An uncrewed aerial vehicle launched from Yemen was shot down in self-defense by a US ship in the southern Red Sea on Saturday in the vicinity of several commercial vessels, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.
No casualties or damage were reported, it said.
The announcement came as the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) organization said that six small craft approached a merchant vessel about 50 nautical miles from the Yemeni city of Mocha on Saturday before leaving the area.
Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi militias have stepped up attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea in protest against Israel’s war in Gaza. Various shipping lines have suspended operations, instead taking the longer journey around Africa.
“The vessel and crew were reported safe,” UKMTO added in an advisory note on the incident.
Source: National News Agency – Lebanon
The first person to spot it was a shovel operator working the overnight shift, eyeing a glint of white as he scooped up a giant mound of dirt and dropped it into a dump truck.
Later, after the truck driver dumped the load, a dozer driver was ready to flatten the dirt but stopped for a closer look when he, too, spotted that bit of white.
Only then did the miners realize they had unearthed something special: a 7-foot-long mammoth tusk that had been buried for thousands of years.
The miners unearthed the tusk from an old streambed, about 40 feet (12.1 meters) deep, at the Freedom Mine near Beulah, North Dakota.
After spotting the tusk, the crews stopped digging in the area and called in experts, who estimated it to be 10,000 to 100,000 years old.
Jeff Person, a paleontologist with the North Dakota Geologic Survey, was among those to respond. He expressed surprise that the mammoth tusk hadn’t suffered more damage, considering the massive equipment used at the site.
Mammoths once roamed across parts of Afric
a, Asia, Europe and North America. Specimens have been found throughout the United States and Canada, said Paul Ullmann, a University of North Dakota vertebrate paleontologist.
Source: Oman News Agency