Month: June 2024
DNA from mammoth remains reveals the history of the last surviving population
The mammoths of Wrangel Island purged a lot of harmful mutations before dying off.
Enlarge / An artist’s conception of one of the last mammoths of Wrangel Island. (credit: Beth Zaiken)
A small group of woolly mammoths became trapped on Wrangel Island around 10,000 years ago when rising sea levels separated the island from mainland Siberia. Small, isolated populations of animals lead to inbreeding and genetic defects, and it has long been thought that the Wrangel Island mammoths ultimately succumbed to this problem about 4,000 years ago.
A paper in Cell on Thursday, however, compared 50,000 years of genomes from mainland and isolated Wrangel Island mammoths and found that this was not the case. What the authors of the paper discovered not only challenges our understanding of this isolated group of mammoths and the evolution of small populations, it also has important implications for conservation efforts today.
A severe bottleneck
It’s the culmination of years of genetic sequencing by members of the international team behind this new paper. They studied 21 mammoth genomes—13 of which were newly sequenced by lead author Marianne Dehasque; others had been sequenced years prior by co-authors Patrícia Pečnerová, Foteini Kanellidou, and Héloïse Muller. The genomes were obtained from Siberian woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius), both from the mainland and the island before and after it became isolated. The oldest genome was from a female Siberian mammoth who died about 52,300 years ago. The youngest were from Wrangel Island male mammoths who perished right around the time the last of these mammoths died out (one of them died just 4,333 years ago).
NASA and SpaceX misjudged the risks from reentering space junk
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Netflix in 2024: the 9 most unmissable shows so far and what’s coming next
The finest shows on Netflix so far in 2024 and what’s worth getting excited about in the coming months.
When you’re the biggest streaming company in the world and make as many new Netflix movies and shows as it does, there’s bound to be a few misfires – and this year has seen its fair share already, including J-Lo-in-space AI thriller Atlas, which has been inexplicably popular despite terrible reviews, and Zach Snyder’s Rebel Moon Part 2, which was not the epic sci-fi sequel we were hoping for.
Suffice to say, there haven’t been that many new entries in our best Netflix movies guide, but when it comes to TV shows, Netflix has been delivering winner after winner this year in pretty much every genre: we’ve had swooning rom-coms, terrifying tales of obsession, quirky fantasy and some brain-melting sci-fi too – all of which have earned a place on our best Netflix shows list.
As we hit the mid-point of 2024, the good news is that there’s plenty more where that came from. Later this year, we’ll see the final seasons of some of our very favorite shows as well as the debuts of some series we think are worth getting excited about. And we’ll also see the return of the biggest show Netflix has ever produced – although as yet we don’t know exactly when.
These are the shows we think have been among Netflix’s biggest and best this year, and the shows we think you’ll be talking about for the rest of the year.
Netflix in 2024: what have been this year’s biggest shows?
(Image credit: Netflix)
If by “biggest” we mean “most talked about”, then the biggest Netflix show of the year so far has been Baby Reindeer. It’s a tale of a suffocating, life-wrecking obsession that begins by saying it’s a true story – and that’s turned out to be a problem, because Netflix is currently being sued for defamation to the tune of $170 million by Fiona Harvey, of whom the show’s key character Martha appears to have been based.
For many viewers, the must-see shows this year have been romantic ones: season 3 of Bridgerton has been an absolute joy, while One Day very successfully turned David Nicholl’s best-selling novel into 14 episodes of romantic comedy.
If you prefer darker shows, it doesn’t get much darker than Ripley. The neo-noir crime thriller, which arrived in April, is a tale of a 1960s New Yorker pulled into a life of deceit and murder. It got some great reviews – The Guardian called it “spellbinding” – and was watched by millions, although its 2.5 million first-week views were low by Netflix standards.
The quirky, Benedict Cumberbatch-starring psychological thriller Eric did much better, rocketing to the top of Netflix’s charts in its very first week.
(Image credit: Netflix)
It’s been a good year for fantasy fans, too. Neil Gaiman’s Dead Boy Detectives has been a lot of fun with its tale of ghostly investigations, and 3 Body Problem is a largely effective adaptation of the brain-melting sci-fi books by Liu Cixin.
But for many viewers the stand-out sci-fi show of the year so far is the animated Scavengers Reign, axed by Max and brought to Netflix last month. It’s currently that rare thing, a show with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 100% ratings might be rare, but Netflix has another one for Chicken Nugget, the truly bizarre show about a young woman who gets turned into – yes! – a chicken nugget.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Netflix without a few loved shows getting canned. And so far this year one of the saddest cancelations is The Brothers Sun, featuring Michelle Yeoh in an action comedy. Despite great reviews Netflix pulled the plug after just one season, so that particular Sun isn’t going to shine again this year.
Netflix in 2024: what new Netflix shows are coming next?
(Image credit: Christor Kalohoridis/Netflix)
One of the most talked-about shows of the coming months is likely to be the fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy, which will stream from August 8 – just after Cobra Kai season six, another hit show coming to an end this year. That’ll be streaming from 18 July.
Emily In Paris is returning for a fourth season in August, but it will be split into two parts: the first five episodes will be available from August 15 but the second five won’t be streaming until September 12. Another returning favorite is Heartstopper, the sensitive coming of age drama centering on teens Charlie and Nick. Heartstopper season three is due in October.
Dramas won’t be the only source of drama in the months to come. The UK version of reality dating show Love Is Blind will hit streaming in August with its very distinctive take on dating: contestants are placed into pods to isolate them from the outside world and they get to know their potential soulmates without knowing what they look like.
If a match is made, the would-be couple have to get engaged before they actually get to meet in person and find out if love really is blind. The show will be presented by former Big Brother contestant Emma Willis and her husband Matt, formerly of the pop band Busted.
(Image credit: Netflix)
Netflix is continuing to invest in animation, and one of the most anticipated new shows is Terminator: The Animated Series. Based on the world of the Schwarzenegger movies but telling a whole new story, the anime will be streaming from August 29. And Zack Snyder’s Twilight of the Gods, an animated series based on Norse mythology, will arrive the following month in September.
Some shows have yet to get a streaming date other than 2024 such as the Kiera Knightley-starring spy drama Black Doves, which could be as much fun as Apple TV Plus’ Slow Horses. Knightley is joined by Happy Valley’s Sarah Lancashire, Bond actor Ben Whishaw and Peaky Blinders‘ Andrew Koji in a tale of secrets, skullduggery and a vast global conspiracy. And that’s all we know so far: there isn’t even a trailer yet, just a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in Netflix’s 2024 preview trailer.
And there’s one more big show without a streaming date just yet: Squid Game 2. We’re going to go out on a limb here and suggest that a few people might watch that one.
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Inside a violent gang’s ruthless crypto-stealing home invasion spree
More than a dozen men threatened, assaulted, tortured, or kidnapped 11 victims.
Enlarge (credit: Malte Mueller / Getty)
Cryptocurrency has always made a ripe target for theft—and not just hacking, but the old-fashioned, up-close-and-personal kind, too. Given that it can be irreversibly transferred in seconds with little more than a password, it’s perhaps no surprise that thieves have occasionally sought to steal crypto in home-invasion burglaries and even kidnappings. But rarely do those thieves leave a trail of violence in their wake as disturbing as that of one recent, ruthless, and particularly prolific gang of crypto extortionists.
The United States Justice Department earlier this week announced the conviction of Remy Ra St. Felix, a 24-year-old Florida man who led a group of men behind a violent crime spree designed to compel victims to hand over access to their cryptocurrency savings. That announcement and the criminal complaint laying out charges against St. Felix focused largely on a single theft of cryptocurrency from an elderly North Carolina couple, whose home St. Felix and one of his accomplices broke into before physically assaulting the two victims—both in their seventies—and forcing them to transfer more than $150,000 in bitcoin and ether to the thieves’ crypto wallets.
In fact, that six-figure sum appears to have been the gang’s only confirmed haul from its physical crypto thefts—although the burglars and their associates made millions in total, mostly through more traditional crypto hacking as well as stealing other assets. A deeper look into court documents from the St. Felix case, however, reveals that the relatively small profit St. Felix’s gang made from its burglaries doesn’t capture the full scope of the harm they inflicted: In total, those court filings and DOJ officials describe how more than a dozen convicted and alleged members of the crypto-focused gang broke into the homes of 11 victims, carrying out a brutal spree of armed robberies, death threats, beatings, torture sessions, and even one kidnapping in a campaign that spanned four US states.