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  'Intellectual Giant' The Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, who has publicly disagreed with Wilson on some subjects, praised the late researcher on Twitter, calling him the "greatest myrmecologist" -- ant researcher -- and a "great Darwinian." Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, also expressed sadness over Wilson's death. "A great scientist and a lovely man," said Pinker on Twitter. "We disagreed about some things, but it didn't affect his generosity and willingness to engage." In later years Wilson spoke relentlessly about the need for environmental stewardship, warning of the potential for chaos and ruin if humans do not change course. "Biodiversity (is) being eroded at an accelerating rate by human activity," he said in a 2014 lecture at Duke University. "And the loss is going to inflict a heavy price in wealth, security and spirit, unless we staunch it." In 2016, Wilson published the book ...

  Itambe:  Juliana Reis, a 37-year-old from the isolated Brazilian town of Itambe, was finally reuniting for Christmas with her parents after months apart due to the pandemic. "We really hoped it would be the Christmas of our dreams," she told Reuters on Tuesday. Soon their reunion turned to nightmare, however, as dramatic floods ripped through this portion of Bahia state in northeast Brazil. Late on Dec. 25 a dam collapsed some 27 km (17 miles) away, turning the nearby Verruga River into a violent torrent. Reis and her parents survived only by swimming out of her house as it filled with water. "When midnight arrived, this catastrophe happened," she recalled of their panicked Christmas, while picking through the ruins of her now-flattened home. "I just wanted everyone to stay alive." Her home was one of some 5,000 destroyed in this state of 15 million. The flooding has displaced nearly 50,000 people and killed at least 20. The state of Bahia has been suffe...