2,500 scientists implore Australia to protect the Great Barrier Reef

More than 2,000 coral reef scientists have sent a letter to the Australian government pleading for it to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

Warning that Australia is perceived as a "laggard" on climate action, the letter was sent Saturday after the conclusion of the 13th International Coral Reef Symposium, which was held in Honolulu, Hawaii.

SEE ALSO: What the Great Barrier Reef looks like in the wake of coral bleaching

Addressed to Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, it was sent on behalf of the International Society for Reef Studies, which represents more than 2,500 coral reef scientists, managers and policy makers.
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1865: Haunting portraits of the Lincoln assassination conspirators

Lewis Powell, also known as Lewis Payne, who attempted to assassinate Secretary of State William Seward.

Image: Alexander Gardner/Library of Congress

On April 14, 1865, at the climax of a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., actor John Wilkes Booth entered Abraham Lincoln's private balcony and shot the president in the back of the head. He leaped to the stage below, shouting “Sic semper tyrannis” - “thus always to tyrants" - before fleeing into the night

Booth's brazen murder of the president was the only successful part of a larger, hastily organized conspiracy to kill the president, vice president and secretary of state simultaneously, with the aim of throwing the Union government into disarray just as the Civil War was ending. Read more...

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