A family holiday party in Tores, Brazil on December 23, 2024, turned fatal, resulting in the deaths of three members, and the hospitalization of three others, from arsenic poisoning. Dead are sisters Maida da Silva, 58, and Neuza Silva Dos Anjos, 65; and Neuza’s daughter Tatiana, 43; a third sister, Zeli Silva, 60, Maida’s husband Jefferson, and Tatiana’s son Matheus, 10, were hospitalized with severe injuries but survived.
It was half a century ago, on 31 October 1974, that eight-year-old Timothy O’Bryan died in agony after eating a Halloween treat laced with cyanide. The family and friends had been trick-or-treating in Pasadena, Texas, when they came across a house which did not respond to their knocks. Thinking no one was home, the group proceeded down the street, but Timothy’s father Ronald hung back awhile. In a couple minutes he rejoined the group, offering five 21” Pixy Stix to his son, daughter, and three other children, claiming that his repeated knocking had finally elicited an answer, and these were the treats he was given.
On 16 February 2024, the sudden death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was announced from the Polar Wolf prison in Kharp, Siberia, Russia, where he had been held since December, following a series of transfers after his incarceration in 2021. Navalny, who can be seen laughing and joking in a video just the day before, reportedly felt unwell after a morning walk, collapsed, and could not be revived.
Navalny had long been a thorn in the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin, organizing and leading the opposition to his despotic rule for over a decade. Putin had tried at least once before to have him killed, using poison, and astrologic factors point to his death being a repeat performance, successful this time. In August 2020 Navalny became violently ill during a flight, losing consciousness and lapsing into a coma; he was medically evacuated to Berlin, where the cause was determined to be Novichok poisoning, a Soviet era neurotoxin. Miraculously, Navalny survived, and despite the risk to his life returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was immediately arrested, and has been in detention ever since, under increasingly harsh conditions, serving a nineteen-year sentence for “extremism.”
I like to think of myself as a fairly tolerant person. At least when it comes to other species (with humans, I’m not always that patient). I far prefer a policy of “live and let live.” There are exceptions. I will not suffer a mosquito to live in my presence (buy, hey! they started it!). And an ant discovered in the kitchen has a very short shelf life, though I often turn a blind eye to scouts I find elsewhere in the house. Silverfish and my library don’t mix, and thousand leggers skeeve me out, to the point of hysterics, so I am usually unable to take direct action against them. I positively cosset spiders of all kinds, which help me deal with other unwanted insects (sorry, spiders, I know you’re actually not insects, but arachnids; it’s just easier to phrase it that way).
