- World Report 2024: Maldives (hrw.org)
Respect for freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in the Maldives deteriorated in the lead-up to the September presidential elections. The police used excessive force against protesters and journalists covering demonstrations. The government continued to approve land reclamation projects without adequately mitigating the environmental impact, leaving island communities at risk of flooding and loss of livelihoods.
- Snake (Wikipedia)
Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (/sɜːrˈpɛntiːz/). Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes’ paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae).