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'Russian Spy' Whale Found Dead in Norway

Hvaldimir first appeared off Norway's coast in 2019. Jorgen REE WIIG / NTB Scanpix/AFP/File
Hvaldimir first appeared off Norway's coast in 2019. Jorgen REE WIIG / NTB Scanpix/AFP/File
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'Russian Spy' Whale Found Dead in Norway

Hvaldimir first appeared off Norway's coast in 2019. Jorgen REE WIIG / NTB Scanpix/AFP/File
Hvaldimir first appeared off Norway's coast in 2019. Jorgen REE WIIG / NTB Scanpix/AFP/File

A Beluga whale whose strange harness sparked suspicions it was trained by Russia for spying purposes has been found dead in Norway, according to an NGO which tracks his movements.
Nicknamed "Hvaldimir" in a pun on the Norwegian word for whale, hval, and its purported ties to Moscow, the beluga first appeared off the coast in Norway's far-northern Finnmark region in 2019, AFP said.
At the time, Norwegian marine biologists removed an attached man-made harness with a mount suited for an action camera and the words "Equipment St. Petersburg" printed on the plastic clasps.
Norwegian officials said Hvaldimir may have escaped an enclosure and may have been trained by the Russian navy as he appeared to be accustomed to humans.
Moscow has never issued any official reaction to speculation that he could be a "Russian spy".
On Saturday, the beluga's lifeless body was discovered off the southwest coast at Risavika by Marine Mind, an organization that has tracked his movements for years.
"I found Hvaldi dead when I was scouting for him yesterday like usual," Marine Mind's founder Sebastian Strand told AFP.
"We had confirmation of him being alive little more than 24 hours before finding him floating motionlessly," he added.
Fredrik Skarbovik, maritime coordinator at the port of Stavanger, confirmed the beluga's death to the VG tabloid newspaper.
Strand said the cause of the whale's demise was unknown and no visible injuries were found during an initial inspection of Hvaldimir's body.
"We've managed to retrieve his remains and put him in a cooled area, in preparation for a necropsy by the veterinary institute that can help determine what really happened to him," Strand added.
With an estimated age of around 14 or 15, Hvaldimir was relatively young for a Beluga whale, which can live to between 40 and 60 years of age.
Beluga whales can reach a size of six meters (20 feet) and generally tend to inhabit the icy waters around Greenland, northern Norway and Russia.
Those include the Barents Sea, a geopolitically important area where Western and Russian submarine movements are monitored.
It is also the gateway to the Northern Route that shortens maritime journeys between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

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Ozempic Hailed as 'Fountain of Youth' that Slows Aging

The is available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic (Photo by Reuters)
The is available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic (Photo by Reuters)
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Ozempic Hailed as 'Fountain of Youth' that Slows Aging

The is available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic (Photo by Reuters)
The is available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic (Photo by Reuters)

The anti-obesity drug Ozempic could slow down ageing and has “far-reaching benefits” beyond what was imagined, researchers have suggested.

Multiple studies have found semaglutide (available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic) reduced the risk of death in people who were obese or overweight and had cardiovascular disease without diabetes, The Independent reported.

Responding to research published in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology, Professor Harlan M Krumholz from the Yale School of Medicine, said: “Semaglutide, perhaps by improving cardiometabolic health, has far-reaching benefits beyond what we initially imagined.”

He added: “These ground-breaking medications are poised to revolutionise cardiovascular care and could dramatically enhance cardiovascular health.”

Multiple reports also quoted Professor Krumholz saying: “Is it a fountain of youth?”

He said: “I would say if you’re improving someone’s cardiometabolic health substantially, then you are putting them in a position to live longer and better.

“It’s not just avoiding heart attacks. These are health promoters. It wouldn’t surprise me that improving people’s health this way actually slows down the ageing process.”

The studies, presented at the European Society of Cardiology Conference 2024 in London, were produced from the Select trial which studied 17,604 people aged 45 or older who were overweight or obese and had established cardiovascular disease but not diabetes.

They received 2.4 mg of semaglutide or a placebo and were tracked for more than three years.

A total of 833 participants died during the study with 5 percent of the deaths were related to cardiovascular causes and 42 per cent from others.

Infection was the most common cause death beyond cardiovascular, but it occurred at a lower rate in the semaglutide group than the placebo group.

People using the weight-loss drug were just as likely to catch Covid-19, but they were less likely to die from it – 2.6 percent dying among those on semaglutide versus 3.1 per cent on the placebo.

Researchers found women experienced fewer major adverse cardiovascular events, but semaglutide “consistently reduced the risk” of adverse cardiovascular outcomes regardless of sex.

Dr Benjamin Scirica, lead author of one of the studies and a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Harvard Medical School, said: “The robust reduction in non-cardiovascular death, and particularly infections deaths, was surprising and perhaps only detectable because of the Covid-19-related surge in non-cardiovascular deaths.

“These findings reinforce that overweight and obesity increases the risk of death due to many etiologies, which can be modified with potent incretin-based therapies like semaglutide.”

Dr Jeremy Samuel Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, praised the researchers for adapting the study to look at Covid-19 when the pandemic started.

He said the findings that the weight-loss drug to reduce Covid-19 mortality rates were “akin to a vaccine against the indirect effects of a pathogen.”