Tue, Aug 19, 2025 English homepage

Fish farming or pisciculture involves commercial breeding of fish, most often for food, in fish tanks or artificial enclosures such as fish ponds. It is a particular type of aquaculture, which is the controlled cultivation and harvesting of aquatic animals such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs and so on, in natural or pseudo-natural environments. A facility that releases juvenile fish into the wild for recreational fishing or to supplement a species' natural numbers is generally referred to as a fish hatchery. Worldwide, the most important fish species produced in fish farming are carp, catfish, salmon and tilapia.

The Atlantic salmon is a species of ray-finned fish in the family Salmonidae. It is the third largest of the Salmonidae, behind Siberian taimen and Pacific Chinook salmon, growing up to 1 m (3.3 ft) in length. Atlantic salmon are found in the northern Atlantic Ocean and in rivers that flow into it. Most populations are anadromous, hatching in streams and rivers but moving out to sea as they grow where they mature, after which the adults seasonally move upstream again to spawn.

On August 19, 2017, a net pen at a salmon farm near Cypress Island, Washington, broke, accidentally releasing hundreds of thousands of non-native Atlantic salmon into the Pacific Ocean. The fish farm was run by Cooke Aquaculture Pacific, LLC. According to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, inadequate cleaning was likely the primary cause for the pen break; the nets were supporting more than six times their own weight in biofouling. Coastal tribes were hired to fish the escaped salmon. Atlantic salmon farming was later banned in Washington state in reaction to the incident.

Cypress Island is the westernmost part of Skagit County, Washington, and is about halfway between the mainland and offshore San Juan County. It is separated from Blakely Island to the west by Rosario Strait and from Guemes Island to the east by Bellingham Channel. The island has a land area of 5,500 acres (22 km2), and a population of 40 persons as of the 2000 United States Census.

Ontario is the southernmost province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it is home to 38.5% of the country's population, and is the second-largest province by total area. Ontario is Canada's fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area of all the Canadian provinces and territories. It is home to the nation's capital, Ottawa, and its most populous city, Toronto, which is Ontario's provincial capital.

The Southern Ontario tornado outbreak of 2005 was a series of thunderstorms on the afternoon of August 19, 2005, that spawned tornadoes damaging homes in the Conestoga Lake, Fergus, and Tavistock areas. A tornado was reported within the Toronto city limits, although this was never officially confirmed by the Meteorological Service of Canada. The storms morphed into heavy rain cells when reaching Toronto. The Insurance Bureau of Canada has estimated that insured losses were the highest in the province's history, exceeding 500 million Canadian dollars, two and a half times that of Ontario's losses during the 1998 ice storm and the second largest loss event in Canadian history until another event of torrential rain of July 8, 2013.

The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $. There is no standard disambiguating form, but the abbreviations Can$, CA$ and C$ are frequently used for distinction from other dollar-denominated currencies. It is divided into 100 cents (¢).

The Second Chechen War took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from August 1999 to April 2009.

The Mil Mi-26 is a Soviet/Russian heavy transport helicopter. Its product code is Izdeliye 90. Operated by both military and civilian operators, it is the largest helicopter to have gone into serial production.

On 19 August 2002, a group of Chechen fighters armed with a man-portable air-defense system brought down a Russian Mil Mi-26 helicopter in a minefield, which resulted in the death of 127 Russian soldiers in the greatest loss of life in the history of helicopter aviation. It is also the deadliest aviation disaster ever suffered by the Russian Armed Forces, as well as its worst loss of life in a single day since the 1999 start of the Second Chechen War.

The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, known simply as Ichkeria, was a de facto state in Eastern Europe. It controlled most of the former Checheno-Ingush ASSR from 1991 to 2000 and has been a government-in-exile since.

Man-portable air-defense systems are portable shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. They are guided weapons and are a threat to low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters and also used against low-flying cruise missiles. These short-range missiles can also be fired from vehicles, tripods, weapon platforms, and warships.

Khankala is a settlement in Groznensky District of the Chechen Republic, Russia, located to the east of Grozny, the republic's capital. Population: 7,908 (2002 Census).

On 7 June 2025, Miguel Uribe Turbay, a senator and pre-candidate in the 2026 Colombian presidential election, was shot from behind during a rally at El Golfito Park in the neighbourhood of Modelia, part of the locality of Fontibón, in Bogotá, Colombia. He was hospitalised in critical condition and died two months later, on 11 August 2025.

Miguel Uribe Turbay was a Colombian politician who served as a member of the Senate of Colombia from 2022 until his assassination in 2025. A member of the conservative Democratic Centre party, he had been seeking the party's nomination for the 2026 presidential election.

Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in Colombia in May 2026. Gustavo Petro, who was elected president in 2022, is ineligible to run due to term limits.

The Armenia–Azerbaijan peace agreement is a planned deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan to end the 37-year-long Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. On 8 August 2025, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, with the mediation of US President Donald Trump, initialed an agreement and signed a joint declaration emphasizing the need to continue efforts toward the signing and final ratification of the agreement.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an ethnic and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians until 2023, and seven surrounding districts, inhabited mostly by Azerbaijanis until their expulsion during the 1990s. The Nagorno-Karabakh region was entirely claimed by and partially controlled by the breakaway Republic of Artsakh, but was recognized internationally as part of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan gradually re-established control over Nagorno-Karabakh region and the seven surrounding districts.

James Arthur Lovell Jr. was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and mechanical engineer. In 1968, as command module pilot of Apollo 8, he along with Frank Borman and William Anders, became one of the first three astronauts to fly to and orbit the Moon. He then commanded the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970 which, after a critical failure en route, looped around the Moon and returned safely to Earth.

Apollo 13 was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and would have been the third Moon landing. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, but the landing was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module (SM) exploded two days into the mission, disabling its electrical and life-support system. The crew, supported by backup systems on the Apollo Lunar Module, instead looped around the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and returned safely to Earth on April 17. The mission was commanded by Jim Lovell, with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise as Lunar Module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella.