Free Republic

Alasdair Burns, a stargazing guide on Stewart Island/Rakiura, received a text from a friend: go outside and look at the sky. “As soon as we actually went outside, it was very obvious what it was he was referring to,” Burns said. He saw a huge, blue spiral of light amid the darkness. “It looked like an enormous spiral galaxy, just hanging there in the sky, and slowly just drifting across,” Burns said. A spiral of blue lights as seen from Stewart Island/Rakiura, New Zealand, on Sunday. Theories on social media about its origins ranged from aliens to foreign rockets to...

As many as 145 whales have died after being found stranded on a remote beach in New Zealand, conservation officials said Monday. Two pods of pilot whales were discovered just over a mile apart on Mason Bay, Stewart Island, a sparsely populated island in the country's south. Authorities were first alerted to the mass stranding by a hiker Saturday evening. Half of the whales were already dead. The remaining animals were later euthanized, according to New Zealand's Department of Conservation (DOC). A Stewart Island operations manager for the DOC, Ren Leppens, said that the remote location and condition of the...