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HORROR video captures the moment airport authoritiesopened a suitcase containing more than 140 tarantulas.

The creepy crawlies were being illegally smuggled through customs, but 12 died after being stuffed into plastic bags without proper ventilation.

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Authorities at Bogota Airport in Colombia found the spiders hidden in a chess set bound for Mexico City.

They were due to be sold illegally in pet stores, according to Colombian news outletAlerta Bogota.

The Colombian environmental agency said it worked with police to recover "more than 140 tarantulas that were to be sent from El Dorado International Airport to a Central American country.

Officials received a tip-off after a delivery company reported discovering "strange objects" during screening procedures at the airport's cargo terminal.

"When the professionals from the Environment Secretariat and members of the (National Police's) Environmental and Ecological Unit arrived at the place to inspect the cargo, they determined that 143 tarantulas of the infraorder mygalomorphae were camouflaged inside a chess set," authorities said in a statement.

Twelve of the 143 spiders died after being transported in plastic bags inside the chess set without proper ventilation.

"The shipment, whose final destination was Mexico City, lacked the respective environmental permits and licenses [necessary for] the use, transport or sale of that wildlife," the statement added.

"Environmental and police authorities have launched investigations to determine the sender and recipient and thereby begin the respective punitive processes."

The surviving spiders were taken for medical, nutritional, and biological care at Bogota's Centre for the Assessment and Rehabilitation of Wild Flora and Fauna.

It isn't yet known where the spiders were taken from, and authorities want to find out which facility they belong to before deciding whether to release them into the wild or relocate them.

Colombia is one of the diverse countries on earth, home to tens of thousands of species, which makes it incredibly attractive to illegal wildlife traffickers.

In November last year, authorities caught two German citizens trying to smuggle more than 300 creatures out of the country via El Dorado Airport.

Some 232 spiders, nine spider eggs, eight scorpions, and 67 cockroaches were seized hidden in more than 200 plastic containers amid rolls of photographic film.

Colombian animal conservation law includes criminal penalties and hefty fines.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, tarantulas are illegally sold to meet demand in the pet trade, due to their tameness and colourful appearance.

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While pet spiders might not be to everyone's taste, one Brit is such a fan he lives with 120 tarantulas.

Arachnophile Aaron Phoenix, 34, has spent around 1,000 on buying 80 different species, some of which have a leg span as big as 10 inches.

They all have their own enclosure in his spare room inBristoland he will tend to them every morning and night with food and water.

House removal contractor Aaron said: "Theyre my passion and obsession. I find them fascinating.

"I could sit and watch them for hours. Theyve had an incredible effect on me and Ill never give up owning tarantulas now.

"They all have their individual quirks. One of my first girls comes up to the top of the enclosure when I drop food in and does this little happy dance to say thank you.

"Another runs to the lid to greet you whenever you walk into the room - it's beautiful to watch.

"Peoples reactions are fantastic. They cant believe it!"

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Skin-crawling moment more than 140 tarantulas found hidden in CHESS SET by customs officers... - The US Sun

Daniil Dubov, a Russian chess grandmaster who has spoken out against his country's invasion of Ukraine, has reiterated his position and suggested that Russia needs a revolution.

While Dubov has stressed that he isn't a politician, he is willing to speak critically about his government, even if he knows how dangerous that might be.

"To be a real opponent, you really have to do something," he said in an interview with Der Spiegel.

"I am not a professional politician. But I love this country and want it to do well. I criticize things because I have the right to do so. For example, I also criticized the government after Crimea in 2014.

"What I am saying now is really dangerous, but the only way to change anything in Russia is a revolution. Personally, I don't want that. I find it rational; you can call me a coward if you want. But I don't want the revolution to start, I don't want Russians to kill Russians. It feels like the only way, but the consequences would be worse.

"Even in terms of democracy, [Vladimir] Putin and his actions are clearly supported by the majority of Russians, like it or not."

The chess player, who shot to fame in 2018 when he won the World Rapid Chess Championship, also spoke about the decision across the world of sport to ban the Russian flag. While some Russian athletes and teams have been banned altogether, in chess Dubov can keep playing but only with the flag of the world federation FIDE.

"I find it strange, as everyone knows where I come from, where I live, which country I played for," he said on that.

"To ban the flag for every Russian is like equating the whole country with the current government.

"I feel great when I play for Russia, but I don't represent the Kremlin. I represent Dostoevsky and Chekhov - I represent the culture, the people."

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Chess champion Dubov: The only way to change anything in Russia is a revolution - Marca English

Events over the past two months have flipped the perception of the geopolitical world on its head, says CJ Werleman

When Russian President Vladimir Putin stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Chinese President Xi Jinping on 4 February to announce their relationship had entered a new era, the fate of global democracy and the Western rules-based international order had reached its low water mark. Authoritarianism was on a seemingly unstoppable march.

Russia and China are playing chess, while the West is playing checkers was the common snipe hurled towards Washington D.C. and Brussels a jibe echoed by former US President Donald Trump who routinely lauded Putin as a genius and praised Xi Jinping for his toughness.

With the United States and Europe divided and in disarray, President-for-life Putin plotted to restore the Russian Empire, while President-for-life Xi Jinping set his eyes on conquering the Western Pacific, starting with Taiwan.

Knowing that the US and NATO cannot fight and win a war on two fronts, the pair set in motion their plot to divide and rule the world, starting with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.

Four weeks later, military analysts are calling Putins war the greatest military disaster since the Second World War an accusation supported by a number of data points, including the death of 15,000 Russian soldiers and the loss of 500 tanks, 1,500 armoured personnel carriers, 100 aircraft, 120 helicopters, 35 operational and tactical UAVs, 250 artillery systems, 80 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,000 vehicles of various types, 45 anti-aircraft warfare systems, and 15 special equipment units, according to Ukraines Ministry of Defence.

Russia has lost more military personnel and equipment in a neighbouring country in four weeks than the US lost in Afghanistan and Iraq over the course of two decades. An assessment by the head of the UKs cyber spy agency has said that intelligence shows Russian soldiers are refusing to carry out orders and sabotaging their own equipment, and that Putin has massively misjudged the capabilities of his own military.

These losses on the battlefield are paired with the economic destruction that US and European sanctions have wrought on the Russian economy. The consequences will last a generation or longer, with Putin marginalised on the world stage and Russia branded a bona fide pariah state.

Europe is more united than ever before. NATO membership has never looked so appealing. Theres now even talk of an EU Army.

Six weeks ago, Beijing described its relationship with Moscow as an alliance without limits, but now it is pretending like it has never heard of Vladimir Putin, even forcing the Russian Foreign Ministers airplane to turn around midway on its flight to the Chinese capital on 17 March a signal of growing diplomatic distance between the two countries.

With Putin and Russia on the nose, China is suddenly trying to sell itself as an impartial mediator and facilitator for peace talks. Its state-controlled media outlets have even broken away from their initial pro-Russia talking points to air US Government accusations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Beijing now views both Putin and the Russian armed forces through the lens of a popular German expression: Close the lid, the monkey is dead.

According to Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external affairs, the problem for Chinas leaders, which they must now realise, is that one must be careful about the company one keeps.

Russias invasion of Ukraine will not produce more grain to feed the Chinese after the poor harvest predicted for their country this year, he has said. Nor will it replace the markets that China now risks losing in Europe and elsewhere because of its perceived closeness to the Kremlin. Instead, Putins war risks irreparably damaging Chinas global image and its prospects of being a potential leader in international affairs.

Two months ago, Xi Jinping, on the back of the Beijing Olympic Games, was riding a wave of unbridled national enthusiasm towards his reappointment in 2022. But not only has his siding with Putin damaged Chinas global reputation, the Chinese economy finds itself in a tailspin, having set its lowest economic growth target in more than three decades. This is against a backdrop of the Coronavirus spreading like wildfire, forcing tens of millions of residents in Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen into lockdown and cutting off travel between cities and production lines, shutting down shopping malls and technology hubs, as reported by The New York Times.

Worse still, China relied on its own vaccines to fight the Coronavirus, but they appear to have been almost useless against the Omicron variant. Because Beijing adopted a zer COVID policy, using strict quarantine and lockdown measures, it has left the population with little immunity from prior infections. The pandemic is now an albatross around Xi Jinpings neck.

His concerns are no doubt heightened by an unprecedented crash in Chinas property market which accounts for 25% of the countrys gross domestic product and 40% of bank assets and an unprecedented flight of foreign capital from Chinese markets since Russia invaded Ukraine, according to a study by the Institute of International Finance. It found no similar outflows from other emerging markets, adding insult to injury.

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These changing economic and political realties have made China more vulnerable to international sanctions and isolation, leaving Beijing with little choice other than to put greater diplomatic distance between itself and Moscow, and less distance between itself and the Western hemisphere.

Taiwans National Security Bureau Director-General, Chen Ming-tong, said that the war in Ukraine is likely to improve China-US relations, in the same way the two rival powers established closer ties after the 9/11 attacks.

This was not the seismic shift in the international order many had predicted when Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping issued their joint statement on 4 February, but it is seismic nevertheless. Just not in the way Moscow and Beijing had hoped for.

As Russia scholar Stephen Kotkin has noted, Putins invasion disproves all the nonsense about how the West is decadent, the West is over, the West is in decline, how its a multi-polar world and the rise of China all of that turned out to be bunk.

The West is playing chess, while Putin and Xi Jinping are playing checkers. Its been a long time since global democracy felt so reinvigorated.

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The West is Playing Chess, While Russia and China are Playing Checkers Byline Times - Byline Times

Bridge, a card game played on partnerships, has long resisted attempts of computer mastery. But now, it seems that a new AI has managed to overcome human performance, and unlike other AIs, its decisions are not a black box.

In 1997, Deep Blue (a non-human chess player) managed to defeat Garry Kasparov, marking a pivotal moment in computer research: computers had overcome humans in the game of chess. Since then, computers have become way better, and have not only surpassed the sum of human chess knowledge but are even making their own contributions to the game. The game of Go, trillions of trillions of times more complex than chess, was also surprisingly mastered by AI.

But unlike chess and Go, bridge is a game of imperfect information, and AIs dont really like this type of game.

In its basic format, bridge is played by four players in two competing partnerships. The whole card deck is split equally between the four players, and partners sit at opposite sides of the tables, bidding for a winning contract, and then playing their entire hand turn after turn. Unlike many other card games, bridge doesnt have a major luck component: in competitions, players at different tables play the same set of cards, so even if youre dealt a bad hand, youre comparing yourself to players at other tables with the same bad hand.

For AIs, not knowing who has which cards is a big problem, but several groups are working on it including NukkAI. NukkAI has been working on cracking bridge for some time, and they launched a challenge that required human champions to play 800 deals, divided into 80 sets of 10. The bidding part was not used, all players (including the AI) started from a predetermined contract and just played out the hands.

Each champion and the AI played against a pair of robot opponents the best robot opponents in the world to date, but which are still not as good as human experts. It wasnt a perfect experiment, but its as good as you can get; and in this experiment the AI won. NooK, as the AI was called, won 67 of the 80 sets.

It should be said that this focused only on one part of the bridge trick game. When one partnership wins the bidding stage, one of the two partners becomes the dummy, and puts his cards visible for everyone to see and their partner then plays with both their own hand (which is still hidden) and the dummys hand (which is visible to all). This is easier because theres less hidden information, its likely that AIs would have a tougher job not being on the declaring side (the one that won at the bidding stage).

Jean-Baptiste Fantun, co-founder of NukkAI, said he was confident Nook would perform better than the best human players under these conditions. AI researcher Vronique Ventos, NukkAIs other co-founder, says Nook is a new type of AI.

Previously, AIs that mastered Go and chess were black box algorithms, where the algorithm is unable to explain to humans why its making some decisions. Top chess players routinely train with chess AIs, and while the machine suggests a move as the best, its incapable of saying why its the best move. But with bridge, it doesnt really work like that. The game itself relies on communication between partners, and so Nook had to be a white box that communicates its decisions, the co-founders explain.

Rather than playing countless rounds of a game and learning by trial and error, NukkAi tries to first learn the games rules and then carefully improve to practice, using both deep learning systems and a rules-based approach. Its a way thats closer to how humans learn, and through this approach, the AI decisions are legible to others. This could make this test far more important than just winning at bridge.

If we want AIs to help us make important decisions in things like healthcare or economics, we absolutely need to understand why the AI says something is the best option having everything under a black box will just not do. Were already seeing AIs move from games to real-world applications, and being able to understand the algorithms decision process can make a world of a difference for real-life applications.

You can watch the entire game here (commentary in French).

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AI has now reportedly mastered the game of bridge and unlike chess AIs, it can also explain itself - ZME Science

Former Eagles Hall of Fame safety Brian Dawkins has been called a legend based on how he played football. It was why he earned one of the most sought-after sportscoats that every player dreams of who enters the league: The gold Pro Football Hall of Fame jacket.

Dawkins left his gold jacket at home Friday. Instead, he chose to wear his red t-shirt with Blessed by the Best across his chest. Dawkins sat down to answer questions at Harrahs in Atlantic City Friday. Dawkins, who was there for the Maxwell Football Club Gala, was also there to accept the organizations Legends Award.

Part of being a legend was his ability to play in various positions on the field, which was not seen a lot during that period in the NFL. Dawkins not only played the traditional roles that safeties had but lined up in the box to stop the run and line up in exotic looks that would force turnovers.

It is common to see safeties used in creative ways like Dawkins was deployed. Dawkins credited the ongoing evolution of the usage of safeties to one of his former coaches.

Former Eagles safety and Pro Football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins (left) sits next to University of Alabama quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young (right) during Friday's Maxwell Football Club press conference.Chris Franklin | NJ Advance Media For NJ.com

Its going where Jim Johnson started it, Dawkins said. He began to do what he did with me. With the way he played me and utilized me, it started way back then, with me being used in so many different ways and varieties on the field. I call them a chess piece. Youre seeing more guys that have to have that versatility to make defenses more successful. Im happy to see that the safety position is finally getting some of the credit for being game-changers and not just deep safeties.

Dawkins also talked about what was going on with his former team, saying last season looked as if the Eagles season was broken up into three acts in a movie, and one of them is the real identity of the team.

Any team that is in their second year together, you are still truly developing who you are, Dawkins said. Do we know who the Eagles are? They started off one way, changed midseason and finished off another way. Which one are you? This coming year, they will figure out who they are during this offseason, watching film, having tough decisions, bringing in the other talent that can fill in some of the gaps they may have had. Then we will see what this team really has.

Another thing to watch as the season and the years progress are who the leaders are on the team and how they develop in their roles, especially with some of the younger corps players such as Jalen Hurts continue to get experience and some of the veterans such as Brandon Graham get older.

Dawkins, who was a captain for the Eagles and widely known for his leadership abilities, said that it does not matter who is wearing the traditional captains C on jerseys that denotes the responsibility. Other players could quietly be contributing to the role.

One of the things about leadership is that there are often times leaders that dont have the platform because you have a leader in place, Dawkins said. Sometimes when some of the other older guys leave, for instance, when Troy (Vincent) left, there was an opportunity for me to step up because Troy had vacated a leadership position.

Those leaders that are already there that just dont have the stage, they can then step up because theyve already learned some say with their teammates already, Dawkins continued. The fans just dont know it, so they can just step into that place and then teach the younger guys what it is to be an Eagle.

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Chris Franklin may be reached at cfranklin@njadvancemedia.com.

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Eagles great, chess piece Brian Dawkins asks what version of team will show up in 2022 - NJ.com