NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” featured an entertaining opening segment that highlighted Oscar fever recently. The segment included Marcello Hernandez and Heidi Gardner as “Access Hollywood’s” Mario Lopez and “either Maria Menounos or Kit Hoover,” Kenan Thompson as Mike Tyson as a Security Guard, Bowen Yang as Long Island Rep. George Santos pretending to be Tom Cruise, Mikey Day and Molly Kearney as Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson from “The Banshees of Inisherin,” and host Jenna Ortega joking about her big break coming from a video her mother posted on Facebook. Fred Armisen provided off-color dialogue for a read-through of “The Parent Trap”, and Michael Che and Colin Jost provided political commentary on President Biden’s budget and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson during the “Weekend Update”. The 1975 also performed two songs from their 2022 album, "Being Funny in a Foreign Language".
Meanwhile, a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, has revealed that a small population of blue whales living in the eastern Pacific Ocean are genetically distinct from other blue whales around the world. Scientists believe that these whales, known as the “eastern Pacific blue whales,” have been isolated from other blue whales for at least 10,000 years. The study used DNA samples from the skin of whales that had been harvested in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the Japanese whaling industry. The results of the study showed that the eastern Pacific blue whales are distinct from other blue whales in both their mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA and are much smaller than other blue whale populations.
This discovery is of great importance, as it highlights the need for further research into the ecology and population dynamics of these whales to ensure their long-term survival. While the upcoming episode of “Saturday Night Live” on 1 April will feature producer and actress Quinta Brunson and musical guest Lil Yachty, these findings of the study serve as a reminder of the importance of conservation of the Eastern Pacific blue whale population.