A lost baby whale that captured Australians’ hearts as it tried to suckle from a yacht it thought could be its mother will soon be killed to end its suffering, wildlife rangers said yesterday.
“He’s taken a really serious turn for the worse just now,” said John Dengate, spokesman for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife, which has been at the forefront of efforts to save the animal.
“The vets have had a look, they’ve said he’s having breathing difficulties, his flippers are at an unusual angle, he’s not going to last much longer, you should put him down,” he told national radio.
The baby humpback was discovered on Monday in Pittwater bay near Sydney’s Palm Beach, trying to suckle on the hull of a whale-sized anchored yacht, after apparently being abandoned by its mother.
In a remarkable effort to return it to the ocean, the calf — dubbed Colin after the man who first found it — was lured out to sea by the “mother ship.”
But after failing to find its own mother or an adoptive parent among the pods of whales passing Pittwater, Colin returned to the bay and again began trying to suckle yachts.
With public concern over the calf’s fate growing, the army was asked whether it could help with a flotation device to take Colin back out to sea and a scientist suggested it could be fed formula milk through an artificial teat.
But the logistics of feeding and looking after a whale calf which would need about 230 liters of milk a day were insurmountable, experts said.
“The vets who had a look at him were really surprised at how fast he’d gone downhill,” Dengate said.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS