The co-head of a viral online campaign to hunt down Ugandan guerrilla leader Joseph Kony has been hospitalized after being found semi-naked in the street, masturbating, police and his boss said on Friday.
The head of Invisible Children, the organizers of the Internet campaign sensation, said Jason Russell was receiving medical care for “exhaustion, dehydration and malnutrition.”
San Diego Police Department spokeswoman Andra Brown said officers detained a 33-year-old man on Thursday and took him to a medical facility after passers-by reported him in the street in the southern Californian city.
“Officers responded to a radio call to check the welfare of an individual who was said to be running in the street, interfering with traffic, screaming; one person said that he was naked and masturbating,” she said.
“Other people said that he was interfering with traffic, banging on the sidewalk, that sort of thing. We have reports of being in various states of undress, and neighbors in the area were concerned about him.”
While declining to identify him by name, she said: “Officers contacted the 33-year-old white male ... we detained him and transported [him] to a local medical facility for further evaluation and treatment.”
The head of Invisible Children, Ben Keesey, told the TMZ celebrity Web site that Russell was “now receiving medical care and is focused on getting better.”
“The past two weeks have taken a severe emotional toll on all of us, Jason especially, and that toll manifested itself in an unfortunate incident yesterday,” he said.
“Jason’s passion and his work have done so much to help so many, and we are devastated to see him dealing with this personal health issue. We will always love and support Jason,” he said, asking for privacy at “this difficult time.”
About 80 million people have so far watched the 30-minute YouTube video which seeks to focus attention on tracking down Kony, the fugitive head of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
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Burmese President Min Aung Hlaing yesterday cut all prisoners’ sentences by one-sixth, a blanket measure that a source close to deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi said would further shorten her detention. Aung San Suu Kyi has been sequestered since a 2021 military coup, but the senior member of her dissolved National League for Democracy (NLD) party said that while her term had been reduced, her remaining sentence is still unclear. “We also don’t know exactly how many years she has left,” the source told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. The military toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government
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