UNITED STATES
Actress mothers ducklings
Tina Chen has her hands full as a New York City actress, director and now surrogate mother to 16 ducklings that have hatched on her apartment roof deck. Local mallards often nest on high floors on Manhattan’s Upper East and West sides, experts say. Chen’s 12th-floor deck between Madison and Park avenues has been home to wild ducklings for the last four years. She is feeding 16 baby birds born a week ago meals twice a day of duck pellets and shredded greens, putting out water for them to swim in and cleaning up after them. “It’s really a lot of work. The poop out there is tremendous,” she said. “That’s a lot of ducklings.”
UNITED STATES
New trails for zoo’s tigers
The Philadelphia Zoo, the nation’s oldest, is unveiling an exhibit that allows its large cats to walk along enclosed, overhead trails that span the zoo’s pathways. The new walkway officially opens today, but two tigers, Wiz and Dimitri, have already tested it a few times. They had never encountered humans at anything other than eye level before, said Kay Buffamonte, lead keeper of the zoo’s Big Cat Falls exhibit. “Being elevated for them is a position of power,” she said. Visitors also seem to be enjoying the unusual close encounters. The project, featuring mesh-enclosed walkways just 4.2m above the ground, is part of an initiative to give animals more room to run and explore.
UNITED STATES
Syphilis rising in gay men
Syphilis is rising among gay and bisexual men after being nearly eliminated in the country more than a decade ago, according to a federal study released on Thursday. The increase in syphilis among gay men is a major public health concern, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said because it indicates sexual behavior that could lead to an increase in HIV transmission. The syphilis rate last year was 5.3 cases per 100,000 people, more than twice the all-time low of 2.1 cases per 100,000 people in 2000, the centers reported. From 2005 to last year, the number of syphilis cases reported nearly doubled, from 8,724 to 16,663, the centers said.
UNITED STATES
Hunt expands for firefighter
Homicide detectives searching for a battalion chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection suspected of fatally stabbing his girlfriend have turned their attention to the state’s massive mountain ranges on Thursday. The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department said Orville Fleming, 55, has deep knowledge of the Sierra and Santa Cruz mountains and the Yosemite Valley. Fleming, who has fire department keys giving him access to gated trails and roads, disappeared a week ago after his 26-year-old girlfriend, Sarah Douglas, was found stabbed to death at the home they shared.
UNITED STATES
Imam explains hands loss
Radical London imam Abu Hamza al-Masri has been known for years as much for the metal hook he wears in place of his right hand as for his sermons. On Thursday, for what appeared to be the first time, he said he lost both hands and one eye in an accidental explosion in Pakistan two decades ago. His account, which came as he testified in New York City at his trial on terrorism charges, conflicted with media stories that he suffered the injuries while fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. He said his image as a veteran of the Afghan war was exaggerated. “Unfortunately, the reputation is larger than the reality,” he told the jury.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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