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.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
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