NEW YORK: Birds took the blame for bringing down the jetliner that “Sully” Sullenberger landed on the Hudson River eight years ago this weekend. They have been paying for it with their lives ever since.
An Associated Press analysis of bird-killing programs at the New York City area’s three major airports found that nearly 70,000 gulls, starling, geese and other birds have been slaughtered, mostly by shooting and trapping, since the 2009 accident, and it is not clear whether those killings have made the skies safer.
Federal data show that in the years after bird-killing programs LaGuardia and Newark airports ramped up in response to the gutsy landing, the number of recorded bird strikes involving those airports actually went up.
Combined, the two airports went from an average of 158 strikes per year in the five years before the accident to an average of 299 per year in the six years after it, though that could be due to more diligent reporting of such incidents.
At the seaside Kennedy Airport, which is on a major route for migrating birds and had a robust slaughter program even before the Flight 1549 crash, the number of reported strikes has ticked up, too, while the number of birds killed there has dropped slightly in some recent years.
Advocates for the birds say officials should find other, more effective ways to protect aircraft.
“There has to be a long-term solution that doesn’t rely so extensively on killing birds and also keeps us safe in the sky,” said Jeffrey Kramer, of the group GooseWatch NYC, suggesting better radar systems to detect problematic flocks.
Officials involved in the bird-killing programs say they believe they’ve made flying safer, with their strongest argument that there hasn’t been a major crash involving a bird strike in the New York area since the “Miracle on the Hudson.”
“We do our best to reduce the risk as much as possible,” said Laura Francoeur, the chief wildlife biologist at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the airports. “There’s still a lot of random chance involved.”
That was the case on Jan. 15, 2009, when US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia and almost immediately soared into a flock of big Canada geese. Two engines were knocked out. Sullenberger guided the powerless jet over the Hudson River and glided it safely down in the frigid water. All 155 people on board survived.
Sullenberger became a national hero. Geese became public enemy No. 1. They were targeted around LaGuardia, JFK and Newark airports by wildlife officials with shotguns. In some cases, birds were rounded up in traps and killed.
But the Port Authority data of bird-slaughter campaigns around the three major New York City-area airports between 2009 and last October show thousands of smaller birds were also swept up.
Of the 70,000 birds killed during that time, the most commonly slaughtered were seagulls, with 28,000 dead, followed by about 16,800 European starlings, nearly 6,000 brown-headed cowbirds and about 4,500 mourning doves. Canada geese come in a little further down the list, with about 1,830 dead.
While aircraft hit birds over New York on a daily basis, incidents resulting in damage to a plane remain relatively rare and usually involve larger bird varieties.
Of the 249 birds that damaged an aircraft from 2004 to April of last year, 54 were seagulls, 12 were osprey, 11 were double-crested cormorants and 30 were geese, according to Federal Aviation Administration data. The species wasn’t known in 69 instances.
Close to 35,000 European starlings were slaughtered at the three airports during that time period, but only one was involved in a strike that actually damaged an aircraft.
A starling, probably weighing less than 3 ounces, hit a JetBlue flight coming in for a landing at JFK on Sept. 10, 2008, breaking a taxi light. The FAA recorded 138 other instances of European starlings being hit by planes over those dozen years without any harm to the aircraft.
History serves as a reminder that the starling, while small, can still be dangerous. A flock of the birds was blamed for one of the deadliest bird strikes in history, a 1960 crash in Boston that killed 62 people.
Francoeur noted that lethal control represents just one way in which airport officials try to keep birds out of a 5-mile radius around the airports’ runways.
Officials trap and relocate some birds, use pyrotechnics and lasers to disperse others, and even change the habitat surrounding airports by planting grass and trees or introducing certain insects to discourage nesting.
Last year, the Port Authority signed a five-year, $9.1 million agreement with the US Department of Agriculture to survey, manage and research the wildlife around the airports.
At JFK, an official with a 12-gauge shotgun shoots birds from May through October as part of the Bird Hazard Reduction Program, which seeks to reduce a Laughing Gull colony in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge that had exploded in size.
“One must consider the consequences if this proven shooting program was discontinued and a serious bird strike occurred while the colony was still present,” Port Authority documents state.
70,000 birds pay the price for Hudson plane crash
70,000 birds pay the price for Hudson plane crash
Stray dogs in Giza become tourist draw after ‘pyramid puppy’ sensation
- Apollo became an overnight sensation last month after being filmed scaling the Great Pyramid of Khafre
- As news of Apollo’s daring climb spread worldwide, interest grew in the dogs who have long made their homes among the ancient stones
CAIRO: Beneath the blazing Egyptian sun, crowds at the Giza Pyramids gazed up at the ancient wonders, but some had their eyes peeled for a new attraction.
“There he is,” one Polish tourist told his wife as they spotted a scrappy dog perched on one of the stones.
They were talking about Apollo, a stray who became an overnight sensation last month after being filmed scaling the Great Pyramid of Khafre, one of the seven wonders of the world.
The viral footage, captured by American paragliding enthusiast Alex Lang and shared online by his friend Marshall Mosher, showed Apollo fearlessly climbing the 136-meter monument, barking at birds from the summit.
“He was acting like a king,” Lang told AFP.
As news of Apollo’s daring climb spread worldwide, interest grew in the dogs who have long made their homes among the ancient stones.
“He is climbing over there,” said Arkadiusz Jurys, a tourist from Poland, craning his neck for a better view.
“It is unusual,” he added, describing Apollo as surveying the picture-snapping crowd from above.
Another visitor, Diego Vega from Argentina, felt a special bond with the dogs.
“Connecting with them feels like connecting with the pharaohs,” he said, while petting a member of Apollo’s pack.
Apollo’s newfound fame has even inspired local guides to include him and his pack in their stories for tourists.
“This is Anubis,” one tour guide told two American tourists, comparing Apollo, now known as the “pyramid puppy,” with the ancient Egyptian god of the dead, often depicted as a man with a jackal’s head.
“He and his pack are now part of our tour conversations,” said Sobhi Fakhry, another tour guide.
Businesses around the Giza plateau are also seeing a boost.
Umm Basma, a 43-year-old woman selling souvenirs near the Khafre pyramid, reported an increase in sales thanks to the influx of tourists eager to meet the so-called pyramid dogs.
“We’ve always seen these dogs climbing the pyramids, but we never thought they would become a blessing for us,” she said.
One pyramid guard, who preferred to remain anonymous, also said that some celebrities had paid for permits to have their own dogs photographed with Apollo.
Apollo, a three-year-old Baladi dog, is part of a pack of about eight that has made their home among the ancient ruins.
The dogs, a local breed, are known for their resilience, intelligence and ability to survive in Egypt’s harsh climate.
Ibrahim el-Bendary, co-founder of the American Cairo Animal Rescue Foundation, which monitors the pyramid dogs, described Apollo as the pack’s “alpha male.”
“He is the bravest and strongest in his pack,” he said.
Apollo was born in a rocky crevice within the Khafre pyramid where his mother, Laika, found shelter. Sadly, some of Apollo’s siblings did not survive the site’s perilous heights.
A sympathetic guard eventually relocated Laika to a safer spot where Apollo now stands out with his distinctive curled tail and confident nature.
The initial focus of Lang and Marshall was the daring canine climber, but their visit led to a deeper connection with Cairo’s stray dogs.
Intrigued by the challenges they face, Mosher decided to adopt a puppy from the pack: Anubi, who is Apollo’s daughter.
Anubi will join Marshall in the US after she receives the dedicated care she needs in Egypt to grow up healthy.
At the pyramids, local animal care groups are now working with the government in order to set up food and water stations for the strays, as well as for other animals including camels and horses.
A permanent veterinary center will be established at the pyramids with staff set to receive animal care training, said Egypt’s tourism minister.
Vicki Michelle Brown, the other co-founder of the American Cairo Animal Rescue Foundation, believes that Apollo’s story can make a difference.
“It sheds so much light on the dogs and cats that are here,” Brown said.
“I definitely believe him (Apollo) climbing the pyramids can help all of the dogs in Egypt to have a better life.”
Law and disorder as Thai police station comes under monkey attack
- The human inhabitants of Lopburi have long suffered from a growing and aggressive monkey population
- Thousands of the fearless primates rule the streets around the Pra Prang Sam Yod temple in the center of Lopburi
BANGKOK: in central Thailand said they barricaded themselves into their own station over the weekend, after a menacing mob of 200 escaped monkeys ran riot on the town.
The human inhabitants of Lopburi have long suffered from a growing and aggressive monkey population and authorities have built special enclosures to contain groups of the unruly residents.
But on Saturday around 200 of the primates broke out and rampaged through town, with one posse descending on a local police station.
“We’ve had to make sure doors and windows are closed to prevent them from entering the building for food,” police captain Somchai Seedee said on Monday.
He was concerned the marauders could destroy property including police documents, he added.
Traffic cops and officers on guard duty were being called in to fend off the visitors, the Lopburi police said on Facebook on Sunday.
Around a dozen of the intruders were still perched proudly on the roof of the police station on Monday, photos from local media showed.
Down in the streets, hapless police and local authorities were working to round up rogue individuals, luring them away from residential areas with food.
While Thailand is an overwhelmingly Buddhist nation, it has long assimilated Hindu traditions and lore from its pre-Buddhist era.
As a result monkeys are afforded a special place in Thai hearts thanks to the heroic Hindu monkey god Hanuman, who helped Rama rescue his beloved wife Sita from the clutches of an evil demon king.
Thousands of the fearless primates rule the streets around the Pra Prang Sam Yod temple in the center of Lopburi.
The town has been laying on an annual feast of fruit for its population of macaques since the late 1980s, part religious tradition and part tourist attraction.
But their growing numbers, vandalism and mob fights have made an uneasy coexistence with their human neighbors almost intolerable.
Lopburi authorities have tried quelling instances of human-macaque clashes with sterilization and relocation programs.
How a viral, duct-taped banana came to be worth $1 million
- Yellow banana fixed to the white wall with silver duct tape is a work entitled ‘Comedian,’ by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan
- It first debuted in 2019 as an edition of three fruits at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair, where it became a much-discussed sensation
NEW YORK: Walk into any supermarket and you can generally buy a banana for less than $1. But a banana duct-taped to a wall? That might sell for more than $1 million at an upcoming auction at Sotheby’s in New York.
The yellow banana fixed to the white wall with silver duct tape is a work entitled “Comedian,” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. It first debuted in 2019 as an edition of three fruits at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair, where it became a much-discussed sensation.
Was it a prank? A commentary on the state of the art world? Another artist took the banana off the wall and ate it. A backup banana was brought in. Selfie-seeking crowds became so thick, “Comedian” was withdrawn from view, but three editions of it sold for between $120,000 and $150,000, according to Perrotin gallery.
Now, the conceptual artwork has an estimated value of between $1 million and $1.5 million at Sotheby’s auction on Nov. 20. Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, David Galperin, calls it profound and provocative.
“What Cattelan is really doing is turning a mirror to the contemporary art world and asking questions, provoking thought about how we ascribe value to artworks, what we define as an artwork,” Galperin said.
Bidders won’t be buying the same fruit that was on display in Miami. Those bananas are long gone. Sotheby’s says the fruit always was meant to be replaced regularly, along with the tape.
“What you buy when you buy Cattelan’s ‘Comedian’ is not the banana itself, but a certificate of authenticity that grants the owner the permission and authority to reproduce this banana and duct tape on their wall as an original artwork by Maurizio Cattelan,” Galperin said.
The very title of the piece suggests Cattelan himself likely didn’t intend for it to be taken seriously. But Chloé Cooper Jones, an assistant professor at the Columbia University School of the Arts, said it is worth thinking about the context.
Cattelan premiered the work at an art fair, visited by well-off art collectors, where “Comedian” was sure to get a lot of attention on social media. That might mean the art constituted a dare, of sorts, to the collectors to invest in something absurd, she said.
If “Comedian” is just a tool for understanding the insular, capitalist, art-collecting world, Cooper Jones said, “it’s not that interesting of an idea.”
But she thinks it might go beyond poking fun at rich people.
Cattelan is often thought of a “trickster artist,” she said. “But his work is often at the intersection of the sort of humor and the deeply macabre. He’s quite often looking at ways of provoking us, not just for the sake of provocation, but to ask us to look into some of the sort of darkest parts of history and of ourselves.”
And there is a dark side to the banana, a fruit with a history entangled with imperialism, labor exploitation and corporate power.
“It would be hard to come up with a better, simple symbol of global trade and all of its exploitations than the banana,” Cooper Jones said. If “Comedian” is about making people think about their moral complicity in the production of objects they take for granted, then it’s “at least a more useful tool or it’s at least an additional sort of place to go in terms of the questions that this work could be asking,” she said.
“Comedian” hits the block around the same time that Sotheby’s is also auctioning one of the famed paintings in the “Water Lilies” series by the French impressionist Claude Monet, with an expected value of around $60 million.
When asked to compare Cattelan’s banana to a classic like Monet’s “Nymphéas,” Galperin says impressionism was not considered art when the movement began.
“No important, profound, meaningful artwork of the past 100 years or 200 years, or our history for that matter, did not provoke some kind of discomfort when it was first unveiled,” Galperin said.
Palestinians turn to local soda in boycott of Israel-linked goods
- Chat Cola has tapped into Palestinians’ desire to shun brands perceived as too supportive of Israel
- The Palestinian economy’s dependence on Israeli products has made a broader boycott difficult
SALFIT, Palestinian Territories: In a red box factory that stands out among the drab hills of the West Bank, Chat Cola’s employees race to quench Palestinians’ thirst for local products since the Gaza war erupted last year.
With packaging reminiscent of Coca-Cola’s iconic red and white aluminum cans, Chat Cola has tapped into Palestinians’ desire to shun brands perceived as too supportive of Israel.
“The demand for (Chat Cola) increased since the war began because of the boycott,” owner Fahed Arar, said at the factory in the occupied West Bank town of Salfit.
Julien, a restaurateur in the city of Ramallah further south, said he has stocked his classic red Coca-Cola branded fridge with the local alternative since the war began in October last year.
Supermarket manager Mahmud Sidr described how sales of Palestinian products surged over the past year.
“We noticed an increase in sales of Arab and Palestinian products that do not support (Israel),” he said.
Although it does not supply Israeli troops in Gaza with free goods — as some US fast food brands have been rumored to — Coca-Cola is perceived as simply too American.
The United States provides enormous military assistance to Israel, aid that has continued through the devastating military campaign in Gaza that Israel launched in response to Hamas’s unprecedented attack of October 7, 2023.
Coca-Cola did not respond to a request for comment, but it says the company does not support religion nor “any political causes, governments or nation states.”
A manager of the National Beverage Company, the Palestinian firm bottling Coca-Cola in the Palestinian territories, said the company had not noticed the return of many products from local stores.
There was however a decline of up to 80 percent in the drink’s sales to foreign-named chains, said the manager, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“The national boycott movement has had a big impact,” Arar said.
Ibrahim Al-Qadi, head of the Palestinian economy ministry’s consumer protection department, said that 300 tons of Israeli products were destroyed over the past three months after passing their sell-by date for want of buyers.
The Palestinian economy’s dependence on Israeli products has made a broader boycott difficult and Chat Cola’s popularity partly stems from being one of the few quality Palestinian alternatives.
“There’s a willingness to boycott if the Palestinian producers can produce equivalently good quality and price,” the head of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, Raja Khalidi, said.
Khalidi said the desire for Palestinian substitutes has grown sharply since the war in Gaza began, but is stifled by “an issue of production capacity which we lack.”
A boycott campaign has been more successful in neighboring Arab states less dependent on Israeli goods.
In neighboring Jordan, the franchisee of French retail giant Carrefour, Dubai-based conglomerate Majid Al-Futtaim Group announced it was shutting down all its operations after activists called for a boycott.
Chat Cola’s Arar is proud of developing a quality Palestinian product.
Staff at the company’s Salfit factory wear sweaters emblazoned with the words “Palestinian taste” in Arabic and the Palestinian flag.
After opening the factory in 2019, Arar plans to open a new one in Jordan to meet international demand and avoid the complications of operating in the occupied West Bank.
Although the plant still turns out thousands of cans of Chat, one production line has been shut down for more than a month.
Israeli authorities have held up a large shipment of raw materials at the Jordanian border, hitting output, Arar said, adding he can meet only 10 to 15 percent of demand for his product.
As Arar spoke, Israeli air defenses intercepted a rocket likely launched from Lebanon, creating a small cloud in view of the plant.
But with war have come opportunities.
“There has never been the political support for buying local that there is now, so it’s a good moment for other entrepreneurs to start up,” economist Khalidi said.
Yoko Ono owns Lennon watch, Swiss court rules
- The highly rare Patek Philippe 2499 timepiece was given to the former Beatle on October 9, 1980 for his 40th birthday
- “Yoko Ono is the owner of John Lennon’s watch,” the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland ruled
GENEVA: Yoko Ono is the rightful owner of a watch she gifted to her husband John Lennon shortly before he was murdered, Switzerland’s supreme court ruled Thursday after it resurfaced at an auctioneers.
The highly rare Patek Philippe 2499 timepiece was given to the former Beatle on October 9, 1980 for his 40th birthday, two months before he was shot dead.
The 18-carat yellow gold Swiss watch was stolen and passed through various hands before a collector took it to a Geneva auction house for a valuation in 2014. The auctioneers contacted Ono, who did not know the watch was missing.
“Yoko Ono is the owner of John Lennon’s watch,” the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland ruled, as it dismissed the collector’s appeal against a judgment by the Geneva Cantonal Court of Justice.
Ono bought the watch in New York City in 1980 and had the back engraved with the inscription: “(JUST LIKE) STARTING OVER LOVE YOKO 10-9-1980 N.Y.C.”
Released in late October 1980, a few months after it was recorded, “(Just Like) Starting Over” was Lennon’s last single issued during his lifetime.
Lennon was shot dead outside the couple’s apartment building in New York on December 8, 1980. The watch was the last gift Ono gave Lennon before his murder.
The Patek Philippe was listed in the inventory of Lennon’s estate and was kept in a room in their apartment.
A Turkish man who had been Ono’s driver from 1995 to 2006, handed over the watch to an intermediate owner in 2010, along with 86 other items that had belonged to Lennon, court documents showed.
It was later handed to a German auction house, which sold it in 2014, for 600,000 euros, to an Italian collector living in Hong Kong.
The collector gave it to a Geneva auction house for a valuation later that year. They raised the alarm with Ono.
In 2018, the collector filed a court action seeking to establish his status as the watch’s owner, with Ono opposing the move.
In 2022 a Geneva lower court found Ono was the sole owner — a decision upheld on appeal in 2023 by the higher Geneva Cantonal Court of Justice.
The Italian collector then appealed to the Federal Supreme Court, which upheld the cantonal court decision.
The Supreme Court said it was not disputed that Ono had inherited the watch after Lennon’s death.
The Cantonal Court of Justice found that the watch “had been stolen by the former driver,” the Supreme Court said, adding that there was no evidence to show that Ono intended to donate “something as special as the watch,” with its particular inscription.
“Since it is a stolen item, the collector, now the appellant, could not acquire ownership of the watch” when he purchased it in 2014, and according to German law, this applies “regardless of whether or not the purchaser was in good faith as to the origin of the item.”
Lennon’s watch is being held by the Italian dealer’s lawyer, under an agreement that it can only be released to the owner designated by a state court.
It should therefore return to Ono, now 91.
