LONDON: US pop singer Miley Cyrus has dismissed rumors that she is pregnant after sparking speculation with an Instagram post.
The Instagram photo showed her wearing a loose fitting top, with her hand placed on her stomach.
Reports that the singer and boyfriend Liam Hemsworth were possibly expecting a baby together began circulating after she shared the snap on Wednesday.
Cyrus and Hemsworth have been dating since 2016 when they reunited after a three-year split.
Cyrus, whose 25th birthday this year fell on Thanksgiving, said she was “stoked” for the upcoming “day full of Tofurkey & loved ones!”
She also captioned the image with the hashtag #VeganTurkeyBaby.
Some fans and news organizations misinterpreted the shot to mean that she may be pregnant.
Miley later took to Twitter to brand her fans “rude” and confirm she was not pregnant, but had just consumed a lot of vegan turkey while celebrating Thanksgiving.
Cyrus opened up about her relationship with Hemsworth during promotion for her single Malibu in May, telling Billboard they both needed to fall for each other all over again.
Cyrus and Hemsworth recently sparked rumors that they had tied the knot after they were spotted wearing matching rings following a romantic trip to Tybee Island, the location where they first met while filming The Last Song.
Pop star Miley Cyrus dismisses pregnancy rumors
Pop star Miley Cyrus dismisses pregnancy rumors
Snake hunters will wrangle invasive Burmese pythons in Everglades during Florida’s 10-day challenge
- Annual 10-day hunt promotes public awareness of issues with invasive species in Florida while engaging the public in Everglades conversation
- Over the past decade, the python challenge has grabbed headlines for its incentive-based, only-in-Florida style of hunting as well as celebrity participation
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: Friday marked the start of the annual Florida Python Challenge, where hunters head into the Everglades to track down invasive Burmese pythons in hopes of grabbing a share of $30,000 in prizes.
The annual 10-day hunt, which started more than a decade ago, promotes public awareness of issues with invasive species in Florida while engaging the public in Everglades conversation, said Sarah Funck, the wildlife impact management section leader with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
“They are a well-established invasive species across much of South Florida, unfortunately, in our natural areas,” Funck said of Burmese pythons. “A huge part of this challenge is to make sure that people understand about this issue and understand that in general, when you have a non-native species present in the state for whatever purpose, don’t let it loose, that can be really detrimental to our environment.”
Over the past decade, the python challenge has grabbed headlines for its incentive-based, only-in-Florida style of hunting as well as celebrity participation. This year, more than 600 people registered for the event, with two coming from Canada and 108 from other states.
During the challenge, hunters will linger around designated areas spanning through western Broward County to the Tamiami Trail in the Big Cypress Wildlife Management Area, including other management areas like Southern Glades, Holey Land and Rotenberger.
The goal is to humanely kill as many pythons as possible, and prizes divide between three groups: professional hunters who work for the state, hunters who are active in the military or are veterans and novice hunters, which includes anyone who is not working as a state contracted python hunter.
Each category has its own prizes, with $2,500 going to the person or team that kills the most pythons, $1,500 going to the runner-up for most kills and $1,000 going to whoever kills the longest python. The grand prize for the most kills in all categories gets a $10,000 prize.
Each person can only win one prize, so if someone is tops in two categories, they will end up with the highest-valued prize and the next qualifying hunter gets the remaining prize.
In 2017, the South Florida Water Management District and the state began hiring contractors to handle its invasive python problem year round. According to the wildlife agency’s website, through 2023, more than 11,000 pythons have been removed by these contractors.
Last year’s challenge brought in 209 pythons and the grand prize winner was Paul Hobbs, who bagged 20 pythons. Also during 2023, Florida wildlife agency and district contractors removed about 2,200 pythons.
Amy Siewe, the self-named Python Huntress, won a prize last year for catching a Burmese python measuring 10 feet and 9 inches (327 centimeters). This year, she won’t be participating in the challenge due to a knee surgery but said she’s not a fan of the annual challenge.
Siewe, who used to work as a state contractor catching invasive pythons, said she believed the initial intent of the challenge was to bring awareness to the issue. Now, it’s drawing large crowds of hunters, potentially scaring off pythons and potentially killing native snakes they mistake as pythons, like corn snakes, brown water snakes or cottonmouths.
“Pythons don’t take on their normal behavioral pattern because there’s so much traffic and they’ll come up and then they’ll go back into the swamp,” Siewe said. “I feel for myself, it’s counterproductive.”
Participants are required to undergo an online training, including information on how to identify Burmese pythons versus other snakes, Funck said. She said there’s also an additional optional in-person training participants can attend to properly identify Burmese pythons.
“That’s a huge part of what we do, is try to get the word out on how to identify these pythons, how to safely and humanely capture it,” Funck said.
Dead woman found entangled in baggage machinery at Chicago airport
Firefighters found a dead woman entangled in machinery Thursday in a non-public baggage-processing area at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
Larry Langford, a spokesperson for the Chicago Fire Department, said firefighters were called to the airport around 7:45 a.m. for a report of a person pinned in machinery used to move baggage. He said they discovered the woman entangled in a conveyer belt system in a baggage room.
Police said she was 57 years old but have not released her name.
The baggage room wasn’t publicly accessible, Langford said, and it’s not clear how she found her way into it. Scott Allen, a spokesperson for the US Department of Labor, said an official with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration visited the scene and learned the woman was not an airport employee.
Firefighters turned the scene over to police investigators, and Langford had no more details. The Chicago Police Department’s communications office said in an email to The Associated Press that the woman was found unresponsive and pronounced dead on the scene. Detectives have opened an investigation, the office said.
The police communications office initially said the woman was discovered at 2:27 a.m., creating confusion about why firefighters and paramedics didn’t arrive for more than five hours. After checking with the police department about the timing, Langford said that he was told surveillance footage shows the woman walking in the baggage room at 2:27 a.m.
The communications office issued a second statement Thursday afternoon saying that surveillance video shows the woman entering the room at 2:27 a.m. She was actually discovered at 7:30 a.m., prompting a 911 call.
The footage only shows her walking and does not show what happened to her.
Police spokesperson Nathaniel Blackman clarified during a phone interview with The Associated Press that no one was watching the surveillance cameras in real time and investigators reviewed the footage after the woman’s body was discovered.
MrBeast wants ‘full assessment’ of internal culture amid allegations of impropriety and unsafe sets
NEW YORK: MrBeast has ordered a full assessment of the internal culture in his YouTube empire as well as an investigation into “allegations of inappropriate behavior by people in the company,” according to a confidential memo obtained by The Associated Press.
Addressed to “Team Beast” employees, the message sent Wednesday outlines infrastructure changes including plans to hire a chief human resources officer and require company-wide sensitivity training. The expanded probe signals that troubles inside YouTube’s biggest channel could go deeper than the “serious allegations” facing a longtime collaborator acknowledged last month by MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson.
“As your leader, I take responsibility, and I am committed to continue to improve and evolve my leadership style,” Donaldson wrote. “I recognize that I also need to create a culture that makes all our employees feel safe and allows them to do their best work.”
A spokesperson for MrBeast confirmed that the memo was sent to employees, but declined further comment. The memo comes after a turbulent few weeks for the YouTuber, long adored by his young fans for freewheeling videos of outrageous giveaways and audacious charitable acts.
Donaldson admitted to previously using “inappropriate language” last week after clips circulated online of past homophobic and racist remarks. An early production of his ambitious game show — set to feature 1,000 competitors and a $5 million grand prize — recently brought safety complaints from contestants who described a chaotic set where they lacked regular access to food, water and medication.
The memo reveals Donaldson has hired white-shoe law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to investigate his friend and fellow creator Ava Tyson — who left the company in July after online accusations that she shared inappropriate sexual messages with minors.
In the meantime, Donaldson told employees that the company he founded in 2016 at age 18 is making several changes intended “to foster a better internal culture as we continue to grow.”
The memo outlined plans to also hire a chief financial officer and general counsel. The company will offer an “anonymous reporting mechanism” as well as mandatory training for all employees on “safety, sexual harassment, LGBTQ, diversity, sensitivity training, and workplace conduct,” according to the memo.
Donaldson has recently moved to expand his influence far beyond his main YouTube channel’s record 309 million subscribers.
Other YouTube channels “Beast Reacts” and “Beast Philanthropy” total more than 34 million and 25 million subscribers, respectively. His MrBeast Burger has been widely panned but Walmart still carries his popular Feastables chocolate bars. And Amazon Prime Video is set to carry “Beast Games” — touted as the “biggest reality competition.”
But managing such an expansive company gets difficult, said Jake Bjorseth, founder of the Gen Z advertising agency Trndsttrs. He finds that is especially complex in MrBeast’s case when “an individual is the brand” and “his image is now more closely associated with the revenue.”
As the internal culture necessarily shifts more “corporate,” Bjorseth said, Donaldson will have to find a way to “de-risk everything” while still maintaining the “magic” for his followers.
MrBeast’s reaction to the spiraling controversies and any ensuing content changes could end up alienating different parts of his broad audience, Bjorseth added.
“Are we going to see consumer backlash at the product level? Because that’s where there could be some serious ramifications,” he said.
“What do they do with the next release of a YouTube video?” he continued. “Does there need to be a response video that comes out of this or is it going to be business as usual? They’re in a very tricky spot.”
Hottest oceans in 400 years endanger Great Barrier Reef, scientists say
- Ocean temperatures that were stable for hundreds of years began to rise from 1900 onwards as a result of human influence
- Since 2016, the reef has experienced five summers of mass coral bleaching, when large sections of the reef turn white due to heat stress
SYDNEY: Water temperatures in and around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have risen to their warmest in 400 years over the past decade, placing the world’s largest reef under threat, according to research published on Thursday.
The reef, the world’s largest living ecosystem, stretches for some 2,400 km off the coast of the northern state of Queensland. The research is rare in putting the effects of man-made climate change into historical context, as other surveys on damage to the reef have a shorter time frame.
A group of scientists at universities across Australia drilled cores into the coral and, much like counting the rings on a tree, analyzed the samples to measure summer ocean temperatures going back to 1618.
Combined with ship and satellite data going back around a hundred years, the results show ocean temperatures that were stable for hundreds of years begin to rise from 1900 onwards as a result of human influence, the research concluded.
From 1960 to 2024, the study’s authors observed an average annual warming for January to March of 0.12°C (0.22°F) per decade.
Since 2016, the reef has experienced five summers of mass coral bleaching, when large sections of the reef turn white due to heat stress, putting them at greater risk of death.
These summers were during five of the six warmest years in the last four centuries, the study showed.
“The world is losing one of its icons,” said Benjamin Henley, an academic at the University of Melbourne and one of the study’s co-authors.
“I find that to be an absolute tragedy. It’s hard to understand how that can happen on our watch in our lifetime. So it’s very, very sad.”
The last temperature data point, from January to March of this year, was the highest on record and “head and shoulders” above any other year, Henley said.
Coral reefs protect shorelines from erosion, are home to thousands of species of fish, and are an important source of tourism revenue in many countries.
At least 54 countries and regions have experienced mass bleaching of their reefs since February 2023 as climate change warms the ocean’s surface waters, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has said.
The Great Barrier Reef is not currently on UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites that are in danger, though the UN recommends it should be added.
Australia has lobbied for years to keep the reef — which contributes A$6.4 billion ($4.2 billion) to the economy annually — off the endangered list, as it could damage tourism.
Lissa Schindler, Great Barrier Reef campaign manager at the Australian Marine Conservation Society, said the research showed Australia needed to do more to reduce its emissions.
“Australia must increase its ambition, action and commitments to battle climate change and protect our greatest natural asset,” she said.
Muslim ice cream man gives ‘free cones for cops’ after UK riots
- “We just thought we’d show them a little bit of love,” Mr.Tee, whose real name is Ashiq, said
- Mr Tee said most of the praise for his video came from non-Muslims who value their community
LONDON: A British Muslim social media star who travels around the country in his ice cream van has thanked police officers trying to control racist and anti-immigration riots by handing out free cones.
Mr Tee, King of Desserts, posted a TikTok video taken in the English city of Sunderland that amassed over 2.6 million views, in which he offered a police van full of officers ice creams, with the theme tune to 1980s hit TV show ‘The A-Team’ blaring.
“We just thought we’d show them a little bit of love,” Mr.Tee, whose real name is Ashiq, told Reuters.
The two-minute clip — in which one policeman asked for a special birthday ice cream for a colleague — struck a chord with the British public, the vast majority of whom think the riots are unjustified, according to a recent YouGov poll.
“This is brill — remember under the uniforms there is a dad, husband, uncle brother, human,” said commenter sayithowitis1970.
Riots have erupted at anti-immigration protests in towns and cities across Britain in the last week, with attacks by far-right groups on hotels housing asylum seekers and on mosques.
Mr Tee said most of the praise for his video came from non-Muslims who value their community.
“It’s just a very small minority that are unfortunately (not) feeling in this way,” Mr.Tee said.
Based in the northern Welsh town of Wrexham, Mr.Tee said he would take a week off to let the tensions around the country die down.
“Some people are scared to leave the house, ladies especially, they don’t want to be seen walking about with their hijabs,” he said.
But Mr.Tee pointed to the reaction to his video as a reason for hope.
“It just showed the genuine true colors of Great Britain and the people that live here, and obviously the welcoming side of the people here.”
