MIAMI: After photographer Monni Must’s 28-year-old daughter Miya committed suicide while in the midst of an abusive relationship, the grieving mother adopted Miya’s spunky black Labrador, Billy Bean.
Last year, as the 10th anniversary of her daughter’s death approached, the dog was nearing 13 and becoming increasingly frail.
“I knew that I was falling apart,” said Must.
“The thought of Billy dying was just more than I could handle.”
So she decided to clone her.
She paid more than $50,000 for what is essentially an identical twin of Billy, born at a later date.
“I have three other daughters and they thought I had completely lost my mind,” Must said.
Cloning animals is hardly new. The first major success was Dolly the sheep, born in 1996 as the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. In 2005, researchers in South Korea cloned the first dog.
But the news this week that singer Barbra Streisand had cloned her dog grabbed international headlines, and sparked fresh outrage from animal rights groups.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) president Ingrid Newkirk issued a statement saying she would “love to have talked her out of cloning,” noting that “millions of wonderful adoptable dogs are languishing in animal shelters every year or dying in terrifying ways when abandoned.”
Vicki Katrinak, program manager for animal research issues at the Humane Society of the United States, agreed.
Companies that clone animals are “preying on grieving pet owners, giving them a false promise that they are going to replicate their beloved pet,” she told AFP.
“Pet cloning doesn’t replicate a pet’s personality,” she said, adding there is “no justification” for the practice.
Just how many pets are cloned each year is unclear. The main US company engaged in the practice, ViaGen Pets, declined AFP’s requests for comment.
“We have produced thousands of happy, healthy cloned cows and hundreds of cloned horses,” says its website, adding that company scientists “have been developing successful animal cloning and reproductive technology for over 15 years.”
A former employee of ViaGen, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, estimated that the Texas-based company has cloned around 100 cats and dogs.
The other main source for cloned pets is the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in Seoul, South Korea, which says it has cloned some 800 pets and charges $100,000 each.
Many companies have tried and failed to make the pet cloning business work.
Ron Gillespie, a former cattle semen salesman, owns a company called PerPETuate, which collects pet DNA for $1,300 plus a storage fee.
They used to do pet cloning, but now farm it out to other companies like ViaGen Pets, he said.
His client list runs the gamut from rich to poor, he said.
“I have a homeless man and I have a celebrity,” said Gillespie, adding that the homeless man was not out on the street when he paid for to have his dog’s DNA frozen, but fell into dire financial straits afterward.
Now, he desperately wants “to get his dog back,” but is unsure if he will ever be able to pay for a clone, Gillespie said.
Dogs can be cloned up to five days after they die and cats up to three, as long as the corpses are kept cool, Gillespie said.
Ideally, though, the pet should be alive when the veterinarian takes a tissue biopsy, a chunk of skin and muscle about the size of a pencil eraser.
The next step is to take an egg cell from a donor dog, remove the egg’s nucleus, and insert DNA from the pet to be cloned.
When an embryo develops, it is transplanted in the womb of a surrogate dog.
Animal rights groups say the process causes undue suffering to the dogs that provide the egg cells and carry the embryos.
“Because cloning has a high failure rate, many dogs are caged and tormented for every birth that actually occurs,” said Newkirk.
Traits that will carry over can include temperament, physical characteristics and genetic flaws. Coat patterns may differ, and the cloned animal will have no awareness of the life its predecessor lived.
According to Must, the puppy that was cloned from Billy is playful and fearless, like her. They also share the same petite frame, shiny coat and big paws.
“They look exactly alike for sure. She will do things like Billy does, like putting her head down and rolling into your lap,” said Must.
She named the puppy Gunni, after the town in Colorado, Gunnison, where her daughter lived, and is grateful for the respite from grief the canine has provided.
She was born the same week as the anniversary of her daughter’s passing. The puppy’s first ultrasound took place — coincidentally — on Miya’s birthday.
“It was singularly one of the best decisions that I have made,” Must said.
“It has given me a new lease on life.”
Pet cloning is not just for celebrities anymore
Pet cloning is not just for celebrities anymore
Zelensky hails Usyk victory over Fury
RIYADH: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed Oleksandr Usyk’s victory over Tyson Fury in their heavyweight world championship rematch on Saturday, calling it proof that Ukraine “will not give up what’s ours.”
“Victory!” Zelensky said in a post on Telegram. “So important and so necessary for all of us now.”
Ukraine remains locked in war nearly three years after Russia invaded, but Zelensky said Usyk’s triumph was a mark of Ukrainian resiliency and determination.
“Having retained the championship belts, Oleksandr proves: we are Ukrainians and we will not give up what’s ours. And no matter how difficult it is — we will win.
“Be it the ring, battlefield or diplomatic arena — we fight and we will not give up what’s ours.
“Congrats on the victory, Cossack! Congrats on the victory Ukraine! Glory to Ukraine.”
Usyk’s victory — seven months after his first triumph over Britain’s Fury to become the first undisputed heavyweight world champion of the four-belt era — took his record to 23-0 with 14 knockouts.
Weightlifting Taiwan granny, 90, garners cheers, health benefits at gym
TAIPEI: Cheng Chen Chin-Mei beamed broadly as she hoisted a 35-kg weightlifting bar to her waist, dropped it and waved confidently to the enthusiastic crowd in a competition in Taipei. Cheng Chen, 90, has been pumping iron since last year, encouraged by her granddaughter to take up the sport after she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She credits the regimen with helping to fix her posture.
Three generations of her family were among a couple of hundred people watching Cheng Chen and 44 others aged 70 or over in a weightlifting competition on Saturday. In the three-round competition, Cheng Chen lifted as much as 45kg using a hexagonal-shaped bar that is said to allow the lifter more stability and options for gripping.
“I want to tell all the old people to join the workout,” Cheng Chen told Reuters after the competition. “You don’t need to work extremely hard, but this is to stay healthy.”
Cheng Chen was not the only nonagenarian in the competition. The oldest participant is 92.
Taiwan is projected to become a “super-aged society” next year, with 20 percent or more of its 23 million people aged 65 or older, according to National Development Council data.
The government has set up fitness centers across the island with equipment suitable for older people, to encourage them to train, according to the Health Promotion Administration, which encourages healthy lifestyles.
Santa and Mrs. Claus use military transports to bring Christmas to an Alaska Native village
- Operation Santa started in 1956 when flooding severely curtailed subsistence hunting for residents of St. Mary’s, in western Alaska
YAKUTAT, Alaska: Forget the open-air sleigh overloaded with gifts and powered by flying reindeer.
Santa and Mrs. Claus this week took supersized rides to southeast Alaska in a C-17 military cargo plane and a camouflaged Humvee, as they delivered toys to the Tlingit village of Yakutat, northwest of Juneau.
The visit was part of this year’s Operation Santa Claus, an outreach program of the Alaska National Guard to largely Indigenous communities in the nation’s largest state. Each year, the Guard picks a village that has suffered recent hardship — in Yakutat’s case, a massive snowfall that threatened to buckle buildings in 2022.
“This is one of the funnest things we get to do, and this is a proud moment for the National Guard,” Maj. Gen. Torrence Saxe, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard, said Wednesday.
Saxe wore a Guard uniform and a Santa hat that stretched his unit’s dress regulations.
The Humvee caused a stir when it entered the school parking lot, and a buzz of “It’s Santa! It’s Santa!” pierced the cold air as dozens of elementary school children gathered outside.
In the school, Mrs. Claus read a Christmas story about the reindeer Dasher. The couple in red then sat for photos with nearly all of the 75 or so students and handed out new backpacks filled with gifts, books, snacks and school supplies donated by the Salvation Army. The school provided lunch, and a local restaurant provided the ice cream and toppings for a sundae bar.
Student Thomas Henry, 10, said while the contents of the backpack were “pretty good,” his favorite item was a plastic dinosaur.
Another, 9-year-old Mackenzie Ross, held her new plush seal toy as she walked around the school gym.
“I think it’s special that I have this opportunity to be here today because I’ve never experienced this before,” she said.
Yakutat, a Tlingit village of about 600 residents, is in the lowlands of the Gulf of Alaska, at the top of Alaska’s panhandle. Nearby is the Hubbard Glacier, a frequent stop for cruise ships.
Some of the National Guard members who visited Yakutat on Wednesday were also there in January 2022, when storms dumped about 6 feet (1.8 meters) of snow in a matter of days, damaging buildings.
Operation Santa started in 1956 when flooding severely curtailed subsistence hunting for residents of St. Mary’s, in western Alaska. Having to spend their money on food, they had little left for Christmas presents, so the military stepped in.
This year, visits were planned to two other communities hit by flooding. Santa’s visit to Circle, in northeastern Alaska, went off without a hitch. Severe weather prevented a visit to Crooked Creek, in the southwestern part of the state, but Christmas was saved when the gifts were delivered there Nov. 16.
“We tend to visit rural communities where it is very isolated,” said Jenni Ragland, service extension director with the Salvation Army Alaska Division. “A lot of kids haven’t traveled to big cities where we typically have Santa and big stores with Christmas gifts and Christmas trees, so we kind of bring the Christmas program on the road.”
After the C-17 Globemaster III landed in Yakutat, it quickly returned to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, an hour away, because there was nowhere to park it at the village’s tiny airport. Later it returned to pick up the Christmas crew.
Santa and Mrs. Claus, along with their tuckered elves, were seen nodding off on the flight back.
Scientists observe ‘negative time’ in quantum experiments
- The researchers emphasize that these perplexing results highlight a peculiar quirk of quantum mechanics rather than a radical shift in our understanding of time
TORONTO, Canada: Scientists have long known that light can sometimes appear to exit a material before entering it — an effect dismissed as an illusion caused by how waves are distorted by matter.
Now, researchers at the University of Toronto, through innovative quantum experiments, say they have demonstrated that “negative time” isn’t just a theoretical idea — it exists in a tangible, physical sense, deserving closer scrutiny.
The findings, yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, have attracted both global attention and skepticism.
The researchers emphasize that these perplexing results highlight a peculiar quirk of quantum mechanics rather than a radical shift in our understanding of time.
“This is tough stuff, even for us to talk about with other physicists. We get misunderstood all the time,” said Aephraim Steinberg, a University of Toronto professor specializing in experimental quantum physics.
While the term “negative time” might sound like a concept lifted from science fiction, Steinberg defends its use, hoping it will spark deeper discussions about the mysteries of quantum physics.
Years ago, the team began exploring interactions between light and matter.
When light particles, or photons, pass through atoms, some are absorbed by the atoms and later re-emitted. This interaction changes the atoms, temporarily putting them in a higher-energy or “excited” state before they return to normal.
In research led by Daniela Angulo, the team set out to measure how long these atoms stayed in their excited state. “That time turned out to be negative,” Steinberg explained — meaning a duration less than zero.
To visualize this concept, imagine cars entering a tunnel: before the experiment, physicists recognized that while the average entry time for a thousand cars might be, for example, noon, the first cars could exit a little sooner, say 11:59 am. This result was previously dismissed as meaningless.
What Angulo and colleagues demonstrated was akin to measuring carbon monoxide levels in the tunnel after the first few cars emerged and finding that the readings had a minus sign in front of them.
The experiments, conducted in a cluttered basement laboratory bristling with wires and aluminum-wrapped devices, took over two years to optimize. The lasers used had to be carefully calibrated to avoid distorting the results.
Still, Steinberg and Angulo are quick to clarify: no one is claiming time travel is a possibility. “We don’t want to say anything traveled backward in time,” Steinberg said. “That’s a misinterpretation.”
The explanation lies in quantum mechanics, where particles like photons behave in fuzzy, probabilistic ways rather than following strict rules.
Instead of adhering to a fixed timeline for absorption and re-emission, these interactions occur across a spectrum of possible durations — some of which defy everyday intuition.
Critically, the researchers say, this doesn’t violate Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which dictates that nothing can travel faster than light. These photons carried no information, sidestepping any cosmic speed limits.
The concept of “negative time” has drawn both fascination and skepticism, particularly from prominent voices in the scientific community.
German theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, for one, criticized the work in a YouTube video viewed by over 250,000 people, noting, “The negative time in this experiment has nothing to do with the passage of time — it’s just a way to describe how photons travel through a medium and how their phases shift.”
Angulo and Steinberg pushed back, arguing that their research addresses crucial gaps in understanding why light doesn’t always travel at a constant speed.
Steinberg acknowledged the controversy surrounding their paper’s provocative headline but pointed out that no serious scientist has challenged the experimental results.
“We’ve made our choice about what we think is a fruitful way to describe the results,” he said, adding that while practical applications remain elusive, the findings open new avenues for exploring quantum phenomena.
“I’ll be honest, I don’t currently have a path from what we’ve been looking at toward applications,” he admitted. “We’re going to keep thinking about it, but I don’t want to get people’s hopes up.”
‘Don’t hit him too hard!’: Zelensky tells Usyk not to endanger British arms deal
- Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky jokes for Oleksandr Usyk to be gentle with British rival Tyson Fury to not harm UK weapon supplies
PARIS: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded with boxing star Oleksandr Usyk to be gentle with British rival Tyson Fury in their world heavyweight clash in case a battering delivers a knockout blow to a crucial arms deal.
Usyk defeated Fury in May to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and the two men meet again in Riyadh on Saturday.
“All Ukrainians are on your side. Of course, Britain is helping Ukraine in a fight against Russia,” Zelensky told Usyk on Friday in a video on Zelensky’s Telegram account.
“We respect our partners. That’s why when you beat Fury, don’t hit him too hard, because we don’t want them to ban Storm Shadow.”
British media reported last month that Ukraine had fired Storm Shadow missiles into Russia for the first time after London gave Kyiv the green light for such strikes.
The UK government refused to confirm or deny the reports.
