BELGRADE, Serbia: In the Balkans, soccer is so political that it has created bitter divisions about Croatia’s surprising success at the World Cup.
The team will face France in the tournament final in Moscow on Sunday, provoking mixed reactions and strong emotions in the region scarred by war.
From Montenegro and Serbia in the east and Slovenia in the west, Croatia’s neighbors have been split over whether to support Croatia or France, reflecting the persisting rifts stemming from the 1990s conflict.
While many in those nations have expressed pride and joy that a Balkan country has made it to the final, Croatia’s stellar achievement also has caused envy and nationalist outbursts evoking the war era.
“The World Cup generally is a joyful event, but we in the Balkans somehow manage to turn even ball-kicking into a clash,” said Draza Petrovic, an editor at the liberal Danas daily in Serbia.
Petrovic said that sports rivalry was also strong among the Balkan nations even while they were all part of the former Yugoslavia, when it was also rare to see Serbian or Croatian teams support one another. But he added that the former federation’s bloody breakup turned sports competitiveness into something more.
“The wars were not so long ago, so people view things not just as sports,” he said of the conflict that tore the former Yugoslavia into pieces and in which more than 100,000 people were killed.
Nearly three decades after the war, a number of unresolved issues still plague relations among the former Yugoslav republics, while nations stick to their own versions of what happened and who were the victims.
Illustrating postwar tensions, Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic said publicly that he would support Slavic ally Russia over Croatia in the quarterfinals, and the foreign minister openly backed England in the semifinal.
Even Serbia’s most-adored sportsman, tennis star Novak Djokovic, has faced criticism from a nationalist lawmaker after openly supporting Croatia, while the issue triggered a heated for-and-against debate on social networks and in the media.
Petrovic noted that “those divisions are bad, particularly if fueled by the state media and top officials, including the president.”
Some Serbs — whose team didn’t make it past the group stage — joked about Croatia being a better team, with a popular post on social media declaring that Serbia’s biggest success recently in soccer was being a neighbor to a World Cup finalist.
In Slovenia, generally a Croatian ally but with a looming border dispute, hundreds of supporters are expected to travel to Croatia to join street viewing of the match on Sunday. This prompted the Croatian railway company to introduce more trains and ticket discounts.
One supporter from Slovenia congratulated Croatia on its victory against England, noting that: England wanted Brexit and they got it!
In Montenegro, the national divide over the country’s loyalty to Orthodox Christian and Slavic neighbor Serbia, was reflected in the support for Croatia:
“There is no way I could back Croatia because they are our enemies,” declared Milan Bulatovic, from Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital.
But retiree Igor Nikolic, also from Podgorica, told The Associated Press that when Croatia beat England to make it to the final “I felt as if my old dream of Yugoslavia at the top has come true.”
Mixed emotions in Balkans over Croatia’s World Cup success
Mixed emotions in Balkans over Croatia’s World Cup success
- Croatia’s neighbors have been split over whether to support Croatia or France reflecting the persisting rifts stemming from the 1990s conflict
- Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic said publicly that he would support Slavic ally Russia over Croatia in the quarterfinals
Chinese man defies demolition orders to build madcap rural home
- Nail houses sometimes make headlines for delaying money-spinning construction projects or forcing developers to divert roads or build around shabby older homes
XINGYI, China: Surrounded by the rubble of demolished homes, Chen Tianming’s ramshackle tower of faded plyboards and contorted beams juts into the sky in southwestern China, a teetering monument to one man’s stubbornness.
Authorities razed most of Chen’s village in Guizhou province in 2018 to build a lucrative tourist resort in a region known for its spectacular rice paddies and otherworldly mountain landscapes.
Chen, 42, refused to leave, and after the project faltered, defied a flurry of demolition notices to build his family’s humble stone bungalow higher and higher.
He now presides over a bewildering 10-storey, pyramid-shaped warren of rickety staircases, balconies and other add-ons, drawing comparisons in Chinese media to the fantastical creations of legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.
“I started building out of practicality, trying to renovate and expand our home,” Chen said on a sweltering May afternoon as he climbed ladders and ducked wooden beams in his labyrinthine construction.
“But then it became more of an interest and hobby that I enjoyed,” he said.
Chen’s obsessive tinkering and lack of building permits continue to draw ire from the local government.
The higher floors where he sleeps sway in the wind, and dozens of ropes and cables tether the house to the ground as if the whole thing might one day float away.
“When I’m up here... I get the sense of being a nomad,” Chen said, gazing out at apartment blocks, an airport and distant mountains.
“People often say it’s unsafe and should be demolished... but I’ll definitely never let anyone tear it down.”
Local authorities once had big plans to build an 800-acre tourist resort — including a theater and artificial lake — on Chen’s native soil.
They promised to compensate villagers, but Chen’s parents refused, and he vowed to help them protect the home his grandfather had built in the 1980s.
Even as neighbors moved out and their houses were bulldozed, Chen stayed put, even sleeping alone in the house for two months “in case (developers) came to knock it down in the night.”
Six months later, like many ill-considered development projects in highly indebted Guizhou, the resort was canceled.
Virtually alone among the ruined village, Chen was now master of a “nail house” — a Chinese term for those whose owners dig in and refuse to relocate despite official compensation offers.
A quirk of China’s rampant development and partial private property laws, nail houses sometimes make headlines for delaying money-spinning construction projects or forcing developers to divert roads or build around shabby older homes.
Even as Chen forged ahead, completing the fifth floor in 2019, the sixth in 2022 and the seventh in 2023, he continued to receive threats of demolition.
Last August, his home was designated an illegal construction, and he was ordered to destroy everything except the original bungalow within five days.
He says he has spent tens of thousands of yuan fighting the notices in court, despite losing several preliminary hearings.
But he continues to appeal, and the next hearing has been delayed.
“I’m not worried. Now that there’s no one developing the land, there’s no need for them to knock the place down,” he said.
In recent years, ironically, Chen’s house has begun to lure a steady trickle of tourists itself.
On Chinese social media, users describe it as China’s strangest nail house, likening it to the madcap buildings in Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli masterpieces “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Spirited Away.”
As dusk falls, Chen illuminates his home with decorative lanterns, and people gather on the nearby dirt road to admire the scene.
“It’s beautiful,” local resident He Diezhen said as she snapped photos.
“If there are no safety issues, it could become an (official) local landmark,” she said.
Chen said the house makes many visitors remember their whimsical childhood fantasies.
“(People) dream of building a house for themselves with their own hands... but most can’t make it happen,” he said.
“I not only thought of it, I made it a reality.”
Man who let snakes bite him 200 times spurs new antivenom hope
- “I know what it feels like to die from snakebite”
PARIS: Tim Friede was feeling particularly down on the day after the September 11 attacks, so he went to his basement and let two of the world’s deadliest snakes bite him.
Four days later, he woke up from a coma.
“I know what it feels like to die from snakebite,” Friede told AFP via video call from his home in the small US town of Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
This experience might put most people off snakes entirely, but Friede simply vowed to be more careful next time.
From 2000 to 2018, he allowed himself to be bitten by snakes more than 200 times. He also injected himself with their venom over 650 times.
Friede endured this pain because he wanted to achieve total immunity to venom, a practice called mithridatism which should not be tried at home.
After a couple of years, Friede started to believe he could be the basis for a better kind of antivenom. The former truck mechanic, who does not have a university degree, long struggled to be taken seriously by scientists.
But last month, a study published in the prestigious Cell journal showed that antibodies from his blood protect against a range of snake venom.
The researchers now hope Friede’s hyper-immunity could even lead to the development of a universal antivenom.
This would fill a major need, because currently most antivenoms only cover one or a few of the world’s 600 venomous snakes.
Up to 138,000 people are killed by snakebites a year, while 400,000 suffer amputations or other disabilities, according to the World Health Organization.
These figures are believed to be vastly underestimated because snakebite victims typically live in poorer, remote areas.
Friede’s first bite was from a harmless garter snake when he was five years old.
“I was afraid, I cried, I ran away,” said Friede, now 57.
Then he started bringing snakes home and hiding them in pickle jars. His mother sought counselling, but his interest in snakes persisted.
Things escalated after Friede attended a class that taught him how to “milk” snakes for their venom.
How antivenom is made has changed little over the last 125 years.
Small doses of snake venom are injected into animals such as horses, which produce antibodies that can be extracted and used as antivenom.
However this antivenom usually only works for bites from that particular species of snake — and it includes other antibodies from horse that can cause serious side-effects including anaphylactic shock.
“I thought, well, if they make antivenom in horses, why can’t I just use myself as a primate?” Friede said.
He started working through the venom from all the deadly species he could get his hands on, such as cobras, taipans, black mambas and rattlesnakes.
“There is pain every time,” he said.
For years, the scientists he contacted to take advantage of his immunity refused to bite.
Then in 2017, immunologist Jacob Glanville, who previously worked on universal vaccines, turned his attention toward antivenom.
Glanville told AFP he had been looking for “a clumsy snake researcher who’d been bit accidentally a couple times,” when he came across a video of Friede taking brutal back-to-back snake bites.
When they first spoke, Glanville said he told Friede: “I know this is awkward, but I would love to get my hands on some of your blood.”
“I’ve been waiting for this call for a long time,” came the response, Glanville said.
The antivenom described in the Cell paper includes two antibodies from Friede’s blood, as well as a drug called varespladib.
It offered mice full protection against 13 of the 19 snake species tested, and partial protection for the remaining six.
The researchers hope a future cocktail will cover far more snakes — particularly vipers — with further trials planned on dogs in Australia.
Timothy Jackson of the Australian Venom Research Unit praised the immunological research, but questioned whether a human needed to be involved, pointing to synthetically developed antibodies.
Glanville said the ultimate goal of his US-based firm Centivax was to develop a universal antivenom administered by something like an EpiPen, potentially produced in India to keep the costs down.
Friede said he was “proud” to have made a “small difference” in medical history.
Now working for Centivax, Friede stopped self-inflicting himself with venom in 2018 to save the firm from liability issues.
But he hopes to get bitten by snakes again in the future.
“I do miss it,” he said.
Video shows dolphin calf birth and first breath at Chicago zoo. Mom’s friend helped
- Calf was born at Brookfield Zoo Chicago from 38-year-old bottlenose dolphin named Allie
- Experienced mother dolphin stayed close to Allie through her more than one hour of labor
CHICAGO: A bottlenose dolphin at a Chicago zoo gave birth to a calf early Saturday morning with the help of a fellow mom, in a successful birth recorded on video by zoo staff.
The dolphin calf was born at Brookfield Zoo Chicago early Saturday morning as a team of veterinarians monitored and cheered on the mom, a 38-year-old bottlenose dolphin named Allie.
“Push, push, push,” one observer can be heard shouting in video released by the zoo Saturday, as Allie swims around the tank, the calf’s little tail fins poking out below her own.
Then the calf wriggles free and instinctively darts to the surface of the pool for its first breath. Also in the tank was an experienced mother dolphin named Tapeko, 43, who stayed close to Allie through her more than one hour of labor. In the video, she can be seen following the calf as it heads to the surface, and staying with it as it takes that first breath.
It is natural for dolphins to look out for each other during a birth, zoo staff said.
“That’s very common both in free-ranging settings but also in aquaria,” said Brookfield Zoo Chicago Senior Veterinarian Dr. Jennifer Langan in a video statement. “It provides the mom extra protection and a little bit of extra help to help get the calf to the surface to help it breath in those couple minutes where she’s still having really strong contractions.”
In a written statement, zoo officials said early signs indicate that the calf is in good health. They estimate it weighs around 35 pounds (16 kilograms) and stretches nearly four feet in length (115-120 centimeters). That is about the weight and length of an adult golden retriever dog.
The zoo’s Seven Seas exhibit will be closed as the calf bonds with its mother and acclimates with other dolphins in its group.
As part of that bonding, the calf has already learned to slipstream, or draft alongside its mother so that it doesn’t have to work as hard to move. Veterinarians will monitor progress in nursing, swimming and other milestones particularly closely over the next 30 days.
The calf will eventually take a paternity test to see which of the male dolphins at the zoo is its father.
Zoo officials say they will name the calf later this summer.
Top TikToker Khaby Lame detained by US immigration
- Lame holds top spot on the wildly popular TikTok social media app, with 162.2 million followers and has risen to fame for his short silent videos mocking the convoluted tutorials and tips that abound on the Internet
- Since taking power in January, US President Donald Trump has delivered on campaign promises to tighten immigration controls and carry out a mass deportation drive — aspects of which have been challenged in US courts
LOS ANGELES, United States: US immigration agents detained and later allowed the “voluntary departure” of the world’s most-followed TikToker, Khaby Lame, after he “overstayed” his visa, authorities said Saturday.
“US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Seringe Khabane Lame, 25, a citizen of Italy, June 6, at the Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada for immigration violations,” the agency said in a statement to AFP.
Lame entered the United States on April 30 and “overstayed the terms of his visa,” the statement said of the Friday detention, adding that he was released the same day.
The Italian national, who is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and has a following of more than 162 million on TikTok, “has since departed the US.”
Lame had not immediately posted publicly about the incident as of Saturday afternoon.
Since taking power in January, US President Donald Trump has delivered on campaign promises to tighten immigration controls and carry out a mass deportation drive — aspects of which have been challenged in US courts.
Lame holds top spot on the wildly popular TikTok social media app, with 162.2 million followers and has risen to fame for his short silent videos mocking the convoluted tutorials and tips that abound on the Internet.
He punctuates his videos with a trademark gesture — palms turned toward the sky, accompanied by a knowing smile and wide eyes — as he offers his own simple remedies.
The idea for his content came to him while wandering around the housing project where his family lived in Chivasso, near Turin, after losing his factory mechanic’s job in March 2020.
His posts took off — helping him gross an estimated $16.5 million through marketing deals with companies in the period between June 2022 and September 2023, according to Forbes.
Pope Leo XIV faces funding challenges for cash-strapped Vatican
VATICAN CITY: The world’s smallest country has a big budget problem.
The Vatican doesn’t tax its residents or issue bonds. It primarily finances the Catholic Church’s central government through donations that have been plunging, ticket sales for the Vatican Museums, as well as income from investments and an underperforming real estate portfolio.
The last year the Holy See published a consolidated budget, in 2022, it projected €770 million ($878 million), with the bulk paying for embassies around the world and Vatican media operations. In recent years, it hasn’t been able to cover costs.
That leaves Pope Leo XIV facing challenges to drum up the funds needed to pull his city-state out of the red.
Withering donations
Anyone can donate money to the Vatican, but the regular sources come in two main forms.
Canon law requires bishops around the world to pay an annual fee, with amounts varying and at bishops’ discretion “according to the resources of their dioceses.” US bishops contributed over one-third of the $22 million (€19.3 million) collected annually under the provision from 2021-2023, according to Vatican data.
The other main source of annual donations is more well-known to ordinary Catholics: Peter’s Pence, a special collection usually taken on the last Sunday of June. From 2021-2023, individual Catholics in the US gave an average $27 million (€23.7 million) to Peter’s Pence, more than half the global total.
American generosity hasn’t prevented overall Peter’s Pence contributions from cratering. After hitting a high of $101 million (€88.6 million) in 2006, contributions hovered around $75 million (€66.8 million) during the 2010’s then tanked to $47 million (€41.2 million) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many churches were closed.
Donations remained low in the following years, amid revelations of the Vatican’s bungled investment in a London property, a former Harrod’s warehouse that it hoped to develop into luxury apartments. The scandal and ensuing trial confirmed that the vast majority of Peter’s Pence contributions had funded the Holy See’s budgetary shortfalls, not papal charity initiatives as many parishioners had been led to believe.
Peter’s Pence donations rose slightly in 2023 and Vatican officials expect more growth going forward, in part because there has traditionally been a bump immediately after papal elections.
New donors
The Vatican bank and the city state’s governorate, which controls the museums, also make annual contributions to the pope. As recently as a decade ago, the bank gave the pope around €55 million ($62.7 million) a year to help with the budget. But the amounts have dwindled; the bank gave nothing specifically to the pope in 2023, despite registering a net profit of €30 million ($34.2 million), according to its financial statements. The governorate’s giving has likewise dropped off.
Some Vatican officials ask how the Holy See can credibly ask donors to be more generous when its own institutions are holding back.
Leo will need to attract donations from outside the US, no small task given the different culture of philanthropy, said the Rev. Robert Gahl, director of the Church Management Program at Catholic University of America’s business school. He noted that in Europe there is much less of a tradition (and tax advantage) of individual philanthropy, with corporations and government entities doing most of the donating or allocating designated tax dollars.
Even more important is leaving behind the “mendicant mentality” of fundraising to address a particular problem, and instead encouraging Catholics to invest in the church as a project, he said.
Speaking right after Leo’s installation ceremony in St. Peter’s Square, which drew around 200,000 people, Gahl asked: “Don’t you think there were a lot of people there that would have loved to contribute to that and to the pontificate?”
In the US, donation baskets are passed around at every Sunday Mass. Not so at the Vatican.
Untapped real estate
The Vatican has 4,249 properties in Italy and 1,200 more in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland. Only about one-fifth are rented at fair market value, according to the annual report from the APSA patrimony office, which manages them. Some 70 percent generate no income because they house Vatican or other church offices; the remaining 10 percent are rented at reduced rents to Vatican employees.
In 2023, these properties only generated €35 million euros ($39.9) in profit. Financial analysts have long identified such undervalued real estate as a source of potential revenue.
But Ward Fitzgerald, the president of the US-based Papal Foundation, which finances papal charities, said the Vatican should also be willing to sell properties, especially those too expensive to maintain. Many bishops are wrestling with similar downsizing questions as the number of church-going Catholics in parts of the US and Europe shrinks and once-full churches stand empty.
Toward that end, the Vatican recently sold the property housing its embassy in Tokyo’s high-end Sanbancho neighborhood, near the Imperial Palace, to a developer building a 13-story apartment complex, according to the Kensetsu News trade journal.
Yet there has long been institutional reluctance to part with even money-losing properties. Witness the Vatican announcement in 2021 that the cash-strapped Fatebenefratelli Catholic hospital in Rome, run by a religious order, would not be sold. Pope Francis simultaneously created a Vatican fundraising foundation to keep it and other Catholic hospitals afloat.
“They have to come to grips with the fact that they own so much real estate that is not serving the mission of the church,” said Fitzgerald, who built a career in real estate private equity.
