LONDON: Actor Ben Stiller, a goodwill ambassador for the UN refugee agency, has said it was “distressing” to hear the experiences of people displaced by the Ukraine conflict, adding he hoped to shine a light on their plight with his visit to the country.
He added that it was crucial for people not to turn away from and lose interest in the war, now that it had been going on for several months.
Stiller, a UNHCR goodwill ambassador, traveled to Poland and Ukraine over the last few days to meet those who had fled their homes since Russia’s invasion began.
“It was definitely a different experience to be here in person and see the effects of the war and see how people are having to cope. It’s distressing to see and hear the experiences that these people have gone through,” Stiller told Reuters in a telephone interview.
“It’s really tough to see and I’m very glad I came to get a different sense that you don’t get from just watching television.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in February, has claimed thousands of civilian lives, displaced millions of Ukrainians and reduced cities to rubble. Moscow says it is involved in a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
During his trip which began in Poland, Stiller visited a UNHCR warehouse in Rzeszow as well as the Medyka border crossing. In Ukraine, he traveled to Lviv, Irpin, which was heavily damaged at the start of the conflict, and Kyiv, where he met President Volodymyr Zelensky, telling him “You’re my hero.”
He has shared pictures of his trip and on Monday put out a message calling for compassion on World Refugee Day. More than 12 million people have fled their homes since the start of the war, according to UNHCR.
“It’s natural for people to want to turn away, especially in a situation like this with a war that has been going on for a while now... while dealing with our own personal issues,” Stiller told Reuters. “But I think it’s also important to be aware of what’s going on in different parts of the world.”
Stiller was appointed a goodwill ambassador in 2018 and has previously met refugees in Germany, Jordan, Guatemala and Lebanon.
Ben Stiller says ‘really tough’ to see Ukraine refugees’ plight
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Ben Stiller says ‘really tough’ to see Ukraine refugees’ plight
- Stiller travelled to Poland and Ukraine over the last few days to meet those who had fled their homes
- "It's really tough to see and I'm very glad I came to get a different sense that you don't get from just watching television," he said
Weinstein jury pores over accuser’s emails during deliberations
- Jurors deliberated through the day, winding up with a request to rehear on Wednesday a key part of Mann’s testimony
NEW YORK: Jurors in Harvey Weinstein’s sex crimes retrial appeared to be focusing on one of his three accusers as deliberations stretched into a fourth day Tuesday, with no further sign of interpersonal tensions that flared earlier.
The jury had requested to start off Tuesday with electronic copies of emails and other evidence pertaining to Jessica Mann — the accuser with arguably the most complex history with Weinstein.
Jurors deliberated through the day, winding up with a request to rehear on Wednesday a key part of Mann’s testimony. Jurors also indicated they want on Wednesday to keep reviewing the emails and some medical records concerning her reaction to news accounts of other women’s allegations against him.
During days of testimony, Mann said the Oscar-winning movie producer raped her in 2013 amid a consensual relationship that continued for years afterward. Weinstein’s lawyers emphasized that she kept seeing him, accepting invitations and sending warm messages to him. Mann said she “compartmentalized” the pain he caused her.
Weinstein, 73, has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in the case. In addition to the rape charge, he’s accused of sexually assaulting two other women, Mimi Haley and Kaja Sokola.
Weinstein didn’t testify during the current trial, but maintained through his attorneys that he had completely consensual encounters with his accusers, who wanted his help building show business careers.
Weinstein was one of the movie industry’s most powerful figures until a series of sexual misconduct allegations against him became public in 2017, fueling the #MeToo movement and eventually leading to criminal charges.
The jury is made up of seven women and five men. Their closed-door discussions began Thursday and apparently have been fractious at times.
One juror asked Friday to be excused because he felt one member of the group was being treated unfairly. Then on Monday, the foreperson complained to the judge, prosecutors and defense lawyers that some jurors were “pushing” others to change their minds, talking about Weinstein’s past and going beyond the charges.
The foreperson didn’t specify what was said. Trial evidence has included some testimony about allegations outside the scope of the current charges, such as mentions of the groundswell of claims against the ex-studio boss in 2017.
Yet another juror soon asked to speak to the court, where she opined that things were “going well.” By the end of Monday, the jury as a whole said in a note that it was “making good progress.”
There was progress Tuesday on at least one front: Jurors ultimately were given coffee, as requested, Judge Curtis Farber said. He hadn’t initially thought the state court system could provide it.
Weinstein originally was convicted in New York in 2020 of raping Mann and forcing oral sex on Haley. Sokola’s allegation was added last year, after New York state’s highest court overturned the 2020 conviction and sent the case back for retrial.
Meanwhile, Weinstein is appealing a 2022 rape conviction in Los Angeles.
The Associated Press generally does not identify people without their permission if they say they have been sexually assaulted. Sokola, Mann and Haley have agreed to be named.
Emperor penguin populations falling ‘faster than we thought’: researchers
- Emperor penguin populations in Antarctica have shrunk by almost a quarter as global warming transforms their icy habitat
PARIS: Emperor penguin populations in Antarctica have shrunk by almost a quarter as global warming transforms their icy habitat, according to new research Tuesday that warned the losses were far worse than previously imagined.
“We’ve got this really depressing picture of climate change and falling populations even faster than we thought, but it’s not too late,” said Peter Fretwell, of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), who led the study monitoring sixteen colonies, representing nearly a third of the global emperor penguin population.
In London, the fox has its own ambulance service when it needs help
- The critters that have admirers and adversaries are well adapted to city life but living on the streets, alleys and back gardens of a dense urban environment can be rough
- When they are ill, injured or abandoned as cubs in south London and its leafy suburbs, The Fox Project is often there to help
PADDOCK WOOD: The injured fox is cornered in a cage, teeth bared and snarling at the woman trying to help it.
Nicki Townsend is unfazed. Wearing only rubber gloves and an outfit suitable for a yoga class, she approaches with soothing words. “All right, baby,” she coos as she deftly drapes a towel over his head, grabs him by the scruff of his neck, scoops up his wounded legs and moves him to a clean cage.
It’s not the way her day typically begins, but there’s nothing routine about rescuing foxes.
“You can never predict what you’re going to arrive at,” Townsend said.
While not as visible as phone boxes or double-decker buses, the red fox is a fixture in London, a city not known for its wildlife. But living on the streets, alleys and back gardens of a dense urban environment can be rough and when foxes need help, they have their own ambulance service — and Townsend may be on her way.
The foxes didn’t invade London so much as adapt and expand their range inward as the city spread to their habitat in the 1930s and suburbs grew.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em
But people and the bushy-tailed member of the canine family have not always lived in harmony, and the species has admirers and adversaries.
For everyone enchanted seeing a fox trotting nonchalantly down their street at dusk or basking in a sunny backyard, there are plenty who see them as pests. They poop where they like, tear into garbage and the vixens in heat let out terrifying shrieks in the dead of winter when attracting a mate.
“It’s like Marmite with foxes,” Townsend said, referring to the food spread that is an acquired and divisive taste. “You either love them or hate them.”
The divide between the two camps led Trevor Williams to found what became The Fox Project nearly 35 years ago.
Once a bass player in the rock group Audience that opened for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, Williams had been active in the campaign to stop fox hunting when he redirected his protection efforts to the city, where foxes were once routinely killed.
“Because of the myths that have occurred over the years, there’s still a lot of suspicion about what foxes might be,” Williams said. “You know, they’re going to bite the baby, they’re going to eat the cat, they’re going to run away with your husband.”
The project has since grown from providing information on deterring foxes to rescuing 1,400 a year, including 400 cubs, though only about half survive to be released.
City offers cheap eats and unique hazards
There are estimated to be 15,000 foxes in London. The project covers a swath of south London and its leafy suburbs while other organizations not devoted solely to foxes handle other parts of the city.
While the omnivores survive on small animals, bugs and berries in the wild, they favor easily scavenged leftovers in the city and handouts that make them more dependent on humans.
Their main urban menaces are cars, getting snagged in soccer nets or getting stuck in tight spaces. In their effort to get free, they often get nasty abrasions that can become infected. Many also suffer from mange, a parasitic infestation that leads to all kinds of problems.
Townsend pilots her VW Caddy on city streets, highways and narrow lanes that roll through lush hills, responding to calls about injured or ill foxes or cubs that have lost their mothers.
She’s seen a bit of everything since her first humbling call 2 1/2 years ago when the supposedly injured fox bolted.
“In my inexperience, I chased after him, which is comical because you’re never going to outrun a fox,” she said. “I just remember he ran very fast and I looked silly running after him.”
Despite many challenging situations — she once managed to rescue a fox that lost its footing atop a fence and ended upside down at eye level with its paw lodged between boards — she’s only been bitten once.
Heartbreak with hard cases
Her van carries the distinctly musky scent of foxes. The odor becomes unpleasant when an anxious passenger in a litter of cubs relieves itself enroute to being delivered to a foster care pen where they will stay until being released in the wild.
“Feel free to open the window,” said Townsend, who is accustomed to the stench. “This is a stinky job.”
On a recent day, she was dispatched to meet a heartbroken couple who found a cub with a puncture wound collapsed on their back lawn.
“We thought he was asleep at first, so we went to go and have a close look because we love them,” Charlotte English said. “Then he just didn’t move, so we knew something was wrong.”
That cub had to be put to sleep, as did the adult Townsend transferred at the start of her shift.
Cubs that recover are socialized in packs of five until they mature and are then released in a rural location while the adults are freed in the neighborhoods where they were found.
The fox does not say ‘Thank you’
Given a second chance, it’s not clear how well the foxes fare, because they are rarely tracked. A 2016 study in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science found that rehabilitated foxes were more likely to behave as if they had been displaced when returned to their original territory. They were tracked wandering farther away, potentially exposing them to more traffic and greater stress.
“It is a gap in the knowledge and there’s an assumption that when you release them, they thrive and I think that that assumption needs to be challenged more,” said Bryony Tolhurst, a University of Brighton honorary research fellow and lead author of the study.
For Townsend, fox deaths are offset by the joy of seeing little ones venture into the unknown or an adult darting into a neighborhood it instantly recognizes.
“Sometimes they look back and people like to romanticize that they’re saying ‘thank you,’” she said. “They’re just making sure we’re not chasing after them.”
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.
