deaths
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Thousands gathered at New Jersey’s Point Pleasant beach on Sunday with a united mission: to pause offshore wind projects in response to recent whale deaths along the New York-New Jersey coast.
The gathering unfolded even as officials dispute the notion that the projects may be to blame for the dead whales, a controversy that – like many – is breaking along political party lines.
Holding signs reading “Save the Whales” and “Whale Lives Matter” on Sunday, World Whale Day, a coalition of ocean conservationist groups and homegrown activists argued that local wind turbine survey projects were harming marine wildlife.
Apparently, it's not been a proven reason that whales are dying but I did see a W5 report a couple of years ago where not only were people suffering from the results/activity of windmills in their area but that birds & bats were dying at a rate not seen before. They also indicated that the electricity that goes into the ground makes the soil "dead" (for lack of a better term) because any insects, worms etc., were not found in the soil surrounding the windmills which means that the soil was good for absolutely nothing as nothing would grow there.
I haven't seen anything recently that corroborates or disputes what was said on the program. I wonder how many "studies" have (or are in process) to determine if said windmills are affecting humans & local habitat. If not, there needs to be one done.
The gathering unfolded even as officials dispute the notion that the projects may be to blame for the dead whales, a controversy that – like many – is breaking along political party lines.
Holding signs reading “Save the Whales” and “Whale Lives Matter” on Sunday, World Whale Day, a coalition of ocean conservationist groups and homegrown activists argued that local wind turbine survey projects were harming marine wildlife.
Apparently, it's not been a proven reason that whales are dying but I did see a W5 report a couple of years ago where not only were people suffering from the results/activity of windmills in their area but that birds & bats were dying at a rate not seen before. They also indicated that the electricity that goes into the ground makes the soil "dead" (for lack of a better term) because any insects, worms etc., were not found in the soil surrounding the windmills which means that the soil was good for absolutely nothing as nothing would grow there.
I haven't seen anything recently that corroborates or disputes what was said on the program. I wonder how many "studies" have (or are in process) to determine if said windmills are affecting humans & local habitat. If not, there needs to be one done.
Deadly bat fungus discovered in B.C.
The fungus is spread from one bat to the next and does not have any health effect on humans
Author of the article
avid Carrigg
Published Apr 03, 2023 • Last updated 9 hours ago • 1 minute read
A fungus that is causing mass death among bat populations in North America has arrived in B.C.
According to the B.C. Ministry of Land and Resource Stewardship, the fungus that causes white nose syndrome in bats has been found in bat guano (feces) in the Grand Forks area.
The ministry has been monitoring bat guano for the fungus since 2016, when it was detected on the west coast of the United States.
The fungus originated in New York state and has spread to 38 U.S. states and eight provinces in Canada since 2006. Those provinces are Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Alberta is the remaining province where the fungus has not been detected.
Three Canadian bat species have been listed as “endangered” under the federal Species at Risk Act since the syndrome appeared in Canada.
People are asked to contact the ministry or the B.C. Community Bat Program if they see a bat displaying unusual behaviour, like flying during the day, or if they find dead bats. Locations of bat roosting sites are also valuable as ministry scientists can test the guano there.
The ministry statement said several agencies are upgrading surveillance for the syndrome.
The fungus is spread from one bat to the next and does not have any health effect on humans. Humans can transfer the fungus, however, through contaminated clothing or if they come into contact with a bat habitat.
Anyone who discovers a sick or dead bat should not pick it up with their bare hands.
dcarrigg@postmedia.com
bcbats.ca
torontosun.com
The fungus is spread from one bat to the next and does not have any health effect on humans
Author of the article
avid CarriggPublished Apr 03, 2023 • Last updated 9 hours ago • 1 minute read
A fungus that is causing mass death among bat populations in North America has arrived in B.C.
According to the B.C. Ministry of Land and Resource Stewardship, the fungus that causes white nose syndrome in bats has been found in bat guano (feces) in the Grand Forks area.
The ministry has been monitoring bat guano for the fungus since 2016, when it was detected on the west coast of the United States.
The fungus originated in New York state and has spread to 38 U.S. states and eight provinces in Canada since 2006. Those provinces are Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Alberta is the remaining province where the fungus has not been detected.
Three Canadian bat species have been listed as “endangered” under the federal Species at Risk Act since the syndrome appeared in Canada.
People are asked to contact the ministry or the B.C. Community Bat Program if they see a bat displaying unusual behaviour, like flying during the day, or if they find dead bats. Locations of bat roosting sites are also valuable as ministry scientists can test the guano there.
The ministry statement said several agencies are upgrading surveillance for the syndrome.
The fungus is spread from one bat to the next and does not have any health effect on humans. Humans can transfer the fungus, however, through contaminated clothing or if they come into contact with a bat habitat.
Anyone who discovers a sick or dead bat should not pick it up with their bare hands.
dcarrigg@postmedia.com
BC Bats | Community Bat Programs of BC
BC Bats is raising awareness of bat conservation issues, helping manage bats in buildings, and collecting data needed to monitor and understand bats in BC
bcbats.ca
White-Nose Syndrome (WNS)
White nose syndrome (WNS) is a very agressive, fatal disease in bats. It is caused by a fungus (Pseudogymnoascus destructans).
www2.gov.bc.ca
Deadly bat fungus discovered in B.C.
The fungus is spread from one bat to the next and does not have any health effect on humans
Man jailed for scaring 1,100 chickens to death
Author of the articleenette Wilford
Published Apr 10, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 1 minute read
A man in China was sentenced to six months in jail for scaring 1,100 of his neighbour’s chickens to death.
The man, identified only by his surname Gu, snuck onto his neighbour Zhong’s property and used a flashlight to frighten the chickens in the first incident.
The light caused the chickens to flee to a corner of the coop where they trampled over each other to try to escape the brightness, China Daily reported, according to Fox News.
That incident stemmed from a months-long feud between the neighbours that first began in April 2022 when Gu cut down Zhong’s trees without permission, the outlet reported.
Gu became irate after Zhong’s wife got rid of the trees.
The first encounter with the chickens resulted in 500 of the fowl dying.
Gu was arrested an ordered to pay Zhong 3,000 yuan ($586) but the angry neighbour wasn’t finished.
Gu returned to Zhong’s chicken farm and used the killer flashlight once again, causing the deaths of 640 more chickens, the outlet reported.
The 1,100 chickens that died in the two incidents were worth about 13,840 yuan ($2,700), Chinese authorities said.
The Hengyang County court ruled that Gu intentionally caused Zhong to suffer property loss.
In addition to the six-month jail term, he will be on probation for a year.
foxnews.com
torontosun.com
Author of the article
enette WilfordPublished Apr 10, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 1 minute read
A man in China was sentenced to six months in jail for scaring 1,100 of his neighbour’s chickens to death.
The man, identified only by his surname Gu, snuck onto his neighbour Zhong’s property and used a flashlight to frighten the chickens in the first incident.
The light caused the chickens to flee to a corner of the coop where they trampled over each other to try to escape the brightness, China Daily reported, according to Fox News.
That incident stemmed from a months-long feud between the neighbours that first began in April 2022 when Gu cut down Zhong’s trees without permission, the outlet reported.
Gu became irate after Zhong’s wife got rid of the trees.
The first encounter with the chickens resulted in 500 of the fowl dying.
Gu was arrested an ordered to pay Zhong 3,000 yuan ($586) but the angry neighbour wasn’t finished.
Gu returned to Zhong’s chicken farm and used the killer flashlight once again, causing the deaths of 640 more chickens, the outlet reported.
The 1,100 chickens that died in the two incidents were worth about 13,840 yuan ($2,700), Chinese authorities said.
The Hengyang County court ruled that Gu intentionally caused Zhong to suffer property loss.
In addition to the six-month jail term, he will be on probation for a year.
Man in China jailed for scaring neighbor's 1,100 chickens to death amid feud: report
Amid an ongoing feud with his neighbor, a Chinese man used a flashlight to scare 1,100 chickens to death. He was sentenced to six months for the fowl crime.
Man jailed for scaring 1,100 chickens to death
A man in China is behind bars for scaring more than a thousand of his neighbour’s chickens to death amid feud.
Jerry Springer, politician-turned-TV ringmaster, dies at 79
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Dan Sewell
Published Apr 27, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 5 minute read
CINCINNATI — Jerry Springer, the onetime mayor and news anchor whose namesake TV show featured a three-ring circus of dysfunctional families willing to bare all on weekday afternoons including brawls, obscenities and blurred images of nudity, died Thursday at 79.
Jerry Springer, Politician-Turned-TV Ringmaster, Dies at 79
Springer, the former Cincinnati mayor and news anchor whose namesake TV show unleashed strippers, homewreckers and skinheads to brawl and spew obscenities on weekday afternoons, has died. He was 79. A family spokesperson died Thursday at home in suburban Chicago.
Jerry Springer, Politician-Turned-TV Ringmaster, Dies at 79
At its peak, “The Jerry Springer Show” was a ratings powerhouse and a U.S. cultural pariah, synonymous with lurid drama. Known for chair-throwing and bleep-filled arguments, the daytime talk show was a favorite American guilty pleasure over its 27-year run, at one point topping Oprah Winfrey’s show.
Springer called it “escapist entertainment,” while others saw the show as contributing to a dumbing-down decline in American social values.
“Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word,” said Jene Galvin, a family spokesperson and friend of Springer’s since 1970, in a statement. “He’s irreplaceable and his loss hurts immensely, but memories of his intellect, heart and humor will live on.”
Springer died peacefully at home in suburban Chicago after a brief illness, the statement said.
On his Twitter profile, Springer jokingly declared himself as “Talk show host, ringmaster of civilization’s end.” He also often had told people, tongue in cheek, that his wish for them was “may you never be on my show.”
After more than 4,000 episodes, the show ended in 2018, never straying from its core salaciousness: Some of its last episodes had such titles as “Stripper Sex Turned Me Straight,” “Stop Pimpin’ My Twin Sister,” and “Hooking Up With My Therapist.”
In a “Too Hot For TV” video released as his daily show neared 7 million viewers in the late 1990s, Springer offered a defense against disgust.
“Look, television does not and must not create values, it’s merely a picture of all that’s out there — the good, the bad, the ugly,” Springer said, adding: “Believe this: The politicians and companies that seek to control what each of us may watch are a far greater danger to America and our treasured freedom than any of our guests ever were or could be.”
He also contended that the people on his show volunteered to be subjected to whatever ridicule or humiliation awaited them.
Gerald Norman Springer was born Feb. 13, 1944, in a London underground railway station being used as a bomb shelter. His parents, Richard and Margot, were German Jews who fled to England during the Holocaust, in which other relatives were killed in Nazi gas chambers. They arrived in the United States when their son was 5 and settled in the Queens borough of New York City, where Springer got his first Yankees baseball gear on his way to becoming a lifelong fan.
He studied political science at Tulane University and got a law degree from Northwestern University. He was active in politics much of his adult life, mulling a run for governor of Ohio as recently as 2017.
He entered the arena as an aide in Robert F. Kennedy’s ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign. Springer, working for a Cincinnati law firm, ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1970 before being elected to city council in 1971.
In 1974 — in what The Cincinnati Enquirer reported as “an abrupt move that shook Cincinnati’s political community” — Springer resigned. He cited “very personal family considerations,” but what he didn’t mention was a vice probe involving prostitution. In a subsequent admission that could have been the basis for one of his future shows, Springer said he had paid prostitutes with personal checks.
Then 30, he had married Micki Velton the previous year. The couple had a daughter, Katie, and divorced in 1994.
Springer quickly bounced back politically, winning a council seat in 1975 and serving as mayor in 1977. He later became a local television politics reporter with popular evening commentaries. He and co-anchor Norma Rashid eventually helped build NBC affiliate WLWT-TV’s broadcast into the Cincinnati market’s top-rated news show.
Springer began his talk show in 1991 with more of a traditional format, but after he left WLWT in 1993, it got a sleazy makeover.
TV Guide ranked it No. 1 on a list of “Worst Shows in the History of Television,” but it was ratings gold. It made Springer a celebrity who would go on to host a liberal radio talk show and “America’s Got Talent,” star in a movie called “Ringmaster,” and compete on “Dancing With the Stars.”
“With all the joking I do with the show, I’m fully aware and thank God every day that my life has taken this incredible turn because of this silly show,” Springer told Cincinnati Enquirer media reporter John Kiesewetter in 2011.
Well in advance of Donald Trump’s political rise from reality TV stardom, Springer mulled a Senate run in 2003 that he surmised could draw on “nontraditional voters,” people “who believe most politics are bull.”
“I connect with a whole bunch of people who probably connect more to me right now than to a traditional politician,” Springer told the AP at the time. He opposed the war on Iraq and favored expanding public healthcare, but ultimately did not run.
Springer also spoke often of the country he came to age 5 as “a beacon of light for the rest of world.”
“I have no other motivation but to say I love this country,” Springer said to a Democratic gathering in 2003.
Springer hosted a nationally syndicated “Judge Jerry” show in 2019 and continued to speak out on whatever was on his mind in a podcast, but his power to shock had dimmed in the new era of reality television and combative cable TV talk shows.
“He was lapped not only by other programs but by real life,” David Bianculli, a television historian and professor at Monmouth University, said in 2018.
Despite the limits Springer’s show put on his political aspirations, he embraced its legacy. In a 2003 fund-raising infomercial ahead of a possible U.S. Senate run the following year, Springer referenced a quote by then National Review commentator Jonah Goldberg, who warned of new people brought to the polls by Springer, including “slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs and whatnots.”
In the informercial, Springer referred to the quote and talked about wanting to reach out to “regular folks … who weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Dan Sewell
Published Apr 27, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 5 minute read
CINCINNATI — Jerry Springer, the onetime mayor and news anchor whose namesake TV show featured a three-ring circus of dysfunctional families willing to bare all on weekday afternoons including brawls, obscenities and blurred images of nudity, died Thursday at 79.
Jerry Springer, Politician-Turned-TV Ringmaster, Dies at 79
Springer, the former Cincinnati mayor and news anchor whose namesake TV show unleashed strippers, homewreckers and skinheads to brawl and spew obscenities on weekday afternoons, has died. He was 79. A family spokesperson died Thursday at home in suburban Chicago.
Jerry Springer, Politician-Turned-TV Ringmaster, Dies at 79
At its peak, “The Jerry Springer Show” was a ratings powerhouse and a U.S. cultural pariah, synonymous with lurid drama. Known for chair-throwing and bleep-filled arguments, the daytime talk show was a favorite American guilty pleasure over its 27-year run, at one point topping Oprah Winfrey’s show.
Springer called it “escapist entertainment,” while others saw the show as contributing to a dumbing-down decline in American social values.
“Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word,” said Jene Galvin, a family spokesperson and friend of Springer’s since 1970, in a statement. “He’s irreplaceable and his loss hurts immensely, but memories of his intellect, heart and humor will live on.”
Springer died peacefully at home in suburban Chicago after a brief illness, the statement said.
On his Twitter profile, Springer jokingly declared himself as “Talk show host, ringmaster of civilization’s end.” He also often had told people, tongue in cheek, that his wish for them was “may you never be on my show.”
After more than 4,000 episodes, the show ended in 2018, never straying from its core salaciousness: Some of its last episodes had such titles as “Stripper Sex Turned Me Straight,” “Stop Pimpin’ My Twin Sister,” and “Hooking Up With My Therapist.”
In a “Too Hot For TV” video released as his daily show neared 7 million viewers in the late 1990s, Springer offered a defense against disgust.
“Look, television does not and must not create values, it’s merely a picture of all that’s out there — the good, the bad, the ugly,” Springer said, adding: “Believe this: The politicians and companies that seek to control what each of us may watch are a far greater danger to America and our treasured freedom than any of our guests ever were or could be.”
He also contended that the people on his show volunteered to be subjected to whatever ridicule or humiliation awaited them.
Gerald Norman Springer was born Feb. 13, 1944, in a London underground railway station being used as a bomb shelter. His parents, Richard and Margot, were German Jews who fled to England during the Holocaust, in which other relatives were killed in Nazi gas chambers. They arrived in the United States when their son was 5 and settled in the Queens borough of New York City, where Springer got his first Yankees baseball gear on his way to becoming a lifelong fan.
He studied political science at Tulane University and got a law degree from Northwestern University. He was active in politics much of his adult life, mulling a run for governor of Ohio as recently as 2017.
He entered the arena as an aide in Robert F. Kennedy’s ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign. Springer, working for a Cincinnati law firm, ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1970 before being elected to city council in 1971.
In 1974 — in what The Cincinnati Enquirer reported as “an abrupt move that shook Cincinnati’s political community” — Springer resigned. He cited “very personal family considerations,” but what he didn’t mention was a vice probe involving prostitution. In a subsequent admission that could have been the basis for one of his future shows, Springer said he had paid prostitutes with personal checks.
Then 30, he had married Micki Velton the previous year. The couple had a daughter, Katie, and divorced in 1994.
Springer quickly bounced back politically, winning a council seat in 1975 and serving as mayor in 1977. He later became a local television politics reporter with popular evening commentaries. He and co-anchor Norma Rashid eventually helped build NBC affiliate WLWT-TV’s broadcast into the Cincinnati market’s top-rated news show.
Springer began his talk show in 1991 with more of a traditional format, but after he left WLWT in 1993, it got a sleazy makeover.
TV Guide ranked it No. 1 on a list of “Worst Shows in the History of Television,” but it was ratings gold. It made Springer a celebrity who would go on to host a liberal radio talk show and “America’s Got Talent,” star in a movie called “Ringmaster,” and compete on “Dancing With the Stars.”
“With all the joking I do with the show, I’m fully aware and thank God every day that my life has taken this incredible turn because of this silly show,” Springer told Cincinnati Enquirer media reporter John Kiesewetter in 2011.
Well in advance of Donald Trump’s political rise from reality TV stardom, Springer mulled a Senate run in 2003 that he surmised could draw on “nontraditional voters,” people “who believe most politics are bull.”
“I connect with a whole bunch of people who probably connect more to me right now than to a traditional politician,” Springer told the AP at the time. He opposed the war on Iraq and favored expanding public healthcare, but ultimately did not run.
Springer also spoke often of the country he came to age 5 as “a beacon of light for the rest of world.”
“I have no other motivation but to say I love this country,” Springer said to a Democratic gathering in 2003.
Springer hosted a nationally syndicated “Judge Jerry” show in 2019 and continued to speak out on whatever was on his mind in a podcast, but his power to shock had dimmed in the new era of reality television and combative cable TV talk shows.
“He was lapped not only by other programs but by real life,” David Bianculli, a television historian and professor at Monmouth University, said in 2018.
Despite the limits Springer’s show put on his political aspirations, he embraced its legacy. In a 2003 fund-raising infomercial ahead of a possible U.S. Senate run the following year, Springer referenced a quote by then National Review commentator Jonah Goldberg, who warned of new people brought to the polls by Springer, including “slack-jawed yokels, hicks, weirdos, pervs and whatnots.”
In the informercial, Springer referred to the quote and talked about wanting to reach out to “regular folks … who weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”
Jerry Springer, politician-turned-TV ringmaster, dies at 79
Jerry Springer, the onetime mayor and news anchor whose namesake TV show featured a three-ring circus of dysfunctional families, died Thursday
Fears over scores of zoo animals caught in Sudan crossfire
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Samy Magdy
Published May 10, 2023 • 3 minute read
ASWAN, Egypt — Dozens of zoo animals in Sudan’s capital — including an elderly crocodile, parrots and giant lizards — are feared dead after street battles between the country’s rival forces made the location unreachable.
At least 100 animals, all kept inside enclosures, will have gone more than three weeks without food or water, said Sara Abdalla, the head zoologist at the zoo, which is part of the Sudan Natural History Museum.
Millions of people in Sudan have endured shortages of food, water and medicines after the conflict halted the most basic services. But as the sounds of explosions ring across the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, Abdalla has been wracked with worry over her animal charges, particularly those that are increasingly rare to find in their natural habitats in Sudan.
“I feel a great deal of misery and sadness, as well as helplessness,” she said in a telephone interview from Khartoum. “I have assumed that we lost the birds and mammals.”
The zoo is home to species including an African grey parrot, a vervet monkey, giant lizards known as Nile monitors, a desert tortoise, a horned viper snake and a Nubian spitting cobra. Prior to the fighting, these were all fed twice a day. But the last time they received their meals and for some, medications, was on April 14, the day before fighting broke out, according to Abdalla.
The conflict, which capped months of tensions between Sudan’s rival generals, pits the Sudanese military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, who is the head of the ruling sovereign council, against the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The RSF is commanded by Burhan’s deputy on the council, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. Abdalla said neither has heeded appeals to allow access to the zoo.
The conflict has turned much of Khartoum and the adjacent city of Omdurman into a battlefield, with both sides using heavy weapons, including artillery and airstrikes, inside urban areas. The urban combat has badly damaged infrastructure and properties and poses great risk to civilians trying to move in the city streets.
Residents fleeing the capital have described seeing bodies littering sidewalks and central squares, particularly in areas not far from the museum. Roughly 500 civilians have been killed in the fighting so far, according to Sudan’s doctors’ syndicate, though the true number of dead is believed to be higher.
The zoo, which is housed inside the University of Khartoum, is one of the oldest in Sudan. The facility was established about a century ago as part of Gordon Memorial College, an educational institution built in the early 1900s when Sudan was a part of the British empire. It was annexed to the University of Khartoum two years after Sudan won independence in 1956.
Its current location is close to the military’s headquarters, where fighting has been heavy, preventing access to the museum.
Abdalla, who teaches zoology at the University of Khartoum, began working at the museum in 2006, and was appointed director of the facility in 2020. It was a job she had dreamed of since she visited the museum as a child. Now, trapped at her home in southern Khartoum with her husband and their two children — 9-year-old Yara, and 4-year-old Mohamed — she worries about the animals that have already survived years of unrest, economic collapse and pandemic lockdowns.
Neither the military nor the RSF responded to requests for comment on the plight of the animals and their caretakers.
“Unless someone released the animals early on when the clashes started, I don’t see how any would or could have survived for over two weeks with no care,” said Kamal M. Ibrahim, a biology professor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale in an email. He is familiar with the museum and its work, having graduated from the University of Khartoum and spending a sabbatical there.
The museum documents the wildlife of Sudan and its neighbour South Sudan. The facility serves both scientists and the general public. It also contains hundreds of valuable preserved animal specimens, some of which are now extinct, according to Abdalla.
Both Ibrahim and Abdalla are particularly worried about a Nile crocodile, raised from an egg at the facility since 1971. Abdalla said the crocodile was on a regimen of medicine and vitamins due advanced age. The crocodiles are increasingly rare to find in the Blue and White Nile rivers that cut their way through the country.
“It could have fared better if released from its enclosure,” Ibrahim said.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Samy Magdy
Published May 10, 2023 • 3 minute read
ASWAN, Egypt — Dozens of zoo animals in Sudan’s capital — including an elderly crocodile, parrots and giant lizards — are feared dead after street battles between the country’s rival forces made the location unreachable.
At least 100 animals, all kept inside enclosures, will have gone more than three weeks without food or water, said Sara Abdalla, the head zoologist at the zoo, which is part of the Sudan Natural History Museum.
Millions of people in Sudan have endured shortages of food, water and medicines after the conflict halted the most basic services. But as the sounds of explosions ring across the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, Abdalla has been wracked with worry over her animal charges, particularly those that are increasingly rare to find in their natural habitats in Sudan.
“I feel a great deal of misery and sadness, as well as helplessness,” she said in a telephone interview from Khartoum. “I have assumed that we lost the birds and mammals.”
The zoo is home to species including an African grey parrot, a vervet monkey, giant lizards known as Nile monitors, a desert tortoise, a horned viper snake and a Nubian spitting cobra. Prior to the fighting, these were all fed twice a day. But the last time they received their meals and for some, medications, was on April 14, the day before fighting broke out, according to Abdalla.
The conflict, which capped months of tensions between Sudan’s rival generals, pits the Sudanese military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, who is the head of the ruling sovereign council, against the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The RSF is commanded by Burhan’s deputy on the council, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. Abdalla said neither has heeded appeals to allow access to the zoo.
The conflict has turned much of Khartoum and the adjacent city of Omdurman into a battlefield, with both sides using heavy weapons, including artillery and airstrikes, inside urban areas. The urban combat has badly damaged infrastructure and properties and poses great risk to civilians trying to move in the city streets.
Residents fleeing the capital have described seeing bodies littering sidewalks and central squares, particularly in areas not far from the museum. Roughly 500 civilians have been killed in the fighting so far, according to Sudan’s doctors’ syndicate, though the true number of dead is believed to be higher.
The zoo, which is housed inside the University of Khartoum, is one of the oldest in Sudan. The facility was established about a century ago as part of Gordon Memorial College, an educational institution built in the early 1900s when Sudan was a part of the British empire. It was annexed to the University of Khartoum two years after Sudan won independence in 1956.
Its current location is close to the military’s headquarters, where fighting has been heavy, preventing access to the museum.
Abdalla, who teaches zoology at the University of Khartoum, began working at the museum in 2006, and was appointed director of the facility in 2020. It was a job she had dreamed of since she visited the museum as a child. Now, trapped at her home in southern Khartoum with her husband and their two children — 9-year-old Yara, and 4-year-old Mohamed — she worries about the animals that have already survived years of unrest, economic collapse and pandemic lockdowns.
Neither the military nor the RSF responded to requests for comment on the plight of the animals and their caretakers.
“Unless someone released the animals early on when the clashes started, I don’t see how any would or could have survived for over two weeks with no care,” said Kamal M. Ibrahim, a biology professor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale in an email. He is familiar with the museum and its work, having graduated from the University of Khartoum and spending a sabbatical there.
The museum documents the wildlife of Sudan and its neighbour South Sudan. The facility serves both scientists and the general public. It also contains hundreds of valuable preserved animal specimens, some of which are now extinct, according to Abdalla.
Both Ibrahim and Abdalla are particularly worried about a Nile crocodile, raised from an egg at the facility since 1971. Abdalla said the crocodile was on a regimen of medicine and vitamins due advanced age. The crocodiles are increasingly rare to find in the Blue and White Nile rivers that cut their way through the country.
“It could have fared better if released from its enclosure,” Ibrahim said.
Fears over scores of zoo animals caught in Sudan crossfire
Dozens of zoo animals in Sudan's capital are feared dead after street battles between the country's rival forces made the location unreachable.
Herders in Kenya kill 10 lions, including Loonkiito, one of country's oldest
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published May 14, 2023 • 1 minute read
NAIROBI, Kenya — One of Kenya’s oldest wild lions was killed by herders and the government has expressed concern as six more lions were speared at another village on Saturday, bringing to 10 the number killed last week alone.
The male lion named Loonkiito was 19 years old and was described as frail by Kenya Wildlife Service spokesperson Paul Jinaro, who said it wandered out of the Amboseli national park into a village in search of food on Thursday night.
Six other lions from the same national park were speared by herders after they killed 11 goats in Mbirikani area, Kajiado county. The deaths brought to 10 the number of lions killed by herders last week in escalated human-wildlife conflict that has worried the government.
Tourism minister Peninah Malonza met locals in Mbirikani area on Sunday and urged them not to spear wandering lions and to instead reach out to the wildlife service.
The government and conservation groups have a compensation program for herders whose livestock is killed by wild animals.
But herders have become more protective after losing livestock to a drought that has been termed as the worst in decades in the East Africa region.
Conservation group Big Life Foundation’s Craig Miller said the killing of Loonkiito “was unfortunate” because he was the oldest lion in the Amboseli national park.
Wild lions rarely live past 15 years, according to conservationists.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published May 14, 2023 • 1 minute read
NAIROBI, Kenya — One of Kenya’s oldest wild lions was killed by herders and the government has expressed concern as six more lions were speared at another village on Saturday, bringing to 10 the number killed last week alone.
The male lion named Loonkiito was 19 years old and was described as frail by Kenya Wildlife Service spokesperson Paul Jinaro, who said it wandered out of the Amboseli national park into a village in search of food on Thursday night.
Six other lions from the same national park were speared by herders after they killed 11 goats in Mbirikani area, Kajiado county. The deaths brought to 10 the number of lions killed by herders last week in escalated human-wildlife conflict that has worried the government.
Tourism minister Peninah Malonza met locals in Mbirikani area on Sunday and urged them not to spear wandering lions and to instead reach out to the wildlife service.
The government and conservation groups have a compensation program for herders whose livestock is killed by wild animals.
But herders have become more protective after losing livestock to a drought that has been termed as the worst in decades in the East Africa region.
Conservation group Big Life Foundation’s Craig Miller said the killing of Loonkiito “was unfortunate” because he was the oldest lion in the Amboseli national park.
Wild lions rarely live past 15 years, according to conservationists.
Herders in Kenya kill 10 lions, including Loonkiito, one of country's oldest
One of Kenya's oldest wild lions was killed by herders and the government has expressed concern as six more lions were speared at another village
Calgary Zoo giraffe died due to broken neck in 'tragic accident' with a cable
Evidence suggests that Emara caught one of her ossicones — her horns — on a cable surrounding the yard
Author of the article:Stephanie Babych
Published May 29, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read
Emara was five when she arrived in Calgary from the San Diego Zoo in Calgary in 2016 as a result of a breeding recommendation. She was part of the Species Survival Plan.
Emara was five when she arrived in Calgary from the San Diego Zoo in Calgary in 2016 as a result of a breeding recommendation. She was part of the Species Survival Plan. PHOTO BY MIKE DREW/POSTMEDIA
A necropsy on the Wilder Institute and Calgary Zoo’s female Masai giraffe Emara revealed the cause of death was a broken neck due to a “tragic accident,” the zoo announced Monday.
The zoo’s animal care, health and welfare staff found 12-year-old Emara unresponsive against the fence of the African Savannah Yard on May 19.
According to zoo officials, the death occurred early in the morning before staff had arrived, but evidence suggests that Emara caught one of her ossicones — her horns — on a cable surrounding the yard. It is believed that resulted in Emara falling against the fence and fatally breaking her neck.
“Our entire zoo family is still mourning this sudden and tragic loss,” said Colleen Baird, interim associate director of animal care and welfare at the zoo. “From the staff and volunteers who loved and cared for her to the visitors she inspired each visit, Emara will be missed by all.”
Zoo staff is assessing the African Savannah Yard’s fencing to see if any modifications need to be made for the safety of the other animals living there. Hartmann’s Mountain zebras, ostriches and African grey-crowned cranes also reside in the habitat.
Emara was brought to Calgary in 2016 from the San Diego Zoo. She is remembered by her caregivers as a cautious, curious and gentle giraffe.
Dr. Doug Whiteside, interim associate director of animal health and welfare, said Emara was in the prime of her life.
“She had been in excellent health prior to this, so her unexpected departure is being felt deeply by all of us,” Whiteside said.
“The health and well-being of all the animals in our care is our top priority. Major life changes such as this not only affect our people but can affect our animal residents as well. We are closely monitoring the zoo’s remaining giraffes, Nabo and Moshi, and so far they are doing well.”
According to the zoo, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) has been notified of the incident, as the Wilder Institute and Calgary Zoo is accredited through AZA.
sbabych@postmedia.com
torontosun.com
Evidence suggests that Emara caught one of her ossicones — her horns — on a cable surrounding the yard
Author of the article:Stephanie Babych
Published May 29, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read
Emara was five when she arrived in Calgary from the San Diego Zoo in Calgary in 2016 as a result of a breeding recommendation. She was part of the Species Survival Plan.
Emara was five when she arrived in Calgary from the San Diego Zoo in Calgary in 2016 as a result of a breeding recommendation. She was part of the Species Survival Plan. PHOTO BY MIKE DREW/POSTMEDIA
A necropsy on the Wilder Institute and Calgary Zoo’s female Masai giraffe Emara revealed the cause of death was a broken neck due to a “tragic accident,” the zoo announced Monday.
The zoo’s animal care, health and welfare staff found 12-year-old Emara unresponsive against the fence of the African Savannah Yard on May 19.
According to zoo officials, the death occurred early in the morning before staff had arrived, but evidence suggests that Emara caught one of her ossicones — her horns — on a cable surrounding the yard. It is believed that resulted in Emara falling against the fence and fatally breaking her neck.
“Our entire zoo family is still mourning this sudden and tragic loss,” said Colleen Baird, interim associate director of animal care and welfare at the zoo. “From the staff and volunteers who loved and cared for her to the visitors she inspired each visit, Emara will be missed by all.”
Zoo staff is assessing the African Savannah Yard’s fencing to see if any modifications need to be made for the safety of the other animals living there. Hartmann’s Mountain zebras, ostriches and African grey-crowned cranes also reside in the habitat.
Emara was brought to Calgary in 2016 from the San Diego Zoo. She is remembered by her caregivers as a cautious, curious and gentle giraffe.
Dr. Doug Whiteside, interim associate director of animal health and welfare, said Emara was in the prime of her life.
“She had been in excellent health prior to this, so her unexpected departure is being felt deeply by all of us,” Whiteside said.
“The health and well-being of all the animals in our care is our top priority. Major life changes such as this not only affect our people but can affect our animal residents as well. We are closely monitoring the zoo’s remaining giraffes, Nabo and Moshi, and so far they are doing well.”
According to the zoo, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) has been notified of the incident, as the Wilder Institute and Calgary Zoo is accredited through AZA.
sbabych@postmedia.com
Calgary Zoo giraffe died due to broken neck in 'tragic accident' with a cable
The zoo's animal care, health and welfare staff found Emara, 12, unresponsive against the fence of the African Savannah Yard on May 19.
Beloved New York swan's babies rescued after mother eaten by family, cops say
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Karen Matthews
Published May 31, 2023 • 2 minute read
The village of Manlius in upstate New York is mourning the loss of Faye, a swan who was stolen from the town’s pond over the weekend along with her four cygnets.
The cygnets, or baby swans, were recovered, but officials say the mama swan was eaten.
“The mother swan was consumed,” Manlius Mayor Paul Whorrall said Wednesday. “Sad to say, but that’s what they did.”
Three teenagers were arrested Tuesday on charges including grand larceny and criminal mischief in connection with the swan-napping, Manlius police Sgt. Ken Hatter said.
Mute swans like Faye and her mate, Manny, are not native to North America. They were introduced as an ornamental species and are loved for their beauty but are considered invasive by wildlife officials.
Hunting swans is legal in a few U.S. states but not in New York.
Southeast of Syracuse, the village of Manlius has a swan insignia on its website, as well as on merchandise like hats and T-shirts.
“The swans have been a part of this village for well over 100 years,” Whorrall said. “We’re known for our swans.”
For over a decade, Faye and Manny swanned about in the village pond, and each spring hatched and raised cygnets. In 2010, they were donated by biologist and self-described “swan guru” Michael Bean.
Police said Faye and this year’s cygnets went missing on Saturday, but that officials weren’t notified until Monday.
After notice went out of the missing Manlius birds, a concerned citizen spotted two of baby swans in a store in nearby Salina and called authorities, Hatter said.
One of the suspects who worked at the store confessed to taking part in the crime, along with the two other teenagers, police said. The remaining two swans were found at the first suspect’s Syracuse home, they said.
The young swans will be cared for and returned to the pond in a few weeks when they are old enough to survive on their own, Hatter said, but Faye won’t return to the pond. She was given to a relative to cook.
“They brought it back to an aunt’s house and the aunt prepared it,” he said.
Two of the suspects, aged 16 and 17, were released to their parents because they are juveniles, police said. The third, who is 18, is awaiting arraignment. Information on their attorneys wasn’t available.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Karen Matthews
Published May 31, 2023 • 2 minute read
The village of Manlius in upstate New York is mourning the loss of Faye, a swan who was stolen from the town’s pond over the weekend along with her four cygnets.
The cygnets, or baby swans, were recovered, but officials say the mama swan was eaten.
“The mother swan was consumed,” Manlius Mayor Paul Whorrall said Wednesday. “Sad to say, but that’s what they did.”
Three teenagers were arrested Tuesday on charges including grand larceny and criminal mischief in connection with the swan-napping, Manlius police Sgt. Ken Hatter said.
Mute swans like Faye and her mate, Manny, are not native to North America. They were introduced as an ornamental species and are loved for their beauty but are considered invasive by wildlife officials.
Hunting swans is legal in a few U.S. states but not in New York.
Southeast of Syracuse, the village of Manlius has a swan insignia on its website, as well as on merchandise like hats and T-shirts.
“The swans have been a part of this village for well over 100 years,” Whorrall said. “We’re known for our swans.”
For over a decade, Faye and Manny swanned about in the village pond, and each spring hatched and raised cygnets. In 2010, they were donated by biologist and self-described “swan guru” Michael Bean.
Police said Faye and this year’s cygnets went missing on Saturday, but that officials weren’t notified until Monday.
After notice went out of the missing Manlius birds, a concerned citizen spotted two of baby swans in a store in nearby Salina and called authorities, Hatter said.
One of the suspects who worked at the store confessed to taking part in the crime, along with the two other teenagers, police said. The remaining two swans were found at the first suspect’s Syracuse home, they said.
The young swans will be cared for and returned to the pond in a few weeks when they are old enough to survive on their own, Hatter said, but Faye won’t return to the pond. She was given to a relative to cook.
“They brought it back to an aunt’s house and the aunt prepared it,” he said.
Two of the suspects, aged 16 and 17, were released to their parents because they are juveniles, police said. The third, who is 18, is awaiting arraignment. Information on their attorneys wasn’t available.
Beloved New York swan's babies rescued after mother eaten by family, cops say
Upstate New York is mourning the loss of Faye, a swan who was stolen from the town's pond over the weekend along with her four cygnets
Man pleads guilty to picking up Yellowstone bison calf that was rejected by herd, euthanized
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published May 31, 2023 • 1 minute read
MAMMOTH, Wyo. — A man from Hawaii pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge alleging he picked up a bison calf in Yellowstone National Park, causing the animal’s herd to reject it and leading park officials to kill it rather than allow it to be a hazard to visitors.
A federal magistrate judge ordered the man to pay a $500 fine and make a $500 payment to the Yellowstone Forever Wildlife Protection Fund for the charge of intentionally disturbing wildlife, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Wyoming said.
Prosecutors said the man approached a struggling newborn bison calf, which had been separated from its mother when the herd crossed the Lamar River on May 20. He pushed the calf up from the river and onto the nearby roadway.
Human interference with young wildlife can cause animals to shun their offspring. Park rangers tried repeatedly to reunite the calf with the herd but were unsuccessful. The calf was killed by park staff because it was approaching people and cars on the road.
There was nothing in the investigation to suggest the man had acted maliciously, park officials said.
However, park regulations require people stay at least 25 yards (23 metres) away from most wildlife, including bison, elk and deer and 100 yards (91 metres) away from bears and wolves, for the safety of both visitors and the animals.
The situation was similar to one in 2016, when a Canadian man and his son put a newborn calf in their SUV because they thought it had been abandoned and would die without their help. The man pleaded guilty, was fined $235 and ordered to pay $500 to a Yellowstone park wildlife protection fund.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published May 31, 2023 • 1 minute read
MAMMOTH, Wyo. — A man from Hawaii pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge alleging he picked up a bison calf in Yellowstone National Park, causing the animal’s herd to reject it and leading park officials to kill it rather than allow it to be a hazard to visitors.
A federal magistrate judge ordered the man to pay a $500 fine and make a $500 payment to the Yellowstone Forever Wildlife Protection Fund for the charge of intentionally disturbing wildlife, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Wyoming said.
Prosecutors said the man approached a struggling newborn bison calf, which had been separated from its mother when the herd crossed the Lamar River on May 20. He pushed the calf up from the river and onto the nearby roadway.
Human interference with young wildlife can cause animals to shun their offspring. Park rangers tried repeatedly to reunite the calf with the herd but were unsuccessful. The calf was killed by park staff because it was approaching people and cars on the road.
There was nothing in the investigation to suggest the man had acted maliciously, park officials said.
However, park regulations require people stay at least 25 yards (23 metres) away from most wildlife, including bison, elk and deer and 100 yards (91 metres) away from bears and wolves, for the safety of both visitors and the animals.
The situation was similar to one in 2016, when a Canadian man and his son put a newborn calf in their SUV because they thought it had been abandoned and would die without their help. The man pleaded guilty, was fined $235 and ordered to pay $500 to a Yellowstone park wildlife protection fund.
Man pleads guilty to picking up Yellowstone bison calf that was rejected by herd, euthanized
A man from Hawaii pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge alleging he picked up a bison calf in Yellowstone National Park
'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski dies in U.S. federal prison
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Michael Balsamo And Lindsay Whitehurst
Published Jun 10, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 6 minute read
WASHINGTON — Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the Harvard-educated mathematician who retreated to a dingy shack in the Montana wilderness and ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died Saturday. He was 81.
Branded the “Unabomber” by the FBI, Kaczynski died at the federal prison medical centre in Butner, North Carolina, Kristie Breshears, a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons, told The Associated Press. He was found unresponsive in his cell early Saturday morning and was pronounced dead around 8 a.m., she said. A cause of death was not immediately known.
Before his transfer to the prison medical facility, he had been held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims.
Years before the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax mailing, the Unabomber’s deadly homemade bombs changed the way Americans mailed packages and boarded airplanes, even virtually shutting down air travel on the West Coast in July 1995.
He forced The Washington Post, in conjunction with The New York Times, to make the agonizing decision in September 1995 to publish his 35,000-word manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” which claimed modern society and technology was leading to a sense of powerlessness and alienation.
But it led to his undoing. Kaczynski’s brother, David, and David’s wife, Linda Patrik, recognized the treatise’s tone and tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the Unabomber for years in nation’s longest, costliest manhunt.
Authorities in April 1996 found him in a 10-by-14-foot (3-by-4-metre) plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, that was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs.
As an elusive criminal mastermind, the Unabomber won his share of sympathizers and comparisons to Daniel Boone, Edward Abbey and Henry David Thoreau.
But once revealed as a wild-eyed hermit with long hair and beard who weathered Montana winters in a one-room shack, Kaczynski struck many as more of a pathetic loner than romantic anti-hero.
Even in his own journals, Kaczynski came across not as a committed revolutionary but as a vengeful hermit driven by petty grievances.
“I certainly don’t claim to be an altruist or to be acting for the ‘good’ (whatever that is) of the human race,” he wrote on April 6, 1971. “I act merely from a desire for revenge.”
A psychiatrist who interviewed Kaczynski in prison diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic.
“Mr. Kaczynski’s delusions are mostly persecutory in nature,” Sally Johnson wrote in a 47-page report. “The central themes involve his belief that he is being maligned and harassed by family members and modern society.”
Kaczynski hated the idea of being viewed as mentally ill and when his lawyers attempted to present an insanity defence, he tried to fire them. When that failed, he tried to hang himself with his underwear.
Kaczynski eventually pleaded guilty rather than let his defence team proceed with an insanity defence.
“I’m confident that I’m sane,” Kaczynski told Time magazine in 1999. “I don’t get delusions and so forth.”
He was certainly brilliant.
Kaczynski skipped two grades to attend Harvard at age 16 and had published papers in prestigious mathematics journals. His explosives were carefully tested and came in meticulously handcrafted wooden boxes sanded to remove possible fingerprints. Later bombs bore the signature “FC” for “Freedom Club.”
The FBI called him the “Unabomber” because his early targets seemed to be universities and airlines. An altitude-triggered bomb he mailed in 1979 went off as planned aboard an American Airlines flight; a dozen people aboard suffered from smoke inhalation.
Kaczynski killed computer rental store owner Hugh Scrutton, advertising executive Thomas Mosser and timber industry lobbyist Gilbert Murray. California geneticist Charles Epstein and Yale University computer expert David Gelernter were maimed by bombs two days apart in June 1993.
Mosser was killed in his North Caldwell, New Jersey, home on Dec. 10, 1994, a day he was supposed to be picking out a Christmas tree with his family. His wife, Susan, found him grievously wounded by a barrage of razor blades, pipes and nails.
“He was moaning very softly,” she said at Kaczynski’s 1998 sentencing. “The fingers on his right hand were dangling. I held his left hand. I told him help was coming. I told him I loved him.”
When Kaczynski stepped up his bombs and letters to newspapers and scientists in 1995, experts speculated the Unabomber was jealous of the attention being paid to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
A threat to blow up a plane out of Los Angeles before the end of the July Fourth weekend threw air travel and mail delivery into chaos. The Unabomber later claimed it was a “prank.”
The Washington Post printed the Unabomber’s manifesto at the urging of federal authorities, after the bomber said he would desist from terrorism if a national publication published his treatise.
Patrik had had a disturbing feeling about her brother-in-law even before seeing the manifesto and eventually persuaded her husband to read a copy at the library. After two months of arguments, they took some of Ted Kaczynski’s letters to Patrik’s childhood friend Susan Swanson, a private investigator in Chicago.
Swanson in turn passed them along to former FBI behavioural science expert Clint Van Zandt, whose analysts said whoever wrote them had also probably written the Unabomber’s manifesto.
“It was a nightmare,” David Kaczynski, who as a child had idolized his older brother, said in a 2005 speech at Bennington College. “I was literally thinking, ‘My brother’s a serial killer, the most wanted man in America.”’
Swanson turned to a corporate lawyer friend, Anthony Bisceglie, who contacted the FBI. The investigation and prosecution were overseen by now-Attorney General Merrick Garland, during a previous stint at the Justice Department.
David Kaczynski wanted his role kept confidential, but his identity quickly leaked out and Ted Kaczynski vowed never to forgive his younger sibling. He ignored his letters, turned his back on him at court hearings and described David Kaczynski in a 1999 book draft as a “Judas Iscariot (who) … doesn’t even have enough courage to go hang himself.”
Ted Kaczynski was born May 22, 1942, in Chicago, the son of second-generation Polish Catholics — a sausage-maker and a homemaker. He played the trombone in the school band, collected coins and skipped the sixth and 11th grades.
His high school classmates thought him odd, particularly after he showed a school wrestler how to make a mini-bomb that detonated during chemistry class.
Harvard classmates recalled him as a lonely, thin boy with poor personal hygiene and a room that smelled of spoiled milk, rotting food and foot powder.
After graduate studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, he got a job teaching math at the University of California at Berkeley but found the work difficult and quit abruptly. In 1971, he bought a 1 1/2-acre parcel about 4 miles (6 kilometres) outside of Lincoln and built a cabin there without heating, plumbing or electricity.
He learned to garden, hunt, make tools and sew, living on a few hundred dollars a year.
He left his cabin in Montana in the late 1970s to work at a foam rubber products manufacturer outside Chicago with his father and brother. But when a female supervisor dumped him after two dates, he began posting insulting limericks about her and wouldn’t stop.
His brother fired him and Ted Kaczynski soon returned to the wilderness to continue plotting his vengeful killing spree.
— Balsamo reported from Miami. This story includes biographical material written by former Associated Press writer Derek Rose.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Michael Balsamo And Lindsay Whitehurst
Published Jun 10, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 6 minute read
WASHINGTON — Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the Harvard-educated mathematician who retreated to a dingy shack in the Montana wilderness and ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died Saturday. He was 81.
Branded the “Unabomber” by the FBI, Kaczynski died at the federal prison medical centre in Butner, North Carolina, Kristie Breshears, a spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Prisons, told The Associated Press. He was found unresponsive in his cell early Saturday morning and was pronounced dead around 8 a.m., she said. A cause of death was not immediately known.
Before his transfer to the prison medical facility, he had been held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims.
Years before the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax mailing, the Unabomber’s deadly homemade bombs changed the way Americans mailed packages and boarded airplanes, even virtually shutting down air travel on the West Coast in July 1995.
He forced The Washington Post, in conjunction with The New York Times, to make the agonizing decision in September 1995 to publish his 35,000-word manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” which claimed modern society and technology was leading to a sense of powerlessness and alienation.
But it led to his undoing. Kaczynski’s brother, David, and David’s wife, Linda Patrik, recognized the treatise’s tone and tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the Unabomber for years in nation’s longest, costliest manhunt.
Authorities in April 1996 found him in a 10-by-14-foot (3-by-4-metre) plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, that was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs.
As an elusive criminal mastermind, the Unabomber won his share of sympathizers and comparisons to Daniel Boone, Edward Abbey and Henry David Thoreau.
But once revealed as a wild-eyed hermit with long hair and beard who weathered Montana winters in a one-room shack, Kaczynski struck many as more of a pathetic loner than romantic anti-hero.
Even in his own journals, Kaczynski came across not as a committed revolutionary but as a vengeful hermit driven by petty grievances.
“I certainly don’t claim to be an altruist or to be acting for the ‘good’ (whatever that is) of the human race,” he wrote on April 6, 1971. “I act merely from a desire for revenge.”
A psychiatrist who interviewed Kaczynski in prison diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic.
“Mr. Kaczynski’s delusions are mostly persecutory in nature,” Sally Johnson wrote in a 47-page report. “The central themes involve his belief that he is being maligned and harassed by family members and modern society.”
Kaczynski hated the idea of being viewed as mentally ill and when his lawyers attempted to present an insanity defence, he tried to fire them. When that failed, he tried to hang himself with his underwear.
Kaczynski eventually pleaded guilty rather than let his defence team proceed with an insanity defence.
“I’m confident that I’m sane,” Kaczynski told Time magazine in 1999. “I don’t get delusions and so forth.”
He was certainly brilliant.
Kaczynski skipped two grades to attend Harvard at age 16 and had published papers in prestigious mathematics journals. His explosives were carefully tested and came in meticulously handcrafted wooden boxes sanded to remove possible fingerprints. Later bombs bore the signature “FC” for “Freedom Club.”
The FBI called him the “Unabomber” because his early targets seemed to be universities and airlines. An altitude-triggered bomb he mailed in 1979 went off as planned aboard an American Airlines flight; a dozen people aboard suffered from smoke inhalation.
Kaczynski killed computer rental store owner Hugh Scrutton, advertising executive Thomas Mosser and timber industry lobbyist Gilbert Murray. California geneticist Charles Epstein and Yale University computer expert David Gelernter were maimed by bombs two days apart in June 1993.
Mosser was killed in his North Caldwell, New Jersey, home on Dec. 10, 1994, a day he was supposed to be picking out a Christmas tree with his family. His wife, Susan, found him grievously wounded by a barrage of razor blades, pipes and nails.
“He was moaning very softly,” she said at Kaczynski’s 1998 sentencing. “The fingers on his right hand were dangling. I held his left hand. I told him help was coming. I told him I loved him.”
When Kaczynski stepped up his bombs and letters to newspapers and scientists in 1995, experts speculated the Unabomber was jealous of the attention being paid to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
A threat to blow up a plane out of Los Angeles before the end of the July Fourth weekend threw air travel and mail delivery into chaos. The Unabomber later claimed it was a “prank.”
The Washington Post printed the Unabomber’s manifesto at the urging of federal authorities, after the bomber said he would desist from terrorism if a national publication published his treatise.
Patrik had had a disturbing feeling about her brother-in-law even before seeing the manifesto and eventually persuaded her husband to read a copy at the library. After two months of arguments, they took some of Ted Kaczynski’s letters to Patrik’s childhood friend Susan Swanson, a private investigator in Chicago.
Swanson in turn passed them along to former FBI behavioural science expert Clint Van Zandt, whose analysts said whoever wrote them had also probably written the Unabomber’s manifesto.
“It was a nightmare,” David Kaczynski, who as a child had idolized his older brother, said in a 2005 speech at Bennington College. “I was literally thinking, ‘My brother’s a serial killer, the most wanted man in America.”’
Swanson turned to a corporate lawyer friend, Anthony Bisceglie, who contacted the FBI. The investigation and prosecution were overseen by now-Attorney General Merrick Garland, during a previous stint at the Justice Department.
David Kaczynski wanted his role kept confidential, but his identity quickly leaked out and Ted Kaczynski vowed never to forgive his younger sibling. He ignored his letters, turned his back on him at court hearings and described David Kaczynski in a 1999 book draft as a “Judas Iscariot (who) … doesn’t even have enough courage to go hang himself.”
Ted Kaczynski was born May 22, 1942, in Chicago, the son of second-generation Polish Catholics — a sausage-maker and a homemaker. He played the trombone in the school band, collected coins and skipped the sixth and 11th grades.
His high school classmates thought him odd, particularly after he showed a school wrestler how to make a mini-bomb that detonated during chemistry class.
Harvard classmates recalled him as a lonely, thin boy with poor personal hygiene and a room that smelled of spoiled milk, rotting food and foot powder.
After graduate studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, he got a job teaching math at the University of California at Berkeley but found the work difficult and quit abruptly. In 1971, he bought a 1 1/2-acre parcel about 4 miles (6 kilometres) outside of Lincoln and built a cabin there without heating, plumbing or electricity.
He learned to garden, hunt, make tools and sew, living on a few hundred dollars a year.
He left his cabin in Montana in the late 1970s to work at a foam rubber products manufacturer outside Chicago with his father and brother. But when a female supervisor dumped him after two dates, he began posting insulting limericks about her and wouldn’t stop.
His brother fired him and Ted Kaczynski soon returned to the wilderness to continue plotting his vengeful killing spree.
— Balsamo reported from Miami. This story includes biographical material written by former Associated Press writer Derek Rose.
'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski dies in U.S. federal prison
Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, who ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others in the U.S., died Saturday.
let us pray...
no wait!
there's these limericks!
Contest Requirements: To use the names Lewinsky and
Kaczynski in a limerick.
Winning Contestants' Entries:
# 1 There once was a gal named Lewinsky
Who played on a flute like Stravinsky
'Twas "Hail to the Chief"
on this flute made of beef
that stole the front page from Kaczynski.
# 2 Said Bill Clinton to young Ms. Lewinsky
We don't want to leave clues like Kaczynski,
Since you look such a mess,
use the hem of your dress
And wipe that stuff off of your chinsky.
# 3 Lewinsky and Clinton have shown
what Kaczynski must surely have known:
that an intern is better
than a bomb in a letter
given the choice of how to be blown.
no wait!
there's these limericks!
Contest Requirements: To use the names Lewinsky and
Kaczynski in a limerick.
Winning Contestants' Entries:
# 1 There once was a gal named Lewinsky
Who played on a flute like Stravinsky
'Twas "Hail to the Chief"
on this flute made of beef
that stole the front page from Kaczynski.
# 2 Said Bill Clinton to young Ms. Lewinsky
We don't want to leave clues like Kaczynski,
Since you look such a mess,
use the hem of your dress
And wipe that stuff off of your chinsky.
# 3 Lewinsky and Clinton have shown
what Kaczynski must surely have known:
that an intern is better
than a bomb in a letter
given the choice of how to be blown.
Its sad such a brilliant mind was corrupted by MK Ultra. All it did was destroy lives and families.
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness. There's a fine line between genius and insanity.
Ted Kaczynski, known as the 'Unabomber,' died of suicide
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Michael Sisak, Mike Balsamo And Jake Offenhartz
Published Jun 11, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 3 minute read
Theodore Kaczynski, right, the convicted killer known as the Unabomber, died by suicide, according to multiple Associated Press sources.
Theodore Kaczynski, right, the convicted killer known as the Unabomber, died by suicide, according to multiple Associated Press sources.
Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” who carried out a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died by suicide, four people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
Kaczynski, who was 81 and suffering from late-stage cancer, was found unresponsive in his cell at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday. Emergency responders performed CPR and revived him before he was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead later Saturday morning, the people told the AP. They were not authorized to publicly discuss Kaczynski’s death and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Kaczynski’s death comes as the federal Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny in the last several years following the death of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein, who also died by suicide in a federal jail in 2019.
Kaczynski had been held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims.
In 2021, he was transferred to the federal medical centre in North Carolina, a facility that treats prisoners suffering from serious health problems. Bernie Madoff, the infamous mastermind of the largest-ever Ponzi scheme, died at the facility of natural causes the same year.
A Harvard-educated mathematician, Kaczynski lived as a recluse in a dingy cabin in rural Montana, where he carried out a solitary bombing spree that changed the way Americans mailed packages and boarded airplanes.
His targets included academics and airlines, the owner of a computer rental store, an advertising executive and a timer industry lobbyist. In 1993, a California geneticist and a Yale University computer expert were maimed by bombs within the span of two days.
Two years later, he used the threat of continued violence to convince The New York Times and The Washington Post to publish his manifesto, a 35,000 word screed against modern life and technology, as well as damages to the environment.
The tone of the treatise was recognized by his brother, David, and David’s wife, Linda Patrik, who tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the Unabomber for years in the nation’s longest, costliest manhunt.
Authorities in April 1996 found him in a small plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, that was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs.
While awaiting trial, in 1998, Kaczynski attempted to hang himself with a pair of underwear. Though he was diagnosed by a psychiatrist as a paranoid schizophrenic, he was adamant that he wasn’t mentally ill. He eventually pleaded guilty rather than allow his attorneys to present an insanity defence.
Growing up in Chicago, Kaczynski skipped two grades before attending Harvard at age 16, where he published papers in prestigious mathematics journals.
His explosives were carefully tested and came in meticulously handcrafted wooden boxes sanded to remove possible fingerprints. Later bombs bore the signature “FC” for “Freedom Club.”
The FBI called him the “Unabomber” because his early targets seemed to be universities and airlines. An altitude-triggered bomb he mailed in 1979 went off as planned aboard an American Airlines flight; a dozen people aboard suffered from smoke inhalation.
During his decades in prison, Kaczynski maintained regular correspondence with the outside world, becoming an object of fascination — and even reverence — among those opposed to modern civilization.
“He’s turned into an iconic figure for both the far-right and far-left,” said Daryl Johnson, a domestic terrorism expert at the New Lines Institute, a nonprofit think tank. “He definitely stands out from the rest of the pack as far as his level of education, the meticulous nature in which he went about designing his bombs.”
— Balsamo reported from Miami.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Michael Sisak, Mike Balsamo And Jake Offenhartz
Published Jun 11, 2023 • Last updated 2 days ago • 3 minute read
Theodore Kaczynski, right, the convicted killer known as the Unabomber, died by suicide, according to multiple Associated Press sources.
Theodore Kaczynski, right, the convicted killer known as the Unabomber, died by suicide, according to multiple Associated Press sources.
Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” who carried out a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died by suicide, four people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
Kaczynski, who was 81 and suffering from late-stage cancer, was found unresponsive in his cell at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday. Emergency responders performed CPR and revived him before he was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead later Saturday morning, the people told the AP. They were not authorized to publicly discuss Kaczynski’s death and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Kaczynski’s death comes as the federal Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny in the last several years following the death of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein, who also died by suicide in a federal jail in 2019.
Kaczynski had been held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims.
In 2021, he was transferred to the federal medical centre in North Carolina, a facility that treats prisoners suffering from serious health problems. Bernie Madoff, the infamous mastermind of the largest-ever Ponzi scheme, died at the facility of natural causes the same year.
A Harvard-educated mathematician, Kaczynski lived as a recluse in a dingy cabin in rural Montana, where he carried out a solitary bombing spree that changed the way Americans mailed packages and boarded airplanes.
His targets included academics and airlines, the owner of a computer rental store, an advertising executive and a timer industry lobbyist. In 1993, a California geneticist and a Yale University computer expert were maimed by bombs within the span of two days.
Two years later, he used the threat of continued violence to convince The New York Times and The Washington Post to publish his manifesto, a 35,000 word screed against modern life and technology, as well as damages to the environment.
The tone of the treatise was recognized by his brother, David, and David’s wife, Linda Patrik, who tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the Unabomber for years in the nation’s longest, costliest manhunt.
Authorities in April 1996 found him in a small plywood and tarpaper cabin outside Lincoln, Montana, that was filled with journals, a coded diary, explosive ingredients and two completed bombs.
While awaiting trial, in 1998, Kaczynski attempted to hang himself with a pair of underwear. Though he was diagnosed by a psychiatrist as a paranoid schizophrenic, he was adamant that he wasn’t mentally ill. He eventually pleaded guilty rather than allow his attorneys to present an insanity defence.
Growing up in Chicago, Kaczynski skipped two grades before attending Harvard at age 16, where he published papers in prestigious mathematics journals.
His explosives were carefully tested and came in meticulously handcrafted wooden boxes sanded to remove possible fingerprints. Later bombs bore the signature “FC” for “Freedom Club.”
The FBI called him the “Unabomber” because his early targets seemed to be universities and airlines. An altitude-triggered bomb he mailed in 1979 went off as planned aboard an American Airlines flight; a dozen people aboard suffered from smoke inhalation.
During his decades in prison, Kaczynski maintained regular correspondence with the outside world, becoming an object of fascination — and even reverence — among those opposed to modern civilization.
“He’s turned into an iconic figure for both the far-right and far-left,” said Daryl Johnson, a domestic terrorism expert at the New Lines Institute, a nonprofit think tank. “He definitely stands out from the rest of the pack as far as his level of education, the meticulous nature in which he went about designing his bombs.”
— Balsamo reported from Miami.
Ted Kaczynski, known as the 'Unabomber,' died of suicide
Ted Kaczynski, known as the "Unabomber," who carried out a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people, died by suicide.