SRINAGAR: Wild boars have turned into a formidable foe for farmers across the Hajin area of North Kashmir’s Bandipora district, people complained on Saturday.
The locals said that the wild boars have been on a rampage, causing extensive damage to crops and apple orchards across the area, leaving the agricultural community in distress.
“Despite efforts by wildlife authorities to curb the menace, their attempts have fallen short, leaving farmers in a state of desperation,” they said, adding that the department should take effective steps to put an end to this menace.
“These wild boars have transformed our once peaceful fields into a relentless battleground. They rampage in packs, leaving destruction in their wake and consuming our toil overnight,” laments Mohammad Sultan, a local farmer who sorrowfully recounts the decimation of 30 percent of his prized apple orchard to the insatiable foraging of these formidable beasts.
“We have invested our sweat and blood into these fields, only to witness them being destroyed by these beasts. We need immediate help from the authorities.”
Farmers bear the burden of substantial financial losses while they anxiously await a solution to their plight. The unyielding attack on their means of sustenance has left them disheartened, teetering on the brink of despair.
“Our hopes rest on the authorities comprehending the urgency of the situation and promptly taking decisive action. Our very survival hangs in the balance,” expresses Mohammad Hassan, a fellow farmer affected by the ongoing crisis
Meanwhile, an official said that concrete measures will be taken to protect them from these Wild Boars. Historically, the Wild Boar was brought into the valley by erstwhile Dogra ruler, Maharaja Gulab Singh, for hunting purposes—(KNO)
A EuroLeague basketball game between Real Madrid and Partizan Belgrade was suspended with less than two minutes left after a brawl between players from both teams.
Madrid were losing 95-80 at home – and about to go down two games to none in their playoff series – when a hard foul by Madrid guard Sergio Llull on American forward Kevin Punter upset Partizan players and led to the benches being cleared.
Punches were thrown and a couple of players, one from each team, were tossed to the ground by opponents during the melee in the Spanish capital.
Officials spent several minutes watching replays before deciding to call the game off with 1:40 left because “neither team had the requisite minimum of two players each required to finish the game” after all disqualifications were applied, the league said. The game was considered officially over with Partizan Belgrade as the winner.
“Euroleague Basketball strongly condemns the events that happened at the end of the game,” the league said. “Such events do not represent the values of respect that the league and its clubs promote and that the sport of basketball embodies.”
The league said its independent disciplinary judge “will issue a decision about the on-court incidents in accordance with the established proceedings within the following 24 hours”.
Among the former NBA players in the middle of the action were Partizan’s Dante Exum and Madrid’s Guerschon Yabusele and Džanan Musa.
Exum, who played seven seasons with the Utah Jazz and Cleveland Cavaliers and helped Australia to a bronze medal at the 2020 Olympics, suffered an apparent ruptured tendon in his toe after getting body-slammed by Yabusele. The Melbourne native was later seen departing the arena on crutches.
“The way Yabusele threw him with a judo move, that’s for prison, for life suspension. As Yabusele threw him, Exum could have broken his spine, seriously injured his head, and ended his career,” Partizan’s doctor Moma Jakovljevic told Mozzart Sport. “This was terrible. I have never seen this in my life.”
Partizan Belgrade coach Zeljko Obradovic said emotions took over the players, but “after the game they greeted each other” and it was all “finished and discussed between them.”
“This is in the hands of the officials and in the hands of the EuroLeague,” he said. “I believe that what happened is not good for the image of basketball, not good for the image of Real Madrid nor for Partizan. This should never happen. The players have emotions and this has happened.”
Obradovic pledged to try to calm Partizan Belgrade fans ahead of the third game of the best-of-five series, which is scheduled for Tuesday in Belgrade.
“When we go to Belgrade tomorrow, I’m going to talk about that,” he said. “I’m going to try to calm everybody so that we receive Real Madrid like the people here have received us. That they are going to support our team, yes, but that they are not going to do anything against Real Madrid.”
Partizan Belgrade won the first game in Madrid 89-87.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
When French Polynesia was overrun by the invasive African giant land snail, another alien species, the predatory rosy wolf snail, was introduced to solve the problem.
Unfortunately the rosy wolf snail devoured tiny, endemic partula snails instead, hunting down the scent of their slime trails at three times the speed of a normal snail.
But the extinction-threatened partula snails are now inching back to health thanks to the largest ever release of an “extinct in the wild” species, with more than 5,000 of the snails returning to the island after being bred in captivity.
Thousands of partula snails belonging to 11 different species have been reared at London and Whipsnade zoos, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and Saint Louis Zoo in the United States, individually marked with a dot of red UV-reflective paint, and released on to the islands of Moorea and Tahiti.
The paint ensures the 1 to 2cm-long nocturnal snail will glow under UV torchlight to help conservationists monitor the growing populations.
More than 5,000 of the snails have been returned to the islands after being bred in captivity. Photograph: ZSL
Dr Paul Pearce-Kelly, curator of invertebrates at ZSL and coordinator of the partula conservation programme, said: “Despite their small size these snails are of great cultural, ecological and scientific importance – they’re the Darwin’s finches of the snail world, having been researched for more than a century due to their isolated habitat providing the perfect conditions to study evolution.
“This collaborative conservation initiative is, without a doubt, helping to bring these species back from the brink of extinction and shows the conservation power of zoos to reverse biodiversity loss.”
The last few surviving individuals of several partula species were rescued in the early 1990s by London and Edinburgh zoos to begin an international conservation breeding programme across 15 zoos.
Eleven species have been saved, including the very last known individual of the Partula taeniata sumulans variety, which was given to Edinburgh zoo in 2010 where it was bred back to a safe level of several hundred.
Another partula species, Partula faba, wasn’t so lucky and the nine individuals taken to Edinburgh zoo did not breed successfully in captivity and the species became extinct in 2016.
Working with the French Polynesian government to prepare the islands for their return with predator-proof snail reserves, the zoos began to fly snails back to the wild nine years ago.
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Since then, more than 21,000 partula snails, including 11 species classified as “extinct in the wild” by the IUCN Red List of endangered species, have been released on the islands. This year’s reintroduction was the largest number so far.
Partula snails, also known as Polynesian tree snails, play an important role in maintaining tropical forest health by eating decaying plant tissue and fungi. Returning them to the wild helps restore the ecological balance to the islands.
Christophe Brocherieux, project manager for the Polynesian government’s environment ministry, said: “We are proud to be partners in this programme, which highlights the importance of not being discouraged and of persevering to realise successful outcomes for all our conservation projects.”
Mollusc specialist Dr Justin Gerlach of Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, and another collaborator on the project, said: “The releases have shown that partula snails that have been bred in zoos for generations have adapted really well to being back in the forests of their ancestors.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
A Pizza Express in Woking. The inability to sweat. A tendency to be “too honourable”. Prince Andrew’s 2019 Newsnight interview was a bonanza of bizarre excuses – in which he disastrously tried to defend himself from allegations that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl trafficked by his friend Jeffrey Epstein. Greeted with a riot of disbelief, anger and meme-making by the public, it was the most explosive royal interview of the decade. But how on Earth did it happen in the first place?
A new documentary, airing as part of Channel 4’s alternative coronation coverage, is lifting the lid on this remarkably misguided interview. But Andrew: The Problem Prince kicks off with an entirely different TV appearance. It’s 1985 and the prince is primarily known as a pin-up, playboy and the Falklands hero who risked his life for his country. He is also known as Randy Andy, a nickname referenced by his interviewer on this occasion, a giggling Selina Scott. Andrew shrugs it off with remarkably easy charm and humour. The audience howls in approval. “It was a badge of honour then – the idea of this young prince cutting a swathe through the aristocratic women of London was something to be admired,” says James Goldston, former president of ABC News and one of the documentary’s producers. “There was zero conversation at the time about: are there ethical or moral issues involved in this?”
Fast-forward three decades and Sam McAlister, a guest booker on Newsnight, receives an email from a PR company offering an interview with Prince Andrew about his charity work. She declines on the grounds that it sounds like a puff piece, but the exchange prompts months of negotiations about a more wide-ranging interview, which is again rejected by McAlister because the palace has a single stipulation: all questions about convicted paedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein are off the table.
But then Epstein is found dead in his New York prison cell. Until that point, the man Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis describes as “America’s Jimmy Savile” had been a peripheral figure in the public consciousness: now he is centre stage, and the prince’s friendship with him is under the media’s microscope. Eventually, Andrew’s team change their minds. McAlister – whose book Scoops: The BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews from Steven Seagal to Prince Andrew, was the inspiration for this documentary – can barely believe her luck.
Emily Maitlis. Photograph: Channel 4
It only gets weirder from there. Andrew brings his daughter Beatrice to a meeting with McAlister and Maitlis. He seems delighted after the interview, inviting the Newsnight team to stick around for a cinema night at Buckingham Palace. It’s only when the Queen receives the transcript, and Andrew receives a “tap on the shoulder” from the palace (according to Maitlis), that the catastrophe becomes clear to him. The interview then prompts Virginia Giuffre – who claims the prince had sex with her on several occasions when she was 17 – to pursue Andrew legally. The lawyers interviewed for the documentary “are very specific”, says Goldston. “What he said opened the door to bringing that legal action which ultimately destroyed him.” In 2022, Andrew settled out of court.
Andrew: The Problem Prince is expressly not a “hatchet job”, says Sheldon Lazarus, another of the programme’s producers. Instead, it’s an attempt to anchor Andrew’s behaviour and decisions within the broader context of his life: despite his status and knack for making headlines, Lazarus believes there has never been an in-depth documentary about him before. We hear how the Queen indulged him as a child, and how Andrew’s finances meant he could never afford the lavish life he had become accustomed to. While Charles had an annual income of £20m, Andrew had to make do with a yearly allowance of £249,000 from the Queen. “By most standards that’s a lot of money, but to live a royal lifestyle, it’s obviously not enough. You feel that he’s being set up for failure,” says Goldston.
Queen Elizabeth II with her sons: Prince Edward next to her, and Prince Charles and Prince Andrew behind, in 1976. Photograph: Anwar Hussein/Getty Images
One of the most notorious moments in the Newsnight interview sees Maitlis ask Andrew whether he regrets consorting with Epstein. No, he replies, because the opportunities he got from it “were actually very useful”. According to Lazarus, the producers found themselves asking a question: “If he had been wealthier, would he have made better decisions, and not got into this crowd in order to keep up with the Joneses – or the Windsors?”
Tonally, the documentary team had to tread carefully. While the Newsnight interview was inescapably comic in content, its subject was a set of extremely serious and disturbing crimes. “I think you can use humour in the most serious of circumstances, as long as it’s done appropriately,” says Goldston, whose other job at the time was overseeing the coverage of the January 6 committee hearings in Washington DC.
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After all, much of what goes on with the royals veers between farce and something far more troubling. One of the standout moments from the documentary is an interview with the former – yet still palpably annoyed – deputy British ambassador in Bahrain, who recounts Andrew’s freewheeling and ultimately very damaging input as a trade envoy in the early 2000s. “I love the line that ultimately his boss is the Queen – there was just no accountability,” says Lazarus. The diplomat also tells of how the prince refused to stay in ambassadorial residences, instead hiring out luxury hotels to house his thank-you letter-writer and valet.
The Problem Prince isn’t just about the titular royal, however. It’s “a celebration of the power of journalism,” says Goldston, who admits to feeling “kind of jealous” about the Newsnight scoop at the time. It’s also an insight into a rather mysterious job: that of the celebrity booker. “I’ve worked in journalism for 30 years and been involved in a lot of big gets: presidents, prime ministers, celebrities,” he says. “The art of the booking has always fascinated me – how does that happen?” Goldston ran Good Morning America “at the height of the morning wars and watched these bookers go after these things every day. It’s a phenomenal feat of endurance.”
It’s a world Lazarus is also familiar with, having started his career booking guests for Paula Yates’s On the Bed segment on Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast – a job he admits wasn’t beholden to the same journalistic ethics as Newsnight. “I definitely wouldn’t have said no to Andrew,” he says. “He could have come and juggled – he could have done whatever he wanted!”
The documentary provides an intimate insight into the big-name interview, but its headline question – why Andrew decided to appear on Newsnight in the first place – is ultimately left unanswered. Maitlis suggests it may have been an attempt to clear his name for his daughters’ sake, while Goldston thinks the media pressure meant “he was going to have to confront it head on and that’s how they end up saying yes”. That, however, doesn’t explain why he went against the guidance of trusted advisers, including media lawyer Paul Tweed, who claims in the documentary that he warned Andrew not to do it.
Instead, you come away with the sense that it was driven by a heady cocktail of yes-men-powered delusion and extreme naivety (he was “not intellectual”, according to royal biographer Andrew Lownie, while Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers claims that Epstein called the prince “an idiot”). Yet this cluelessness wasn’t limited to Andrew himself. Goldston recalls McAlister telling him that as the interview concluded, a member of the prince’s staff leaned over to her and muttered, “‘Isn’t he marvellous?’ That lack of understanding of what had just happened was pretty profound.”
The documentary ends with a portrait of an underemployed Andrew living in the shadows. And yet Tweed, who appears in the documentary with the blessing of the prince and his family, suggests something that seems currently unthinkable: the idea that the prince might make a return to public life. Is there any world in which this could happen?
“I think they live in hope that they can still turn this round, which is actually a very interesting idea,” says Goldston. “[Tweed] has seen a lot of these cases. Who knows?” Never say never, but if the royal family wants to survive until the next coronation, it seems that Andrew – utterly tone-deaf, entitled beyond belief and morally dubious, at best – is everything it must leave behind.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
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Srinagar, Apr 04: Brought to Kashmir for hunting purpose in 1840’s by the then Maharaja Gulab Singh, Wild boars have staged a massive comeback across the Valley after vanishing in mid-80’s completely. Even though experts believe global warming may be the reason for resurgence of the wild animal, they sounded alarm stating the boars can affect the Hangul’s habitat besides damaging the crops of every nature.
Talking to news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), Wildlife warden Shopain Intisaar Suhail, who has co-authored a publication on wild-boars, are not the native animal. “It was introduced in some areas of Kashmir like Dachigam by the then Maharaja for hunting. Then it started to decline and in mid 80’s it became a rare specie. In 2015, it was again sighted. We had found a dead specimen at north Kashmir’s area and in South Kashmir, we rescued one.”
Suhail said that the boars are getting revived in Kashmir. “It’s revival can have beneficial as well as adverse impact which needs to be studied thoroughly. Firstly, it’s the prey for Leopards but at the same time this animal shares the habitat of Hangul. So how far it can affect the habitat of Hangul needs to be studied,” he said.
He said that global warming may be the main reason for the animal’s revival in Kashmir.
Aakib Hussain Paul, Project Associate of Research Study on Ecological Aspects of Wild Boars at Dachigam National Park, told KNO that the team led by him conducted a study on the ecological aspect of the Boar’s revival in the Park. “We studied the animals food habits and co-related the same with that of Hangul. Hangul and Boars share the same habitat and food. For us, this was an alien specie. In 2013, camera trap image of Boars were found in some parts of Kashmir. Today, we can say that Boar population is growing rapidly in Kashmir,” he said. “It was in 1840’s when the then Maharaja introduced Boars in Kashmir for hunting and fun purposes.”
Paul said that Boars are considered a big threat for habitat degradation. “Our study is still in the process of publication as we haven’t covered all aspects so far. We started our study in October last and time period was for six months,” he said.
Asked about whether the animal may prove dangerous for the Hangul and other crops in Kashmir, Paul said that Boar is a very dangerous animal and if comes out the park, it an dig up everything. “In apple orchards, it can dig up to the roots and in the open area, it can eat anything even saffron seeds etc. If the animal reaches the streets of Srinagar, it can tear apart everything as food remains littered on streets of the city,” he said. Pauls said that since Boars and Hangul share similar habitats that include food and shelter, Hanguls may face a threat from these animals, which, however, needs to be studied further. He urged the government to allow to cover other aspects of the study as well. “It is not enough to cover every aspect in just six months. It needs some more to co-relative what we saw physically with what we see in the laboratory,” he said—(KNO)
Kochi: Angry protesters, including children and women, from 10 villages in the hilly district of Idukki on Thursday are out on the streets, blocking traffic on the Kochi-Dhanushkodi highway.
This highway passes through Idukki and the protesters are unhappy with the Kerala High Court’s Wednesday decision involving wild tusker ‘Arikomban’ and two other rogue elephants causing destruction to life and properties of people in these affected villages.
The Kerala High Court on Wednesday warned the state of strict action if it found that the area in the Idukki district where these wild tuskers, including ‘Arikomban’, were roaming had been an elephant habitat before the tribals were resettled there.
The division bench, according to the protesters, instead of helping them, called for records and reports on the resettlement of tribal people in the area back in 2000. The court said, “If it was an elephant habitat, you had no business resettling people there and putting them in danger. The court said that resettling people in an elephant habitat was the root of the entire problem.”
“We will examine it. If it was an elephant habitat, then your policymakers went way off the board. If people were resettled there despite being aware of this fact, we will come down heavily on those responsible.
“Errors in history can be corrected later in time. We need to find whether the mistake happened and if yes, correct it,” the bench said, and declined to issue any direction in the interim for capture and captivity of the wild tuskers, including ‘Arikomban’.
The feature of Arikomban (translated in Malayalam as Aari-rice and Komban-tusker) is it attacks ration shops and houses for rice.
The villagers are unhappy with the court decision as it said that it will constitute a five-member committee that would decide whether to capture the wild elephant and turn it into a captive tusker or relocate it to interior areas of the forest.
It further said that till the panel came to a decision by the next week, the tusker was not to be captured and put in captivity, but allowed tranquilising for a limited purpose of radio-collaring it to track its movements.
“We are not going to stop our protests and we will do it, only when some concrete things come out, as we are fed up living in constant fear. Lives are lost and properties are being destroyed,” said a group of angry protesters.
Meanwhile, state Forest Minister A.K. Saseendran said the people have the right to protest as the Court’s directive complicated things.
“The state will go forward exploring all the legal remedies and it will seek legal recourse,” said Saseendran.
Sheopur: Two more Namibian cheetahs were on Wednesday released into the wild at the Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park (KNP) here, where the felines were translocated from the African country in September 2022, a forest department official said.
With this, four of the eight cheetahs brought from Namibia have been released into the wild in the park in Sheopur district.
Elton and Freddie, popularly known as “Rockstars”, were successfully released into the free range area of the park from a large enclosure at around 6.30 pm, Sheopur’s divisional forest officer (DFO) P K Verma told PTI.
“Both are healthy and doing well,” he said.
On March 11, two cheetahs — Oban and Asha — were released into the wild, almost six months after they were brought to the KNP.
Eight Namibian cheetahs — five females and three males — were brought to the KNP as part of a reintroduction programme aimed at reviving the species’ population in India, where they became extinct more than 70 years ago.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had released the cheetahs — the world’s fastest land animal — in a special enclosure at the park on September 17 last year.
They were first moved to acclimatization enclosures from quarantine bomas (animal enclosures in November last year. They were later released into hunting enclosures of the park.
A dozen more cheetahs – seven males and five females were brought to the KNP from South Africa on February 18, 2023. The KNP is now home to 20 cheetahs.
Hyderabad: One of the current music sensations, rapper, and Bigg Boss 16 winner MC Stan performed at a concert in Hyderabad on Friday leaving the audience spellbound with his electrifying performance. The concert, which took place on March 10, 2023, at Gachibowli Stadium, was attended by thousands of fans who had gathered to see the rising star in action.
Fans who attended MC Stan’s concert yesterday said that the rapper performed a mix of old and new tracks, blending rap and hip-hop to create a unique sound that kept the audience engaged throughout the event.
Dressed in his signature streetwear, MC Stan took to the stage amidst loud cheers and applause from the crowd. According to Stan’s official fan club on Twitter, the crowd was really feeling his hit song ‘Ek Din Pyaar’ and some even broke through the gates to get in. Nearly 15K fans attended the concert.
Check out some of the glimpses of the crazy night here.
It’s not every day that you get to Witness a Moment like this the aerial Drone view of MC Stan’s Hyderabad Concert is truly very Special 🔥🥹
“Just heard about the frenzy at MC Stan’s concert in Hyderabad! People Were vibing hard to ‘Ek Din Pyaar’ – Some even broke gates to get in. His Music truly has the power to move Crowds! 🎶🙌#MCStan#BB16#BiggBoss16pic.twitter.com/vKxusfLHLn
MC Stan’s concert was a part of his current ‘India Tour’ that kick-started on March 3 in Pune and will end in Delhi on May 7. The rapper has been ruling headlines ever since he won Bigg Boss 16 last month defeating other top contestants like Shiv Thakare and Priyanka Chahar Choudhary. His journey throughout the season was loved by the audience and reportedly he received over 17M votes on the day of the finale.
Mysuru: A forest watcher has been killed in Karnataka’s Mysuru district after he was attacked by a wild elephant while he was on patrolling duty, an official said on Saturday.
The incident took place in Kalkere forest area in the limits of Bandipur National Park. The deceased has been identified as Bomma.
The wild elephant attacked him while he was on patrolling duty along with his colleague Madhu K.
Officials said the wild elephant that attacked him wrapped Bomma in its trunk and threw him into a gorge.
Bomma somehow had managed to inform the forest authorities about the attack.
He was rescued from the gorge and rushed to the hospital. However, Bomma, who suffered severe injuries, succumbed on the way.
The police have registered a case, and taken up the investigation.
