by tyler | Jun 6, 2023 | CNN, world
A Labrador and German shepherd mix named Zoey has claimed the record for the longest tongue on a living dog.
At 12.7 centimeters (5 inches), Zoey’s tongue is longer than a soda can, according to Guinness World Records.
Her owners, Sadie and Drew Williams from Metairie, Louisiana, US, said people often comment on how long Zoey’s tongue is.
“We got Zoey when she was only six weeks old and in the first ever picture we have of her, she has her tongue sticking out,” said Sadie Williams.
“We thought surely she’d grow into it but she obviously didn’t. She still has an enormous tongue compared to her body.”
Zoey’s massive tongue is most obvious when she is panting after playing outside.
“It would be slobbering all over the place,” said Drew Williams. “So sometime last year we took her to the vet and measured her tongue.”
Measuring from the tip of her snout to the tip of her tongue, Zoey was recognized as a record breaker.
The 3-year-old dog is a fun loving creature, according to her owners.
“She will pretty much go fetch anything you throw and swim in any body of water that’s available,” said Drew Williams. “But she hates getting a bath.”
Zoey is also friendly to strangers, but petting her comes with its own risks.
“Every now and then while we’re out taking her on a walk, people will come up to her and want to pet her,” said Drew Williams.
“We’ll warn them ahead of time ‘Hey, she’s friendly but she might slobber on you’ and every now and then she will, and they’ll have a big slobber mark on their black pants.”
Zoey beat previous record holder Bisbee, an English Setter from Tucson, Arizona, who claimed the record almost three months ago with a tongue measuring 9.49 centimeters (3.74 inches).
Another previous holder of the record, Mochi “Mo” Rickert, had a tongue that measured 18.58 centimeters (7.3 inches). The female Saint Bernard held the record for five years, and died in November 2021.
by tyler | Jun 2, 2023 | CNN, world
Here is a look at the life of Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Birth date: June 21, 1947
Birth place: Hamadan, Iran
Father: Muhammad Ali Ebadi, law professor and lawyer
Mother: Minu Yamini
Marriage: Javad Tavassolian (1975-divorce date unknown)
Children: Nargess (female); Negar (female)
Education: University of Tehran, law degree, 1969; University of Tehran, doctorate, 1971
Religion: Islam
Is the first Iranian to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Is a campaigner for women’s and children’s rights and has published numerous books on the subject.
Worked to try to change child custody laws in Iran after 9-year-old Arian Golshani was beaten to death by her father and stepmother. Golshani’s mother was not allowed to have custody of her due to Iranian laws that favor men over women.
March 1969 – Becomes the first female judge in Iran.
1975-1979 – Serves as president of the city court of Tehran.
1979 – Is forced to step down as a judge after the Islamic Revolution.
1999 – Campaigns to reveal the identities of attackers who killed several students at Tehran University.
2000 – Jailed for more than three weeks and suspended from practicing law for five years after she and another attorney are accused of releasing a video that supposedly slandered members of the government.
2001 – Wins the Rafto Prize for her work promoting democracy and fighting for human rights in Iran.
2003 – Wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
2006 – Her memoir “Iran Awakening: One Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Her Life and Country” is published. Helps establish the Nobel Women’s Initiative with other female peace prize recipients.
2007 – Represents imprisoned Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, who is released after being arrested on charges of threatening national security.
2008 – Ebadi’s book “Refugee Rights in Iran” is published.
April 2008 – After Ebadi receives death threats, Iranian Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad orders a police investigation.
December 2008 – Iranian security forces raid Ebadi’s office in Tehran. She tells CNN the authorities did not give her a reason for closing down her office.
June 2009 – Begins life in exile in the United Kingdom.
November 2009 – The Iranian government confiscates Ebadi’s Nobel medal and freezes her bank accounts.
2011 – Her book “The Golden Cage: Three Brothers, Three Choices, One Destiny” is published.
August 2015 – Ebadi and other high-profile Iranians release a video encouraging Americans to support the nuclear deal with Iran.
March 2016 – Her memoir “Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran” is published.
February-March 2018 – Visits Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, with Nobel Peace laureates Tawakkol Karman of Yemen and Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland. The Nobel Women’s Initiative fact-finding delegation calls for an end to genocide in Myanmar.
by tyler | May 18, 2023 | CNN, world
Here is a look at D-Day. Allied troops invaded Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, to fight Nazi Germany in World War II.
The largest amphibious (land and water) invasion in history.
The code name for the invasion was Operation Overlord.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower commanded the operation, and plans were made to land in Normandy, west of where the German troops and artillery were built up.
More: See historic photos from the landing.
The “D” stands for Day. D-Day is code for the day an important military attack is scheduled to begin.
Code names for the five beaches where the Allies landed: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.
More than 13,000 aircraft and 5,000 ships supported the operation.
The exact number of casualties is not known. It is estimated that approximately 10,000 Allied soldiers were killed, wounded and or went missing in action: 6,603 Americans, 2,700 British and 946 Canadians.
August 19, 1942 – A raid on the French port of Dieppe resulting in heavy losses convinces D-Day planners to land on the beaches. Preparations begin for an Allied invasion across the English Channel.
May 1943 – The Trident Conference, a British and US strategy meeting on the war takes place in Washington, DC. Winston Churchill, President Theodore Roosevelt and their military advisers discuss crossing the English Channel.
August 1943 – British and US military chiefs of staff outline Operation Overlord during the Quadrant Conference.
November and December 1943 – British and US military chiefs discuss the specifics of the assault on France during the Sextant and Eureka Conferences.
1944 – The Germans expect an invasion along the north coast of France, but they do not know where it will occur. They build up their troops and artillery near Calais, where the English Channel is the narrowest.
June 5, 1944 – Allied paratroopers and gliders carrying heavy equipment leave England to begin the invasion of France by air.
In a broadcast message to troops before they leave, Eisenhower tells them, “The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory…. We will accept nothing less than full victory!”
June 6, 1944 – Overnight, a military armada and more than 160,000 troops cross the English Channel. Minesweepers go ahead to clear the waters in preparation for the thousands of landing crafts that will be carrying men, vehicles and supplies.
Between midnight and 8 a.m., Allied forces fly 14,674 sorties.
At 6:30 a.m. troops begin coming ashore on a 50-mile front.
In a broadcast to the people of occupied Europe, Eisenhower says, “Although the initial assault may not have been made in your own country, the hour of your liberation is approaching.”
by tyler | May 18, 2023 | CNN, world
More than half of the world’s largest lakes and reservoirs have lost significant amounts of water over the last three decades, according to a new study, which pins the blame largely on climate change and excessive water use.
Roughly one-quarter of the world’s population lives in the basin of a drying lake, according to the study by a team of international scientists, published Thursday in the journal Science.
While lakes cover only around 3% of the planet, they hold nearly 90% of its liquid surface freshwater and are essential sources of drinking water, irrigation and power, and they provide vital habitats for animals and plants.
But they’re in trouble.
Lake water levels fluctuate in response to natural climate variations in rain and snowfall, but they are increasingly affected by human actions.
Across the world, the most significant lakes are seeing sharp declines. The Colorado River’s Lake Mead in Southwest US has receded dramatically amid a megadrought and decades of overuse. The Caspian Sea, between Asia and Europe – the world’s largest inland body of water – has long been declining due to climate change and water use.
The shrinking of many lakes has been well documented, but the extent of change – and the reasons behind it – have been less thoroughly examined, said Fangfang Yao, the study’s lead author and a visiting scholar at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The researchers used satellite measurements of nearly 2,000 of the world’s largest lakes and reservoirs, which together represent 95% of Earth’s total lake water storage.
Examining more than 250,000 satellite images spanning from 1992 to 2020, along with climate models, they were able to reconstruct the history of the lakes going back decades.
The results were “staggering,” the report authors said.
They found that 53% of the lakes and reservoirs had lost significant amounts of water, with a net decline of around 22 billion metric tons a year – an amount the report authors compared to the volume of 17 Lake Meads.
More than half of the net loss of water volume in natural lakes can be attributed to human activities and climate change, the report found.
The report found losses in lake water storage everywhere, including in the humid tropics and the cold Arctic. This suggests “drying trends worldwide are more extensive than previously thought,” Yao said.
Different lakes were affected by different drivers.
Unsustainable water consumption is the predominant reason behind the shriveling of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and California’s Salton Sea, while changes in rainfall and runoff have driven the decline of the Great Salt Lake, the report found.
In the Arctic, lakes have been shrinking due to a combination of changes in temperature, precipitation, evaporation and runoff.
“Many of the human and climate change footprints on lake water losses were previously unknown,” Yao said, “such as the desiccations of Lake Good-e-Zareh in Afghanistan and Lake Mar Chiquita in Argentina.”
Climate change can have an array of impacts on lakes. The most obvious, Yao said, is to increase evaporation.
As lakes shrink, this can also contribute to an “aridification” of the surrounding watershed, the study found, which in turn increases evaporation and accelerates their decline.
For lakes in colder parts of the world, winter evaporation is an increasing problem as warmer temperatures melt the ice that usually covers them, leaving the water exposed to the atmosphere.
These changes can have cascading effects, including a decrease in water quality, an increase in toxic algal blooms and a loss of aquatic life.
“An important aspect that is not often recognized is the degradation in water quality of the lakes from a warmer climate, which puts stress on water supply for communities that rely on them,” Yao said.
For reservoirs, the report found that the biggest factor in their decline is sedimentation, where sediment flows into the water, clogging it up and reducing space. It’s a “creeping disaster,” Yao said, happening over the course of years and decades.
Lake Powell, for instance – the second-largest human-made reservoir in the US – has lost nearly 7% of its storage capacity due to sediment build-up.
Sedimentation can be affected by climate change, he added. Wildfires, for example, which are becoming more intense as the world warms, burn through forests and destabilize the soil, helping to increase the flow of sediment into lakes and reservoirs.
“The result of sedimentation will be that reservoirs will be able to store less water, thereby becoming less reliable for freshwater and hydroelectric energy supply, particularly for us here in the US, given that our nation’s reservoirs are pretty old,” Yao said.
Not all lakes are declining; around a third of lake declines were offset by increases elsewhere, the report found.
Some lakes have been growing, with 24% seeing significant increases in water storage. These tended to be lakes in less populated regions, the report found, including areas in the Northern Great Plains of North America and the inner Tibetan Plateau.
The fingerprints of climate change are on some of these gains, as melting glaciers fill lakes, posing potential risks to people living downstream from them.
In terms of reservoirs, while nearly two thirds experienced significant water loss, overall there was a net increase due to more than 180 newly filled reservoirs, the report found.
Catherine O’Reilly, professor of geology at Illinois State University, who was not involved with the study, said this new research provides a useful long term data set that helps untangle the relative importance of the factors driving the decline of lakes.
“This study really highlights the impact of climate in ways that bring it close to home – how much water do we have access to, and what are the options to increase water storage?” she told CNN.
“It’s a little scary to see how many freshwater systems are unable to store as much water as they used to,” she added.
As many parts of the world become hotter and drier, lakes must be managed properly. Otherwise climate change and human activities “can lead to drying sooner than we think,” Yao said.
by tyler | May 18, 2023 | CNN, world
One of the strongest storms on record to hit Myanmar has left thousands of people in urgent need of food, water, shelter, and medical help.
Cyclone Mocha slammed into the southeast Asian nation on Sunday. Western Rakhine state, an area with hundreds of thousands of displaced people living in camps, was hit especially hard.
Amid the urgent need for help, widespread storm damage and Myanmar’s military junta have made it difficult for some humanitarian aid groups to deliver desperately needed relief.
You can take action by clicking on the button below to help organizations on the ground responding to the disaster.
by tyler | May 18, 2023 | CNN, world
There’s no denying the echoes to the late Princess Diana’s 1997 death in a car crash in Paris. More than 25 years on, her son and his wife were pursued through the streets of New York City this week in what their team called a “near catastrophic” car chase.
That language makes it hard not to evoke the tragic memory of circumstances that led to the loss of one of the most beloved members of the British royal family.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were in New York to attend Ms. Foundation’s Women of Vision Awards, where Meghan was being honored for her global advocacy to empower women and girls. As their first public appearance since Prince Harry returned from King Charles’ coronation in London, it had initially seemed a pretty routine affair.
The couple posed on the red carpet before heading inside, where Meghan later claimed her accolade. It was only after the event that the situation escalated, with the details differing depending on who you talked to.
The couple’s spokesperson described “a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi” trailing them for more than two hours, which sparked global rolling coverage. The spokesperson claimed that there were several close calls with other drivers, pedestrians and police officers.
Later, police confirmed the outlines of the account but offered less colorful language, describing the situation merely as “challenging.” Questions continued to swirl Thursday over exactly what happened and for precisely how long, in a city notorious for its traffic congestion. CNN has not independently verified every detail of the couple’s account, but in the light of a new day, a clearer picture is emerging.
Here’s what we know: The couple was seen leaving the awards ceremony in a black car but spotted later in a yellow cab. Chris Sanchez, who was part of the royal security detail, told us they were immediately followed from the event by a dozen vehicles. He said he’d “never seen [or] experienced anything like this” and that “the public were in jeopardy at several points.” He also explained that the couple had switched cars “more than once” during the incident.
Thomas Buda, who runs a private security business contracted to help the couple, corroborated Sanchez’s account of reckless driving from the vehicles that tailed them and the Sussexes’ car swap. He said the couple’s convoy took a circuitous route from 23rd street to 96th street – up and down busy Manhattan arteries – before security brought the couple to the 19th police precinct on East 67th street. From there, the couple were moved to a yellow cab but it ended up circling the block and returning them to the police station.
Cab driver Sukhcharn Singh told CNN that he didn’t feel under threat by the encounter with photographers but Harry and Meghan looked “nervous and scared.”
The couple were ultimately able to make a clean break during the midnight changeover of patrol officers, which effectively caused a traffic choke point on the block, allowing security teams to spirit Harry and Meghan away, according to Buda.
To answer the question of why this elaborate game of cat and mouse unfolded, we were told by Harry’s team that the couple were staying at a private residence and did not want to compromise the security of their friend’s home by returning directly from the awards. Meanwhile, a law enforcement source also said the pair did not stay at a hotel but rather at a private residence on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and chose to keep the location secret so they could come and go.
Statements from the NYPD, the city’s mayor and the law enforcement source also back up that the couple were followed, though those perceptions of the events are less emotionally-charged.
The NYPD put out a more benign statement, saying it had “assisted the private security team” wherein “there were numerous photographers that made their transport challenging.” New York City Mayor Eric Adams cast doubt on the two-hour time frame but added that, irrespective of length, the incident was “reckless” and “irresponsible.”
“It’s clear that the paparazzi want to get the right shot, they want to get the right story, but public safety must always be at the forefront,” Adams said.
In a statement obtained by CNN on Thursday, photo agency Backgrid USA said they were taking the Sussexes’ allegations “seriously” and will conduct an investigation. However, they also pushed back, saying that photographers at the scene had reported “feeling that the couple was not in immediate danger at any point.”
The agency stressed their commitment to transparent journalism, including the need to provide “fair and factual responses to claims.”
“We want to clarify that we have received photos and videos of last night’s events from four freelance photographers, three of whom were in cars and one of whom was riding a bicycle. It is important to note that these photographers have a professional responsibility to cover newsworthy events and personalities, including public figures such as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle,” the statement outlined.
“According to the accounts given by these freelance contributors, they were covering the couple’s stay in New York City, including the possibility of a dinner after an award ceremony. They had no intention of causing any distress or harm, as their only tool was their cameras. A few of the photos even show Meghan Markle smiling inside a cab,” the statement continued.
The Backgrid statement also counterclaimed that one of the four SUVs in the royal convoy “was driving in a manner that could be perceived as reckless” and rejected the allegation that the incident could have resulted in a fatal disaster.
From all of this, it’s clear something took place on Tuesday night – even if perceptions of it differ.
To be fair to the Sussexes, they never claimed a “high-speed” chase took place. Conversations with a member of their entourage have also made it clear that they felt that they had stuck to speed limits, that the couple never felt under threat but that the lives of others had been.
CNN has made a decision, like many other media outlets, not to publish any photographs taken once the couple left the engagement at the Ziegfeld Ballroom. However, those images appear to show Prince Harry documenting the moment on his phone, so we may yet learn more about what exactly happened from their perspective in the future.
Playing into all of this, it’s well known that Harry blames the tabloid press for the premature death of his mother. He has previously shared how every camera flash takes him “straight back” to one of the worst moments of his life. He has been very vocal in his commitment to ensure history does not repeat itself with his wife and has had no qualms about holding the media to account through legal action over what he sees as particularly invasive methods.
Much of that will likely have been running through his mind during this late-night episode. Even the most ardent critics could understand the kind of traumatic resonance that may have surfaced for Harry in this situation.
One other notable element is the silence from his family. Both Buckingham Palace, home of the King, and Kensington Palace, where the Prince of Wales is based, declined to comment on the story. We know that the Sussexes did not hear from the royal family after the story broke – as some may expect in normal family circumstances. But, given the rift between the two sides, it’s likely there has been a broader decision that the household simply can’t respond or engage with the headlines surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan every time they have a tangle with the press.
