Inquiry launched at Belfast Zoo after worker allegedly locked in lion enclosure
Liam McBurney/PA Images via Getty Images
(LONDON) — The Belfast City Council says it has launched an investigation at Belfast Zoo in Northern Ireland after a worker allegedly became locked in a lion enclosure earlier this month, with lions inside.
Two staff workers – one who was working in a training capacity and one who was more experienced – are reported to have entered the lion enclosure last week to attend to the big cats, the Belfast Telegraph reported, citing a source familiar with the incident.
The more experienced staff member is then reported to have left the paddock, leaving the gate locked and his colleague in the enclosure with the pride of lions with no means of escape.
It’s unknown how long the worker was locked inside of the enclosure with the lions.
In a statement provided to ABC News, the Belfast City Council said it is “aware of an incident at the lion enclosure at Belfast Zoo earlier this month.”
“We take the safety of all our staff, visitors and animals very seriously,” the statement continued. “An investigation is underway into the circumstances of this incident.”
The Belfast Zoo similarly told ABC News that they could not comment on the alleged incident while their investigation of it is underway.
The Belfast Zoo is home to a pride of Barbary lions: one male lion named Qays, and two female lions named Fidda and Theibba, according to the zoo’s website.
Barbary lions were once native to North Africa, but the Belfast Zoo notes “The only Barbary lions left in the world are now found in zoos and are part of a global and collaborative breeding programme to ensure their future survival.”
(NEW YORK) — As the Israel-Hamas war continues, efforts to secure the release of hostages taken by the terrorist organization are ongoing, and Israeli forces have launched an assault in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
49 minutes ago 2 hostages ‘no longer alive,’ IDF says
The Israel Defense Forces on Monday said two hostages, Alex Dancyg and Yagev Buchshtab, who were taken by Hamas militants, were “no longer alive.”
Their bodies “were being held by the Hamas terror organization,” IDF said in a statement. They were determined to be dead based on intelligence gathered by Israel’s Ministry of Health, in cooperation with the Ministry of Religious Services and the Israel Police, the IDF said.
“The circumstances of their death in Hamas captivity are being examined by all the professional authorities,” IDF said.
-ABC News’ Morgan Winsor
12:11 PM EDT Poliovirus detected in wastewater across Gaza: WHO
Poliovirus has been detected in wastewater in multiple locations of the Gaza Strip, including two major cities in the region, the World Health Organization (WHO), Gaza health and Israeli officials confirmed on Sunday.
Among the locations where the poliovirus has been found in wastewater are Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and Khan Younis in southern Gaza, two major cities where the majority of people in the war-torn region currently reside, the officials said.
WHO officials said that while they have received no reports of people contracting polio symptoms in Gaza, an investigation is underway to identify how the virus has spread. WHO said it is working with UNICEF and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to investigate and establish “prompt vaccination campaigns.”
Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that largely affects children under 5 years of age, according to WHO’s website. Since 1988, poliovirus cases worldwide have decreased by 99%, according to WHO.
The Israel Defense Forces announced Sunday that it will vaccinate all soldiers operating in Gaza to prevent the spread of poliovirus.
The IDF also said is is working with international organizations to provide polio vaccines for people in Gaza.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of WHO, sounded the alarm in a statement on Friday, saying, “The decimation of the health system, lack of security, access obstruction, constant population displacement, shortages of medical supplies, poor quality of water and weakened sanitation are increasing the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio.”
Ghebreyesus added, “This poses a risk for children and creates the perfect environment for diseases like polio to spread.”
-ABC News’ Victoria Beaulé
11:52 AM EDT Netanyahu to meet with Biden on Tuesday in Washington
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with President Joe Biden in Washington on Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement Sunday.
The meeting between the two leaders is scheduled to occur at noon on Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office said.
Netanyahu’s flight to Washington is scheduled to leave Israel on Monday morning, the prime minister’s office said.
The meeting between Biden and Netanyahu will come ahead of the Israeli prime minister’s July 24 address to a joint session of Congress.
The two governments had tentatively scheduled a meeting between Biden, who is recovering from COVID, and Netanyahu on Monday.
However, a Biden administration official on Sunday disputed that a date and time have been set for the meeting with Netanyahu, and that an exact date and time are still dependent on when the president tests negative for COVID and returns to Washington, D.C. Biden has been self-isolating in Rehoboth, Delaware.
-ABC News’ Victoria Beaulé and Justin Ryan Gomez
Jul 20, 2024, 2:05 PM EDT Houthis say ‘multiple’ dead, injured in Israeli airstrike on Yemen
Multiple people were killed and others have been injured in an Israeli strike on oil storage facilities in the port of Hodeidah in Yemen, according to the Houthis who said the attack will “only increase the resolve […] of the Yemeni people.”
The Houthis accused Israel of an attack that “targeted civilian facilities, oil tanks and the electricity station in Hodeidah, with the aim of doubling people’s suffering and pressuring Yemen to stop supporting Gaza.”
Israel said its attack came in response to over 200 projectiles that the Houthis have launched toward Israel, saying they targeted the port as as the main supply route for weapons transfers with Iran.
(LONDON) — Gazing into a mirror framed by a vase of bright flowers, Taiba Sulaimani begins to sing. The lyrics, in Farsi, offer a message of hope — I will fly one day, I will be free one day.
Sulaimani is one of hundreds of Afghan women and allies around the world uploading videos of themselves singing on social media platforms. The videos are meant to protest a law passed by the Taliban last week banning women’s voices in public and mandating that they cover their entire bodies.
Women in Afghanistan are not allowed to show any skin, including their eyes. Before this law was passed, however, it was put forth as a recommendation — not enforced — and many women would show the upper half of their faces in public.
The new law “effectively [attempts] to render them into faceless, voiceless shadows,” a spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner said on Tuesday.
In response, women like Sulaimani are demonstrating that they refuse to be silenced.
“I recorded the video because I wanted to tell the Taliban, you can’t tell me what to do,” she told ABC News.
Sulaimani, who fled from Afghanistan to Canada three years ago after the Taliban regained power in 2021, didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to her family. But, even though she currently lives more than 10,000 miles away, the Taliban still tried to intimidate her, warning her by phone that they can’t do anything to her, but that she also shouldn’t forget her family is still in Afghanistan.
But, in defiance, this only motivated Sulaimani further.
“It makes me sure that I have to go ahead with power, even more than ever,” she told ABC News.
Elsewhere, an Afghan woman now living in Norway, Hoda Khamosh, echoed the sentiment.
“We came to the conclusion that every voice can become thousands, showing that we women are not just a few individuals who can be erased,” she said.
Khamosh, who founded the Afghan Women’s Justice Movement, posted a video of herself singing a revolutionary poem saying that if you close your doors on us, we will use the windows to make her voices heard.
“We do not go to the field with a gun, but our voice, our image,” she said. “Protest is a war and a struggle.”
Even women inside Afghanistan are now recording videos of themselves singing, sometimes solo and sometimes in pairs or small groups, yet always wearing burqas that conceal their identities.
Zahra, a journalist in Afghanistan who asked only to be identified by her first name for her safety, said the situation on the ground is rapidly changing. Last week, there were many women outside, but since the passage of the law mandating women to veil their bodies, as well as their voices, she said the streets have emptied of women.
The new law now considers a woman’s voice intimate and they are forbidden to sing, recite or read anything in public. This comes in addition to other regulations forbidding women to leave their houses alone or allowing them to look or speak to men who they’re not related to by blood or marriage.
The combination of these restrictions makes leaving the home impractical at best, and even impossible in some cases. If a person violates the rules, they can be punished with a warning or be arrested, with a Taliban spokesperson saying the new law would “be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice.”
Now, many male family members often instruct their female relatives to stay at home since they don’t want trouble, Zahra said.
“Sometimes we have nightmares that [the Taliban] will come and arrest us,” she said, citing common anecdotes of rape and torture in prisons.
Although hope alone may not seem meaningful to many Afghan women, some now feel empowered by the outpouring of global support in response to the videos of women singing. Now — they hope — the international community will step in and tangibly do something to help protect Afghan women.
“Please don’t leave us alone with the Taliban,” Sulaimani said. “We all need your support.”
Ukrainian servicemen of the Shkval special battalion, 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade, ex-convicts, take part in military exercises at an unspecified location in the Donetsk region, July 26, 2024. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)
(SOLOTVYNSKA, Ukraine) — The barbed wire fence stretches along the bank of the river that marks Ukraine’s western border. Across the water, lie Romania and the European Union.
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, there was no fence here at this stretch of the Tisza River. But in the two and a half years since then, Ukraine has tightened security — not to keep Russians out, but Ukrainian men in.
Since 2022, Ukraine has barred most military-age men from leaving the country. As a result, the number seeking to cross the border illegally has soared, according to Ukraine’s border service. Aided by smugglers, some buy counterfeit paperwork to try to pass by official crossings. But others try a more desperate route, trying to sneak out on foot, taking their chances swimming across the river. Fast-flowing and cold, it is dangerous — at least two dozen men have died trying to make the crossing since 2022, according to the border service.
The flow of men and the reinforced security at the border reflect two hard truths Ukraine faces: its military is short on soldiers and it is struggling to find volunteers willing to fight.
Two and a half years of devastating fighting has severely depleted Ukraine’s forces, leaving them in some places heavily outnumbered by Russian troops. The shortage of troops means units are often unable to rotate off the frontline, leaving them exhausted. The issue is one of the key reasons why in recent weeks Russia has been creeping forward in the Donbas region.
In the early months of the war, a vast wave of Ukrainians volunteered to fight. But that wave is now largely exhausted and most of those eager to volunteer have already done so. As the war has become bogged down, with tens of thousands killed and wounded while the lines barely move, enthusiasm to join up has faded.
In recent months, Ukraine’s government has finally taken steps to address the manpower shortage. In late spring a law was passed to lower the conscription age and tightening draft rules. Conscription officers now patrol the streets looking for military-age men, checking their papers and sometimes taking away those who are subject to the draft. That has sent many young men into hiding, rarely venturing outside. Others have gone abroad.
One man, who ABC News is calling Ihor, left Ukraine late last year to avoid being drafted. ABC News is disguising his identity over fears he could face repercussions for speaking.
“When the war had only just started, then there was more patriotism. And then I also wanted to go to the army,” said Ihor.
But Ihor’s brother returned from the war with a spine injury, telling him not to join up. Ihor said his family began to beg him to leave before he could be drafted. He started to worry if he were disabled in fighting it would fall on his family to care for him, with little support from the state.
“I know people who are already dead, who were there two days and that was it, they died,’ said Ihor. “And it’s just, I understand that even if I go to war and become an invalid, then no one will care for me except for my relatives.”
Ihor said the decision to leave Ukraine was wrenching, wracking him with guilt.
“I have this feeling that my family are there, under missile strikes, under constant air raid alerts, and I am here in safety. I am torturing myself. Why I am here and not there? I already thought about going back,” he said.
For months, Ukraine’s government avoided passing a new mobilization law, fearful it would be unpopular, and also concerned to preserve its younger men crucial for the country’s economic future. Many of those illegally crossing the border are looking to go abroad to find work or see their families, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Border Service told ABC News.
The issue of who should fight has opened a painful divide in Ukraine. Videos showing draft officers sometimes grabbing men off the street that circulate online have sparked outrage. In some incidents, scuffles have broken out as people try to prevent officers from taking men. Police insist such incidents are rare.
Public anger has also flared over videos showing young men drinking on the street in Kyiv and other cities, fueling complaints that the draft disproportionately targets poorer, rural areas, where people cannot afford to pay bribes to evade it.
As the war has dragged out, Ukrainian men have been confronted with anguishing dilemmas, asking themselves if their duty is to their family or to their country.
Others say they worry about being sent to the frontline with inadequate training, fearful of finding themselves in units still following Soviet-style tactics.
“You have to have been trained for many years to be an efficient soldier, not just cannon fodder,” another man, who ABC is calling Denys, told ABC News. “I think I will be killed the next 5 minutes.”
Denys left Ukraine in early 2023 with his family. He said he would be more willing to join the military if he could choose to be in a non-frontline role, such as a supply officer.
He said he worried for Ukraine and continued to pay taxes there and make monthly donations to the war effort.
“Of course I worry,” he said. “But I’m not sure that I will be a good soldier. And I’m not sure if I die, as I said, in the first 5 minutes, it can help my country, for my country to win. Maybe. Maybe. But I’m not sure about that.”
Ukraine has begun trying to reform its recruitment practices to give people more scope to choose their roles. Recruitment campaigns highlight technical specialists who can use their skills in the military, rather than being thrown into the frontline as infantry.
The expanded draft is also starting to have effects, according to independent military analysts. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians are answering the draft notices and are now undergoing basic training and should begin refilling the ranks this summer.
Some Ukrainians are also choosing to sign up for volunteer battalions to the side of the regular army and that have a better reputation for training and command.
Denys, a 26-year-old video game designer and graphic artist, in February joined the Da Vinci Wolves Battalion, one of the best-known volunteer formations.
“We each have to muster the courage,” Denys told ABC News as he waited to board a train in Kyiv with a group of other men bound for three months of basic training. “It took me about 2 years from the beginning to master my own. But I guess more to follow.”
Nearby Lyudmyla stood saying goodbye to her husband Pavlo, who was also embarking. She wiped away tears as the train began to move off.
Pavlo had decided he needed to join now in part so that their 20-year-old son would not have to fight in the future, she said.
“He told our son, ‘I’m going now so you don’t go there later. But get ready.’ Unfortunately, life is such that everyone has to be ready,” she said.
