NANTERRE, France: A memorial to French World War II soldiers and Resistance fighters has been vandalized with an anti-health pass slogan, authorities said Monday, in what President Emmanuel Macron called an “insult” to the nation’s memory.
The Mont Valerien monument in Suresnes, west of Paris, was vandalized with “Anti Pass” painted in large letters, with the style of the double-s reminiscent of that used by Nazis for their SS inscriptions, authorities said.
The inscription on the monument — which was inaugurated in 1960 by then-president Charles de Gaulle — is 50 meters (164 feet) long, they said.
Macron on Monday called the act “an insult to the memory of our heroes and the memory of the nation.”
In a tweet, he said that “to sully this sacred place of the republic is to violate what unites us. The perpetrators will be found and put on trial.”
France requires a health pass — proof of vaccination, Covid recovery or a negative test result — for access to restaurants and cafes, public transport and cultural venues, a requirement that sparked major protests last summer.
The government is pushing for a fast rollout of booster shots in an effort to avoid another lockdown as the new omicron virus variant is causing infections to spike.
It has also said the pass will lapse for anyone who fails to get a booster shot.
The health authorities have reported that more than 76 percent of the eligible population had been fully vaccinated as of last week, one of the highest vaccination rates in the European Union.
French WWII memorial vandalized with anti-health pass slogan
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French WWII memorial vandalized with anti-health pass slogan
- The Mont Valerien monument in Suresnes was vandalised with "Anti Pass" painted in large letters
- Macron called the act "an insult to the memory of our heroes and the memory of the nation"
Four Colombian children lost in Amazon jungle for 40 days after plane crash found alive
- The pilot and 2 adult passengers of the Cessna single-engine propeller plane did not survive the May 1st plane crash
- Colombia’s army employed 150 soldiers with dogs into the jungle to track the four siblings, who were missing from the crash site
BOGOTA, Colombia: Four Indigenous children who were missing for more than five weeks in a jungle in Colombia’s south following a deadly plane crash arrived in the capital Bogota early on Saturday for medical treatment.
The siblings were found on Friday in Colombia’s Caqueta province according to the country’s armed forces and were initially treated by military medics who had been among the search teams searching for them.
The mission to find the four siblings, called Operation Hope, captured the imagination of Colombians as reports of clues to their whereabouts fueled longing they would be found safely despite spending more than a month in the inhospitable jungle.
“We did everything necessary to make the impossible possible, using satellites, using aircraft that launched messages, that launched food, that launched flyers, that launched hope,” General Pedro Sanchez, commander of the military’s joint command for special operations said at an air base in Bogota.
In photos shared by Colombia’s military, the four children — three girls and a boy — appeared gaunt as they were being cared for by rescuers.
After the plane carrying the children landed in Bogota, four ambulances were waiting at to collect them and take them to a military hospital for specialist medical care.
They had been missing in the jungle since a Cessna 206 carrying seven people on a route between Araracuara, in Caqueta, and San Jose del Guaviare, a city in Guaviare province, issued a mayday alert due to engine failure in the early hours of May 1.
Three adults, including the pilot and the children’s mother, died in the crash and their bodies were found inside the plane. The siblings, aged 13, 9, 4, as well as a now 12-month-old baby, survived the impact.
They are members of the Huitoto people, and officials said the oldest children in the group had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.
On Friday, after confirming the children had been rescued, the president said that for a while he had believed the children were rescued by one of the nomadic tribes that still roam the remote swath of the jungle where the plane fell and have little contact with authorities.
But Petro added that the children were first found by one of the rescue dogs that soldiers took into the jungle. He said that he hoped to meet with the children Saturday.
“The jungle saved them” Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”
Young black bear wanders Washington D.C. neighborhood, sparking a frenzy before being captured
- Pictures of the bear and its capture touched off a frenzy on social media
- The bear was discovered roaming the Brookland neighborhood, less than 5 miles from the Capitol and White House
WASHINGTON: A young black bear gave residents of a quiet northeast Washington neighborhood a start Friday morning when they woke to find a furry interloper wandering backyards and sniffing around garbage cans.
Pictures of the bear and its capture touched off a frenzy on social media. It also spurred a healthy online debate as to whether to name it Franklin, for the street where he was captured, or Smokey — for both the iconic cartoon bear and as a testament to this particularly smoky week in Washington weather.
The bear was discovered roaming the Brookland neighborhood, less than 5 miles from the Capitol and White House. It prompted formation of a sort of ursine emergency task force including the Metropolitan Police Department, the local Humane Rescue Alliance, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the National Zoo.
Authorities formed a perimeter near the 1300 block of Franklin Street NE to keep curious onlookers away. When the young male bear climbed a tree, police used their sirens to discourage him from climbing down until capture crews were ready.
Undeterred by the noise, the bear came down around 10 a.m. and started wandering area yards. Humane Rescue Alliance staffers were able to tranquilize the approximately 200- pound animal and load it into a huge metal crate. The young male will now receive a medical check and be released back into the wild, “somewhere in Maryland,” said Chris Schindler, vice president of field services for the Humane Rescue Alliance.
Wildlife authorities had actually been tracking this particular bear for several weeks, spotting him most recently around nearby Hyattsville, Maryland. But the last bear-related mobilization like this in D.C. was at least five years ago.
“At this age, it’s natural for them to explore other areas,” said Schindler, who estimated the animal was a little more than a year old, “especially as wildlife continues to be pushed out of their natural areas by human construction.”
The bear would mostly likely not have been aggressive unless it was startled by humans or challenged by an particularly brave dog.
“Bears often do not want to engage with people,” Schindler said. “As long as people keep their distance and give them their space, it will be fine.”
‘Double duck, double luck’: Hong Kong pop-art project returns after 10 years
- Many Hong Kongers recall the happiness Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s work brought to the shopping district of Tsim Sha Tsui in 2013
HONG KONG: Two giant inflatable ducks made a splash in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor on Friday, marking the return of a pop-art project that sparked a frenzy in the city a decade ago.
The two 18-meter-tall yellow ducks by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman resemble the bath toys many played with in their childhood. Shortly after their launch, dozens of residents and tourists flocked to the promenade near the government headquarters in Admiralty to snap photos of the ducks.
Hofman said he hopes the art exhibition brings joy to the city and connects people as they make memories together.
“Double duck, double luck,” he said. “In a world where we suffered from a pandemic, wars and political situations, I think it is the right moment to bring back the double luck.”
The inflatable ducks will stay in Hong Kong for about two weeks.
Many Hong Kongers at the promenade recalled the happiness his work brought to the shopping district of Tsim Sha Tsui in 2013. Some were excited to see a pair of ducks on Friday instead of just one duck like the earlier exhibition.
Among the visitors was artist Laurence Lai, who brought paint brushes to make watercolors of the ducks. Lai said the city was full of negative vibes in recent years during the COVID-19 pandemic and that it’s time for the city to move on.
“With life returning to normal, the ducks can bring back some positivity,” the 50-year-old said.
Shenzhen resident Eva Yang and her young daughters were also happy to see the ducks, saying they made their sightseeing in Hong Kong more memorable.
“They’re spectacular,” Yang said.
In 2013, residents and tourists packed streets near the Tsim Sha Tsui pier to catch a glimpse of Hofman’s duck.
That duck’s stint in Hong Kong unintentionally turned political on the social media platform Weibo around the anniversary of Beijing’s Tiananmen crackdown in 1989. Chinese censors blocked searches for the term “big yellow duck” after netizens shared an image in which the tanks in the iconic ” Tank man” image were replaced with a line of oversized giant rubber ducks.
Hofman’s rubber ducks have been on a world tour since 2007.
Russian citizen killed in shark attack in Egypt’s Hurghada
- Egypt’s Environment Ministry said in a statement posted on Facebook that a tiger shark was responsible
- A team from the ministry and other authorities was able to capture the shark
HURGHADA: A Russian citizen was killed in a shark attack near a beach at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada, Russia’s Consulate General in the city and two Egyptian security sources said on Thursday.
Egypt’s Environment Ministry said in a statement posted on Facebook that a tiger shark was responsible for the death of a beachgoer, without giving details of the victim.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT BELOW
A team from the ministry and other authorities was able to capture the shark, the statement said, adding that local authorities had issued a ban on swimming, snorkelling and other water sports activities on several beaches near the attack site.
A diver who arrived on the scene just after the attack said people had rushed to help the victim after a lifeguard from a nearby hotel raised the alarm, but were not able to reach him in time.
Russia’s TASS news agency said the person killed was a Russian man born in 1999 who lived in Egypt full-time and was not a tourist.
In a statement posted on its official channel on the Telegram messaging application, the consulate urged Russian tourists to be vigilant when in the water and to strictly adhere to any swimming bans imposed by local authorities.
Apple unveils sleek, $3,500 ‘Vision Pro’ goggles. Will they be what VR has been looking for?
- Headset will test the technology trendsetter’s ability to popularize new-fangled devices after others failed to capture the public’s imagination
CUPERTINO: Apple on Monday unveiled a long-rumored headset that will place its users between the virtual and real world, while also testing the technology trendsetter’s ability to popularize new-fangled devices after others failed to capture the public’s imagination.
After years of speculation, Apple CEO Tim Cook hailed the arrival of the sleek goggles — dubbed “Vision Pro” — at the the company’s annual developers conference held on a park-like campus in Cupertino, California, that Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs helped design.
“This marks the beginning of a journey that will bring a new dimension to powerful personal technology,” Cook told the crowd.
Although Apple executives provided an extensive preview of the headset’s capabilities during the final half hour of Monday’s event, consumers will have to wait before they can get their hands on the device and prepare to pay a hefty price to boot. Vision Pro will sell for $3,500 once it’s released in stores early next year.
The headset could become another milestone in Apple’s lore of releasing game-changing technology, even though the company hasn’t always been the first to try its hand at making a particular device.
Apple’s lineage of breakthroughs date back to a bow-tied Jobs peddling the first Mac in 1984 — a tradition that continued with the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, the Apple Watch in 2014 and its AirPods in 2016.
The company emphasized that it drew upon its past decades of product design during the years it spent working on the Vision Pro, which Apple said involved more than 5,000 different patents. The goggles will be equipped with 12 cameras, six microphones and variety of sensors that will allow users to control it and various apps with just their eyes and hands. Apple also developed a technology to create three-dimensional digital version of each user to display during video conferencing.
If the new device turns out to be a niche product, it would leave Apple in the same bind as other major tech companies and startups that have tried selling headsets or glasses equipped with technology that either thrusts people into artificial worlds or projects digital images with scenery and things that are actually in front of them — a format known as “augmented reality.”
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been describing these alternate three-dimensional realities as the “metaverse.” It’s a geeky concept that he tried to push into the mainstream by changing the name of his social networking company to Meta Platforms in 2021 and then pouring billions of dollars into improving the virtual technology.
But the metaverse largely remains a digital ghost town, although Meta’s virtual reality headset, the Quest, remains the top-selling device in a category that so far has mostly appealed to video game players looking for even more immersive experiences. Cook and other Apple executives avoided referring to the metaverse in their presentations, describing the Vision Pro as the company’s first leap into “spatial computing” instead.
The response to virtual, augmented and mixed reality has been decidedly ho-hum so far. Some of the gadgets deploying the technology have even been derisively mocked, with the most notable example being Google’s Internet-connected glasses released more than a decade ago.
After Google co-founder Sergey Brin initially drummed up excitement about the device by demonstrating an early model’s potential “wow factor” with a skydiving stunt staged during a San Francisco tech conference, consumers quickly became turned off to a product that allowed its users to surreptitiously take pictures and video. The backlash became so intense that people who wore the gear became known as “Glassholes,” leading Google to withdraw the product a few years after its debut.
Microsoft also has had limited success with HoloLens, a mixed-reality headset released in 2016, although the software maker earlier this year insisted it remains committed to the technology.
Magic Leap, a startup that stirred excitement with previews of a mixed-reality technology that could conjure the spectacle of a whale breaching through a gymnasium floor, had so much trouble marketing its first headset to consumers in 2018 that it has since shifted its focus to industrial, health care and emergency uses.
Daniel Diez, Magic Leap’s chief transformation officer, said there are four major questions Apple’s goggles will have to answer: “What can people do with it? What does this thing look and feel like? Is it comfortable to wear? And how much is it going to cost?”
The anticipation that Apple’s goggles are going to sell for several thousand dollars already has dampened expectations for the product. Although he expects Apple’s goggles to boast “jaw dropping” technology, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said he expects the company to sell just 150,000 units during the device’s first year on the market — a mere speck in the company’s portfolio. By comparison, Apple sells more than 200 million of its marquee iPhones a year. But the iPhone wasn’t an immediate sensation, with sales of fewer than 12 million units in its first full year on the market.
Since 2016, the average annual shipments of virtual- and augmented-reality devices have averaged 8.6 million units, according to the research firm CCS Insight. The firm expects sales to remain sluggish this year, with a sales projection of about 11 million of the devices before gradually climbing to 67 million in 2026.
Before taking the wraps of its new goggles, Apple kicked off the event by announcing that the latest models of two high-end computer lines, the Mac Studio and Mac Pro, will be powered by a company-designed chip that has already been available in less expensive Macs.
The Mac Studio will sell for $2,000 and the Mac Pro will be priced at $7,000. As it typically does at this conference, Apple provided a peek at the next iPhone operating system, iOS 17. That software, which will include more personalization and location-sharing tools for phone calls and texting, is expected to be released as a free update in September.
