The Kardashian family on Friday paused social media postings across their commercial sites while ex basketball star Lamar Odom — Khloe Kardashian’s estranged husband — fights for his life in a Las Vegas hospital.
Khloe, sister Kim and half-sister Kylie Jenner said they had stopped publishing content to their various popular mobile apps and their official websites.
“As a family, we’ve decided to hold off on publishing content across our apps while we continue to support and pray for Lamar,” read a statement on a black background posted on all of their sites.
“Thank you for your kindness and understanding during this difficult time.”
The Kardashians are the most famous family on reality television and collectively have tens of millions of followers on Twitter, Instagram and other social media applications, posting pictures and content several times a day.
But Kim and Khloe’s Twitter accounts have been silent since the sisters rushed to Odom’s bedside this week, along with his other family members.
Neither the Kardashians nor Odom’s representatives have given any official updates on the athlete’s condition since he collapsed on Tuesday at a brothel in Nevada, where authorities said he had used cocaine and so-called herbal Viagra.
Celebrity media, citing sources close to the family or at the hospital, have said Odom, 35, is on life support, has suffered a series of strokes and his kidneys and other organs are failing. TMZ.com said he has a 50/50 chance of survival.
Odom’s courtship and four year marriage to Khloe Kardashian was featured on reality TV show “Keeping up With the Kardashians” and its spin-off “Khloe and Lamar.” Although the couple signed divorce papers in July, the divorce has not yet been finalized by a judge and they are still legally married.
Cable channel E! says it is not filming for the reality show in Las Vegas but has not said how it plans to handle Odom’s situation when the show resumes broadcasts next month.
Odom’s two teenage children from a previous relationship issued a statement thanking his fans for their “outpouring of prayers and support for our dad.”
“We appreciate everyone respecting our privacy at this time. We ask for your continued prayers,” said Destiny and Lamar Odom Jr.
Kardashians pause social media postings as Odom fights for life
Kardashians pause social media postings as Odom fights for life
These shy, scaly anteaters are the most trafficked mammals in the world
CAPE TOWN, South Africa: They are hunted for their unique scales, and the demand makes them the most trafficked mammal in the world.
Wildlife conservationists are again raising the plight of pangolins, the shy, scaly anteaters found in parts of Africa and Asia, on World Pangolin Day on Saturday.
Pangolins or pangolin products outstrip any other mammal when it comes to wildlife smuggling, with more than half a million pangolins seized in anti-trafficking operations between 2016 and 2024, according to a report last year by CITES, the global authority on the trading of endangered plant and animal species.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that over a million pangolins were taken from the wild over the last decade, including those that were never intercepted.
Pangolins meat is a delicacy in places, but the driving force behind the illegal trade is their scales, which are made of keratin, the protein also found in human hair and fingernails. The scales are in high demand in China and other parts of Asia due to the unproven belief that they cure a range of ailments when made into traditional medicine.
There are eight pangolin species, four in Africa and four in Asia. All of them face a high, very high or extremely high risk of extinction.
While they’re sometimes known as scaly anteaters, pangolins are not related in any way to anteaters or armadillos.
They are unique in that they are the only mammals covered completely in keratin scales, which overlap and have sharp edges. They are the perfect defense mechanism, allowing a pangolin to roll up into an armored ball that even lions struggle to get to grip with, leaving the nocturnal ant and termite eaters with few natural predators.
But they have no real defense against human hunters. And in conservation terms, they don’t resonate in the way that elephants, rhinos or tigers do despite their fascinating intricacies — like their sticky insect-nabbing tongues being almost as long as their bodies.
While some reports indicate a downward trend in pangolin trafficking since the COVID-19 pandemic, they are still being poached at an alarming rate across parts of Africa, according to conservationists.
Nigeria is one of the global hot spots. There, Dr. Mark Ofua, a wildlife veterinarian and the West Africa representative for the Wild Africa conservation group, has rescued pangolins for more than a decade, which started with him scouring bushmeat markets for animals he could buy and save. He runs an animal rescue center and a pangolin orphanage in Lagos.
His mission is to raise awareness of pangolins in Nigeria through a wildlife show for kids and a tactic of convincing entertainers, musicians and other celebrities with millions of social media followers to be involved in conservation campaigns — or just be seen with a pangolin.
Nigeria is home to three of the four African pangolin species, but they are not well known among the country’s 240 million people.
Ofua’s drive for pangolin publicity stems from an encounter with a group of well-dressed young men while he was once transporting pangolins he had rescued in a cage. The men pointed at them and asked him what they were, Ofua said.
“Oh, those are baby dragons,” he joked. But it got him thinking.
“There is a dark side to that admission,” Ofua said. “If people do not even know what a pangolin looks like, how do you protect them?”
