Turkish volunteer fights to save fire-scarred sheep

Turkish volunteer fights to save fire-scarred sheep
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In this picture taken on July 2, 2024, former kebab seller Mehmet Celebioglu checks on the injuries of a sheep that survived a fire in Mardin of Mazidagi province, southeastern Turkey. (AFP)
Turkish volunteer fights to save fire-scarred sheep
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In this photograph taken on July 2, 2024, veterinarian Hasan Kizil treats a sheep injured in a fire in Mardin of Mazidagi province, southeastern Turkey. Lying on her back, the sheep struggled as the vet approached to bandage her udders, which had been burned in a fire last month that killed hundreds of sheep in southeast Turkey. (AFP)
Turkish volunteer fights to save fire-scarred sheep
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In this photograph taken on July 2, 2024, veterinarian Hasan Kizil treats sheep injured in a fire in Mardin of Mazidagi province, southeastern Turkey.(AFP)
Turkish volunteer fights to save fire-scarred sheep
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Since the fire, Hasan Kizil has been driving on hilly roads in his van, treating traumatised animals and convincing farmers not to sell the injured sheep to the slaughterhouse. The blaze ripped through the southeastern cities of Diyarbakir and Mardin on June 22, claiming 15 lives. Experts pointed to faulty wiring as a possible cause. (AFP)
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Updated 10 July 2024
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Turkish volunteer fights to save fire-scarred sheep

Turkish volunteer fights to save fire-scarred sheep

MAZIDAGI, Turkiye: Lying on her back, the sheep struggled as the man approached to bandage her udders, which had been burned in a fire last month that killed hundreds of sheep in southeast Turkiye.
Since the fire, Hasan Kizil has been driving on hilly roads in his van, treating traumatized animals and convincing farmers not to sell injured sheep to the slaughterhouse.
The blaze ripped through the southeastern cities of Diyarbakir and Mardin on June 22, claiming 15 lives. Experts pointed to faulty wiring as a possible cause.
More than 1,000 sheep and goats died in the fire, according to the agriculture ministry, including those in the Mazidagi area, 36 kilometers (22 miles) from Mardin.
“Most of them had their eyes completely closed, too swollen to see in front of them,” the 29-year-old, who largely taught himself how to care for the animals, said while treating burns around blackened hooves and udders.
“Had it continued for a few more days, the spoiled milk would have caused septicaemia,” he said, referring to blood poisoning by bacteria. “We almost lost them.”
Every day, Kizil voluntarily visits farms to monitor the animals and convince farmers to keep their damaged herds.
Caring for injured and unproductive animals is a heavy burden for the young breeder, who owes 27,000 Turkish lira ($825) to the bank while also paying for medicine and hay.
Former kebab seller Mehmet Celebioglu, in his 30s, went into debt to buy 160 sheep and a few goats. Now only about 40 remain — female sheep unable to produce milk and young goats orphaned by the fire.
“They were lying in the fields when the fire broke out. 120 sheep burned on the spot. Their eyes melted... these are all that are left,” he said.
“My brothers risked their lives to save them,” added his 18-year-old sister Gulistan, recalling how the fire cut off the electricity and water supplies as hot wind raged over the hills.
But selling the remaining stock is not an option for Celebioglu, originally from Adana, a large city in the south.
“Selling them? They’d pay me 2,000 to 3,000 lira,” he said.
“I’ve spent two years teaching myself this job and most of all, I love my animals.”

Disaster victims
The farmers’ attachment to their sheep encouraged Kizil to support them and reach out to disaster victims, as he did after treating injured animals following the massive earthquake that struck southeastern Turkiye in February 2023, killing 55,000 people.
Now a local star on Instagram, he is known for making braces and prostheses for disabled animals. More than 240,000 followers track his work rehabilitating foxes, cats and injured birds.
Recalling the night of the fire, he said: “It was a battlefield around here.”
“The butchers were trying to grab the wounded animals and slaughter them, while we were trying to keep them alive.”
Images of the animals moved vets from several cities to rush to the scene voluntarily.
The municipality in the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir took in injured animals at its shelter, while others were sent to clinics in Izmir (west Turkiye), Adana, and Istanbul.
“We are still fighting,” said Kizil, in a region where agriculture and livestock farming are the mainstay of the economy.
Applying ointment to the black wounds on the female sheep, he added: “If we can recover the udders, these will be saved.”


Nobel Prize in medicine honors two Americans for discovery of microRNA

Nobel Prize in medicine honors two Americans for discovery of microRNA
Updated 07 October 2024
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Nobel Prize in medicine honors two Americans for discovery of microRNA

Nobel Prize in medicine honors two Americans for discovery of microRNA
  • The Nobel Assembly said Monday that their discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function”

STOCKHOLM: The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.
The Nobel Assembly said that their discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.”
Ambros performed the research that led to his prize at Harvard University. He is currently a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Ruvkun’s research was performed at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, where he’s a professor of genetics, said Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Committee.
Perlmann said he spoke to Ruvkun by phone shortly before the announcement.
“It took a long time before he came to the phone and sounded very tired, but he quite rapidly, was quite excited and happy, when he understood what, it was all about,” Perlmann said.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that were critical in slowing the pandemic.
The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
The announcement launched this year’s Nobel prizes award season.
Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Oct. 14.
The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.


Sardinia’s sheep farmers battle bluetongue as climate warms

Sardinia’s sheep farmers battle bluetongue as climate warms
Updated 07 October 2024
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Sardinia’s sheep farmers battle bluetongue as climate warms

Sardinia’s sheep farmers battle bluetongue as climate warms
  • Some 20,000 sheep have died so far this year on the island, which is home to nearly half Italy’s flock and plays an important role in the production of famed Italian cheeses such as Pecorino

ARBUS: The sheep huddle together, bleeding from the nose, aborting lambs or suffocating on saliva as they succumb to bluetongue, a virus sweeping through flocks on the Italian island of Sardinia.
Some 20,000 sheep have died so far this year on the island, which is home to nearly half Italy’s flock and plays an important role in the production of famed Italian cheeses such as Pecorino.
It is another blow for farmers in a region already battered by a drought aggravated by man-made climate change — which experts say is also fueling the spread of bluetongue and longer outbreaks.
“The virus hit about two and a half months earlier than usual,” 39-year-old farmer Michela Dessi told AFP as she scanned her flock for panting or limping sheep in her fields in Arbus in western Sardinia.
Bluetongue does not present any risks to humans but in animals it causes swollen heads, high fevers, mouth ulcers, difficulty swallowing and breathing, and can turn an infected animal’s tongue blue.
It is transmitted between animals by biting midges.
While cattle, goats and deer can get it too, sheep are the most severely affected, according to the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH).
Infected and pregnant ewes abort or their lambs are born deformed, and survivors can lose their wool.
Sunken sides are a sign the ewes are carrying dead fetuses. The sick animals struggle to expel them.
The infection rate this year on Dessi’s farm is about 60 percent, and some 30 percent of her sheep have aborted.
Around 50 of her 650 sheep have died — and in a way she said was “horrible to watch.”
With high fevers, “they refuse food and water and some suffocate or drown in their own saliva,” she said, adding that it is illegal to euthanize them.
Nearly 3,000 outbreaks have been recorded so far this year in Sardinia, compared to 371 last year — and the end is not yet in sight.
Bluetongue used to peak in Sardinia in August but has done so as late as November in recent years, according to the region’s veterinary research institute (IZS).
“Climatic conditions heavily influence midge populations,” the animal health division at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome told AFP.
They affect “their biting behavior and the speed of development of the virus, with climate change likely driving the virus’s expansion... and contributing to larger outbreaks.”
Cases have been reported this year in other European countries, from neighboring France to Portugal, Spain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Bluetongue has been present in Sardinia since 2000 but Italy’s farming lobby Coldiretti says authorities are too slow each year to vaccinate the island’s flocks.
The costs of failing to rein it in are high.
A University of Bologna study last year found the 2017 outbreak, which killed 34,500 sheep, cost an estimated 30 million euros ($33 million).
That included damages suffered by farms — deaths, reduced milk yields, infertility, abortions — costs to animal health authorities and subventions paid by the region to affected farms.
“The first outbreaks occur in the same at-risk areas each year,” meaning highly targeted measures could theoretically prevent outbreaks, said Stefano Cappai from research institute IZS.
There are three variants on the island this year, two of which can be vaccinated against, with mortality rates twice as high among unvaccinated sheep.
Flocks should be vaccinated in March or April, Cappai said, but vaccines were only issued by the region in mid-June this year.
By that point, the virus had begun to spread unchecked.
Even if the vaccines had been made available earlier, some farmers fear to use them.
Others only vaccinate part of their flock, which means they fail to reach herd immunity, Cappai said.
And some farmers — like Dessi — vaccinated her flock, only for the sheep to catch the variant for which there is no vaccine yet.
Battista Cualbu, head of Coldiretti in Sardinia, who also has an outbreak on his farm, said vaccines are not enough and authorities must disinfect areas and provide midge repellents.
“It would certainly save public money because the region has to pay compensation for dead livestock (and) lost income,” he said, including less milk sold and fewer lambs for the slaughterhouse.
Compensation is set at 150 euros per sheep killed by bluetongue — a figure Coldiretti is battling to increase, although the region has failed to pay up over the past three years, Dessi said.
As temperatures fall, the case numbers are expected to decline but Dessi said the end was weeks away.
“I’ve dug three mass graves already and I fear the worst is still to come,” she said.


Survivor of rare rapid-aging disease progeria dies at 28

Sammy Basso. (Twitter @SammyBasso)
Sammy Basso. (Twitter @SammyBasso)
Updated 06 October 2024
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Survivor of rare rapid-aging disease progeria dies at 28

Sammy Basso. (Twitter @SammyBasso)
  • Born in 1995 in Schio, in the northern Italian region of Veneto, Basso was diagnosed with progeria at the age of two. In 2005, he and his parents founded the Italian Progeria Association

MILAN: Sammy Basso, who was the longest living survivor of the rare genetic disease progeria, has died at the age of 28, the Italian Progeria Association said on Sunday.
Progeria, also known as Hutchinson–Gilford syndrome, causes people to age rapidly, leading them to appear older than they are, with a reduced quality of life and a life expectancy of only 13.5 years without treatment, the association’s website said.
It affects one in every 8 million people born, and has a worldwide incidence of one in every 20 million.
Born in 1995 in Schio, in the northern Italian region of Veneto, Basso was diagnosed with progeria at the age of two. In 2005, he and his parents founded the Italian Progeria Association.
He became famous through the National Geographic documentary “Sammy’s Journey,” which recounts his journey along Route 66 in the United States, from Chicago to Los Angeles, with his parents and one of his best friends, Riccardo.
“Today our light, our guide, has gone out. Thank you Sammy for making us part of this wonderful life,” the association wrote on its Instagram page.
There are only 130 recognized cases of classic progeria worldwide, of which four are in Italy.
However, the Italian Progeria Association estimated there could be as many as 350 cases as they can be difficult to trace especially in developing countries.

 


‘Russian spy’ whale likely died of infection: Norway police

‘Russian spy’ whale likely died of infection: Norway police
Updated 04 October 2024
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‘Russian spy’ whale likely died of infection: Norway police

‘Russian spy’ whale likely died of infection: Norway police
  • Animal rights’ organizations NOAH and One Whale claimed the whale had been shot dead and filed a police report

OSLO: A beluga whale found dead in Norway in August, suspected by some of being a Russian spy, probably died of an infection and not gunshot wounds, Norwegian police said Friday.
Nicknamed “Hvaldimir” in a pun on the Norwegian word for whale (“hval“) and its purported ties to Moscow, the white beluga first appeared off the coast in Norway’s far-northern Finnmark region in 2019 and quickly became a celebrity in the country.
He was found dead on August 31 in a bay on Norway’s southwestern coast.
Animal rights’ organizations NOAH and One Whale claimed the whale had been shot dead and filed a police report.
The Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted an autopsy and found a 35-centimeter (14-inch) stick lodged in his mouth.
“The report concluded that the probable cause of death was a bacterial infection, possibly a result of wounds in his mouth caused by a stick that got stuck,” police official Amund Preede Revheim said in a statement on Friday.
“The stick may also have made it difficult for Hvaldimir to eat, thereby increasing the risk of infection,” he added.
Police said they had found no trace of bullets and had decided not to open an investigation.
“There is nothing in the examinations that suggests Hvaldimir was killed illegally,” Preede Revheim said.
When Hvaldimir was found in 2019, Norwegian marine biologists removed a man-made harness with a mount suited for an action camera and the words “Equipment St. Petersburg” printed in English on the plastic clasps.
The whale appeared to be accustomed to humans.
Norwegian officials said the whale might have escaped an enclosure and been trained by the Russian navy.
Moscow has never made any official response to claims the whale could be a “Russian spy.”


Stranded killer whales make their way to sea in Russia

Stranded killer whales make their way to sea in Russia
Updated 04 October 2024
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Stranded killer whales make their way to sea in Russia

Stranded killer whales make their way to sea in Russia

MOSCOW: A family of killer whales who were stranded in a silted estuary in the Russian Far East have made their way to the open sea after researchers directed them into deeper water, Russia’s emergencies ministry said on Friday.
The four animals, two adults and two calves, beached in the estuary on the Kamchatka Peninsula this week and researchers and volunteers had to douse them with water at one point to prevent them from dying.
After one unsuccessful rescue attempt in which they missed the narrow exit during high tide, the orcas managed to leave the estuary on Friday, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app where it also published videos of the rescue operation.
Orcas, or killer whales, belong to the sub-order of toothed whales but are also the largest member of the dolphin family, according to Whale and Dolphin Conservation.