odds ’n’ ends
FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich: Live traps are being placed in a suburban Detroit neighborhood in hopes of catching two Guinness World Records-holding cats and two others believed missing after a fire destroyed their owners’ home.
Oakland County Animal Control Supervisor Ron Shankin said Wednesday that flyers have been posted and Farmington Hills residents are asked to look out for the cats.
Arcturus, Cygnus and the other cats haven’t been seen since Sunday’s fire northwest of Detroit. Will and Lauren Powers escaped and opened doors to allow the cats to flee.
Arcturus holds the record for the world’s tallest domestic cat, measuring at about 19 inches (48 centimeters). Cygnus is the domestic cat with the world’s longest tail, measuring at more than 17 inches (43 centimeters). (AP)
BROOKLINE, Mass:
A Massachusetts town has removed the word “men” from the name of its governing body.
Brookline approved changing the Board of Selectmen to the Select Board at a Town Meeting vote Tuesday. The title “selectman” has been replaced with “select board member.”
The five-member panel includes two women.
The Boston Globe reports the measure also requires the use of gender-neutral language in town documents and communications.
The changes were proposed by a member of the town’s Commission for Diversity Inclusion & Community Relations. Commission member Alex Coleman says the measure is intended to help reflect a commitment to diversity and inclusion. Coleman says similar changes have been made in Newton and Amherst. (AP)
WASHINGTON:
A US court has sentenced an Irish national to 18 months in prison for trafficking a cup made from the horn of an endangered rhinoceros, in the latest case linked to an illicit global trade.
At the end of his sentence, Michael Hegarty will be on supervised release for three years, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
He was convicted in Florida of buying a “libation cup” of carved rhinoceros horn from a North Carolina auction house and then falsifying documents to smuggle it out of the United States.
Prices for ornate rhinoceros horn cups have exploded on Asian art markets in recent years. (AFP)
RIO DE JANEIRO:
The decomposing body of a dead humpback whale surprised swimmers when it washed up on Rio de Janeiro’s iconic Ipanema beach Wednesday.
Curious onlookers approached a cordon to take photographs of the humpback, whose 14-meter (45 feet) long carcass gave off a putrid stench as it lay exposed to the sun.
Some touched its jaw bones, which had come loose and lay on the damp sand.
Rafael Carvalho, a marine mammal biologist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, told AFP: “It is not possible to know what happened, it is in an advanced state of decomposition and that makes it difficult to know the cause of death.” (AFP)