STATUS UPDATES
A week in which a walrus was born, a wasp was christened and a 42-year-old pitcher took his first home run trot
NAMED A newly discovered species of wasp, after Brad Pitt. Conobregma bradpitti lays its eggs in moth and butterfly caterpillars, explained Buntika Butcher, lead author of a paper describing the species, SciNews.com reported. Pitt once played a vampire, but it wasn’t the wasp’s parasitic behaviour that inspired its name. Butcher said a poster of Pitt used to hang on her laboratory wall.
BORN A baby walrus at a Quebec City aquarium. The unnamed pup was delivered naturally by mother Arnaliaq (pictured, right), the Montreal Gazette reported, with the aquarium noting it was the first live birth by a walrus in captivity in Canada, and only the seventh such birth in North America since 1930. Zoo staff didn’t immediately determine the sex of the baby.
DISCOUNTED Donald Trump’s former mansion in Connecticut, which he purchased for $4 million (U.S.) in 1982. The 19,773-squarefoot main house and guest house have eight bedrooms and 13 baths. Originally listed for $54 million, it is now selling for the cut-rate price of $45 million. Trump’s ex-wife Ivana sold the home in 1988 for $15 million.
IMPOSSIBLE A home run by Bartolo Colon. The New York Mets pitcher pulled off a feat this week, becoming the oldest player — at 42 — in Major League Baseball history to hit his first career home run. As Mets announcer Gary Cohen called: “Bartolo has done it! The impossible has happened!”
MISNAMED Bayan Zehlif, a Muslim student who was labelled “Isis Phillips” in her high school yearbook. School officials in California are investigating why a caption misidentified Zehlif as Phillips — the name of another former student. “The school reached out to me and had the audacity to say that this was a typo. I beg to differ, let’s be real,” Zehlif wrote on Facebook.
DIED Sylvia Kauders, a former civil servant who took up acting later in life but racked up dozens of film and TV roles — sometimes described only as “old Jewish lady.” Her credits included American Splendor, Inside Llewyn Davis and The Sopranos. “I was never a beauty, but what I was was talented and smart,” Kauders said in 2008. “Someone has to play the small roles, and I love the work.”
DISMISSED A legal battle between 92-year-old media mogul Sumner Redstone and his 52-year-old former girlfriend over control of his $42-billion empire. Manuela Herzer claimed that Redstone did not have the mental competence to write her out of his will last year. A judge disagreed; Herzer signalled she will appeal.
IMPRACTICAL A plan by Kenya to send hundreds of thousands of Somalis back to their war-torn homeland or to other countries. Kenya vowed to close the world’s biggest refugee camp, Dadaab, within a year. Human rights groups decried the plan, calling it dangerous, illegal and impractical.