Latest news with #sanctuary
BBC News
7 hours ago
- General
- BBC News
Meet the Isle of Wight carpenter behind rescued bears enclosure
The carpenter who built an enclosure for two "naughty" rescued brother bears says it feels "amazing" to see them Tweitman helped create the enclosure for Benji and Balu at Wildheart Animal Sanctuary on the Isle of has been almost a year in the making to create the enclosure for the bears, who were saved from a cage in Azerbaijan and released into the sanctuary on 4 Tweitman says it was "quite emotional" to see the bears splashing around in the water - even if they recently damaged part of their new enclosure. The bears were recently moved into a smaller pen while repairs were made to part of their new home, but have since been chief executive, Lawrence Bates, said they had a "notoriously curious nature" and jokingly called them "naughty bears" after they damaged a brick. Mr Tweitman explained the 3,500sqm (11,483 sqft) enclosure was made through "lots of recycling and re-using" to keep costs materials have been used to make the bear platform and the connecting ramp in the bears' new the local marina donated concrete boat floats to build the structure."Actually building an enclosure for bears - everything is supersized, super engineered and structurally a lot safer. There's zoo regulations to follow, guidelines and stuff so the bears don't escape," Mr Tweitman said."[There was] a lot of thought about putting in a rock slide to hang out on and sunbathe. All sorts of things that cropped up as we built, adding in extra mounds for privacy, hibernation holes." About two years ago, the bears were relocated by the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources to a temporary had been previously kept in a cage at a restaurant in Azerbaijan to attract 2024, Wildheart Animal Sanctuary started a fundraising campaign to pay for the bears' transport and brand new home, with almost £218,000 raised. Mr Tweitman added: "We broke ground last August I think, obviously it was time critical getting the bears here."It's absolute madness really, to think the amount of work and effort that everyone's put in to this build for two bears."It's quite emotional just to see them splashing around in the water, just happy." You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
New York Times
4 days ago
- General
- New York Times
Two Brown Bears Broke Out of Their Pen. Then They Ransacked the Honey Stash.
Mish and Lucy are friendly and easygoing siblings. They get along well. This time of year, they primarily hang out in their enclosure eating fruits, nuts and honey. But on Monday, the pair of 5-year-old bears broke out of their living quarters at a wildlife sanctuary in Devon, in Southwest England, and helped themselves to a stockpile of fresh food. And in a scene that could've been pulled straight from 'Winnie the Pooh,' the bears devoured a week's worth of honey in about an hour. Mark Habben, the director of zoological operations at Wildwood Trust, which operates the sanctuary, said he received a call on Monday afternoon informing him of a 'code red' at the organization's Devon location. (At the time, he was working at Wildwood Trust's other location in Kent, a roughly four-hour drive away.) Mr. Habben said he first thought it might be a drill. But when he realized it was a genuine alert, he said, the sanctuary enacted its emergency protocol, taking 16 guests into a play barn for safety and calling the police. None of the visitors were at risk, he said, and the bears were not in a public area. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
BBC News
21-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Rescued bears settling into new home in Isle of Wight sanctuary
A wildlife sanctuary has said "words cannot quite describe" the scenes as two brown bear brothers rescued from a cage near a restaurant in Azerbaijan settled into their new home on the Isle of and Balu arrived at Wildheart Animal Sanctuary in Sandown on 4 June and were released into their new enclosure on donations went towards the almost £218,000 raised for their transport and the brand new space for the upstairs viewing area, closed while the bears acclimatise, is expected to open next week if the brothers are deemed ready for visitors. A downstairs viewing area is expected to open next month. The bears were kept in a holding pen while they got used to their new life on the island but have now been released into the new 3,500sqm (11,483 sqft) space in-keeping with their natural environment. The sanctuary said: "A few tentative steps turned to utter joy and delight."Years of significant challenges, incredibly hard work and a massive amount of fundraising all suddenly became worth it for this one moment of pure joy."Tears all round... thank you to every single person that has played a role in this rescue - this is why we do what we do." About two years ago, the bears were relocated by the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan from a restaurant, where they had been kept to attract customers, to a temporary Animal Sanctuary started fundraising to rehome the bears having become aware of their situation in May 2024. You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
CBS News
20-06-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Trump administration can't require states to cooperate with ICE to get transportation funding, judge says
A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from requiring almost two dozen mostly Democratic states to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in order to receive billions in transportation funding. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned in April his department may cut off grants to any recipients that fail to "cooperate generally with Federal authorities in the enforcement of Federal law" — part of a wider gambit to push back against "sanctuary" jurisdictions. A group of 20 states sued, arguing the administration doesn't have the legal authority to tie transportation dollars — which states rely on for upkeep of roads, airports and other infrastructure — to immigration enforcement. U.S. District Judge John McConnell sided with the 20 plaintiff states on Thursday, issuing a preliminary injunction that barred the government from enforcing the new immigration rules for "the States and their governmental subdivisions" while the lawsuit works its way through court. The policy, McConnell wrote, "is arbitrary and capricious in its scope and lacks specificity in how the States are to cooperate on immigration enforcement in exchange for Congressionally appropriated transportation dollars — grant money that the States rely on to keep their residents safely and efficiently on the road, in the sky, and on the rails." The Rhode Island judge added that "Congress did not authorize or grant authority to the Secretary of Transportation to impose immigration enforcement conditions on federal dollars specifically appropriated for transportation purposes." California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose state was one of the 20 plaintiffs, lauded the decision in a statement, saying President Trump has tried to "coerce state and local governments into doing his bidding." "President Trump is threatening to withhold critical transportation funds unless states agree to carry out his inhumane and illogical immigration agenda for him. He is treating these funds – funds that go toward improving our roads and keeping our planes in the air – as a bargaining chip," Bonta wrote. CBS News has reached out to the White House and Department of Transportation for comment. The Trump administration has threatened to cut off some federal funding to "sanctuary" jurisdictions, or cities and states that limit local police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. The administration argues these policies make it harder for agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement to apprehend undocumented immigrants, including those with criminal records. But some jurisdictions say that if local police are forced to cooperate with ICE, immigrants may be less likely to trust police. In April, a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the Trump administration from enforcing executive orders threatening to pull funds from "sanctuary cities." Duffy wrote on X earlier this week that his department "will NOT fund rogue state actors who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement." "And to cities that stand by while rioters destroy transportation infrastructure — don't expect a red cent from DOT, either. Follow the law, or forfeit the funding," Duffy added, likely referring to protests against ICE in Los Angeles and other cities.
The Guardian
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sanctuary by Marina Warner review – the power of stories in an age of migration
Marina Warner begins this dazzlingly protean book with a distinctly mundane memory. It is the 1950s, she is a young teen, and the highlight of her week is going to the Saturday morning 'flicks' with a neighbour's slightly older daughter. One particular movie scene has stayed with her: it involves a man dressed in a vaguely historical costume who is fleeing for his life. Face contorted with terror, he makes it as far as the door of a cathedral, whereupon he knocks loudly and cries 'Sanctuary!' The door opens a crack, the man slides inside, and the Saturday morning audience breaths a collective sigh of relief. Even if the plot points remain hazy – is Robin Hood somehow involved? – the underlying principle needs no explaining. The fugitive has invoked the ancient right by gaining entrance to a designated sacred space. As long as he stays put his pursuers can't touch him. From these hyper-local beginnings, Warner sets out to explore and expand what 'sanctuary' means in an age when millions are on the move around the world, chased out of their homes by environmental disaster, economic collapse, war and political oppression. It is in these grim circumstances that she proposes a new concept of sanctuary, one built not from bricks and mortar or even tents and blankets, but by tales and their telling. Over the past 50 years of her distinguished career as a cultural historian, Warner has immersed herself in liminal literature, tracing the way that fairytales, playground chants, lullabies, fables, patter and ditties manage to evade the censor, slip under the radar, and slide into conversations without attracting too much attention. Now she suggests putting these folk forms to work, using them to build bridges and forge connections between arrivants (a term she prefers to 'migrants') and their often hostile hosts. It is at this point that sceptics might ask how Warner's proposed 'commons of wonder', filled with stories of myth and magic, can possibly help with the practical needs of displaced people more likely to be worried about clean water, healthcare, a job and, above all, the legal right to remain. This is a challenge that she knows well and has spent her career confronting. Her earliest books on the Virgin Mary (1976), Joan of Arc (1981) and, especially, female statuary (the magnificent Monuments and Maidens, 1985), all made the case for allegorical forms having a powerful conditioning effect on the way that people understand and experience their own lives. She got critical flak for it, as well as a great deal of praise. Decades on she shows no signs of being abashed, insisting as strongly as ever that storytelling can function as a 'binding agent' between strangers, creating spaces for concepts of justice and coexistence to develop. As back-up she deploys the British anthropologist Alfred Gell's useful phrase 'art as agency' to underscore her belief that telling stories has real-world consequences. This won't be enough to convince everyone, yet even the most literal-minded critic must admire Warner's commitment to making things happen. In 2015 she won the prestigious Holberg prize and used her £380,000 winnings to help set up Stories in Transit, a project designed to facilitate the exchange of stories between the young people, mostly men, who daily arrive in Sicily from the Middle East, the Maghreb, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the eastern Mediterranean. What might emerge, Warner wanted to know, if these travellers and their tales were encouraged to mix and mingle? Din from Guinea, where civil strife has destroyed his family, arrived in Sicily after a two-year trek by foot across the Sahara followed by a journey across the Mediterranean in a boat. During a Stories in Transit workshop he tells a traditional tale from home called The Huntsman, the King's Son and the Enchanted Deer, a spirited mashup of politics and magic, comedy and sorrow, with one tale nestled inside another in the manner of One Thousand and One Nights. What strikes the comparatist in Warner is the way that this Guinean tale echoes animal stories from both the medieval Arab world and the even older Aesop's Fables. Still, it is not where a story has come from that concerns her so much as where it is going. Over the course of several sessions, The Huntsman, the King's Son and the Enchanted Deer develops into a promenade piece, complete with puppetry, song and animated film. From here another arrivant, this time from Gambia, takes the spirit of Din's story and turns it into something quite distinct, a comic parable with music called One for You and One for Me. Sceptics once again might worry that this privileging of fantastical and shape-shifting narratives strikes the wrong note in a world where truth has become slippery and facts are optional. But Warner is ready for them, pointing out that the world in which the arrivants live is already fictional. Rhetorically marshalled into 'hordes' or 'swarms', these 'aliens' are routinely denigrated as 'scroungers' and even 'criminals'. The official maps that tell them where they have come from and where they should go are also imaginary, continually redrawn in the wake of colonial and nationalistic carve-ups that frequently take little account of linguistic, cultural and ethnic affinities. There is another reason Warner feels strongly about encouraging the arrivants to play fast and loose with the materials to hand. At every stage in their hazardous journey they have been required to narrate their life stories to officials in particular ways if they are to be allowed to proceed to the next stage in their search for sanctuary. The dates must be right, the dangers consistent, and motives must be pure, involving escape from tyranny rather than desire for a better job. To deviate from the first telling of an account is to risk deportation. As a result, suggests Warner, in an exquisitely attuned reading of the situation, arrivants are sealed into versions of themselves that take no account of their changing feelings and experience. It is in this context that making up stories becomes vital in ensuring a form of survival that is as psychically healthy as it is physically safe. Sanctuary: Ways of Telling, Ways of Dwelling by Marina Warner is published by William Collins (£22). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
