Entertainment news
Experts say more proactive approach to dog ownership is needed after recent dog attacks – CBC.ca
The Current24:11What dog attacks say about dog ownership culture
As two families deal with the impacts of separate dog attacks in Toronto and Edmonton, some Canadians say they believe not enough is being done to stop dangerous dog attacks.
“I remember back in the ’80s, maybe into the ’90s, if your dog bit someone, your dog was taken away and destroyed,” Tamara Dufour told The Current’s Matt Galloway. “I don’t agree with that.”
“But the pendulum has swung so far now that… that these dogs and these owners are allowed to re-offend and re-offend and re-offend.”
In late March, a child in Toronto was taken to hospital with serious, life-altering injuries following a dog attack. A woman and her off-leash dog were inside a playground area when the dog allegedly “charged” through an open gate toward a child who was walking with their father, police said.
Two weeks later, an 11-year-old died in Edmonton after he was attacked by two large cane corso dogs, a breed of mastiff. Police attempted life-saving measures until emergency medical services arrived, but the child was declared dead on scene.
These incidents are prompting some calls not just for more enforcement of the law beyond municipal borders, but more proactive pet ownership too.
Dufour alleges that “every single one of those cases were preventable.”
The mother of the 11-year-old boy who died in an Edmonton dog attack says she regrets letting him leave to visit his father, whose roommate owned the two dogs that mauled her son.
These attacks hit close to home for Dufour. On June 23, 2022, Dufour and her partner were on a mountain bike ride at Iroquoia Heights Conservation Area in Hamilton, Ont., when they came across a man with two big German shepherds.
Dufour said they got off of their bikes and moved off the side of the trail to avoid the dogs, but the owner couldn’t control them. One of the dogs escaped the owner’s grasp and attacked Dufour’s leg. She needed 30 stitches to mend the injury.
Following the attack, Dufour said the German shepherds were designated as dangerous dogs by the municipality. She said the order required the dogs to be muzzled in public and specified that they can’t be on extendable leashes, which make animals more difficult to control.
Responsible owners
One of the prevailing themes from the recent Toronto and Edmonton dog attacks is that it wasn’t the first time those owners had gotten in trouble for their dogs’ actions.
In Toronto, it was revealed that the woman charged in the dog attack was previously deemed an “irresponsible” owner of dangerous dogs and subsequently ordered evicted from her apartment, according to court records and her former landlord.
In Edmonton, the city said Animal Control peace officers had previously visited the house twice this year to investigate other complaints of dog attacks, prior to their killing of the 11-year-old. On Friday, they said animal control officers acted appropriately when investigating the two previous attacks.
“Prior to the fatality on April 1, 2024, the city had no lawful basis to remove the dogs from the home,” the city said in a statement to CBC News.
Brian Pasmore, the founder and head dog trainer at K911 in Edmonton, said incidents like the one in Edmonton are sad and unfortunate, but they’re not one-offs.
“There’s a pattern of behaviour established” when dogs aren’t trained properly, he told Galloway.
According to Pasmore, different breeds have different tendencies. Large, powerful dogs like cane corsos, for example, require significant obedience, early socialization and an owner who’s good with setting rules and boundaries.
“That said … the vast, vast majority are very capable being good social members of the family and of the community through proper socialization and training,” he said.
When buying a dog, owners should research the breed, make sure their lifestyle matches that of the dog’s energy and temperament, and make sure they “have the skill set necessary — or at least [be] willing to learn the skill set necessary — to manage it,” he said.
Dawn Rault, a lecturer at the Simon Fraser University’s School of Criminology in Burnaby, B.C., agrees. Rault, whose research focuses on enforcing animal law, recalls a dangerous dog designation hearing she went to in Calgary.
At the hearing, the dog was said to have demonstrated aggressive and anxious behaviour. Yet, the dog’s owners let their three young kids jump on the dog and even pull at its tail and testicles.
One of the children even required plastic surgery after he jumped on the dog while it was sleeping, causing it to bite him very severely in the face.
“At the hearing, the owners failed to take any responsibility or accountability or really see the severity of the incident,” she said. And the dog … was seized, and it went through these appraisals and testing of its behaviour.”
“It was deemed to have really concerning behaviour, but because the owner was not willing to, you know, have a fence, leash the dog, teach their children how to interact in a way that’s appropriate with dogs, in the end this dog was ordered to be euthanized.”
Had the owners taken responsibility for how the dog was treated, Rault said there would have been a different outcome.
“It comes down to responsible pet ownership,” she told Galloway. “It comes down to people taking responsibility for owning their dogs and the behaviour of their dogs.”
Entertainment news
Researchers parse oddity of distantly related bats in Solomon Islands that appear identical – Science Daily
A study of body size in leaf-nosed bats of the Solomon Islands has revealed surprising genetic diversity among nearly indistinguishable species on different islands.
The research team behind the study from the University of Melbourne, Australia, included several evolutionary biologists from the University of Kansas — who collected specimens in the field, conducted genetic analysis and co-wrote the research appearing in the journal Evolution.
“This is genus of bats called Hipposideros with multiple species all over Southeast Asia in the Pacific,” said co-author Rob Moyle, senior curator of ornithology with the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, whose lab conducted much of the investigation. “In the Solomon Islands, where we’ve been doing a lot of fieldwork, on each island there can be four or five different species, and they parse out in terms of body size. There’s a small, medium, large — or if there’s more than three species, there’s a small, medium, large and extra large. On one island there’s five, so there’s an extra small.”
According to Moyle, who also serves as professor of evolutionary biology at KU, previous generations of researchers reviewed the bats’ morphology, or physical traits, and concluded they’re one species.
“You go from one island to the next, and the medium-sized species is identical to the other islands,” he said. “Biologists have always looked at those and said, ‘OK, it’s obvious. There’s a small, medium and large size species distributed across multiple islands.'”
However, Moyle and his collaborators had more modern analysis at their disposal. In sequencing the DNA of bats they collected from the field (along with specimens from museum collections), the team found the large and extra large bat species weren’t actually closely related.
“That means that somehow these populations arrived at this identical body size and appearance not by being closely related — but we usually think identical-looking things are that way because they’re really closely related,” Moyle said. “It brings up questions like what’s unique about these islands that you’d have convergence of body size and appearance into really stable size classes on different islands.”
The team performed precise measurements on bats from different islands, confirming previous work by scientists in the Solomon Islands.
“All the large ones from different islands all clustered together in their measurements,” Moyle said. “It’s not just that the earlier biologists made a mistake. They looked at them and said, ‘Oh, yeah, they’re the same.’ And they’re actually not. We measured them, and they’re all clustered together, though they’re different species. We verified — sort of — that earlier morphological work.”
Moyle’s collaborators included lead author Tyrone Lavery of the University of Melbourne and KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. Other KU co-authors include Devon DeRaad, doctoral student, and Lucas DeCicco, collections manager, both of the Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum; and Karen Olson of both KU and Rutgers University. They were joined by Piokera Holland of Ecological Solutions Solomon Islands; Jennifer Seddon of James Cook University and Luke Leung of the Rodent Testing Centre in Gatton, Australia.
Genetic analysis that revealed the bats weren’t closely related was performed at KU’s Genome Sequencing Core.
“When we created family trees using the bats’ DNA, we found that what we thought was just one species of large bat in the Solomon Islands was actually a case where bigger bats had evolved from the smaller species multiple times across different islands,” Lavery said. “We think these larger bats might be evolving to take advantage of prey that the smaller bats aren’t eating.”
DeRadd said the work could be “highly relevant” for conservation efforts in identifying evolutionarily significant units in this group.
“Body size had misled the taxonomy,” DeRadd said. “It turns out every island’s population of extra-large bats is basically genetically unique and deserving of conservation. Understanding that is really helpful. There are issues with deforestation. If we don’t know whether these populations are unique, it’s hard to know whether we should be putting effort into conserving them.”
According to DeCicco, the new understanding of leaf-nosed bats was fascinating on a purely theoretical level.
“We study evolutionary processes that lead to biodiversity,” he said. “This shows nature is more complex. We humans love to try to find patterns — and researchers love to try to find rules that apply to broad suites of organisms. It’s super cool when we find exceptions to these rules. These are patterns that you see duplicated over lots of different taxa on lots of different islands — a large and a small species, or two closely related species that differ somehow to partition their niches. We’re seeing there are lots of different evolutionary scenarios that can produce that same pattern.”
Entertainment news
Sandra Oh Reenacts ‘Princess Diaries’ Phone Scene for ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show’ – Hollywood Reporter
Sandra Oh is stepping into her vice principal role from The Princess Diaries once again for a special reunion.
The actress reprised her Princess Diaries role as Vice Principal Geraldine Gupta on The Kelly Clarkson Show on Tuesday to introduce guest and her Princess Diaries co-star, Anne Hathaway. Hathaway played Princess Mia Thermopolis in the original 2001 film and its 2004 sequel.
For the introduction Oh reenacted her famous scene from the film when she picks up the phone and says into the receiver, “Gupta. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm,” before hanging up and telling everyone, “The queen is coming.”
Though in the film Oh’s character is referring to Julie Andrews’ Clarisse Renaldi, on the talk show she instead introduced Hathaway.
Despite Andrews stating that starring in another Princess Diaries film probably wouldn’t “be possible,” a third installment is in the works with Aadrita Mukerji penning a script for Disney.
While speaking to V Magazine, Hathaway teased the third film, sharing, “We’re in a good place. That’s all I can say. There’s nothing to announce yet. But we’re in a good place.”
Based on Meg Cabot’s novel, the first film earned $165.3 million globally. For the sequel Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, the film brought in $134.7 million globally. Late filmmaker Garry Marshall directed both installments, which remain pop culture touchstones.
Entertainment news
Barry Jenkins Responds to Criticism That ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’ Is Part of “Soulless Machine” – Hollywood Reporter
Barry Jenkins isn’t necessarily feeling the love from every social media commenter over his involvement in Mufasa: The Lion King after the Disney prequel released its first trailer this week.
After screening footage at CinemaCon earlier this month, the film’s trailer was released online Monday and features narration from Rafiki (John Kani) explaining that the movie offers the origin story for Mufasa, the lion featured in 1994’s animated The Lion King and Jon Favreau’s 2019 photorealistic remake of the same name.
Jenkins took to X (formerly Twitter) on Monday to share the trailer, and his post was greeted with both favorable responses and also some negative ones, with the criticism apparently stemming from backlash to Disney trend of reimagining its previous animation hits. One user wrote, “Barry, You’re too good and talented for this Iger’s soulless machine,” referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger.
The filmmaker, whose 2016 drama feature Moonlight won three Oscars, responded to the comment by defending the original 1994 animated film, which takes inspiration from William Shakespeare’s classic play Hamlet. “There is nothing soulless about The Lion King,” Jenkins wrote. “For decades children have sat in theaters all over the world experiencing collective grief for the first time, engaging Shakespeare for the first time, across aisles in myriad languages. A most potent vessel for communal empathy.”
This response spurred another commenter, who recalled having interviewed the filmmaker at the Toronto Film Festival when Moonlight first debuted, to write, “That Barry Jenkins wouldn’t have said what you just said.”
Jenkins appeared to interpret the comment as criticizing him for working on a family-friendly project and replied, “Bruh what kind of logic is that? How about this, here are a few videos from the ‘same Barry Jenkins who premiered Moonlight’ (as you put it) showing some of the things I was doing in my spare time AT THE SAME TIME I was writing Moonlight.” Jenkins then included videos from that time in which he discussed his work and advocacy that centered on children.
When the commenter then responded that his initial remark was referencing the post stating that Jenkins is above “Iger’s soulless machine,” Jenkins responded, “You said ‘and that Barry Jenkins wouldn’t have said what you just said.’ But it’s cool. You said it. I responded. It’s done. I’m going back to work now. Much respect.”
A third user praised Jenkins as an “extremely talented director” and noted that “very little good” can come from the filmmaker addressing social media criticism. Jenkins replied, “Yeah, there’s a quota. And I just hit it,” adding a laughing emoji.
Jenkins’ most recent feature as a director was 2018’s If Beale Street Could Talk. The film won the Oscar for Regina King’s performance and was nominated for two other Academy Awards, including one for Jenkins’ script adapting James Baldwin’s novel. Jenkins himself won an Oscar for his work on the screenplay for Moonlight, which also prevailed for best picture and best supporting actor for Mahershala Ali.
During his CinemaCon appearance this month, Jenkins explained that the Mufasa script resonated with him in part due to his fond memories of watching the 1994 original with his young nephews. “This film explores Mufasa’s rise to become the iconic king that we all know,” he said at the time. “And yet what I love about it is that it’s so full of heart and it helps all these kids, like these same kids that I helped raise.”
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Disney and Jenkins’ representatives for additional comment.
Hitting theaters Dec. 20, Mufasa includes original music from Lin-Manuel Miranda, in addition to the voice work of Aaron Pierre (Mufasa), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Taka), Seth Rogen (Pumbaa), Billy Eichner (Timon), Donald Glover (Simba), Beyoncé Knowles-Carter (Nala) and Blue Ivy Carter (Kiara).
Man buried with his bicycle, took box, radios and mobile phones
Researchers parse oddity of distantly related bats in Solomon Islands that appear identical – Science Daily
Sandra Oh Reenacts ‘Princess Diaries’ Phone Scene for ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show’ – Hollywood Reporter
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