A brown bear that underwent brain surgery in the first operation of its kind in the UK is doing well but is “not out of the woods” yet, a charity has said.

Boki went under the knife on Wednesday after an MRI scan revealed he had hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid in the brain.

The two-year-old mammal, who had been suffering from seizures and related health issues, is awake and said to be doing well after the surgery.

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It was the first time a procedure of this kind has been carried out in the UK. Pizzi previously became the first surgeon to perform a similar operation on a black bear in Asia.

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The conservation charity is fundraising for Boki’s surgery and immediate aftercare costs, which is expected to be about £20,000.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17730191

A nurse who created a wellbeing programme involving singing to sick children has won an award for her work.

Sally Spencer, a leukaemia advanced nurse practitioner, has won the Sky Arts Hero Award.

Alongside Birmingham-based choir Ex Cathedra, Ms Spencer performs songs to distract and soothe the patients at Birmingham Children's Hospital.

Ms Spencer, who has worked at the hospital for 25 years, said singing had "enormous benefits" for the children.

Ms Spencer told BBC Radio WM she came up with the idea of Singing Medicine in 2002.

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The Sky Arts Hero Award recognises unsung heroes who use the arts to help their local communities and has only one winner.

Chester Zoo has celebrated the birth of what it said was one of the rarest animals on earth.

The Cheshire attraction said the Persian onager was born to mum Azita after a year-long pregnancy.

Onagers hail from the semi-desert regions of Iran, and are related to domestic donkeys.

The foal was named Jasper, whose Persian meaning relates to treasure.

A dog has been rescued after seven hours trapped underground.

Adventurous Bryn found himself in a precarious situation after falling into a narrow, seven-metre deep natural rift in the hillside during a walk on the Darren Mountain in Cwmdare, Rhondda Cynon Taf.

The South and Mid Wales Cave Rescue Team was called to assist their colleagues at the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service in rescuing him.

A rescue operation, which took place on Sunday, involved a seven-hour effort using ropes and a harness before the combined efforts of both rescue teams brought him safely and uninjured back to the surface.

Harold Terens - a 100-year-old US Army Air Force veteran - called it "the best day of my life" as he married 96-year-old Jeanne Swerlin on Saturday.

On her way to the ceremony, the bride-to-be said: "It's not just for young people, love, you know? We get butterflies. And we get a little action, also."

She also said her sweetheart was the "greatest kisser ever".

The pair married in the town hall of Carentan, a key initial D-Day objective that witnessed fierce fighting after the Allied landings on 6 June 1944.

A Shetland woman has been telling how a search for a gene variant alerted her to her breast cancer diagnosis.

Christine Glaser, from Whalsay, had been a participant in Viking Genes, a research project that looked at the genetic make up of people from the Orkney and Shetland Islands.

Since those tests were taken, the understanding of the significance of certain genes has improved and last year geneticists sought special permissions to go back to those who took part in the study to ask if they wanted to know their results.

Although she had lost a sister to ovarian cancer, the family was unaware many of them carried a BRCA 2 gene variant that increased their risk of breast, ovarian and prostate cancer.

Christine’s cancer was caught early and successfully treated.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/12516919

A woman has sent a big thank you to the people of Merseyside for their "non-stop kindness" during a recent visit.

Christine Veitch, 75, from Cumbria, was on her way to visit her poorly brother in Neston when her train to Liverpool Lime Street terminated at Preston, leaving her in a rush to get the next train to the city

Speaking to the ECHO, Christine said: "We all got thrown off at Preston with six minutes to get the next train. We had to rush across the station onto an alternative train, which was already crowded."

It was then the "wave of kindness" began. She said: "First of all, I was offered a seat, which I was more than grateful for. I'm a pensioner, but I'm not a doddery old lady or anything, so that was nice to begin with."

Then a kindly stranger called Keith sat next to her and gave her reassurance about her onward journey. Christine said: "We got chatting, and I mentioned I was worried about whether or not I'd make it to the train for Neston. He said to me, 'don't worry pet, I'll take you'."

Keith guided Christine through Lime Street Station, then checked the timing of the trains and waited until she was safely on board before waving her off on the platform. "He was so so kind," said Christine. "He even gave me a kiss when he left!"

But it didn't stop there. Keith passed on the kindness baton to a lady called Jane, who was waiting on the same platform as Christine at Bidston. Christine said: "We got on the train and she saw me looking at a piece of paper I'd brought along with my journey times on. She said to me, 'I know where it is you're going - I'll tell you where to get off'.

When they arrived at Neston, a couple of lads lifted Christine's case off the train for her, and Jane showed her to the high street, from where she was able to make her own way to her brother's house.

A man who survived Nazi occupation and camps as a teenager has reflected on his harrowing start in life as he turns 100.

George Durkal, who was held captive in an internment camp in Germany during World War Two marked his milestone with a celebration at his care home. George was born as one of six siblings in Poland in 1925 but emigrated to the UK after the war. Speaking from the Argentum Lodge Care Home in Nailsea, in Somerset, he said the outbreak of the Second World War and Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939 had shattered his happy childhood.

Aged 15 he returned from school one day to find his house burnt to the ground, surrounded by German soldiers. Living in occupied Poland was extremely tough and in 1945 the Gestapo demanded one member of his family was to go to work in Germany. George, who was only 21 at the time, volunteered and he was sent by cattle truck across the border to work as a carpenter fixing farmers' carts.

Later he was sent to an internment camp where he was forced to labour building underground bunkers. George, who said his birthday card from King Charles and The Queen Consort took pride of place during his party, said: "I've certainly led an eventful life, which is perhaps the secret to a long life."

"I was blessed with a wonderful marriage of over 68 years to my soulmate Joyce, which brought me great joy. "I had a really lovely birthday and the staff at Argentum Lodge have gone out of their way to help me celebrate my century." Following the war, George joined the Polish Army and was stationed in Italy for two years."

As Poland was now under Russian occupation, George emigrated to England where he swiftly learnt English and used his carpentry skills to find work making furniture. He later worked for British Cellophane in Bridgwater for many years. George married his wife Joyce in 1955 and they had a son, Neil. After Joyce's death in 2023, George moved to Argentum Lodge in Nailsea to be near his Great Nieces and Nephews.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/11646341

Speedo Mick, whose full name is Michael Cullen, is best known for walking the length and breadth of the UK for charity in his unique attire.

He has also swum the English Channel and climbed four mountains as part of his fundraising activity.

"I'm absolutely thrilled," Mr Cullen said, adding that the Citizen of Honour certificate would take pride of place in his front room.

He added: "I'm over the moon about it because it's from the city of Liverpool it makes it all the more special to me.

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Mr Cullen has raised money for over 120 organisations including charities which support disadvantaged young people and homeless people as well as mental health and wellbeing projects.

He said it was a way to thank the people who helped him with his own mental health challenges.

A rare Lego piece that fell into the sea in 1997 has been found by a 13-year-old boy in Cornwall.

Liutauras Cemolonskas had been hoping to find a "holy grail" plastic octopus for two years in his hunt for pieces of Lego that famously fell into the sea in 1997 when a cargo ship encountered a storm.

Among the Lego pieces that fell into the sea were 352,000 pairs of flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks, and 92,400 swords - but octopuses are the most prized objects as only 4,200 were onboard.

Liutauras, who found it on a beach in Marazion, regularly goes down to the local beaches with his parents and has amassed 789 Lego pieces over the course of two years, as well as numerous fossils.

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Beachcomber Tracey Williams is behind the Lego Lost At Sea project, which has spent years finding the plastic pieces since they spilled into the ocean.

She said she found one octopus in 1997 and didn't recover another one for 18 years.

"I think there's something quite magical about the octopuses," she said. "They're often seen as the holy grail of finds from that shipping container."

A poodle had to be rescued by specialist firefighters after it became trapped under a home.

The crew were forced to tunnel under the property in Parkmill in Swansea, South Wales, to reach the three-year-old black dog named Jock, after being called out at 7.11am on Tuesday.

They removed a large number of patio slabs at the rear of the home, hoping to get to the poodle.

Unable to find him, specially trained officers from the Wales Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Team were called in.

Using seismic detection equipment and technical search cameras they were able to help pinpoint the dog’s exact location and a second tunnel was dug under the property’s kitchen.

Watch collectors and horological connoisseurs added a new trade fair to their calendars this year. It was not launched in Switzerland – centre of excellence for luxury timepieces and home to brands such as Patek Philippe and Rolex – nor with a party in Paris or Milan attended by fashion’s front row, but at a Royal Horticultural Society lecture hall in London.

The inaugural British Watchmakers’ Day attracted international visitors from the US, Dubai and Norway last month, and tickets sold out six weeks in advance. The most expensive watch at the event went for more than £595,000 – it was sold in a closed bid auction, and the exact price was not disclosed – but timepieces around the £100 mark were also snapped up.

Though still relatively small – for comparison, Watches And Wonders Geneva, an annual international trade fair this month, attracted 45,000 visitors – British Watchmakers’ Day reached its 1,400 capacity, and was set up in response to a growing industry.

In 1800, the UK made around half of the world’s watches: 200,000 a year. Apart from a brief postwar renaissance , the industry has been in constant decline – until now.

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Tracey Llewellyn, editor of the Horological Journal for the British Horological Institute, said the cult of particular British watchmakers has been key: “Around 2020, watch collecting, which had previously been niche, became a worldwide phenomenon – with a focus on independents, who make very small numbers of watches and specialise in hand craftsmanship and finishing.

“Many of these artisans credit the late Isle of Man horologist George Daniels and his book Watchmaking as their inspiration. This turned attention on Brits following in his wake, particularly Daniels’ sole apprentice, Roger Smith.”

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Garrett thinks that British watchmakers’ show unique creativity because many of them are so new to the industry: “Swiss makers have hundreds of years of experience on many of us. We don’t have great-grandfathers who made watches, or hundreds of thousands of people who know our brands by name. We have to be unique and own our niches. We have to have a strong USP.”

A byproduct of this is a new camaraderie. “It was pretty lonely being an independent British watchmaker when I started in 2017,” said Garrett. “Now there’s an open-door policy between founders. British Watchmakers’ Day was pretty epic. It felt like we were part of something bigger.”

According to Alistair Audsley: “We’re seeing exponential growth and that makes the whole sector look at long-term opportunities. We’re also seeing more makers take on skilled craftspeople. Meanwhile we’re building our own major brands. It’s a long journey ahead but we’re taking bigger steps.”

Garrett added: “We have to stop people thinking that their first nice watch has to be Swiss.”

A girls’ football team has won a boys’ league after going unbeaten all season, earning them the “invincibles” title.

Queens Park Ladies under-12s finished top of division three of the Bournemouth Youth Football League with 18 wins, four draws and no defeats.

They dominated the 11 other boys’ teams in the league, scoring 61 goals and conceding only 11.

By the time they had played all their matches, they had amassed 58 points, 16 more than the second-placed team, which had two games still to play.

Initially, they were met with resistance from county FA bosses, who had told them they would have to play in an all-girls’ competition.

However, the team’s manager, Toby Green, was convinced the team was good enough to play in the league.

A British man running the length of Africa has set off on his final day of the gruelling challenge in Tunisia.

Russ Cook, who calls himself "Hardest Geezer" on social media, has been running for more than 350 days and completed the equivalent of 385 marathons.

The 26-year-old, from Worthing, West Sussex, is now running the final 40km of the 16,000km challenge and has been joined by hundreds of supporters.

"One more day, one final push to get this thing done," he said to Sky News shortly after setting off, with sports correspondent Rob Harris trying to keep up.

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He says he will become the first person to run the full of length of Africa if he completes the challenge.

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Mr Cook has been raising money for two charities along the way and has recently seen a surge in donations.

In the last seven days, he has raised more than £217,000 of his £568,000 total.

He is fundraising for The Running Charity, which supports the mental health of young people with complex needs or who are homeless, and Sandblast which educates people about Sahrawi culture.

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Although the run across Africa is his biggest challenge, it isn't his first.

At 22, Mr Cook ran from Asia to England, completing 71 marathons in 66 days.

He had only run the Brighton Marathon before he decided to run from Asia to England.

A great-grandfather from Merseyside has become the world's oldest living man.

John Tinniswood, who is 111 years and 223 days old, says he doesn't pin his extraordinary longevity down to any particular lifestyle choice or diet but he does eat battered fish and chips every Friday.

The Briton lives in a care home in Southport, where staff call him a "big chatterbox". He said: "I eat what they give me and so does everybody else. I don't have a special diet."

He also said his secret to longevity is "pure luck", adding: "You either live long or you live short, and you can't do much about it."

My TL;DR:

Last weekend the conservation park, in North Anston, near Sheffield, celebrated its 30th birthday.

The centre was built to create an accessible energy-efficient and ecologically friendly environment to house butterflies and tropical plants with the support of the RDPE Growth Development Fund. The final phase of the project will see a new bug house open this year.

The park is committed to conservation efforts and plays an active role in breeding and conservation programmes aimed at protecting native species closer to home.

There are more than 450 bird boxes across the three sites which each attract a variety of native birds including one of the largest populations of tree sparrows in the UK.

Large herds of red deer, barn owls, grass snakes and an abundance of native butterflies have also been recorded.

The park’s most famous resident is Odin the Raven, who is well known for her artistic ability with a paintbrush. Odin, who prefers a black and red palette, even painted a special 30th birthday masterpiece which was auctioned last weekend with all proceeds donated to the RSPB.

On first impressions, the pub might look like your classic East End neighbourhood boozer. Wood-panelled l-shaped bar? Check. Floral-patterned red carpet? Check. Dartboard? Check. But as well as the main bar, there’s another room that the pub often rents out for no cost – it’s used for a regular children’s stay and play sessions hosted by a local provider, English lessons for refugees and meetings for charities. While the pub doesn’t do food, it hosts pop-ups with Plateful Cafe, a community organisation that trains and employs refugee chefs.

At The Old Forge, the committee regularly asks locals what they think about the pub, whether that’s what’s on the menu or the events programme – live music nights with local musicians have been a huge hit. Spendley says that being able to adapt in response to the community’s feedback is what makes these places so successful. “Member control and input ensures the business is continually adapting and serving the needs of its members and wider community – that’s what gives community-owned pubs such longevity.”

A much-loved owl with a "big personality" who has been a hoot at Warwick Castle for three decades is winging his way into retirement.

Ernie has been wowing audiences with his aerial antics around the turrets of the historical West Midlands attraction on average twice a day for 30 years.

During his long service, the African Verreaux's Eagle Owl with a wingspan of 165cm is estimated to have made around 20,000 flights.

He most recently starred in The Falconer's Quest, the UK's largest bird of prey show.

He will be performing his final flypast during the Easter holidays before gliding off into a quieter life in the Yorkshire Dales with Hawk Experience, which organises the bird of prey displays at Warwick Castle.

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"We're excited for him to spend his twilight years in the stunning Yorkshire Dales with other feathered friends."

When Chris Cowie complained to the council about graffiti in his neighbourhood he was told they didn't have the resources to tackle it. So he took his own pot of paint and headed for a nearby telecoms box.

"There was one quite offensive tag so I thought I'll paint over that," Chris says.

"I liked what I did so I thought 'right, I'll see what else I can do'."

Chris, a retired teacher who has lived in the Portobello area of Edinburgh for more than 50 years, says the council didn't object and, in fact, they gave him a pot of paint so it was more in keeping with their colour scheme.

He used the paint to cover graffiti tags "anywhere that needed it" - on communications boxes, telephone boxes and the local police box.

"It's a beautiful part of Edinburgh and I want to keep it that way," Chris says.

The UK’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by 5.7% in 2023 to their lowest level since 1879, according to new Carbon Brief analysis.

The last time UK emissions were this low, Queen Victoria was on the throne, Benjamin Disraeli was prime minister, Mosley Street in Newcastle became the first road in the world with electric lighting and 59 people died in the Tay Bridge disaster in Dundee.

A miniature Shetland pony who was stolen eight months ago has been reunited with its owner.

Maisey was taken from a field in the Castle Combe area of Wiltshire between 11 and 12 July 2023.

The 16-year-old was located this week after Avon and Somerset Police received a call from a concerned member of the public who had seen a group of horses near the M5 at Avonmouth.

Police said the incident had shown the importance of chipping animals.

My TL;DR:

Lucy Moore, a UK academic, has completed a project creating a Wikipedia page for a woman in every country in the world and is calling for more women to contribute to the world’s largest encyclopedia.

She has now written biographies of 532 women since 2019, when she first became a Wikipedia editor, including scientists, monarchs, activists, writers and women whose faces are well known but their stories are not.

She tended to focus on women who share her interests, she said, such as poets, activists and coin specialists, known as numismatists, which is her own field.

But it has not been easy. She said one of the issues was that Wikipedia required three reliable sources for each biography and, while there may have been a lot written on social media about some of the women, they may not have appeared in newspapers, especially in countries where women’s achievements are not taken seriously.

Run as a non-profit, open-source encyclopedia that is free to use, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone but only a fifth of its 124,000 regularly active editors are women.

Some of the women recognised by Moore:

• Julia Chinn (c. 1790 – July 1833) was an American plantation manager and enslaved woman of mixed race, who was the common-law wife of the ninth vice-president of the United States, Richard Mentor Johnson.
• Sharbat Gula (born c. 1972) is an Afghan woman who became internationally recognised as the 12-year-old subject in Afghan Girl, a 1984 portrait taken by American photojournalist Steve McCurry that was later published on the cover of National Geographic.
• Jeanne Gapiya-Niyonzima (born 12 July 1963, in Bujumbura) is a human rights activist from Burundi. She is the chair and founder of the National Association for Support for HIV-Positive People with Aids (ANSS) and was the first person from the country to publicly admit they had HIV.
• Ólafía Einarsdóttir (28 July 1924 – 19 December 2017) was an Icelandic archaeologist and historian, becoming the first Icelander to complete a degree in archaeology. She taught at the University of Copenhagen and published many works about Icelandic sagas and Viking history.
• Gloria Meneses (1910 – 1996) was a Uruguayan performer and activist who lived openly from 1950 until her death as travesti – a term used in Latin America to designate people who were assigned male at birth and develop a feminine gender identity.

A dog who was missing for five months is "happy to be back" after surviving the winter in rural Pembrokeshire.

Costa, a three-year-old Newfoundland Cross from Greenacres Rescue Centre in Haverfordwest, was being rehomed when he ran away at the end of September.

Since then he has endured living in the wild, braving storms, freezing temperatures and heavy rain.

It was feared he was dead, but rescuers lured him into a rescue trap using chicken broth.

Centre manager Mikey Lawler said Costa is "a bit tatty" but doing well.

My TL;DR:

The UK’s net zero economy grew by 9% in 2023, a report has revealed, in stark contrast to the 0.1% growth seen in the economy overall. This includes renewable energy, building energy efficiency, electric vehicles, carbon capture technology and green finance.

Thousands of new green companies were founded in 2023 and overall the sector was responsible for the production of £74bn in goods and services and 765,000 jobs.

Hotspots of net zero businesses and the well-paid jobs they provide occur across the country, rather than being concentrated in London and the south-east. It also highlighted strong net zero activity in some of the most deprived areas (including Hartlepool, Nottingham, Redcar and Cleveland) and in marginal constituencies that will be focal battlegrounds in the coming general election (including High Peak, Cheadle, Derby North, and Lancaster and Wyre).

Achieving net zero emissions by 2050 is vital to limiting the damage from the climate crisis. Doing so would not only bring an economic boost but also cut energy costs for households and businesses and ensure energy security by ending the UK’s reliance on volatile fossil fuel markets.

Nevertheless, the report pointed out that strong future growth from green businesses was being put at risk by government policy reversals, lack of investment and competition from the EU and US.

Four years after the Smyth family had abandoned all hope, the call came: “We have your Blueberry.”

The beloved black cat who disappeared in November 2019 from the family home in Bangor, County Down, on Northern Ireland’s coast, turned up last week in County Galway in western Ireland.