Close encounters

Lion forms close, rare bond with conservationists

Valentin Gruener and Mikkel Legarth raise Sirga as a cub after she was abandoned; pair seeks to save lion population through Modisa Wildlife Project

November 04, 2013 by David Strege

Mikkel Legarth with Sirga the lion at sunset; photo from Caters News Agency used by permission

Valentin Gruener and Mikkel Legarth play with Sirga as if she were a family pet. But while she is not a pet, Sirga is considered part of the family, as much as a lion can be part of a human family.
It is a touching bond that stretches back to when the two men rescued Sirga as a cub deep in the African bush and became the animal’s surrogate parents. Legarth told the U.K. Daily Mail that his bond with Sirga is similar to her being part of his pride.
“A pride had three cubs and two were killed before Sirga was abandoned without food,” Legarth told the Daily Mail. “It happened on our land and we could not stand by and watch her die.”

US Stock Exchange bloodbath

..World stocks slide further

By Ben Perry
AFP News – Sat, Aug 6, 2011.

Enlarge Photo.A display board showing the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong. Hong Kong shares dived …

Enlarge Photo.Closings for Tokyo, Sydney, Seoul and Taipei stock markets. Global stocks plunged …

AP - Sat, Aug 6, 2011.....Surprisingly robust US jobs data sparked only a brief rebound on Wall Street and in Europe on Friday, leaving investors scarred from a week of heavy losses brought on by slow growth and eurozone debt concerns.

European stock markets initially dived 3.0-4.0 percent after heavy falls in Asia, and rally quickly lost steam following the announcement that the US economy gained a net 117,000 jobs in July.

London's FTSE-100 index closed down 2.71 percent to 5,246.99 points for a weekly loss of 9.8 percent, wiping nearly £150 billion ($246 billion, 173 billion euros) off its total value over the last five days.

In Frankfurt, the DAX dropped 2.78 percent to 6,236.16 points, dropping 13.3 percent over the week.

In Paris, the CAC-40 slid 1.26 percent to 3,278.56 points to chalk up a record 10th consecutive daily loss. It lost 10.7 percent over the week.

In highly volatile trading, Madrid and Milan rebounded for part of the day on rumours that that the European Central Bank was preparing to buy hard-hit Spanish and Italian bonds, before falling back.
Madrid ended the day down 0.18 percent and dropped 10 percent over the week, while Milan fell 0.70 percent on Friday and lost 13.12 percent for the week.

Wall Street also opened higher on the surprisingly strong jobs data, but the rally quickly fizzled.

Great story of this year 2011

Police: Train ticket helps crack 1957 Ill. killing

By BARBARA RODRIGUEZ - Associated Press
AP – Sat, Jul 2, 2011

...The grave site of Maria Ridulph at Elmwood Cemetery is shown in Sycamore, Ill., on …

....SYCAMORE, Ill. (AP) — Charles "Chuck" Ridulph always assumed the person who stole his little sister from the neighborhood corner where she played and dumped her body in a wooded stretch some 100 miles away was a trucker or passing stranger — surely not anyone from the hometown he remembers as one big, friendly playground.

And, after more than a half century passed since her death, he assumed the culprit also had died or was in prison for some other crime.

On Saturday, he said he was stunned by the news that a one-time neighbor had been charged in the kidnapping and killing that captured national attention, including that of the president and FBI chief. Prosecutors in bucolic Sycamore, a city of 15,000 that's home to a yearly pumpkin festival, charged a former police officer Friday in the 1957 abduction of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph after an ex-girlfriend's discovery of an unused train ticket blew a hole in his alibi.

Jack Daniel McCullough, 71, has been held in Seattle on $3 million bail. A judge overseeing a Saturday court appearance for him said he had been taken to a regional trauma center but did not elaborate. She rescheduled his bail hearing for 12:30 p.m. Monday.

"I just can't believe that after all these years they'd be able to find this guy," Chuck Ridulph told The Associated Press at his duplex in Sycamore, about 50 miles west of Chicago.

A 65-year-old minister who mainly serves his area's senior citizens, Ridulph once shared a bedroom with his sister and already has his headstone placed on a burial plot next to her grave. With McCullough's arrest, he worries about a drawn-out legal process that will dredge up bad memories but also perhaps answer some nagging, stomach-churning questions about what happened to the little girl who loved to play dress up.

"It's in my every thought, even in my dreams," he said of his sister's death. "It was just like it was yesterday. It comes up all the time in conversation."