Attempts to bring live fighting birds through a British airport in suitcases were 'astonishing', Border Force has said.
Two separate attempts to smuggle the birds into the UK were discovered at Leeds Bradford airport. They had been placed in individual wooden cages inside the cases.
Border Force said the smugglers tried to bring in nine grey francolin birds, which are native to South Asia and often bred for fighting.
Nine grey francolin birds were found smuggled in suitcases at Leeds Bradford airport by Border Force officials
The birds were hidden in wooden cages inside suitcases which arrived on flights from Islamabad
On both occasions they were hidden inside suitcases on flights arriving from Pakistan's capital Islamabad.
Four birds were found on May 4 and five on May 11. They were passed to environmental health officers from Leeds City Council before being put down. The council is now investigating the find.
A council spokesman said: 'Based on expert veterinary advice from Defra, the birds have been humanely destroyed to prevent any risk to public health.'
Sam Bullimore, Border Force assistant director at Leeds Bradford Airport, said: 'These were astonishing smuggling attempts, of a kind we have not seen before at Leeds Bradford.
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'Our officers are trained to expect the unexpected, but were surprised when they realised just what the passengers were smuggling.
'It is vitally important that unregulated attempts to bring livestock into the UK are stopped, to protect the health of both animals and humans and to prevent animal cruelty.'
A spokesperson for the Home Office said: 'Not all baggage going through airport security will be x-rayed, so it was really a good spot by the officials that stopped these birds being brought into the UK.
One suitcase contained five of the fighting birds in individual crates, while another held fourThe birds showed up on Border Force x-ray machines during a routine baggage check
'It's not uncommon for these birds to be used for fighting, although we don't know this is what they were going to be used for.
'The birds weren't making any noise because being in the dark suitcase is like when you put a blanket over a parrot's cage - the darkness means they are quiet.'
Border Force officers use search techniques including sniffer dogs, carbon dioxide detectors, heartbeat monitors and scanners - as well as visual searches - to find stowaways, illegal drugs, firearms and cigarettes.
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Customs officers find live Asian fighting birds in suitcases after smugglers flew them into Britain Images
After stellar performances all season, Candice Glover took home the title of American Idol during Thursday night’s live taping.But before she was crowned with the honor, the 23-year-old singer took to the stage and sang the 1975 hit “Inseparable” — and she didn’t sing it alone.Former Idol contestant Jennifer Hudson joined Glover in rounding out the two-hour finale and they rocked the stage while performing an unforgettable duet.The Idol stars were greeted with a roaring applause and a standing ovation from audience members and judges, and their song soon rocketed across social media and the Internet. Personally for me (Efrem) JHud’s Vibrato was killing me softly!
However, singer and performer Natalie Cole wasn’t too pleased with their song choice.Cole sang the original version on her hit debut album, also titled Inseparable; a fact she made sure to publicly clarify via Twitter.
Make no mistake…"Inseparable" was NOT originally recorded by Jennifer Hudson, but by ME…. American Idol… fb.me/243VjYiIU—Natalie Cole (@NatMCole) May 17, 2013Cole also addressed a tweet to Idol’s account saying: “@AmericanIdol ought to be ashamed of themselves! I’m seriously offended! #Idol #Idolfinale.” She later deleted the tweet.
Despite Cole’s disdain, some of her followers disagreed.“Get real, and let someone else have their moment. If u recorded it first so be it – but u don’t need to rain on a parade,” one follower said in response.
Through it all, Glover was more than ecstatic from the results and was brought to tears after her win was announced.“I’m still trying to process the whole thing,” Glover told reporters after the show.“Like, I don’t even know my name. I don’t know what’s happening,” she adds. “It feels amazing, though. I finally got to this point. I’ve been working for so long.” WOW...Thoughts?http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheChroniclesOfEfrem
In "Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age" (Crown Archetype), the veteran author-journalist Allen Barra examines the mythic stature of two of the greatest center-fielders to play the game. The book is also a personal exodus of sorts, as Barra attempts to untangle the complex emotions he has about two childhood heroes."Mickey and Willie – they were given boys' names that they never grew out of," he writes. "The private lives of both men revealed that they were ill equipped for life after baseball, a fact that those of us who loved them found almost impossible to understand. How, though, could we have understood?"I emailed questions to Barra about writing and "Mickey and Willie," and he replied from his home in New Jersey.You helped Marvin Miller write his memoirs, entitled "A Whole Different Ball Game." What was it like to work with Marvin Miller?It was an education. I thought I knew enough to write a book on the business of baseball and the ongoing strife between the owners and the baseball union. I was amazed at how much I didn’t know. In the course of doing the book, I think I came to think a little like Marvin. That’s a gift I’ll always be grateful for.Do you think that Marvin Miller will ever be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame?No, I don’t. If the players had stood up and demanded it, which they should have done, it would have happened. It is, after all, their Hall of Fame. But they didn’t. Anyway, Marvin was adamant he didn’t want in and stated so in several public letters. One of the last things he said to me was to please make that clear to anyone still calling for him to be elected. So now the HOF can’t induct him without embarrassing themselves.It's been said that "all biography is at last autobiography." As the author of biographies about Paul "Bear" Bryant, Yogi Berra and now Mantle and Mays, do you find that statement to be true? How do you, as a writer, approach biography?Well, if all biography is autobiography, then I coached Alabama to six national championships and won ten World Series rings with the Yankees. Nope on that.I approach biography – and in this category I'll put Wyatt Earp, Bear Bryant and Yogi Berra – as men about whom much had been written but about whom I had never read what I wanted to read about them. There were too many unanswered questions, and that’s why I wrote those books. I don’t regard "Mickey and Willie" as biography. As the subtitle says, it’s a “parallel lives.” I was fascinated by the many things about them that were both similar and different. They were the same age, both children of the Depression, both southerners, both raised by baseball fathers and nurtured by the industrial league culture that thrived until a couple of years after World War II. They came to the Major Leagues in the same city and played against each other in the World Series in their rookie year, 1951. They ended up playing the same position, center field, and both were great all-around players.They both had actual names that others thought were nicknames, boys’ names. They were both booed by fans for not being Joe DiMaggio. Both loved going to the movies, especially westerns.As for the opposites – well, of course, one was white and one was black, so they lived most of their lives on different sides of American culture.There have been quite a few books about Mantle and Mays, including most recently James Hirsch's exhaustive biography of Mays and Jane Leavy's personal reportage about Mantle. Why did you feel there was room for another book about Mantle and Mays? What did you feel had not been discussed in previous works?All previous books, whether about them or ghosted by them, left out pretty much one element: each other. The similarities I mentioned above were seldom discussed except in passing. I never read anything, for instance, about Mickey and Willie barnstorming together, or about the many commercials and endorsements they did. (Thank you, George Lois.) Or, that Mickey was envious of Willie’s salary while Willie was envious of Mickey’s endorsements. In the end, each liked and respected the other enormously.They were compared endlessly. When I was growing up, “Who's better, Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays?” was practically the only baseball question that mattered. I think that’s largely forgotten today.You've written that "Mickey and Willie" is, at heart, about the concept of hero worship. What did you discover about that in researching and writing this book? Knowing what we know now, are Mantle and Mays still deserving of hero status?What I learned was that in their private lives they were at least as flawed as I am. That makes me feel both better and worse. I suppose the thing I learned that impressed me most is that being someone’s hero imposes an enormous burden of dreams on someone.But, finally, were they worthy of being called heroes? Yes, I think they were. I’ll give them that. Being my hero was a tough job, but in the end they did okay.You write that, after all these years, Willie Mays remains a cipher. Why? What happened to him?I don’t know that anything “happened” to him except everything he went through his whole life. After reading everything that has ever been written about Willie Mays, I can’t say I know him any better than I did before I started, at least in the sense of “What is the inner man really like? What were his dreams outside baseball, his aspirations?” What made me feel that more than anything else was that the two men who knew him best from the time he hit the major leagues, [authors] Arnold Hano and the late Charlie Einstein, were also baffled by him.You're a general manager in the spring of 1950. You have the choice of taking one ballplayer for your team: Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays. Who do you take and why?Well, I take Mickey for two simple reasons. In 1950 I don’t know what his history of injury is going to be, but I do know he’s white. It’s that simple. What I’m saying is that if I were a general manager in 1950, I don’t know that I would have thought differently than GMs did back then.From the perspective of ability, I don’t know that there was anything to make me choose one over the other.What's the subject of your next book?I’m not sure yet. I would love to write a dual biography of Ed and his late son Steve Sabol – how they built NFL Films and changed the way we look at sports. I also have been researching for years a book on how an Italian, a Jew, and an Irishman – Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Owney Madden – created the modern mob.David Davis is a contributing writer at Los Angeles Magazine. He is the author of Showdown at Shepherd's Bush: The 1908 Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched A Sporting Craze (St. Martin's). He lives in Los Angeles and is on Twitter at @ddavisla.
Kauli kwenye hotuba hiyo iliyobabisha spika wa bunge asitishe shughuli za leo hadi jioni ilisema, “Tanzania imegeuka chini ya usimamizi wa wizara ya serikali hii ya CCM kuwa taifa linalotoka nyara wanahabari, kuwatesa, kuwangoa kucha na meno, kuwatoboa macho, kuwamwagia tindikali na hata kuwaua.”Spika amesitisha bunge hilo ili kupata muda wa kuipitia hotuba hiyo kuondoa kauli za uchochezi.
This Saturday the Preakness Stakes will be contested at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore at a distance slightly shorter than the 1-1/4 mile of the Kentucky Derby and also with a shorter home stretch. The Preakness is the second jewel in the Triple Crown of racing for three year olds. While in Kentucky they run for the roses, in Maryland it is for the "black eyed susans" a type of sunflower that blooms in summer so that if they are late, folklore has it that they might use black shoe polish for the centerpiece in May. Maryland has great racing traditions and several tracks operating besides Pimlico i.e. Havre de Grace and Laurel. But this Saturday we might expect to hear the Naval Academy glee club sing "Maryland, My Maryland" - a capella and there won't be a dry eye in the crowd. Let's all sing along and hopefully pick a winner.tjsNext - TBA
Rogers spoke of happy memories in the game - I know he had them, because I was there for a few, including the MLS Cup the Columbus Crew won in Los Angeles. Besides his talent as a player, Rogers was a pretty well-spoken player in interviews, though at the same time, a bit aloof and guarded. I never thought much of it, but can speculate now that he had to constantly be on his guard. Perhaps Rogers would have continued to expend the energy to hide his truth had his career taken other turns. While he is rightly to be commended on courageously going public, there's a sad mixed message going out due to his apparently stalled playing career.There has yet to be a professional athlete in the men's game to say, "I'm gay, and it doesn't matter. My game is unaffected, my teammates are accepting, and people should learn that this supposed taboo is just an anachronism." It might be a chicken-egg argument of, "Well, no one CAN say it, BECAUSE no one has said it before, and who wants to risk a thriving career on what might happen if they did say it?" What's crazy is the notion that there aren't more players like Rogers getting up every day with a sigh, going to work on the sport they love, and pulling a double-shift hiding at the same time. They're out there, of course, and perhaps yes, the mainly positive response to Rogers has encouraged them a bit. Or maybe they're mad. Maybe some of them are thinking, "Damn! So close - this guy could have been the one to show that orientation doesn't affect quality of play." Of course, they could be 'that guy', too. No one should expect from someone else what they themselves aren't willing to risk. Rogers has done what he feels capable of - maybe that's all he has in him now. "Secrets can cause so much internal damage," Rogers wrote. He also told how he now felt free.Rest, and hopefully, restoration, will follow. 
