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The Colombian government has announced a raft of measures to control its growing population of invasive hippos—descendants of animals introduced to the country by the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. Hippos are native to Africa, but in the 1980s, Escobar smuggled four of the animals into Colombia, keeping them at his luxurious country estate, Hacienda Nápoles, in the municipality of Puerto Triunfo—located east of Medellin—which featured a private zoo. As well as the hippos, the zoo housed numerous exotic creatures, including elephants, ostriches, rhinos, giraffes and zebras. Following the death of Escobar, who was killed by Colombian police during a...

Political activist and failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D-GA) said Sunday on MSNBC’s “Inside” that she believed the criticisms leveled at Vice President Kamala Harris were based on “misogyny and racism.” Anchor Jen Psaki said, “I want to ask you about the vice president, because she has been under a huge amount of scrutiny through her entire time in office. I think there’s a lot of reasons for this. But I want to ask you, as a prominent woman of color who’s run for office, do you think that she would be receiving the same critiques if she was a...

An online fundraiser has been launched to pay for security for Black Lives Matter activist Zyahna Bryant — whose partnership with Dove to promote “fat liberation” sparked controversy after she was accused of getting a white student expelled over “misheard” comments. The GoFundMe — which had raised nearly $10,000 by Sunday – was created last week by Erica Chapman, a Charlottesville, Virginia, woman who claims she is Bryant’s cousin. “Zyahna has been receiving hate mail and threats for YEARS, and recently they have become worse,” she wrote on the GoFundMe page. Chapman said that Bryant, a community organizer and student...

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia is proposing transferring at least 70 hippopotamuses that live near Pablo Escobar’s former ranch - descendants of four imported from Africa illegally by the late drug lord in the 1980s – to India and Mexico as part of a plan to control their population. The hippos, which are territorial and weigh up to 3 tons, have spread far beyond the Hacienda Napoles ranch, located 200 kilometer (124 mile) from Bogota along the Magdalena River. Environmental authorities estimate there are about 130 hippos in the area in Antioquia province and their population could reach 400 in...

Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams‘ campaign owes more than $1 million to vendors following her second failed attempt to win the state’s governorship, according to a new report. Despite raising more than $100 million during her campaign, Ms. Abrams, hailed by many in her party as an organizing and voter-mobilizing star, has left her 180 former campaign staffers in a lurch by cutting off their pay a week after the Nov. 8 election, according to the political news website Axios. “People have told me they have no idea how they’re going to pay their rent in January,” a former staffer told...

He was only two days old when he was abandoned by his herd. Charlie the baby hippo was premature, weak, stressed and traumatised when he was rescued by workers from Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife in KwaZulu-Natal. But what a difference a few years and some TLC can make – Charlie (6) is healthy as a horse and will soon be released into the wild. But boy, did he have plenty obstacles standing in his way. For the first few years of his life, Charlie believed he was a rhinoceros because he was raised with rhinos in a rhino orphanage. But to...

Grammy-winning pop star and Joe Biden-Kamala Harris surrogate Lizzo played a 200-year-old crystal flute lent to her by The Library of Congress, before proclaiming, “*****, I just twerked and played James Madison’s crystal flute from the 1800s.” Lizzo was on stage at one of her recent concerts, when she was handed a 200-year old flute originally owned by the fourth U.S. president, James Madison.

'It’s unreal how he was treated just because he’s a little bit more tan than I am....' Marc Wilson / PHOTO: Bulloch County Sheriff's Office (Ben Sellers, Headline USA) As desperately trailing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams scrambles for a winning message to avoid yet another defeat at the hands of Gov. Brian Kemp, activists are using a road-rage killing as a rallying cry to attack the state’s self-defense laws. On Aug. 31, William “Marc” Wilson, a 21-year-old biracial black man, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of 17-year-old Haley Hutcheson. Wilson claimed that a pickup truck...

During a guest appearance on 'The View' on Wednesday, Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams - once a pro-lifer raised in a religious home - said she supports abortion 'until the time of birth' in some cases. When asked by the show's new conservative host, Alyssa Farah Griffin, if she believed there should be any limitation on abortion, Abrams said: 'Viability is the metric and that if a woman's health or life is endanger then viability extends until the time of birth.' Abrams added that abortion is a 'medical decision not a political one' and called various state-imposed limitations on...

Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker and incumbent GOP Gov. Brian Kemp are both widening their leads over their Democratic opponents, according to a poll.Former NFL star Walker is ahead of incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock by 47-44%, an InsiderAdvantage/FOX 5 Atlanta poll released Thursday shows. Libertarian nominee Chase Oliver is receiving 4% support with 5% of voters still undecided.An Emerson College poll last month showed that Walker, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, led Warnock 46-44%."Warnock is winning among younger voters and seniors but trails badly among those 40-64. Men support Walker at 60%, while women support...

Lizzo used her moment in the spotlight at MTV’s Video Music Awards (VMAs) to claim that laws in the United States were “oppressing us.” The artist took home the prize at Sunday’s event for “Music Video for Good,” and despite admitting she wasn’t even sure what a “music video for good” was, she immediately pivoted to talk about the power of a single vote and call on her fans to vote and change the laws that were “oppressing us.” WATCH: “I don’t know what ‘Music Video for Good’ means,” Lizzo laughed, adding, “But I do know what your vote means,...

A Democrat-backed group claims to have naturalized almost 100,000 legal immigrants in Georgia before the November elections. “Over 96,000 newly naturalized Americans in the state, who naturalized between 2016 and 2020, could significantly influence the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections,’ said the press statement by National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), the SEIU union, and various Georgia-based, pro-migration groups.

ATLANTA - Republican Herschel Walker’s $6.2 million in fundraising looked impressive when unveiled Wednesday, until Democrat Raphael Warnock rolled out his $17.2 million total a half-hour later. The dueling Senate campaign numbers underlined two truths. Georgia is again going to be one of the most expensive races to run for office in 2022, and Democrats are building a strong fundraising advantage. Like Warnock, Democrat Stacey Abrams heavily outraised incumbent Republican Brian Kemp in the race for governor, collecting almost $50 million compared to the $31 million Kemp has brought in over a longer period. Abrams and Warnock plan to run...

Lizzo announced that she will be donating $500K of her upcoming tour proceeds to Planned Parenthood and Abortion Funds just hours after Roe v. Wade was overturned. The 34-year-old Detroit, Minnesota native - born Melissa Viviane Jefferson - made the announcement on her Instagram Story on Friday. She also revealed that Live Nation has agreed to match her generous donation making it a grand total of $1million. Lizzo wrote: 'I'm pledging $500k from my upcoming tour to Planned Parenthood and Abortion Rights. Live Nation agreed to match— to make it 1 MILLION dollars. 'The most important thing is action &...

After being dragged by disability advocates on social media on Monday, Lizzo has responded to her use of an “ableist” lyric. Her statement comes after social media users nearly canceled her for the lyric: “Do you see this ----. I’m a sp-z.” “It’s been brought to my attention that there are [sic] is a harmful word in my song ‘GRRRLS,'” the “Truth Hurts” songstress wrote on Twitter. “Let me make one thing clear: I never want to promote derogatory language. As a fat black woman in America, I’ve had many hurtful words used against me so I understand the power...

Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Saturday night told Georgians that Georgia is the “worst state” to live in. Abrams, who is now worth more than $3 million after being in massive debt just a few years ago, owns at least two houses in Georgia, according to Fox News. "I’m running for governor because I know that we have to have a conversation about who we are in this state and what we want for each other and from each other,” Stacey Abrams said on Sunday during a speech at the Gwinnett Democrats’ Bluetopia Gala, according to the Gwinnett Daily...

Democratic activist and second-time gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams aims to build on the energy of President Joe Biden's 2020 win in Georgia to flip the governor's mansion blue, but polls suggest the former state House of Representatives minority leader still faces an uphill battle. Georgia has not been led by a Democratic governor since 2003. The conservative southern state also has a significant Republican lean, which polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight assesses as being plus 7.4 points in the GOP's favor. But in 2018, Abrams lost to Brian Kemp, who is now the incumbent Republican governor, by a relatively narrow margin...

President Biden plans to journey to Georgia on Tuesday to drum up support for a Democratic rewriting of the nation’s election laws and accuse Republicans of curtailing voting rights. A partisan showdown over election laws has become the Democrats’ top priority after the demise last month of Mr. Biden’s $1.75 trillion social justice and climate bill, which was the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. In Atlanta, Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will lay a wreath at the crypt of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. before delivering a speech on voting rights, cementing the issue at the forefront of...

A Belgian zoo has confirmed that two hippopotamuses have tested positive for coronavirus in what could be the first reported cases in the species. Hippos Imani, aged 14, and 41-year-old Hermien have no symptoms apart from a runny nose. Antwerp Zoo in Belgium said the pair had been put into quarantine as a precaution. It is unclear how the hippos caught the virus, but staff tested the pair after they were seen 'expelling snot'. 'To my knowledge, this is the first time in this species. Worldwide, this virus has been reported mainly in great apes and felines,' said the zoo's...

Pablo Escobar's famed hippos - who have thrived in Colombia since the notorious drug lord was killed almost 30 years ago - got a stay of execution after a United States federal court ruled that animals can be recognized as legal persons. Judge Karen Litkovitz, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, issued the ruling Tuesday after the nonprofit Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) filed an application seeking to allow two experts in nonsurgical sterilization of wildlife to provide testimony supporting a Colombian lawsuit to stop a cull. The Animal Legal Defense Fund made the...