|| [Wikipedia refuses to delete the famous monkey photos, claiming the copyright of the monkey's selfies belongs to the monkey]The nonprofit behind Wikipedia, Wikimedia, has repeatedly been asked by a photographer to cancel free sharing of his famous photos, but Wikimedia refused, stating that since the shutter was pressed by the monkey, the copyright belongs to the monkey.The picture on the right is the famous monkey selfie. In 2011, British nature photographer David Slater went to Indonesia hoping to capture a perfect photo of the crested black macaque. However, one of the monkeys suddenly came forward, inspected his equipment, grabbed one of his cameras, and took hundreds of selfies. Most of these selfies were blurry, some even pointed at the ground, but there were indeed a few very good ones, including a selfie of a smiling female monkey. This photo then made headlines in major media outlets around the world and quickly made Slater famous.
"They were really playful, hopping around my equipment as if they were posing for a photo, and then one monkey pressed the shutter," Slater said at the time. "The sound of the shutter caught its attention, and it kept pressing and pressing. At first, it scared the other monkeys away, but soon they gathered around again, which was amazing to see."
"Before I got the camera back, it must have taken hundreds of shots, but many were out of focus. Clearly, it didn't really understand what was going on."
After this photo frequently appeared on major websites, newspapers, magazines, and TV shows, Slater prepared to sue Wikimedia because the organization had added the photo to its collection for free public viewing. The Wikimedia Commons photo collection contains 22,302,592 photos (and videos) available for free browsing online, including Slater's famous photo.
The Gloucestershire-born photographer now believes this harms his income because anyone can download and use the photo for free without paying him royalties. He complained to Wikimedia that he holds the copyright for the photo. But a recent transparency report from Wikimedia shows that they received all of Slater's removal requests, yet the editors believed Slater did not own the photo, as it was taken by the monkey itself.
Now Slater is considering taking the case to court, which would cost about £10,000. "The monkey takes the photo, the monkey owns it, not me – that's their logic. I guess going to court will make them realize this," he said.
The photo had been removed before due to his complaint, but other editors later re-uploaded it. "Some editors believe it should be there."They told me this is not public domain, that they had no right to say that, the monkey pressed the shutter, but the rest was done by me.” Slater said that going on photography trips is very expensive, and the money earned from the photos taken is also limited. “That trip cost me £2,000, not to mention the £5,000 worth of equipment I carried, the insurance, and the computer tools I used to process the images. This money-burning photography business is slowly being eroded; they have basically cut off my livelihood,” he said. “Out of 1,000 pictures, at least one needs to make money in order for me to continue. That (monkey selfie) is the situation; it represents a year's worth of work.” Meanwhile, Wikimedia said they “do not agree” that photographers hold copyright, and U.S. law states that non-human authors have no copyright in photos they take. “For copyright to be claimed, the photographer must have made a significant contribution to the final image. Even then, they only have the right to modify it, not direct copyright. This means no one owns the copyright, so the photo becomes public domain.” Wikimedia editors are divided on this legal issue. Saffron Blaze commented under the photo, “I don't know whether to believe this ‘no one owns the copyright' claim. From the result, it seems disrespectful to the photographer, after all, he created the conditions for the photo to happen. In some other regulations, monkeys could also have copyright.” || [The Russian Woman Who Gave Birth to 69 Children] \ In history, the woman who has had the most children gave birth to 69 in total. Yes, really 69. This extraordinary Russian woman was named Valentina Vassilyeva; she must have had an iron-willed uterus, and her husband was completely unable to refuse. Her husband, Feodor Vassilyev (1707–1782), is also remembered in history, not for anything else, but for his superhuman childbearing abilities. The couple were originally peasants, and their living space must have been limited. One can imagine the risks they took to complete such a massive undertaking in such constrained quarters. Additionally, feeding so many children required careful planning of provisions. A woman's childbearing period typically lasts 30 years; how did this mother-warrior accomplish her feat in a limited time? She gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets. Therefore, this truly prolific baby factory did not adopt a 'take-it-one-step-at-a-time' strategy.Even more astonishing, out of their 69 children, 67 survived in the end, which was considered a miracle at the time. In fact, Valentina Vasilieva was her husband's first wife, which means this super procreator remarried. (Polygamy was not common in Russia at the time, especially for lower-class peasants.) Let us imagine: this young man, who had endured hardship, got together with his first wife, and after marriage, invested all his resources into feeding his children. Besides satisfying the family's basic needs and procreation, most of his energy would go into naming his children; when he realized his wife could no longer bear children, he sank into shame, feeling it was an insult to his masculinity; when his wife committed suicide (quite possible), he tried to find the next wife to continue creating his tribe. It's hard to imagine whether the couple could remember all their children's names, many of whom looked exactly alike. They probably struggled with this every day.
The most remarkable thing is their 67 surviving children: if each had two children (considered few at the time), and each of them had two children... assuming 25 years per generation, this model couple would now have about 70,000 descendants. If this were in China, just the extra childbirth fees alone would bankrupt you…
[Graveyard Scare Leads to Conviction]
Anthony Stallard, 24, who lives in Portsmouth, admitted to wildly flailing his arms and making ghostly noises within the visible and audible reach of grieving families.
A man, whose brain was metaphorically ‘caught in a door,' was fined and given a suspended sentence for scaring people in a cemetery. He was fond of mysteriously appearing in places visible to grieving families, flailing his arms and making strange noises.
The city sheriff said the cemetery enthusiast was Anthony Stallard, 24, from Portsmouth. Someone saw him doing backflips at Kingston Cemetery in Portsmouth and making "ooo-ooo" noises, and promptly called the police. Shortly before the incident, another person had seen unemployed Stallard playing football in the cemetery with a friend.Prosecutor Tim Concannon said in Portsmouth Magistrates' Court: 'The defendant was cheerfully singing loudly while playing football in the cemetery, which was extremely rude. He also did backflips, flailed his arms around, and made strange 'woo-woo' noises. It can be concluded that he was pretending to be a ghost.' The police arrested him, charging him with using threatening or insulting language and behavior that could cause others distress. Storad admitted the crime, acknowledging that his actions could hurt grieving family members of the deceased. Defense lawyer Denise Saunders said: 'He realized his misbehavior, and it would not have been inappropriate if it had happened elsewhere. But since it was in a cemetery, which is a place where people mourn their loved ones.' Facing a one-year sentence, Storad pleaded guilty and took responsibility for the disturbance he caused in January and the offensive attack the previous August. He was fined £35, plus an additional £20 victim surcharge and £20 in court costs. If Storad were sentenced to an additional three months, it would mean serving 15 months in total. If he further admitted to other crimes that breach his probation, he would face an additional 12 weeks of imprisonment. Charges of damage to cemetery headstones were dismissed due to the inability of witnesses to provide courtroom evidence. Someone saw the unemployed Storad playing football and doing backflips with a friend in Kingston Cemetery.
[A couple searches for their respective biological mothers and ultimately discovers they are siblings] This news seems aptly described as 'Lovers ultimately turn out to be siblings.' A woman, after finding her long-lost mother, discovered that she had unwittingly married her own brother. 39-year-old Adriana and 37-year-old husband Leandro have been married for seven years and have a seven-year-old daughter. The Brazilian couple, whose surnames were not disclosed, spent a long time searching for their respective biological mothers—coincidentally, both mothers were named Maria, and both abandoned their daughters as infants. Reality, however, proved far more surprising than imagined—this week, they discovered that the Maria they had each been searching for was, in fact, the same person. Cosmetics salesperson Adriana had not seen her mother since she was one year old, when her mother left home, leaving the girl with her father.When truck driver Leandro was 8 years old, he learned that he had been abandoned by his biological mother. He had always thought the person he considered his mother was actually his stepmother. Leandro had been living in his birthplace, São Paulo in southeastern Brazil, while Edrian, who had led a wandering life, left the city to work as a maid in other people's homes. She later got married and had three children, and that marriage lasted for 15 years. Ten years ago, Edrian got divorced and returned to her hometown, where the two met for the first time, quickly fell in love, and soon moved in together.
For a long time, Edrian could not give up trying to find her mother. It wasn't until last month that she decided to seek help from a local radio station. This week, the mother and daughter were reunited on a live broadcast. But at the end of Radio Globo's program 'The Time Is Now,' which helps people find lost relatives, the story took an unexpected twist. The mother revealed that she also had a son named Leandro, who did not yet know that she was his biological mother. As the story unfolded, the truth came out: her son Leandro was actually Edrian's husband. Edrian broke down in tears, sobbing continuously: "I can't believe the words you're saying—Leandro is my husband."
As the show interview was about to end, Edrian said: "I am very scared right now, afraid that when I go home, Leandro might not want me anymore. I love him so much." Edrian and Leandro had never registered their marriage legally. Yesterday, they told reporters that they would still live together, even though they were actually biological siblings. Edrian said: "Only death can separate us. Everything that has happened is God's plan. Of course, if we had known the truth in advance, things would have been very different, but we could not have known. We love each other deeply. We used to find it quite amusing that both our biological mothers were named Maria, but since it is such a common name, we didn't think much of it at the time and just considered it a coincidence. We have many plans to accomplish together, and nothing can separate us."
The couple said they would not blame their mother for abandoning them, and since then they have spoken to her many times and plan to meet her again soon.
