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| The Palestinian Woman in the Way of a Gilad Shalit Deal Sentenced to life for a crime that shocked Israel, Amneh Muna is high on the list of prisoners Hamas wants released in exchange for the soldier Gilad Shalit feedproxy.google.com |
Putin, Tycoons Rescue Each Other Oleg Deripaska seemed the most likely of Russia's tycoons to fall victim to the financial crisis. But thanks to Kremlin bailouts, he's set to save his empire. online.wsj.com |
Northern Ireland Leader Takes Leave The head of Northern Ireland's administration temporarily stepped down in a bid to defuse the scandal involving his wife that has gripped the province and rocked its fragile power-sharing government. online.wsj.com |
Lucy Wisdom obituary Performance artist and founder of the Sumatran Orangutan SocietyLucy Wisdom, who has died aged 53 of cancer, brought colour and passion to everything she did, above all to the Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS), the charity she founded in 1997, and which became her life's work. She fostered SOS's growth from a one-woman campaign to a small but vital international agency, whose grassroots projects allow the few remaining wild orangutans the chance to survive in the forests of Aceh.Lucy was the eldest of four children born to two doctors in London, and their only daughter. With her parents' blessing, after passing her O-levels she took an early "gap year" to work on a kibbutz in Israel, beginning a lifetime of independent travelling. She took her A-levels at the sixth form college in Hereford, where her circle of friends included a local band, the Pretenders, and their lead singer Chrissie Hynde. A relatively conventional interlude at Bristol University reading geology and archaeology was followed by short-term jobs and long-haul travel to India, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia.Her family is unable to explain how the parental genes and medical precedent came to produce a full house of performers in the next generation. Lucy trained in circus skills in London and at Fool Time clown school in Bristol, before joining her brothers Michael and Julian in a triple act called the Wisdom Brothers, combining acrobatics, juggling and trapeze, and Lucy's escapology number. She then became tour manager of her brother Oliver's band Specimen. In 1982 she crewed a yacht to Barbados, staying on afterwards and creating the Barbados Archaeological Society, which flourished for a decade after she left.Lucy next joined the Mutoid Waste Co, a tribe of performance artists/sculptors who create installations and events involving mutated cars, cranes and even MiG fighter planes as backdrop to a surreal melange of fire-swinging, acrobatic percussionists in outlandish recycled costumes. For many years Lucy was prominent in the Mutoid cause and helped to mastermind the giant Kiefer man whose chest was a Volkswagen Beetle, looming over the Berlin wall shortly before it fell, and Tankhenge (with pink painted tank) behind the Reichstag soon afterwards. She toured with them through Europe in her "fishcar", a Volvo covered with metal fishscales, and lived in her caravan at the Mutoids' yard near Rimini, Italy.In 1994, after surgery for breast cancer, she went to Sumatra as a volunteer at the Orangutan Rehab- ilitation Centre at Bohorok, a holding station for young orphan apes. She stayed on, leading the young apes up vines into the forest canopy to hone their skills in their natural environment.Lucy soon realised that saving individual apes could not prevent the imminent extinction of the species as a result of the loss of the animals' habitat caused by logging, burning and palm oil plantations. In the process of setting up the SOS, she embarked on a crash course of learning that included travelling to the third International Great Apes Conference at Kuching, Borneo, in 1998, where she met leading primatologists and animal rights advocates. Finding that she was the only attendee with raspberry-pink hair, she later toned down her flamboyance at official events.Lucy by now had made her home in Bali. SOS opened branches first in Indonesia, the US, the UK, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. SOS activities included the donation of funds and medical equipment to a new reintroduction centre for Sumatran orangutans near Medan. In 2001 SOS co-founded the Orangutan Information Centre with a group of Indonesian conservationists working with local communities living in North Sumatra and Aceh to protect orangutans as a keystone species in the rainforest ecosystem.So SOS evolved its policy of collaboration with local Sumatran programmes, helping to finance conservation classes, touring roadshows, tree-planting schemes and eco-treks. In London, high-profile comedy nights at the Lyceum raised more funds. Lucy's achievements were recognised in awards, including Hero of the Month by Marie Claire magazine and Ethical Businesswoman of the Year (2009).At Lucy's funeral in Epping Forest, several hundred people heard addresses by her mother and friends, including the comedian and SOS patron Bill Bailey. Her pink papier-maché coffin was carried on the Mutoids' hearse, moss-lined, garlanded with pink feather boas and a profusion of orchids and drummed through the woods to her burial. Lucy is survived by her father Anthony, mother Charlotte and her brothers.• Lucy Wisdom, performance artist and conservationist, born 21 November 1956; died 19 December 2009ConservationCircusIndonesiaInstallationAnimalsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Suicide bomber comedy premieres Brass Eye creator Chris Morris's comedy film about a group of jihadis premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in the US. news.bbc.co.uk |