Prince Charles Delivers Queen’s Speech for the First Time https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3637851/prince-charles-delivers-queen%E2%80%99s-speech-first-time
Prince Charles Delivers Queen’s Speech for the First Time
Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (L), the Imperial State Crown (C), Britain's Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (R) and Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (rear C) proccess through the Royal Gallery during the State Opening of Parliament at the Houses of Parliament, in London, on May 10, 2022. (AFP)
Prince Charles Delivers Queen’s Speech for the First Time
Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (L), the Imperial State Crown (C), Britain's Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (R) and Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (rear C) proccess through the Royal Gallery during the State Opening of Parliament at the Houses of Parliament, in London, on May 10, 2022. (AFP)
Britain's heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and Prince William took center stage at the opening of parliament on Tuesday, replacing the 96-year-old Queen Elizabeth who missed the grand set-piece event for the first time in almost six decades.
With the queen forced to withdraw on Monday due to a recurrence of mobility issues, 73-year-old Charles arrived at the Palace of Westminster to read out the government's legislative agenda.
Charles, who had attended the opening of parliament alongside his mother in recent years, started reading out each bill by saying: "Her majesty's government will...".
The State Opening of Parliament is an event of huge pomp and pageantry which traditionally sees the queen traveling to the assembly in a State Coach, escorted by mounted soldiers in ceremonial uniform, while the Imperial State Crown and other regalia travel ahead in a carriage of their own.
The monarch dons the Robe of State before leading a procession to the House of Lords upper chamber where she sits on a throne and formally opens a new session of parliament, reading a speech written by the government outlining its legislative plans.
The queen has missed the occasion only twice during her 70-year reign - in 1959, and 1963, when she was pregnant with sons Andrew and Edward.
The queen, who has missed a number of public engagements since she was hospitalized for a night last October for an unspecified illness, had to issue a 'Letters Patent' to authorise Charles and William to carry out her role at the constitutional event.
Real Possum Appears Among Plush Toy Animals in Australia Airport Shophttps://english.aawsat.com/varieties/5252970-real-possum-appears-among-plush-toy-animals-australia-airport-shop
This handout frame grab from UGC video footage by Melissa Oddie taken on March 18, 2026 and received via AFPTV shows a wild possum on a shelf among toys at Hobart Airport in Tasmania. (Photo by Handout / various sources / AFP)
Real Possum Appears Among Plush Toy Animals in Australia Airport Shop
This handout frame grab from UGC video footage by Melissa Oddie taken on March 18, 2026 and received via AFPTV shows a wild possum on a shelf among toys at Hobart Airport in Tasmania. (Photo by Handout / various sources / AFP)
On shelves crammed with cuddly toy native animals in an Australian airport gift shop, one fluffy possum stood out: Its big brown eyes were moving.
A browsing passenger first spotted a living Australian brushtail possum peering out from among the kangaroos on the display shelf at the departure terminal shop at Hobart Airport in Tasmania state on Wednesday, an airport retail manager Liam Bloomfield said on Thursday.
Above the possum were bilbies, marsupials with rabbit-like long ears, and dingoes, Australia’s native dog. Beside the possum in the kangaroo section were Tasmanian devils, a growling carnivore that inspired the feisty Warner Bros. cartoon character Taz.
“A passenger reported it to .... one of the staff members on shift who couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing,” Bloomfield said. “She then called the (airport) management and said we’ve got a possum in the store.”
A staff member took a video of the possum with her phone before the animal grew wary of the growing attention and left the shop.
Airport staff were able to remove the possum from the airport unharmed.
Bloomfield didn’t know what attracted the possum to the toy shelf, The Associated Press reported.
“I’m imaging it saw some of the plush animals that were for sale on the shelf and it decided to make its home with those. It wanted to blend in,” Bloomfield joked.
How the possum got into the store and how long it spent there are also unknown.
It was unlikely to have been placed there as a prank. Someone would have had to put the possum through X-ray screening to get it into the secure departure terminal area.
The Platypus is Even Weirder than Thought, Scientists Discoverhttps://english.aawsat.com/varieties/5252967-platypus-even-weirder-thought-scientists-discover
The Platypus is Even Weirder than Thought, Scientists Discover
Weird guys: The platypus has found yet another way to stand out in the animal kingdom. RICK STEVENS / TARONGA ZOO/AFP/File
They already have the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver, lay eggs like reptiles and have venom like snakes.
Yet the humble platypus, a small creature which quietly swims in the rivers of eastern Australia, has found yet another way to amaze scientists, AFP said.
It is the only mammal that has hollow structures of the pigment melanin, a trait normally found in birds, biologists said in a new study on Wednesday.
When the first taxidermied specimen of a platypus was brought back from Australia in 1799, European naturalists began looking for the seams -- they assumed it was a hoax.
The animal has been surprising scientists ever since.
The platypus is one of only five mammal species that lay eggs, which are called monotremes. The other four are all types of echidna -- spiny creatures that waddle through the Australian bush.
It is also one of the few poisonous mammals -- males have a spur on their hind legs that releases venom at their enemies.
Now another oddity has been added to the unusual platypus characteristics, according to the study published in the Biology Letters journal of the UK's Royal Society.
In animals with spines, called vertebrates, the pigment called melanin protects against UV radiation, helps regulate body temperature and is responsible for the color of skin, fur or feathers.
Melanin is contained in tiny, specialized structures inside cells called melanosomes, the shape of which is linked to their color.
For example, eumelanin -- which produces black, grey and dark brown hues -- is usually found in elongated melanosomes.
Pheomelanin, which produces reds, reddish-browns and some shades of orange and yellow, is found in spherical melanosomes.
And in mammals, these melanosomes are always solid.
However in birds, sometimes the structures are hollow or flat, with only a thin layer of melanin. This helps birds have the dazzling and varied colors seen across the world.
Birds also have melanosomes that are organized into smaller "nanostructures" which create iridescent colors that interact with light, such as the feathers of a peacock.
'Surprising and exciting'
Jessica Leigh Dobson, a biologist at Ghent University in Belgium and the study's lead author, told AFP the team was compiling a database of mammal melanosomes when they made an "extremely surprising and exciting" discovery.
Platypus melanosomes were mostly spherical -- which should give it reddish-orange fur. But the animal is merely dark brown.
Then the scientists discovered that some of its melanosomes are hollow -- like those of birds.
They checked their database for other mammals, including marsupials, rodents and primates.
"To the best of our knowledge, this is the only example of hollow melanosomes in mammals," Dobson said.
The melanosomes were "scattered randomly throughout the hair cortex" and do not create iridescence, she said.
"Further work is definitely needed to find out why they have them," Dobson added.
Why these animals evolved these unusual features in the first place is also unclear.
The ancestors of the platypus and echidna are thought to have been aquatic burrowing animals, so their hollow melanosomes could have helped them adapt to life in the water, giving them warmer insulation.
But this theory raises more questions.
If this was the case, why is this trait "not more widespread among aquatic mammals?" the study asked.
Emergency Room for Injured Wild Birds Opens at Warsaw Zoo in Polandhttps://english.aawsat.com/varieties/5252603-emergency-room-injured-wild-birds-opens-warsaw-zoo-poland
A male bullfinch is treated at the birds' hospital at the Warsaw Zoo after crashing against the window of an apartment building, in Warsaw, Poland, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Claudia Ciobanu)
Emergency Room for Injured Wild Birds Opens at Warsaw Zoo in Poland
A male bullfinch is treated at the birds' hospital at the Warsaw Zoo after crashing against the window of an apartment building, in Warsaw, Poland, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Claudia Ciobanu)
When a male bullfinch smashed into Marcin Jarzębski’s apartment window, he took it in but realized it needed expert treatment. So the next morning he brought it to Warsaw’s new emergency room for wild birds.
He placed the tiny, plump bird with a black head, gray back and reddish chest feathers into a shoebox and took it as one of the first patients to the new drop-off center for sick and injured birds at the entrance of the Warsaw Zoo.
“The bird stayed with us overnight, but unfortunately it probably has a broken wing so we brought it to the bird hospital,” The Associated Press quoted Jarzebski as saying.
The 24/7 emergency room in the Polish capital is actually a system of automated metal containers – something like a parcel room – where the containers can keep the birds warm in winter. The boxes send an immediate signal to the bird hospital just a few meters away, where veterinarians bring the birds for diagnosing and treatment.
Jarzebski filled out a questionnaire and carefully placed the shoebox and the paper form into one of the containers, assured that the bullfinch would now have its best chance of surviving.
The box system, designed based on ideas of the workers at the bird hospital, locks the birds in to keep them safe until a doctor can collect them. The drop-off center, opened in February, is boosting the efficiency of a bird hospital that has operated at the Warsaw Zoo since 1998 and now treats about 9,000 patients annually.
It’s the brainchild of the zoo director, ornithologist Andrzej Kruszewicz, who said that people have a responsibility to care for creatures whose habitat they have altered, such as that of the bullfinch.
“This bird is a child of the forest who, during migration, didn’t understand the window,” Kruszewicz said.
“Humans often cause problems: car accidents, crashes into windows, electrocutions, tangled strings on storks’ legs,” he said. “All this is humans’ fault and they should feel responsible to give these birds a second chance.”
Treated storks are seen in an external cage outside the birds' hospital at the Warsaw Zoo in Warsaw, Poland, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Claudia Ciobanu)
Typical patients at the Warsaw Zoo include common songbirds like tits, sparrows, thrushes and starlings, as well as pigeons. However, in a green city like Warsaw, which has the river Vistula running through it, rarer species also can appear.
Hospital manager Andżelika Gackowska says that warm winters caused by climate change have meant birds that were previously migrating south, including cranes or herons, are choosing to stay in Poland.
“Birds who stopped migrating because of warm winters were caught off guard by such a harsh winter as this year,” Gackowska said. Some birds developed anemia during the cold months because of tough conditions and insufficient nutrition, making them more vulnerable to disease.
The emergency room was financed in part with money from Warsaw’s citizen budget, a program that chooses projects based on their popularity in online surveys of city residents.
Warsaw Zoo workers say residents have become more conscious about providing help if they see a sick bird, although they also warn against overzealousness, saying that people shouldn't pick up young and healthy birds that they might believe are orphans.
“In spring, we always make an information campaign warning people not to ‘kidnap’ birds,” Gackowska said. “Birds take care of their small ones differently than humans. If we see a baby bird on the grass alone, it is likely just training how to fly independently.”
In the bird hospital, veterinarian assistants are constantly on their feet, feeding and giving medicine to the various birds, located across multiple rooms depending on species and degree of illness.
Once birds are stronger, they are placed in large cages outside, to readjust to their natural environment before being released.
Releasing the cured birds back into their habitat is the ultimate goal, veterinarian Ewelina Chudziak said.
“We are fighting for freedom,” she said.
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