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Adopted Wild Boar Threatened with Euthanasia in France

French horse breeder Elodie Cappe walks with "Rillette", a wild boar she rescued as a piglet in 2023 that is now at the center of a legal dispute over the keeping of wild animals in France, at her farm in Chaource, France, January 15, 2025. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq
French horse breeder Elodie Cappe walks with "Rillette", a wild boar she rescued as a piglet in 2023 that is now at the center of a legal dispute over the keeping of wild animals in France, at her farm in Chaource, France, January 15, 2025. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq
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Adopted Wild Boar Threatened with Euthanasia in France

French horse breeder Elodie Cappe walks with "Rillette", a wild boar she rescued as a piglet in 2023 that is now at the center of a legal dispute over the keeping of wild animals in France, at her farm in Chaource, France, January 15, 2025. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq
French horse breeder Elodie Cappe walks with "Rillette", a wild boar she rescued as a piglet in 2023 that is now at the center of a legal dispute over the keeping of wild animals in France, at her farm in Chaource, France, January 15, 2025. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq

Animal rights campaigners in France are fighting to save a wild boar adopted as a piglet by a horse breeder but now threatened with being put down if her owner does not send her to a specialized sanctuary, Reuters reported.
A French court is set to rule in coming days on the fate of "Rillette", who was found as a tiny piglet outside the horse farm of Elodie Cappe in Chaource, central France, in April 2023.
Now a big sow with a bristly brown coat, Rillette strolls around between the horses and dogs on the farm and enthusiastically kicks around a big plastic ball with her snout.
"I do not know how she sees me. Maybe I am her mother, maybe her best friend, or just her protector, but as you can see there is a link of love between us," Cappe said as she hugged Rillette in the hay and kissed her on the snout.
Cappe says Rillette no longer is a wild animal and that two attempts to set her free have failed miserably as the boar immediately ran back towards her owners.
"Rillette has no link whatsoever with her own species. If we release her in the woods, she will sit in middle of the road and run to the first human she sees," she said.
Authorities' attempts to remove the boar on health and safety grounds have whipped up a storm of protest in France.
Last weekend hundreds of people in the area marched behind a "Free Rillette" banner, while animal rights campaigner and movie icon Brigitte Bardot posted on X: "I ask that Rillette be saved...who are the monsters who want to euthanize her?".
Rillette's owner says she will fight to save her. "All will depend on the magistrate's decision, but it could come down to euthanasia, and I will not let that happen," said Cappe, who risks three years in jail for failing to comply.
Cappe said that Rillette - jokingly named after a regional dish of shredded pork - is sterilized and vaccinated and poses no danger to the public as she is confined to the farm.
"Why would they take her away, since she is happy here and does not bother anyone?" she asked.

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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Launches New Glenn Rocket on 1st Test flight

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Launches New Glenn Rocket on 1st Test flight

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Blue Origin launched its massive new rocket on its first test flight Thursday, sending up a prototype satellite to orbit thousands of miles above Earth.
Named after the first American to orbit Earth, the New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida, soaring from the same pad used to launch NASA's Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft a half-century ago, The Associated Press reported.
Years in the making with heavy funding by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the 320-foot (98-meter) rocket carried an experimental platform designed to host satellites or release them into their proper orbits. Company employees erupted in cheers and frenzied applause once the craft successfully reached orbit.
For this test, the satellite was expected to remain inside the second stage while circling Earth. The mission was expected to last six hours, with the second stage then placed in a safe condition to stay in a high, out-of-the-way orbit in accordance with NASA's practices for minimizing space junk.
The first-stage booster missed its landing on a barge in the Atlantic minutes after liftoff so it could be recycled, but the company stressed that the No. 1 objective was for the test satellite to reach orbit. “What a fantastic day,” Blue Origin's launch commentator Ariane Cornell, said.
New Glenn was supposed to fly before dawn Monday, but ice buildup in critical plumbing caused a delay. The rocket is built to haul spacecraft and eventually astronauts to orbit and also the moon.
Founded 25 years ago by Bezos, Blue Origin has been launching paying passengers to the edge of space since 2021, including himself. The short hops from Texas use smaller rockets named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard. New Glenn, which honors John Glenn, is five times taller.
Blue Origin poured more than $1 billion into New Glenn's launch site, rebuilding historic Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The pad is 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the company's control centers and rocket factory, outside the gates of NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Bezos — taking part in the launch from Mission Control — declined to disclose his personal investment in the program. He said he does not see Blue Origin in a competition with Elon Musk's SpaceX, long the rocket-launching dominator.
Blue Origin envisions six to eight New Glenn flights this year, if everything goes well, with the next one coming up this spring.
“There’s room for lots of winners” Bezos said from the rocket factory over the weekend, adding that this was the “very, very beginning of this new phase of the space age, where we’re all going to work together as an industry ... to lower the cost of access to space."