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NEW YORK — It’s small in stature, big on activity and known for a “smile,” and it’s ready to compete with 200 other dog breeds.

Say hello to the Lancashire heeler, the latest breed recognized by the American Kennel Club. The organization announced Wednesday that the rare herding breed is now eligible for thousands of U.S. dog shows, including the prominent Westminster Kennel Club show.

With long bodies and short coats that are often black and tan, the solidly built dogs are shaped a bit like a downsized corgi, standing around 30 centimeters at the shoulder and weighing up to about 7.7 kilograms. Historically, they were farm helpers that could both drive cattle and rout rats, and today they participate in an array of canine sports and pursuits.

“They’re gritty little dogs, and they’re very intelligent little dogs,” says Patricia Blankenship of Flora, Mississippi, who has bred them for over a decade. “It’s an enjoyable little breed to be around.”

Their official description — or breed standard, in dog-world parlance — calls for them to be “courageous, happy, affectionate to owner,” and owners say contented heelers sometimes pull back their lips in a “smile.”

They’re “extremely versatile,” participating in everything from scent work to dock diving contests, says United States Lancashire Heeler Club President Sheryl Bradbury. But she advises that a Lancashire heeler “has to have a job,” whether it’s an organized dog sport or simply walks and fetch with its owners.

The dogs benefit from meeting various different people and canines, added Bradbury, who breeds them in Plattsmouth, Nebraska.

Lancashire heelers go back centuries in the United Kingdom, where they’re now deemed a “vulnerable native breed” at risk of dying out in their homeland. Britain’s Kennel Club has added an average of just 121 Lancashire heelers annually to its registry in recent years, and the American Kennel Club says only about 5,000 exist worldwide.

Founded in 1884, the AKC is the United States’ oldest purebred dog registry and functions like a league for many canine competitions, including sports open to mixed-breeds and purebreds. But only the 201 recognized breeds vie for the traditional “best in show” trophies at Westminster and elsewhere.

To get recognized, a breed must count at least 300 pedigreed dogs, distributed through at least 20 states, and fanciers must agree on a breed standard. Recognition is voluntary, and some breeds’ aficionados approach other kennel clubs or none at all.

Adding breeds, or even perpetuating them, bothers animal rights activists. They argue that dog breeding powers puppy mills, reduces pet adoptions and accentuates canine health problems by compressing genetic diversity.

The AKC says it promotes responsibly “breeding for type and function” to produce dogs with special skills, such as tracking lost people, as well as pets with characteristics that owners can somewhat predict and prepare for. The club has given over $32 million since 1995 to a foundation that underwrites canine health research.
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white house — South Africa is taking the war in Gaza to a top global court, accusing Israel of genocide in a lengthy court filing that the International Court of Justice is preparing to hear next week.  

Israel says the filing constitutes “blood libel,” and the White House dimisses it as “meritless.”  

More than 22,000 Palestinians have perished since the start of Israel’s offensive on Gaza, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. U.S. officials have previously cast doubt on those figures, noting that the ministry is run by Hamas, the group that was elected to govern Gaza and whose armed wing launched the October 7 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,200 people. 

Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and some of its allies, lists the killing of Jews and the elimination of the Jewish state as its main objectives. 

South Africa’s 84-page submission, filed last week, says that Israel’s actions in its Gaza offensive “are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”

Israel’s use of state organs and agents to do this, they say, is a violation of its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.  

Alarms over possible war crimes

International organizations, including United Nations agencies, have raised alarms over possible war crimes, with the U.N.’s human rights agency calling in November for “prompt, transparent and independent investigations into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, perpetrated in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territory on 7 October 2023 and thereafter.”  

Israel’s government has slammed the move as a “decision to play advocate for the devil” and accused South Africa of “blood libel.” The accusation that Jewish people use the blood of Christians in religious rituals has been touted for centuries — notably by the genocidal Nazi regime, which oversaw the extermination of some 6 million Jews — to justify targeting Jews.  

“History will judge South Africa for its criminal complicity with the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and it will judge it without mercy,” said Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy. 

The White House, when asked by VOA, dismissed South Africa’s argument.  

“We find this submission meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” said John Kirby, director of strategic communications for the National Security Council.  

South Africa’s Foreign Affairs Ministry did not respond to requests for comment, but spokesperson Clayson Monyela said on the social media platform X that this is an example of his nation’s decision to “flex its diplomatic muscle in defense of humanity.”  

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has historically supported the Palestinian cause, with the nation’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela, saying, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”  

In the court application, South Africa argues that the treatment of Palestinians also bears strong resemblance to South Africa’s own racially motivated apartheid regime, which ended in 1994 with Mandela’s election.  

“It is important,” the submission reads, “to place the acts of genocide in the broader context of Israel’s conduct towards Palestinians during its 75-year-long apartheid, its 56-year-long belligerent occupation of Palestinian territory and its 16-year-long blockade of Gaza, including the serious and ongoing violations of international law associated therewith, including grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity.” 

The grassroots Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says it supports South Africa’s submission, which has also been endorsed by Muslim-majority nations Turkey and Malaysia.  

Robert McCaw, government affairs department director for CAIR, notes that while the group has “condemned the killing of Palestinians and Israelis alike” and the actions of both Hamas and Israel’s government, it believes South Africa’s case “fits the definition of genocide.” 

“When you are systematically erasing Palestinians from Gaza, that is a genocide,” he said. “And you can, you know, use whatever terms you want to dismiss this claim, but it’s a genocide.” 

But can it stop the war? South Africa, in its submission, asks the court to immediately call upon Israel to halt attacks, but it’s not clear whether such a ruling would stick.  

“It can’t enforce its verdicts, but members of the United Nations, which are all the world’s government, they can accept its findings, and that impacts the types of policies that are put out by the U.N.,” McCaw said. 

“So, this can have a significant impact in how we might be able to get a cease-fire or to hold Israel accountable by other means for its ongoing genocide of Palestinians. Also, it’s a very good way to legally document the crimes that are occurring.” 

Proceedings begin January 11 and will be streamed live on the United Nations’ web-based TV site.  
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pentagon — Houthi militants appear to be ignoring U.S. warnings about their repeated attacks on ships in the Red Sea, launching a naval drone Thursday that came within “a couple of miles” of merchant ships and American combat vessels before detonating.

U.S. naval officials said the so-called unmanned surface vessel was launched from Houthi territory in Yemen and traveled about 50 miles into busy shipping lanes before exploding. They said it is unclear who or what the Houthis were trying to target, adding the explosion did not cause any damage or injuries.

“There are no signs that their irresponsible behavior is abating,” Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Navy operations in the Middle East, told reporters.

“Shipping lanes in this region are dense,” Cooper said. “These Houthi attacks are, for sure, destabilizing and contrary to international law and clearly, as have as has been articulated by many, must stop immediately.”

Twenty-five attacks since November

Since November, the Iranian-backed Houthis have launched 25 attacks on vessels sailing through the Red Sea, claiming the ships are linked to Israel and that the attacks are in support of Palestinians in Gaza.

In response, the United States, along with France, Britain and nearly 20 other countries launched Operation Prosperity Guardian in mid-December to protect ships from Houthi attacks.

So far, about 1,500 vessels have passed safely through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, with the U.S. and its partners shooting down 11 Houthi drones, six anti-ship ballistic missiles and two cruise missiles. U.S. forces also sunk three Houthi boats Sunday after they attacked a container ship.

“We now have the largest surface and air presence in the southern Red Sea in years,” Cooper said. “And in the coming weeks, we expect additional countries to contribute, which will only strengthen our ability to deter.”

But Cooper also said the five warships and other assets taking part in Operation Prosperity Guardian are “entirely defensive in nature” and are separate from any capabilities that might be used to strike at the Houthis.

US, allies warn Houthis

On Wednesday, the U.S. and 12 allies issued a statement warning the Houthis of unspecified consequences if their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea continue.

“Let our message now be clear: We call for the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and crews,” the statement said.

Signatories on the statement include Britain, which on Monday issued its own warning to the Houthis of “direct action,” as well as Australia, Canada, Germany and Japan.

Late Wednesday, a senior U.S. administration official —briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity — said the Houthis should “not anticipate another warning” from the U.S. or its partners.
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Perry, Iowa — Police in Perry, Iowa, say multiple people were shot at the city’s high school Thursday, early on students’ first day back in classes after their annual winter break.

Two gunshot victims were taken by ambulance to Iowa Methodist Medical Center in the state capital of Des Moines, about 64 kilometers southeast of Perry, a community of about 8,000 people. Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said the shooting occurred before school was set to start, so there were few students and faculty in Perry High School.

The suspect in the shooting has died of what investigators believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity.

The shooting occurred in the backdrop of the Iowa caucuses and not far from where Republican presidential candidates were campaigning.

An active shooter was reported at 7:37 a.m. Thursday morning and officers arrived seven minutes later, Infante said. He added during a news conference that officers located multiple people with injuries, but couldn’t confirm how many there were or their conditions. A spokesperson for UnityPoint Health, which operates the Des Moines hospital, confirmed the two gunshot victims arriving there.

An enormous number of emergency vehicles surrounded the building that houses both the town’s middle school and high school.

Zander Shelley, 15, was in a hallway waiting for the school day to start when he heard gunshots and dashed into a classroom, according to his father, Kevin Shelley. Zander was grazed twice and hid in the classroom before texting his father at 7:36 a.m.

Kevin Shelley, who drives a garbage truck, told his boss he had to run. “It was the most scared I’ve been in my entire life,” he said.

Rachael Kares, an 18-year-old senior, was wrapping up jazz band practice when she and her bandmates heard what she described as four gunshots, spaced apart.

“We all just jumped,” Kares said. “My band teacher looked at us and yelled, ‘Run!’ So we ran.”

Kares and many others from the school ran out past the football field, as she heard people yelling, “Get out! Get out!” She said she heard additional shots as she ran, but didn’t know how many. She was more concerned about getting home to her 3-year-old son.

“At that moment I didn’t care about anything except getting out because I had to get home with my son,” she said.

FBI agents from the Omaha-Des Moines office were on scene to help with the investigation led by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

“There are a bunch of speculative numbers floating around,” said Dirk Cavanaugh, Perry’s mayor. “We have no confirmed numbers of who was involved yet.”

Erica Jolliff said that her daughter, a ninth grader, reported getting rushed from the school grounds at 7:45 am. Distraught, Jolliff was still looking for her son Amir, a sixth grader, one hour later.

“I just want to know that he’s safe and OK,” Jolliff said. “They won’t tell me nothing.”

Jasmine Augustine, 18, was at the high school shortly after everything happened Thursday morning. She said she was dropping off a friend at the high school and his brother, who goes to the town’s elementary school about a mile (1.61 kilometers) away.

“I was at Casey’s convenience store and saw one car speed by. I thought it was just someone getting pulled over,” she said.

Augustine said that when she pulled in at the high school, someone told her there was an active shooter “and then we hurried up and left.”

“After that, there’s just tons and tons and tons of cops who came,” said Augustine, whose sister attends the high school but wasn’t near what happened. Jasmine and her dad picked up her sister from the armory afterward.

The high school is part of the 1,785-student Perry Community School District. The town of Perry is more diverse than Iowa as a whole, with census figures showing that 31% of the residents are Hispanic, compared to less than 7% for the state. Those figures also show that nearly 19% of the town’s residents were born outside the U.S.

The shooting occurred in the backdrop of the Iowa caucuses and not far from where Republican candidates were campaigning.

Phone messages left with the Perry School Board’s president and vice president, and an email message left with Superintendent Clark Wicks, were not immediately returned.
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SAN FRANCISCO — The falling-block video game Tetris has met its match in 13-year-old Willis Gibson, who has become the first player to officially “beat” the original Nintendo version of the game — by breaking it.

Technically, Willis — aka “blue scuti” in the gaming world — made it to what gamers call a “kill screen,” a point where the Tetris code glitches, crashing the game. That might not sound like much of a victory to anyone thinking that only high scores count, but it’s a highly coveted achievement in the world of video games, where records involve pushing hardware and software to their limits. And beyond.

It’s also a very big deal for players of Tetris, which many had long considered unbeatable. That’s partly because the game doesn’t have a scripted ending; those four-block shapes just keep falling no matter how good you get at stacking them into disappearing rows. Top players continued to find ways to extend their winning streaks by staying in the game to reach higher and higher levels, but in the end, the game beat them all.

Until, that is, Willis managed on Dec. 21 to trigger a kill screen on Level 157, which the gaming world takes as a victory over the game — something along the lines of pushing the software past its own limits.

The makers of Tetris agree. “Congratulations to ‘blue scuti’ for achieving this extraordinary accomplishment, a feat that defies all preconceived limits of this legendary game,” Tetris CEO Maya Rogers said in a statement. Rogers noted that Tetris will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year and called Willis’ victory a “monumental achievement.”

It’s been a very long road. Early on, “the Tetris scene people didn’t even know how to get to these higher levels,” said David Macdonald, a gaming YouTuber who has chronicled the gaming industry for years. “They were just stuck in the 20s and 30s because they just didn’t know techniques to get any further.” Level 29 posed an especially tough roadblock because the blocks began falling more quickly than the in-game controller could respond.

Eventually players found ways to make progress, as Macdonald chronicled in his detailed video on Willis victory. In 2011, one got to Level 30 using a technique called “hypertapping,” in which a player could rhythmically vibrate their fingers to move the game controller faster than the game’s built-in speed. That technique took players to level 35 by 2018, after which they hit a wall.

The next big thing came in 2020 when a gamer combined a multifinger technique originally used on arcade video games with a finger positioned on the bottom of the controller to push it against another finger on the top. Called “rolling,” this much speedier approach helped one player reach Level 95 in 2022.

Then other obstacles arose. Because the original Tetris developers had never counted on players pushing the game’s limits so aggressively, bizarre quirks began to crop up at higher levels. One particularly difficult issue arose with the game’s color palette, which traditionally cycled through 10 easily distinguished patterns. Starting at level 138, though, random color combinations began to appear — some of which made it much harder to distinguish the blocks from the game’s black background.

Two particularly devilish patterns — one a dim combination of dark blues and greens later dubbed “Dusk,” the other composed of black, gray and white blocks called “Charcoal” — proved taxing for players. When combined with the strain of increasingly longer games, which could run 40 minutes or more, progress slowed again. It took a Tetris-playing AI program dubbed StackRabbit to break that logjam by helping map out just where players might happen across a glitch resulting in a kill screen, and finally beat the game.

StackRabbit, which managed to make it all the way to Level 237 before crashing the game, ran on a modified version of Tetris, so its achievements aren’t strictly comparable to those of human players. And its findings weren’t immediately applicable to the human-played game, either. But its runs clearly demonstrated that game-ending glitches could be triggered by very specific events, such as which block pieces were in play or how many lines a player cleared at once.

That let human players take over the task of mapping all possible scenarios that could cause such crashes in the original game. These typically resulted when the game’s decade-old code lost its place and began reading its next instructions from the wrong location, generally resulting in garbage input.

A massive effort spurred by StackRabbit’s experience eventually led to the compilation of a large spreadsheet that detailed which game levels and which specific conditions were most likely to lead to a crash.

That’s what compelled Willis to make his run for the record.

Yet even he appeared shocked when he crashed the game at Level 157. In his livestream video, he appears to hyperventilate before barely gasping “Oh my God” several times, clutching his temples and worrying that he might be passing out. After cupping his hands over his mouth in an apparent attempt to regulate his breathing, he finally exclaims, “I can’t feel my fingers.”
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AUSTIN, Texas — The Justice Department on Wednesday sued Texas over a new law that would allow police to arrest migrants who enter the U.S. illegally, taking Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to court again over his escalating response to border crossers arriving from Mexico.

The lawsuit draws Texas into another clash over immigration at a time when New York and Chicago are pushing back on buses and planes carrying migrants sent by Abbott to Democrat-led cities nationwide. Texas is also fighting separate court battles to keep razor wire on the border and a floating barrier in the Rio Grande.

But a law Abbott signed last month poses a broader and bigger challenge to the U.S. government’s authority over immigration. In addition to allowing police anywhere in Texas to arrest migrants on charges of illegal entry, the law — known as Senate Bill 4 — also gives judges the authority to order migrants to leave the country.

The lawsuit asks a federal court in Austin to declare the Texas law unconstitutional. It calls the measure a violation of the Supremacy Clause, which establishes that federal laws in most cases supersede state law. 

“Texas cannot run its own immigration system,” the Justice Department states in the lawsuit. “Its efforts, through SB 4, intrude on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate the entry and removal of noncitizens, frustrate the United States’ immigration operations and proceedings, and interfere with U.S. foreign relations.”

Abbott’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment.

“Biden sued me today because I signed a law making it illegal for an illegal immigrant to enter or attempt to enter Texas directly from a foreign nation.” Abbott said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “I like my chances.”

The law is scheduled to take effect in March. Civil rights organizations and officials in El Paso County, Texas, filed a lawsuit last month that similarly described the new law as unconstitutional overreach.

The Justice Department sent Abbott a letter last week threatening legal action unless Texas reversed course. In response, Abbott posted on X that the Biden administration “not only refuses to enforce current U.S. immigration laws, they now want to stop Texas from enforcing laws against illegal immigration.”

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson and about 60 fellow Republicans visited the Texas border city of Eagle Pass, which has been the center of Abbott’s $10 billion border initiative known as Operation Lone Star. Johnson suggested he could use a looming government funding deadline as further leverage for hard-line border policies.

President Joe Biden has expressed willingness to make policy compromises because the number of migrants crossing the border is an increasing challenge for his 2024 reelection campaign. Johnson praised Abbott, who was not in Eagle Pass, and slammed the lawsuits that seek to undo Texas’ aggressive border measures.

“It’s absolute insanity,” Johnson said.

Illegal crossings along the southern U.S. border topped 10,000 on several days in December, a number that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Troy Miller called “unprecedented.” U.S. authorities closed cargo rail crossings in Eagle Pass and El Paso for five days last month, calling it a response to a large number of migrants riding freight trains through Mexico to the border.

Authorities this week also resumed full operations at a bridge in Eagle Pass and other crossings in San Diego and Arizona that had been temporarily closed.

Legal experts and opponents say Texas’ new law is the most far-reaching attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law that was partially struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. That law had made it a state crime to be in the U.S. without legal status and gave police some immigration enforcement powers. A Supreme Court ruling in 2012 affirmed that immigration enforcement is solely within the authority of the federal government.

Under the Texas law, migrants could either agree to a Texas judge’s order to leave the U.S. or be prosecuted on misdemeanor charges of illegal entry. Migrants who don’t leave could face arrest again under more serious felony charges.

Those ordered to leave would be sent to ports of entry along the border with Mexico, even if they are not Mexican citizens. The law can be enforced anywhere in Texas but some places are off-limits, including schools and churches.

For more than two years, Texas has run a smaller-scale operation on the border to arrest migrants on misdemeanor charges of trespassing. Although that was also intended to stem illegal crossings, there is little indication that it has done so. 
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