内容摘要：earlier this month on 89-year-old Robert Markel and his dog in a rural part of Collier County, in southwest Florida. Bears are also frequently seen in neighborhoods that stretch into their habitat, one even

earlier this month on 89-year-old Robert Markel and his dog in a rural part of Collier County, in southwest Florida. Bears are also frequently seen in neighborhoods that stretch into their habitat, one even

A lawsuit filed this month by an LA resident sought to halt the elephants’ transfer, but a judge denied an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order. That lawsuit includes a declaration by the singer Cher, who has advocated for the elephants for years, the“Billy and Tina have served their time in confinement,” Cher said in the declaration. “They deserve the chance to live out their lives in peace and dignity.”

The LA Zoo referred questions about the court actions to the city attorney’s office, which said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.Los Angeles City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield introduced a motion in April requiring the zoo to explore sanctuary options for the pair. But before the council could act, the zoo went forward with the move, “thwarting public discourse and transparency,” In Defense of Animals said in a statement Wednesday.The nonprofit said the Tulsa Zoo’s enclosure is “cramped, unnatural, and harmful to elephant health,” with seven animals “jammed into an enclosure less than one percent the size of their smallest natural range.”

The Tulsa Zoo said last month that it has renovated and expanded its elephant exhibit, which dedicates 17 of its 124 total acres to pachyderms. A large barn was built in 2024 and an additional 10 acres will be added to preserve this summer, the zoo said in an April statement.Zoos across the country have been targeted in recent years by animal activists who criticize living conditions for elephants. Broadly, some elephant experts say urban zoos simply don’t have the space that elephants, who roam extensive distances in the wild, need for a normal life.

Some larger zoos such as the

have phased out their elephant programs, sending their aging animals to sanctuaries that have far more space.exploits all the tension and ambiguity inherent in that opening scene to craft a short, propulsive novel that suggests that at work and in life, we are constantly trying out roles and making it up as we go along. Or, to quote

, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”“Audition” features an unnamed female narrator, an actor of some renown, in rehearsals for a difficult new play. When she is not on stage, she lives a quiet life in the West Village with her art historian husband, Tomas. Halfway through the novel, everything changes. The relationships between her, Xavier and Tomas are turned upside down in head-spinning fashion like the figure/ground illusion known as Rubin’s vase. Look at the picture one way, and it is a container for flowers; look at it another way, and it is the silhouettes of two heads facing each other.

Kitamura’s two previous novels also featured unnamed female protagonists whose work was bound up with interpretation: in “Intimacies,” a female interpreter at the Hague, and in “A Separation,” a translator. In this book she evokes a stylish city built out of glass, a sort of Mastercard ad where people have personal assistants and nibble on charcuterie trays in tastefully furnished apartments.In this facsimile of New York, which does not include disheveled people sleeping on the street or garbage spilling out of trash cans, Kitamura does a good job of creating a sense of the uncanny and feeling of dread. Reality is unstable; nothing is as it seems.