Joined skull to skull, sisters Ervina and Prefina were born with a condition the Bambino Gesu (Baby Jesus) Pediatric Hospital in Rome called "one of the rarest and most complex forms of cranial and cerebral fusion" Torrence OTTEN AFP
A hospital in Rome said on Tuesday it had successfully separated two-year-old twins joined above the nape of their necks, after three risky surgeries.
Joined skull to skull, sisters Ervina and Prefina were born with a condition the Bambino Gesu (Baby Jesus) Pediatric Hospital in Rome called "one of the rarest and most complex forms of cranial and cerebral fusion."
The hospital said it was the first time in Italy and likely the world -- as such a case had never been cited in medical literature -- that surgeons were able to separate twins joined in such a way, sharing the back of their skull and its venous system.
The two sisters from Bangui, Central African Republic, were brought to Italy in September 2018 after the hospital's president met the twins and their mother at a medical centre where they were born.
Tests conducted in Italy showed the twins to be generally in good health but that one sister's heart was working harder to maintain the "physiological balance of the organs of both, including the brain."
The girls had "distinct" personalities, the hospital said, Prefina being vivacious and playful with her sister Ervina more serious and quietly observing.
The greatest challenge facing the team of specialists -- including neurosurgeons, anaesthesiologists, neuroradiologists, plastic surgeons, engineers, and physiotherapists -- was the shared network of blood vessels bringing blood from the girls' brains to their hearts, the hospital said in a statement.
That required "three very delicate operations to progressively reconstruct two independent venous systems," it said.
- 'Lead a normal life' -
The final surgery, which took 18 hours and involved 30 doctors and nurses, took place on June 5 when the bones of the shared skull were divided.
Surgeons then reconstructed the membrane covering the two brains and recreated the skin lining over the new skulls.
"A month after the final separation, the twins are fine," said the hospital.
Video images of a hospital party given for the twins' second birthday with their mother on June 29 showed the girls, their heads wrapped in protective bandages, gesticulating and grabbing at their birthday cake.
But post-operative controls showed that their brains were "intact," adding that they will have the opportunity to grow normally and "lead a normal life, like all girls of their age."
It was the fourth time the hospital had operated on conjoined twins in its history.
Twins conjoined by the skull are extremely rare, or approximately one case every 2.5 million live births, the hospital said, adding that in Europe in the past 20 years only two cases of separating twins joined at the top of their skulls had been successful.
India’s prolific movie industry enjoyed pride of place at the Cannes Film Festival, starring as the film market’s first-ever guest of honour. FRANCE 24 spoke to director Shaunak Sen about his stunning New Delhi-set documentary “All That Breathes”, which screened at the festival this week.
The festival’s 75th anniversary has been celebrated as a homecoming, a much-needed reunion after two years of lockdowns and virtual events. It’s also been a time of farewells, with at least two Cannes stalwarts bowing out this year.
Pierre Lescure, the festival’s president for much of the past decade, is passing the baton to Iris Knobloch, the former head of Warner Europe – an appointment that has raised eyebrows among French cinema workers wary of seeing the industry’s crown jewel fall under American influence.
Perhaps more significant for industry workers is the departure of Jérôme Paillard, the head of the all-important Cannes Film Market, who is bowing out after a whopping 27 years at the helm.
When Paillard joined the organization back in 1995, the Marché du film was, in his own words, “a basement with some porno booths”. Since then, it has grown into the world’s largest film market, a sprawling maze where buyers and sellers from all continents discuss film rights and hash out production deals.
The market counted around 2,000 delegates when Paillard stepped in. This year there were more than 12,000 scattered across 360 physical booths – with around half as many attending online.
China was one notable absentee – ostensibly due to Covid restrictions, though the screening of a hard-hitting documentary on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests last year is rumored to be the real cause of Beijing’s no-show. Other countries have sent their largest delegation yet, most notably India, the market’s first-ever “guest of honour” this year.
Both Cannes and New Delhi have made much of their concommittant anniversaries, the festival’s diamond jubilee coinciding with the 75th anniversary of India’s independence.
India sent a high-profile delegation to the Riviera, including a government minister and the country’s ambassador to France. Inaugurating its pavilion on the Croisette last week, the Indian delegation hailed cinema as “one of the most potent instruments of soft power of our country”. Paillard, for his part, spoke of a “renewal of Indian cinema”.
The potential is indeed immense. India's film industry produces up to 2,000 movies per year, more than any other country. The country's 1.4 billion inhabitants, growing middle class, huge theatre network, and sizable global diaspora give the sector a fanbase that is the envy of the world.
“We’ve been making movies for 60 years and it’s really nice to be recognized on such an international platform,” the Indian model, actress and activist Nidhi Sunil told FRANCE 24 in an interview in Cannes. “I wasn’t here with a brand – I was here as ‘brand India’. And that’s something that’s truly special,” added fellow Indian actress Pooja Hegde, who shoots three films a year in as many Indian languages and has 20 million Instagram followers.
New Delhi’s stifling smog
India’s turbulent politics, and the immense challenges facing the world’s largest democracy, form the backdrop to the most high-profile Indian film at Cannes this year: Shaunak Sen’s hauntingly beautiful “All That Breathes”, which won the grand jury prize at Sundance earlier this year. It is the second film in as many years to touch on the catastrophic consequences of India’s economic growth at breakneck speed, after Rahul Jain’s “Invisible Demons” premiered here last year.
The latter film focused on the tangible experience of climate change: the unbearable heat, the lack of water, the smog so thick that cars and rickshaws keep their signal lights on at all times, hoping other drivers will spot them. It was a powerful indictment of the way unbridled capitalism has precipitated cataclysmic changes in the lives of ordinary people – its ominous warning finding an echo in the blistering heatwaves that have scorched India and neighboring Pakistan in recent weeks.
In “All That Breathes”, Sen has opted for a more subtle approach, weaving elements of the climate emergency, nature, politics and human brotherhood into a “dense tapestry” depicting life in his hometown of New Delhi. Set in a predominantly Muslim district of the Indian capital, his documentary focuses on two brothers who have dedicated their lives to rescuing birds injured in the city’s chronically polluted skies.
Nadeem and Saud tend to hundreds of injured kites, birds of prey that drop to the ground in droves because the air is so filthy they crash into each other or collide with kids’ paper kites. Wildlife Rescue, the charity they founded two decades ago, is like “a tiny band-aid on a gaping wound”: a dingy basement crowded with more injured birds than the brothers can handle.
In the background, sectarian violence triggered by a controversial citizenship law spreads across the city, threatening its Muslim population and adding to the sense of an environment that is both stifling and off-balance – as precarious as the power lines and equipment that regularly leave the brothers without clean air, electricity or food for the kites.
FRANCE 24 spoke to the director about the film’s message and his experience of the Cannes Film Festival.
Your film touches on many subjects, including the environmental emergency, human interactions with nature, and social strife. What was your starting point and how did you bring it all together?
We began with a clear idea of what this was not, rather than what it was. We knew this was neither a nature film, nor a frontally political snapshot of the country, nor a regular environmental documentary. Instead, it was a dense tapestry of things I’m interested in and which were very consonant with everything I just mentioned (…) The political metaphor only evolved over time because of things that happened during the shooting. It certainly wasn’t premeditated.
The brothers are more than just characters in the film; they provide its title and much of the thinking. How did you come across them?
I was looking for people who have a deep or profound relationship with the skies or birds, that’s how it began. I wanted to find the kind of metaphor for a broader ecological and social malaise. Fortuitously, the first people I met were the brothers and so I didn’t have to meet anybody else.
The minute I walked into their basement – in equal measure full of industrial decay and majestic, vulnerable birds – it had a salient bipolarity that was inherently cinematic. So I immediately got hooked into it.
Cinema has tackled the pollution crisis, in New Delhi in particular, head-on. Is there still reason for hope?
There’s always reason for hope – guarded, cautiously optimistic hope. What I find interesting about the brothers is that neither do they have a kind of maudlin sentimentality when it comes to environmental issues, nor are they constantly, bleakly spelling doom and gloom, even though they have front-row seats to the apocalypse. They have a kind of wry resilience in terms of putting their head down and soldiering on. I like that kind of attitude. A kind of philosophical disposition of calmness in the face of (…) ecological disaster.
What has your experience of Cannes been like?
It’s difficult not to answer that in clichés. It’s any filmmaker’s dream, obviously. It’s not often that you’re in a space that is sprinkled with such cinematic royalty. It’s an enormous honor and the fact that the characters, the brothers were able to come it means a lot to them, and to get a long standing ovation after the screening was a big deal for them.
According to testimony given to the Jan. 6 committee by one of his aides, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows burned papers in his office after meeting with a House Republican who was working to overturn the 2020 election's results, POLITICO reports.
"Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked under Meadows when he was former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, told the panel investigating the Capitol attack that she saw Meadows incinerate documents after a meeting in his office with Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.). A person familiar with the testimony described it on condition of anonymity," POLITICO's report stated.
It’s not known if Hutchinson told the committee anything specific about the papers that were burnt.
"Meadows’ destruction of papers is a key focus for the select committee, and the person familiar with the testimony said investigators pressed Hutchinson for details about the issue for more than 90 minutes during a recent deposition," the outlet reported.
According to Lowell, "the select committee intends to hold six hearings, with the first and last in prime time, where its lawyers will run through how Trump’s schemes took shape before the election and culminated with the Capitol attack."
The Guardian report adds, "the June public hearings will explore Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, starting and ending with prime-time hearings at 8pm on the 9th and the 23rd. In between, the panel will hold 10am hearings on the 13th, 15th, 16th and 21st."
A Montana man has been charged with one count of aggravated sexual intercourse without consent for allegedly raping a 16-year-old girl in October of last year, the Great Falls Tribune reports.
The victim said Michael Shawn Brown, 26, used the name “Michael Forstwulf” when the two were communicating on SnapChat. She said she snuck out and met with him after he offered her marijuana.
"The girl said Brown parked in front of her house in a white Volkswagen. She said she was talking to Brown through the window, then entered the vehicle. Before she could fully close the door, she said Brown began driving and locked the vehicle doors," the Tribune reports. "The girl said she saw that Brown had a large knife. He allegedly drove her to a location in Great Falls, strangled and raped her. He then drove her home, the girl said. When investigators searched the girl’s phone, they reportedly found a chat in which Brown stated, 'If you try to claim rape, I will sue you for libel and press whatever criminal charges I possibly can.'"
According to police, Brown allegedly mentioned claimed to be affiliated with the Aryan brotherhood and Nazis and talked about how “Hitler should have won."
Police also say he has a history of espousing "Nazi ideals and racist tendencies and to carry knives and a handgun," writes the Great Falls Tribune.
