That’s Odd

Her family criticized the investigation, saying on Monday that the army “tried to obscure the truth and avoid responsibility” for the killing.

“Our family is not surprised by this outcome since it’s obvious to anyone that Israeli war criminals cannot investigate their own crimes. However, we remain deeply hurt, frustrated and disappointed,” the family said in a statement. It also reiterated its call for an independent U.S. investigation and a probe by the International Criminal Court.

Cold Comfort

A Brazilian man has a freezer to thank for keeping him alive.

Romualdo Macedo Rodrigues, a fisherman, was fishing in a boat in August when the boat developed cracks and started taking on water. Eventually, the boat sank off the coast of northern Brazil. Rodrigues managed to jump inside a floating cooler before it floated away. That cooler was his rescue buoy for 11 days, until a group of fishermen found him and took him to shore.

After he was rescued, Rodrigues was taken to a hospital in Suriname and was kept for a few days because he didn’t have proper documentation.

Now, he’s back in Brazil.

“I was born again. I thought I wouldn’t be telling this story, but I’m back here,” he said.

“I was desperate. I thought my end was coming. But thanks G-d, G-d gave me one more chance,” Rodrigues told Record TV. “I saw it (the freezer) wasn’t sinking. I jumped (inside it), it fell to one side and kept normal.”

Rodrigues, ironically, doesn’t know how to swim.

“Sharks were surrounding the freezer, but they went away. I thought (I would be attacked). I stayed on the top (of the freezer), I didn’t sleep – I didn’t sleep. I saw the dawn, the dusk, asking G-d to send someone to rescue me.” Eventually water started to creep inside the freezer, and he said he used his hand to scoop it out. Rodrigues didn’t have food or water to keep him alive.

“I was thinking about my kids, my wife. Every day, I was thinking about my mother, my father, all my family. It gave me strength and hope ... but at the moment I thought there was no other way,” he told Record TV.

Finally, after 11 days at sea, Rodrigues heard sounds of salvation. “I heard a noise, and there was a boat on top of the freezer. Only they (the other fishermen_ thought there was no one there. Then they slowly pulled over, my vision was already fading, then I said, ‘My G-d, the boat.’ I raised my arms and asked for help.”

He is grateful to be alive.

“That freezer was G-d in my life. The only thing I had was the freezer. It was a miracle.”

Stop Monkeying Around

Chichi, the chimpanzee, managed to escape from her enclosure at a Ukrainian zoo last week. Thankfully, zookeepers were able to bring the ape back to the zoo at Kharkiv after she was found in a park.

But Chichi got to ride home in style.

Zookeepers had followed the primate, and Chichi approached one of the workers when it started to rain. The zookeeper put a yellow raincoat on the chimp and wheeled her back to the zoo on the seat of a bicycle.

Chichi was one of numerous animals evacuated earlier in the Russian invasion from Feldman Ecopark, an outdoor zoo in the Kharkiv region that was determined to be dangerously close to targets of Russian shelling. Despite the war, Chichi is still monkeying around.