Day: June 23, 2024

For Pekingese Wild Thang, and his owner Ann Lewis, winning the title of “World’s Ugliest Dog” is not an insult but an honor.

The pup hailing from Coos Bay, Oregon, is the 2024 winner of the annual World’s Ugliest Dog competition, which took place on Friday, June 21, at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, California.

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According to the contest’s website, the event—which has been running since 1988—is “not about making fun of ‘ugly’ dogs, but having fun with some wonderful characters and showing the world that these dogs are really beautiful.”

The 8-year old dog, whose tongue perpetually hangs out of his mouth, went home with a $5,000 check and a trip to New York City, which is set to be featured on NBC’s Today show on Monday, June 24. A year ago, Wild Thang was featured briefly on Today, as runner up to the 2023 contest winner,  17-year-old chihuahua mix Mr. Happy Face, whose owner showed up to the animal shelter and asked for the “most unadoptable dog.”

Now, Wild Thang has finally entered the spotlight.

The win was a long time coming for the pup, who has competed in the competition five times, and has been runner-up the last three years. According to one of the judges, Fiona Ma, it was this perseverance that helped push Wild Thang over the edge and across the stage to first place.

“The fact that he was the bridesmaid and never the bride, I think really tugged at our heartstrings,” Ma, California’s 34th State Treasurer, said in an interview with the Associated Press after the event. “He deserved to win.”

She went on to highlight one of the major purposes of the show, which is to advocate for rescuing and adopting pets, rather than buying them. Most of the contestants every year are shelter dogs, or grew up on the streets.

The 2024 runner-up title went to first time entree, 14-year old pug Rome, who walks with an attached wheelchair on his hind legs. Rome spends his time visiting hospice patients and educating children about the importance of adopting senior rescue pets. He was also a member of the 2023 Wheeling Pug Relay team, which raises money to purchase wheelchairs for differently-abled dogs. Owner Michelle Grady was incredibly excited with their placement.

“To win second place out of everyone here is a real honor,” she said, in an interview with The Star News. “I love this whole contest, and that it celebrates dogs that are perfectly imperfect.”

Though Wild Thang won the official prize—based on a judges panel that included Ma, NBC News Correspondent Gadi Schwartz, and others—runner-up Rome took home the “People’s Choice” award, which viewers could vote for prior to the contest on Friday via the contest’s website.

Other contestants included 14-year-old Daisy Mae, who was rescued from the streets at the tender age of 2, chihuahua mix Cadence II, who weighs a mighty five pounds and has almost no teeth left, and Freddy Mercury, a 14-year old Brussels-Griffon/Pug mix who was adopted from the streets and is now the mascot for Petaluma’s local ice cream truck.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — An Israeli was shot dead in a Palestinian town in the northern West Bank Saturday morning, Israel’s army said, while deadly strikes rocked northern Gaza.

The army said the Israeli man was pronounced dead after being shot in the town of Qalqilya, and that Israeli troops were currently operating in the area. Israeli forces fatally shot two militants in the same West Bank town Friday.

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Violence has flared in the the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last October. Since then, at least 549 Palestinians in the territory have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which tracks the killings. Over the same period, Palestinians in the West Bank have killed at least nine Israelis, including five soldiers, according to U.N. data.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency group active in Gaza, said they pulled 19 bodies from a building hit by an Israeli strike Saturday in an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City.

The group said its emergency workers were also digging for survivors at the site of another strike in Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. The Associated Press has been unable to verify the figures provided by the emergency group.

The Israeli army said its fighter jets struck two Hamas military sites in the Gaza City area but did not elaborate further.

A separate Israeli strike Saturday in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley killed a member of the military wing of al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Group, a Sunni Muslim faction closely allied with Hamas, according to the group. The member was the seventh killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since the war began.

The Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7. when Hamas militants who stormed southern Israel killed about 1,200 people and took some 250 others hostage. Israel has responded by bombarding and invading the enclave, killing more than 37, 400 Palestinians there according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Israeli nationals are prohibited from entering Qalqilya and other areas of the West Bank that fall under the under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

In April, the death of a 14-year-old Israeli settler sparked a series of settler attacks on Palestinian towns in the territory. The army said a Palestinian was later arrested in connection with the killing.

In 2014, the abduction and killing of three Israeli teens in the West Bank escalated tensions and eventually ignited a 50-day Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, at the time the deadliest round of fighting between the two sides.

Over recent years, the Palestinian Authority’s influence in the northern West Bank has waned as militant groups have grown increasingly powerful.

Also Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 12-year-old Palestinian boy died from his wounds after being shot by Israeli forces in Ramallah last week. Commenting on the shooting, the Israeli army said its forces raided al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah to arrest a suspect Friday and then opened fire on a group of Palestinians who were pelting them with stones.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories as part of their hoped-for independent state.