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    Stress From Fireworks Killed Baby Red Panda, Zoo in Scotland Says

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    Camera footage showed Roxie, a three-month-old, agitated by the noise. She died shortly afterward.Roxie, a three-month-old panda, had just lost her mother, Ginger, five days earlier. Though the zookeepers at the Edinburgh Zoo were initially worried that she might not pull through, they became optimistic when she began to eat independently.That optimism quickly turned to despair, after camera footage showed Roxie becoming agitated during a continual din of fireworks as the city celebrated its annual Bonfire Night.“Roxie was very frightened by the fireworks,” Ben Supple, the deputy chief executive of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, which runs the zoo, said on Thursday night.Roxie became ill, choked on her vomit, and died on Nov. 5. “It’s very sad to have lost Roxie at such a particularly young age,” Mr. Supple said. “Roxie would have been a wonderful ambassador for red pandas.”The zoological society is now calling for greater restrictions on the extensive fireworks displays that are a trademark of Bonfire Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Night, the Nov. 5 celebration named after a participant in a failed plot in 1605 to kill King James I.More than one million have signed a public petition seeking tighter controls on fireworks displays. The petition was delivered to the British government last week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Getty Apologizes for Fireworks Display Gone Awry

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      A planned “explosion event” in Los Angeles by the artist Cai Guo-Qiang left several injured and others shaken.The Getty museum this week found itself having to apologize for the “explosion event” by the artist Cai Guo-Qiang at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum after it left several people injured by falling debris and many others shaken by the sound and smoke.“We’re aware of a few people who were hit by some kind of falling debris, and it was really loud, and we’re really sorry there were people who were freaked out by how loud and smoky it was,” Katherine E. Fleming, the president of the Getty Trust, said in a telephone interview, adding that appropriate procedures had been followed for stadium events and that city officials had been notified in advance.The fireworks display on Sept. 15 — which the Getty had said in an earlier news release would “recall the myth of Prometheus’s theft of fire from the gods” — marked the start of PST Art, a $20 million, Getty-funded museum collaboration which this year is focused on art and science.The Getty did not specify how many people were injured or to what extent. “Unfortunately, pieces of debris fell on some people. We know a few of them required first aid,” a spokeswoman told The Art Newspaper in an email. “Of course this is distressing to us, and we have expressed our concern to the people for whom we have contact information.”Calls to the Los Angeles Fire Department and police were not immediately returned.Some people in the area were also highly disturbed by the loud noise. “It sounded like bombs dropping in the neighborhood,” one resident told CNN.Carol Cheh, a Los Angeles arts writer, added that in the “times that we live in” it was understandable that people were rattled. “Here we are setting off massive explosions with a ton of smoke and no explanation in a major city,” she said.For Cai’s show, “WE ARE,” more than 4,000 people on the stadium’s playing field watched fireworks shells on bamboo sticks explode with drone-launched pyrotechnics overhead, a type of fireworks that began to be approved this year. Cai narrated the event from a podium on the sidelines with an A.I.-assisted translator.Cai, who designed the pyrotechnics for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, had worked on the Los Angeles display with an artificial intelligence program developed by his studio. “I’m thinking about a celebration of the hopes and successes of the human civilization,” he told The Times in July, “and I’m having A.I. play a role as my collaborator to help tell the story.” More

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      Man Charged With Arson in California’s Thompson Fire

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      The Thompson fire also burned over 3,700 acres and forced the evacuation of 26,000 residents.A 26-year-old California man was arrested last week on arson charges in connection with the Thompson fire in July, which destroyed 13 homes, burned over 3,700 acres and forced the evacuation of 26,000 people, according to the law enforcement agencies.The man, Spencer Grant Anderson, who was taken into custody on Aug. 22, was arraigned on Monday and is being held without bail in Butte County Jail.The Thompson fire began on July 2 when Mr. Anderson threw a “flaming object” out the window of a car he was driving just north of Oroville, where he lives, according to a news release issued Monday by the Butte County District Attorney’s Office.On the day the fire began, investigators with Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, pinpointed where the fire had originated and learned from 911 callers and witnesses that a Toyota sedan had been spotted there at the time, the prosecutor’s office said.The next day, they found the Toyota and identified Mr. Anderson as the driver and potential arsonist, according to the release.Investigators monitored and investigated Mr. Anderson for 50 days before arresting him, prosecutors said.After his arrest, Mr. Anderson admitted that he had purchased fireworks from a stand in Oroville and tested one by throwing it out of his car window, according to the release.District Attorney Mike Ramsey did not immediately return a phone message on Monday seeking comment.Mr. Anderson is charged with arson of an inhabited structure, arson of forest land, and arson causing multiple structures to burn.“It was a long investigation, there was a lot moving parts to it,” Larry Pilgrim, Mr. Anderson’s attorney, said to The New York Times on Monday. “He is just being accused at this point.”He added that “it’s too early to pass judgment.”If convicted on all charges, Mr. Anderson could face more than 21 years in prison, prosecutors said. He has a previous felony conviction related to domestic violence, according to the news release from the Butte County District Attorney’s Office, which it said could double the punishment of any possible arson conviction. More