Mesen – Firefighters in Westhoek rescued a cow in Mesen on Saturday, August 16, 2025, marking the fourth cow rescue in a week. The animal was secured with ropes and lifting straps before being safely returned to its farmer, reports 24brussels.
According to GVA News, firefighters responded to a call early Saturday morning when a farmer in Nieuw-Zealanderstraat, located on the Walloon border in West Flanders province, discovered that one of his cows had fallen into a pond after escaping through a fence. The cow was trapped but managed to remain standing at the edge of the bank. Promptly, the farmer contacted emergency services, leading to a response from the Mesen firehouse.
What led firefighters in Westhoek to rescue 4 cows in a week?
Firefighters employed ropes to catch and secure the cow, preventing any chance of injury or escape. Through coordinated efforts, they successfully pulled the animal back onto solid ground and returned it unharmed to the grateful farmer. This incident marked the fourth cow rescue in the region within a single week.
A specialized animal rescue team from the Westhoek Fire Department arrived at the scene after the initial crew had secured the cow. Firefighters from various stations participated in the operation, notably including a hooklift truck from the Verne station.
Divers and additional personnel were on hand to assist with the rescue. They fitted lifting straps around the cow and hoisted it out of the water. The farmer confirmed that the cow was in good health after the ordeal.
On Thursday, August 7, 2025, firefighters in Diksmuide were dispatched when a cow was reported swimming in the Handzamevaart canal. The animal drifted nearly two kilometers, accompanied by a kayaker, before rescuers moored it and pulled it ashore with a telehandler.
Earlier in the week, on Monday, August 11, the fire department alongside the DRT team had to assist a cow weighing approximately 800 kilograms that had become stuck in the mud of a pond in Pollinkhove.
That rescue called for heavy equipment and additional manpower, while another cow was found in the mud at a pond in Lo-Reninge on Wednesday, August 13, and was freed more quickly.
In 2023, firefighters in Diksmuide successfully rescued a cow that had wandered into the Handzamevaart canal, and several animals have previously been saved from muddy ponds in Lo-Reninge.
“Our generation of women was sold the idea that we could have it all, but no one told us that it’s impossible to do it all ourselves,” Courtney Hirsch said.
Jigar Bhati, who joined OpenAI in 2023, said the company still feels like a startup.
Jigar Bhati
Jigar Bhati transitioned from Twitter to OpenAI for a startup-like environment.
He said his work experience in infrastructure and scaling helped him get hired at OpenAI.
Bhati said OpenAI still feels like a startup with a focus on productivity and collaboration.
This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Jigar Bhati, a member of technical staff at OpenAI. He’s worked at the company since 2023 and previously worked as a software engineer at Twitter. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
I was working at Twitter for almost seven years and was looking for a change in general. Twitter was a big tech company, and it was handling millions of users already. I wanted to join a company that was a bit smaller scale and work in a startup-like environment.
When ChatGPT launched, software engineers were in awe. So I was already using it before joining OpenAI. I was fascinated by the product itself. There was definitely that connection with the product that, as a software engineer, you often don’t feel.
I could also see there was a huge opportunity and huge impact to be created as part of joining OpenAI in general. And I think if I look back at the past two years of my journey, I think that’s mostly true. It’s been exciting seeing the user base grow over two years. I got to work and lead some critical projects, which was really great for my own professional development.
And you’re always working with smart people. OpenAI hires probably the best talent out there. You’re contributing while also learning from different people, so there’s exponential growth in your professional career as well.
Building up the right work experience is key
My career at Twitter and before that had been focused on infrastructure capabilities and handling large-scale distributed systems, which was something the team was looking for when I interviewed with OpenAI.
When I joined OpenAI, there were a lot of challenges with respect to scaling infrastructure. So my expertise has helped steer some of those challenges in the right direction. Having that relevant experience helps when you’re interviewing for any team. So one of the best things is to find the right team that has the closest match for you.
Having public references, for me, helped. I had some discussions and conference talks and met a lot of people as part of that conference networking. That also helps you stay on top of state-of-the-art technological advancements, which helps in whatever work stream you’re working with.
I think OpenAI is probably one of the fastest-growing companies in the world, so you really need to move fast as part of that environment. You’re shipping, or delivering, daily or weekly. And as part of that, I think you really need to have that cultural fit with the company. When you’re interviewing, I think you need to be passionate about working at OpenAI and solving hard problems.
In general for professionals, it’s important to have a good career trajectory so that they can showcase how they have solved real, hard problems at a large scale. I think that goes a long way.
Starting your career at a startup or a larger tech company are both fine. It’s up to the students’ interests and cultural fit as well. OpenAI is not just a place for experienced engineers. OpenAI also hires new grads and interns. I’ve definitely seen people entering as part of that pipeline. And it’s amazing to see how they enjoy working at OpenAI and how they come up with new ideas and new capabilities and new suggestions.
But whichever place you end up in, I think it’s important to have good growth aspects professionally and also for you to ship products. At any company you can create impact for the company and yourself, and be able to have that career trajectory.
OpenAI still feels like a startup
One of the most exciting things is that I think OpenAI still operates like it operated two years ago. It still feels like a startup, even though we may have scaled the number of engineers, number of products, the number of user bases.
It’s still very much like a startup environment and there’s a big push for productivity and collaboration. The velocity and the productivity you get working at OpenAI is definitely much higher than some of the other companies that I’ve worked with.
That makes things really exciting because you get to ship products on a continuous basis, and you get into that habit of shipping daily rather than weekly or monthly or yearly.
It feels great to be working in AI right now. In addition to having a connection with the product, it makes things very interesting when you are able to work from within the company, shaping the direction of a product that will be used by the entire world.
With GPT-5, for instance, we had early access to it and could steer the direction of its launch. Every engineer is empowered to provide feedback that will help improve the model, add new capabilities, and make it more usable and user-friendly for all the different 700 million users out there. I think that’s pretty amazing and speaks to the kind of impact you can make as part of the company.
A California high school girls’ volleyball team forfeited a match against a team that is believed to include a biological male trans athlete Friday night.
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Brussels – Ambassadors from 27 EU countries convened urgently in Brussels to assess the repercussions of the Trump-Putin meeting held in Alaska, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin engaged in discussions at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Anchorage regarding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Trump characterized the meeting as “very productive,” indicating that while they reached agreements on various points, there were no advancements toward a ceasefire or a significant breakthrough.
Why did EU ambassadors call an emergency session?
The emergency meeting arose amid heightened concerns in Brussels and other EU capitals about the implications of the summit and Trump’s subsequent communications with leaders of the European Commission, NATO Secretary General, and Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy.
“An emergency meeting of COREPER (the Committee of Permanent Representatives) began on Saturday morning to discuss further steps on Ukraine,”
TASS reported.
What role does the committee play in EU decision-making?
The committee is responsible for drafting all ministerial decisions for the European Union Council. It serves as a core body consisting of the heads or deputy heads of mission from EU member states based in Brussels, facilitating the preparation and drafting of decisions for EU Council meetings, making it essential to the EU’s decision-making process.
According to TASS, “the sides intend to coordinate positions and possibly make their own statement” in light of the Russian-US discussions. The report also highlighted that only a few officials remained in Brussels or other EU capitals, awaiting the outcomes of the Alaska summit and Trump’s phone call, during which he likely provided more insights than during his press conference.
How did the Alaska summit address the Russia-Ukraine war?
Following two and a half hours of closed-door discussions, Trump stated there had been “great progress” in talks with Putin; however, no agreement concerning the conflict in Ukraine was reached.
After their discussion, Trump and Putin conducted a joint press conference but refrained from detailing specific topics covered.
In a later interview, Trump proposed the possibility of a tri-party meeting involving himself, Putin, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Additionally, Trump engaged in an extended conversation with Zelensky during his flight back from Alaska, which included discussions with other European leaders, lasting over an hour and a half in total, reports 24brussels.
The author has gone on three big trips so far with his inheritance.
Courtesy of Chris Turner-Neal
When my aunt died unexpectedly, she left me a $20,000 inheritance.
I was thankful she thought of me in her estate planning and decided to use it for travel.
I’ve always wanted to travel, and the trips I’ve taken have already changed my life.
My father’s sister Helen died unexpectedly in the fall of 2021. I’d known my aunt was ill and had made plans to fly from my home in New Orleans to Dallas to visit her, but she was closer to the end than we realized. I had loved Helen and written to her while she was sick, but we hadn’t been especially close, so I was surprised and grateful to find that she’d left me $20,000 in her will.
Because the money was in Helen’s IRA, I received it as an inherited IRA, which has certain tax implications: In short, the money had to be taxed, but not until it had been withdrawn, and I had 10 years after the first January 1 after her death to withdraw it. I set up a schedule of disbursements with my aunt’s financial manager, allowing the money to be gradually withdrawn, taxed, and deposited into my existing investment account.
The author thinks of his aunt while traveling.
Courtesy of Chris Turner-Neal
I decided to use the inheritance on travel
Suddenly, I had what I’d wanted for years: a growing travel fund. I’d been the kind of kid who played with the atlas and grew into an adult who set up cheap flight alerts, but since I was working in nonprofit publishing, my hopes always far outstripped my budget. If I wanted to go to Vienna, I had to settle for eating the namesake canned sausage while listening to “The Blue Danube Waltz.”
Within the next three years, I’d taken three big trips. I had been saving for years to go to Nepal, where Red Panda Network, a nonprofit I used to volunteer for, led trips to look for wild red pandas in the area where RPN works to preserve and rehabilitate their habitat. I got a discount on the trip as an “alumnus,” but I still needed to swing a pricey international flight and buy some trekking gear.
The author received an unexpected inheritance and has used it for a travel fund.
Courtesy of Chris Turner-Neal
Not only could I now go, but I also could treat myself to an upgrade on the leg of my flight from Doha to Kathmandu, quaffing complimentary Tom Collinses and watching Joan Crawford movies with an ocean of legroom. I saw five red pandas and spent my 39th birthday making sweet homemade butter at our farmstay, using cream from cows I could hear lowing on the hillside.
I went to Europe for the first time to watch the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest with my friends and fellow fans. We flew into Ljubljana, whose downtown looked just like my American fantasies of Europe, and rented a car to explore Slovenia and Croatia.
I had the best meal of my life, fresh grilled fish and asparagus risotto, looking out over the Adriatic, and the presence of three Americans at a public watch Eurovision party in downtown Zagreb was so noteworthy that we were interviewed by the news. Sharing the cost of the Airbnb and car rental, along with eating in a fair amount, kept this trip budget-friendly while leaving room for all the major activities we wanted to do.
The author and his friends enjoyed the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest.
Courtesy of Chris Turner-Neal
My trip to Argentina changed my life, and now, I live there
The most life-changing of the trips, though, was to Argentina. I visited a friend who had moved to Buenos Aires, and I was so smitten by the city and the quality of life it offered that I moved there in summer 2024. Over a year in, I’m having the happiest time of my life, exploring the city while eyeing more adventures across South America.
I’ve toasted Helen’s generosity and memory with rhododendron cordial in the foothills of the Himalayas, with malbec over an Argentine asado, and with pear liqueur bought in a Slovenian castle. And since I have a little over half of the original amount left, I’m not done: I’ll thank her when I land in Paraguay later this month.
Her kindness in remembering me in her estate meant that I could build the life I’d always wanted — and it’s changed how I feel about estate planning. My (more modest) estate is mostly earmarked for nonprofits, but next time I review it, I’m going to organize an adventure fund to bequeath to someone I love who needs one.
