A former child star from Australia died when the Los Angeles wildfires ripped through his family’s Malibu estate in California earlier this week, according to his mother.

Rory Callum Sykes was at the family’s 17-acre Mount Malibu TV Studios estate, where he had his own cottage, when it burned down on January 8, his mother Shelley Sykes wrote on X Thursday.

Shelley Sykes described her son, who appeared on the 1998 British TV series “Kiddy Kapers,” as “beautiful” and “wonderful” and said she was “totally heart broken” by his death.

She said she had tried to put out the wildfire cinders on her property’s roof using a hose but couldn’t because the water wasn’t working.

“He said, ‘mom leave me’ and no mom can leave their kid. And I’ve got a broken arm, I couldn’t lift him, I couldn’t move him,” Sykes told Australia’s 10 News First.

Her son, 32, was born blind with cerebral palsy on July 29, 1992, and had become famous for his speeches on overcoming disability. He was the co-founder of Happy Charity, which according to its site offers, “Hope, Happiness & Health to those that are Hurting.”

“He overcame so much with surgeries and therapies to regain his sight and to be able to learn to walk. Despite the pain, he still enthused about traveling the world with me from Africa to Antarctica,” Shelley Sykes wrote on X.

She said her son was born in Britain but lived in Australia, then America. He was “a gift born on mine and his grandma’s birthday,” she wrote.

On his website, Sykes describes himself as a professional speaker and consultant for many companies including the Tony Robbins Foundation, and the Cerebral Palsy Alliance.

In an appearance with his mother on Australian television show “Mornings with Kerri-Anne” in 2003, he discussed going on a trip to the United States to speak at a Tony Robbins motivational conference.

“It doesn’t matter what happens to you in life, it’s what you do about it that counts,” he told viewers.

“The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to his family. Our thoughts are with them,” DFAT told 9News. “Owing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further comment.”

Ukraine claimed Saturday to have struck one of Russia’s largest oil refineries in a drone attack, starting a fire at the facility more than 700 miles into Russian territory.

The attack on the Taneco refinery in the city of Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan – one of the largest and most modern refineries in Russia – was the second time the facility had been struck by Ukrainian forces within the space of a year, according to Lieutenant Andrii Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation.

Despite the footage, the press service of the Republic of Tatarstan denied there had been a fire at the plant, insisting instead that it had been carrying out a mock evacuation as a safety exercise and that the images of the glowing facility in fact showed “the work of the plant’s torches.”

The Taneco refinery has a refining capacity of over 16 million tons of oil per year and “plays a key role in supplying fuel to the Russian army,” according to the Ukrainian official Kovalenko.

“The destruction of refineries and oil depots directly affects Russia’s ability to wage an intense war,” he added.

Kovalenko said the refinery had also been hit in the spring of 2024, in an attack that damaged its primary processing unit.

The attack last April was at the time the farthest into Russian territory Ukraine had struck since the beginning of the war.

When 35-year-old combat medic Tetyana Tsymbaliuk regained consciousness in the hospital room, she found her boyfriend waiting with a bunch of flowers. He proposed, but she declined. After a serious injury, her leg had been amputated; she worried about being a burden as a wife.

“I realized that before amputation, I was more attractive. I was not sure that I could find a way to fulfil my family role as a woman,” said Tsymbaliuk. It took her a long time to regain her confidence.

Tsymbaliuk says she was one of the first Ukrainian military amputees following the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. Almost three years on, nearly 370,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been wounded. Thousands have lost one or more limbs.

While the government does not provide official figures on amputations, a state program issued prostheses to almost 20,000 people across 2023 and the first half of 2024, and many others were helped by private programs in Ukraine and abroad.

In the past two years, Ukraine has implemented protocols for physical and, to some degree, psychological rehabilitation for those injured in conflict. But sexual rehabilitation for people who have lost limbs or suffered other serious injuries has been largely overlooked.

Sex has long been a taboo topic in Ukraine. While modern Ukrainians are more open about sex than in the Soviet era, the topic is still an uncomfortable one for many.

“If I ask veterans about sex issues, they usually say that everything is okay. Only a few of them after a while, when they start to trust me, can talk about the problems they have,” Revunets said.

There are no protocols or recommendations for sexual rehabilitation on the official governmental level, she said, or even any mention of it.

“That’s important because the doctor is required to work according to protocol,” Revunets said. “Sexual rehabilitation is not specified anywhere, so the doctor can only take the initiative if he or she wants to do so. But most doctors aren’t ready to talk about it.”

It takes time even to persuade some doctors of its significance, Revunets said. “When I tell my colleagues about the importance of sexual rehabilitation, they look at me as if I’m crazy, (someone) who doesn’t understand what kind of serious injuries the patient has,” she said.

A good sexologist can help in many ways. Revunets is one of the very few sexologists in the country who works with the military. “I find out what exactly is wrong with the patient. I ask how the person feels. Depending on this, I give advice – it can be advice on how and what to do from a technical point of view, or what medications to take, or help psychologically.”

‘I was told to have sex, but no one told me how’

The war has resulted in an unprecedented number of people with injuries, a situation for which Ukraine was unprepared. The lack of any information on sexual rehabilitation has motivated the Ukrainian nonprofit Veteran Hub, which is specifically dedicated to supporting war veterans and their families, to study the topic.

In 2023, Veteran Hub researchers conducted 39 in-depth interviews with injured soldiers and their partners. Among other things, interviewees spoke anonymously about their sex lives after injury.

Researchers found that sex itself had changed for many. For example, after being injured, some respondents started to prepare for or plan sexual relations due to physical changes.

One of the veterans in a long-term relationship said of the doctors who treated him: “I was told to have sex, but no one told me how. If we’re talking about the technical part, it is very important.” He told researchers that without formal resources available to them, men were having to pass on information “by word of mouth.”

In response to the researchers’ findings, Veteran Hub created a guide for veterans on how to restore their sexual lives after being wounded.

“We saw that there was a great demand for this topic. After physical rehabilitation, people start asking themselves whether they will be able to swim in the sea, go skiing, go on dates, or have sex. And usually no one can answer these questions,” said Veteran Hub project manager Kateryna Skorohod.

Olga Serdyuk, the head of a sexual educational program at a network of rehabilitation centers called Recovery, said: “We need to understand that a wounded person works with different specialists – surgeons, physiotherapists, psychologists – on the way to rehabilitation. Because there is a lack of sexologists in Ukraine, those doctors must be ready for the person to open up to them and talk about sexual rehabilitation.”

To help widen their knowledge, Recovery launched a course called “Sexual Life” to train doctors and other professionals working with Ukrainian soldiers.

Serious injury changes the life of not only the veteran but also their partner, Serdyuk explained.

“For some reason, Ukrainian society believes that a good wife should take care of her husband on her own, even if there is an opportunity to get help. A woman becomes a carer. What kind of sex can we talk about then?” Serdyuk said, referring to how the pressures of full-time caring can lessen a couple’s capacity to explore paths to sexual fulfilment.

“Even if we are talking about complete dysfunction or missing genitals, a person (who’s been injured) can still have an orgasm with pleasure. You have to work with your fantasies, study your body.”

People need to learn to accept themselves in a new way, and believe in their integrity, their body, Serdyuk said.

Ukrainian ‘Bachelor’ stars double amputee

Discussions surrounding disabilities are increasingly cropping up in Ukraine as casualties rise.

Popular dating show “The Bachelor” has taken the discussion into the mainstream, with 26-year-old Ukrainian veteran Oleksandr Budko – who lost both his legs in the war – cast as the star of the latest season.

An episode with an intimate scene, shown in November, became one of the most popular in the season. According to data provided by Starlight Media, a Ukrainian broadcasting group, about 2.8 million people all around the country watched it, making it the most viewed program on the day it aired.

“We were concerned about how people would react to seeing a person’s body with visible amputations in such an intimate context. There is no representation of people living with injuries in Ukraine and we didn’t know how people would react to it. It was a big challenge. But it turned out well.”

Kalyna thinks the audience was interested, in part, because they realize that in this time of war their own loved ones could be injured at any moment.

On his Instagram page, Budko said he was not taking part in the show to convince anyone of anything or prove his “normality.”

“My prostheses or even sometimes a wheelchair are just a part of me, but not what defines me,” he posted. “The fact that I have a disability does not make me less worthy of love or a happy life. And this is important to understand.”

Budko also posted that his first experience of sex after injury “was not just sex, but a step back to life.”

Choosing life over suffering

Among those to attend Recovery’s “Sexual Life” course is Oleksandr Batalov. The unit infantry commander, who works as an osteopath in civil life, lost his leg in a fierce battle on the front line. He recalls that it took time for him to get used to his changed body.

“At the beginning, with such trauma, you want no one to look at you. But my wife gave me huge support. So, I got a grip. I chose life, not suffering,” he said. The psychologist helped a lot, he added.

There are very few sexologists in the hospitals, he said, but men who have experienced serious injuries are talking about sex with one another, and that’s important. However, “they need to have specialists they can talk to” as well, Batalov said.

That’s why he is starting this course. “If you survived, you have to live. Despite the injury, my life is full and interesting, I want to leave and study and share the knowledge,” said Batalov, who is now working again as an osteopath.

The same goes for Tsymbaliuk, the injured combat medic. She decided to live a fulfilling life no matter what. Her boyfriend did not give up and proposed again.

After months of rehabilitation in Germany, and later in Ukraine’s Superhumans Center, she finally married him, realizing “she was full of love that she wanted to fulfil.” Four months ago, they welcomed their first child together.

“I’m not hiding my prosthetic. I’m living a full life. And I’m happy,” she said.

Sudan’s army said on Saturday it had entered the central city of Wad Madani and was pushing out its paramilitary rivals the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a step which if completed successfully would be its biggest gain in near two years of war.

The army posted a video appearing to show troops inside the city, which is the capital of El Gezira state, an agricultural and trading hub that has been held by the RSF since December 2023.

Recapture of the state as a whole could mark a turning point in the war that began in April 2023 over disputes on the integration of the two forces, which has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises with the displacement of more than 12 million people and half the population facing hunger.

“The leadership of the Armed Forces congratulates our people on the entry of our forces into Wad Madani this morning. They are now working to clean up the remaining rebel pockets inside the city,” an army statement said.

The state, located in the center of the country and south of the capital Khartoum has seen some of the RSF’s bloodiest attacks on civilians, as well as the burning of fields, looting of hospitals and markets, and flooding of irrigation ditches.

Despite a long history as an agricultural trade hub, Madani has been marked by experts as an area at risk of famine due to the blockades imposed as part of the conflict.

The army had stepped up its campaign to retake El Gezira in recent months, after retaking Sennar state in the south, including by increasing airstrikes that have often hit civilians.

The RSF’s top commander in the state defected to the army in October, and his troops took part in Saturday’s operations, though the RSF responded at the time with a series of attacks.

The army also on Saturday continued its operations on the city of Bahri, part of the greater capital, where it has also made advances in recent months.

The RSF controls most of the west of the country, where it is fighting the army for al-Fashir, its last stronghold in the Darfur region. The two forces are also actively fighting over White Nile state in the south of the country.