■ CANADA
Sealskin for Canada day
Canadians should wear sealskin to celebrate the country’s birthday on Wednesday, an Inuit leader said on Friday, in defiance of a European movement to ban the import of Canadian seal products. “I am quite tired of other people telling us how to live our lives, without taking the time to learn about our culture and way of life,” National Inuit leader Mary Simon said. “I am calling on Canadians who support us to get some seal clothing and wear it in a show of solidarity to Inuit and other Canadian sealers on Canada Day.” Simon said she made the plea in response to plans by animal rights protesters to gather in Brussels and demand a prohibition on seal items like furs, skins and health products.
■ CANADA
Teen faces murder charges
The brother of a teenage girl who was strangled to death, apparently for failing to wear the hijab, was charged on Friday with first-degree murder. Waqas Parvez, 27, initially was charged with obstruction of justice in the death of Aqsa Parvez. Aqsa Parvez, whose family is of Pakistani origin, was 16 when she was killed in December during what friends said was a family dispute over her reluctance to wear the traditional headscarf. Shortly after her death, her father, Muhammed Parvez, 57, was charged with second-degree murder. Earlier this month, the charge was upgraded to first-degree murder.
■ MEXICO
‘Green wall’ goes up
The first of 400,000 trees are being planted to form a “green wall” in protest of the fence the US is building along the border. The treeline will eventually stretch 512km along the border between the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas. Coahuila Governor Humberto Moreira Valdes says “our wall is of life, and it competes with shame and hate.” The US government says the fence is critical to security. Critics say it fuels animosity between the two countries and raises environmental and private property concerns.
■ UNITED STATES
NRA sues San Francisco
The National Rifle Association (NRA) sued the city of San Francisco on Friday to overturn its ban on handguns in public housing, a day after the Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in Washington. The legal action follows a similar lawsuit against the city of Chicago over its handgun ban, filed within hours of Thursday’s high court ruling. In San Francisco, the NRA was joined by the Washington state-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and a gun owner who lives in the city’s Valencia Gardens housing project. The gun owner, who is gay, says he keeps the weapon to defend himself from “sexual orientation hate crimes.”
■ UNITED STATES
Organ trafficker gets jail
The mastermind of a network caught trafficking organs illegally harvested from some 1,000 bodies including that of veteran BBC journalist Alistair Cooke was sentenced to 54 years in jail on Friday. Former dentist Michael Mastromarino, 44, was sentenced after pleading guilty earlier this year to a conspiracy to steal human tissue. “In accordance with a March 18 guilty plea, Mastromarino was sentenced today to 18 to 54 years in prison,” said District Attorney Charles Hynes. Mastromarino was “charged with orchestrating a large-scale, criminal enterprise, in which tissues were harvested from people who never consented before they died, to be donors,” Hynes said.
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