UNITED STATES
Marathon reading of Melville
Moby-Dick fans from around the world are getting ready for their own grueling quest — a marathon reading of Herman Melville’s classic. The New Bedford Whaling Museum this weekend is holding its 20th annual nonstop reading of the man versus whale novel. More than 150 volunteers are to recite snippets of the novel aloud in a cover-to-cover reading that starts at midday tomorrow, goes through the night and ends on Sunday about 25 hours later. Hundreds are expected to attend the reading while thousands more follow online. This year’s celebrity reader, who always reads the first section of the book and its famous first line “Call me Ishmael,” is author Nathaniel Philbrick.
UNITED STATES
Florida executes Oscar Ray
Florida put to death on Thursday a former truck driver who murdered three young women in 1986 and made headlines again after one of his defense team fell in love with him. Convicted serial killer Oscar Ray Bolin, 53, became the first person to be executed in the US this year after receiving a lethal injection at 10:16pm, a local prison administration official said. Bolin was also convicted of kidnapping and rape in another case. His victims were aged 17, 25 and 26.
BOLIVIA
Titicaca to be cleaned up
Bolivia and Peru on Thursday agreed to provide more than US$500 million toward cleaning up Lake Titicaca, whose polluted waters are home to some animals nearing extinction, a Bolivian environment official said. The deal, which is meant to improve the lake’s biodiversity, includes environmental management and recovery through to 2025. Lake Titicaca, the highest in the world, at an altitude of 3,800m above sea level, provides a habitat for a number of frogs, birds and fish, including two species that are close to extinction. Minister for the Environment and Water Alexandra Moreira and Peruvian Minister of State for the Environment Manuel Pulgar signed the agreement during a public event. “For the short term we have a limit of US$117 million and for the long term US$400 million,” Moreira’s advisor Sergio Arispe said. “It’s a logistical matter we are trying to manage through 2025,” he said. Part of the waste in the lake is generated by the Bolivian city of El Alto, near La Paz, which is home to about 800,000 people.
HONDURAS
‘White City’ search begins
Honduras on Thursday said it was starting a major archeological dig for a mysterious, ancient “White City” supposedly hidden in jungle in its northeast that explorers and legends have spoken of for centuries. “Today a group of archeologists and scientists is traveling to the White City to start excavations in coming days,” President Juan Orlando Hernandez said in a speech. The hope is that they might uncover incontrovertible proof of the existence of the fabled site, which has also been called “the City of the Monkey God” and, in Spanish, la Ciudad Blanca. According to 16th-century Spanish conquistadors and to legend, the settlement, dating back thousands of years, is meant to be filled with fabulous riches. Explorers over the past century have claimed several times to have spotted the White City in the thick jungle inside the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve on Honduras’ Caribbean coast. Archeologists in recent decades found what looked like ancient mounds. Then in 2012 an American documentary team using mapping technology in a small plane discovered what appeared to be the overgrown remains of an ancient civilization.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the