ECUADOR
Stuffed tortoise sent home
The embalmed body of the giant tortoise known as Lonesome George — the last known survivor of a species that died out in 2012 — returned home to the Ecuadoran Galapagos Islands on Friday. The body arrived in Puerto Ayora, the capital of the archipelago’s Santa Cruz Island, on an Ecuadoran military plane after undergoing taxidermy work at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, the Galapagos National Park said. The giant tortoise — thought to be about 100 years old when he died in June 2012 — was the last known member of the subspecies Geochelone nigra abingdoni. He failed to reproduce, despite a decades-long conservation effort that earned him the moniker Lonesome George. His body is to go on display at the park starting on Thursday next week.
CUBA
Migrants returned to island
About 680 Cubans have been returned to the nation from various countries since then-US president Barack Obama ended a longstanding immigration policy that allowed any Cuban who made it to US soil to stay and become a legal resident, state television reported on Friday. The government had long sought the repeal of the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which it said encouraged people to risk dangerous voyages and drained the nation of professionals. The Jan. 12 decision by Washington to end it followed months of negotiations focused in part on getting Havana to agree to take back people who had arrived in the US. Cuban state television late on Friday said that the returnees came from countries including the US, Mexico and the Bahamas, and were sent back to the island between Jan. 12 and Friday. Florida’s El Nuevo Herald reported that the two women were deemed “inadmissible” for entry to the US and placed on a morning flight to Havana. Wilfredo Allen, an attorney for one of the women, said they had arrived at Miami International Airport, Florida, with European passports.
ARGENTINA
Penguins flock for fish
More than 1 million penguins have traveled to Punta Tombo peninsula during this year’s breeding season, drawn by an unusual abundance of small fish. Local officials said that it is a record number in recent years for the world’s largest colony of Magellanic penguins, offering an especially stunning spectacle for the tens of thousands of people who visit the reserve annually. The peninsula’s tiny islets are well-suited to nesting and have sardines and anchovies close to the shoreline. The birds come on shore in September and October and stay while the males and females take turns caring for their eggs and hunting for food. The warm-weather birds breed in large colonies in southern Argentina and Chile and migrate north as far as southwestern Brazil between March and September.
CAMBODIA
Jolie film debuts
Angelina Jolie yesterday unveiled her new film on the Khmer Rouge era at the Angkor Wat complex. The king and survivors of the communist regime were among about 1,500 people invited to the debut screening of First They Killed My Father, directed by Jolie and based on the memoirs of Loung Ung, who was five years old when the Khmer Rouge swept into Phnom Penh, plunging her family into a harrowing ordeal in labor camps before she escaped to the US. “The movie reflects the brutality of the Khmer Rouge regime,” Cinema and Cultural Diffusion Department director Sin Chanchhaya said.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
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