HONG KONG
Rangers promote ivory ban
African park rangers are urging the Legislative Council to approve a ban on ivory sales, but warn that giving in to traders’ demands for compensation would fuel more elephant poaching. The council yesterday heard submissions from the rangers and other groups on the government’s long-awaited proposal to prohibit all local ivory trading by 2021. The hearing was marked by a testy standoff between traders and conservationists who say the territory’s prime role in the ivory trade is pushing elephants toward extinction. Erik Mararv, manager of Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said 100 elephants are poached a day while 1,000 rangers have been killed over the past 10 years trying to protect them. The territory’s licensed ivory dealers and traders, are permitted to sell only ivory acquired before a 1990 ban on international trading. They want millions of dollars in return for giving up their stockpile.
INDIA
Baby killed as mother raped
A nine-month-old baby died when she was thrown out of a moving autorickshaw by men accused of gang raping her mother, police said yesterday. Police said they had registered a case of murder and gang rape after the alleged attack on Monday last week in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi. Gurgaon Commissioner of Police Sandeep Khirwar said the baby had died of head injuries, and estimated the mother was aged 19 or 20. The woman said she had been attacked after getting into an autorickshaw with her daughter about midnight to travel to her parents’ house. There were already two men on board, along with the driver.
INDIA
Roy publishes second book
Arundhati Roy’s eagerly awaited second novel went on sale yesterday, two decades after her prize-winning debut The God of Small Things propelled her to global fame and launched her career as an outspoken critic of injustice in her homeland. Since winning the Booker Prize with her 1997 book, which sold about 8 million, she turned to non-fiction writing, taking on issues ranging from poverty and globalization to the conflict in Kashmir. She said The Ministry of Utmost Happiness took 10 years to produce.
MALI
EU funding Sahel force
The EU is giving 50 million euros (US56.27 million) to set up a joint African military force in the Sahel region to fight Muslim militants, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini said on Monday in Bamako. The funds will help pay for the troops to fight terrorism, cross-border crime and illegal immigration, she said. Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdoulaye Diop on Monday said the heads of state of the Sahel G5 had decided to double the number of troops in the new force from 5,000 to 10,0000.
THAILAND
Canadian convicted in theft
A court yesterday sentenced a Canadian man to 14 months in jail for crimes linked to a bank robbery in Singapore where he allegedly used nothing more than a threatening note to steal US$22,000. Roach was accused of strolling into a Standard Chartered branch in July last year, handing the teller a scrap of paper and walking off with the cash. The 28-year-old fled to Bangkok where he was arrested a few days later in a hostel. Roach was convicted of violating money laundering and customs laws by bringing the loot into the kingdom.
UNITED STATES
Beijing diplomat resigns
The top career diplomat at the embassy in Beijing has stepped down amid suggestions that he opposes President Donald Trump’s climate policy. Embassy charge d’affaires David Rank was a 27-year veteran Department of State officer appointed to serve in Beijing in January last year. “Mr Rank made a personal decision. We appreciate his years of dedicated service to the State Department,” embassy spokeswoman Mary Beth Polley said. News of Rank’s resignation was broken on Twitter by veteran China reporter John Pomfret, an editor at the SupChina Web site. According to Pomfret, Rank stepped down because he “could not back Trump on climate.”
GERMANY
Troops to move to Jordan
The army is set to transfer its troops from a key base in Turkey to Jordan, Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday, after talks broke down with Ankara on the subject. The Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey has been at the center of a dispute between the NATO allies since Ankara blocked a visit by German parliamentarians last month. Her announcement came after Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu told a joint news conference with Minister of Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel in Ankara that MPs could still not visit Incirlik. The Cabinet is to meet on Wednesday to decide on an eventual move for the 280 military personnel concerned, plus 10,000 tonnes of materiel, Von der Leyen said.
UNITED STATES
Awning worker goes postal
A recently fired worker from an awning company in Florida followed through with a plan to kill his former colleagues, singling out five and fatally shooting them in the head before taking his own life, authorities said. Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said John Robert Neumann shot and killed himself at the sound of approaching sirens on Monday. Demings said Neumann had a “negative relationship” with at least one of his former coworkers in Orlando. He would not say why Neumann was fired in April.
UNITED STATES
Woman stabs relatives
A Southern California woman who was once found not guilty by reason of insanity to the attempted murder of her own children is now suspected of stabbing her daughter and two granddaughters. Colton police are looking for Nicole Darrington-Clark, 43, the suspect in Monday’s attack that left her one-year-old granddaughter dead and critically injured her daughter and five-year-old granddaughter. In 2005, Darrington-Clark pleaded guilty to stabbing her 14-year-old son and throwing her 10-year-old daughter out of a moving minivan. Neither child was seriously injured. However, a judge found Darrington-Clark not guilty by reason of insanity and sent her to a mental hospital.
SPAIN
Madrid gears up for pride
Madrid is gearing up to host an international lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pride celebration by installing “inclusive” and “gender equal” traffic signals across the city. Figures of women or girls, identified by skirts and ponytails, started going up on Monday at intersections that previously featured the familiar figure of a man in mid-stride to let pedestrians know when to cross. Other walk, do not walk signs are designed to show couples — some same-sex and some opposite gender — holding hands. Madrid is hosting the this year’s World Pride celebrations from June 23 through July 2.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema