TANZANIA
‘Ivory Queen’ given 15 years
A Chinese businesswoman dubbed the “Ivory Queen” on Tuesday was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Tanzanian court for smuggling the tusks of more than 350 elephants, weighing nearly 2 tonnes, to Asia. Yang Fenglan (楊鳳蘭) had been charged in October 2015 along with two Tanzanian men with smuggling 860 pieces of ivory between 2000 and 2004 worth 13 billion shillings (US$5.57 million). All three denied the charges. Yang, 69, has lived in Tanzania since the 1970s and was secretary-general of the Tanzania China-Africa Business Council, police sources said. A Swahili-speaker, she also owns a popular Chinese restaurant in Dar es Salaam. Kisutu Court Magistrate Huruma Shaidi sentenced Yang, Salivius Matembo and Manase Philemon to 15 years each, after they were convicted of leading an organized criminal gang. Shaidi ordered them to either pay twice the market value of the tusks or face another two years in prison.
SOLOMON ISLANDS
Oil spill near heritage reef
Oil has started leaking from a bulk carrier stranded on a coral reef near World Heritage-listed waters, villagers said yesterday. The Hong Kong-flagged MV Solomon Trader ran aground on Feb. 5 while loading bauxite at Rennell Island, but heavy seas whipped up by Tropical Cyclone Oma have thwarted salvage attempts. The 225m vessel was now starting to leak oil, locals said. “We’re starting to see a slick,” Derek Pongi said. “It’s not that big, but it’s hard to tell because the weather’s still rough.” Rennell Island is the largest raised coral atoll in the world and includes a UNESCO World Heritage site which extends kilometers out to sea. Locals fear a major environmental disaster, Pongi said. “The people here depend on the sea for all their needs,” he said. “It would make life very hard for them.”
INDIA
‘Cow vigilantes’ kill 44
Radical cow protection groups have killed at least 44 people over the past three years and often received support from police and Hindu nationalist politicians, Human Rights Watch said this week. Its 104-page report examines Hindu nationalist vigilante attacks and said that 36 of the dead were Muslim. About 280 people have been injured in more than 100 attacks between May 2015 and December last year, the report said, without providing statistics for the previous comparable period. Members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have “increasingly used communal rhetoric that has spurred a violent vigilante campaign against beef consumption and those deemed linked to it,” the group said.
NEW ZEALAND
Ex-PM denies China op-ed
Former New Zealand prime minister Jenny Shipley has denied writing an article in a Chinese state-run daily effusively praising Beijing. The article titled “We need to learn to listen to China” was published on Monday under Shipley’s byline in the People’s Daily and heaped praise on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) Belt and Road Initiative. The piece appears to be based on an interview with Shipley in December last year by the China Daily. An appendix to the People’s Daily online article was changed yesterday from “The author is former prime minister of New Zealand” to “Dame Jenny Shipley is former prime minister of New Zealand. The article is based on the interview by journalist with People’s Daily on December 2018.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Begum loses citizenship
Shamima Begum, a teenager who left London when she was aged 15 to join the Islamic State group in Syria, has had her British citizenship revoked, according to a letter sent to her family published by ITV News on Tuesday. Now 19, she has told reporters that she wants to return to Britain. The letter addressed to Begum’s mother said: “Please find enclosed papers that relate to a decision taken by the home secretary to deprive your daughter, Shamima Begum, of her British citizenship... In light of the circumstances of your daughter, the notice of the home secretary’s decision has been served of file today, and the order removing her British citizenship has subsequently been made.” Mohammed Akunjee, a lawyer representing Begum’s family, said on Twitter: “We are considering all legal avenues to challenge this decision.”
UNITED STATES
Space force order signed
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an order outlining his vision for a new “Space Force” that could one day become a separate military branch on an equal footing to the army and navy. Trump wants to create a space force to protect satellites, tackle vulnerabilities in space and assert US dominance in orbit. The order calls for Congress to draft legislation that would establish the space force as a branch that falls under the air force, similar to how the navy oversees the marines. However, the creation of the space force is by no means a done deal, as it must be vetted and approved by Congress. Lawmakers and defense officials have reacted with skepticism, wary of the cost and added bureaucracy.
UNITED STATES
Sanders to run for president
Senator Bernie Sanders on Tuesday launched a second bid for the White House. The 77-year-old joined an already crowded field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. “We are living in a pivotal and dangerous moment in American history,” the senator from Vermont said in a video announcing his candidacy. “We are running against a president who is a pathological liar, a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and someone who is undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction.” Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, highlighted policies he would advocate on the campaign trail: healthcare for all, raising the minimum wage to a “living wage” and fighting climate change.
UNITED STATES
DC drops ‘Second Coming’
DC Comics has dropped plans to publish a series that imagines Jesus Christ returning to Earth and teaming up with superheroes, following a campaign calling the work blasphemous. Second Coming will not be published by Vertigo, a unit of DC Comics, next month as originally planned, a source close to the issue told reporters on Tuesday. In an interview with Web site Syfy Wire, series author Mark Russell said that DC Comics had asked him to make major changes to it and he refused. He attributed the request to a campaign that reportedly collected more than 234,000 signatures and sought the withdrawal of the series on grounds it is blasphemous. “I think the religious fundamentalists and critics who are trying to stop Second Coming aren’t interested in protecting Christ so much as their ability to control his narrative,” Russell told Syfy Wire. “They probably (correctly) suspect that it’s not Christ who’s being parodied, but themselves and how they’ve twisted his teachings of mercy for the powerless into a self-serving tool of the powerful.”
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
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
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of