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.”
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.