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.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in