A US animal protection group said yesterday that it would give China US$100,000 to vaccinate dogs against rabies if it promises to immediately stop the mass slaughter of dogs in areas where humans have died from the disease.
"There are far better ways of addressing rabies control to promote the safety of your citizens, the good reputation of China and the welfare of dogs," Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the US, said in an open letter to China's ambassador in Washington.
The financial aid was offered to help set up a rabies control program in Jining, a city in Shandong Province, where officials last week killed thousands of dogs after 16 people died of rabies over an eight-month period.
An official with the Ministry of Agriculture's media affairs office declined to immediately comment and asked to first see a Chinese translation of the Humane Society's statement. He refused to give his name.
Officials in Mouding, a county in the southern province of Yunnan, last month clubbed to death more than 50,000 dogs after rabies killed three people in the area.
The killings provoked unusually pointed criticism in Chinese state media, while the activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called for a boycott of Chinese products.
The official newspaper Legal Daily published an editorial calling the killings an "extraordinarily crude, cold-blooded and lazy way for the government to deal with epidemic disease."
Xinhua said in a separate editorial that the slaughter was "the only way out of a bad situation."
The Humane Society said the money was conditional on China agreeing to stop the mass killing of dogs and accept the group's help in establishing a nationwide rabies control program that relies on vaccinations.
The government says 70 percent of rural households have dogs, but just 3 percent are vaccinated against the disease.
The Beijing Morning Post yesterday reported that Qingdao, a major port city in Shandong Province, was carrying out a campaign to vaccinate 40,000 dogs between now and the end of September. The newspaper said owners who did not comply would be fined.
The Chinese Health Ministry reported 2,375 rabies deaths last year nationwide.
The rabies virus attacks the nervous system and usually kills humans within a week of the development of symptoms.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate