■THAILAND
Officials seize ivory
Customs officials seized more than 2 tonnes of ivory being stored at Bangkok’s main international airport en route from Dubai to Laos, a customs department statement said on Thursday. The officials, acting on a tip-off, searched a transit cargo warehouse at Suvarnabhumi airport on Wednesday evening and found 239 African elephant tusks, the statement said. The haul was valued at 120 million baht (US$3.6 million), it said. The shipment flown on an Emirates flight from Dubai had been declared as telecommunications equipment. Thailand is a commonly used transit point for the illegal trafficking of animal parts, with African ivory often bound for China.
■UZBEKISTAN
AIDS activist jailed
An AIDS activist has been sentenced to seven years in prison for writing a brochure that authorities said would promote antisocial behavior, activists said on Thursday. Maxim Popov was convicted last September, his colleagues said, but his case only came to light this week after US-based watchdog Human Rights Watch asked local activists to investigate his situation. “Maxim Popov was convicted for writing a brochure which was funded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS and UNICEF as an effort by international donor organizations to raise awareness about the disease in the country,” an AIDS activist who worked with Popov said. Prosecutors argued that the brochure, which called for the use of condoms during sex and sterile needles when injecting drugs, was promoting immoral behavior.
■BANGLADESH
Factory fire kills 21
A fire raced through a sweater factory near Dhaka overnight, killing at least 21 people and injuring dozens more, police said yesterday. All the victims died of suffocation while being treated in hospitals or on the way there, after they were pulled from the Garib & Garib Sweater Factory in Gazipur, a police spokesman said.
■CHINA
Call for humane slaughter
A city in Henan Province is advocating a more humane way of killing pigs to improve the taste of the pork, ordering they get up to a day of rest and relaxation before they go to the slaughterhouse. “After long-distance transport, the rest can help pigs get rid of tiredness,” an official at the commerce commission in Zhengzhou said on Thursday. “The rest will ensure the pork has the best taste and will prevent water-logged pork entering the market,” said the official, who refused to be named. A report in the Shanghai Daily said officials have suggested slaughterhouse employees play music to the pigs and pat them to help them relax before they are killed.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Tale of debauchery revealed
A tale of debauchery on a ship taking settlers to Australia in the 1830s has been revealed in a journal to be auctioned next month. The detailed account kept by James Bell, a junior officer on the Planter, reveals the ship’s captain shared his bed with two daughters of a preacher and that a gang of prostitutes also made the voyage. “Our Capt of course could not want a mistress till he returned to his own in England, but made love to 2 of McGowans daughters,” Bell wrote, in extracts released by Bonhams auction house. While not engaging in amorous conquests, the captain frequently clashed with other crew members in alcohol-fueled fights, the journal records. The volume, bought for a few pounds at a book stall, is expected to fetch up to £4,000 (US$6,200).
■FRANCE
Group urges frog crossings
An animal protection group is urging authorities to build special crossings to save millions of frogs and toads from being squashed on the country’s roads. “For frogs, toads and newts, the most visible cause of death is undoubtedly road traffic. The animals try to reach the damp areas they need to reproduce and are flattened by the million,” the Association for the Protection of Wild Animals said on its Web site. The group’s suggestions for reducing the death toll include advising drivers on areas where frogs and toads cross and lobbying local authorities to build tunnels to help them cross roads safely.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Rhubarb gets protection
A variety of vegetable grown in darkness and harvested by candlelight has joined French champagne and Italian Parma ham in having its name protected by the EU, officials said on Thursday. Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb has been awarded Protected Designation of Origin status by an EU program that aims to protect regional and traditional foods throughout Europe. It means the name can be used by only the 12 remaining growers of the foodstuff in the protected area, the so-called “rhubarb triangle,” which is in the county of Yorkshire, northern England. The EU designation will guarantee the product is authentic and prevent imitation across Europe.
■RUSSIA
Nine jailed in ethnic killings
Nine people convicted of the ethnically motivated murder of Central Asian migrants were jailed for up to 23 years by a Moscow court on Thursday. The trial of the alleged members of a neo-Nazi group dubbed the “White Wolves” underscored the persistence of racist crimes by extreme nationalists and white supremacists. A Moscow City Court jury convicted the nine earlier this month of involvement in five murders and one attempted murder, according to SOVA, a Moscow-based non-governmental organization that tracks racist violence. Three defendants were acquitted, a court spokesman said. The only minor among those convicted was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in a juvenile prison.
■IRAQ
Historical items returned
US officials have returned more than 1,000 archeological and historical items taken after the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, the country’s ambassador said on Thursday. Six pieces ranging from an ancient Sumerian stone tablet to an AK-47 rifle bearing Saddam’s image were handed over at an embassy ceremony on Thursday. Ambassador Samir Sumaida’ie said that the Iraqi National Museum lost some 15,000 items due to looting after Saddam’s regime collapsed. Half of the items have since been found and returned “due to the diligence of our allies,” he said.
■DUBAI
Leak causes evacuation
Dubai Mall, one of the world’s largest shopping centers and a symbol of the emirate’s grandeur, was partly closed on Thursday after an aquarium containing thousands of fish and other sea animals started leaking, police and witnesses said. One of the largest tanks in the world, the aquarium features the world’s largest viewing panel at 32.8m wide and 8.3m high. It was designed to hold more than 33,000 living animals, representing more than 85 species including over 400 sharks and rays combined, Dubai Mall’s Web site.
■UNITED STATES
Teen blackmailer sentenced
A Wisconsin teen convicted of using Facebook to blackmail dozens of classmates into sex has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. Nineteen-year-old Anthony Stancl of New Berlin showed no emotion as the sentence was handed down on Wednesday. Stancl pleaded no contest in December to two felonies, including repeated sexual assault of a child. He apologized during sentencing, saying he has learned to understand what his victims went through. He had faced a maximum 30-year sentence.
■UNITED STATES
Elderly thief sent to prison
An 80-year-old woman with a criminal record stretching back to 1955 has been sentenced to three years in state prison for ransacking and stealing cash from a medical office. Doris Thompson thanked a judge on Wednesday for not sending her to Los Angeles County jail, which she doesn’t like, and said she deserved a longer sentence, the Daily Breeze newspaper reports. She also told the judge, “God bless you.” State records show Thompson, who has used 27 aliases, has repeatedly been arrested during the past 55 years, mainly for theft.
■UNITED STATES
Zombies have speech rights
An appeals court in Minneapolis, Minnesota rule on Wednesday allowed a group of zombies — or rather, several protesters costumed as such — to press ahead with their lawsuit against police who arrested them for disorderly conduct. The appeals court overturned a lower court in finding that the group of seven “zombies” had been wrongfully detained during a 2006 shopping mall protest against consumerism. Made up as zombies, the plaintiffs had lurched through the mall urging shoppers to “get your brains here” and “brain cleanup in aisle five.” The judges ruled the police lacked probable cause to arrest the demonstrators for disorderly conduct but upheld the lower court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims of “false imprisonment.” The decision allows the protesters to revive their lawsuit against Minneapolis and its police.
■UNITED STATES
Beauty riles Beverly Hills
The mayor of Beverly Hills is outraged over a Miss USA contestant who spoke out against same-sex marriage and said she represented the city in the pageant. Mayor Nancy Krasne said on Wednesday that 23-year-old Lauren Ashley, Miss California USA, lives in Pasadena and doesn’t represent Beverly Hills in any capacity. Krasne said in a statement that she was shocked to see statements made by a beauty pageant contestant under the name of Beverly Hills, “which has a long history of tolerance and respect.” Ashley recently told Fox News and other media outlets that same-sex marriage goes against God and the Bible. The pageant’s executive director Keith Lewis says contestants choose the area they represent and Ashley chose to compete as “Miss Beverly Hills” in November.
■CANADA
Missing actor found dead
The parents of US actor Andrew Koenig, best known for his role in the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains said their son has committed suicide. “My son took his own life,” Walter Koenig — who starred in Star Trek — told CBC television after visiting Stanley Park in Vancouver where his son’s body was found. The 41-year-old Andrew Koenig was last seen on Feb. 14 when he left the Vancouver apartment of a friend he had been visiting, and he was reported missing four days later after his father, in Los Angeles, received a despondent letter from his son.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS