MALTA
Prince to keep fossil
Britain’s Prince George can keep his giant shark tooth fossil after Minister of Culture Jose Herrera on Tuesday reversed himself after a backlash over his announcement that he intended to reclaim it. British naturalist and TV presenter David Attenborough gifted the young prince the fossil. A spokesman for the minister told the Times of Malta that “it is not [our] intention to pursue this matter any further.” Critics of the planned reclamation included the son of murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Matthew, who wrote on Twitter that a “megalodon tooth costs $40 on eBay. Corruption has cost us billions of euros. I ask my government to prioritize and please get a grip on what’s important.” Attenborough presented the fossil to the prince during a private viewing of his new documentary at Kensington Palace. He had found it during a vacation in the island nation in the 1960s. Photos released by the palace over the weekend showed Prince George looking intrigued as he inspected the tooth.
BELGIUM
Parties agree on government
Almost 500 days after parliamentary elections, seven parties from both sides of the linguistic aisle yesterday agreed to form a fully functioning majority government that will center on dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. A final negotiating session that lasted almost 24 hours found agreement on a common budget and had only one issue left to decide: who would succeed Sophie Wilmes as prime minister. The seven parties consist of Liberals, Socialists and Greens, divided into separate linguistic entities, and the Dutch-speaking Christian Democrats.
UNITED KINGDOM
Swearing birds separated
A British zoo has had to separate five foul-mouthed parrots who zookeepers say were encouraging each other to swear. Billy, Eric, Tyson, Jade and Elsie joined the Lincolnshire Wildlife Centre’s colony of 200 gray parrots in August, and soon revealed a penchant for bad language. “We are quite used to parrots swearing, but we’ve never had five at the same time,” zoo chief executive Steve Nichols said. “Most parrots clam up outside, but for some reason these five relish it.” Nichols said that no visitors had complained about the parrots and most found the situation funny. “When a parrot tells you to ‘fuck off,’ it amuses people very highly,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s brought a big smile to a really hard year.” Nichols said that the parrots have been separated to save children’s ears. They were moved to different areas of the park so they do not “set each other off,” he said.
FRANCE
Animal captivity banned
Minister of Ecological Transition Barbara Pompili on Tuesday announced a gradual ban on using wild animals in traveling circuses, on keeping dolphins and killer whales in captivity in marine parks, and on raising mink on fur farms. Pompili told a news conference that bears, tigers, lions, elephants and other wild animals would not be allowed any more in traveling circuses “in the coming years.” In addition, starting immediately, the nation’s three marine parks would not be able to bring in nor breed dolphins and killer whales any more, she said. “It is time to open a new era in our relationship with these animals,” she said, adding that animal welfare is a priority. Pompili said that the measures would also bring an end to mink farming, where animals are raised for their fur, within the next five years.
MEXICO
Skeletal remains found
Prosecutors in the country’s most violent state said they have found skeletal remains that might belong to the bodies of about 15 people near the city of Irapuato. Relatives of missing people led them to a site where bones were scattered on the ground or in plastic bags, the Guanajuato State Prosecutors’ Office said late on Monday. The search concluded over the weekend and the remains were taken to laboratories for analysis and possible identification, but the office said they represented the remains “of no more than 15 people.”
UNITED STATES
Twitter denies surveillance
Twitter on Tuesday said that a service that monitors tweets for police, alerting them to brewing social justice protests and more, does not break the platform’s ban on being used for surveillance. Twitter defended letting the service, Dataminr, tap into the flow of public tweets to send alerts to police or other government agencies about plans for protests or civil disobedience. “Twitter prohibits the use of our developer services for surveillance purposes. Period,” a spokesman said.
UNITED STATES
Flynn doesn’t want pardon
A lawyer for former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn on Tuesday told a judge that she recently updated President Donald Trump on the case and asked him not to issue a pardon for her client. The attorney, Sidney Powell, was initially reluctant to discuss her conversations with the president or the White House, saying that she believed they were protected by executive privilege. However, under questioning from District Judge Emmet Sullivan, she acknowledged having spoken to the president to request that he not pardon Flynn.
UNITED STATES
Women drink more
Alcohol consumption among women in the country rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study published on Tuesday. Researchers found that women drank about 5.4 days per month, compared with their last year average of 4.6 days. Women drank heavily on an average of 0.6 days a month during the pandemic, compared with 0.4 before, according to the study in JAMA Network Open. Heavy drinking was defined as five or more drinks for men and four or more drinks for women within a couple of hours.
UNITED STATES
Mail ballots turn out faulty
Mail-in voting has gotten off to a rocky start in New York City, where election officials sent out nearly 100,000 absentee ballots with the wrong names and addresses printed on the return envelopes. The deluge of faulty ballots, sent to voters across Brooklyn, could result in ballots being voided if voters sign their own name on return envelopes bearing different names. The New York City Board of Elections blamed the problem on the company hired to print and mail the ballots.
UNITED STATES
Sex trafficker sentenced
A Long Island man convicted of running a sex trafficking ring out of his elderly parents’ sprawling suburban home was on Tuesday sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison. Raymond Rodio III, 49, was arrested in April last year and in February pleaded guilty to charges including sex trafficking and promoting prostitution. “This defendant had a sex dungeon in his parents’ home and forced women into sex slavery,” Suffolk County District Attorney Tim Sini said.
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
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