Dog pounds in the Philippines are being allowed to kill stray dogs with vehicle exhaust fumes, local animal welfare groups said yesterday, a practice they say is cruel and inhumane.
The Philippine Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) and two other groups called for the government to reverse an agricultural department ruling in June that approved the gassing method to kill dogs.
“If we need to put a dog to death because he cannot be cared for, the least we can do is send him off as painlessly and as humanely as possible,” PAWS program director Anna Cabrera said.
Carbon monoxide gassing is used in several US states and Japan to put down animals, but in a less cruel manner, Cabrera said.
She said in the Philippines it was done by shutting up to eight dogs in a metal box, attaching a hose from a car to the box, and revving the engine to fill the box with exhaust fumes.
Cabrera said it normally took up to 10 minutes for the dogs to die.
More than 27,000 dogs are put down in Philippine pounds each month, according to PAWS, but it said it did not know how many of these deaths were via the gassing method.
In related news, a Philippine court has fined and sentenced 13 Vietnamese poachers to several months in prison after they were caught two years ago trying to flee with 101 critically endangered Hawksbill Turtles, a conservationist group said yesterday.
The World Wide Fund for Nature said the sentences, handed down last week in the southwestern island province of Palawan, could serve as a precedent and a strong warning to poachers from nearby countries who in the past have escaped prison time.
The Puerto Princesa Regional Trial Court convicted and sentenced the fishermen to between six and 18 months in prison plus fines.
The court ruled that only the fines remain to be served because the poachers have been detained since September 2008.
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
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS