PERU
Whaling moratorium stays
A four-decade-old moratorium on commercial whaling is to remain in force after a proposal to overturn it was withdrawn on Thursday at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Lima. Another proposal to declare whaling a source of global food security was also abandoned in a plenary session after failing to gain consensus among delegates from 60 countries. “We are relieved that the dark and dangerous resolution to resume commercial whaling has been withdrawn,” said Grettel Delgadillo, Latin America representative for Humane Society International. The first proposal was submitted by Antigua and Barbuda, which is not a whaling nation, but has said it would pursue the matter at the next IWC meeting in Australia in 2026. Delgadillo said pro-whaling stances by countries that do not consume whale meat “demonstrates how Japan continues to influence the IWC, despite not being a member anymore.” The food security proposal was submitted by a host of African countries, which also have no whaling tradition, but are allies of Japan, non-governmental organizations said. Japan is one of three countries to continue whale hunting, along with Norway and Iceland. An estimated 1,200 whales are killed by hunters every year.
INDIA
Boy ‘killed’ in sacrifice
Five people were arrested for the killing of a seven-year-old boy in an alleged ritual sacrifice aimed at bringing good fortune to a public school, police said yesterday. The boy was found dead in his bed on Sunday night at the hostel where he lived in the city of Hathras. Instead of alerting authorities, police said that school director Dinesh Baghel hid the body in the trunk of his car. Police officer Himanshu Mathur said the boy was killed before a black magic ceremony conducted by Baghel’s father. “The boy was meant to be taken to an altar as part of a ritual, but got killed before the ceremony could be completed,” he said. Baghel and his father were arrested along with three other teachers at the school, he said. Mathur did not give further details on how the child had died and local media reports said the body was undergoing a post-mortem examination.
UNITED KINGDOM
Bronte memorial corrected
With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Bronte sisters have got their dots back. More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was on Thursday amended to restore the diaereses — the two dots over the “e” in their surname. The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II. They were restored after Bronte historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Bronte Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them. “There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.” It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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