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A four-decade-old moratorium on commercial whaling is to remain in force after a proposal to overturn it was withdrawn on Thursday at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Lima.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 “We are relieved that the dark and dangerous resolution to resume commercial whaling has been withdrawn,” said Grettel Delgadillo, Latin America representative for Humane Society International.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
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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