Nairobi, Kenya
Uhuru Kenyatta put a flame to the biggest of 11 pyres of ivory tusks and one of rhino horn in a chilly afternoon. Overnight torrential rains had threated to ruin the event but stopped midday leaving a mud field around the piles inside Nairobi National Park.
“A time has come when we must take a stand and the stand is clear … Kenya is making a statement that for us ivory is worthless unless it is on our elephants,” Kenyatta said.
The stacks of tusks represent more than 8,000 elephants and some 343 rhinos slaughtered for their ivory and horns, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service.
Kenya will push for the total ban on trade in ivory at the 17th meeting of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species to be held in South Africa later this year, said Kenyatta.
Tehran, Iran
The results released Saturday on state television failed to give the moderate-reformist camp an outright majority in the 290-seat chamber, however. They will now likely try to attract support from dozens of independent lawmakers whose political leanings vary depending on the issue at hand.
There were 68 seats being contested in runoff elections held Friday in 55 constituencies around the country. Residents in the capital, Tehran, did not take part in the second-round balloting because moderates won all 30 seats there outright in first-round voting in February.
The reformist and moderate list claimed 37 seats in Friday’s vote, giving them a total of 143 seats in the assembly — just two seats shy of 50 percent. They are followed by hard-liners, with 86 seats, and independents, with 61. Twenty-two hard-liners and nine independents won seats in the runoff.
Mohammad Reza Aref, head of the moderate-reformist bloc, welcomed the victory, saying “our priority is engagement with other factions rather than confrontation,” the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.
Johannesburg
It was the largest airlift of lions in history, said Jan Creamer, president of Animal Defenders International, which carried out the operation.
“These lion have suffered tremendously,” Creamer said as the lions were loaded in crates onto trucks.
“They lived in small cages on the backs of trucks for their entire lives. Some of them had their teeth bashed in with steel pipes in circuses in Colombia and Peru. Some of them had their claws removed. … It is a wonderful feeling to bring them back to their home.”
Nine of the lions were surrendered by a circus in Colombia. The remaining 24 were rescued in raids on circuses in Peru by the animal defense group and officials enforcing a crackdown on wildlife trafficking.
The Australian government on Friday blocked once and for all a bid that would have seen a chunk of its land the size of Ireland — or more than 1 percent of the country’s total landmass — sold to a private Chinese company.
The company at first seems like an extremely unlikely contender to become not only Australia’s, but the world’s, biggest private landowner.
It’s called Dakang, and it was once a struggling pig-breeding firm until it was bought in 2013 by Pengxin Group, a Shanghai-based company mostly involved in real estate.
But ever since a massive tainted milk scandal effectively shuttered China’s domestic dairy industry in 2008, companies there have been seeking to source dairy products from overseas, and Pengxin has been particularly pioneering, if not very successful, in the endeavor.
In September, New Zealand nixed its plan to buy one massive farm there, and Pengxin subsequently canceled its plans to buy 10 more in the country. The company has bought vast farms in Argentina, Bolivia and Cambodia.
On Friday, the possibility dimmed for Pengxin of owning an 80 percent share of S. Kidman & Co., a company founded in 1899 that has 10 gigantic ranches spanning more than 100,000 square kilometers, roughly the size of the state of Virginia.
The deal was reportedly worth approximately $280 million. Pengxin’s initial offer for all of S. Kidman’s ranches was rejected over “security concerns” in November, as the largest of the ranches overlapped with a rocket firing range operated by the Australian military. That ranch was eliminated from the second bid, reducing the area for sale to 77,000 square kilometers.
New York
The toy poodle was among the first to try a special bathroom just for animals at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, among a growing number of “pet relief facilities” being installed at major air hubs across the nation.
“There’s a fire hydrant in there!” Simba’s owner, Heidi Liddell, announced as she opened the pawprint-marked door between the men’s and women’s rooms.
It didn’t take long for the dog to sidle up to the little red hydrant atop a patch of artificial turf and do her business. A dispenser of plastic doggie bags and a hose was provided for the owners to clean the area up for the next pet.
The 70-square-foot room, at JFK’s sprawling Terminal 4, allows dogs and other animals to relieve themselves without needing to exit the building to find a place to go outside — a step that requires an annoying second trip through the security line.
“We had seen an increase of passengers traveling with pets and we decided to do it sooner rather than later,” said Susana Cunha, vice president of the management company that operates the terminal.
Guide and service dogs, emotional support animals and other pets traveling with passengers are all welcome to use the facilities.