MEXICO CITY (AP) – Another journalist was shot to death in Mexico on Tuesday, the eighth murdered so far this year in an unprecedented spate of killings that has made Mexico the most dangerous place in the world for the press.
Reporters and photographers have been murdered this year in Mexico at the rate of almost one a week, despite claims from the government that the situation is under control.
Prosecutors in the western state of Michoacan said reporter Armando Linares was shot to death at a home in the town of Zitacuaro. His killing came six weeks after the slaying of a colleague, Roberto Toledo, from the same outlet Monitor Michoacan. It was Linares who announced Toledo’s death on January 31 in a video posted to social media.
Zitacuaro is one of the closest towns to the monarch butterfly wintering grounds in the mountains west of Mexico City.
The area has been plagued by illegal logging and drug gangs, local governance disputes and deforestation linked to expanding avocado production. Logging has damaged the pine and fir forests where the butterflies spend the winter after migrating from the United States and Canada.
Linares served as director at the Monitor Michoacan website, which on Tuesday continued to show an article he had written about a cultural festival celebrating monarch butterflies.
There was no immediate information on a possible motive in the killing.
Toledo, a camera operator and video editor for Monitor Michoacan, was shot on January 31 as he prepared for an interview in Zitacuaro.
At the time of Toledo’s death, Linares told The Associated Press (AP) he had received several death threats after enrolling in a government journalist protection programme.
Asked who he thought was behind the threats, Linares said “they pass themselves off as an armed group, they pass themselves off as a criminal gang. We can’t verify whether it is true or not that they are this armed gang”.
Criminals in Mexico often claim they are part of a drug cartel in order to instill fear in their victims, whether or not they really are.
“We have organised crime, just like in the rest of the country, and monitor worked on a lot of issues like illegal logging, given that we are near the monarch reserve,” Linares said in early February. “We wrote a lot about illegal logging and also a lot of issues like corruption in the municipal government.”
Photos of slain journalists are posted on the gate of Mexico’s Attorney General’s office during a vigil. PHOTO: AP
CAIRO (AP) – A United Nations appeal for Yemen yesterday is aiming at raising USD4.27 billion to alleviate what it describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with 161,000 people likely to experience famine there in 2022.
The virtual pledging conference is co-hosted by Sweden and Switzerland. United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed donors on the dire needs of the Arab world’s poorest country.
The conference comes as world attention is gripped by the war in Ukraine, which has overshadowed other humanitarian crisis across the world since the Russian invasion on February 24 – raising concerns that that Yemen’s plight may be forgotten.
“The Ukrainian crisis could also dramatically impact Yemenis’ access to food,” Yemen director at the Norwegian Refugee Council Erin Hutchinson said. “We hope that Yemenis will find the same level of support and solidarity as we’ve seen with the people of Ukraine.”
A prolonged conflict in Ukraine is likely to further reduce Yemenis’ access to their basic needs, as food prices, especially the cost of grain, are likely to increase. Yemen depends almost entirely on food imports with 22 per cent of its wheat imports coming from Ukraine, according to the World Food Programme.
People gather at the site affected by an airstrike near Yemen’s Defence Ministry complex in Sanaa. PHOTO: AP
Last year’s conference raised only some USD1.7 billion for Yemen, out of USD3.85 billion the UN appealed for as the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating consequences hit economies around the globe. The UN chief called the 2021 result “disappointing”.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that 19 million people are expected to face acute food insecurity by the second half of this year – an increase of around 20 per cent compared to the first six months of 2021. Of them, 161,000 people are likely to experience famine, it said.
OCHA said half of the country’s health facilities are shuttered or destroyed. It said the Yemeni currency lost 57 per cent of its value in 2021 in government-run areas, while persistent fuel shortages drove up the prices of food and other basic commodities in the Houthi-controlled north.
It said 4.3 million Yemenis have been driven from their homes; around one-fifth of new displaced in 2021 were in the energy-rich province of Marib which Houthis attempted to seize for over a year, it said.
With the USD4.27 billion for Yemen, the UN aims to provide support to 17.3 million people in 2022, out of the 23.4 million who need aid, OCHA said.
The Turkish Embassy in Brunei Darussalam answered calls from the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports (MCYS) to help the Sultanate in curbing the COVID-19 outbreak through volunteering work.
The embassy has helped with the delivery of rations for families undergoing the quarantine order. Embassy staff transported rations provided at the Sungai Kebun Sports Complex to houses in different villages.
Head of Food Ration Distribution Centre at the sports complex Mohammad Johardi bin Hamdi lauded the embassy’s support. Turkish Ambassador to Brunei Darussalam Dr Hamit Ersoy also toured the distribution centre.
He believed that fighting COVID-19 together would bring communities closer together and make the world a better place.
ABOVE & BELOW: Turkish Ambassador to Brunei Darussalam Dr Hamit Ersoy, Head of Food Ration Distribution Centre at the Sungai Kebun Sports Complex Mohammad Johardi bin Hamdi and embassy staff. PHOTO: TURKISH EMBASSY
TRIPOLI, LEBANON (AP)- The hissing of a water hose spraying the ground reverberates around the walls of the dimly lit Empire Cinema in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli. From the floor of a paint-chipped room that was once a ticket office, a man sorts through rusty bolts and screws, while in the adjacent foyer, a woman sweeps dust off a mirror.
The person leading the restoration efforts is 35-year-old actor and director Kassem Istanbouli, known for his theatre work throughout Lebanon.
Several days a week, his team – which includes a Syrian, a Palestinian, a Lebanese and a Bangladeshi – drives three hours from their homes in the country’s south to work on the space, built in the early 1940s but abandoned for decades.
The restoration project launched last month is the first of its kind in hardscrabble Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city more often known in recent years for sectarian and other violence.
“What we are trying to say is that Tripoli is a city of culture and art,” Istanbouli said. “When you open a cinema and a theatre, people will come and attend. But if you give them a gun, of course they will shoot at each other and kill each other,” he added.
ABOVE & BELOW: Kassem Istanbouli inspects a movie tape at Empire Cinema in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon; and Maha Amin cleans a room that was once a ticket office. PHOTOS: AP
A team of actors attend a rehearsal for a play at Empire CinemaBangladeshi volunteer and actor Shuman Dali washes chairs before attending a rehearsal
For much of the rest of Lebanon, Tripoli’s artistic history is considered a relic of the past, overshadowed by crushing poverty, corruption, and migration.
But Tripoli has an especially long cinematic tradition, once boasting up to 35 movie houses, including Lebanon’s first.
Cinema Empire is the last of five historic cinemas still standing in Tripoli’s Tell Square, which encircles a clock tower gifted by Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the early 20th Century. It shut down in 1988 as massive cinema complexes opened inside malls, and home video players grew in popularity.
Istanbouli, founder of the Tiro Association for Arts in the southern city of Tyre, already transformed three abandoned cinemas there into theatre and film venues.
Much like Tyre’s Rivoli theatre which he restored in early 2018, Istanbouli aims to transform the Empire into a multi-purpose venue featuring not only arts festivals and plays, but also a library, a visual arts studio and area for workshops.
That’s no small order these days, given a crippled economy and over 80 per cent of the population living in poverty.
Even before a financial crisis led to the current depression, Tripoli was already Lebanon’s poorest city – plagued by government neglect and a lack of investment. It has been a major point of departure for illegal migration, with Lebanese now following the same precarious path as Syrians fleeing their civil war, trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean.
The director’s project was inspired by his father, an electrician who used to repair movie houses in the south, and his grandfather, who was a sailor and hakawati – a storyteller who sported a red fez while recounting folkloric tales in Tyre’s old cafes.
“This project will improve the city economically. It will bring tourism and change to its reputation,” Istanbouli said.
Charles Hayek, a 39-year-old historian and conservationist said Istanbouli’s project will do more than just fight negative perceptions.
“Kassem is saving one of the heritage buildings and giving it back life,” he said.
Tripoli has lost much of its architectural heritage – especially around Tell Square – in the past decade due to neglect. Before the 1975-1990 civil war, the square’s oldest cinema Inja once attracted two of the Arab world’s biggest music celebrities: Umm Kalthoum and Mohamed Abdel Wahab.
That building has now been demolished, replaced by a parking garage.
For rehabilitation funds, Istanbouli has partnered with the DOEN Foundation and The Euro-Mediterranean Foundation of Support to Human Rights Defenders. The cinema contract from a private owner is for five years, and he hopes to officially open within six months.
One afternoon, Istanbouli led volunteers who finished with repairs through acting exercises.
“Pretend that you’re an animal,” he said to a woman who then announced she was a panda.
“Now I want you to face off against a dog… who wants to be a dog?” he asked.
Maha Amin, one of the attendees from Tyre who was sweeping dust off mirrors in the morning and was now on stage, never thought about the possibility of acting, let alone visiting Tripoli.
“The environment we live in doesn’t accept a woman who is my age to do this,” the 57-year-old special needs teacher said. She initially went to Istanbouli’s Rivoli theatre in Tyre to enroll her seven grandchildren, but ended up joining them.
“Especially in the tough times today, people need to breathe and express themselves,” she said. “It’s here on stage after a long day of work that I’m able I’m able to say what I want, in total freedom.”
PARIS (AFP) – European stock markets opened sharply higher yesterday a rally in Asia as investors track the war in Ukraine, COVID lockdowns in China and a key United States (US) Federal Reserve meeting.
London’s FTSE 100 was up 1.3 per cent at 7,265.53 points while the eurozone’s main markets were up more than two per cent, with Frankfurt at 14,189.48 points and Paris at 6,486.91.
European markets had fallen on Tuesday after Asian equities sank over concerns about the resurgence of COVID in China.
Oil prices also plunged over fears about demand in China, a major crude consumer.
But the war in Ukraine remains a major focus for investors.
Chief market analyst at CMC Markets Michael Hewson warned that “any rally is likely to find itself pushing against the headwinds of headlines out of Ukraine, as well as the prospect that Russia might default on a bond payment later” yesterday.
Moscow is due to pay USD117 million on two dollar-denominated bonds but sanctions have raised concerns about its ability to service its debt.
KUALA LUMPUR (CNA) – The Malaysian government has allowed a fourth round of withdrawals from the country’s Employees Provident Fund (EPF) retirement scheme.
Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced in a special press conference yesterday that this withdrawal would be capped at MYR10,000 per contributor.
However, he urged contributors to consider carefully before making the “special withdrawal”, in the interests of their future.
There have previously been three withdrawal schemes for EPF contributors since the pandemic struck. Under the i-Lestari, i-Sinar and i-Citra schemes, MYR101 billion has been withdrawn from the retirement fund by 7.34 million contributors since 2020, the prime minister noted.
“Based on findings from thorough studies and observations during the recovery phase after this pandemic, there are those within the Malaysian Family still affected from an economic standpoint. (They suffered) loss of income and are currently rebuilding their lives,” Ismail Sabri said.
“Although the government has given permission for this special EPF withdrawal, nevertheless I plead with contributors to keep your savings unless the situation is truly pressing.”
In a press statement, Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz said EPF would give further details on the special withdrawal in the near future, as well as necessary steps to manage the issue of diminished retirement funds faced by contributors.
A woman shops at a supermarket in Pahang, Malaysia. PHOTO: AFP
THE WASHINGTON POST – Horace the Asian elephant is so terrified of explosions that he’s been put on sedatives. The zebras are being kept inside after they panicked at the sound of shelling and ran directly into a fence. And Maya the lemur is so overwhelmed that she abandoned her newborn baby this week – nearly killing him.
Zoos have often been collateral damage in war around the world. And war is now touching Kyiv’s zoo, next to a key military installation and possibly in the path of a Russian push into the capital.
Animals are increasingly exhibiting signs of stress. They cower from the air raid sirens and blasts that ring out throughout the day. Gunfire often can be heard at night.
Fearing the worst – and seeking shelter from attacks in their own neighbourhoods – around 50 staff members have moved into the sprawling facility to care for the animals around-the-clock, bringing some 30 family members with them.
They take cover during air raid sirens in the zoo’s makeshift shelters: one in a bird enclosure and another in an unfinished aquarium. But animals as large as elephants or giraffes cannot be moved below ground.
“They have no space to hide or run,” said the zoo’s Director Kyrylo Trantin, 49. “Once they’re out of the zoo, they have fewer options than any human. It’s going to be the streets with tanks.”
Kyiv Zoo Director Kirilo Trantin comforts Horace, a 17 year-old Asian elephant at the Kiev Zoo in Kyiv, Ukraine. PHOTOS: THE WASHINGTON POSTNewborn two day old Bayraktar the lemur, named after a Turkish drone that Ukrainians are using to fight the Russians is hand fed by a zoo workerABOVE & BELOW: Trantin feeds a banana to Jambo, a giraffe; a gorilla named Tony, the only gorilla in Ukraine, is fed tea from a Coca Cola bottle; and heating lights keep turtles warm at the Kyiv Zoo
In the eastern city of Kharkiv, the Feldman Ecopark zoo reported that their facilities were damaged in recent fighting.
“Some animals were injured, some were killed,” the zoo wrote on Facebook. “Fighting is still going on in the Feldman Ecopark area, so, unfortunately, the losses are not final yet.”
This is the nightmare the Kyiv Zoo hopes to avoid. A wild animal shelter outside of Kyiv moved some animals abroad to Poland – including lions and tigers. But that’s a process Trantin said would be difficult for his large animals during peacetime, let alone during war.
Instead, he began preparing for the possibility of a Russian invasion about a week before it began. Taking advice from a fellow zoo director in Haifa, Israel, he stocked up on food supplies and materials to rebuild enclosures in case of an attack.
By February 25, “there was fighting near the zoo and bullets were flying over us”, he recalled.
Already, staff are keeping certain animals inside to protect them from any shelling that could land nearby.
With his enormous ears and sensitive disposition, Horace is particularly vulnerable to loud noises, Trantin said. So a staff member moves into the 17-year-old elephant’s enclosure with him each night, sleeping beside him to comfort him from any loud bangs. When he wakes up in distress, they feed him apples and chat to him until they sense he’s relaxed.
“If a rocket or shell lands, they know how to calm him down,” Trantin said of his colleagues.
On Friday, he stroked Horace’s big grey cheek and dumped a pile of hay on the ground for him to snarf up with his trunk. He eats around 220 pounds of food a day. For now, the zoo has enough supplies in stock for around two weeks and hopes to be able to keep up a steady stream from their suppliers.
But the city’s general population is already preparing for the possibility that key supply routes could be cut off if the city is surrounded.
For the zoo, the biggest concern now is the lack of available green salad. So staff members planted their own garden to feed the animals the freshest lettuce they can.
Already, some staff who live on the other side of the river have been unable to report to work due to road closures. Others have signed up to fight.
Cafes and ice cream stands are closed. Benches decorated with animal shapes are empty. A colourful Ferris wheel sits lonely against the grey sky. A flock of birds flying above scattered when a small drone flew near them – their caws echoing through the haunting quiet.
Ivan Rybchenko, 33, is among the zookeepers who can still reach work by bike. On Friday, he leaned over a balcony enclosure, feeding a banana to Dguto, one of two 17-year-old giraffes living at the zoo. In the background, several booms could be heard and an air raid siren began to wail. Rybchenko and Dguto barely blinked.
Unlike many other men his age, Rybchenko didn’t consider joining local forces to push back the Russians. His own way of standing up to the invasion, he said, is by keeping these animals alive.
“I’m taking care of giraffes, deer and horses,” he said. “So there’s no way for me to join territorial defence because they would simply die.”
Still, he worries that events outside of his control will lead to a tragedy here. “I’m afraid that any of the animals in the zoo will be killed,” he said.
Tony, a 47-year-old gorilla, paced back and forth in his enclosure, happy to see Trantin and his colleague Valentina Dykoneva, 50, who arrived with treats: dates, bananas and a Coca-Cola bottle filled with tea.
Tony doesn’t seem particularly disturbed by the explosions, Dykoneva said. “But of course he’s missing people and visitors.”
In an office nearby, a boy sat at a computer playing a game. A snake was curled up inside a small tank. And in a small box on a table, a two-day-old baby lemur clung to a soft piece of cloth.
Unlike his sibling born the same day, he failed to quickly latch to his mother after his birth to feed. So she abruptly abandoned him, in a move the zookeepers said was highly unusual and probably linked to stress. To save him, they moved him into their care, where they are now mimicking his mother’s warmth by wrapping him in fuzzy material and feeding him baby formula through a syringe.
Despite blaming the conflict for his mother’s abandonment, the birth of the baby lemur offered a source of joy for the zoo employees. They named him Bayraktar – after a Turkish-made drone used by the Ukrainian military.
The name, they joked, shows that – like the drones fighting the Russians – the arrival of this baby lemur amid so much destruction “is a positive thing”.
AP – Kyrie Irving’s 60-point barrage at Orlando was the seventh 50-point effort in the league so far this month – with half of March remaining.
His career-best performance came one night after Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns also scored a career-high 60, a number nobody in the league had reached this season until this week.
Even Kevin Durant – one of the most elite scorers ever, someone who had 53 in Brooklyn’s win over New York last Sunday – is marveling at what’s happening right now.
March’s seven 50-point games have come in a span of 11 days. LeBron James started it on March 5 by scoring 56 for the Los Angeles Lakers against Golden State. Jayson Tatum had 54 points for Boston one day later against Brooklyn.
With that, the madness was off and running. Irving had 50 on March 8 at Charlotte. James had 50 again last Friday against Washington.
Durant had his 53 last Sunday, Towns answered that with 60 on Monday and Irving then had a 60-point night of his own.
It matches the highest number of 50-point games in the same calendar month in the NBA in the last 60 years.
August 2020 also had seven 50-point efforts, four of those being playoff games at the restart bubble inside Walt Disney World. There were also seven such games in March 2019.
The last month with more 50-point games in the NBA was decades ago – all the way back to December 1962. There were nine of them that month, six by Wilt Chamberlain of the San Francisco Warriors. He had eight all by himself that October. He made 50-point nights look ordinary in those days.
LAS VEGAS (AP) – A federal court in Las Vegas has signalled that the public might get a look at a Las Vegas police report compiled about Cristiano Ronaldo after a Nevada woman claimed in 2018 that the international football star assaulted her in 2009.
United States (US) Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts said in documents filed last Friday that denying the New York Times access to what police collected “would almost certainly raise the ‘spectre of government censorship'”.
Albregts recommended that US District Judge Jennifer Dorsey transfer to a state court the newspaper’s open-records request for documents so far kept secret under a hush-money agreement the woman, Kathryn Mayorga, signed more than a decade ago.
Albregts said a protective order that Dorsey imposed to prevent the release of the 2010 agreement doesn’t apply to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) and “does not bar LVMPD from disseminating its criminal investigative file”.
Mayorga sued Ronaldo in 2018, saying through her attorneys that she was coerced into the settlement, never wanted to be identified publicly and should receive millions of dollars more than the USD375,000 she received from Ronaldo’s representatives.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they are victims of sexual assault, but Mayorga gave consent through her attorneys, Leslie Mark Stovall and Larissa Drohobyczer, to make her name public.
Albregts said the public records dispute should go to state court.
He noted the police department was not a party to the Mayorga-Ronaldo hush-money deal and that “all parties came to agree” that state court, not federal court, is the proper venue to decide whether state law obligates police to release what investigators found. “While the information in LVMPD’s file may be identical to that which is covered in the protective order… LVMPD did not obtain the information because of this lawsuit,” Albregts wrote.
“To find that the protective order restricts (police) dissemination of the information it gained from other sources would offend the First Amendment.”
Dorsey ruled last year that due to the 2010 agreement, the dispute between Mayorga and Ronaldo belonged in private arbitration.
The judge has not yet ruled whether Mayorga lacked the mental capacity at the time to sign the secrecy agreement and accept the settlement from Ronaldo’s representatives.
If Mayorga was fit to enter the pact, the judge has said, she is bound by confidentiality and an arbitrator should decide behind closed doors whether the contract was valid.
ADDIS ABABA (XINHUA) – The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 11,284,902 as of Tuesday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.
The specialised healthcare agency of the African Union said the COVID-19 death toll across the continent stands at 250,403, and some 10,560,754 patients have recovered from the disease so far.
South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya are among the countries with the most cases on the continent, said the Africa CDC.
South Africa has recorded the most COVID-19 cases in Africa with 3,695,175 cases, followed by the two northern African countries of Morocco and Tunisia with 1,162,125 and 1,029,762 cases, respectively, it said.
In terms of regional caseload, southern Africa is the most affected region in Africa, followed by the northern and eastern parts of the continent, while central Africa is the least affected, said the Africa CDC.
A resident receives a dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Windhoek, Namibia. PHOTO: XINHUA
