Permit to kill Namibia black rhino fetches $350,000 in US

January 12, 2014

Namibia_black_rhino

Washington, Jan 12: A Texas hunting club on Saturday auctioned off a permit to kill a black rhinoceros in Namibia, raising $350,000 (Dh1.29 million) towards conservation efforts for the animal, but not without controversy.

The Dallas Safari Club, which said all money would be given to Namibia for “anti-poaching patrols, habitat protection, research and other measures crucial for protecting populations of endangered black rhinos,” has nonetheless sparked the ire of some wildlife groups.

A government-approved annual quota, in place in Namibia since 2012, gives permission for the killing of five black rhinos per year.

“Science shows that selective hunting helps rhino populations grow,” the club said in a statement released after the US auction.

“Removing old, post-breeding bulls — which are territorial, aggressive and often kill younger, breeding bulls, cows and even calves — increases survival and productivity in a herd.”

Namibia wildlife authorities on Friday defended the auctioning of permits, saying the kill was aimed at conserving the endangered species. But Dallas Safari Club director Ben Carter said he has received more than a dozen emailed death threats against his family and members of his staff.

“It is some pretty crazy stuff,” he told NBC News.

“A number of emails said, ‘For every rhino you kill, we will kill a member of the club.'”

The Texas-based group sought help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which said it is taking the threats “seriously.”

According to the club, Namibian wildlife officials will accompany the auction winner through Mangetti National Park where the hunt will occur, “to ensure the correct type of animal is taken.”

The Dallas Safari Club also stated that meat from the rhino will feed “a nearby community,” if the hunt is successful.

Carter defended the hunt in a recent press release in which he insisted that the auction will help increase the size of the herd by removing an old “post-breeding” male.

Several months ago, the Humane Society of the United States described the news of the auction as “disturbing” and vowed to campaign against the issuance of a US permit to return the trophy.

“The world is seeing a concerted effort to preserve the very few black rhinos and other rhinos who are dodging poachers' bullets and habitat destruction,” Wayne Pacelle, president of the HSUS, said.

Black rhinoceroses are internationally considered an endangered species and the World Wildlife Fund says there are less than 5,000 remaining in Africa.

Namibia, a semi-desert southern African country, has a black rhino population of nearly 1,800.

Namibia is less affected by rhino poaching compared with its neighbour, South Africa, with only 10 killed since 2006, according to the international wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic.

Rhino poaching has reached crisis levels in South Africa, with nearly a thousand killed in 2012.

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News Network
May 8,2020

New York, May 8: An Indian-American father and daughter, both doctors in New Jersey, have died due to the COVID-19, with Governor Phil Murphy describing their demise as “particularly tough" and hailed them for dedicating their lives for others.

Satyender Dev Khanna, 78, was a surgeon who served both on staff and as the head of the surgical departments for multiple hospitals across New Jersey for decades.

Priya Khanna, 43, was a double board-certified in both internal medicine and nephrology. She was Chief of Residents at Union Hospital, now part of RWJ Barnabas Health.

"Dr Satyender Dev Khanna and Dr Priya Khanna were father and daughter. They both dedicated their lives to helping others. This is a family dedicated to health and medicine. Our words cannot amply express our condolences," New Jersey Governor Murphy tweeted on Thursday.

“Both dedicated their lives to helping others and we lost both of them to COVID-19,” Murphy said during a press conference on Thursday, saying their demise is a "particularly tough one.”

Satyender passed away at the Clara Maass Medical Center where he had worked for more than 35 years.

Murphy described him as a "pioneering doctor” who was one of the first surgeons to perform laparoscopic surgery in the state. He is being remembered by colleagues as a “gentle and caring physician."

“And for a doctor, I'm not one, but I would bet, I don't think there could be a more fitting way to be remembered, or a nurse or a healthcare worker of any kind,” Murphy said, adding that the doctor had a passion for bicycling, and he often found peace from the hustle of the hospital in biking along the Jersey Shore.

Priya did all of her medical training in New Jersey and then did her fellowship in nephrology in South Jersey with the Cooper Health System. Like her father, she too worked at Clara Maass, where she died.

She was also Medical Director at two dialysis centres in Essex County and “took pride” in teaching the next generation of doctors, Murphy said, adding that the ICU physician who cared for Priya Khanna was trained and taught by her as well.

Follow live developments on the coronavirus pandemic here

“Priya will be remembered as a caring and selfless person who put others first. And even while in the hospital, fighting her own battle, she continued to check up on her mom and dad and her family,” Murphy said.

“This is a family, by the way, dedicated to health and medicine,” he said.

The governor spoke with Satyender's wife Komlish Khanna, who is a paediatrician. The couple has two more daughters - Sugandha Khanna, an emergency medicine physician and Anisha Khanna, a paediatrician.

“Unbelievable. Our words cannot amply express our condolences nor, I am sure, can they express the pain that the Khanna family is feeling. But I hope that the fact that our entire state mourns with them is some small comfort. And we mourn everyone we have lost. We commit in their memory to saving as many lives as we can,” Murphy said.

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Agencies
March 1,2020

Washington, Mar 1: The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed a fine of over $200 million for all major US mobile carriers for selling the location data of customers to some agencies.

The Federal Communications Commission today proposed fines against the nation's four largest wireless carriers for apparently selling access to their customers' location information without taking reasonable measures to protect against unauthorised access to that information. As a result, T-Mobile faces a proposed fine of more than $91 million, AT&T faces a proposed fine of more than $57 million, Verizon faces a proposed fine of more than $48 million, and Sprint faces a proposed fine of more than $12 million, the FCC said in a statement on Friday.

The Enforcement Bureau of FCC opened this investigation after reports surfaced that a Missouri Sheriff, Cory Hutcheson, used a "location-finding service" operated by Securus, a provider of communications services to correctional facilities, to access the location information of the wireless carriers' customers without their consent between 2014 and 2017.

"American consumers take their wireless phones with them wherever they go. And information about a wireless customer's location is highly personal and sensitive. The FCC has long had clear rules on the books requiring all phone companies to protect their customers' personal information. And since 2007, these companies have been on notice that they must take reasonable precautions to safeguard this data and that the FCC will take strong enforcement action if they don't. Today, we do just that," said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

"This FCC will not tolerate phone companies putting Americans' privacy at risk."

The FCC also admonished these carriers for apparently disclosing their customers' location information, without their authorisation, to a third party

The four major US carriers mentioned sold access to their customers' location information to "aggregators," who then resold access to such information to third-party location-based service providers (like Securus).

Although their exact practices varied, each carrier relied heavily on contract-based assurances that the location-based services providers (acting on the carriers' behalf) would obtain consent from the wireless carrier's customer before accessing that customer's location information.

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News Network
January 7,2020

Jan 7: Body of the senior Iranian military commander, Qasem Soleimani killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq last week, has arrived in his home town of Kerman in southeast Iran for burial, the official IRNA news agency said on Tuesday.

State TV broadcast live images of thousands of people in the streets of the town, many of them dressed in black, to mourn Soleimani's death.

Soleimani was widely seen as Iran’s second most powerful figure behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 80, who wept in grief along with hundreds of thousands of mourners who thronged the streets of Tehran for Soleimani’s funeral on Monday.

Khamenei led prayers at the funeral in the Iranian capital, pausing as his voice cracked with emotion. Soleimani, 62, was a national hero even to many who do not consider themselves supporters of Iran’s clerical rulers.

He was killed while leaving Baghdad airport last Friday. Mourners packed the streets, chanting: “Death to America!” - a show of national unity after anti-government protests in November in which many demonstrators were killed.

The crowd, which state media said numbered in the millions, recalled the masses gathered in 1989 for the funeral of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The killing of Soleimani has prompted fears around the world of a broader regional conflict, as well as calls in the U.S. Congress for legislation to keep President Donald Trump from going to war against Iran.

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