Around the World briefs
By Associated Press
A second critically endangered Chinese pangolin is born in the Prague zoo in less than two years
PRAGUE | A second Chinese pangolin was born in the Prague zoo in less than two years and is doing well, defying the odds and surprising park officials.
The female of the critically endangered mammal was born July 1, the second Chinese pangolin born in captivity in Europe following her sister, Cone, in February last year.
She weighed just 4.97 ounces but was putting on about 0.3 ounces daily and could reach 8.8 ounces this week, the zoo said. Adults can reach up to 15 pounds.
When the park in 2022 received Guo Bao, a male, and Run Hou Tang, a female, from the Taipei zoo, the leading breeder of the mammals, the major goal was just to keep them alive and in good health, zoo director Miroslav Bobek said Wednesday.
“We certainly hoped that we’ll have a baby born one day in the future but absolutely nobody expected that we’ll have two in a year and a half,” Bobek said.
The Chinese pangolin is native to southern China and Southeast Asia. It’s one of the four pangolin species in Asia, with the others found in Africa. They are hunted heavily for their scales and meat.
The pangolins are difficult to breed in captivity because they require a special feed that includes drone larvae and need a particular humidity and temperature in their enclosure.
Prague became only the second European zoo to keep the species.
The pangolins arrived came after Prague decided to revoke a sister-city agreement with Beijing and signed a similar deal in 2020 with the Taiwanese capital, Taipei. The deal caused tensions with China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory. The agreement included cooperation between the Taipei and Prague zoos.
The body of an American climber buried by an avalanche 22 years
ago in Peru is found in the ice
LIMA, Peru | Twenty two years ago, an avalanche buried American climber Bill Stampfl as he made his way up one of the highest peaks in the Andes mountains.
His family knew there was little hope of finding him alive, or even of retrieving his corpse from the thick fields of snow and the freezing ice sheets that cover the 22,000-foot tall Huascaran peak.
But in June, Stampfl’s son got a call from a stranger, who said he had come across the climber’s frozen, and mostly intact body, as he made his own ascent up Huascaran.
“It was so out of left field. We talk about my dad, we think about him all the time,” Joseph Stampfl said. “You just never think you are going to get that call.”
He then shared the news with his family.
“It’s been a shock” said Jennifer Stampfl, the climber’s daughter. “When you get that phone call that he’s been found your heart just sinks. You don’t know how exactly to feel at first.”
On Tuesday, police in Peru said they had recovered Stampfl’s body from the mountain where he was buried by the avalanche in 2002, when the 58-year-old was climbing with two friends who were also killed.
A group of policemen and mountain guides put Stampfl’s body on a stretcher, covered it in an orange tarp, and slowly took it down the icy mountain. The body was found at an altitude of 5,200 meters (17,060 feet), about a nine-hour hike from one of the camps where climbers stop when they tackle Huascaran’s steep summit.
Jennifer Stampfl said the family plans to move the body to a funeral home in Peru’s capital, Lima, where it can be cremated and his ashes repatriated.
“For 22 years, we just kind of put in our mind: ‘This is the way it is. Dad’s part of the mountain, and he’s never coming home,’” she said.
Police said Stampfl’s body and clothing were preserved by the ice and freezing temperatures. His driver’s license was found inside a hip pouch. It says he was a resident of Chino in California’s San Bernardino County.
The effort to retrieve Stampfl’s remains began last week, after an American climber came upon the frozen body while making his way to the Huascaran summit. The climber opened the pouch and read the name on the driver’s license. He called Stampfl’s relatives, who then got in touch with local mountain guides.
Joseph Stampfl said they worked with a Peruvian mountain rescue association to retrieve his father’s body, which was about 915 to 1,200 meters (3,000 to 4,000 feet) below where he and his two friends were believed to have been killed.
“He was no longer encased in ice,” the son said. “He still has got his boots on.”
A team of 13 mountaineers participated in the recovery operation — five officers from an elite police unit and eight mountain guides who work for Grupo Alpamayo, a local tour operator that takes climbers to Huascaran and other peaks in the Andes.
Eric Raul Albino, director of Grupo Alpamayo, said he was hired by Stampfl’s family to retrieve the body.
Lenin Alvardo, one of the police officers who participated in the recovery operation, said Stampfl’s clothes were still mostly intact. The hip pouch with his driving license also contained a pair of sunglasses, a camera, a voice recorder and two decomposing $20 bills. A gold wedding ring was still on the left hand.
“I’ve never seen anything like that” Alvarado said.
Huascaran is Peru’s highest peak. Hundreds of climbers visit the mountain each year with local guides, and it typically takes them about a week to reach the summit.
However, climate change has affected Huascaran and the surrounding peaks higher than 5,000 meters, known as the Cordillera Blanca. According to official figures, the Cordillera Blanca has lost 27% of its ice sheet over the past five decades.
Stampfl was with friends Matthew Richardson and Steve Erskine in trying to climb Huascaran in 2002. They had travelled the world to climb challenging mountains and had reached the peaks of Kilimanjaro, Rainier, Shasta and Denali, according to a Los Angeles Times report at the time.
Erskine’s body was found shortly after the avalanche, but Richardson’s corpse is still missing.
Jennifer Stampfl said a plaque in memory of the three friends was placed at the summit of Mount Baldy in Southern California, where the trio trained for their expeditions. She said they may return to the site with her father’s remains.
Janet Stampfl-Raymer, who was Stampfl’s wife, said that when her husband wasn’t working as a civil engineer, he loved to be a mountaineer.
“He was a kind man. He was humble. He loved God, and he loved the mountains,” she said.
“We all just dearly loved my husband. He was one of a kind,” she said. “We’re very grateful we can bring his body home to rest.”
Stampfl carefully planned his mountaineering expeditions, his daughter said. She also said he was very humble and did not like to draw attention to himself.
“The fact that he is in the news, it is so not my dad,” she said.
Australia appoints special
envoy to confront a rise in antisemitism across the country
MELBOURNE, Australia | The Australian government named a special envoy Tuesday to confront a rise in antisemitism across the country since the Israel-Hamas war began.
A similar envoy will soon be appointed to challenge Islamophobia in Australia and both will promote social cohesion, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
Albanese’s own Sydney office has been targeted with pro-Palestinian graffiti as rival activists clash over the Israeli-Hamas war in Australian cities and university campuses.
Albanese appointed Jillian Segal, a Sydney lawyer and business executive, to be “special envoy to combat antisemitism in Australia” for three years. She will consult with community groups and report back to Albanese and Multicultural Affairs Minister Andrew Giles.
Segal called statistics on antisemitism in Australia “shocking.” Reports of antisemitism spiked 700% immediately after Hamas militants sparked the war in Gaza by attacking Israel on Oct. 7, and are still running 400% to 500% higher than before the conflict, she said.
The reports include Jewish-owned businesses being boycotted and vandalized as well as Jewish artists being excluded or subjected to social media shadow bans that restrict their visibility on platforms, Segal said.
“Unfortunately there is no single answer to the perennial problem of antisemitism,” she said.
“But the creation of this role shows a determination by the government to confront this evil and to ensure that it does not erode the goodness that exists in our society,” she added.
Albanese said a graffiti attack that marked his inner-Sydney office as a Hamas target in December was being taken seriously and acted upon.
He also condemned last month’s vandalism with spray paint at the Australian National Korean War Memorial and the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial in the national capital, Canberra.
“I have spoken with members of the Jewish community here, in Melbourne, right around Australia, who have not felt safe, members of the Jewish community whose children are worried about wearing their school uniform in our capital cities,” Albanese said. “That’s not acceptable. Not acceptable, ever. And certainly not in Australia in 2024.”
“What we need to do is to make sure that the conflict that is occurring in the Middle East that has caused a great deal of grief for the Jewish community, for members of the Islamic and Palestinian communities — Australians overwhelmingly do not want conflict brought here,” Albanese added.
Dozens of people are sentenced
to life in prison in the UAE in
a mass trial criticized abroad
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates | A mass trial of dissidents in the United Arab Emirates sentenced 43 people to life in prison on Wednesday while several other defendants received long prison terms in a case that has been widely criticized by activists abroad.
The sentences given by the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal came in a case described by the UAE government as involving the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Islamic organization declared a terrorist group by the Emirates. Activists, however, decried the case as targeting dissidents, something that drew attention and protests at the United Nations COP28 climate talks held in Dubai in November.
The state-run WAM news agency reported the verdicts after human rights activists said the sentences had been handed down. Five defendants received 15-year sentences while five others received 10-year sentences. Another 24 defendants had their cases dismissed, WAM reported.
The court ruled that those convicted “have worked to create and replicate violent events in the country, similar to what has occurred in other Arab states — including protests and clashes between the security forces and protesting crowds — that led to deaths and injuries and to the destruction of facilities, as well as the consequent spread of panic and terror among people,” WAM said.
The agency reported on no specific evidence the court cited tying those convicted to violence or the Brotherhood.
The verdict, which can be appealed to the UAE’s Federal Supreme Court, drew immediate criticism abroad.
“These over-the-top long sentences make a mockery of justice and are another nail in the coffin for the UAE’s nascent civil society,” said Joey Shea, a researcher focusing on the UAE for Human Rights Watch. “The UAE has dragged scores of its most dedicated human rights defenders and civil society members through a shamelessly unfair trial riddled with due process violations and torture allegations.”
The Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center, an advocacy group in exile, separately reported that sentences had been handed down.
“Regrettably, these sentences were entirely foreseeable,” center director Mohamed al-Zaabi said. “From the outset, it was clear that this trial was merely a facade designed to perpetuate the detention of prisoners of conscience even after their sentences had been served.”
Amnesty International also criticized the sentences, saying the defendants had “been held in prolonged solitary confinement, deprived of contact with their families and lawyers and subjected to sleep deprivation through continuous exposure to loud music.” Those tried also were “forbidden from receiving the most basic court documents,” it said.
“The trial has been a shameless parody of justice and violated multiple fundamental principles of law, including the principle that you cannot try the same person twice for the same crime, and the principle that you cannot punish people retroactively under laws that didn’t exist at the time of the alleged offense,” said Devin Kenney, an Amnesty International researcher.
Kenney described some of those tried as “prisoners of conscience and well-known human rights defenders.”
WAM did not identify those sentenced. But among those who received life sentences is activist Nasser bin Ghaith, an academic held since August 2015 over his social media posts, Shea said.
He was among dozens of people sentenced in the wake of a wide-ranging crackdown in the UAE following the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Those demonstrations saw Islamists, including Brotherhood member Mohammed Morsi in Egypt, rise to power in several Mideast nations.
The Gulf Arab states did not experience any popular overthrow of their governments and cracked down against demonstrators and those perceived to be dissenters.
Also among those who were likely sentenced Wednesday is Ahmed Mansoor, the recipient of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2015. Mansoor repeatedly drew the ire of authorities in the UAE by calling for a free press and democratic freedoms in the federation of seven sheikhdoms.
Mansoor was targeted with Israeli spyware on his iPhone in 2016 likely deployed by the Emirati government ahead of his 2017 arrest and sentencing to 10 years in prison over his activism.
During COP28, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch held a demonstration in which they displayed Mansoor’s face in the U.N.-administered Blue Zone at the summit in a protest carefully watched by Emirati officials.
The UAE, while socially liberal in many regards compared with its Middle Eastern neighbors, has strict laws governing expression and bans political parties and labor unions. That was seen at COP28, where there were none of the typical protests outside of the venue as activists worried about the country’s vast network of surveillance cameras.
—From AP reports
