Around the World briefs
By Associated Press
Turkey plans to regulate a large
stray dog population, raising
some fears about mass killings
ANKARA, Turkey | A Turkish bill aimed at regulating the country’s millions of stray dogs moved closer to becoming law Wednesday as animal rights advocates feared many of them would be killed or end up in neglected, overcrowded shelters.
“Although some people persistently ignore it, Turkey has a stray dog problem,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling party proposed the bill, told legislators after a parliamentary committee approved the bill late Tuesday. The full assembly will have a final vote in the coming days.
The government estimates that around 4 million stray dogs roam Turkey’s streets and rural areas. Although many are harmless, a growing number are congregating in packs, and numerous people have been attacked in Istanbul and elsewhere. The country’s well-known large stray cat population is not a focus of the bill.
Erdogan noted that stray dogs “attack children, adults, elderly people and other animals. They attack flocks of sheep and goats, they cause traffic accidents.”
The proposed legislation mandates that municipalities collect stray dogs and house them in shelters where they would be neutered and spayed. Dogs that are in pain, terminally ill, pose a health risk to humans or are aggressive would be euthanized.
Municipalities would be required to build dog shelters or improve conditions in existing ones by 2028. Mayors who fail to meet their responsibilities in controlling stray dogs would face imprisonment of six months to two years. Fines on people who abandon pets would be raised from 2,000 lira ($60) to 60,000 lira ($1,800).
Animal rights activists worry that some municipalities might kill dogs on the pretext that they are ill, rather than allocate resources to shelter them.
“Since there are not enough places in the shelters — there are very few shelters in Turkey — a path has been opened for the killing (of strays),” said veterinarian Turkan Ceylan. “We animal rights activists know very well that this spells death.”
Ceylan maintained that the dogs are at risk of contracting diseases in shelters and in vehicles used to round up strays. “No animal that enters the shelter comes out healthy,” she said.
Existing regulations require stray dogs to be caught, neutered and spayed and returned to where they were found. But a failure to implement those regulations has caused the dog population to explode, animal rights groups say. They argue that proper implementation of the existing regulations would be sufficient to control the population.
The government denies the bill would lead to a widespread culling. Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc told journalists on Wednesday that anyone killing strays “for no reason” would be punished.
Meanwhile the main opposition party, which won key municipalities in local elections in March, asserts that Erdogan’s government would use the law to target opposition mayors.
Murat Pinar, who heads an association campaigning for measures to keep the streets safe from stray dogs, says at least 75 people, including 44 children, were killed as a result of attacks or by traffic accidents caused by dogs since 2022. That’s the year his 9-year-old daughter, Mahra, was run over by a truck after she fled from two aggressive dogs.
During public meetings last week on the bill, representatives of some nongovernmental groups were prevented from observing the proceedings. Activists have gathered in parks demanding that what they call the “massacre law” be withdrawn.
UN cultural agency rejects plan
to place Britain’s Stonehenge on
list of heritage sites in danger
LONDON | The United Nations’ cultural agency rejected recommendations Wednesday to place Stonehenge on the list of endangered world heritage sites over concerns that Britain’s plans to build a nearby highway tunnel threaten the landscape around the prehistoric monument.
UNESCO experts had recommended listing the stone circle on a plain in southern England as “in danger” over contentious plans to redevelop the highway. The highway project has been touted for decades but mired in legal challenges. It aims to move the congested A303 highway underground and slightly farther from Stonehenge.
UNESCO said a site’s inclusion on its List of World Heritage Sites in Danger is not punitive and instead is aimed at drawing international attention to the urgent need for conservation measures and “encourage corrective action.” If issues are not addressed, sites could be de-listed by UNESCO, though that is rare.
Adding Stonehenge to the list, however, would have increased pressure on the government to reconsider the highway plan, which has faced opposition from residents and archaeologists.
Britain’s government argued ahead of the vote at the annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee in New Delhi that efforts to mitigate the planned tunnel’s effects on Stonehenge were sufficient and that the site should not be added to the “in danger” list.
A spokesperson for the British government welcomed the UNESCO decision over one of the country’s “oldest and most celebrated sites.”
Stonehenge has long captured the imagination of the British public and remains one of the country’s biggest tourist draws. That’s particularly true at the time of the summer and winter solstices, when the sunrise is greeted by thousands.
Campaign group Stonehenge Alliance said it was “shocked” by the UNESCO decision and urged the U.K.’s new Labour government to distance itself from what it called “political maneuverings” behind it.
“If Labour ministers are complicit in this, then it disgraces them,” said historian Tom Holland, president of the Stonehenge Alliance.
Last week, campaigners seeking to block the highway plan began their latest legal challenge at the U.K.’s Court of Appeal.
Stonehenge was built on the flat lands of Salisbury Plain in stages, starting 5,000 years ago, with the stone circle erected in the late Neolithic period in about 2,500 B.C.
It was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986 — an honor bestowed upon sites that have special cultural or physical significance.
The site’s meaning has been a subject of debate through the centuries. English Heritage, a charity that manages hundreds of historic sites, notes theories including Stonehenge being a coronation place for Danish kings, a Druid temple, a cult center for healing or even an astronomical computer for predicting eclipses and solar events.
Nowadays, the charity says the interpretation “most generally accepted is that of a prehistoric temple aligned with the movements of the sun.”
Trash dropped by a North Korean balloon falls on South Korea’s presidential compound
SEOUL, South Korea | Trash carried by at least one North Korean balloon fell on the South Korean presidential compound on Wednesday, raising worries about the security of key South Korean facilities during North Korean provocations.
The rubbish that landed on the presidential compound in central Seoul contained no dangerous material and no one was hurt, South Korea’s presidential security service said. While North Korea likely lacks sophisticated technology to drop balloons on specific targets, some experts say South Korea should shoot down incoming North Korean balloons next time to protect major facilities because they might contain hazardous substances in the future.
North Korea’s latest balloon launches came days after South Korea boosted its broadcasts of K-pop songs and propaganda messages across the two countries’ heavily armed border. Their tit-for-tat Cold War-style campaigns are inflaming tensions, with the rivals threatening stronger steps and warning of grave consequences.
Seoul officials earlier said North Korea used the direction of winds to fly balloons toward South Korea, but some of the past balloons had timers that were likely meant to pop the bags of trash in midair.
The security service gave no further details about the rubbish found at the presidential compound. It refused to disclose whether President Yoon Suk Yeol was at the compound when the balloons were flying over his office, a no-fly zone in South Korea.
If North Korea is found to have used timers or any other device to deliberately dump trash on the presidential office, it would invite a strong response by South Korea. But experts say dropping balloons on selected ground targets requires advanced technology and that North Korea would certainly lack such an ability.
“Some of (the hundreds of balloons) launched by North Korea landed on the presidential compound by coincidence. North Korea has no technology to precisely drop balloons at certain targets,” said Jung Chang Wook, head of the Korea Defense Study Forum think tank in Seoul.
Jung said that a GPS navigation device and a power system would need to be attached to a balloon to make it fall on certain sites and that North Korea doesn’t possess such balloons. He said North Korea likely wanted the balloons to fall on Seoul, about an hour’s drive from the border, after calculating factors like the weight of the trash bags tied to the balloons, the volume of air in the balloons and the weather conditions.
Lee Illwoo, an expert with the Korea Defense Network in South Korea, said strong winds in Seoul would also make it impossible for North Korea to target certain places with balloons.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier Wednesday that North Korea had resumed floating balloons across the border, the 10th such launch since late May.
The more than 2,000 North Korean balloons discovered in South Korea in the past weeks carried wastepaper, scraps of cloth, cigarette butts and even manure. North Korea has said it was responding to South Korean activists who have scattered political leaflets across the border via their own balloons.
North Korea’s balloons haven’t caused any major damage but have raised security jitters among people worried it could use such balloons to drop chemical and biological agents.
South Korea has avoided shooting at the balloons because of possible damage caused by falling bullets and the chance that the balloons might contain hazardous substances.
Lee said South Korea should still shoot down North Korean balloons in border areas because attacking them over the populous Seoul area would be too risky if they contain dangerous items like biological agents. But there are worries that doing so could cause skirmishes with North Korea. Jung said South Korea could use recently developed laser weapons to intercept North Korean balloons.
Experts say North Korea considers leafleting activities by South Korean civilian groups a major threat to its efforts to stop the inflow of foreign news and maintain its authoritarian rule. In furious responses to past South Korean leafleting, North Korea destroyed an empty South Korean-built liaison office in its territory in 2020 and fired at incoming balloons in 2014.
South Korea said Sunday it was ramping up its anti-North Korean propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers at all major sites along the land border because the North was continuing its launches of trash-carrying balloons. South Korea restarted its loudspeaker broadcasts last Thursday for the first time in about 40 days in retaliation for North Korea’s previous balloon activities.
Observers say the propaganda broadcasts can demoralize front-line North Korean troops and residents. In 2015, North Korea fired artillery rounds across the border in anger over South Korea’s restart of propaganda broadcasts, prompting the South to return fire.
South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson Lee Sung Joon said the current South Korean broadcasts include K-pop songs and news on South Korean economic development. South Korean media reported the broadcasts also contained news on the recent defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and called the planting of land mines by North Korean soldiers at the border “hellish, slave-like lives.”
South Korea has an estimated 40 loudspeakers — 24 stationary and 16 mobile ones. South Korea’s military said Monday it was operating all of the fixed loudspeakers and plans to use the mobile loudspeakers as well.
North Korea hasn’t officially responded to the South Korean propaganda broadcasts. But last week, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, threatened new countermeasures against South Korean civilian leafleting, warning that South Korean “scum” must be ready to pay “a gruesome and dear price” for their actions.
Brazil to allow miles of selective logging in effort to preserve the Amazon
BRASILIA, Brazil | To combat ongoing destruction in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil announced a plan Tuesday to dramatically expand selective logging to an area the size of Costa Rica over the next two years.
In Brazil, vast forest lands are designated as public yet have no special protection or enforcement and are vulnerable to land grabbing and illegal deforestation. Criminals frequently take over land and clear it, hoping the government will eventually recognize them as owners, which usually happens.
“The main goal of forest concessions is the conservation of these areas,” said Renato Rosenberg, director of forest concessions for the Brazilian Forest Service, during an online press conference. “They also create jobs and income in parts of the Amazon that would otherwise have little economic activity.”
Companies that get timber concessions have to follow strict rules. They can log up to six trees per hectare (2.5 acres) over a 30-year period. Protected species, such as Brazil nut, and older, seed-producing trees are off limits.
The idea is that granting permission to timber companies to take a limited number of trees gives them a stake in overseeing the forest, something the Brazilian government cannot afford to do. Several studies show that illegal deforestation in concession areas is significantly lower than outside them.
Eventually, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva plans to treat as much as 310,000 square kilometers (112,000 square miles) of public undesignated Amazon rainforest this way — an area the size of Italy.
A working group is assessing which areas should be designated as conservation areas, Indigenous territories or forest concessions.
Currently, there are 22 such timber lease areas in the Amazon, covering more than 13,000 square kilometers (5,000 square miles). Since the country initiated its first timber concessions, only two companies have declined to renew their leases, which shows the model works, according to Rosenfeld. Still, the program is much smaller than first envisioned when Brazilian legislation established it in 2006.
Brazil’s Forest Service is part of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change. It was created that same year to promote sustainable activities in public forests by private organizations.
The government plan is a partnership with two private institutions — Imaflora and Systemiq — that will help do research and design community forest management, according to an official statement.
Funding comes from Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions, the primary program of the United Kingdom´s International Climate Finance to address climate change.
The announcement was met with skepticism by the National Forum of Forest-Based Activities, representing some 3,500 companies with interests in the timber industry.
“Forest management is the best way to halt environmental crime, from land-grabbing to illegal logging,” Frank Almeida, president of the National Forum, told the AP. “But there is no use in creating a project that won´t become a reality,” he said, referencing recent government actions related to exports that have generated business uncertainty.
The main one is that two of Brazil´s leading timber products — ipe wood and tonka beans — were listed with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora for species requiring export permits. Unless Brazil meets a November deadline for submitting a so-called non-detriment finding, Almeida said exports of these species will be halted.
In a press statement, Brazil’s environmental law-enforcement agency, known as Ibama, said it will address this issue before the November deadline.
Maisa Isabela Rodrigues, a forest engineering professor at Brasilia National University, said the plan is the right approach, but needs some adjustment. Forest management is the best way to reconcile forest preservation and logging, she told the AP. But research indicates the 30-year period between timber harvests is not long enough for the recovery of some of the most valuable species. She said the program probably won’t work in remote areas, because sky-high transportation costs could make them economically unattractive.
—From AP reports
