Foreign
Zimbabwe approves mass slaughter of elephants to feed hungry citizens
Zimbabwe has authorized a mass slaughter of elephants to feed citizens left hungry by its worst drought in decades.
With nearly half of the country’s population facing the risk of acute hunger, “we are targeting to cull 200 elephants,” Tinashe Farawo, a spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority, told CNN on Monday.
The move follows a decision in Namibia to cull elephants and other wild animals to relieve food insecurity fueled by a prolonged drought. The culls have drawn criticism from animal rights activists and conservationists.
Zimbabwe is home to more than 84,000 elephants, Farawo said, around double its “capacity of 45,000,” he added.
2019/11/29: African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Huanib River Valley in northern Damaraland and Kaokoland, Namibia.
Zimbabwe’s elephant population is the second-largest in the world, exceeded only by Botswana’s.
Environment Minister Sithembiso Nyoni told parliamentarians last week that “Zimbabwe has more elephants than we need and more elephants than our forests can accommodate.”
She added that overpopulation by elephants “causes lack of resources” for their sustenance, which fuels human-wildlife conflict in the country.
“We are discussing with Zim Parks (Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority) and some communities to do like what Namibia has done so that we can count the elephants, mobilize the women to maybe dry the meat and package it to ensure that it gets to some communities that need the protein,” Nyoni said.
“When there is an overpopulation of wildlife in a specific park, they will then seek to go outside the park to look for other resources such as water or greenery. When that happens, they will then come into contact with the humans and conflicts begin.”
In Namibia, 700 wild animals, including elephants, were approved for slaughter last month and for their meat to be distributed to people facing food insecurity.
More than 150 animals have already been killed, Namibia’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism said, with more than 125,000 pounds of meat shared out.
Zimbabwe and Namibia are just two of the many countries across southern Africa suffering a severe drought caused by El Niño — a natural climate pattern that has resulted in very little rainfall in the region since the start of the year. The countries are also vulnerable to droughts worsened by climate change.
Farawo, the parks spokesperson, told CNN that the culling will begin once the authority completes the necessary paperwork.
“We are doing the paperwork … so that we can start as soon as possible,” he said, adding that the planned slaughter would target areas with a large elephant population.
The proposed elephant culls in Zimbabwe and Namibia have been strongly criticized.
“Culling of elephants must be stopped,” Farai Maguwu, who leads the Zimbabwe-based advocacy group the Center for Natural Resource Governance, said in a post on X.
“Elephants have a right to exist,” he wrote, adding that “future generations have a right to see elephants in their natural habitat.”
Conservation biologist and natural resources consultant Keith Lindsay also expressed his discomfort at using wildlife to alleviate food insecurity, telling CNN that it is “very likely to lead to a more regular, ongoing demand for bushmeat that would be unsustainable.”
Farawo, however, said Zimbabwe’s decision to slaughter elephants — its first cull since 1988 — was part of wider measures to reduce conflict between elephants and humans, following a series of elephant attacks on humans.
“The animals are causing a lot of havoc in communities, killing people. Last week, we lost a woman in the northern part of the country who was killed by an elephant. The previous week, the same thing happened. So it (the culling) is also a way of controlling,” he said.
At least 31 people have died in Zimbabwe this year as a result of conflict between humans and wildlife, local media reported.
Credit/CNN
Fresh Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip have killed at least 25 Palestinians, according to medics.
The casualties on Friday included at least eight people in an apartment in the Nuseirat refugee camp and 10 others in the town of Jabalia, among them seven children.
Efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have yet to succeed.
Sources involved in the negotiations told Reuters on Thursday that Qatar and Egypt had resolved some points of contention but key issues remain unresolved.
Israel launched its assault on Gaza following Hamas-led attacks on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023.
The attacks resulted in the deaths of 1200 people and the abduction of over 250 hostages, according to Israeli reports.
Israel states that approximately 100 hostages are still being held, though it is unclear how many remain alive.
Gaza authorities report that Israel’s ongoing campaign has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians and displaced the majority of the 2.3 million residents.
Much of the territory has reportedly been devastated by the conflict.
President Biden signed the stopgap funding bill that will keep the government open until March, punting the thornier issues surrounding the nation’s finances to the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
A bloated 1,500-page funding measure was exploded by Trump and his top ally Elon Musk earlier this week as they demanded a pared-down version.
The parties were able to cobble a stopgap bill together Friday evening, which passed the Senate early Saturday morning.
The package funds the government at current levels until March 14, 2025, and includes $100 billion in hurricane relief funds and $10 billion in aid to farmers.
With the stopgap funding only running until March, an almost certain clash is looming between Trump and GOP spending hardliners when Congress reconvenes in January.
“The bipartisan funding bill I just signed keeps the government open and delivers the urgently needed disaster relief that I requested for recovering communities as well as the funds needed to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge,” Biden said in a statement after inking the deal.
The post Biden signs bipartisan funding bill to keep government open appeared first on New York Post.
A military court in Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don on Friday sentenced an unnamed resident of eastern Ukraine’s Lugansk region to 16 years in prison for “high treason,” according to Russia’s FSB security service.
Moscow regularly imposes heavy sentences on individuals it accuses of spying for Ukraine and has consistently imprisoned Ukrainians both in Russia and in occupied territories.
The sentencing coincided with President Vladimir Putin’s call for security services to adopt “tough” anti-terror measures, with a particular focus on military counter-intelligence, as the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine nears its third year.
Putin urged the special services to “identify spies and traitors” and “disrupt the work of foreign security services.”
Prosecutors claimed the accused had passed information about the Russian armed forces to Kyiv’s security services.
The FSB, as reported by Russian news agencies, stated that the man was found guilty of state treason, aiding terrorist activities, and the illegal handling and transport of explosives.
The court ordered him to serve his sentence in a high-security penal colony.
The TASS news agency released a video of the man’s arrest, showing FSB officers stopping a car, dragging a man out, throwing him to the ground, and handcuffing him before taking him to the local FSB headquarters.
The video, filmed by the FSB, featured the man—his face blurred — stating that he had been recruited by Ukraine’s SBU security service in 2016.
Russia frequently publishes confession videos filmed by the FSB after arrests.
Meanwhile, independent Russian media reported that an activist had died by suicide on Thursday in a Rostov detention centre, shortly after being sentenced to 16 years in prison, also in the Rostov region.
The Mediazona website confirmed with prison officials that Roman Shved, a 39-year-old anarchist sentenced for an arson attack on a government building following the Kremlin’s 2022 military mobilisation, had died in the detention centre.
Several social media channels reported that Shved had taken his life just hours after being sentenced.
Russia has prosecuted thousands of its citizens for opposing the Ukraine conflict.
AFP
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