The United States will return to Cambodia 30 looted antiquities, including bronze and stone statues of Buddhist and Hindu deities carved more than 1,000 years ago, US officials said on Monday.
The Southeast Asian country’s archaeological sites – including Koh Ker, the capital of the ancient Khmer empire – suffered widespread looting in civil conflicts between the 1960s and 1990s. Cambodia’s government has since sought to repatriate stolen antiquities sold on the international market.
Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said the items being returned were sold to Western buyers by Douglas Latchford, a Bangkok dealer who created fake documents to conceal that the items had been looted and smuggled.
Williams said the antiquities, including a 10th-century sandstone statue depicting the Hindu god of war Skanda riding on a peacock, were voluntarily relinquished by U.S. museums and private collectors after his office filed civil forfeiture claims.
“These statues and artefacts, which range in age from the Bronze Age to the 12th century, are of extraordinary cultural value to the Cambodian people,” Williams said at a ceremony in Manhattan announcing the return of the antiquities.
U.S. prosecutors in 2019 charged Latchford, a dual citizen of Thailand and the United States, with wire fraud and smuggling over the alleged looting. He died in Thailand in 2020.
The antiquities will be displayed at the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s U.S. ambassador Keo Chhea told Reuters at the ceremony.
In 2014, federal prosecutors returned the Duryodhana, a looted 10th-century sandstone sculpture, to Cambodia after settling with auction house Sotheby’s Inc, which had acquired it.
Last year, the Manhattan district attorney’s office returned 27 looted antiquities to Cambodia.
Florida’s sea turtles are grappling with a gender imbalance made worse by climate change. Recent heat waves have caused the sand on some beaches to get so hot that nearly every turtle born was female.
“The frightening thing is the last four summers in Florida have been the hottest summers on record,” said Bette Zirkelbach, manager of the Turtle Hospital in Marathon, a city in the Florida Keys, a string of tropical islands stretching from the southern end of the state.
“Scientists that are studying sea turtle hatchlings and eggs have found no boy sea turtles, so only female sea turtles for the past four years,” Zirkelbach said, whose turtle centre has operated since 1986.
When a female turtle digs a nest on a beach, the temperature of the sand determines the gender of the hatchlings. Zirkelbach said an Australian study showed similar statistics – “99% of new sea turtle babies are female.”
Instead of determining sex during fertilization, the sex of sea turtles and alligators depends on the temperature of developing eggs, according to the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
If a turtle’s eggs incubate below 81.86 Fahrenheit (27.7 Celsius), the turtle hatchlings will be male, whereas if they incubate above 88.8 F (31C), they will be female, according to NOAA’S National Ocean Service website.
“Over the years, you’re going to see a sharp decline in their population because we just don’t have the genetic diversity,” said Melissa Rosales Rodriguez, a sea turtle keeper at the recently opened turtle hospital at the Miami Zoo. “We don’t have the male-to-female ratio needed in order to be able to have successful breeding sessions.”
The two turtle hospitals are also battling tumours in turtles known as fibropapillomatosis, also known as FP. These tumours are contagious to other turtles and can cause death if not treated.
With climate affecting the future of turtles and the disease being so widespread, Zirkelbach sees the need to save every turtle she can and open more rehab centres.
“The Turtle Hospital was the first. But, sadly and fortunately, there’s a need all throughout Florida.”
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, hit by shelling over the weekend, is operating as normal, the Interfax news agency quoted the Russian-installed head of the local administration as saying on Monday.
Earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for international inspectors to be given access to the nuclear plant after Ukraine and Russia traded accusations over the shelling of Europe’s largest atomic plant.
Guterres said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needed access to the plant.
Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor complex located near the Russian-controlled city of Enerhodar in southeastern Ukraine in early March, shortly after Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour, but it is still run by Ukrainian technicians.
Ukraine accused Russia of responsibility for renewed shelling on Saturday that had damaged three radiation sensors and injured a worker at the plant in what was the second hit in consecutive days on the site.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a televised address on Sunday, said Russia was waging “nuclear terror” that warranted more international sanctions, this time on Moscow’s nuclear sector.
The region’s Russian-installed authority said Ukrainian forces hit the site with multiple rocket launchers, damaging administrative buildings and an area near a storage facility.
The Russian Embassy in Washington also itemised the damage, saying artillery fire from “Ukrainian nationalists” damaged two high-voltage power lines and a water pipeline, but the critical infrastructure was not affected.
The Kremlin said on Monday that Western countries with influence over Ukraine should push Kyiv to stop shelling the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
The events at the Zaporizhzhia site have alarmed the world. Residents living near the vast nuclear power plant say they fear fighting between Ukrainian and pro-Russian forces in the region could lead to a disaster comparable to the 1986 Chornobyl disaster.
Locals in Enerhodar told Reuters on Thursday that they thought Russia and Ukraine should agree to a wide perimeter around the plant where fighting could not take place.
“The city of Enerhodar, as well as the nuclear power plant, is built on sand. Even any small explosions could lead to sand moving,” humanitarian aid point volunteer Volodymyr Martynyuk said.
“We’re talking about the safety of the entire planet, not just about the safety of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and nearby foreign countries,” Martynyuk added.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) raised grave concerns on Saturday about the shelling the previous day at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, saying the action showed the risk of a nuclear disaster.
Both sides accused each other on Saturday of engaging in “nuclear terrorism”. Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom blamed Russia for the damage while Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the plant.
“I’m extremely concerned by the shelling yesterday at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement.
Grossi, who leads the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, urged all sides in the Ukraine conflict to exercise the “utmost restraint” around the plant.
The Kremlin said on Monday there was no basis for a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents at the moment.
In response to a question about Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s offers to broker peace talks, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call that Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskiy could meet only after negotiators from both sides had “done their homework.”
Negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv have been stalled for months, with each side blaming the other for a lack of progress.
“The Ukrainian delegation has gone off the radar, there is no negotiation process now,” Peskov said on Monday.
“As for a meeting between Presidents Putin and Zelenskiy, it is possible only after all the homework has been done by the delegations. This is missing, so there are no necessary prerequisites for the meeting,” he added.
The 2022 Taihu Bay Future Healthcare Conference held Thursday in Wuxi City in east China’s Jiangsu Province witnessed the launch of Wuxi Intellectual Property Protection Centre with 52 biomedical projects contracted, involving a total of more than 30 billion yuan investment.
The biomedical industry is an important part of Wuxi’s modern industrial system construction during the 14th Five-Year Plan(2021-2025) period. Its scale topped 140 billion yuan in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 24 per cent, making Wuxi among the top 20 prefecture-level cities listed on China Biomedical Industry Barometer in 2021.
Besides the property protection centre, six biomedical industrial parks were licensed and three biomedical public platforms were inaugurated at the conference, which is expected to inject impetus into the development of Wuxi’s biomedical industry.
The city will strengthen and expand its industrial chain to build a 200-billion-yuan modern biomedical industrial cluster, said Du Xiaogang, Secretary of the Wuxi Municipal Party Committee of CPC.
The biomedical industry started early in Wuxi. With a good foundation, it has developed a relatively comp industry chain covering chemical raw medicine production, preparation production, and pharmaceutical service outsourcing, and gathered 1,278 biomedical companies such as AstraZeneca and WuXi Biologics AppTech, showing a strong clustering effect.
Aiming at building a world-class biomedical industry highland with distinctive characteristics, Wuxi not only issued a special policy tailored for the development of biomedical industrial parks but also established a special fund for the modern biomedical industry to reward breakthroughs in forward-looking technologies and innovation research. In 2021, Wuxi funded more than 32 million yuan for the science and technology development of 43 biomedical projects.
Multiple fund agreements were signed at the conference, including a biomedical fund of 5 billion yuan jointly established by Guolian Group, AstraZeneca, and China International Capital Corporation Limited.
Gustavo Petro on Sunday became Colombia’s first leftist president, pledging to unite the polarized country in the fight against inequality and climate change and achieve peace with leftist rebels and crime gangs.
Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerrilla group, was sworn in by Senate President Roy Barreras in Bogota’s Bolivar Plaza on Sunday afternoon, watched by some 100,000 invitees, including Spanish King Felipe VI, at least nine Latin American presidents and other Colombians invited by Petro.
“I do not want two countries, just as I do not want two societies. I want a strong, just and united Colombia,” an emotional Petro said in his inauguration speech.
Petro has promised to revive scuppered peace negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels and apply a 2016 peace deal to ex-members of the Farc guerrillas who reject it. Armed groups should accept that deal, Petro said.
“We call on all those who are armed to leave their arms in the haze of the past. To accept legal benefits in exchange for peace, in exchange for the definitive non-repetition of violence,” Petro told the cheering crowd gathered under a bright Andean sun.
He also called for a new international strategy to fight drug trafficking, saying the U.S.-led war on drugs has failed.
“It is time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has failed, that it has left a million dead Latin Americans during 40 years and that it leaves 70,000 North Americans dead by overdose each year. The war on drugs strengthened mafias and weakened states,” he said.
Climate change must be fought internationally, but especially by countries which emit the most greenhouse gases, Petro added, saying Colombia would transition to an economy without coal or oil.
Petro, a 62-year-old former senator, has also said a top priority is to fight hunger in the country of 50 million, where nearly half the population lives at some level of poverty.
Petro has also pledged free public university education and healthcare changes and constructed a broad congressional coalition of leftist and centrist parties to pass his platform.
Promises of pension reform and a halt to new oil development have caused investor jitters despite the appointment of Ocampo, a long-time official. Read full story
New Vice President Francia Marquez, an environmental activist and former housekeeper, is the first Afro-Colombian woman to hold her post.
Thousands of supporters celebrated in Bogota and at large screens set up in public places around the country.
Groups of people were also celebrating on both sides of the Colombia-Venezuela border, with dozens gathered on either side of a crossing point on the Simon Bolivar bridge outside Cucuta.
Petro, a former mayor of Bogota, has promised to re-open diplomatic relations with Venezuela, allowing trade between the two countries and consular services to resume.
Petro’s first order as president was for the military to bring the sword of Latin American liberation hero Simon Bolivar – stolen by Petro’s erstwhile M-19 comrades in 1974 – to be displayed in the plaza, after his predecessor Ivan Duque did not authorize its use in the ceremony.
Police in New Mexico and federal agencies were probing the murders of four Muslim men to determine if the killings, the latest of which happened on Friday evening, were linked while the state’s governor described them as “targeted killings.”
Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina told reporters on Saturday that a “young man who was part of the Muslim community was murdered.”
The victim’s name and the circumstances of the murder were not disclosed. In the previous three cases, the victims were ambushed and shot without warning, police said.
Medina said the killing was possibly linked to the previous three murders.
Police in New Mexico had said earlier that the other three Muslim men murdered in the state’s largest city in the past nine months appeared to have been targeted for their religion and race.
Two of those murdered men were members of the same mosque, who were shot dead in Albuquerque in late July and early August. Police said there was a “strong possibility” that their deaths were connected to the November killing of an Afghan immigrant.
Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, 27, a planning director for the city of Espanola who came to the United States from Pakistan, was shot dead on Monday outside his Albuquerque apartment complex while Aftab Hussein, 41, was found dead of gunshot wounds on July 26 near the Albuquerque’s international district.
Those deaths are likely linked to the shooting of 62-year-old Mohammad Ahmadi in a parking lot by a halal supermarket and cafe on Nov. 7 last year, police said.
New Mexico State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service are among several agencies involved in probing the murders.
Muslim men likely targeted and killed in New Mexico, police say.
Police was searching for a grey Volkswagen Jetta or Passat in connection to the murder of four Muslims in Albuquerque. Albuquerque Police Department handed out a flyer containing a picture of the car of interest on Sunday.
Speaking to the press, Albuquerque’s mayor Tim Keller pledged for help from the public to find the car. “We have got to find this vehicle.” Said the mayor.
A German diplomat in Brazil was transferred to a Brazilian prison on Sunday after police arrested him as the prime suspect in his Belgian husband’s murder.
The German consul in Rio de Janeiro Uwe Herbert Hahn was arrested on Saturday in connection with the death of his Belgian husband, police said.
Hahn said that his husband, Walter Biot, had died on Friday when he fell from their apartment in the Ipanema neighbourhood after suffering a sudden illness.
But police arrested him on suspicion of murder after their forensics found bloodstains in the apartment, and the autopsy of Biot’s body showed multiple wounds.
“There are indications of recurrent blunt force injuries, and I can say for sure that the victim was beaten,” police investigator Camila Lourenco told reporters.
The German Consulate in Rio did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to Brazilian news portal G1, the couple had been together for 23 years. Biot was 52.
Beijing residents feel confident that the purpose of the four-day military exercises around Taiwan in reaction to a visit by the US House speaker to the island is achieved, while residents in Hsinchu, Taiwan are unfazed as the drills were due to end on Sunday.
Nancy Pelosi’s visit last week to the self-ruled island infuriated China, which responded with test launches of ballistic missiles over the island’s capital for the first time and the cutting of communication links with the United States.
Twenty-four-year-old Hsinchu resident, Chen, who was at the Hsinchu Air Force Space to watch the military aircrafts, told Reuters that Taiwanese people are worried.
“I can’t say that they’re contemptuous, but there is no serious attitude to the matter,” she said.
Beijing resident Wang, however, when asked about the effect of the military exercises, said with confidence that the maximum purpose and impact are achieved by mainland China at the minimum cost.
Women and girls who seek to advance their STEM education have long faced incredible challenges in a field traditionally dominated by men.
At the same time, recent events have highlighted the soaring population of 89.3 million refugees, displaced and stateless people around the world – almost 27% of whom are women and girls under 18.
International education, and especially virtual exchange, is rarely used to address such issues, even though it can be a powerful way to broaden opportunities for marginalized groups.
Helping Young Women Enter the World of STEM & Sustainability AFS Intercultural Programs, a global non-profit renowned for its intercultural exchanges has run programs funded by bp since 2011 for young people in STEM.
In 2021, the two organizations launched an ambitious 5-year initiative aimed at giving 5,000 young people scholarships, with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion, and a particular focus on supporting young women.
The AFS Global STEM Accelerator program, which launched in June 2022, is a full-scholarship, virtual exchange program designed to provide 180 young women worldwide with access to education in sustainability, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), and positive social impact.
Giving Refugees Equal Access to Education The refugee crisis affects more than 89.3 million people globally, including the millions of displaced people from Syria, Venezuela, Sudan, and Myanmar. Since February 2022, the world has seen millions of Ukrainians being forced to flee their homes.
The immediate public response to refugee crises is often focused on meeting urgent humanitarian needs. However, education is a basic human right that is often denied to refugee youth. This is especially true of young refugee women. It’s also, according to the UNHCR, a critical part of any international refugee response.
With this in mind, AFS, with support from bp, increased the number of scholarships to ensure that young refugee women were included in the AFS Global STEM Accelerator Program. Recognizing the need to execute outreach thoughtfully, AFS partnered with SPARK, an international non-governmental development organization active in 14 regions throughout the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa. For over 28 years, SPARK has created pathways for young people to rebuild their futures, and provide opportunities for youth, particularly women and refugees, to study, work and grow their own businesses in fragile communities.
“Global citizenship education has to be accessible to everyone. We are so excited that we could work with bp and SPARK to make this program accessible to young people that are often excluded from these opportunities, but in reality need them the most,” says Daniel Obst, AFS President and CEO.
Over 1,000 applicants from 71 Countries The AFS Global STEM Accelerators program received 1,083applications from 71 countries worldwide, including applicants from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Nigeria, and Syrian refugees in Turkey. Applications were open to young women (ages 15-17.5) globally, with a keen interest in becoming changemakers in their communities. AFS allocated 20% of scholarships specifically for refugees and girls from displaced populations, whether from war, violence, or natural disaster.
The 180 scholarships awarded to young women from 61 countries reflect the diversity and inclusion the program seeks to achieve:
20% of recipients identify as refugees or from displaced communities
82% of recipients identify as People of Color
51% of recipients come from low-income households
10% will be the first in their families on track to graduate from high school
AFS and bp recognize that access to technology and internet connectivity is inequitable globally and are prepared to support these needs.
“It is exciting to see such strong interest from these brilliant young women,” says Kerry Dryburgh, EVP people & culture, bp. “With their passion to make a difference and the skills they will learn, they are future changemakers, leaders and innovators – we wish them the very best for their journey.”
The words of the scholarship recipients further support the claim that virtual exchange is a powerful tool for expanding access to educational opportunities.
“I am from a traditional Pashtun society, where in my province girls don’t even have the right to go to school. In each corner of my country, gender inequality is vivid. All these challenges give me the strength to create my own identity and to be different from my surroundings. Participating in this program will be my first step toward achieving my goal to explore the world and become someone influential in improving sustainable societies.” – Harira, from Afghanistan
What’s Next for These Young Women The AFS Global STEM Accelerators program culminates with scholars developing social impact capstone projects and presentations that offer potential solutions to real-world challenges, with an emphasis on sustainability. Participants receive the Advanced Certificate on Global Competence for Social Impact, awarded by AFS and the University of Pennsylvania, along with official validation on their capstone projects from the University of Pennsylvania Center for Social Impact Strategy.
Students’ learning and capstone development is guided by a diverse facilitation team representing twelve qualified facilitators (all women) from nine countries.
Upon program completion, scholars will be invited to join the alumni community offering diverse mentoring opportunities, skills development sessions, panel discussions and further development opportunities.
Scholars will also be invited to participate in the AFS Youth Assembly, a global gathering of young people actively tackling the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Concerns are rising for a beluga whale which has been spotted in France’s river Seine, far from the cold Arctic waters it is more suited after it refused food and appears emaciated, a local official said on Saturday.
The beluga is swimming slowly in a basin between two locks about 80 km (50 miles) from Paris. Vets will evaluate its health before a decision is taken on how to intervene.
Rescuers, who do not know if the 4-metre mammal is not eating because it lacks energy or because it is sick, have tried with little success feeding it with a live trout.
The whale has strayed far from its natural habitat, swimming 160 km up the Seine, past the port of Rouen and towards the French capital. Markings were beginning to appear on its skin, a possible sign of deteriorating health.
The all-white beluga normally lives in the Arctic and sub-Arctic oceans, although they are known to sometimes venture into more southern waters and can survive for a short while in freshwater.
In May, a sick orca separated from its pod died of natural causes in the Seine after attempts to guide it back to sea failed. A month later, another whale, believed to be a Minke, was spotted in the Seine.
No decision had been taken on how to return the beluga to the ocean, Eure department authorities said in a news conference on Saturday.
One option was to try and lead it back to open water. Another way to remove it from the river and transport it, though Dorliat-Pouzet said it was unclear whether the whale was strong enough for such a perilous operation.
Vets will first attempt to inject it with vitamins.
“Seeing animals like that in the Seine, with global warming and all that, makes you wonder why this is happening and how come it manages to swim that far up (the river), on its own,” an onlooker told Reuters on Friday.
SootinClaimon.Com 