Around the World briefs
By Associated Press
South Koreans bid emotional farewell to beloved panda leaving for China
SEOUL, South Korea | A crowd of people, some weeping, gathered at a rain-soaked amusement park in South Korea to bid farewell to a beloved giant panda before her departure to China on Wednesday.
Fu Bao has been a major attraction at the Everland theme park near Seoul since she was born there in 2020 to pandas Ai Bao and Le Bao, who came from China in 2016 on a 15-year lease program.
China sends pandas abroad as a sign of goodwill but maintains ownership over the animals and their cubs. Decades of conservation efforts in the wild and study in captivity saved the species from extinction, increasing its population from fewer than 1,000 at one time to more than 1,800 in the wild and in captivity.
On Wednesday, many panda fans in South Korea braved rain to attend a farewell ceremony at the Everland park for Fu Bao, who was to be flown to China later in the day.
As a truck carrying Fu Bao slowly moved to a plaza in the rain, many visitors wearing raincoats or holding umbrellas waved flags, shouted their parting messages and took photos with their mobile phones. Some loudly cried or wiped away tears.
The truck was decorated with a huge picture of Fu Bao and the message “It was a miracle that we met you. Thank you, Fu Bao.”
But she wasn’t shown to the public on Wednesday. The park last showed her to the public on March 3.
“You are our baby panda forever even if 10 years pass or 100 years pass,” zookeeper Kang Cheol-won said in a speech during the ceremony. “Dear all, Fu Bao is now leaving. Please, remember Fu Bao for a long, long time … and please don’t cry much!”
Fu Bao’s mother, Ai Bao, gave birth last year to female twin cubs, the first panda twins born in South Korea.
Zimbabwe declares drought
disaster, the latest in a region where El Nino has left millions hungry
HARARE, Zimbabwe | Zimbabwe declared a state of disaster Wednesday over a devastating drought that’s sweeping across much of southern Africa, with the country’s president saying it needs $2 billion for humanitarian assistance.
The declaration was widely expected following similar actions by neighboring Zambia and Malawi, where drought linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon has scorched crops, leaving millions of people in need of food assistance.
“Due to the El Nino-induced drought … more than 80% of our country received below normal rainfall,” President Emmerson Mnangagwa said in a speech calling for international aid. The country’s top priority, he said, is “securing food for all Zimbabweans. No Zimbabwean must succumb to, or die from hunger.”
He appealed to United Nations agencies, local businesses and faith organizations to contribute towards humanitarian assistance.
El Nino, a naturally occurring climatic phenomenon that warms parts of the Pacific Ocean every two to seven years, has varied effects on the world’s weather. In southern Africa, it typically causes below-average rainfall, but this year has seen the worst drought in decades.
In Zimbabwe, the United Nations’ World Food Program has already rolled out a food assistance program targeting the 2.7 million people, nearly 20 percent of the country’s population, from January to March.
The first few months of the year are traditionally known as the “lean period,” when households run short as they wait for the new harvest. However, there is little hope for replenishing food stores this year, and Mnangagwa said that even more people than previously forecast will likely need food aid.
More than 60% of Zimbabwe’s 15 million people live in rural areas, growing the food they eat, and sometimes small surpluses that can be sold to cover expenses such as school fees. With relatively little participation in the cash economy, many of those won’t be able to buy food even when it’s available in markets.
Zimbabwe, once a regional agricultural powerhouse and grain exporter, has in recent years relied more and more on aid agencies to avert mass hunger due to extreme weather conditions such as heat waves and floods.
Mnangagwa’s declaration will open the way for aid agencies to mobilize international support for more aid, but many people may still fail to get assistance, which is likely to be targeted to the most vulnerable populations due to limited resources amid a global hunger crisis and a cut in humanitarian funding by rich governments.
Much of Southern Africa is in the throes of a food crisis due to the ongoing drought. Zimbabwe declared a state of national disaster and appealed for humanitarian assistance from international donors in 2019, after a failed crop left tens of thousands in need.
Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema declared the current drought a national disaster in February, saying that almost half of his country’s staple corn crop had been destroyed. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, more than 6 million in Zambia, half of them children, have been affected by the drought.
Less than a month later, Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera said his country needed more than $200 million in urgent humanitarian assistance over a drought that he said has affected 2 million households in 23 of the tiny country’s 28 districts. The U.N. Children’s Fund said about 9 million people, half of them children, need help in Malawi.
The United States Agency for International Development, the U.S. government’s foreign aid agency, has estimated through its Famine Early Warning Systems Network that 20 million people in southern Africa needed food relief between January and March.
These needs could extend into early 2025 for many people in areas of highest concern such as Zimbabwe, southern Malawi, parts of Mozambique and southern Madagascar due to El Nino, USAID said.
Thailand has a plan to contain the monkey mayhem in the popular tourist town of Lopburi
BANGKOK | Thai wildlife officials laid out a plan on Wednesday to bring peace to a central Thai city after at least a decade of human-monkey conflict.
The macaques that roam Lopburi are a symbol of local culture, and a major tourist draw. But after years of dangerous encounters with residents and visitors and several failed attempts to bring peace with population controls, local people and businesses have had enough.
The monkeys frequently try to snatch food from humans, sometimes resulting in tussles that can leave people with scratches and other injuries. But outrage grew in March when a woman dislocated her knee after a monkey pulled her off her feet in an effort to grab food, and another man was knocked off a motorcycle by a hungry monkey.
Authorities hope to round up some 2,500 urban monkeys and place them in massive enclosures, said Athapol Charoenshunsa, the director-general of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation. They’ll work with wildlife experts to find a way for a limited number of monkeys to stay at liberty in the city, he added.
“I don’t want humans to have to hurt monkeys, and I don’t want monkeys to have to hurt humans,” he told reporters during a news conference in Bangkok.
An official monkey catching campaign was launched week, prioritizing more aggressive alpha males. It has caught 37 monkeys so far, most of whom have been placed put under the care of wildlife authorities in the neighboring province of Saraburi, while others were sent to the Lopburi zoo.
Officials said they plan to capture the rest of the monkeys once the enclosures are complete, especially those in the residential areas. Separate cages will be prepared for different troops of monkeys to prevent them from fighting.
Athapol said he expects the first phase of the operation to start within weeks, and believes the huge cages will be able to contain thousands of them and “will solve the problem very quickly.”
The monkeys are a symbol of the province, about 140 kilometers (90 miles) north of Bangkok, where the ancient Three Pagodas temple celebrates an annual “Monkey Buffet” festival, and they’re commonly seen throughout the city. Macaques are classified as a protected species under Thailand’s wildlife conservation law.
Some have blamed the city’s monkey troubles on tourists and residents feeding the animals, which they say drew monkeys into the city and boosted their numbers, as well as getting them accustomed to getting food from humans.
But an earlier effort to limit feeding may have made things worse, some residents say. Local officials began threatening fines for feeding monkeys outside a few designated areas around the main tourist attractions in recent years. But those feeding areas were dominated by a few troops of the highly territorial creatures, while rival bands grew hungry and turned to harassing humans in other areas for food even more.
Athapol said people shouldn’t see monkeys as villians, saying that the authorities might have not been efficient enough in their work to control the simian population.
People also need to adapt to the city’s monkeys, said Phadej Laithong, director of the Wildlife Conservation Office, explaining that a lack of natural food sources prompts the animals to find food wherever they can, including from humans.
Previous control measure have fallen short. From 2014-2023, the wildlife authorities neutered about 2,600 Lopburi monkeys.
Athapol said they are also working in other areas of Thailand that are facing problems with monkeys, such as Prajuab Kiri Khan and Phetchaburi. He said 52 of the country’s 77 provinces report frequent problems from monkeys.
Germany has legalized possession
of small amounts of cannabis
FRANKFURT, Germany | Marijuana campaigners in Germany lit celebratory joints on Monday as the country legalized possession of small amounts of cannabis for recreational use over objections from doctors and police.
The German Cannabis Association, which campaigned for the new law, staged a “smoke-in” at Berlin’s landmark Brandenburg Gate when the law took effect at midnight. Other public consumption events were scheduled throughout the country, including one in front of the Cologne cathedral and others in Hamburg, Regensburg and Dortmund.
Germany becomes the third European Union country to legalize cannabis for personal use after Malta and Luxembourg. The government argued that legalization would undermine criminal trade in the drug, guard against harmful impurities, and free police to pursue more serious crimes while providing for protections against use by under-18s.
The new law legalizes possession by adults of up to 25 grams (nearly 1 ounce) of marijuana for recreational purposes and allows individuals to grow up to three plants on their own. Use is prohibited within 100 meters (109 yards) of the entrance to a playground or school. That part of the legislation took effect Monday.
German residents age 18 and older will be allowed to join nonprofit “cannabis clubs” with a maximum 500 members each starting July 1. Individuals will be allowed to buy up to 25 grams per day, or a maximum 50 grams per month — a figure limited to 30 grams for people under age 21. Membership in multiple clubs won’t be allowed.
The clubs’ costs will be covered by membership fees, which are to be staggered according to how much marijuana members use.
The legislation also calls for an amnesty under which sentences for cannabis-related offenses that will no longer be illegal are to be reviewed and in many cases reversed. Regional authorities worry that the judicial system will be overburdened by thousands of cases.
Over the past 20 years, the general trend has been for European Union member countries to reduce cannabis penalties in various ways, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.
Those could include making possession a civil offense or diverting offenders to treatment instead of the criminal justice system, or less strict enforcement. In the Netherlands, cannabis remains illegal but sale of small amounts in so-called coffee shops is tolerated by the public prosecution service. A number of countries in Europe permit medical cannabis under differing sets of rules.
The law was passed by the current coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, against opposition from some of Germany’s federal states and the center-right Christian Democrats.
Christian Democratic leader Friedrich Merz has vowed that his party will reverse the legislation if it wins national elections expected in the fall of 2025. Any likely new government coalition, however, would include one of the parties that supported the law.
Leading garden stores surveyed by the dpa news agency indicated they would not be adding cannabis plants to their horticultural offerings. The German Medical Association opposed the law, saying it could have “grave consequences” for the “developmental and life prospects of young people in our country.” So did the union representing German police officers, which called it “the wrong signal.”
—From AP reports
