Discovery
Indonesia nabs smugglers:
Indonesian police said Sunday that they have arrested two men suspected of being part of a ring that poaches and trades in endangered animals and seized from them several lion and leopard cubs and dozens of turtles.
One of the suspects, identified only as Yatno, was arrested Saturday in Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province, after picking up suspicious boxes from a speedboat at a port in Dumai district, said Andri Sudarmadi, Riau police’s chief detective.
Police found several boxes containing four lion cubs, a leopard cub and 58 turtles in his van. The turtles and the leopard cub are listed as critically endangered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, while the lion cubs are listed as endangered.
Yatno’s arrest led police to capture another suspect who was planning to sell the smuggled wildlife to a trader on Java island, Sudarmadi said at a news conference. The second suspect was identified only by his initials, IS. Sudarmadi said that the two men were allegedly part of an international trafficking syndicate and that they bought the haul from a smuggler in Malaysia.
They told police each cub is valued at $32,000 on the black market, while the turtles fetch $1,200 apiece, Sudarmadi said.
The two suspects, if found guilty, face up to five years in jail and $7,000 in fines for attempting to smuggle wildlife. (AP)
Thunberg, railway co in tweetstorm:
Climate activist Greta Thunberg and Germany’s national railway company created a tweetstorm Sunday after she posted a photo of herself sitting on the floor of a train surrounded by lots of bags.
The image has drawn plenty of comment online about the performance of German railways. Thunberg posted the tweet late Saturday with the comment “traveling on overcrowded trains through Germany. And I’m finally on my way home!”
But German railway company Deutsche Bahn suggested that Thunberg may not have spent the whole time sitting on the floor. And the 16-year-old Swedish activist later sought to draw a line under the matter by tweeting that she eventually got a seat and that overcrowded trains are a good thing.
Some Twitter users expressed pity for Thunberg for not being able to get a proper seat on the train for the long ride home from Madrid, where she was attending the UN climate change conference. Others wished her a safe trip home after months of traveling by trains and boats to different climate events in Europe and the United States. (AP)