BEIJING: Nervous about a repeat of last month’s deadly knife attack at a Chinese train station, a well-known Buddhist temple in eastern China has drafted some of its monks into a new “anti-terrorist” squad, state media said yesterday.
The team at the 1,700-year-old Lingyin Temple in the tourist city of Hangzhou is made up of 20 monks and more than 20 security guards, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the temple’s Buddhist Master Jueheng as saying.
The squad’s members are equipped with shields, pepper spray and batons. It is the first time a Chinese temple has set up such a team, Xinhua said.
Japan cancels whaling hunt
TOKYO: Japan said yesterday it was cancelling its annual Antarctic whaling hunt for the first time in more than 25 years after a UN court ruled that the programme was a commercial activity disguised as science.
A “deeply disappointed” Tokyo earlier this week said it would honour Monday’s judgement by the UNs’ Hague-based International Court of Justice but did not exclude the possibility of future whaling programmes. Officials said the next hunt, which would have started in late 2014, had been scrapped, just weeks after the most recent one finished.
1 tonne ivory tusks seized
SINGAPORE: Singapore authorities said yesterday they had intercepted about one tonne of ivory worth $1.6m in a shipping container from Africa marked as carrying coffee berries.
The seizure was made in an export inspection station at the Pasir Panjang port on March 25 following a tip-off, Singapore Customs and the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority said.
“The shipment, which was declared as coffee berries, was transiting through Singapore from Africa in a 20-foot container and destined for another Asian country,” the statement said. The shipment contained 106 pieces of raw ivory tusks.
Agencies
