SNamibia will step up efforts against wildlife crime in the country during this year’s festive season, an official said yesterday.

Romeo Muyunda, spokesperson of the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT), said Namibia has observed that in the past poachers took advantage of the festive season to undertake criminal activities of poaching rhinos, pangolins, elephants, and other species.

Muyunda said even though Namibia continues to record successes in the fight against wildlife crime, poaching of high valued species remains a concern.

‘In 2022 to date, Namibia recorded 63 rhinos poached, which include 15 on custodianship farms, 22 on private farms, and 26 in the Etosha National Park,’ Muyunda said.

Interventions have been put in place across the country under the leadership of the MEFT to fight wildlife crime.

XINHUA

2 (LA PAZ, 27 NOV, AFP) – Protests to demand a new census were called off in Bolivia’s economic hub of Santa Cruz yesterday after weeks of unrest, with the country’s leftist government set to carry out a count in March 2024.

The deadly protests, which have gone on for 36 days, were suspended after the country’s Chamber of Deputies approved the 2024 census earlier in the day, with the bill now headed to the Senate.

In addition to cementing the census date, the bill pledges government spending changes and legislative assembly seat allotment ahead of the country’s 2025 presidential election.

The protests in Santa Cruz first began on 22 October with blocked roads, as activists demanded that President Luis Arce carry out the census by 2023, since the distribution of funds and legislative seats would depend on each region’s population.

Many in Santa Cruz, a stronghold of centre-right political forces that are opposed to Arce’s government, believed their department was disadvantaged under current calculations that are based on a 2012 census.

They feared the allocation of seats would not be updated in time for the 2025 ballot

But the government refused the request for a 2023 census, stating that it would be impossible to organise the count by then, and proposed the date of March 2024.

AFP

3 (SEOUL, 27 NOV, AFP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country aimed to have the world’s most powerful nuclear force as he celebrated the launch of its newest intercontinental ballistic missile at a ceremony with his young daughter, state media reported today.

Kim also handed promotions to more than 100 officials and scientists for their work on the Hwasong-17 – dubbed the ‘monster missile’ by analysts and believed to be capable of reaching the US mainland – just days after Pyongyang test-fired it in one of its most powerful launches yet.

Hailing the new ICBM as ‘the world’s strongest strategic weapon’, Kim said North Korean scientists had made a ‘wonderful leap forward in the development of the technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles’, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

Building the nuclear force to protect the dignity and sovereignty of the state and the people ‘is the greatest and most important revolutionary cause, and its ultimate goal is to possess the world’s most powerful strategic force, the absolute force unprecedented in the century’, Kim was quoted as saying in his order promoting the officials.

The leading officials and scientists had demonstrated to the world Pyongyang’s ‘goal of building the world’s strongest army’, he added.

AFP

4 (CASAMICCIOLA TERME, 27 NOV, AFP) – Italian rescuers were searching for a dozen missing people on the southern island of Ischia today after a landslide killed at least one person, as the government scheduled an emergency meeting.

A wave of mud and debris swept through the small town of Casamicciola Terme early yesterday morning, engulfing at least one house and sweeping cars down to the sea, local media and emergency services said.

Rescuers had recovered the body of a 31-year-old woman, according to Italian news agency AGI, with other local media reporting that 13 people had been injured in the incident.

About a dozen people were still unaccounted for by early yesterday evening, according to Claudio Palomba, prefect of Naples, of which the island is part.

But some people who had earlier been reported missing had since been found safe, including one family with a newborn baby, he said.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni tweeted her sympathy to those affected, saying she had called an extraordinary cabinet meeting today to discuss the disaster.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency