THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2012
PAGE 3A
Associated Press
NEWS OF THE WORLD
AFRICA
Rhino poaching at all-time high
Miles Lapman, owner of Fintoff Lake Reserve near Tantanaan, South Africa, and his son Marc, right, walk past the carcass of a rhinon on Nov. 22. South Africa says at least 588 rhinos have been killed by poachers this year alone.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
alyer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
VAALKOP DAM NATURE RESERVE, South Africa — By the time ranchers found the rhinoceros calf wandering alone in this idyllic setting of scrub brush and acacia, the nature reserve had become yet another blood-soaked crime scene in South Africa's losing battle against poachers.
Hunters killed eight rhinos at the private Finfoot Game Reserve inside the Vaalkop Dam Nature Reserve this month with single rifle shots that pierced their hearts and lungs.
That insatiable demand for horns has sparked the worst recorded year of rhino poaching in South Africa in decades, with at least 588 rhinos killed so far, their carcasses rotting in private farms and national parks.
The poachers' objective: the rhinos' horns, cut away with knives and popped off the dead animals' snouts for buyers in Asia who pay the U.S. street value of cocaine for a material they believe cures diseases.
Without drastic change, experts warn that soon the number of rhinos killed will outpace the number of the calves born — putting
the entire population at risk in a nation that is the last bastion for the prehistoric-looking animals.
"This is a full-on bush war we are fighting," said Marc Lappeman, who runs the Finfoot reserve with his father Miles and has begun armed vigilant patrols to protect the remaining rhinos there. "We here are willing to die for these animals."
From the 1990s to 2007, rhino poachings in South Africa averaged about 15 a year, according to a recent report by the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAF-FIC.
in Africa.
Unchecked hunting nearly killed off all the rhinos in southern Africa at the beginning of the 1900s.
Conservationists in the 1960s airlifted rhinos to different parts of South Africa to spread them out. That helped the population grow to the point that South Africa is now home to some 20,000 rhinos — 90 percent of all rhinos
In 2008, however, poachers killed 83 rhinos and by 2009, the number hit 122, the report says.
Afghanistan bank probe into loan fraud continues
ASIA
KABUL, Afghanistan — Political interference stymied an investigation into the collapse of Afghanistan's largest bank, according to an independent report of how the men at Kabul Bank and their friends and relatives got rich from $861 million in fraudulent loans.
The 87-page report, released on Wednesday, details how politics played
a role in who was charged in the case and why it took prosecutors so long to render indictments. Its findings reinforce the image of Afghanistan as deeply corrupt. If those who carried out the fraud are not punished, it will likely be more difficult for the West to donate money to this impoverished nation where U.S. and NATO forces are trying to extricate themselves from an 11-year-old war.
The bank's collapse and subsequent
bailout represents more than 5 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product, making it one of the largest banking failures in the world. Hundreds of millions of dollars were sent out of Afghanistan — some in airplane food trays.
The report depicts the Kabul Bank scandal as a saga about money-grabbing, weak banking oversight, lax prosecution, nepistism and fraud. The cast of characters includes a
poker-playing bank chairman, an Afghan central bank head who feared his life was endangered and fled to the U.S., the wealthy relatives of the Afghan president and vice president, and bank shareholders — some who bought posh properties in Dubai and spent lavishly on themselves and their circle of friends and relatives.
CARIBBEAN
Rastafarian faith surges in Jamaica
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Around him at the sprawling Bobo Ashanti commune on an isolated hilltop, a few women and about 200 dreadlocked men with flowing robes and tightly wrapped turbans prayed, fasted, and fashioned handmade brooms — smoking marijuana only as a ceremonial ritual.
"Rasta church is rising" declared Priest Morant, who wore a vestment stitched with the words "The Black Christ." "There's nothing that can turn it back."
BULL BAY, Jamaica — The robed Rastafarian priest looked out over the turquoise sea off Jamaica's southeast coast and fervently described his belief that deliverance is at hand.
The Rastafarian faith is indeed rising in Jamaica, where new census figures show a roughly 20 percent increase in the number of adherents over a decade, to more than 29,000. While still a tiny sliver of the mostly Christian country's 2.7 million people, Jalani Niaah,
an expert in the Rastafari movement, says the number is more like 8 to 10 percent of the population, since many Rastas disdain nearly all government initiatives and not all would have spoken to census takers.
"Its contemporary appeal is particularly fascinating to young men, especially in the absence of alternative sources for their development," said Niaah, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies.
For the black nationalist Bobo Ashanti commune, the Rastafarian faith is a transforming way of life, where Rastas strive to live a frugal existence uncomplicated by binding relationships to "Babylon" — the unflattering term for the Western world.
Founded 80 years ago by descendants of African slaves, the Rasta movement's growing appeal is attributable to its rejection of Western materialism, the scarcity of opportunities for young men in Jamaica and an increasing acceptance of it.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Robed Rastafarian priests chant prayers while facing the direction of the African nation of Ethiopia at the Bobo Ashanti commune in Bull Bay, Jamaica, on Nov. 19.
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