Ivory Trade Banned in Hong Kong

Hong Kong's lawmakers have voted overwhelmingly to ban the trade in ivory, in a move campaigners described as "a lifeline for elephants".  A similar ban was brought in across mainland China earlier this year.

Ivory sales will be phased out gradually in Hong Kong, stopping completely in 2021. Prior to the vote, demonstrators gathered outside Hong Kong's legislature with signs reading: "Do you really need ivory chopsticks?"  "Shutting down this massive ivory market has thrown a lifeline to elephants," said Bert Wander of the global advocacy group Avaaz.  Hong Kong is considered the world's largest ivory market.

Hong Kong lawmaker Elizabeth Quat said the vote marked a great day for elephants, but that the changes must be enforced effectively.  "It's now up to our law enforcement agencies to ensure the ban is properly implemented," she said.

Oscar Nominated Film Caught in Plagiarism Charge

The estate of the Pulitzer-winning playwright Paul Zindel has accused the film "The Shape of Water" of using the late writer’s work without credit, arguing that Guillermo del Toro’s movie, which is leading in Oscar nominations, was “obviously derived” from a 1969 play.

David Zindel, son of the American playwright, told the Guardian he believes his father’s work Let Me Hear You Whisper, a play about a female janitor in a research laboratory who bonds with a captive dolphin and tries to rescue the creature, is a source of inspiration for The Shape of Water. Del Toro’s film was nominated on Tuesday for 13 Oscars, including best picture, best director and best original screenplay.

The Shape of Water, the critically acclaimed film co-written by Del Toro and Vanessa Taylor, tells the story of a cleaner who works in a Baltimore laboratory in the 1960s and falls in love with a sea creature whom she attempts to rescue. In terms of the broad concept, specific plot points and some characters, the film has close similarities to Let Me Hear You Whisper, which was aired as a TV production nearly 50 years ago.

The creative team behind The Shape of Water,  has presented the film as an original idea and has not mentioned Zindel’s work as an inspiration.

In both stories, a female cleaner works a night shift at a lab and falls for an aquatic creature that is the subject of mysterious science experiments. Both women develop a relationship by bringing food to the animal and dancing with a mop in front of the tank to the tune of a love song.

The cleaner character in both stories learn to communicate with the creature, and both labs are involved in secretive military operations. The protagonists both discover imminent plans to kill the creature, and both labs mention “vivisection”.

The women in both stories also devise plans to rescue the animal and release it to the sea by sneaking it out in a laundry cart.   Both women are also friends with another janitor who helps them.

Paul Zindel, who died in 2003, won the 1971 drama Pulitzer for the play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.  Bonnie Zindel, the playwright’s former wife, said Let Me Hear You Whisper was one of the earliest plays he wrote and one of the first performed on television.

Fox Searchlight responded, saying: “Guillermo del Toro has never read nor seen Mr Zindel’s play in any form. Mr del Toro has had a 25 year career during which he has made 10 feature films and has always been very open about acknowledging his influences.

The director said the idea originated in part through a conversation with the novelist Daniel Kraus, who suggested a story about a “janitor that kidnaps an amphibian-man from a secret government facility”. Kraus’s website says the film is “based on an original idea” by him and Del Toro. Kraus did not respond to a request for comment.

Nikki Haley Denies Affair With Trump

Nikki Haley, U.S.ambassador to the United Nations and former governor of South Carolina, has been forced to publicly deny having an affair with Donald Trump, calling the speculation “highly offensive” and “disgusting”.

The rumor began to spread after publication of the book "Fire and Fury"-- authored by journalist Michael Wolff, who said ast week he was “absolutely sure” Trump was having an affair.

“It is absolutely not true,” Haley said in an interview with Politico, regarding speculation that Wolff was referring to her when describing the president’s alleged lover.  She said Wolff had made a basic factual error in his book, when he wrote that the president had been spending a notable amount of private time with Haley on Air Force One.  “I have literally been on Air Force One once and there were several people in the room when I was there,” Haley said.

Haley (the daughter of Indian immigrants) who has been married for 20 years and has two children, was the first woman to be elected governor of South Carolina and the second Indian-American governor in US history.  She told Politico insinuations she had had an affair with the president fit a pattern of attacks on successful women.

The Haley speculation was the second instance this month of a rumor emerging that the president had conducted an extramarital affair.  Earlier in January an interview was published in which Stephanie Clifford, who performs in pornographic films under the name Stormy Daniels, said she had an affair with Trump shortly after his marriage to Melania Trump.

U.S. Diplomat Quits Rohingya Panel Over Disput Wtih Aung San Suu Kyi

Bill Richardson, the veteran U.S. diplomat, has resigned from an international panel on the Rohingya crisis, calling it a “whitewash” and accusing the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi of lacking “moral leadership”.  Richardson, a former Clinton administration cabinet member, quit  the 10-member advisory board as it was about to make its first visit to Rakhine state, from where nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled in recent months.

“The main reason I am resigning is that this advisory board is a whitewash,” Richardson said, adding he did not want to be part of “a cheer leading squad for the government”.  Richardson said he got into an argument with Suu Kyi during a meeting with other members of the board, when he brought up the case of two Reuters reporters who are on trial accused of breaching the country’s secrets act.

Reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were working on Reuters coverage of the Rohingya crisis in Rakhine, where 688,000 Rohingya fled an army crackdown on insurgents in late August. The government was not happy with the international press coverage of the crackdown and the two reporters were detained in December after being lured into their arrest by a seemingly friendly dinner invitation with some police officers.   After the arrest, the government claimed they were arrested for possessing secret security documents.

Richardson said Suu Kyi responded furiously to the discussion of the reporters' situation.  She believed that the reporters case was not related to the panel's work advising the government on the Rohingya crisis.  The argument continued at a dinner later that evening, the former New Mexico governor said.

The Myanmar government disputed Richardson's version of events, claiming that Richardson was pursing his own agenda outside the advisory panel and the government had decided that his participation was not in the best interest of all concerned.

Heather Nauert, a US state department spokeswoman, called Richardson’s decision to resign from the board and his reasons for doing so “cause for concern”, but noted he had been acting as a private citizen in joining the board.

It's Raining Shit Popsicles over India

A mysterious chunk of brown ice fell in the northern state of Haryana, causing confusion and paranoia among local villagers. 

The 26-pound chunk of ice fell on Fazilpur Badli village with a "big thud", startling residents in the wee hours of Saturday.  Before authorities could reach the site, suspicious villagers "sneaked a few pieces into their clothes", and stored them in their refrigerators at home. Senior Gurgaon official Vivek Kalia said some villagers thought it was an "extra-terrestrial" object.

"It was a very heavy icy ball of ice which dropped from the skies early on Saturday morning. There was big thud and people of the village came running out of their homes to find out what had happened," he said.  "Some villagers thought it was an extra-terrestrial object. Others thought it was some celestial rock and I've heard that they took samples home," he said.

However, authorities now suspect that the ice chunk is nothing more than frozen human waste leaked from an airplane overhead.  Plane toilets store human waste in special tanks, which are normally disposed of once the plane has landed. But international aviation authorities acknowledge that lavatory leaks can occur in the air.

Kalia told reporters that a sample of the projectile had been sent for chemical analysis, but "we suspect strongly" that it is frozen airline excrement.

Trump Delivers on the Shutdown

"But I'm a Stable Genius!"

He Knows Nothing

Can't Shake Him

Token Party

Persecution of Women Continue in Latin America

The life of a Dafne McPherson, a mother in the central Mexican city of San Juan del Rio changed dramatically after she began having abdominal cramps at work.  She reported to her employer's nurse, who told her nothing was amiss. But shortly afterwards, in the bathroom, McPherson went into labor. She says she hadn’t even realized that she was pregnant.

McPherson is currently serving a 16-year sentence after she was convicted of homicide for the death of her baby in what she says was a miscarriage.  Her case gained national notoriety when court videos surfaced in which the prosecutor described McPherson’s alleged actions as something “not even a dog would do”.

Activists say her trial demonstrates a growing trend in which Mexican prosecutors in conservative parts of Mexico criminalize women who have miscarriages or complicated childbirths by accusing them of intentionally inducing abortion – which remains illegal in much of the country.

“When the authorities started investigating Dafne, it was as an abortion investigation, not a homicide case,” said Karla Michel Salas, a human rights lawyer familiar with McPherson’s case.

The persecution of women who have miscarriages started after Mexico City decriminalized abortion a decade ago. In response, other states introduced further restrictions on women’s reproductive rights.  Most of the women charged in such cases are poor and unable to find a competent lawyer to defend them, she added.

Officials in Querétaro – a staunchly Catholic state – said the prosecutor would be sanctioned for his disparaging comments about McPherson, but they stood by the case.  More details from the Guardian can be found here.

Let's Talk About Crowd Size

El Salvador Still Persecuting Women Suffering Stillbirths

An El Salvador court has rejected the appeal of a woman sentenced to 30 years in prison over what she says was a stillbirth.

Teodora del Carmen Vásquez, 37, said she was working in 2007 when she began to experience intense pain, then bleeding. She called for help before fainting. As she came round, police officers surrounded her and accused her of murdering her baby by inducing an abortion of her nearly full-term baby.  Authorities charged Vásquez with aggravated murder and she was convicted in 2008. Her attorneys appealed her sentence, presenting testimony that the baby was born dead.  The court said it relied on the government autopsy’s conclusion that the girl was born alive and asphyxiated.

The non-profit Center for Reproductive Rights, which has been campaigning for the release of dozens of other women convicted of murder in El Salvador for obstetric emergencies, said the decision was “another slap in the face for Teodora, who never committed any crime”.  Teodora’s tragic story is a sad illustration of everything that is wrong with the justice system in El Salvador, where human rights seem to be a foreign concept,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s Americas director.  “Instead of punishing Teodora for being a woman, authorities in El Salvador must urgently take a hard look at their outrageous anti-abortion law and take immediate steps to repeal it.”

El Salvador is one of a handful of Latin American countries with total bans on abortion.  A glimmer of hope that El Salvador could overturn its abortion ban emerged earlier this year with the introduction of a parliamentary bill that proposed allowing abortion in cases of rape or human trafficking, when the foetus in unviable or to protect the pregnant woman’s health or life. Recently, activists took to the streets to protest the absolute ban.

In August, Chile voted to overturn its complete ban to allow abortion in certain circumstances.  Last week, Bolivia loosened its laws to allow girls and young women to access abortion services up to eight weeks into pregnancy. Prior to the change in new legislation, abortion was only available to women if their lives were in danger.

The Force Is Strong

Fire and Fury from the White House

Michael Wolff's explosive book on the Trump white house was released four days early, and here are some of the juicer tidbits that have already come out:


Shortly after the election, Trump's friend Ailes told him, with some urgency, “You’ve got to get right on Russia.” Even exiled from Fox News, Ailes still maintained a fabled intelligence network. He warned Trump of potentially damaging material coming his way.- telling him, “You need to take this seriously, Donald.”  Trump happily replied:  “Jared has this.  It’s all worked out.”


Ivanka often described the mechanics behind [her father's hair] to friends: an absolutely clean pate—a contained island after scalp reduction surgery—surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray. The color, she would point out to comical effect, was from a product called Just for Men—the longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump’s orange-blond hair color.


Trump had a longtime fear of being poisoned, one reason why he liked to eat at McDonald’s — nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely pre-made.


Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate. (There was some argument about this, because he could read headlines and articles about himself, or at least headlines on articles about himself, and the gossip squibs on the New York Post’s Page Six.) Some thought him dyslexic; certainly his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn’t read because he just didn’t have to, and that in fact this was one of his key attributes as a populist. He was post-literate—total television.


Trump had little or no interest in the central Republican goal of repealing Obamacare. An overweight seventy-year-old man with various physical phobias (for instance, he lied about his height to keep from having a body mass index that would label him as obese), he personally found health care and medical treatments of all kinds a distasteful subject. The details of the contested legislation were, to him, particularly boring; his attention would begin wandering from the first words of a policy discussion.  During one particular health care discussion, Trump reportedly asked of his aides: “Why can’t Medicare simply cover everybody?”


In their efforts to “influence the president and undermine” one another, Bannon, Priebus and Kushner created a kind of “paralysis” within the White House that led each of the advisers to turn to the media.  The constant leaking was often blamed on lower minions and permanent executive branch staff, culminating in late February with an all-hands meeting of staffers called by Sean Spicer—cell phones surrendered at the door—during which the press secretary issued threats of random phone checks and admonitions about the use of encrypted texting apps. Everybody was a potential leaker; everybody was accusing everybody else of being a leaker.  The reality is that everybody ended up being a leaker.


In a series of tweets in early 2017, Trump accused former President Barack Obama of surveilling him, offering no evidence to support the claim.   It was a turning point. Until now, Trump’s inner circle had been mostly game to defend him. But after the wiretap tweets, everybody, save perhaps Hope Hicks, moved into a state of queasy sheepishness, if not constant incredulity.  Sean Spicer, for one, kept repeating his daily, if not hourly, mantra: “You can’t make this shit up.”


The president’s plan to back out of the Paris agreement, announced in early June 2017, was the move Ivanka Trump “had campaigned hardest against in the White House.” Bannon, who had fought repeatedly against Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s White House influence, had supported the withdrawal.  “Score,” Bannon said. “The bitch is dead.”

New Meaning for "Light Pole"

A burgeoning trend of penis whitening has captivated Thailand in recent days and left it asking if the country's beauty industry is taking things too far.

Skin whitening is nothing new in many Asian countries, where darker skin is often associated with outdoor labor, therefore, being poorer.  But even so, when a clip of a clinic's latest intriguing procedure was posted online, it quickly went viral.

Thailand's health ministry has since issued a warning over the procedure, saying it may cause possible side effects such as pain, inflammation or scars and even effects on the reproductive system and on having sex.  Stopping treatment would  also cause the skin color to return to normal and may result in "nasty-looking spots", the ministry added.

One patient who has undergone the treatment told reporters: "I wanted to feel more confident in my swimming briefs."  The 30-year-old said his first session of several was two months ago, and he had since seen a definite change in the shade.

Popol Tansakul, marketing manager of Lelux Hospital which offers the service, said they had introduced vagina whitening services four months ago.  "Patients started to ask about penis whitening, and so we started the treatment a month later," he explained. The cost of the laser procedure is $650 for five sessions.  "The [procedure is]  popular among gay men and transvestites who take good care of their private parts. They want to look good in all areas," Popol added.

Gone to Pot

2017: One Down and Three to Go

Wish for the New Year

Obama Beats Trump as Most Admired

President Obama beat out Donald Trump as the most admired person of 2017, marking the tenth time he was won that title. Trump joined Harry Truman and Gerald Ford as the only presidents who failed to win the top distinction in his first year in office.

Hillary Clinton, who beat Trump in the popular vote during the presidential election,  retained her title as the most admired woman for the 16th year in a row.    The former senator, secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee has won 22 times overall, the most ever.

That Time of Year . . . Again