In the World
Russians leading bid to save tigers
MOSCOW - Russian government and environmental organizations said yesterday they would lead an international campaign to revive the dwindling numbers of Siberian and other world tigers.Officials from the Natural Resource Ministry and the World Wildlife Fund said the goal would be to double the current number tigers worldwide to 6,500 by 2022. Igor Chestin, director of the Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund, said countries and organizations involved hoped to raise $1 billion to carry out the ambitious program.
"We decided that this time we should do something serious in order to preserve tigers on our planet," he said. "The situation is catastrophic."
Hunters kill tigers for their prized pelts and body parts, some of which are used in traditional Chinese medicines, while logging and housing developments have encroached on tiger habitats in the dozen or so countries where they are present. - AP
Coins from era of Jewish revolt
JERUSALEM - Israel displayed for the first time yesterday rare coins charred and burned in the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple nearly 2,000 years ago.About 70 coins - some indecipherable chunks of pockmarked and carbonized bronze - were excavated at the foot of the Temple Mount. They give a glimpse into the period of the Jewish revolt that eventually led to the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in A.D. 70, said Hava Katz, curator of the exhibition in Jerusalem's Archaeological Garden.
Jews rebelled against the Roman Empire and took over Jerusalem in A.D. 66. After laying siege to the city, the Romans breached its walls and crushed the rebellion, demolishing the Jewish Temple, the holiest site in Judaism.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound sits atop those ruins and Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven from there. Control of the site is an explosive issue in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. - AP
A suspect in 1977 N. Ireland killing
DUBLIN - A suspected Irish Republican Army man was charged yesterday with the murder of a British army intelligence agent 32 years ago, a surprising turn in one of the conflict's most baffling killings.Northern Ireland state prosecutors unexpectedly levied the new charge at a regular bail hearing for Kevin Crilly. Last year the 58-year-old was arrested and charged with kidnapping - but not killing - Capt. Robert Nairac.
In May 1977, Nairac was abducted from a pub in the outlaws' border stronghold of South Armagh where he had sought to infiltrate the IRA by posing as a Belfast IRA man.
The Oxford University-educated Catholic learned IRA drinking songs and a rough Belfast Gaelic accent. But it didn't fool local IRA men. His body was never found. - AP
Elsewhere:
Germany's parliament will return an oil painting of the country's first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, which has hung there for decades to the heirs of its rightful Jewish owner after discovering the 1896 work by Franz von Lenbach was looted in the Nazi era, a spokesman said.
