The operators of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus have agreed to pay a fine of $270,000 to settle a probe into violations of the Animal Welfare Act for animal abuse, US officials said yesterday.
The settlement announced by the US Department of Agriculture “sends a direct message to the public and to those who exhibit animals that USDA will take all necessary steps to protect animals regulated under the Animal Welfare Act,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Picture shows artist Daniel Raffo performing with a tiger during Barnum’s FUNundrum in New York on March 26 of last year.
Libya sex crimes probed
A team from the International Criminal Court arrived yesterday in Libya to probe sexual crimes committed by loyalists of slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi during the revolt against his rule.
“We are here to conduct investigation into sexual crimes,” committed during the revolt against Gaddafi and during his rule, Jane O’Toole, ICC investigator leading the team told AFP.
She said the ICC investigation would probe all aspects of major sexual crimes against women.
Judge’s Mafia links claim
An Italian court issued arrest warrants yesterday for 12 people suspected of links with organised crime in southern Italy, including a judge, a police officer and a lawyer, reports said.
Vincenzo Giglio, a 51-year old judge and law professor in Reggio Calabria, was arrested on suspicion of corruption, passing on confidential information and aiding a local gangster, the Corriere della Sera daily said. The officer and lawyer arrested worked in the nearby resort town of Palmi.
Among the other suspects arrested are three members of the Ndrangheta, the powerful crime syndicate which operates in the region of Calabria, as well as a member of ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party (PDL).
Wilde’s tomb renovated
Oscar Wilde’s renovated Paris tomb was unveiled yesterday, complete with a new glass barrier to shield the monument to the quintessential dandy’s life from a torrent of admiring kisses.
Kiss upon lipsticked kiss in honour of Wilde, who died penniless aged 46 in a Paris hotel room in 1900, had worn down the elegant tomb in Pere Lachaise cemetery, as grease from tourist lips sank into the stonework.
Wilde’s only grandson Merlin Holland and British actor Rupert Everett accompanied French and Irish officials at the ceremony, held under bright winter sunshine on the tree-lined alleys of the famous burial ground.
The tomb, designed by modernist sculptor Jacob Epstein with a flying Assyrian-style angel, survived almost unscathed until 1985, except for the angel’s notoriously prominent genitals being hacked off.
Then, the expense of cleaning operations to deal with increasing graffiti on the tomb led the descendants of Wilde and of his friend and executor Robert Ross to try, successfully, to get it listed as a historic monument.