Russian warships have embarked on a long voyage to the Black and Mediterranean Seas to take part in what the Defense Ministry said Wednesday would be the largest naval exercise in decades. It said the exercise would test the ships’ ability to act together outside Russian waters. Moscow has been trying to strengthen its military presence in the Mediterranean region. President Vladimir V. Putin has said Russia needs a stronger military to protect it from foreign attempts to stoke conflicts around its borders.
World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Navy Embarks on Major Exercise
Label: WorldJennie Garth Wants to Date a Man with 'Positive Energy'
Label: LifestyleWhen it comes to her current love life, Jennie Garth has a new mantra.
"I'm learning to date again," the actress, who split from husband Peter Facinelli in March 2012, tells Health in its January issue, "[and] looks aren't important to me anymore. ... I like positive energy."
The actress, who dropped 30 lbs. last year, plans to keep her health a priority in 2013.
"Every day, I just renew my healthy choices," she says. "I feel really good about myself now, and I don't want to do anything to change that."
That means avoiding trendy diets or weight-loss gimmicks.
"My biggest regret is putting my body through fad diets: Atkins, cleanses, the hCG diet," Garth, 40, says. "I lost like 18 lbs., but it came right back. The worst was fasting with colonics for three or four days. It was the most horrifying experience ever."
In addition to her body, Garth says she's trying to maintain a positive outlook, even when times are tough.
"When I'm in excruciating pain, like with what I've been through with my breakup and that grief and loss that's just immobilizing, it helps to remember that it only lasts for 13 to 15 minutes, max," she tells Health. "And then it's over."
"Your mind is ready to go to something else," Garth continues. "You might come back to it, but it helps to just know that that pain is not going to last forever."
Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating
Label: HealthThis is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.
After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.
It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.
All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.
For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.
Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."
What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.
"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.
What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.
A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.
The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.
Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.
Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.
"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.
A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.
Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.
"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."
___
Online:
Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html
___
Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe
Wall Street starts new year with a bang after "cliff" deal
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks kicked off the new year with their best day in over a year on Wednesday, sparked by relief over a last-minute deal in Washington to avert the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts that threatened to derail the economy's growth.
In 2013's first trading session, the S&P 500 achieved its biggest one-day gain since December 20, 2011, pushing the benchmark index to its highest close since September 14.
Concerns over Washington's ability to sidestep the cliff had driven the S&P 500 down for five straight sessions, before signs that a resolution was near sent the benchmark index higher on the final trading session of 2012.
The CBOE Volatility Index or the VIX <.vix>, Wall Street's favorite gauge of investor anxiety, dropped 18.5 percent to 14.68 at the close. The VIX has fallen 35.4 percent over the past two sessions, the biggest 2-day percentage drop in the history of the index.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> jumped 308.41 points, or 2.35 percent, to 13,412.55 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 36.23 points, or 2.54 percent, to finish at 1,462.42. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> climbed 92.75 points, or 3.07 percent, to end at 3,112.26.
U.S. markets were closed on Tuesday for New Year's Day.
Market breadth reflected the strong rally, with 10 stocks rising for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. All 10 of the S&P 500 industry sector indexes gained at least 1 percent. The S&P financial index <.gspf> shot up 2.9 percent.
The S&P Information Technology index <.gspt> gained 3.2 percent, including Hewlett-Packard
On Tuesday, Congress passed a bill to prevent huge tax hikes and delay spending cuts that would have pushed the world's largest economy off a "fiscal cliff" and possibly into recession.
The vote avoided steep income-tax increases for a majority of Americans, but failed to resolve a major showdown over cutting the budget deficit, leaving investors and businesses with only limited clarity about the outlook for the economy. Spending cuts of $109 billion in military and domestic programs were temporarily delayed, and another fight over raising the U.S. debt limit also looms.
"We got through the fiscal cliff. The next big thing, and probably more contentious thing, is negotiating the debt ceiling and possibly entitlement reform in early 2013," said Jim Russell, senior equity strategist for U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Cincinnati.
Hard choices about budget cuts and the critical need to raise the debt ceiling will confront Congress about the same time in two months "so the fur will be flying," Russell said.
U.S. stocks ended 2012 with the S&P 500 up 13.4 percent for the year, as investors largely shrugged off worries about the fiscal cliff. For the year, the Dow gained 7.3 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 15.9 percent.
Bank shares rose following news that U.S. regulators are close to securing another multibillion-dollar settlement with the largest banks to resolve allegations that they unlawfully cut corners when foreclosing on delinquent borrowers.
Bank of America Corp
Shares of Zipcar Inc
Shares of Apple rose 3.2 percent to $549.03, helping to lift the S&P information technology index <.gspt> up 3.2 percent following a report that the most valuable tech company has started testing a new iPhone and a new version of its iOS software.
Economic data from the Institute for Supply Management showed U.S. manufacturing ended 2012 on an upswing despite fears about the fiscal cliff, but the Commerce Department reported that construction spending fell in November for the first time in eight months.
Volume was heavy, with about 7.8 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE MKT and the Nasdaq, well above the 2012 daily average of 6.42 billion.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)
Stampede at New Year’s Celebration Kills Dozens in Ivory Coast
Label: World
Herve Sevi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Clothing and shoes strewn in Abidjan after a stampede at a fireworks show.
At least 60 people were killed in Ivory Coast’s economic capital, Abidjan, as a New Year’s fireworks celebration turned into a deadly stampede early on Tuesday.
The panic struck as the crowd of thousands was leaving the sprawling stadium in the downtown Plateau neighborhood after the last fireworks had signaled the new year. In the crush, dozens were trampled underfoot, officials in Abidjan said Tuesday.
Many were pushed into a small gully adjoining the Houphouët-Boigny stadium on the Boulevard de la République, in the heart of the city’s compact central business district, then were crushed as the panicked crowd surged over them.
Children seemed to be among the injured and dead: the state television station, RTI, showed images of wounded children in a city hospital, as well as pregnant women stretched on cots.
Ivorian officials said Tuesday that they were baffled as to what set off the stampede but that it was being investigated.
“The precise circumstances of this tragic occurrence are being looked into by the security services,” Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko said on RTI. The station showed rescue workers carrying bodies through the streets and ambulances lined up in the darkness.
Mr. Bakayoko told RTI that “the New Year’s Eve celebrations brought many onto the streets of Plateau,” and continued: “There were 50,000 people on the streets. They were going home, and there was a stampede.”
The head of the rescue services, Lt. Col. Issa Sakho, told an RTI reporter that the “flow of people created a great crush, and in the stampede there were people who were trampled, people who were suffocated.” More than 200 were wounded, officials said.
Careless police action could have incited the stampede, witnesses said. At the hospital in the city’s adjoining Cocody neighborhood, one of the wounded — a young man who declined to give his name — said that the police had tried to disperse the crowd as it was leaving the stadium. That action provoked a mass panic, the young man said, and the crowd surged forward.
The Ivorian police and security services, with a long record of brutality, are feared by the people of Abidjan, a sprawling city of some four million people. Arbitrary arrests, unpunished beatings and impromptu traffic stops, often to extort money, are not uncommon in the city’s poorer neighborhoods.
The police and security forces were the principal instruments in a campaign of repression that lasted months in 2010-11 by Laurent Gbagbo, a president who was ousted by rebel fighters and French forces after he failed to give up office after his electoral defeat. About 3,000 people were killed in the civil war precipitated by Mr. Gbagbo’s refusal.
The fireworks celebration, sponsored by the government of President Alassane Ouattara, was the second since Mr. Gbagbo’s ouster. It was intended as another sign that Ivory Coast, with its surging economic growth and renewed foreign investment, had emerged from years of political crisis, repression and civil war.
Social, ethnic and political tensions remain acute, however, with some observers warning that Mr. Ouattara has done too little to resolve problems left over from the Gbagbo years.
Armed robbers hit Paris Apple store
Label: TechnologyPARIS (Reuters) – Armed robbers targeted an Apple Inc store in central Paris on New Year’s Eve, taking thousands of euros (dollars) worth of goods, a police official said on Tuesday.
The robbery took place at about 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Monday, three hours after closing time at one of Apple‘s flagship stores behind the Paris Opera which sells products ranging from iPhones and iPads to Mac computers.
The police official declined to comment on reports the thieves walked away with about 1 million euros ($ 1.32 million) of loot, saying the company was still evaluating the loss.
Christophe Crepin from the police union UNSA told reporters four masked and armed individuals forced their way into the shop and afterwards escaped in a van.
“They were well prepared. As the majority of police were busy watching the Champs Elysees (for New Year’s Eve celebrations), the robbers took advantage of this opportunity,” he said.
($ 1 = 0.7585 euros)
(Reporting By Thierry Leveque and John Irish; Editing by Michael Roddy)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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Jessica Simpson and Kendall & Kylie Jenner Make Readers Smile - and Frown
Label: LifestyleSplash News Online; Michael Simon/Startraks
What's on the minds of PEOPLE readers this week? We love getting your feedback, and as always, you weighed in – even while celebrating during the holidays – with plenty of reactions to all of our stories.
From Kelly Osbourne's dramatic weight loss to Jessica Simpson's happy baby news to the tragic death of hero surfer Dylan Smith in Puerto Rico, readers responded to what made them happy, what made them laugh out loud and what made them sad this week.
Check out the articles with the top reactions on the site this week, and keep clicking on the emoticons at the bottom of every story to tell us what you think!
Kelly Osbourne says loving herself was the key to her 60-lb. weight loss. She had to get to a place where she respected herself enough to take care of her health – and she emerged a fierce style star who is not afraid to rock a bikini.
Jessica Simpson became a new mom just 8 months ago – so the news that she's expecting baby No. 2 with fiancé Eric Johnson made readers say, "Wow!"
Reality stars Kendall and Kylie Jenner showed off expensive Christmas gifts on Instagram, and their pricey public display turned many readers off. From a pair of Louboutin spike heels to Balenciaga boots with a more than $1,000 price tag, the teens cleaned up with lavish presents that most could only dream about.
Dylan Smith captured our hearts with his heroic efforts during Superstorm Sandy, saving six people on his surfboard. But the Queens, N.Y., lifeguard, 23, who was named one of PEOPLE's Heroes of the Year, drowned on Dec. 24 in a surfing accident off Puerto Rico.
Does the idea of Tom Cruise dating a new woman make you laugh? Maybe. A story that falsely linked the actor romantically to a 26-year-old restaurant manager, had readers clicking LOL. Or maybe the funny part was this quote from a source, who told told PEOPLE: "He's single and will be talking to women – all of whom he won't be instantly dating."
Check back next week for another must-read roundup, and see what readers are reacting to every day here.
Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating
Label: HealthThis is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.
After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.
It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.
All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.
For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.
Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."
What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.
"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.
What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.
A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.
The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.
Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.
Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.
"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.
A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.
Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.
"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."
___
Online:
Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html
___
Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe
Asia stocks at five-month high as end nears for U.S. fiscal cliff
Label: BusinessHONG KONG (Reuters) - Asian stocks hit a five-month high and the dollar fell as a last-minute deal looked set to end the U.S. "fiscal cliff" crisis that threatened a U.S. recession and roiled world financial markets.
The U.S. Senate early on Tuesday passed a bill that aims to avoid the cliff's automatic implementation of $600 billion in spending cuts and tax increases.
The bill easily cleared a procedural vote in the House of Representatives allaying earlier concerns over complaints from a number of Republicans that spending cuts were still not adequately addressed.
Asian stock markets cheered the developments as a major risk for investors, namely a slump in global growth, appeared to have receded for now.
The MSCI Asia Pacific ex-Japan index of stocks <.miapj0000pus> jumped 1.7 percent. Chinese shares in Hong Kong <.hsce> jumped 2.6 percent as last month's rally spilled over into the new year.
"The mood now is that it will pass," said Satoshi Okagawa, senior global markets analyst for Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in Singapore, referring to the budget bill before the House of Representatives.
"If the fog caused by the fiscal cliff disappears, there will probably be moves toward putting risk back on," Okagawa said.
In South Korea, where data showed manufacturing activity rose for the first time in seven months in December, the KOSPI index <.ks11> was up 1.4 percent.
Asian stocks outside Japan rose nearly 20 percent last year as a combination of improving economic data from China, easing worries about a euro zone blow-up, and global central bank easing that encouraged investors back into equity markets.
Sakthi Siva, Asia strategist for Credit Suisse, said in a note to clients that 2013 could see similar returns for Asian equities, given a solution to the fiscal crisis.
"As we move into 2013 we retain our bullish bias, and our theme is whether markets could catch up with earnings," said Siva, adding that markets in China and India could offer the most upside given the mismatch between index levels and earnings expectations.
OIL, EURO UP
Risky assets across the board got a lift with crude oil futures and the euro both up 0.7 percent.
Copper futures in London rose 1.5 percent.
The safe-haven U.S. dollar edged lower, falling 0.6 percent against a basket of major currencies <.dxy>.
The Australian dollar, a currency that tends to benefit when optimism about the outlook for the global economy increases, rose 0.6 percent to $1.0463.
The Japanese yen continued its slide as investors wagered the Bank of Japan would have to take ever-more aggressive easing steps to support the economy and satisfy the new government.
The yen fell to 87.17 against the dollar to its weakest level since July 2010.
The Japanese currency also dropped to depths not seen in more than four years against the Australian and New Zealand dollars.
(Additional reporting by Wayne Cole in SYDNEY and Masayuki Kitano in SINGAPORE; Editing by Eric Meijer)
Ruthless Smuggling Rings Put Rhinos in Cross Hairs
Label: World
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa — They definitely did not look like ordinary big-game hunters, the stream of slender young Thai women who showed up on the veld wearing tight bluejeans and sneakers.
But the rhinoceros carcasses kept piling up around them, and it was only after dozens of these hulking, relatively rare animals were dead and their precious horns sawed off that an extravagant scheme came to light.
The Thai women, it ends up, were not hunters at all. Many never even squeezed off a shot. Instead, they were prostitutes hired by a criminal syndicate based 6,000 miles away in Laos to exploit loopholes in big-game hunting rules and get its hands on as many rhino horns as possible — horns that are now worth more than gold.
“These girls had no idea what they were doing,” said Paul O’Sullivan, a private investigator in Johannesburg who helped crack the case. “They thought they were going on safari.”
The rhino horn rush has gotten so out of control that it has exploded into a worldwide criminal enterprise, drawing in a surreal cast of characters — not just Thai prostitutes, but also Irish gangsters, Vietnamese diplomats, Chinese scientists, veterinarians, copter pilots, antiques dealers and recently an American rodeo star looking for a quick buck who used Facebook to find some horns.
Driven by a common belief in Asia that ground-up rhino horns can cure cancer and other ills, the trade has also been embraced by criminal syndicates that normally traffic drugs and guns, but have branched into the underground animal parts business because it is seen as “low risk, high profit,” American officials say.
“Get caught smuggling a kilo of cocaine, you will receive a very significant prison sentence,” said Ed Grace, a deputy chief with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. But with a kilogram of rhino horn, he added, “you may only get a fine.”
The typical rhino horn is about two feet long and 10 pounds, much of it formed from the same substance as fingernails. Yet it can fetch nearly $30,000 a pound, more than crack cocaine, and conservationists worry that this “ridiculous price,” as one wildlife manager put it, could drive rhinos into extinction.
Gangs are so desperate for new sources of horn that criminals have even smashed into dozens of glass museum cases all across Europe to snatch them from exhibits.
“Astonishment and rage, that’s what we felt,” said Paolo Agnelli, a manager at the Florence Museum of Natural History, after three rhino horns were stolen last year, including a very rare one from 1824.
American federal agents recently staged a cross-country undercover rhino horn sting operation, called Operation Crash, “crash” being the term for a herd of rhinos.
Among the 12 people arrested: Wade Steffen, a champion steer wrestler from Texas, who pleaded guilty in May to trafficking dozens of horns that he found through hunters, estate sales and Facebook; and two members of an Irish gang — the same gang suspected of breaking into the museums in Europe.
In an e-mail to an undercover agent, an Irish gangster bragged: “Believe me WE NEVER LOSES A HORN TO CUSTOMS, we have so many contacts and people payed off now we can bring anything we want out of nearly any country into Europe.”
Corruption is a huge element, just like in the illegal ivory trade, in which rebel groups, government armies and threadbare hunters have been wiping out tens of thousands of elephants throughout Africa, selling the tusks to sophisticated criminal networks that move them across the globe with the help of corrupt officials.
Here in South Africa, home to the majority of the world’s last surviving 28,000 rhinos or so, the country is throwing just about everything it has to stop the slaughter — thousands of rangers, the national army, a new spy plane, even drones — but it is losing.
The number of rhinos poached in South Africa has soared in the past five years, from 13 killed in 2007 to more than 630 in 2012. The prehistoric, battleship-gray animals are often found on their knees, bleeding to death from a gaping stump on their face.
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