165-year-old newspaper vows to publish despite office fire
Woodstock (US): A newspaper that has published every week since its founding in 1853 but recently lost its office in a fire has vowed it will publish this week’s issue, too.
Vermont Standard president and owner Phil Camp Sr. said Wednesday that production was running one day behind normal schedule but he and his staff felt a duty to Woodstock, the community where they live and work.
“On my watch, we’re always going to have a local newspaper,” Camp said. Early Monday morning, a fire tore through a building that housed the Standard’s office, a restaurant and an apartment. Woodstock fire Chief David Green said the fire started in the restaurant and was being investigated as suspicious. This isn’t the first time the Standard, which usually publishes on Thursday, has been displaced.
Its office was destroyed by flooding from tropical storm Irene in 2011, and it survived two fires and a flood earlier in its history.
Assistant editor Virginia Dean said since 1853 the newspaper has always published. “We’ve been through 165 years,” Dean said. “We’ve been through tropical storm Irene and other fires, and we’ve never not published. We have that history as a foundation, as a motivator.”
The newspaper’s staff is working out of Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock, a town of roughly 3,000 residents. Firefighters salvaged the newspaper’s computers, and the library’s executive director, Amanda Merk, said its trustees are more than happy to provide the space. Camp said Woodstock once had seven weekly newspapers but only the Standard remains.
Camp said that the community has always been his biggest motivation in running the Standard, a sentiment echoed by his staff. “The thing that community newspapers have going for them is that first word: community. This is truly the community’s newspaper,” editor Gareth Henderson said. (AP)
China seizes 156 mammoth tusks in huge ivory haul
Beijing: Chinese customs authorities said they seized 156 prehistoric mammoth tusks from a truck entering from Russia in one of the country’s largest such hauls.
The contraband was seized in late April at a border crossing in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province bordering on Siberia, but the find was only announced this week by Chinese customs, state media said. The haul, which also included two elephant tusks and a range of other animal parts, was hidden under a shipment of soybeans. Eight suspects, including Russians and Chinese, have been arrested, the People’s Daily said.
China banned the sale and processing of elephant ivory last year after having banned its import in 2015. This, along with global efforts to stamp out the ivory trade to save elephants from extinction, have led smugglers to turn to a stock of ancient mammoth tusks buried mostly in Siberia but also Europe and North America. The People’s Daily said the shipment as a whole was one of China’s largest involving animal parts in recent years.
The official Xinhua news agency said the inventory included “two elephant tusks, 1,276 antelope horns, 156 mammoth tusks, 406 walrus tusks, 226 narwhal tusks, as well as gall bladders and bear teeth and 320 kilos of sea cucumbers”. A wide variety of animal parts are sought after in China as traditional medicines or for other uses, while ivory carving is an ancient art in the country. The latest seizure’s estimated value was 106 million yuan, Xinhua said, adding that an investigation was under way. (AFP)