Half a million disappears in alleged lost pet scam

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

Arizona grand jury charges
filed in mid-October 1998 are reportedly
pending against Britney Lee Marx, 34,
who allegedly bilked six acquaintances out
of a total of $500,000 between January 1997
and January 1998 through a scheme to offer
cash rewards for missing pets under the
name Protect Animals Through Angels
[PATA, easily confused with PETA.] “One
of the victims, Dale Lumb, said in a lawsuit
he filed in May 1998 that he lost about
$400,000 to Marx, a former friend. She
denied his claims,” wrote Mark Shaffer of
The Arizona Republic. Shaffer identified
Marx as a former stage impersonator of
Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, who
“changed her name from Cheryl Cusella in
1989,” after serving 38 days in jail and
drawing seven years on probation for two
counts of fraud resulting from allegations
that she defrauded investors while purportedly
promoting a Barbara Mandrell c o ncert
which never happened. Reportedly
ordered to pay more than $50,000 in restitution,
Cusella/Marx actually “paid about
$32,000, according to court records,” said
Shaffer, who added that she did actually
pay one $10,000 reward “to a woman who
found a lost poodle belonging to a friend of
hers.”

Gambling & Crookshank warn British charities about investing, breach of trust

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

British animal-issue organizations
ran into trouble one after another
near the pre-Christmas 1998 peak of
fundraising activity.
Embarrassed first was the Zoo-
logical Society of London, after London
Zoo director general Richard Burge, 40,
in early December announced he would
leave to head the pro-hunting Countryside
Alliance, starting February 1.
Royal SPCA press chief
Charlotte Morrissey urged Burge to “do
his homework” before betraying animal
welfare. “For us, cruelty is at the very
heart of this debate,” Morrissey said.

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Richard Leakey on rights

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

Explained recently reinstated Kenya
Wildlife Services director and world-reknowned
field biologist Richard Leakey recently to the Dali
Tambo’s People of the South broadcast audience,
“We now know that elephants communicate, have a
sense of humor, have a sense of grief, and have a
sense of family. They recognize family over several
generations.”
Allowing listeners to contemplate what all
that means for a moment, Leakey then declared, “I
think humans today owe animals a certain courtesy
and respect, and I believe the intelligent mammals,
in particular, need a bill of rights––not human
rights––but a bill of rights.”

Vivisector Adrian Morrison on rights

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

Long criticized by antivivisectionists for
taking a middle-of-the-road position that laboratory
use of animals is inevitable but that they should be
humanely treated, Working for Animals used in
Research, Drugs, and Surgery, formerly Our
Animal Wards, seemed to step to the opposite
extreme by giving three of the four pages in the fall
1998 WARDS newsletter Science and Animal Care
to an essay by arch-vivisectionist Adrian Morrison,
and a third of the remaining page to a synopsis of a
letter to The Washington Times by another professional
pro-vivisectionist, Jacqueline Calnan of
Americans for Medical Progress.
Nor did either Morrison, Calnan, or
WARDS itself have conciliatory words for their
opponents.

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Apology to the animals from Brother #2

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

“Known as Brother Number Two to the
late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, Nuon Chea was
architect of the brutal forced evacuation of
Cambodian cities in 1975,” Seth Mydans of T h e
New York Times reported on December 29 from
Phnom Penh. “Chea later had command responsibility
over a wave of purges in which many thousands of
people were tortured and killed.”
Now 71, Chea was asked by Englishspeaking
reporters at a news conference following his
surrender to the government of current Cambodian
prime minister Hun Sen if he had apologies to make.

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Bullfeathers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

Madrid regional government
children’s rights ombudsman
Javier Urra on January 5 told media
that he will soon formally ask the
regional assembly to bar children under
age 14 from bullrings. “We do not
object to bullfighting as such,” Urra
stated. “It is part of our culture and
some say it is an art. But there are ages
at which it should not be viewed.”
Urra’s request will have precedent: the
Catalona regional government barred
children from bullrings in December
1998. Concern about children at bullfights
may have been prompted, indirectly,
when a man was spotted carrying
a baby in a August 1998 running-ofthe-bulls
at Leganes, near Madrid,
accompanyied by a man who hand-led
children of approximately ages three
and five.

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$250,000 jury award in dog shooting

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

A federal jury in Richmond, California, on
December 30 ruled that Richmond police officers violated the
Fourth Amendment right against unwarranted search and seizure
by shooting an arthritic 11-year-old mixed breed dog named
Champ belonging to the James Fuller family in 1992, after
entering the Fuller yard, with guns drawn, in hot pursuit of a
fleeing suspect in an unrelated case. The jury awarded the
Fuller family $255,000 in costs and punitive damages.
The only comparable previous verdict in the A N IMAL
PEOPLE files was $5,000 awarded to Henry Blackwell
and his daughter LaShay by a Minneapolis jury in March 1998,
because police in 1995 shot their pet pit bull terrier Gippy as
many as 15 times while intervening in a neighborhood dispute.
Henry Blackwell’s son Henry Jr. reportedly tried to set the dog
on other parties to the dispute, but the dog hadn’t bitten anyone.

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First 10 ex-space chimps arrive at Primarily Primates

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

SAN ANTONIO––The first 10 chimpanzees
of 31 former members of the NASA colony who are to
be retired to Primarily Primates arrived on December 28.
All females, of ages ranging from 25 to mid-forties, the
group reportedly settled in easily, and are expected to
help those who follow to feel at home.
Five, transported ahead of the other five,
spent a week at the Southwest Foundation for
Biomedical Research, also in San Antonio, while the
Primarily Primates crew rushed to finish their quarters.
But that should be the last any of them ever see of confinement
at a research facility. Many have spent most of
their lives in close confinement, often in isolation. At
Primarily Primates, they will be housed in semi-natural
troupes, with both indoor and outdoor living areas,
from which they can come and go as they please.
The newcomers soon discovered a 24-foot
enclosed climbing tower.

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Gray wolves, red wolves, orange-painted wolves

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

JACKSON, Wyo.; TUCSON,
Ariz.; KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – – Another
confirmation of the success of the 1995
restoration of wolves to Yellowstone
National Park and northern Idaho came in
December 1998 when young packs of two
and three were spotted at multiple points in
Grand Teton National Park, just to the
south––the first time wolves apparently
born in Yellowstone fanned out into the
Tetons to find new territory.
The initial 41 wolves brought
from Alberta have multiplied up to more
than 120, enough that some might need to
extend their range beyond territory known
to their immediate forebears.
During the winter of 1997-1998,
the Soda Butte pack made a reconnaisance
of northern Grand Teton, near the village
of Moran, but stayed only briefly.

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