Yerkes pays 2/3 of original OSHA fine in 1997 researcher death

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

Emory University, of Atlanta, on
December 2 announced it had agreed to pay a
fine of $66,400, two-thirds of the amount
originally assessed by the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration, in negotiated
settlement of charges resulting from the
December 1997 death of Yerkes Regional
Primate Research Center researcher
Elizabeth Griffin, 22.
Griffin died from a herpes B viral
infection after a caged monkey she was moving
apparently spat in her eye. Griffin was not
wearing eye protection. It was the first documented
case of herpes B infection through the
eye membranes. As well as lowering the fine,
OSHA also dropped language from the settlement
agreement which stated Yerkes had
“willfully” broken safety rules.

ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT ET AL

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

British home secretary Jack Straw,
whose position is analagous to that of the U.S.
Speaker of the House, on December 17 recommended
legislation to expand anti-terrorist legislation
which would both strengthen the rights of
accused persons to a prompt public hearing, and
extend laws now pertaining only to international
violence and the “troubles” in Northern Ireland
to cover any “use of serious violence against persons
or property, or the threat to use such violence
to intimidate or coerce a government, the
public, or any section of the public for political,
religious, or ideological ends.” Although the
proposed legislation does not specifically mention
violence associated with animal rights
activism, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, and
London Times all prominently made the link.
Authorities recorded approximately 800 incidents
of vandalism and arson undertaken in
Britain in the name of animal rights during 1997.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

$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.

Read more

1 395 396 397 398 399 648