Free Republic

A 45-year-old man was jailed for 17 months on Wednesday (April 8) after he was caught smuggling 22kg of white rhinoceros horns worth an estimated US$563,000 (S$804,000) at Singapore’s Changi Airport without a permit. In a statement issued after the sentence was handed down, the National Parks Board said the penalty was "the heaviest sentence meted out for the smuggling of wildlife parts in Singapore" to date. The court heard that the horns had been removed from at least five adult white rhinoceros — a species that is threatened with extinction according to an international convention — the court heard....

North Korean diplomat expelled from SA for rhino horn trafficking 2015-12-23 14:43 Julian Rademeyer, News24 Correspondent Pretoria - A high-ranking North Korean diplomat accused of abusing his diplomatic immunity and his embassy's diplomatic bag to smuggle rhino horn out of South Africa has been expelled from the country. News24 has learnt that Park Chol-jun - also identified in some news reports as Pak Chol Chun - quietly left the country on December 11. A spokesperson for the Department of International Relations and Co-operation (Dirco), Nelson Kgwete, did not name Park, but confirmed on Tuesday that the department had been "informed...

Among those arrested were a father and son from Orange County, as well as the father's girlfriend, on charges related to trafficking in a commodity that largely has been banned by international trade laws since 1976.

Kim Jong Il Turns 68 Amid Health Questions Tuesday , February 16, 2010 SEOUL, South Korea — North Koreans celebrated "peerlessly brilliant" leader Kim Jong Il's 68th birthday Tuesday as questions persist abroad about his health and the future of the impoverished, nuclear-armed nation. Depressed and chronically ill, Kim relies on rare, costly and sometimes outlawed remedies such as rhino's horn and the bile of bear gall bladder, one South Korean official told The Associated Press. Another intelligence expert said North Koreans have gone twice to Beijing since 2008 to buy prized remedies, spending more than $610,000 on one shopping...