Lawyer: Cages OK for exotic animals

Lawyer: Cages OK for exotic animals

COLUMBUS

An attorney for a suicidal animal-owner’s widow who is seeking the return of exotic animals that survived an October release said she has adequate cages for them at her eastern Ohio farm, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Three leopards, two primates and a bear survived the release of dozens of wild creatures in Zanesville. They have been under a state-issued quarantine at the Columbus Zoo. One leopard was euthanized after it was struck by a door at the zoo.

Attorney Robert McClelland wrote to Ohio officials last week on behalf of his client, Marian Thompson.

The state’s agriculture director told him earlier this month that the Ohio Department of Agriculture required proof of the arrangements Thompson has made for the animals’ confinement and care. The department has scheduled an administrative hearing for Monday on Thompson’s request.

hShuttle arrives in NYC; crowds in awe

NEW YORK

In a city understandably wary of low-flying aircraft, New Yorkers and tourists alike watched with joy and excitement Friday as space shuttle Enterprise sailed over the skyline on its final flight before it becomes a museum piece.

Ten years after 9/11, people gathered on rooftops and the banks of the Hudson River to marvel at the sight of the spacecraft riding piggyback on a modified jumbo jet that flew over the Statue of Liberty and past the skyscrapers along Manhattan’s West Side.

The aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, a floating air-and-space museum, will be the shuttle’s permanent home.

Dutch ban aims at tourists buying pot

AMSTERDAM

This country of canals and tulips also is famous for “coffee shops” where joints and cappuccinos share the menu. Now, the Netherlands’ famed tolerance for drugs could be going up in smoke.

A judge on Friday upheld a government plan to ban foreign tourists from buying marijuana by introducing a “weed pass” available only to Dutch citizens and permanent residents.

The new regulation reins in one of the country’s most cherished symbols of tolerance — its laissez-faire attitude toward soft drugs — and reflects the drift away from a long-held view of the Netherlands as a free- wheeling utopia.

Bombing kills 10 in Syrian capital

BEIRUT

Two weeks into a cease-fire agreement, there still was no peace in Syria: Security agents in Damascus collected the remains of 10 people killed in a suicide bombing. Activists reported troops firing on protesters. Video showed a crowd carrying a slain boy to U.N. observers as proof of regime violence.

The head of the United Nations said Syrian President Bashar Assad’s continued crackdown on protests has reached an “intolerable stage,” and that the U.N. will try to speed up the deployment of up to 300 monitors to Syria. Only 15 are there now.

Associated Press