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Showing posts with the label defying U.S.

D.C. Is the New Hub for U.S. Ivory Sales

As states impose their own bans on ivory to help save elephants, it appears the market is simply shifting to other spots. New York City has long been a hub of the U.S. ivory market, but a state ban enacted in 2014 has reduced the amount of ivory for sale. Here, an antique store on 5th Avenue displayed ivory items in the window.   Has the nation’s capital become the new center of the U.S. ivory trade? Investigators counted almost three times as many ivory items for sale in the Washington, D.C., area in 2016 than ten years earlier, even as the amount of ivory for sale in other parts of the country has been decreasing. From antique shops to flea markets, galleries, and even a tobacco shop, some 658 pieces of ivory for sale were identified in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area by investigators with TRAFFIC, the wildlife monitoring organization. A  new report from TRAFFIC, with support from the World Wildlife Fund and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a conservatio

Iran tests missile and radar systems, defying U.S. sanctions

Iran is holding a military exercise on Saturday to test its missile and radar systems, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump's administration imposed sanctions on Tehran for a recent ballistic missile test. The United States sanctioned 13 individuals and 12 entities related to Iran's missile programme and Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn said the United States was putting Iran on notice over its "destabilising activity". Iran's Revolutionary Guards website said that the aim of the military exercise in Semnan province was to "showcase the power of Iran's revolution and to dismiss the sanctions." Iranian state news agencies reported that home-made missile systems, radars, command and control centres, and cyber warfare systems would be tested in the drill. Although tensions between Washington and Iran have risen, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Saturday he was not considering raising the number of U.S. forces in the Mi