China Completely Bans Ivory Trade

A government official picks up an ivory tusk to crush it at a confiscated ivory destruction ceremony in Beijing, China, May 29, 2015. (Reuters)
A government official picks up an ivory tusk to crush it at a confiscated ivory destruction ceremony in Beijing, China, May 29, 2015. (Reuters)
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China Completely Bans Ivory Trade

A government official picks up an ivory tusk to crush it at a confiscated ivory destruction ceremony in Beijing, China, May 29, 2015. (Reuters)
A government official picks up an ivory tusk to crush it at a confiscated ivory destruction ceremony in Beijing, China, May 29, 2015. (Reuters)

A complete ban on ivory trade went into effect Sunday in China, which had been smugglers’ top destination.

The Chinese Forestry Ministry said on its official account on Chinese social media platform Weibo: “From today… the buying and selling of elephant ivory and goods by any market, shop or vendor is against the law!”

“From now on, if a merchant tells you ‘this is a state-approved ivory dealer’… he is duping you and knowingly violating the law,” it added.

The ministry said that the ban also applied to online sales and souvenirs purchased abroad.

According to the Xinhua state news agency, a partial ban had already resulted in an 80 percent decline in seizures of ivory entering China. Domestic prices for raw ivory are down 65 percent, it said.

In March, Xinhua reported, 67 factories and shops involved in China’s ivory trade had closed. The remaining 105 were expected to close later.

In March 2016, Beijing had previously banned imports of all ivory and ivory products acquired before 1975.

Ivory sees high demand in China, where one kilogram is sold for 1,050 euros, reflecting a high social standard. The demand in the country leads to the killing of tens of thousands of African elephants annually.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced that the illegal hunting of elephants has led to a decline in these animals’ number by 110,000 to reach 415,000.



Dreams and Nightmares Exhibit at World’s Oldest Psychiatric Hospital

Between Sleeping and Waking: Hospital Dreams and Visions is at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Beckenham, London, from 14 August (Bethlem Museum of the Mind)
Between Sleeping and Waking: Hospital Dreams and Visions is at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Beckenham, London, from 14 August (Bethlem Museum of the Mind)
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Dreams and Nightmares Exhibit at World’s Oldest Psychiatric Hospital

Between Sleeping and Waking: Hospital Dreams and Visions is at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Beckenham, London, from 14 August (Bethlem Museum of the Mind)
Between Sleeping and Waking: Hospital Dreams and Visions is at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Beckenham, London, from 14 August (Bethlem Museum of the Mind)

A new exhibition featuring artwork and poems from contemporary artists and former patients will go on show at the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital, Bethlem, in London, the Guardian newspaper said on Monday.

The vivid dream that vanishes on waking but fragments of which remain tantalizingly out of reach all day. Powerful emotions – tears, terror, ecstasy, despair – caused not by real events, but by the brain’s activity between sleeping and waking.

“Dreams and nightmares have long been studied by psychologists,” the newspaper wrote.

Now they are the subject of a new exhibition featuring several artists that were patients at the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital, Bethlem (sometimes known as Bedlam), and its sister institution, the Maudsley hospital.

The exhibit includes paintings by Charlotte Johnson Wahl, the late mother of Boris Johnson, who spent eight months as a patient at the Maudsley after a breakdown when her four children were aged between two and nine.

She created dozens of paintings while there, and held her first exhibition which sold out. “I couldn’t talk about my problems, but I could paint them,” she said later.

Two of Johnson Wahl’s paintings are included in the exhibition, Between Sleeping and Waking: Hospital Dreams and Visions, which opens at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in August.

The centerpiece of the show is a huge installation, Night Tides, by contemporary artist Kate McDonnell. She uses swathes of bedding woven with disordered words to evoke the restlessness and clashing thoughts of insomnia.

According to Caroline Horton, professor of sleep and cognition and director of DrEAMSLab at Bishop Grosseteste university in Lincoln, “dreaming occurs during sleep, and sleep is essential for all aspects of mental and physical health.

Among other works featured in the exhibition is London’s Overthrow by Jonathan Martin, an arsonist held in the “criminal lunatic department” of Bethlem hospital from 1829 until his death in 1838. In 2012, the Guardian described it as a “mad pen-and-ink depiction of the capital’s destruction due to godlessness”.