KABUL: The trade of scorpion hunting in Afghanistan, though unregistered, has been around for years but has become a lucrative business in the past few months.
A local dealer from western Herat province said Herat and neighboring Farah, with vast scorching deserts, have become the common hunting ground for shepherds and poor local residents who spend hours and sometimes days trying to catch scorpions.
Scorpions are in high demand for medical research, scorpion smoking and other uses. Its venom is used to develop compounds for anti-cancer medicines while it is a popular street-food snack in many countries, including China.
Requesting anonymity while talking to Arab News, the dealer explained that the invertebrates can cost an average of hundreds of dollars while one weighing 60 grams was sold for as much as $120,000. It all depends on the size of the scorpion and the broker’s offer, he said. “The final price of the scorpion increases with a hike in the number of brokers.”
The weight of the scorpion matters because, according to Khan, those weighing more than 40 grams have a longer life expectancy.
Scorpions hunted in neighboring Farah are brought to Herat city where local dealers compete with each other to find a foreign buyer for their merchandise. The buyers are often Chinese, Arab and Iranian nationals who take them out of the country for medical research and consumption purposes, the dealer told Arab News from Herat by phone.
“It has become a new lucrative business for the past few months now. In the old days we used to kill them (black scorpions) because they are very deadly, now we are chasing to find one,” he said.
While the trade is legal in parts of Pakistan, the authorities in Afghanistan are still considering whether to curb the practice, adding to the fear of local dealers who are avoiding being coerced into giving away their foreign buyers.
“The transaction is conducted in the underground or on social media,” said the dealer.
An investigative reporter for a local Kabul daily bought a 10 gram scorpion for $1,000 from a local dealer in Herat, disguising himself as a frontman for a foreign pharmaceutical firm, Hashte Sobh said in its May 29 edition.
Smuggling scorpions is easy as the creature is tough and can last in a hot climate, surviving in covered boxes without food for several weeks.
Lawmakers from the region have expressed their concern over the trade, especially its impact on the ecosystem.
A spokesman for Herat’s governor, Jailani Farhad, confirmed that the trade was taking place and said the authorities were looking into it.
“We are collecting facts and looking into legalities on whether such kind of trade of a rare type of insect is illegal or not. Instructions have been given to the local authorities in this regard,” Farhad told Arab News.
Kazim Humayoun, a Kabul-based ecological expert, said that Afghanistan has compiled a “Red List” that bars hunting and smuggling of 148 species of animals, birds and insects.
“There are species that have gone extinct and some are on the verge of extinction. The falcons here and another bird named Dogh Dogh have also been key attractions for local and Arab hunters in the past,” he said.
There is a high demand for scorpion venom, especially in the US and Europe, where — according to a report published in the Wall Street Journal — the product is sold for $39 million a gallon.
Black scorpion smuggling in Afghanistan is big business
Black scorpion smuggling in Afghanistan is big business
- Black scorpions can cost on average hundreds of dollars; one weighing 60 grams was sold for as much as $120,000, according to a local Herat dealer.
- The final price of the scorpion increases with a rise in the number of brokers.
Austria wins Eurovision crown with JJ’s song Wasted Love
BASEL, Switzerland: Austria won the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Swiss host city Basel on Saturday, with the country’s first victory since bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst won in 2014.
Operatic singer JJ won ahead of Israel in the world’s biggest music competition, which was watched by more than 160 million people across the world.
The win was Austria’s third in the competition, following Conchita’s success and Udo Juergens’ victory in 1966.
JJ, a 24-year-old from Vienna, combined elements of opera, techno and high-pitched vocals in his song Wasted Love, winning the hearts of the professional juries and telephone voters.
Switzerland won the right to host Eurovision after Swiss rapper and singer Nemo won last year’s contest in Malmo, Sweden.
Fans traveled from across Europe and beyond to Basel, with 100,000 people attending Eurovision events in the city, including the final.
Eurovision, which stresses its political neutrality, has also faced controversy again this year due to the war in Gaza.
Israel’s entrant, Yuval Raphael, was at the Nova music festival during the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
Pro-Palestinian groups urged the European Broadcasting Union to exclude Israel over Gaza, where more than 50,000 people have been killed in the ensuing offensive by Israel, according to local health officials.
Around 200 protesters mounted a demonstration in Basel on Saturday evening.
Spanish public broadcaster RTVE also showed a message before the start of the Eurovision show saying “When human rights are at stake, silence is not an option. Peace and Justice for Palestine.”
Man badly hurt by falling palm tree at Cannes film festival
- The Asian man, believed to have been attending the festival, was badly injured
- A sudden gust of wind brought the tree down
CANNES: A man was seriously hurt after a palm tree fell onto him at the Cannes film festival on Saturday.
The Asian man, believed to have been attending the festival, was badly injured, firemen who treated him at the scene said.
A sudden gust of wind brought the tree down near the Palais des Festivals on the Croisette esplanade overlooking the Mediterranean, an AFP journalist at the scene said.
The accident happened as the American movie “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Pedro Pascal was being shown.
The Croisette was crowded with festivalgoers when the tree fell, witnesses said.
“There was a terrible gust of wind and I heard a cry,” said Marthy Fink from Luxembourg.
Musician charged with Chris Brown in alleged London nightclub assault
LONDON: A fellow musician and friend of Chris Brown has been charged alongside the Grammy-winning singer on allegations they beat and seriously injured a music producer at a London nightclub in 2023, police said Saturday.
Omolulu Akinlolu, 38, who performs under the name “Hoody Baby,” was due to appear in Manchester Magistrates’ Court on a charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
Brown, 36, was jailed without bail on the same charge Friday, throwing his upcoming tour into question. He is scheduled to appear at Southwark Crown Court in London on June 13, which is the third day of his world tour.
Akinlolu is a rapper from Dallas, Texas, who has collaborated with Brown and Lil Wayne. He also goes by the names “Fat Leopard” and “Super Hood.”
Police gave no details on what role Akinlolu played in the alleged assault but said he was charged in connection with the same incident as Brown.
Brown was on tour in the UK in February 2023 when he launched an unprovoked attack on producer Abe Diaw, striking him several times with a bottle at the Tape nightclub in the swanky Mayfair neighborhood in London, prosecutor Hannah Nicholls said in court Friday.
Brown then chased Diaw and punched and kicked him in an attack caught on surveillance camera in front of a club full of people, she said.
Brown did not enter a plea and only spoke to confirm his name, birth date and gave his address as the Lowry Hotel, where he was arrested in Manchester early Thursday and taken into custody.
Brown’s representative has not responded to multiple requests for comment from The Associated Press.
Brown, often called by his nickname Breezy, burst onto the music scene as a teen in 2005 and has become a major hitmaker over the years with notable songs such as “Run It,” “Kiss Kiss” and “Without You.”
He won his first Grammy for best R&B album in 2011 for “F.A.M.E.” and then earned his second gold trophy in the same category for “11:11 (Deluxe)” earlier this year.
He is scheduled to launch an international tour next month with artists Jhene Aiko, Summer Walker and Bryson Tiller, opening with a European leg on June 8 in Amsterdam before starting North America shows in July.
Cassie testimony against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs ends after she spent days describing abuse and texts
- Cassie, who is pregnant with her third child and nearing her due date, spent four days on the witness stand
NEW YORK: R&B singer Cassie delved further into text messages with former boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs during her cross-examination Friday in the music mogul’s sex trafficking trial, telling him “I’m not a rag doll. I’m somebody’s child” after he beat her at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016.
However, as they tried to recover from the episode, she and Combs were expressing love for each other just days later, with Cassie writing in one text: “We need a different vibe from Friday.”
She and one of Combs’ defense attorneys read the couple’s messages aloud during two days of cross-examination in a Manhattan courtroom, which ended Friday afternoon. The defense also tried to discredit Cassie’s testimony that Combs raped her in 2018 after she ended their nearly 11-year relationship.
In the “rag doll” text, Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, told Combs he was out of control from drugs and alcohol that day. After hotel security video of the assault was released last year, Combs apologized and said he was “disgusted” by his actions.
Federal prosecutors allege Combs exploited his status as a music executive and businessman to force women into drug-fueled encounters with male sex workers, called “freak-offs,” that he watched and directed. Cassie is one of several accusers expected to testify.
However, Combs’ lawyers want the jury to see Cassie as a willing and eager participant in his sexual lifestyle. He has pleaded not guilty to federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges.
His defense says that, although he could be violent, nothing he did amounted to a criminal enterprise. And Combs insists all the sex at the freak-offs was consensual.
Cassie, the prosecution’s star witness, testified she was ashamed and loathed taking part in “hundreds” of the freak-offs, which could go on for days. But she said she felt compelled because Combs threatened her with violence, and was physically abusive “a lot” during the encounters. He also threatened to publicly release sex videos of her if she made him angry, she said.
Combs, 55, has been jailed since September. He faces at least 15 years in prison if convicted.
Cassie cross-examination ends Friday
Cassie, who is pregnant with her third child and nearing her due date, spent four days on the witness stand.
When Judge Arun Subramanian told her she could leave, saying, “You’ve been here a long time,” Cassie glanced once toward the jury but never looked in Combs’ direction as she walked out of the courtroom for the final time.
Throughout Friday’s testimony, Combs kept lowering his head to write a steady stream of messages on small sheets of paper that he passed to his defense attorneys.
Singer Dawn Richard takes the stand
Dawn Richard is a singer who appeared on Combs’ reality show “Making the Band,” which launched her group act Danity Kane. She testified Friday that she witnessed Combs physically attack Cassie on multiple occasions.
Richard said she and another woman saw Combs hit Cassie “on the head and beat her on the ground” while at his home studio in 2009. He brought them back the next day, giving Richard flowers and putting a spin on what happened.
“He said that what we saw was passion and what lovers in relationships do,” she testified. But he also locked them in his recording studio and allegedly threatened them to stay silent or else, she said.
Richard sued Combs last year, accusing him of physical abuse, groping and psychological abuse during the years they worked together.
Cassie’s texts to Diddy are a key part of cross-examination
During cross-examination on Thursday and Friday, the defense had Cassie read texts and emails that showed her apparent willingness to participate in the sexual encounters Combs orchestrated.
In a 2012 exchange, Combs told Cassie he wanted to “FO one last time tonight,” using initials for freak-off. Cassie replied, “What?” Combs said, “You can’t read?” Then Cassie replied, “I don’t want to freak off for the last time. I want it to be the first time for the rest of our lives.”
Estevao ended her questioning there, but prosecutor Emily Johnson had Cassie read more messages for context.
“I want to see you, but I’m emotional right now,” Cassie wrote. “I don’t want to do one last time. I’d rather not do it at all.”
Cassie testified she was initially open to the encounters because she wanted to make him happy and spend time with him, but grew weary as the years went on.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Cassie has.
Cassie filed a lawsuit in 2023 accusing Combs of physical and sexual abuse, but they settled within hours for $20 million — an amount she disclosed publicly for the first time this week. Dozens of other women have since made similar legal claims.
Cassie’s testimony ended with another bombshell disclosure: She said she recently reached an estimated $10 million settlement with Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles, where she was assaulted. She didn’t disclose the nature of her claim.
Scrutiny on the 2018 rape claim against Combs
Estevao also raised questions on Friday about Cassie’s rape claim against Combs, noting that Cassie gave differing descriptions of his demeanor and the timing of the alleged assault in interviews with investigators and in her trial testimony.
Cassie contends the rape happened at her Los Angeles home after she and Combs had dinner in Malibu, California, to discuss their breakup, either in August or September 2018.
While Cassie testified this week that Combs was “really nice” and “playful” at the dinner, Estevao pointed out that Cassie told investigators in 2023 that Combs had been “acting very strangely” that night. Cassie clarified, “Nice, but strangely.”
Cassie also testified this week that Combs, during the dinner, was trying to get her to go to the Burning Man festival in Nevada, but previously told investigators that the dinner and rape happened after Combs returned from Burning Man.
Cassie acknowledged she stayed in touch with Combs and had consensual sex with him a few weeks after she says he raped her. She also exchanged warm messages with Combs after they broke up, even after she marrying Alex Fine in 2019.
Cassie’s parting words
Cassie released a statement saying she hoped her testimony helps others “heal from the abuse and fear.”
“For me, the more I heal, the more I can remember,” she said. “And the more I can remember, the more I will never forget.”
Kazuo Ishiguro: ‘When you go from book to film, that’s a fireside moment’
CANNES, France: Kazuo Ishiguro ‘s mother was in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped.
When Ishiguro, the Nobel laureate and author of “Remains of the Day” and “Never Let Me Go,” first undertook fiction writing in his 20s, his first novel, 1982’s “A Pale View of Hills” was inspired by his mother’s stories, and his own distance from them. Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki but, when he was 5, moved to England with his family.
“A Pale View of Hills” marked the start to what’s become one of the most lauded writing careers in contemporary literature. And, now, like most of Ishiguro’s other novels, it’s a movie, too.
Kei Ishikawa’s film by the same name premiered Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival in its Un Certain Regard section. The 70-year-old author has been here before; he was a member of the jury in 1994 that gave “Pulp Fiction” the Palme d’Or. “At the time it was a surprise decision,” he says. “A lot of people booed.”
Ishiguro is a movie watcher and sometimes maker, too. He penned the 2022 Akira Kurosawa adaptation “Living.” Movies are a regular presence in his life, in part because filmmakers keep wanting to turn his books into them. Taika Waititi is currently finishing a film of Ishiguro’s most recent novel, “Klara and the Sun” .
Ishiguro likes to participate in early development of an adaptation, and then disappear, letting the filmmaker take over. Seeing “A Pale View of Hills” turned into an elegant, thoughtful drama is especially meaningful to him because the book, itself, deals with inheritance, and because it represents his beginning as a writer.
“There was no sense that anyone else was going to reread this thing,” he says. “So in that sense, it’s different to, say, the movie of ‘Remains of the Day’ or the movie of ‘Never Let Me Go.’”
Remarks have been lightly edited.
AP: Few writers alive have been more adapted than you. Does it help keep a story alive?
ISHIGURO: Often people think I’m being unduly modest when I say I want the film to be different to the book. I don’t want it to be wildly different. But in order for the film to live, there has to be a reason why it’s being made then, for the audience at that moment. Not 25 years ago, or 45 years ago, as in the case of this book. It has to be a personal artistic expression of something, not just a reproduction. Otherwise, it can end up like a tribute or an Elvis impersonation.
Whenever I see adaptations of books not work, it’s always because it’s been too reverential. Sometimes it’s laziness. People think: Everything is there in the book. The imagination isn’t pushed to work. For every one of these things that’s made it to the screen, there’s been 10, 15 developments that I’ve been personally involved with that fell by the wayside. I always try to get people to just move it on.
AP: You’ve said, maybe a little tongue in cheek, that you’d like to be like Homer.
ISHIGURO: You can take two kind of approaches. You write a novel and that’s the discrete, perfect thing. Other people can pay homage to it but basically that’s it. Or you can take another view that stories are things that just get passed around, down generations. Even though you think you wrote an original story, you’ve put it together out of other stuff that’s come before you. So it’s part of that tradition.
I said Homer but it could be folktales. The great stories are the ones that last and last and last. They turn up in different forms. It’s because people can change and adapt them to their times and their culture that these stories are valuable. There was a time when people would sit around a fire and just tell each other these stories. You sit down with some anticipation: This guy is going to tell it in a slightly different way. What’s he going to do? It’s like if Keith Jarrett sits down and says he’s going to play “Night and Day.” So when you go from book to film, that’s a fireside moment. That way it has a chance of lasting, and I have a chance of turning into Homer.
AP: I think you’re well on your way.
ISHIGURO: I’ve got a few centuries to go.
AP: Do you remember writing “A Pale View of Hills?” You were in your 20s.
ISHIGURO: I was between the age of 24 and 26. It was published when I was 27. I remember the circumstances very vividly. I can even remember writing a lot of those scenes. My wife, Lorna, was my girlfriend back then. We were both postgraduate students. I wrote it on a table about this size, which was also where we would have our meals. When she came in at the end of the day, I had to pack up even if I was at the crucial point of some scene. It was no big deal. I was just doing something indulgent. There was no real sense I had a career or it would get published. So it’s strange all these years later that she and I are here and attended this premiere in Cannes.
AP: To me, much of what the book and movie capture is what can be a unbridgeable distance between generations.
ISHIGURO: I think that’s really insightful what you just said. There is a limit to how much understanding there can be between generations. What’s needed is a certain amount of generosity on both sides, to respect each other’s generations and the difference in values. I think an understanding that the world was a really complicated place, and that often individuals can’t hope to have perspective on the forces that are playing on them at the time. To actually understand that needs a generosity.
AP: You’ve always been meticulous at meting out information, of uncovering mysteries of the past and present. Your characters try to grasp the world they’ve been born into. Did that start with your own family investigation?
ISHIGURO: I wasn’t like a journalist trying to get stuff out of my mother. There’s part of me that was quite reluctant to hear this stuff. On some level it was kind of embarrassing to think of my mother in such extreme circumstances. A lot of the things she told me weren’t to do with the atomic bomb. Those weren’t her most traumatic memories.
My mother was a great oral storyteller. She would sometimes have a lunch date and do a whole version of a Shakespeare play by herself. That was my introduction to “Hamlet” or things like that. She was keen to tell me but also wary of telling me. It was always a fraught thing. Having something formal — “Oh, I’m becoming a writer, I’m going to write up something so these memories can be preserved” — that made it easier.
AP: How has your relationship with the book changed with time?
ISHIGURO: Someone said to me the other day, “We live in a time now where a lot of people would sympathize with the older, what you might call fascist views.” It’s not expressed overtly; the older teacher is saying it’s tradition and patriotism.
Now, maybe we live in a world where that’s a good point, and that hadn’t occurred to me. It’s an example of: Yes, we write in a bubble and make movies in a kind of a bubble. But the power of stories is they have to go into different values.
This question of how you pass stories on, this is one of the big challenges. You have to reexamine every scene. Some things that might have been a very safe assumption only a few years ago would not be because the value systems are changing around our books and films just as much as they’re changing around us.
