Anti-whaling campaigners said on Thursday that they had uncovered an embezzlement ring at the heart of the Japanese whaling fleet, accusing crew members of stealing choice cuts of whale meat worth millions of yen for sale on the black market.
Militant environmentalists hurled stinging acid for more than an hour onto a Japanese whaling ship off Antarctica on Monday, hurting three crew members, officials said. Both Japan and Australia, the leading opponent of whaling, condemned the latest attack by the Sea Shepherd group.
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/ 17 November 2007
Japan’s whaling fleet is set to depart on Sunday for an annual hunt that this year for the first time will take humpback whales — a perennial favourite among whale-watchers — sparking protests from activists. Japan abandoned commercial whaling in accordance with an international moratorium in 1986, but began the next year to conduct what it calls scientific research whaling.