Skip to main content

Smoking orangutan riles anger against zoo in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A video of an orangutan smoking has brought more criticism of a zoo in Indonesia infamous for past animal welfare troubles.

In the video shot Sunday, a young man flicks his half-smoked cigarette into the primate’s enclosure. It’s picked up by the reddish-brown primate, who expertly puffs on it to laughter from the crowd.

Activist Marison Guciano said Wednesday the smoking ape is further evidence of a lack of supervision and education at Bandung Zoo, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) southwest of the capital, Jakarta.

Guciano said the man committed a crime but the privately owned zoo is mainly responsible because of its “ignorance of supervision and education for visitors.”

The zoo has repeatedly made headlines for starving and sick animals. It was temporarily closed in 2016 after a Sumatran elephant that died was found to have bruises on its body.

A change.org petition calling for Bandung Zoo to be closed has nearly 1 million signatures. Visitors who review the zoo on TripAdvisor describe a dirty facility and sadness and anger at seeing the condition of the animals.

Zoo spokesman Sulhan Syafi’I said “we very much regret that such a thing happened” and the incident was reported to police.

Signs at the zoo warn visitors to not feed animals or give them cigarettes, he said.

Substandard conditions are common at Indonesian zoos and Guciano blamed the government for being slow in establishing animal welfare standards.

Wall Street drifts to a mixed finish after Micron soars and Apple drops

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market meandered to a mixed finish Thursday after several artificial-intelligence stocks veered back up their roller-coaster ride, while Apple dropped after hiking prices on many of its products. The S&P 500 finished nearly unchanged with a dip of less than 0.1% after swinging between gains and losses throughout the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 71 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.5%. Micron Technology helped lead the market after jumping 15.7%. The maker of computer memory reported much bigger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, and it gave a stronger growth forecast for the current quarter than Wall Street expected. That helped allay worries a bit that its stock had grown too expensive after coming into the day with a surge of 267% so far this year. Micron and AI stocks broadly have been under pressure recently because of worries that their profits can’t possibly keep pace with the tremendous rallies for their stock prices. But beyond Micron, Qualcomm said late Wednesday that the acceleration of the AI era is forcing it to upgrade forecasts for its own growth in upcoming years. They’re the latest signals of the deluge of dollars heading into AI data centers and other investments.
Read Next Story