In brief: Japan seeks support for minke whale hunt

TOKYO – Japan is seeking international support for its plans to hunt minke whales in the Antarctic Ocean next year by scaling down the whaling research program the U.N.’s top court rejected earlier this year, fisheries officials said Wednesday.

Whaling for research purposes is exempt from the 1986 international ban on commercial whaling, and Japan has conducted hunts in the Antarctic and Pacific on that basis. But in March, the International Court of Justice ruled the Antarctic program wasn’t as scientific as Japan had claimed and must stop.

Japan’s Fisheries Agency is working on a revised program to be submitted to the International Whaling Commission’s scientific committee about November. The new program will address the problems cited by the court, an agency official said on condition of anonymity, citing department rules.

Mexico shows off first grey wolf litter

MEXICO CITY – Mexican officials on Wednesday presented the first litter of Mexican gray wolf pups conceived in the country by artificial insemination, part of an effort to save one of the hemisphere’s more endangered animals.

Authorities are trying to reintroduce the wolf in its natural range after it was hunted to extinction in the wild in Mexico three decades ago.

Andrew Madoff, son of Ponzi king, dies

NEW YORK – Andrew Madoff, Bernard Madoff’s last surviving son, died of cancer Wednesday, years after turning his father in and insisting he had been duped like the rest of the world into believing history’s most notorious Ponzi king was an honest financier.

Andrew Madoff, 48, was “surrounded by his loving family” when he died at a hospital from mantle cell lymphoma, said his attorney, Martin Flumenbaum.

Andrew Madoff and his brother, Mark Madoff, worked on the legitimate trading side of their father’s Manhattan firm, two floors removed from the private investment business where Bernard Madoff carried out his $65 billion Ponzi scheme over several decades.

Bernard Madoff, 76, was arrested in December 2008. He pleaded guilty to fraud charges months later and is serving a 150-year sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina. Two years after the father’s arrest, Mark Madoff hanged himself in his Manhattan loft apartment as his 2-year-old son slept in another room.