Secretive, communist North Korea has a population of 26 million and controls it with fear and isolation. Each citizen must tow the party line at risk of imprisonment or death. But every now and then a few brave North Koreans escape to freedom and truth.

North Korea reports not a single case of COVID-19.

Interesting.

Meanwhile, the Press Herald  Editorial Board (Our View, Sept. 5) tells us that right whale deaths are not caused by lobster fisheries and distrusts the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s plan to protect the whales. It supports the denials of Gov. Mills, and all four members of Maine’s congressional delegation that right whales are endangered in our waters and hails the all-important lobster industry and its votes.

Interesting.

There are 360 critically endangered right whales; every year, some of them swim and feed in Maine waters. Maine has around 5,000 lobster boats that fish with 3 million traps connected with 500,000 vertical ropes to surface buoys. Each rope is an entanglement danger to a right whale.

Maine’s lobster industry is, overwhelmingly, the most important such fishery on the Atlantic East Coast: It profits from handling 87 percent of the entire U.S. lobster catch.

The lobster industry reports not a single case of right whale entanglement in our waters.

Interesting.

Barbara Skapa
executive director, Mainers Guarding Right Whales
Mt. Vernon