Apsara Iyer becomes first Indian-American student to be elected president of Harvard Law Review
New York, Feb 6: A second year Indian-American student at Harvard Law School has been elected president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, becoming the first woman from the community to be named to the position in the prestigious publication's 136-year history.
A report in The Harvard Crimson said on Monday that Apsara Iyer was elected the 137th president of the Harvard Law Review, which was founded in 1887 and is among the oldest student-run legal scholarship publications.
Iyer said in The Crimson report that as Law Review president, she aims to "include more editors in the process of reviewing and selecting articles and upholding the publication's reputation for "high-quality" work."
"I think that right now I'm just focused on making sure we keep the lights on and everything going," Iyer said.
Iyer's distinguished predecessors in the role include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former president Barack Obama.
The Crimson report said Iyer graduated from Yale in 2016 and received a bachelor's degree in Economics and Math and Spanish.
Iyer's immediate predecessor Priscila Coronado said the publication is "extremely lucky" to have Iyer at the helm.
"Apsara has changed the lives of many editors for the better, and I know she will continue to do so," Coronado said. "From the start, she has impressed her fellow editors with her remarkable intelligence, thoughtfulness, warmth, and fierce advocacy."
The Crimson said that Iyer's interest in understanding the "value of cultural heritage" led her to work in the Manhattan District Attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit that tracks stolen works of art and artifacts.
Iyer worked in the office in 2018 before coming to the Law School, and took a leave of absence after her first year studying law to return to the role, it said.
The report added that Iyer joined the Harvard Law Review following a competitive process called "write-on," where Harvard Law School students "rigorously fact-check a document and provide commentary on a recent State or Supreme Court Case."
Iyer has previously been involved in the Law School's Harvard Human Rights Journal and the National Security Journal and is also a member of the South Asian Law Students Association.
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Rare polar bear showed up on shores of Iceland. Police shot it
A rare polar bear that was spotted outside a cottage in a remote village in Iceland was shot by police after being considered a threat, authorities said Friday.
The bear was killed Thursday afternoon in the northwest of Iceland after police consulted the Environment Agency, which declined to have the animal relocated, Westfjords Police Chief Helgi Jensson told The Associated Press.
“It's not something we like to do,” Jensson said. “In this case, as you can see in the picture, the bear was very close to a summer house. There was an old woman in there.”
The owner, who was alone, was frightened and locked herself upstairs as the bear rummaged through her garbage, Jensson said. She contacted her daughter in Reykjavik, the nation's capital, by satellite link, and called for help.
“She stayed there,” Jensson said, adding that other summer residents in the area had gone home. “She knew the danger.”
Polar bears are not native to Iceland but occasionally come ashore after traveling on ice floes from Greenland, according to Anna Sveinsdóttir, director of scientific collections at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History. Many icebergs have been spotted off the north coast in the last few weeks.
Although attacks by polar bears on humans are extremely rare, a study in Wildlife Society Bulletin in 2017 said that the loss of sea ice from global warming has led more hungry bears to land, putting them in greater chance of conflicts with humans and leading to a greater risk to both.
Of 73 documented attacks by polar bears from 1870 to 2014 in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, and United States — which killed 20 people and injured 63 — 15 occurred in the final five years of that period.
The bear shot on Thursday was the first one seen in the country since 2016. Sightings are relatively rare with only 600 recorded in Iceland since the ninth century.
While the bears are a protected species in Iceland and it's forbidden to kill one at sea, they can be killed if they pose a threat to humans or livestock.
After two bears arrived in 2008, a debate over killing the threatened species led the environment minister to appoint a task force to study the issue, the institute said. The task force concluded that killing vagrant bears was the most appropriate response.
The group said the nonnative species posed a threat to people and animals, and the cost of returning them to Greenland, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) away, was exorbitant. It also found there was a healthy bear population in east Greenland where any bear was likely to have come from.
The young bear, which weighed between 150 and 200 kilograms (300 to 400 pounds), will be taken to the institute to study. Scientists took samples from the bear Friday.
They will be checking for parasites and infections and evaluating its physical condition, such as the health of its organs and percentage of body fat, Sveinsdóttir said. The pelt and skull may be preserved for the institute's collection.
A Coast Guard helicopter surveyed the area where the bear was found to look for others but didn't find any, police said.
After the shot bear was taken away, the woman who reported it decided to stay longer in the village, Jensson said.
