Roberta Drury, a 32-year-old woman who was the youngest of the 10 Black people killed at a Buffalo supermarket, was remembered at her funeral Saturday for her love for family and friends.

“Robbie,” as she was called, grew up in the Syracuse area and moved to Buffalo a decade ago to take care of her brother in his fight against leukemia (白血病). She was shot to death May 14 on a trip to buy groceries at the Tops Friendly Market targeted by the white gunman.

“There are no words to fully express the depth and breadth of this tragedy,” Friar Nicholas Spano, parochial vicar (牧师) of Assumption Church in Syracuse, said during the service. “Last Saturday, May 14, our corner of the world was changed forever,” he said. “Lives ended. Dreams shattered and our state was plunged into mourning.”

“Robbie always says Hi to neighbors when she saw them, always making sure they felt noticed and loved,” her sister, Amanda, told the Associated Press by text before the service. “She was that light that shone through whatever darkness might have been present,” Spano said. He said mourners would remember Drury’s “kindness ... love for family and friends, her perseverance, her tenacity (顽强), and most of all, that smile that could light up a room.”

Drury is the second shooting victim to be praised.

Tops was encouraging people to join its stores in a moment of silence to honor the shooting victims Saturday at 2: 30 p.m., the approximate time of the attack a week earlier. Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown also called for 123 seconds of silence from 2: 28 p. m. to 2: 31 p.m., followed by the ringing of church bells 13 times throughout the city to honor the 10 people killed and three wounded.

A candlelight memorial was planned at the Buffalo supermarket in the evening.

The annual Canadian commercial seal hunt is the world's largest hunt of marine mammals. A few weeks old, the seal pups(幼崽)are prized primarily for their skins and also for the omega-3-rich oil used in food supplements--products that are shipped around the world.

This month, the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland, is expected to announce whether products from commercial seal hunting can be marketed in Europe. At present, they cannot. Such products have been banned by the European Union (EU) since 2009 to protect ‘public morals’ Canada and Norway have asked the WTO to overturn the ban — the first of its kind -- and the trade body will soon deliver its final decision.

As an official observer, I have seen the hunt from the ice and from helicopters. The details are grisly. That is why the WTO originally agreed that the EU could act to limit trade on the grounds of public morals — the first time that such a restriction had been put in place.

When they are born, seal pups have white fur. They are abandoned by their mothers at about 12 days of age. Stranded on the unstable ice, they remain alone and unfed for up to six weeks, and during this time their fur changes from white to grey--and the hunters arrive.

The pups are either shot from boats, or clubbed with a wooden bat or an iron-tipped pole called a hakapik. Some shot and injured seals slide into the water and are lost. Many shot and injured animals could potentially suffer for several minutes while the hunters drive their boats close enough to club them unconscious. If the ice is too unstable for the hunters to cross, shot and injured but conscious and reactive seals can be dragged into the boats with long hooked gaffs (鱼叉) before being clubbed.

As a human and as a scientist I consider the hunt to present real and significant welfare concerns. The available scientific evidence supports that opinion. But science, of course, is only one of the factors at play. Perhaps the final word should go to a statement attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”