Thursday, November 18, 2004

Tenuous relations between Japan and the People’s Republic of China were strained last week when a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine entered Japanese territorial waters southwest of Okinawa.

The intrusion occurred on 10 November, Japanese time (UTC+9). The submarine was quickly spotted by Japan’s Self-Defence Forces and was tracked by helicopter as it wandered in Japanese waters for two hours before moving north-west. International law requires a tracked submarine to surface and identify its nationality in times of peace; the submarine did not do so.

Many Japanese officials in the Defence Agency considered the intrusion an act of provocation and “showing off,” as the submarine in question was a particularly noisy model. It continued traveling very slowly after being spotted, and remained in shallow waters. The intrustion caused Japanese Self-Defense Forces to go on alert for the second time since the Second World War.

The submarine in question is believed to be a Type 09-1 Han Class attack submarine. It is a nuclear-powered submarine designed in the 1950s and first built in the 1974. This class of submarine is thought to suffer numerous defects, including radiation leakage, noise, and an inability to fire missiles while submerged. Only two of five submarines are thought to be operational. China has recently begun an active modernization of its navy.

On 17 November, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Daiwei met with the Japanese ambassador to China Anami Koreshige in Beijing and offered an apology for the incident, stating that the submarine was on a training mission and the intrusion was due to a “technical error” and was “regrettable.” Japan’s Defence Agency is studying whether “technical errors” is a feasible explanation for the incident.

Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro has publicly stated he wishes to speak with Chinese President Hu Jintao about this and other matters of Sino-Japanese contention at the upcoming annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Chile later this month.

Despite the increasingly close economic ties between the two nations, distrust has long exisited between Japan and China. Many Chinese people still resent the Japanese invasion and occupation of China during World War II and Japan’s refusal to formally apologise. Japan, on the other hand, sees China as a potential competitor and an increasing threat to its national security.

Japan’s Constitution forbids the nation from exercising military strength in matters other than that of self-defence, but Japan’s ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party or LDP, has recently proposed constitutional amendments to give the military more offensive capabilities, among other things.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Scientists at Chicago’s Field Museum and New York’s American Museum of Natural History have discovered three new species of yellow-shouldered bats, genus Sturnira, in the Neotropics. On Wednesday open-access journal ZooKeys published their paper on two of the new species, Sturnira bakeri and Sturnira burtonlimi. The two new species were previously confused with S. ludovici, and S. lilium and S. luisi, respectively. With the discovery, genus Sturnira now has the most species of any genus in family Phyllostomidae, the leaf-nosed bats.

Species S. bakeri was named after Dr. Robert J. Baker, who “has made enormous contributions to our [Authors of the ZooKey paper] understanding of bats, particularly to the evolution of Neotropical phyllostomids”; and S. burtonlimi after Dr. Burton K. Lim, who “collected the type series of this species and has made many other important collections throughout the Neotropics and beyond”, the authors noted in the paper.

Within the New World tropics, the distribution range of the genus, the new species’ known living areas are in Costa Rica and Panama for S. burtonlimi, and Western Ecuador for S. bakeri. The researchers identified differences between different specimens, including those in their teeth, skull shapes, and DNA sequences.

Wikinews interviewed one of the chiropterologists, Paúl M. Velazco of the American Museum of Natural History, about the study.

((Wikinews)) The Sturnira genus now has 22 species, over 1.5 times larger than it was a year ago (14 species). Who contributed to this change? Did you participate throughout the entire process, or only the discovery of the last 2 species?

Paúl M. Velazco: The last Mammal Species of the World (Simmons, 2005) recognized 14 species for Sturnira. Since then three new species have been described [S. sorianoi Sánchez-Hernández et al., 2005; S. koopmanhilli McCarthy et al., 2006; and S. perla Jarrín-V. and Kunz, 2011] and one subspecies was elevated to the species level (S. hondurensis) by Gardner (2008). This brought the number of species of Sturnira to 18 by 2011. Along with my coauthor Bruce Patterson, we generated the most comprehensive phylogeny of the genus. For this we sequenced two nuclear and three mitochondrial genes from the liver or muscle tissue that had been frozen or preserved from each bat specimen, isolating nearly 5,000 base pairs of DNA. These sequences were obtained from specimens we have collected in the past (38) and from tissues we borrowed from different natural history collections. We published this phylogeny last year in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. Results of this study found that two subspecies of Sturnira lilium should be recognized as valid species (S. parvidens and S. paulsoni). Additionally we found three new species, two of them described in the ZooKeys paper. The third one hopefully will be published later this year.

((WN)) The genus is called Sturnira Gray in the paper. I’ve not seen extra adjectives in genus names, before. What is the context for such name?

PMV: Usually in papers that deal with taxonomy and nomenclature, the first time that a genus or species is mentioned in text is accompanied by the authority that describes that taxon. In the case of Sturnira, it was Gray in 1842 that named the genus.

((WN)) What caused your initial interest in the question in the genus? When did you become interested?

PMV: I have been studying bats for the past eighteen years and I am especially interested in the family Phyllostomidae that is endemic to the Neotropics. This family includes more than 160 species. It is the most diverse family of bats in the Neotropics, which together exhibits more variation in morphological features and feeding ecology than any other family-level group of mammals. Phyllostomid bats exploit an unusually diverse array of feeding habits including sanguivory, insectivory, carnivory, omnivory, nectarivory, pollennivory, and frugivory. Because of all mentioned before, phyllostomids are a really interesting group to work with. Sturnira and Platyrrhinus are members of this family.

((WN)) The paper mentions that the genus is now the most speciose genus in the Neotropical family Phyllostomidae. What genus did it beat? How many species does it include?

PMV: The other genus with the most species in the family is Platyrrhinus. Currently, it has 20 species, but soon it will increase to 21. Along with another colleague, Burton Lim, we have a paper in press describing a new species based on molecular and morphological data from the Guianan Shield.

((WN)) What equipment did you use?

PMV: For the ZooKeys paper, we examined several specimens under the stereoscope. The molecular phylogeny gave us the separation between species, from there our job was to focus on finding morphological differences between these groups.

((WN)) Did you conduct field study to identify the species’ habits? If so, where and how did you do that?

PMV: I have done fieldwork in Belize and Peru, and my coauthor did field work in Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru, where we collected several specimens of Sturnira (including the third species that has not been described yet). But the two species that were described in the ZooKeys paper are based on specimens collected by our colleagues Dr. Robert Baker from Texas Tech University and Dr. Burton Lim from the Royal Ontario Museum.

((WN)) How do you isolate of the living area of the new species from the living area of the old species?

PMV: We used the phylogeny of Velazco and Patterson 2013 (Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution) as a framework for this.

((WN)) How long did the study take? What has been the most time-consuming activity?

PMV: It took almost a year. The most time consuming part was spending several hours behind the stereoscope looking for the diagnostic characters.

((WN)) Who participated in the study? What were their roles?

PMV: Dr. Bruce Patterson from the [American] Museum of Natural History and I. I was the one in charge of finding the diagnostic characters and together we both worked on the manuscript.

((WN)) Who do you collaborate with internationally about your study?

PMV: For this study I collaborated directly with Dr. Bruce Patterson from the Field Museum of Natural History, but studies like this cannot be completed without the contribution of scientific collections. We used specimens from the American Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State University, Museum of Southwestern Biology, Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional de San Marcos, Museo de Zoología of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Berkeley, Royal Ontario Museum, Texas Tech University, and the National Museum of Natural History.

((WN)) What future research do you plan?

PMV: To keep doing what I love, which is going to the field, working at collections, and collaborating with the wonderful collaborators I have, all of this is an effort to try to understand bat diversity and evolution in the Neotropics, especially why phyllostomid bats are so successful at this. There is still much to discover, and hopefully we could, in time, implement conservation actions for species that have small distributions.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, the Ethiopian government’s chief scientist and its representative to the Montreal-based UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) had his passport returned without the requested Canadian visa, and without explanation. Dr. Tewolde is Africa’s chief negotiator for the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

Tewolde had announced he would be visiting Montreal the first week of August to lobby for the labeling of genetically modified (GM) seeds and food products and urge companies and governments to accept liability for environmental contamination their seeds could lead to. Canada has yet to ratify the UN biosafety protocol and opposes compulsory genetically modified labeling and liability.

Dr. Tewolde has worked against terminator technology (genetically-modified seed rendered sterile at harvest time, forcing farmers to buy new seeds each growing season). In the past, Dr. Tewolde has disagreed with Canadian scientists on proposed methods to regulate GM products.

“Dr. Tewolde is one of the most respected scientists in his field,” said Pat Mooney, representative for the conservationist ETC Group in Ottawa, “If the Canadian government can’t make sure Dr. Tewolde has his visa for the opening of the meetings, Canada does not deserve to host the Convention on Biological Diversity.”

Dr. Tewolde himself is concerned that Canada’s actions signal a pattern, “Now that I have been prevented from coming to Montreal, who knows which ones of you will be prevented next time?” he wrote.

This closely mirrors another more recent incident where 12 Ugandans (mainly youths) were denied visas by the Canadian High Commission in Kenya. After making two applications and having met all the requirements asked by the commission, the Ugandan delegation was still denied visas.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

The body of Sarah Lunde, a missing 13-year-old Florida girl, was found very close to her home Saturday, authorities said.

Lunde’s body was found by a search-and-rescue dog in an abandoned fish farm about a half-mile away from her home, according to David Gee, sheriff of Hillsborough County. Lunde had been missing since last Sunday from her home in Ruskin, a town to the south of Tampa.

Gee said the body had a green cast on one arm, just as Sarah did. “The green cast is apparent,” he said. He also stated that the body had been in the water for a long period of time, and that an autopsy would be performed to determine the cause of Lunde’s death.

“The family is very distraught,” Gee added.

According to CNN, David Onstott, 36, was charged late Saturday night with first-degree murder Gee said. “He is the defendant.”,Onstott confessed to the murder.He was arrested on Tuesday on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Aside from a 1995 sexual assault charge, Onstott is said to have been sighted at Lunde’s house hours after Lunde disappeared, and grabbed a half-empty beer bottle as he left. This could possibly link him to the numerous beer bottles found around the area, which, it is rumored, will be subjected to DNA testing. Onstott was also arraigned on Thursday on charges of not registering as a sex offender and is currently being held in the Hillsborough County Jail. Although his bond was set at $250,000, sheriff’s spokesman J.D. Callaway stated that since no bond was set on a Michigan drunk driving warrant Onstott is also being held for, there is no bond set on him for his various other charges, so Onstott is being held without bond for the moment.

This case is now the second such case in a month. Jessica Lunsford‘s body was found in Citrus County, north of Tampa, after she had been missing from her home for three weeks.

Convicted sex offender John E. Couey, who had been living near Lunsford’s home, was arrested and charged with her murder after he confessed.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The Iranian police forces have faced criticism from Ayatollah Hashemi Shahrudi, the head of the judiciary who was appointed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for their re-invigorated campaign to do away with un-Islamic dress.

Ayatollah Shahroudi proclaimed, “Tough measures on social problems will backfire and have counter-productive effects.” Others have, of course, made it clear that un-Islamic dress can lead to moral corruption, engender innumerable vices, and hurt the Islamic character of the nation.

Some believe that no one had any issue with the creation of an Islamic atmosphere. The core of the matter revolves around the implementation of the Islamic dress code; additionally, heavy-handed measures should be shunned. For instance, Mehdi Ahmadi, information head of Tehran’s police, told Al Jazeera: “Some citizens may complain about the way the law is being enforced but they all agree with the plan itself.”

According to one student, “You simply can’t tell people what to wear. They don’t understand that use of force only brings hatred towards them, not love.” Nevertheless, Hojatoll-Islam Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, Iran’s interior minister who is in charge of policing, prognosticated positive feedback from the populace when he said, “People are unhappy with the social and moral status of the society. They expect that the fight against social insecurity be properly implemented.” Thus, Hujjat al-Islam Pour-Mohammadi re-iterated the necessity of proper implementation and methodology towards the restoration of morality in the Islamic Republic. Islamic officials and religious people affirm that this is indispensable to promote righteousness, curb sin, and bring open sinners to justice.

Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, hijab became mandatory in Iran for every woman including foreigners after over 98% of citizens voted for an Islamic government. Women may face caning up to 74 strokes for failing to observe hijab. In this recent crackdown, the authorities have arrested many citizens throughout the country. Not only have women been taken into custody for their hair being uncovered on their foreheads and tight clothes that show body shapes, For men they need to cover from knee to their waist as according to Sharia. Even a foreign journalist was detained because the photograph on her press card was indecent.

It has not been clear whence the directive for the re-newed clampdown emanated. Some have blamed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while Gholam Hossein Elham, the government spokesman, stated to reporters, “The police work as agents of the judiciary to confront crimes. The government as an executive body does not interfere in the affairs of the judiciary.” The following pre-election speech seems to corroborate this latter statement:

Monday, February 11, 2008

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has started construction of its so called ‘green city‘ which will be named Masdar City. It is a city which is designed to have no carbon emissions, cars, or waste. It will cost $22 billion (£11 billion) and take eight years to make. It will be able to hold a population of 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses. The city will cover 1,483 acres (6.00 km²).

The city was designed by Foster and Partners, a British company.

“No one has ever built a zero-carbon city before. Nor one producing zero waste or fully powered by renewable energy. Masdar City will accomplish all three,” said Sultan Al Jaber.

The city will have a personal electrical power supply mainly from two renewable energy sources: wind turbines and solar panels. Water will be provided through a solar-powered desalination plant and air conditioning will be provided naturally from wind towers.

It is planned to save more than $2 billion in oil over the next 25 years along with creating more than 70 000 jobs.

The immense project will be supported by a company created for it called ‘Masdar Initiative’, which will develop and commercialise clean energy technologies. It will also be supported by the WWF, a global conservation charity, and it is hoped that international joint ventures will bring in more money.

Some people fear that Masdar will become a domain for the luxury development of the rich, because the city is located by Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi International Airport.

Dr Al Jaber said, “We are often asked why we are setting our goal so high. Our answer is because someone must… Someone must push the envelope to create the solution that we, as a global community, so urgently require.”

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

This year Israel turns sixty and it has embarked upon a campaign to celebrate its birthday. Along with technology writers for Slate, PC Magazine, USA Today, BusinessWeek, Aviation Weekly, Wikinews was invited by the America-Israel Friendship League and the Israeli Foreign Ministry to review Israel’s technology sector. It’s part of an effort to ‘re-brand the country’ to show America that there is more to Israel than the Palestinian conflict. On this trip we saw the people who gave us the Pentium processor and Instant Messaging. The schedule was hectic: 12-14 hours a day were spent doing everything from trips to the Weizmann Institute to dinner with Yossi Vardi.

On Thursday, the fifth day of the junket, David Saranga of the foreign ministry was able to arrange an exclusive interview for David Shankbone with the President of Israel, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shimon Peres. For over an hour they spoke about Iranian politics, whether Israel is in danger of being side-lined in Middle Eastern importance because of Arab oil wealth, and his thoughts against those who say Israeli culture is in a state of decay.

Shimon Peres spent his early days on kibbutz, a bygone socialist era of Israel. In 1953, at the age of 29, Peres became the youngest ever Director General of the Ministry of Defense. Forty years later it was Peres who secretly gave the green light for dialogue with Yassir Arafat, of the verboten Palestine Liberation Organization. It was still official Israeli policy to not speak with the PLO. Peres shares a Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzak Rabin and Arafat for orchestrating what eventually became the Oslo Accords. The “roadmap” that came out of Oslo remains the official Israeli (and American) policy for peace in the Palestinian conflict. Although the majority of Israeli people supported the plans, land for peace was met with a small but fiery resistance in Israel. For negotiating with Arafat, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shouted at Peres, “You are worse than Chamberlain!” a reference to Hitler’s British appeaser. It was during this time of heated exchanges in the 1990s that Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a Jew who thought it against Halakhic law to give up land given by God (Hashem).

Peres is the elder statesman of Israeli politics, but he remembers that he has not always been as popular as he is today. “Popularity is like perfume: nice to smell, dangerous to drink,” said Peres. “You don’t drink it.” The search for popularity, he goes on to say, will kill a person who has an idea against the status quo.

Below is David Shankbone’s interview with Shimon Peres, the President of Israel.