Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet announced a series of measures aimed at guaranteeing correctness and transparency in the political scene, curbing corruption and certain influences that have also hit her administration.

In a bid to overcome a record drop in popularity caused by corruption scandals, in an address to the nation Bachelet announced administrative measures and bills as part of a global political reform. “We will attempt to eradicate the bad practices in politics and business, as also in their inter-relations”, said the President.

To overcome the recent political and financial scandals, the Head of State stressed, “we will render political spending entirely transparent, eliminating anonymous and reserved retributions and firms will not be able to provide contributions of any sort. Violations of these rules will be considered a crime”.

The post Chile: Bachelet Announces Political Reform To Fight Corruption appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Over 222,000 cases of haemorrhagic Dengue fever have been confirmed in 645 cities of the southern State of Sao Paulo since the start of 2015, marking a historic record based on data released by the Epidemiological monitoring center (CVE).

Just in the first three weeks of April, 32,472 suspected cases were reported, 10,902 of which confirmed. The outbreak has already left 125 dead in the State, nearing the 140 deaths in Sao Paulo in all of 2012, which had at the time marked a record number of deaths.

It is highly probable that the current number will increase, since other 90 deaths are suspected to have been caused by the Dengue fever, reports the Folha newspaper.

Sixty-two percent of cases are concentrated in 32 Sao Paulo cities, with Campinas, Sorocava, Sao Paulo, Sumaré and Catanduva the worst-hit with over 6,400 confirmed cases in each.

Some cities, including the capital, are calling for a military intervention to destroy hotbeds of the Dengue fever vector, the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, 80% of which located in homes. For the outbreak to be categorized as an epidemic 300 cases on 100,000 inhabitants must be confirmed, which is already the case in some areas of the state.

The Federal and state authorities are pushing for an acceleration in testing of a vaccine, being studied for over two years by the Butantan Institute. If testing proceeds correctly, the vaccine should be available between 2016 and 2017.

The post Brazil: Over 200,000 Cases Of Dengue Fever In Sao Paolo State appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Russia was forced to postpone the docking of an unmanned cargo ship with the International Space Station on Tuesday because of a problem receiving data from the supply craft.

The Progress M-27M should have docked with the orbiting station about six hours after its launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early on Tuesday but the Roscosmos space agency said it now expected a delay of at least two days. “There are some problems with the data telemetry. They are being worked on by Roscosmos specialists,” it said in a statement that gave few details.

TASS news agency quoted an unnamed space official as saying the Progress, carrying supplies such as food and fuel, had missed its intended orbit and could be lost if it is not corrected. Other officials told Russian news agencies there had been a problem opening two antennae on the craft.

Space exploration is a subject of national pride in Russia, rooted in the Cold War “space race” with the United States, but the collapse of the Soviet Union starved the space programme of funds and it has been beset by problems in recent years. The current crew on the International Space Station is made up of Americans Terry Virts and Scott Kelly, Russians Anton Shkaplerov, Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko and Italian Samantha Cristoforetti.

The post Space Station Supply Ship Misses Orbit appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Producing pure aluminium from ore accounts for as much as 1 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Recycling is the best way to reduce that carbon footprint – but manufacturers and recycling companies will have to plan carefully to avoid problems with impurities that accumulate in recycled aluminium over time.

An aluminium beverage can is a true technological marvel.

It’s lightweight and strong, so that it adds little to the cost or weight of shipping beverages, and protects them along their journey.

It chills quickly, to the delight of retailers and consumers alike.

Its smooth, rounded surface makes a perfect billboard for advertising the can’s contents. Consider the red can that’s graced with white script, underscored by a curving white line. An estimated 94 per cent of the world’s population knows at a glance what’s inside: Coca-Cola.

And best of all, aluminium cans are eminently recyclable – Europeans recycled 64 per cent of all aluminium drink cans in 2009, while North Americans recycled 57.4 per cent during the same year. Recycling the aluminium in cans to make new cans takes just 5 per cent of the energy needed to produce primary aluminium for the same purpose, and offers an important way to reduce the carbon footprint of using the metal, experts say.

Impurities a problem

But the recycling of aluminium cans involves a very tricky aspect that could cause the entire process to be derailed.

Every time a used can gets melted down into a molten puddle of silvery aluminium, it introduces unwanted hitchhikers into the mix: impurities, either from the composition of the can itself, from the lacquered finish, or from the trash that people sometimes tuck inside.

Sometimes the impurities even come from dust or dirt that may have accumulated on the can somewhere along its journey from your mouth to the recycling facility.

Right now, with recycling rates where they are, the system works and the impurities normally don’t affect the ability of the recycled aluminium to be made into new cans, says researcher and PhD candidate Amund Løvik, in the Industrial Ecology Programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

However, if recycling rates increase to 75 per cent, for example, then the amount of impurities in the cans will increase – by as much as 135 per cent, Løvik and his supervisor, Daniel Müller say. And that could cause problems with the quality of the recycled material.

It’s not that the cans would be unsafe to use, but that the impurities would change the quality of the aluminium to the point where it didn’t have the characteristics needed to actually manufacture a can. The worst case would be that the metal could no longer be recycled into cans or for other uses.

Secret recipes for making cans

While Løvik and Müller can estimate how much impurities will increase as cans are recycled, they do not have any actual information about impurity levels in cans now – in part because it is considered a trade secret.

The industry “all have their own secret recipes,” for making aluminium cans, Müller said.

The pair were able to make good predictions, however, of how impurity concentrations may change over time when changes occur in the system.

Recycling causes impurities to accumulate

Løvik and Müller developed a simple computer model to figure out how these impurities accumulate over time and how recycling rates will affect the amounts of impurities in the recycled products.

Their model relies on a concept called “steady state impurity concentrations.”

Think of it like this: when cans get recycled with their impurities, those impurities are incorporated in the new cans that are made from the recycled mix.

Then, when these recycled cans are recycled again, they bring not only the impurities that are in the actual metal (from the previous recycling mix) but new impurities from the lacquer on the can, or the dust on the outside, or the trash on the inside.

As cans are recycled over and over again, the amount of impurities in each new re-recycled can will increase with each recycling loop.

Impurities eventually reach equilibrium

But because some cans are lost – tossed out in the trash, never to be recycled again – new cans made from fresh aluminium will replace them, lowering the percentage of unwanted impurities in the recycled aluminium mix.

At some point, this loss of old, contaminated cans that are replaced by new, relatively pure cans allows the system to reach equilibrium, meaning that the percentage of impurities in the mix never rises above a certain level.

Müller says impurities in cans are like a water in a bathtub with a little leak in the bottom – the more water the tub contains, the more water will exit the tub at a given recycling rate; the impurities rise to a certain level but never higher because there are always cans with impurities that “leak” out of the recycling system. That’s the steady-state impurity concentration.

Müller says the levels of impurities in recycled cans right now are OK, because recycling rates are well below 100 per cent. But increasing recycling rates is everyone’s goal, he says, and recycling rates are sure to go up. That will raise impurity levels too –not infinitely, but to a steady-state level. However, small changes in the recycling rates, particularly at higher levels, can entail significant changes in the steady-state levels, which may end up too high.

Change will happen fast but can be mitigated

Løvik and Müller were also able to use their model to estimate how quickly the impurities in the system could jump up to their equilibrium levels – and found that in the US, anyway, this time to reach a new higher level of impurities could be as short as two years.

That matters because it doesn’t give recyclers or can manufacturers much time to adjust to changes in the recycling mix, the researchers say.

But that is the benefit of the new study, because it gives the recycling and can manufacturing industry a glimpse into the future so they know what kinds of problems might lie ahead.

And, they can take steps to cut down on the impurity levels so that this looming problem doesn’t become a problem.

For example, “before re-melting the cans they can remove the lacquer,” Løvik said. “Or if they have objects other than cans that end up in the scrap, it is better to get rid of as much of these objects as possible before they remelt the material. Once the impurities are in the molten metal it is too late.”

Award-winning research

“A Material Flow Model for Impurity Accumulation in Beverage Can Recycling Systems,” by Amund Løvik and Daniel B. Müller was published as an article in Light Metals.

The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, which publishes Light Metals, has recognized the researchers with a prize for their work, awarded in mid-March.

The post Recycling Aluminium One Can At A Time appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Clément Doleac and Lucas Gardenal*

On March 24, Ms. Federica Mogherini, head of the European Union’s diplomatic initiatives, met with Cuban President Raul Castro and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez in Havana.[1]

On her way back to Brussels, Ms. Mogherini declared she hopes the E.U. and Cuba “will be able to sign an agreement [for a new framework for bilateral relationship] by the end of 2015.” Considering the Cuban context, such a short deadline would seem overly ambitious and that rushing it might be counterproductive. North American negotiators have already experienced how ineffective such strategy is in Cuba by failing to mutually re-open their embassies before the Summit of the Americas in Panama. This example might show how change will actually take place in Cuba, “without a pause but slowly,” to use President Castro’s own leitmotif. As an exemple, an EU diplomat openly advised that “a lot of patience” be practiced by their American counterparts in their negotiations with Cuba.[2] While Cuba’s negotiators are aware that their “window of opportunity” with their northern neighbor might change by the next presidential election, they are determined to impose their rhythm and not be overwhelmed by the unprecedented “diplomatic ballet” that followed the December 17 announcement.

Indeed, since the speeches of Presidents Obama and Castro, the Cuban MINREX (its foreign office) had to manage a succession of diplomatic and business delegations from a range of countries, involving the U.S, Turkey, France, South Korea, China, Norway, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Russia, India, Kuwait, Japan, North Korea, and Uruguay, several rounds of negotiations with the U.S. and the E.U., and a number of important Summit delegations, such as one for the Summit of the Americas in Panama and the CELAC summit in Costa Rica. It was the first time in half a century that Cuba was assembled with the other hemispheric governments, including Canada and the United States.

Such diplomatic momentum is unprecedented in Cuba and more visits are forthcoming, including French President Francois Hollande’s first visit on May 11. Over the past 5 months, Cuban authorities have become the most courted country in the hemisphere and has enjoyed a specific momentum with the European Union, the United States, and its Latin American partners fighting for a position in this almost virgin market and for a reestablishment of good relations with Havana.

In this context, Ms. Mogherini’s visit, the highest-ranking E.U. official to come to Cuba in several years, has to be considered a success according to Cuban diplomatic standards, especially in light of the failed visit of Spain’s Foreign Minister last November. Even though Mogherini had to share the front page of Cuba’s official newspaper, with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s concurrent arrival to Cuba, she was received by Cuba’s highest authorities.

Besides President Castro and Foreign Minister Rodriguez, her visit also included encounters with Cuban officials such as one with the Vice President and Economy Minister, its Trade and Investment Minister, and the Cuban National Assembly President. Finally, the EU official also managed to balance her agenda by meeting with Cuban civil society figures such as the Archbishop in Havana, Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, as well as famous opponents to the Castro’s government such as blogger Yoani Sachez.

Talks between the E.U. and Cuba have been going on since the European Union’s formal rapprochement with Cuba in 2008, but sped up in 2014 when the negotiation mandate was adopted and the first rounds of negotiations were held in April 2014. After the initial sessions, talks appeared to go smoothly regarding cooperation issues, but sensitive issues such as trade, political dialogue, and human rights have yet to be discussed. Ms. Mogherini’s approach seems to please the Cubans compared to the previous Ashton administration, and she counts on the evolving positions of E.U. member states to strengthen her position and to raise these issues. She also expects Cuban willingness to engage all discussion, even if it would be obviously at its own pace.

Ms. Mogherini’s diplomatic mission to Cuba can also be seen as the an indicator of the E.U. to focus more on Latin America. Historically, only a few member states of the E.U. allocated importance to Latin America, aside from Spain, for obvious historic and colonial reasons. As an example of this shift, on April 20, for the first time in 5 years, relations between the E.U. and Latin America were largely discussed by the E.U. foreign ministers council, and confirmed Ms. Mogherini’s new direction. The E.U. therefore decided to reinforce its political engagement in the region, expand the already important trade and economic relations, and capitalize on the convergence of views on several global issues such as climate change, a thematic important for both Latin America and the European Union.

Moreover, the growing economic openness in Cuba, and the peace talks in Colombia (which are currently being hosted by Cuba) are two opportunities for the E.U. to claim that a positive change is occurring in Latin America. Also, following the Mogherini visit, E.U.-Cuba talks will likely occur more often. Cuban Foreign Minister, Mr. Rodriguez, was received in Brussels on April 23, and another round of negotiation will happen on the sidelines of the next E.U.-CELAC Summit in Brussels this June to which Cuban President Raul Castro may attend.

Even if it is not openly stated, these diplomatic moves towards Latin America and Cuba by the E.U. are also due to economic interests. There is increasing competition between the E.U. and the U.S. for the biggest Caribbean market that Cuba represents. But both cannot assume it publicly, in order to keep some leverage in their respective relations with Cuban authorities. Cuba enjoys the spoils of such a race in order to elicit better deals and favorable economic agreements without any concessions from their part. The subtle ménage à trois obliges diplomats to display competency in balancing close relations and competition. For example, the E.U.’s chief negotiator on Cuba, Christian Leffler statement “denied the bloc was in a race with the United States,” and that “a more active [American] presence… can contribute to reinforcing the positive atmosphere.” [3]

This positive atmosphere is also due to the progressive opening of the Cuban economy, and the commercial opportunities that could be seized before other competitors. Indeed, the Cuban market could transform into the most important Caribbean hub and import-export platform, only 80 miles away from the U.S. The impressive transformation of the Mariel port is an example of this direction taken by Cuba’s economy.

But in any case, movement is going slowly, and will continue as such because of the will of the Cuban authorities to deal with this opening without risking its political control. The government is still very sensitive to any foreign interference with the local political life. Also, Cubans will likely give priority to countries that have given historical support to the island, among which the European countries are well positioned for having been more flexible than the U.S.

A new bilateral agreement could be signed very soon between the European Union and Cuba, but the Cuban diplomats will enjoy the momentum and have the last word. As stated recently by Cuban Foreign Minister Rodriguez, “There are also areas of deep divisions between the EU and Cuba.”[4] The European Union diplomatic corps have been warned that an overly strong insistence on delicate issues such as human rights or the state-controlled economy might mitigate the E.U.’s advantage in developing close ties with Cuba.

Clément Doleac, Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and Lucas Gardenal, Guest Contributor

[1] “EU and Cuba push for closer ties as thaw develops,” BBC News, accessed April 29, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32047089.

[2] “Europa sugiere a Washington ‘mucha paciencia’ en diálogo con Cuba,” El Nuevo Herald, accessed April 29, 2015, http://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/mundo/america-latina/cuba-es/article9745511.html.

[3] Alexandre Grosbois, “US, EU in race to normalize Cuba ties,” April 29, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-us-eu-in-race-to-normalize-cuba-ties-2015-3?IR=T.

[4] “La UE y Cuba retoman el diálogo político y sobre derechos humanos en la Isla,” 14Y Medio, accessed April 29, 2015, http://www.14ymedio.com/internacional/UE-Cuba-politico-derechos-Isla_0_1765623435.html.

The post A New Momentum For EU-Cuba Relationship? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A new article in Middle East Eye offers a fascinating “take” on Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that Russia would resume delivery to Iran of its $800-million S-300 anti-aircraft system.  After intensive lobbying by Bibi Netanyahu, Pres. Obama pressured Putin to delay shipment of the advanced weapons system.  Putin agreed.  The delay meant that Israel would during that period have an opportunity to attack Iran without having to penetrate one of the more advanced anti-aircraft systems produced in the world.

In the current climate, in which a nuclear deal with Iran appears likely, Putin rightly judged that the S-300 would no longer pose a drawback to any possible international developments regarding Iran.  When the resumption of the sale was announced, Prime Minister Netanyahu railed against it.  But curiously, Pres. Obama did not.  In fact, the article quotes him as saying:

“I’m frankly surprised that [the ban on the S-300 delivery to Iran] held this long, given that they were not prohibited by [UN Security Council] sanctions from selling these defensive weapons,” remarked Obama.

He added, “This is actually a sale that was slated to happen in 2009, when I first met with then-Prime Minister [Vladimir] Putin. They actually stopped the sale, paused or suspended the sale, at our request.”

The post Obama’s Agreement To Russian S-300 Weapons Delivery To Iran, Slap In Bibi’s Face? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Islamic State (Daesh) claims it executed Yemeni soldiers in a video posted online Thursday, AFP reported.

The group claimed to have beheaded four soldiers and shooting another 11 dead. According to SITE Intelligence Group, a US website monitor, the extremists were seen in the footage sharpening their knives and killing four men, whose heads were seen on the ground in Yemen’s southern province of Shabwa.

The footage shows ten other soldiers crouched to the ground. Most were then shot once in the forehead. SITE said the “Shabwa Province” claimed to be a division of Daesh and to have carried out the attacks.

Daesh announced it had arrived in Yemen earlier this week in a video released online.

Original article

The post Islamic State Claims It Executed 15 Yemen Soldiers – Reports appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Vietnam tries to balance ties between Washington and Beijing – and avoid conflict in the South China Sea.

By Murray Hiebert*

As Vietnam and the United States mark the 40th anniversary of the end of their bitter war on April 30, it’s surprising how far the two countries have come in normalizing relations. To be sure, there are still areas where ties could be deepened, particularly in military-to-military interaction. The United States is held back by concerns about human rights, particularly Hanoi’s detention of bloggers, but for Vietnam the worry centers on how giant neighbor China will react.

Vietnam this year seems to have two major priorities in its ties with the United States: Host President Barack Obama in Hanoi and secure a meeting for Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong in the White House. When Washington signaled that Trong would be invited to visit Washington, China sought to preempt the Americans by sending him a last-minute invitation to visit Beijing. While Beijing feted the Vietnamese party chief in early April, Vietnam welcomed US naval ships for an annual exercise off the coastal city of Danang, as if to signal its intention to balance ties between China and the United States.

A key factor driving Vietnam to bolster its relations with the United States in recent years has been China’s increasingly assertive behavior in the disputed South China Sea. Most recently, China has been changing facts on the water by dredging sand and pumping it onto partially submerged coral reefs, transforming them into new manmade islands in the Spratly Islands, parts of which are also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. China appears to be creating outposts from which it can conduct air and sea patrols 1,000 miles off its southern shore.

Vietnam’s concerns about China’s actions in the South China Sea date back to 2009 when Chinese ships began harassing the oil and gas exploration activities of PetroVietnam and its foreign partners off the coast of Vietnam. Anti-China protests, some violent, erupted in Vietnam in May 2014 after China parked a deep-water oil rig owned by China National Offshore Oil Corp. in disputed waters off the coast of central Vietnam.

Since the United States and Vietnam restored diplomatic ties in 1995, their relations have deepened in almost every area from economic to military relations and political to cultural cooperation. When Vietnamese president Truong Tan San visited Washington in July 2013, he and Obama announced an agreement to launch a comprehensive partnership, signaling a decision by both governments to boost strategic ties.

Bilateral economic relations have flourished since 1994 when the United States lifted the embargo against Vietnam. Two-way trade reached $36.3 billion in 2014, up more than tenfold since the two countries signed a bilateral trade agreement 13 years ago. Vietnam estimates that US companies have invested $11 billion, making the United States the country’s seventh largest investor. The biggest US investor is Intel Corp., which built a $1 billion wafer testing plant in Ho Chi Minh City.

Despite Vietnam’s growing trade ties with the rest of the world, China remains the country’s top trading partner with two-way trade expected to reach $60 billion this year, almost twice that with the United States. But Vietnam’s economic dependence runs even deeper. The country relies on China for much of its electricity in the northern part of the country, and many of the inputs for its critical exports of garments to the United States and Europe come from China.

To hedge its economic bets, Hanoi is partnering with the United States, Japan and nine other countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade agreement known as TPP, which negotiators seek to complete in the coming months. Vietnam hopes not only that the TPP will help force reforms of its inefficient state-owned enterprises, but also will give its economy alternative markets and decrease its heavy reliance on China.

Vietnam and the United States are also stepping up political and security cooperation. They hold two annual defense dialogues at the vice-ministerial level and work together in such areas as maritime security, military medicine, disaster response, and search and rescue. Vietnam will receive five to six new patrol vessels from the United States each year over the next several years to boost its maritime domain awareness.

Last October, Washington partially lifted its ban on the sale of weapons to Hanoi, which had been in force since the end of the war, to help Vietnam boost maritime security. Six months later, Hanoi has not ordered any US hardware under the new rules, as it apparently labors to understand the complexities of buying weapons systems from the United States. Washington would also be interested in increasing naval cooperation beyond one port call with three ships each year, but Vietnam appears reluctant to expand these operations in an effort to avoid irritating China.

At the political level, the US secretary of state and Vietnamese foreign minister meet each year to monitor progress in their comprehensive partnership. The two governments also hold regular discussions on human rights, the biggest obstacle holding the US government back from deepening ties. Washington’s assessment that freedom of religion and expression had improved in recent years made it possible for the administration to make a case to Congress to partially lift the ban on weapons sales.

Educational and cultural cooperation are also increasing between the two nations. Today there are 16,000 Vietnamese students studying in the United States, more than from any other nation in Southeast Asia. Congress has approved nearly $18 million to establish a private, nonprofit Fulbright University with an independent board of governors in cooperation with the Vietnamese government in an effort to boost country’s university education.

The two countries are also tackling the devastating legacies of their long war. Hanoi has long helped Washington look for servicemen still missing in Vietnam, and the United States has begun assisting the Vietnamese search for the remains of their missing. Washington is also helping clean up dioxin remaining from the use of the Agent Orange defoliant, linked to birth defects and cancer, according to scientists. The United States has spent more than $65 million to clean up the airport in central Vietnam and is beginning work on a former military base just north of Ho Chi Minh City.

The strategic interests of Washington and Hanoi are closely aligned on the South China Sea. Both call for the preservation of freedom of navigation and support a rules-based, diplomatic approach to resolving the territorial disputes with China. Vietnam welcomes the increased US security presence and intelligence activities in the disputed sea.

China’s placement of the oil rig off the coast of Vietnam last year served as a wakeup call for Vietnam’s leaders. It helped resolve, at least for now, the debate between those who want to stick with their communist allies in Beijing and those arguing for moving closer to United States as a hedge against China.

Despite the pace of rapprochement between the United States and Vietnam, the Vietnamese have limits on how far they are willing to go in deepening their defense ties with the Americans. Sharing a long border, 1280 kilometers, and several millennia of history with its giant neighbor, Vietnam – like its Southeast Asian neighbors – is trying to balance relations and avoid having to choose between China and the United States.

*Murray Hiebert is senior fellow and deputy director of the Sumitro Chair for Southeast Asian Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.

The post 40 Years After Exit From Saigon: Vietnam And US Find Strategic Common Ground – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The Minister for Transport of Egypt, Hani Sayed Mohamed Dahi, and Spain’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Competitiveness, Luis de Guindos, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Thursday in Madrid to study the creation of a high-speed railway corridor between the Egyptian cities of Cairo and Luxor.

These studies could be financed under the Fund to Internationalise Business (Spanish acronym: FIEM) managed by Spain’s Ministry for Economic Affairs.

The MOU signed on Thursday will be the first step in developing technological co-operation between the two countries.

The Egyptian Government is greatly interested in modernizing the railway system in the country and, in particular, in boosting high-speed travel. Spain, in turn, offers recognized international experience and know-how in high-speed railways.

The post Spain And Egypt Study Creation Of High-Speed Rail Between Cairo And Luxor appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Australia should withdraw plans to send refugees from Nauru to Cambodia in the face of continuing abuses against those already in Cambodia, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. Cambodia should reject its deal with Australia and focus on providing proper protections to the refugees and asylum seekers already on its soil.

“The Australian government is trying to pay Cambodia to take some refugees off its hands and its conscience,” said Elaine Pearson, Australia director. “This isn’t a solution, but rather a business deal at the expense of some very vulnerable people.”

The media is reporting that Australia is planning the first flight of refugees from Nauru to Cambodia under a September 2014 deal between Canberra and Phnom Penh. Under this deal, Cambodia would receive a US$35 million increase in Australian development assistance. These funds are in addition to the payment by Australia of all the costs related to moving people from the island of Nauru, where they are currently housed, to Cambodia.

Australian authorities have promised refugees and some asylum seekers in Nauru – where conditions are poor and reportedly abusive – a resettlement package in Cambodia. They have distributed a leaflet presenting a misleadingly glowing socioeconomic, political, and human rights picture of Cambodia that contradicts warnings issued by the Australian government to its own citizens and reporting by human rights groups and the media.

With recognized refugees on Nauru refusing to go to Cambodia, Australia has been persuading asylum seekers to go with offers of fast-track determination that they are refugees, plus financial rewards, according to media reports.

In addition to misrepresenting life in Cambodia, the leaflet distributed on Nauru ignores the Cambodian government’s dismal treatment of asylum seekers and refugees who are currently in the country. Human Rights Watch reported in November 2014 on the Cambodian government’s failure to provide recognized refugees with the appropriate legal status as well as official discrimination and hostility toward immigrants from the developing world. Refugees in Cambodia also experience high levels of poverty and insecurity, along with the same kinds of human rights violations committed against its own citizens. Legal barriers persist for refugees to obtain official government identification and open bank accounts.

“Australia has already offered what is effectively a bribe to Cambodia to take refugees, and now there are reports that it is effectively doing the same with desperate asylum seekers in Nauru,” Pearson said. “This would be the Abbott government’s latest attempt to offload all responsibility for people who have fled war, ethnic cleansing, and atrocities.”

Under a September 2014 memorandum of understanding between Australia and Cambodia, Cambodia agreed to “provide safe and permanent settlement opportunities for refugees from the Republic of Nauru … and demonstrate the importance of regional cooperation on refugees’ settlement in accordance with the Refugees Convention.”

The recent Cambodian government treatment of mostly Christian ethnic Jarai asylum seekers (also known as Montagnards) from Vietnam, where they claim they are targets of religious and political persecution, calls into question Cambodia’s good faith in undertaking such obligations. In December 2014 the Cambodian government allowed 13 Jarai from Vietnam claiming persecution by Vietnamese authorities to register in Phnom Penh as asylum-seekers and subsequently recognized them as refugees. But the government has refused to allow some 94 other Jarai asylum seekers even to register to seek a determination whether they also qualify as refugees. It has deported some 54 of these asylum seekers to Vietnam. It has now deployed a mixed force of police, gendarmes, and army troops to Cambodia’s border with Vietnam to prevent more Montagnards from crossing into Cambodia to seek asylum.

Cambodia is also seeking third-country resettlement for the 13 Jarai that it recognized as refugees, which suggests that the government itself has concerns about its capacity to integrate refugees permanently into Cambodian society.

“Cambodia’s search for a new home for Jarai refugees may be evidence enough that it’s not able or willing to integrate refugees from Nauru,” Pearson said. “The Cambodian government should focus on providing effective protection and assistance to refugees already living there and ensuring asylum seekers enjoy their rights under international law.”

The post Australia Should Stop Transfers To Cambodia, Says HRW appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A senior US State Department official said Wednesday that Secretary of State John Kerry was traveling to Sri Lanka to show that the US “applauds the vision” of that country’s new government.

Mr. Kerry will visit Colombo on Saturday as part of a weeklong trip that includes stops in Kenya and Djibouti. He will be the first secretary of state to visit Sri Lanka since Colin Powell did so in 2004.

In Sri Lanka, Kerry will meet with the President Maithripala Sirisena.

At a Wednesday briefing, the senior State Department official said the U.S. foresees having a “mutually helpful relationship” with Sri Lanka, a country that could become a “beacon” for democracy and human rights.

In February, the U.N. agreed to a six-month delay in publishing a report on alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka, in order to give the country’s new government an opportunity to cooperate with U.N. investigators.

During his trip, Kerry will meet with members of the Tamil National Alliance, elected officials who represent many of the country’s ethnic Tamils. He also will attend a celebration for the Vesak, stated the Voice of America.

“Effectively, what Secretary Kerry is doing is making himself part of the process of creating a new kind of relationship with Sri Lanka,” said Teresita Schaffer, a former U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka.

A senior State Department official said the U.S. wants to be “as helpful as possible” in supporting Sri Lanka’s effort to fulfill its goals of peace and reconciliation.

The post Sri Lanka: Kerry Visit To Show US ‘Applauds Vision’ Of New Government appeared first on Eurasia Review.

In 2017, Pope Francis plans to travel to Fatima, said Bishop António Augusto dos Santos Marto of Leiria-Fátima in a statement after meeting with the Holy Father.

The occasion for the visit would be the 100-year anniversary of Mary’s appearing to three shepherd children at Fatima.

No travel dates to the Portuguese shrine have been set, but the country is already preparing for the celebration of the centenary of the apparitions.

Two years ago, Pope Francis received the statue of Our Lady of Fatima in St. Peter’s Square. He invited those present to meditate on the gaze of Mary.

“O Mary, let us feel your gaze as a Mother,” he said. “Lead us to your Son, as we are not Christians ‘for show’, but who can ‘get their hands dirty’ to build with your Son, Jesus, his Kingdom of love, joy and peace.”

“How important it is,” the Pope said of Mary’s gaze. “How many things can be said with a look! Affection, encouragement, compassion, love, but also reproach, envy, pride, even hatred.”

“Often,” he added, “the look says more than words, or says what words cannot or dare not say. Who looks at the Virgin Mary? She looks at all of us, each of us…She looks at us like a Mother, with tenderness, with mercy, with love. The same way she looked at the child Jesus, in every moment of his life… When we are tired, discouraged, overwhelmed by the problems, look to Mary.”

St. John Paul II also had a special devotion to Virgin of Fatima. He attributed his survival during a 1981 assassination attempt to her miraculous intervention. As a sign of his gratitude, he placed the bullet from the failed assassination attempt in her crown.

“Pray for the brother who shot me, whom I have sincerely forgiven. United to Christ, as a priest and victim, I offer my sufferings for the Church and the world,” Pope John Paul II said.

The post Pope Francis Plans To Visit Fatima In 2017 appeared first on Eurasia Review.

All over the world people risk and sometimes lose their lives escaping poverty or war fare in their native lands. Throughout human history migrants have sought out places that are safer or more prosperous but they are seldom greeted with open arms. Xenophobia, racism, and fears of scarcity prevent desperate people from being integrated into societies that might accept them. However, the urge to escape violence or hunger never abates.

The most visible of the world’s refugee crises today is taking place in the Mediterranean sea. Thus far in 2015, it is estimated that 1,724 people have died on unseaworthy vessels as they try to reach southern Europe from Libya. These refugees come from many African nations, from Syria and from countries as far away as Bangladesh. On April 18, 2015 a vessel holding an estimated 850 people capsized with only 28 survivors.

This humanitarian crisis is the direct result of the United States and NATO decision to effect regime change in Libya in 2011. Presumptive democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton infamously said of Libyan president Gaddafi, “We came, we saw, he died.” Not only was Gaddafi killed by the conspiracy between NATO and jihadists in his country, but Libya never recovered from the intervention.

The most well known individual victim was the American ambassador, killed in Benghazi by the same forces which the United States supported. Very few people in this country are aware of their government’s complicity and those who do know don’t want to discuss it. The republicans who were as eager to intervene as the Obama administration want to make embarrassing political hay but don’t want to talk about the ongoing humanitarian crisis which the United States created.

Citizens of many African nations routinely went to work in Libya, an oil rich nation which had jobs for migrants. Libya was an example of the prosperity all Africa nations might be able to experience before it was turned to rubble by NATO’s machinations. Internecine warfare has turned it into a failed state. There is no legitimate government and it is so dangerous that there are no international flights going into that country. Libya can’t even effectively extract or sell the oil resources that it has.

This chaos makes it a perfect place for human traffickers to do business. Africans make a dangerous journey across the Sahara desert from Senegal, Gambia, Nigeria, Niger and Mali. Further east from the horn of Africa come the Ethiopians, Somalians and Eritreans, all of whom suffer from American instigated destruction in their lands. So many Syrians have fled the NATO attack on their nation that neighboring countries Lebanon and Jordan prevent them from entering. Now Syrians fly first to the Sudan and wait to be smuggled into Europe through Libya, whose long coast is a magnet for smugglers and would-be migrants hoping to enter European nations as refugees. (*link maps)

The hand wringing among the Americans and the European Union countries is entirely hypocritical and ought to be pointed out as such. Thousands of Libyans were killed or displaced by the NATO intervention and a brutal race war was directed at black Libyans and African migrants. Libya would not be the point embarkation point for so much misery had it been left alone.

The world’s corporate media have a seemingly infinite capacity to produce hours of footage and thousands of words without ever getting to the inconvenient truth. In this case the truth is that the United States and its allies lied to the world when they claimed a dubious responsibility to protect Libyans. They were interested in nothing of the sort. The only goal was to attack yet another country too weak to thwart their plans for imperial expansion. They succeeded in getting rid of Gaddafi and in creating another crisis for humanity.

Then again Libya isn’t much different from Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. US backed coups, interventions, and drug policing have created violence and chaos in those countries. When unaccompanied children began arriving in the United States there was little discussion of our government’s culpability. Political discourse, such as it was, was focused on political battles in congress about immigration policy and not about how this particular crisis was American made.

We now see another sorry spectacle of suffering people and powerful nations who could help but refuse to do so. It is all the more disgraceful because those countries created the problem in the first place. Let the NATO nations take in every refugee fleeing on a leaky boat. It is the least they could do to make restitution for the suffering they created.

The post American Responsibility For Global Refugee Crises – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Elvira M. Jukic

Family members, as well as hundreds of citizens and officials gathered on Wednesday in the village of Karakaj near Zvornik to bury Dragan Djuric, a Bosnian Serb policeman killed on Monday in an attack on the police station in the eastern town of Zvornik.

As Djuric was laid to rest with the highest police honours, and as other two policemen wounded in the attack recovered in hospital, Bosnia’s judicial, intelligence and police agencies worked around the clock to uncover details about the attack and the motives of the culprit, Nerdin Ibric.

According to some family members, Ibric – who was killed in the shoot-out with police – recently fell under the influence of religious radicals who had fought with Islamic militants in the war in Syria.

Joint teams from the State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA and local and entity police have raided a number of locations and arrested two persons believed to be linked to the attack.

While ethnic and political tensions triggered by the attack slowly lessen, concerns about security in Bosnia remain high. Local institutions and international experts ponder different approaches towards improving security arrangements in the country.

Senior officials from Serbia and Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska met in Belgrade on Wednesday to discuss the repercussions of the attack.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, the RS President, Milorad Dodik, as well as the Serbian and RS interior ministers agreed that Serbia and Republika Srpska should cooperate more closely on security to prevent similar attacks.

“Republika Srpska will cooperate with everyone in the region because the fight against terrorism cannot be isolated,” Dodik said.

“The fight against terrorism is a priority of Republika Srpska but it has to be a priority for the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is not enough will among the Bosniak [Muslim] elite to stand against this phenomenon,” he complained.

Shortly after the attack, Dodik indicated that the RS might withdraw from state security agencies and establish parallel structures. In Belgrade, he said again that Bosnia’s security system was inefficient and that the RS would develop its own new strategies in that sector.

Bosniak leaders have condemned the attack unreservedly. The Islamic Community, the Bosniak member of the state Presidency and the chief of the largest Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, SDA Bakir Izetbegovic, all condemned the Zvornik attack in the strongest terms.

However, local and international experts say the terrorist threat has been ignored for too long in Bosnia and that actions, not words, are required. “The threat was not taken seriously,” the headline in the Mostar daily newspaper Dnevni List said.

“Returnees from Syria represent big threat to Bosnia,” read an article in the Sarajevo daily Dnevni Avaz, which also carried out an interview with Magnus Ranstorp, a Swedish academic considered a leading expert in Islamic radicalism and terrorism.

“We have to take into account that the Balkans is practically on the junction of the roads for [Islamic] foreign fighters,” he said.

Although Bosnia is almost half Muslim in demographic terms – Bosniaks are by far the largest single community – local and international security experts say the number of Bosnians fighting alongside Islamist militant groups is no greater than any other European country of its size.

However, the combination of a divided and impoverished society, an inefficient police and judiciary and growing ethnic, political, economic and social tensions have clearly created conditions for radical ideas and terrorist activities to grow.

The European Union on Wednesday said it would provide 10 million euro to counter Islamist radicalization in northern and central Africa and stem the flow of foreign fighters between North Africa, the Middle East and the Western Balkans.

“Foreign terrorist fighters joining the ranks of Islamic State and other militias in the Middle East are a growing threat to many countries, inside and outside the EU,” it said.

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(EurActiv) — A new report by the Danish Ministry for Justice presented on Thursday (30 April) concludes that Denmark won’t be giving up sovereignty by joining the EU’s banking union. This means the country can proceed without having to first hold a referendum.

Denmark’s centre-left government wants the Scandinavian state to become part of the banking union, as it views it as being in the interest of its financial sector.

“The strengthened coorperation on banks contribute to financial and economic stability which will benefit Denmark. We believe it would be beneficial to take part in this strengthened coorperation. We will make our decision on the issue when we see how the coorperation works in practice,” the government said in a statement.

Denmark obtained four opt-outs from the Maastricht Treaty following the treaty’s initial rejection in a 1992 referendum. The opt-outs are outlined in the Edinburgh Agreement, and concern the Monetary Union (EMU), Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) and the Citizenship of the European Union.

This means that the country often needs to set up referendums for new EU legislative initiatives, such as the Unified Patent Court poll last year, and the upcoming referendum on an opt-in solution for 22 juristical matters, which Denmark is prevented from being part of due to the Justice opt-out. The 22 issues include the cross-border Legal Aid Directive, the Cyber Crime Directive, and the Directive on combating the abuse and sexual exploitation of children. The referendum will take place before April 2016.

If two-thirds of the Danish parliament wishes to join the banking union, a referendum will not be needed. Though Danes tend to be Eurosceptic, most of the parties in the country’s parliament are pro-EU, which means that even with a change of government, a majority in favor of the banking union can be found.

The Eurosceptic Danish People’s Party, which, according to the latest polls, is Denmark’s third biggest party, and became the biggest Danish party in the European Parliament elections last May, was quick to criticise the government on Thursday.

“The government has today decided that Denmark should join the eurozone countries’ banking union. And this, without asking the Danes,” Kristian Thulesen-Dahl, the party’s leader, wrote on Facebook.

“The banking union is natural for the eurozone countries, so we will have to see whether this means that the government is preparing for Denmark to join the euro. The Danish population have rejected the euro twice in referendums and the government has to respect this,” Thulesen-Dahl continued.

The creation of the banking union was the EU’s first answer to the financial crisis. Six years ago, banks across Europe were stabilised using billions of taxpayer money to prevent the financial meltdown from turning into a major depression.

The common EU rules on banking will help to prevent bank crises and set out a common framework to manage the process, including how to wind them down in an orderly way.

Banking union ensures common implementation of the rules.

In November 2014, the European Central Bank (ECB) became the supervisor of all 5,500 banks in the euro area, in the framework of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. In order to ensure that the ECB has a clear view of the situation of banks it supervises, a comprehensive assessment of banks’ financial health was carried out in 2014.

The post Denmark Plans To Join EU Banking Union appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Jean Claude Nkundwa and Jonathan W. Rosen*

When Faustin Kobagaya fled his northern Burundi home in March, sneaking through the night to the Rwandan border, he was running from what could soon become another violent chapter in his country’s fratricidal history.

As a 10-year-old in 1993, Mr. Kobagaya, a member of Burundi’s Tutsi minority, lost most of his extended family in a wave of ethnic violence that followed the assassination of the country’s first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye. The murder of Ndadaye, a Hutu, unleashed a 12-year civil war in which an estimated 300,000 Burundians were killed. It also helped embolden anti-Tutsi extremists in Rwanda, who, only six months later, would begin to carry out Rwanda’s genocide in 1994.

Today, Mr. Kobagaya is one of thousands who’ve fled the country in advance of its June presidential election — a contest that has brought about Burundi’s greatest threat to peace since the end of its civil war in 2005.

Several people have died in political violence here in the capital since Sunday, as protests mounted after President Pierre Nkurunziza’s party officially nominated him for a third term, a move his opponents say violates the 2005 Constitution as well as the 2000 Arusha peace agreement upon which the Constitution was largely based. The situation threatens to boil over, yet Burundi’s international partners have said very little. If the United Nations, Western donors and the African Union don’t act quickly, and prepare to intervene if necessary, the tension could explode into a full-scale civil war, threatening the stability of Africa’s entire Great Lakes region.

Like many of his compatriots now seeking refuge in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr. Kobagaya is on the run from the Imbonerakure, the youth wing of Burundi’s ruling party, the National Council for the Defense of Democracy — Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD). In recent months, he and others say, Imbonerakure youths armed with guns and nail-studded clubs have mobilized across the country, threatening anyone opposed to plans by Mr. Nkurunziza, a member of the Hutu majority, to seek another term.

On the night Mr. Kobagaya fled with his wife and two children, an Imbonerakure mob had broken down the door to his house. “They told me I was lucky to survive in 1993,” he said. “But that I’d soon be following my parents to the grave.”

On Sunday, the most prominent opposition group, the National Liberation Forces reported that its party speaker had been kidnapped. On Monday, the police arrested Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, one of Burundi’s most prominent human rights activists, and the authorities suspended broadcasts of Burundi’s leading private radio station to much of the countryside. In Bujumbura, Imbonerakure stood ready to strike at supporters of the opposition.

The crisis — though only now making global headlines — was actually several years in the making. Although Mr. Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader, has overseen a period of impressive stability since his election in 2005, his party has worked to tighten its grip on power through violence. While the Imbonerakure, a group comprised in part of former combatants, has been linked to the killing of Mr. Nkurunziza’s opponents, its role expanded as his campaign for a third term began to mobilize.

In the spring of 2014, local human rights groups disclosed evidence that the authorities were arming Imbonerakure members and sending them for paramilitary training in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. Last April, a confidential United Nations cable accused high-ranking generals of distributing arms and military uniforms to the group, which it noted had begun to act as “a militia over and above the police, the army and the judiciary” in many rural areas.

At the time, some observers likened the cable to the infamous “genocide fax” sent in January 1994 by Brig. Gen. Roméo Dalliare, commander of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, to U.N. headquarters in New York warning that plans were afoot to exterminate Rwanda’s Tutsis.

A year later, as Burundi edges toward a precipice, parallels with 1994 Rwanda are not unfounded. Like the Rwandan Interahamwe, the civilian group responsible for much of the killing in Rwanda’s genocide, the Imbonerakure — or at least its more radical elements — appear ready to target civilians en masse. Although Burundi’s crisis is primarily one of politics, with antagonisms crossing ethnic boundaries, there is also an ethnic dimension. Many people who’ve fled the country are Tutsis who say they’ve been targeted in an effort by Nkurunziza loyalists to give the Imbonerakure a clear-cut common enemy.

Critically, as in Rwanda 21 years ago, the international response to Burundi’s plight has been clearly insufficient. Although the United Nations deployed an electoral observation mission to the country in January, it is not designed to assist in countering election-related violence. The U.N. Security Council on April 17 called on both the government and political opposition to refrain from voter intimidation and acts of violence, yet the Council has given no indication that it is prepared to engage more robustly.

We believe that much stronger action is required — from both international actors as well as the vast majority of Burundians that remain committed to peace. Within the country, religious leaders, including officials of the widely respected Catholic Church, should discourage the use of violence and promote the disposal of arms in mosques and churches.

Although the army is thought to be divided between pro- and anti-Nkurunziza elements, it remains a trusted institution and must play a constructive role in disarming the Imbonerakure and defending the right of peaceful protest. Should the army fracture, the United Nations, in concert with the African Union, must prepare to intervene if necessary. In this scenario, an intervention of foreign troops could be the only means to protect civilians from the Imbonerakure, which may collude with factions of Burundi’s armed forces that back the president.

The prospect of a wider regional crisis is also grave. Due to their proximity, shared colonial history and similar social and ethnic structures, Burundi and Rwanda have historically been destabilized by cross-border unrest. Should Burundi erupt into full-scale war, chances are high that Rwanda would intervene — particularly if the response from the international community is muted. That could mobilize anti-Rwanda elements in the region, including the Congo-based Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a militia formed by perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide that is believed to maintain links with some Imbonerakure members. Eventually, other regional forces could be dragged into a conflict.

Twenty-one years after the Rwandan genocide, as the United States, the United Nations and other international actors still try to come to terms with their failure to act in the face of horrific violence, they must not underestimate the severity of the crisis that once again is brewing in the region.

* Jean Claude Nkundwa is a peace activist in Bujumbura. Jonathan W. Rosen is a journalist based in Rwanda. A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 29, 2015, in The International New York Times.

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Who among us hasn’t wanted to don a shimmering piece of fabric and instantly disappear from sight? Unfortunately, we non-magical folk are bound by the laws of physics, which have a way of preventing such fantastical escapes.

Real-life invisibility cloaks do exist, in a manner of speaking: researchers have engineered systems that bend light around an object, shielding it from detection. But most are very tiny and only work at very small wavelength ranges, rendering them less impressive to the average observer.

Now, a group of researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), in Karlsruhe, Germany, has developed a portable invisibility cloak that can be taken into classrooms and used for demonstrations. It can’t hide a human, but it can make small objects disappear from sight without specialized equipment.

Scientists hoping to divert light around an object to render it invisible must find a way to compensate for the increased distance the light must now travel. On a road trip, you might solve this problem by changing your speed. If you had planned to take the rutted scenic road directly over the mountain pass, but it’s closed for the season, you could instead take the six-lane superhighway that goes around the mountain. The greater distance is offset by the higher speed limit.

Unfortunately, light is a bit more challenging than a station wagon. Because relativity prevents mass from traveling faster than the vacuum speed of light, there’s no way to further speed up the detoured light in a vacuum or in air.

To address this challenge, the KIT team constructed their cloak from a light-scattering material. By scattering light, the material slows down the effective propagation speed of the light waves through the medium. Then the light can be sped up again to make up for the longer path length around the hidden object.

In this cloak, the object to be concealed is placed inside a hollow metal cylinder coated with acrylic paint, which diffusely reflects light. The tube is embedded within a block of polydimethylsiloxane, a commonly used organic polymer, doped with titanium dioxide nanoparticles that make it scatter light.

“Our cloak takes advantage of the much lower effective propagation speed in light-scattering media,” said Robert Schittny, who led the research project. “As we seemingly slow down the light everywhere, speeding it up again in the cloak to make up for the longer path around the core is not a problem.” If the average time it takes light to travel through the polydimethylsiloxane block is in just the right proportion to the average time it takes to travel through the cloak, the core will become invisible.

On the other hand, the completely solid-state cloak can be easily transported to classrooms. “It is a macroscopic cloak that you can look at with your bare eyes and hold in your hands,” said Schittny. “With a reasonably strong flashlight in a not too bright room, it is very easy to demonstrate the cloaking. That means no fancy lab equipment, no microscopes, no post-processing of measurement data. The effect is just there for everyone to see.”

Schittny and his colleagues hope their cloak will be used in classrooms and labs to excite and educate students about physics.

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In research report published in the May 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal, scientists report that a particular class of pesticides called “neonicotinoids” wreaks havoc on the bee populations, ultimately putting some crops that rely on pollination in jeopardy.

Specifically, these pesticides kill bee brain cells, rendering them unable to learn, gather food and reproduce. The report, however, also suggests that the effects of these pesticides on bee colonies may be reversible by decreasing or eliminating the use of these pesticides on plants pollenated by bees and increasing the availability of “bee-friendly” plants available to the insects.

“Our study shows that the neonicotinoid pesticides are a risk to our bees and we should stop using them on plants that bees visit,” said Christopher N. Connolly, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Medical Research Institute at the Ninewells Medical School at the University of Dundee in Dundee, UK. “Neonicotinoids are just a few examples of hundreds of pesticides we use on our crops and in our gardens. Stop using all pesticides in your garden and see insect damage as a success. You are providing for your native wildlife. Nasty caterpillars grow into beautiful butterflies.”

To make their discovery, Connolly and colleagues fed bees a sugar solution with very low neonicotinoid pesticide levels typically found in flowers (2.5 parts per billion) and tracked the toxins to the bee brain. They found that pesticide levels in the bees’ brains were sufficient to cause the learning cells to run out of energy. Additionally, the brain cells were even vulnerable to this effect at just one tenth of the level present.

When the ability of the bee’s brain to learn is limited, the bee is unable to master key skills such as recognizing the presence of nectar and pollen from the smell emitted from flowers.

In addition, scientists fed bumblebee colonies this same very low level of pesticide in a remote site in the Scottish Highlands where they were unlikely to be exposed to any other pesticides. They found that just a few of the exposed colonies performed well, colonies were smaller, and nests were in poor condition with fungus taking over. This further suggests that bumblebees exposed to this type of pesticide become poor learners, become unable to properly gather food, and become unable to properly nurture the next generation of bees.

“It is ironic that neonicotinoids, pesticides developed to preserve the health of plants, ultimately inflict tremendous damage on plant life,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “These chemicals destroy the insect communities required by plants for their own reproduction.”

The post Pesticides Alter Bees’ Brains And Affect Reproduction appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Genetic testing of Iñupiat people currently living in Alaska’s North Slope is helping Northwestern University scientists fill in the blanks on questions about the migration patterns and ancestral pool of the people who populated the North American Arctic over the last 5,000 years.

“This is the first evidence that genetically ties all of the Iñupiat and Inuit populations from Alaska, Canada and Greenland back to the Alaskan North Slope,” said Northwestern’s M. Geoffrey Hayes, senior author of the new study to be published April 29, 2015, in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

In this study, all mitochondrial DNA haplogroups previously found in the ancient remains of Neo- and Paleo-Eskimos and living Inuit peoples from across the North American Arctic were found within the people living in North Slope villages.

These findings support the archaeological model that the “peopling of the eastern Arctic” began in the North Slope, in an eastward migration from Alaska to Greenland. It also provides new evidence to support the hypothesis that there were two major migrations to the east from the North Slope at two different times in history.

“There has never been a clear biological link found in the DNA of the Paleo-Eskimos, the first people to spread from Alaska into the eastern North American arctic, and the DNA of Neo-Eskimos, a more technologically sophisticated group that later spread very quickly from Alaska and the Bering Strait region to Greenland and seemed to replace the Paleo-Eskimo,” Hayes said.

“Our study suggests that the Alaskan North Slope serves as the homeland for both of those groups, during two different migrations. We found DNA haplogroups of both ancient Paleo-Eskimos and Neo-Eskimos in Iñupiat people living in the North Slope today.”

Hayes is an assistant professor of endocrinology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and an assistant professor of anthropology at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He has been studying population genetics of the Arctic for more than a decade.

At the request of Iñupiat elders from Barrow, Alaska, who are interested in using scientific methods to learn more about the history of their people, Hayes and a team of scientists extracted DNA from saliva samples given by 151 volunteers living in eight different North Slope communities. This is the first genetic study of modern-day Iñupiat people.

For this paper, the scientists sequenced and analyzed only mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mother to child, with few changes from generation to generation.

Ninety-eight percent of the maternal linages in this group were of Arctic descent. The scientists found all known Arctic-specific haplogroups present in these North Slope communities. The haplogroups are: A2a, A2b, D4b1a and D2.

D2 is the known haplogroup of ancient Paleo-Eskimos. Until this study D2 had only been found in the remains of ancient Paleo-Eskimos.

D4b1a is a known haplogroup of the ancient Neo-Eskimos, the much more technologically sophisticated group that came after the Paleo-Eskimos and seemed to replace them and populate a large part of the Arctic in a short amount of time.

“We think the presence of these two haplotypes in villages of the North Slope means that the Paleo-Eskimos and the Neo-Eskimos were both ancestors of the contemporary Iñupiat people,” said Jennifer A. Raff, first author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow in Hayes’ lab at the Feinberg School when the research was being done. “We will be exploring these connections in the future with additional genetic markers.”

Another haplogroup that surfaced in this study was C4. This is typically only seen in Native Americans much farther south. Its geographic distribution suggests that it might have been one of the haplogroups carried by the earliest peoples to enter the Americas. The researchers think it could be seen in the North Slope because of recent marriages between Athapascan and Iñupiat families or because it is a remnant of a much more ancient contact between these groups.

One more surprise in this study was evidence there may have been some migrations of Greenlandic Inuit back to the Alaska North Slope. The scientists plan to explore this in the future with additional genetic markers, too.

This work is part of the Genetics of the Alaskan North Slope project, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs. The goal of the project is to reconstruct the human genetic history along the North Slope. The scientists hope the project will be a model for research partnerships between geneticists and indigenous peoples.

While this study revealed exciting new evidence about the history and prehistory of Iñupiat women, it also confirms local history about the close-knit ties of the North Slope villages.

“We found that there were many lineages shared between villages along the coast, suggesting that women traveled frequently between these communities,” Hayes said. “In fact, when we compared the genetic composition of all the communities in the North Slope, we found that they were all so closely related that they could be considered one single population. This fits well with what the elders and other community members have told us about Iñupiat history.”

Future work will analyze genetic markers on the Y-chromosomes from men in the North Slope, taking a closer look at the population history of men, as well as how contact with outsiders in the 19th century affected the Iñupiat peoples.

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By Nina Shea*

Why is the United States barring a persecuted Iraqi Catholic nun — an internationally respected and leading representative of the Nineveh Christians who have been killed and deported by ISIS — from coming to Washington to testify about this catastrophe?

Earlier this week, we learned that every member of an Iraqi delegation of minority groups, including representatives of the Yazidi and Turkmen Shia religious communities, has been granted visas to come for official meetings in Washington — save one. The single delegate whose visitor visa was denied happens to be the group’s only Christian from Iraq.

Sister Diana Momeka of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena was informed on Tuesday by the U.S. consulate in Erbil that her non-immigrant-visa application has been rejected. The reason given in the denial letter, a copy of which I have obtained, is:

You were not able to demonstrate that your intended activities in the United States would be consistent with the classification of the visa.

She told me in a phone conversation that, to her face, consular officer Christopher Patch told her she was denied because she is an “IDP” or Internally Displaced Person. “That really hurt,” she said. Essentially, the State Department was calling her a deceiver.

The State Department officials made the determination that the Catholic nun could be falsely asserting that she intends to visit Washington when secretly she could be intending to stay. That would constitute illegal immigration, and that, of course, is strictly forbidden. Once here, she could also be at risk for claiming political asylum, and the U.S. seems determined to deny ISIS’s Christian victims that status.

In reality, Sister Diana wanted to visit for one week in mid-May. She has meetings set up with the Senate and House foreign-relations committees, the State Department, USAID, and various NGOs. In support of her application, Sister Diana had multiple documents vouching for her and the temporary nature of her visit. She submitted a letter from her prioress, Sister Maria Hana. It attested that the nun has been gainfully employed since last February with the Babel College of Philosophy and Theology in Erbil, Kurdistan, and is contracted to teach there in the 2015–16 academic year.

She also submitted an invitation from her sponsors, two highly respected Washington-area institutions, the Institute for Global Engagement and former congressman Frank Wolf’s (R., Va.) 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative. For good measure, she also had a letter of endorsement for her visit from Representative Anna Eshoo (D., Calif.).

The State Department wasn’t buying. It either thought that they were all in on a scheme by the nun or that Sister Diana was plotting to deceive her well-placed friends and supporters, as well as the U.S. government.

Until ISIS stormed into Qaraqosh last August, Sister Diana had a distinguished academic career and had been teaching an intensive course on spiritual direction at St. Ephrem Seminary, as well as English and peacemaking courses. She, along with the town’s 50,000 other, mostly Christian, residents, fled for their lives from ISIS during the second week of August. Since then, the 30-something religious woman has served as a spokesperson for this community, as well as for the over 100,000 other Christians driven into Kurdistan under the ISIS “convert or die” policy. Through this, she has become internationally known as a charismatic and articulate advocate for religious freedom and human rights. Mr. Wolf, who met her in Kurdistan a few months ago, explained, “We had hoped to facilitate her trip to the States so that she could speak with great candor, as is her custom, to policymakers. Perhaps just as significantly, we viewed her as a critical voice to awaken the church in the West to the suffering of Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq.”

But in the eyes of the U.S. consulate, she is just another Christian IDP. (Last October a delegation of IDP Yazidis were given U.S. visas to come to Washington to speak.)

Adding insult to injury: In its 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, issued this week, the State Department pledged that “every overseas post and domestic bureau will seek opportunities to engage religious leaders,” as part of its pursuit of countering “violent extremism.” Opportunities to engage with everyone, that is, except Catholic nuns in Iraq — all of whom are now IDPs.

About the author:
*Nina Shea
Director, Center for Religious Freedom

Source:
This article was published at the Hudson Institute.

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