22 Oct - Late News Picks

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 Secrets of frog killer laid bare
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8319467.stm
Scientists have unravelled the mechanism by which the fungal disease chytridiomycosis kills its victims.

The fungus is steadily spreading through populations of frogs and other amphibians worldwide, and has sent some species extinct in just a few years.

Researchers now report in the journal Science that the fungus kills by changing the animals' electrolyte balance, resulting in cardiac arrest.

The finding is described as a "key step" in understanding the epidemic.
The finding is unlikely to plot an immediate route to ways of preventing or treating or curing the disease in the wild.

A kink in the lizard's tale 

About one-third of species on the threatened list - some winking out of existence in a single season as the disease chytridiomycosis extends its fungal tentacles across the continents; nearly 100 species in captive breeding programmes, often because the risk that wild populations will disappear is considered too high for comfort.
But you probably haven't heard this one; the world's reptiles could be in an equally unhappy situation.
As yet, there isn't a global assessment of reptiles, although the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has begun work on one - more of that in a moment.
In its absence, a group of UK specialists has looked at the data we do have and what it tells us, and asked what we'd see if this limited picture turned out to be representative of the world in general.
You can find it in the journal Diversity.
And it's not pretty. By their analysis, the prospects for reptiles worldwide could be just as bad as for amphibians.
As is often the case in these matters, there's more data from Europe than from less developed parts of the world; and the UK is especially rich in studies (though not in the number of reptile species), thanks to the long tradition of amateur naturalists.
The first finding these researchers made as they trawled the scientific literature was that both reptiles and amphibians appear to be less well-studied than birds or mammals.
Between 2005 and 2009, one scientific paper was written for every 11 amphibian or reptile species. Mammals and birds notched up one paper for every four species.

Climate doctors say 'feel the pain'...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack

It's worth looking at some of the international ramifications of the conclusions of the UK's official climate advisers - reported on Monday - that the country needs a "step change" in ambition if it's to achieve government targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Solar_panel_installationIt's worth it because the UK has been one of the developed world's champions when it comes to curbing emissions, having cut greenhouse gas output by about 16% since 1990.

So here's the rub: if the UK has been relatively successful but is still being told it has not done enough - and told that by its own advisors, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), rather than by green campaigners - what does that say about everyone else?

According to UN data, the UK stands in bronze medal position behind Norway and Germany (among OECD countries) in the table of emission slashers, and at opposite poles from back markers such as Spain, Portugal, Greece and New Zealand, which have all seen emissions rise by more than 20% over the same period - 50% in the case of Spain.

(I'm using here UN data up to 2006, the last year for which comparisons are readily available - it's likely that the recession will have made every nation's figures a bit lower, but is unlikely to have changed the overall picture.)

In large part, Germany and the UK have cut emissions through chance. German re-unification forced the closure and refurbishment of old, inefficient industry in the former Soviet sector, while the advent of North Sea gas (combined with some other domestic political concerns) in the UK prompted a large-scale transition from coal to less carbon-intensive natural gas.

A point that this week's CCC report brings out is that most UK reductions since the "dash for gas" have been achieved in greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide.

Your Daily Water Use
http://www.good.is/post/your-daily-water-use
Thirsty? So is everyone else. We’re headed for a water shortage. Here’s how a few simple choices can reduce your daily water use by 1,213 gallons. A GOOD Transparency video.

Health Care Reform: An Online Guide
http://www.slate.com/id/2220222

US raids hit Mexican drug cartel
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8321190.stm
More than 300 people have been arrested in a series of drug raids targeting a Mexican drug cartel operating in the US, American officials have said.

The two-day operation, which involved thousands of police officers in 19 US states, is the latest aimed at the cartel known as La Familia.It was part of Project Coronado, which has led to almost 1,200 arrests over four years, officials said.
La Familia, which is based in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, has been accused of carrying out bloody attacks on Mexican security forces.Mexico's President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 45,000 troops to fight drug gangs since he took office in December 2006.However, more than 11,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in that time.
In the course of the two-day crackdown, US police and FBI agents seized $3.4m (£2.05m) in cash, 144 weapons and more than 100 vehicles, as well as stashes of methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana.

Officials seize cocaine submarine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8321677.stm
Guatemalan and US authorities have seized a makeshift submarine loaded with cocaine with a US street value of $200m (£120m).

US paper seeks pot correspondent
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8319950.stm
The alternative Denver newspaper, Westword, is seeking a writer for its weekly review of Colorado's booming medical marijuana dispensaries.

But there is a catch - candidates must have a medical ailment allowing them to enter a dispensary and use marijuana.


N Korea food shortage 'desperate'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8321670.stm
A UN rights expert says the food situation in North Korea is desperate, with aid from the World Food Programme reaching only one-third of the hungry.

Lasting legacy of Ethiopia's famine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8321043.stm
Even though the population is now close to double what it was in 1984, and many people have smaller plots to cultivate, today's Ethiopian government maintains that enough progress has been made in improving the early warning signs of famine.

Helping farmers withstand drought on anything like the scale of 1984 is a priority and could not happen again, it asserts.

Many ordinary Ethiopians would say the same. But there are many, too, whose anxiety deepens with every crop failure, as is happening in parts of the country once again.
Mesele Adhena stayed in Korem after the famine rather than return home. He is 47 now and he and his wife have six children.
They live in a small house that has been built on a plain on the edge of the town, where he and so many thousands of others arrived in desperation during 1984.

Some crops are withering in Kobo and farmers have future concerns

He grows food in the plot around the house and more in the fields beyond. And he says he has learned a lesson from the 1984 famine - how much more efficiently farmers can protect their livelihoods if they work hard.
"We did not work night and day before," he says, "but we do now."
An hour's drive down an escarpment near the small town of Kobo (also a relief centre in 1984) I talked to farmers who are seeing their crops wither this year - despite doing everything they could to save them.
They said it was the government's food-for-work safety net scheme that had kept their children from the risk of losing their lives.
Much more is known now about how the most vulnerable can be kept from the edge of deadly hunger, and it was the tragedy experienced in Korem and the surrounding region that taught the harshest lessons.
But one man I have met here said he hoped that now - 25 years on - Korem would be remembered by the world as less a place of death and more where so many lives were saved.

Ethiopia asks for urgent food aid
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8319741.stm
ANALYSIS
Martin Plaut
Martin Plaut, Africa analyst
There is no doubt poor and erratic rains have hit the Ethiopian harvest. But large parts of the country have not been hit by drought. So why the current crisis?

It is in part the result of policies designed to keep farmers on the land, which belongs to the state and cannot be sold. So farms are passed down the generations, divided and sub-divided. Many are so small and the land so overworked that it could not provide for the families that work it even with normal rainfall.

At present only 17% of Ethiopia's 80 million people live in urban areas. Keeping people in the countryside is a way of preventing large-scale unemployment and the unrest that this might cause.

Send Lawyers, Guns, and MoneyAnti-Obama paranoia is good for at least one business.
http://www.slate.com/id/2233154/?from=rss
As it has become evident that Obama had no secret plan to send out jackbooted thugs to confiscate firearms, there are signs that paranoia-driven sales may be drying up. Look at the FBI background check data again. In September, background checks were up only 12.3 percent from the year before.

British torture in Kenya alleged
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8321319.stm
Evidence allegedly showing government knowledge and authorisation of torture of Kenyans in the 1950s and 60s has been presented in a compensation claim.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission has said 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, and 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions.

Talking to the Enemy
http://www.slate.com/id/2232552/?from=rss
Reconciling with the Taliban has long been a touchy subject in Afghanistan, especially when foreigners are involved. An Afghan reconciliation commission has helped several thousand former Taliban return after renouncing violence and pledging allegiance to the government. But in 2007, President Hamid Karzai kicked two Western diplomats out of the country for negotiating with insurgents in Musa Qala, an area in Helmand that had been under Taliban control before the British recaptured it. The two men—Michael Semple, who worked for the European Union, and Mervyn Patterson, a political officer for the United Nations—were accused of threatening national security. Yet the British victory in Musa Qala was undoubtedly aided by their having persuaded a local Taliban commander, Mullah Salaam, to switch sides.

Such efforts trigger deep, understandable anxieties here. But they are also seen as increasingly necessary and of growing importance to U.S. policy. "While Mullah Omar and the Taliban's hard core that have aligned themselves with Al Qaeda are not reconcilable and we cannot make a deal that includes them, the war in Afghanistan cannot be won without convincing non-ideologically committed insurgents to lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan constitution," an Obama administration strategy paper issued this spring notes. In September, Gen. David Petraeus appointed retired British Lt. Gen. Sir Graeme Lamb to oversee local reconciliation and reintegration efforts here. Lamb previously worked in Iraq, helping win Sunni fighters away from the insurgency.

"We've got to separate economic insurgents and opportunists from the hard core," said Col. Chris Kolenda, who used aid, development, coordinated operations with Afghan forces and shuras, or meetings, with elders to marginalize insurgent factions in Kunar in 2007 and 2008 and who now works with Gen. Lamb. Reconciliation and reintegration efforts should be Afghan-led, he said. "Ultimately, this is their program, not ours. But we need to be involved in supporting it."


Huevazo: A Governor With Egg on His Face
http://www.theroot.com/views/huevazo-governor-egg-his-face
Days before the general strike, Fortuño had threatened organizers the Patriot Act, pledging to arrest them under "terrorist threat" charges. Every single major government official went on a media blitz to downplay the strike. Yet el huevazo is a meme or international proportions.

The people behind the strike knew it; particularly the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Their massive support shows how they're becoming one of the biggest political forces in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Their understanding of new media and digital technologies has been at the core of their stratey of turning every single union effort into a successful viral campaign. Thanks to their online outreach work, I was alerted to the #ParoPR broadcasting on Twitter. I became part of a whole communications chain that had union worker, random citizens, independent reporters and ex-pats spreading the word about this important political event. Which brings us to the "hijo de puta" moment by René of Calle 13.

That moment is beyond epic. It's the first time in Puerto Rican history that we have a pop-culture superstar go out to bat so forcefully on an international platform. And his action is another example of another alternative media platform working against the power players in the island. René not only worked the MTV Latino Awards and the subsequent backlash. He also used Twitter to maximize the momentum.

"América Latina no está completa sin Puerto Rico y Puerto Rico no es libre." Latin America isn't complete without Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico isn't free, said René before lobbing his insult. The island stands alone between the contexts of U.S. and Latin American politics. He showed boldly how Puerto Ricans need to change our communications, locally, hemispherically and globally, to see any political change.

 What Missile Defense?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/21/what_missile_defense
Missile defense will be strategically useless against the nuclear threats from Iran -- or anywhere else. Speaking broadly, missile defense comes in two different flavors. The first is tactical missile defense, such as the U.S. Patriot system, which protects a theater of battle against short-range conventional rockets. The second category is strategic, or national, missile defense: systems meant to guard against adversaries' nuclear-tipped missiles. While the first of these types is conceptually sensible, the second is not and may even make the world a more dangerous place.

The reason for this is quite simple. A 70 percent effective tactical missile defense (to pick an optimistic number) makes a lot of sense. If 10 conventional missiles are headed your way, stopping seven is undeniably a good thing. Stopping seven of 10 nuclear warheads, however, is less decisive since even one will visit unacceptable devastation upon the United States. Just one nuclear-tipped missile penetrating your missile shield is about the equivalent of a million conventional missiles making it through.

Nasa 'should scrap Ares rocket'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8321697.stm
The prototype Ares rocket, designed to replace the shuttle, has taken four years of research at a cost of $350m.

But the rocket will not be ready to serve as a launcher for space station crews until 2017, by which time the International Space Station is due to have been removed from orbit.

What's a Nuclear Secret?
http://www.slate.com/id/2233013/?from=rss
And why would Israel need one?
Whatever details the United States government values sufficiently to keep quiet. They might be interested in our latest designs for missile-launching equipment or other technological innovations—like the fabled backpack nuke. Nuclear secrets may also pertain to technique, rather than technology: How we ensure the safety of our stockpiles, for example.
Spies are as likely to target industrial secrets as government ones.

 There is little sense of Afghanistan as being an international operation.
http://www.slate.com/id/2232913/?from=rss
The central debate about future Afghanistan policy is taking place in Washington without any obvious contributions from anybody else.
( Shot from offside. NATO nations may have the idea the US will dictate 'tactics'. Witness the failed reinstitution of 'drug war' policies after they had been abandoned by both the Taliban and NATO. )

Karzai Salesman
http://www.slate.com/id/2233153/?from=rss
Politically, Karzai cannot afford to look as though he's buckling to foreign pressure. If he goes along with a runoff election, he has to make it seem that the decision was his alone. Pressure from an outside power can work only if it's applied with discretion and respect. Kerry, who was on a trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan anyway, was the right man for the mission.

Why Wait To Disarm Iran?
http://www.slate.com/id/2232860/?from=rss
( With pundits like this - is there anything left to be said ? Iran wanted to know if the USA would be continuing the media catalogue of lies and sanctions against their continued participation in an NPT-compliant power generating scheme, under Obama.  
I can't imagine why a country might be economically 'backward' if its administration was subject to assassination by foreign 'black ops' and its bank accounts subject to 'freezing' at the whim of a nation holding an absolutely ludicrous oversupply of WMD constantly and loudly proclaiming its dedication to peace while exporting mercenaries and weaponry wholesale...can you ? )

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce must be stopped. Here's how to do it.
http://www.slate.com/id/2232441/?from=rss
Last year alone, the chamber spent more than $91 million on lobbying, and, according to lobby tracker Opensecrets.org, it has spent more than twice as much on lobbying during the past 12 years as any other corporation or group.
Yet we—you and I—own the companies that support the chamber and permit it to propagate its views. Our passive, permissive attitude toward the management of the companies we own has enabled the chamber to be one of the primary impediments to the reform of markets, health care, energy policy, and politics that we have all been calling for. It is time for that to change.

How, you might ask, do we own these companies? Public pension funds and mutual funds are the largest owners of equities in the market. They are the institutional shareholders that have the capacity to push management—and the boards of the corporations. Yet the mutual funds and pension funds have failed to do so. They have failed to control the management of the companies they own because the actual owners of those mutual funds and pension funds—you and I—have failed to raise our voices. We haven't even asked questions.

Were hundreds of criminals given the wrong sentences because lawyers messed up a basic work sheet?
http://www.slate.com/id/2232561/?from=rss
A system designed to make justice more predictable was producing errors in one out of every 10 trials.

Meet Harun YahyaThe leading creationist in the Muslim world.
http://www.slate.com/id/2233122/?from=rss
The great mystery is where Yahya's Science Research Foundation gets its money. No one knows, though speculation runs from Saudi donors to wealthy Turks whose children have joined the secretive group. Whoever funds it, the organization seems to have the kind of wealth and influence that Christian creationists can only dream of. Yahya's teachings aren't confined to a religious subculture in Turkey. They're part of the mainstream.

Creationist stories are now popping up in Turkish high-school science textbooks, and some government officials in the AKP, the ruling Islamic party, freely criticize evolution. In Ankara, the government's point man on religious issues, Mehmet Gormez, told me, "All the holy texts say human beings are created by God. I think evolutionary theory is not scientific, but ideological."

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