The most authoritative global weather forecasting service, the World Weather Information Service, has been upgraded and revamped to be even more user-friendly. The service, based on the collaboration of 133 international meteorological services, offers forecasts for 1,719 global cities in 10 languages. The new site has a user-customized home page, is integrated with GIS, and is mobile-friendly.
According to WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud, “The World Weather Information Service is the authoritative source of official forecasts from around the globe. It is an excellent example of international collaboration between meteorological services to better serve the public worldwide. National weather services operate standardized weather observing networks and follow the most rigorous forecasting procedures.b design will ensure that the weather information will be available in a more user-friendly manner.
“A five-day forecast today is as accurate as a two-day forecast 25 years ago thanks to cutting-edge science and powerful super computers. Meteorological services are constantly improving the lead-time and reliability of their predictions. The new web design will ensure that the weather information will be available in a more user-friendly manner.”
The updated service has a new interface and is integrated with the latest web technology, such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The site offers a user-customized homepage, a favorites list of cities, a sharing tool and news.
The service receives over 12 million views per month. It was launched in 2002, and has received a total of 1.3 billion user views, including a record high of 173 million last year.
As pre-announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin Saturday, Russian troops have begun relocating to designated areas, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense Sunday. The statements of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the massive redeployment were reported by RIA Novosti.
“In the process of checking the combat readiness of troops… the military units have started large-scale relocation to designated areas,” said the Russian Ministry of Defense.
In particular, tank and anti-aircraft missiles were loaded onto railway platforms, airborne units were moved to airfields, and some military units were moved.
Putin had announced his intentions to redeploy the units Saturday as part of what Putin called a comprehensive review of sudden alertness.
The review is expected to involve approximately 65,000 troops, 180 aircraft, 60 helicopters and over 5,500 units of weaponry and other military equipment.
Additionally, the Russian side of the Gokuvo checkpoint in the Rostov region has been closed due to shooting in Ukraine, the Russian Border Guard told RIA Novosti.
However, two other checkpoints, Kujbyshevo and Novoshahtisnk have been opened. Novoshahtinsk had reportedly been hit by mortar fire from Ukraine Friday, destroying buildings and utilities and injuring one employee of the customs post.
Radio remains the dominant form of media in Africa, where most people do not have access to televisions and cannot always read newspapers, and the West African country of Mali has begun a new health program to educate people through the country’s most popular radio station.
“Innovation doesn’t always come in the form of the latest, cutting-edge technology,” said the Mali Health Organization Project’s Executive Director Kris Ansin, “We see radio as the ideal vector for health change among the poorest of the poor.”
In suburban slums–where populations are the fastest growing on the planet–crowding, land use and sanitation have created health challenges.
Health Radio was created with the intention of sparking discussion and acion in the homes and neighborhood in such slum areas, where health issues are most pressing. The radio program purposes to engage and organize slum communities to create positive change.
Some of the topics featured on the program are trash disposal, clean water and improved sanitation. The program also broadcasts crucial health information to empower users and inspire communities, with the intentions of promoting early detection of common maladies, lowering costs and saving lives.
Local businesses also play a part in the program, leveraging publicity and interest by distributing health supplies to participants.
Radio is a broadcast tool that is both low cost and scalable. By broadcasting Mali’s Health Radio into the daily lives of Malians, health has beem improved among the poor and the program has become a platform for better health.
Physicists at University of Queensland, Australia have simulated time travel using particles of light. The researchers achieved this by simulating the behavior of a single piece of light–a particle of energy–traveling on a closed timelike curve (CTC)–a closed path in space-time. The work may help to understand the longstanding problem of how time-travel could be possible in the quantum world and how the theory of quantum mechanics might change in the presence of closed timelike curves.
The work also shows how many effects, forbidden in standard quantum mechanics, may be possible inside a CTC and how light would behave differently depending on how it was created.
Martin Ringbauer
In the study, the research team simulated the behavior of a single photon that travels through a wormhole and interacts with its older self. This was achieved, PhD student Martin Ringbauer told The Speaker, by making use of a mathematical equivalence between two cases. In the first case, photon 1 “travels trough a wormhole into the past, then interacts with its older version.” In the second case, photon 2 “travels through normal space-time, but interacts with another photon that is trapped inside a CTC forever” (as shown in the illustration at top of the article). “Using the (fictitious second case) and simulating the behavior of photon 2, we were able to study the more relevant case 1,” said Ringbauer.
“We used single photons to do this,” said UQ Physics Professor Tim Ralph, “but the time-travel was simulated by using a second photon to play the part of the past incarnation of the time travelling photon.”
The paper, “Experimental Simulation of Closed Timelike Curves,” was completed by University of Queensland’s Dr Matthew Broome, Dr Casey Myers, Professor Andrew White, in addition to Professor Ralph and Martin Ringbauer, supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems and Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, and was published in Nature Communications.
In the team’s press briefing, Ringbauer commented on the relationship between the theory of general relativity and another important–but conflicting–theory, quantum mechanics. Time travel is thought to potentially help understanding the gap between the two schools of thought.
“The question of time travel features at the interface between two of our most successful yet incompatible physical theories – Einstein’s general relativity and quantum mechanics,” said Ringbauer.
Time travel in the quantum world may avoid general relativity paradoxes such as the grandparents paradox–a timetraveller preventing his grandparents from meeting and so preventing his own time travel.
The authors of the study believe that such paradoxes can be resolved in a quantum regime, because a quantum model of closed timelike curves–such as traversable wormholes–can be formulated consistently with relativity”
Ringbauer explained the concept to The Speaker this way: “General relativity predicts the existence of closed timelike curves (e.g. by following a path through a wormhole that connects two different temporal locations in space-time). This would allow travel back in time. In the classical world this is unlikely to be possible, since it causes paradoxes, such as the grandfather paradox. In the quantum world, however, these paradoxes are resolved and time-travel can be formulated in a self-consistent way.”
Part of the reason time travel could be freed from such paradoxes in the quantum world is that the properties of quantum particles are “fuzzy” and “uncertain,” and therefore there is “wriggle room” to avoid inconsistencies in such situations, according to Professor Ralph.
Tim Ralph
Although Ralph said that there was no evidence that nature behaved differently than the laws of standard quantum mechanics, it had not been tested in vastly different environments, such as near black holes, where the extreme effects of general relativity play a role.
This is the value of the study, said Ralph. “Our study provides insights into where and how nature might behave differently from what our theories predict.”
“We see in our simulation (as was predicted in 1991),” Ringbauer stated, “how many effects become possible, which are forbidden in standard quantum mechanics. For example it is possible to perfectly distinguish different states of a quantum system, which are usually only partially distinguishable. This makes quantum cryptography breakable and violates Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. We also show that photons behave differently, depending on how they were created in the first place.”
In 2012, California businessman Russ George illegally dumped 120 tons of iron sulfide over a 25,000 kilometer (15,000 mile) square area off the British Columbia coast in order to create a massive algae bloom to feed Pacific fish and increase catches. Now, salmon runs are setting a new records to the tune of an added 100,000 tons, and the results have been hailed a “a stunningly over-the-top success” in addition to being criticized by more wary environmental groups.
Russ George
Russ George initiated the precedent-setting iron sulfide test in July 2012. The test involved a geoengineering technique called ocean fertilization, whereby plankton are nourished with carbon dioxide–a source of nutrition which has decreased by 25 percent in recent decades. Russ George hoped to gain lucrative carbon credits from the project.
Iron commonly reaches offshore algae by being blown into the sea by dust storms on land, and sometimes iron enrichment occurs naturally, such as after the 2008 eruption of the Kasatochi volcano in Alaska, which spewed mineral-rich ash into the Northeast Pacific Ocean salmon pasture, causing the 2010 “volcano miracle salmon run.”
Iron nourishes the marine food cycle from the ground up, directly feeding zooplankton, which feed young salmon, which in turn feed larger fish and sea mammals.
Some of the waters that George seeded with iron, in the words of Timothy Parsons, professor emeritus of fisheries science at the University of British Columbia, were so nutrient-poor as to be a “virtual desert dominated by jellyfish.”
The iron sulphide was applied thinly from a fishing boat in an eddy 370 kilometers (200 miles) off the Haida Gwaii/Queen Charlotte Islands, after George convinced the Old Masset village council to establish the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC) and offered to fund the project with $1 million of his own money. The corporation was also funded by $2.5 borrowed money from a Canadian credit union. The area covered by the dump was 25,657 km square, roughly the size of Lake Erie.
Evidence of the massive artificial plankton bloom has been provided by satellite images. The bloom is as large as 10,000 km square–10 times larger than any previous test.
Although the dump was illegal under Canadian Law (due to its scale) and United Nations resolutions (Seehere, here and here) , and although the Canadian government raided the headquarters of the offices of HSRC and George was compelled to resign from the HSRC presidency, recent evidence has suggested that the Canadian government may have known about the geoengineering scheme, but not stopped it.
George said of the project, “Let’s not make this a story all about CO2 and Carbon… it’s really about whether the ocean pastures come back to the abundance of life that they and we enjoyed 100 years ago. My hypothesis is that if we can help replenish and restore the ocean pastures we will see the results in the one thing that mankind is most connected to the ocean by, it’s FISH!
“Indeed my experiment, which at a size of 30,000+ sq. km. is perhaps the largest single experiment of its kind ever conducted, has demonstrated that the fish come back in incredible abundance, quickly… All species of fish have responded but the best data comes from those fish who swim back to us instead of making us go hunt them down.”
The largest run of Pink salmon–which take two years to mature–occurred 12-20 months after the iron seeding project took place.Salmon are able to grow bigger in rich environments and more frequently reach catchable size. In a rich ocean environment, salmon can gain more than one pound per month, it has been reported.
In the northeast Pacific Ocean, salmon catches more than quadrupled–from 50 million to 226 million–and in BC’s Fraser River, where catches only once exceeded 25 million, 72 million fish were caught.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently completed an assessment of the 2013 commercial salmon fishery. With the record pink salmon harvest of 219 million fish, the 2013 harvest ranks as the second most valuable on record. In 2013 the value of the Pink harvest was $691.1 million, below only the 1988 harvest value of $724 million. The total number of salmon harvested also set a new record at 272 million fish, well above the expected 50
million. .
This years Fraser River Sockeye salmon run is projected to be at a record high as well–twice the previous record set in 1900. Up to 72 million Sockeye are expected. In history, the number has not exceeded 45 million.
Some have hailed the project as a boon, such as leading sustainability media outlet Treehugger, who said George’s results “had truly amazing, positive impact,” and Robert Zubin, who in a piece for the National Review called the experiment “a stunningly over-the-top success.”
Other environmentalists have targeted the Haida First Nations and George for tampering with the marine environment.
“It appears to be a blatant violation of two international resolutions,” said senior high-seas adviser for the International Union for Conservation of Nature Kristina Gjerde. “Even the placement of iron particles into the ocean, whether for carbon sequestration or fish replenishment, should not take place, unless it is assessed and found to be legitimate scientific research without commercial motivation. This does not appear to even have had the guise of legitimate scientific research.”
George with algae bloom
“It is now more urgent than ever that governments unequivocally ban such open-air geoengineering experiments,” said Silvia Ribeiro, of the international anti-technology watchdog ETC Group. “They are a dangerous distraction providing governments and industry with an excuse to avoid reducing fossil-fuel emissions.”
One of the witnesses to an unprecedented 2012 orca group sighting commented, “If Mr. George’s account of the mission is to believed, his actions created an algae bloom in an area half of the size of Massachusetts that attracted a huge array of aquatic life, including whales that could be ‘counted by the score.’ . . . I began to wonder: could it be that the orcas I saw were on the way to the all you can eat seafood buffet that had descended on Mr. George’s bloom? The possibility . . . provides a glimpse into the disturbing repercussions of geoengineering: once we start deliberately interfering with the earth’s climate systems — whether by dimming the sun or fertilizing the seas — all natural events can begin to take on an unnatural tinge. . . . a presence that felt like a miraculous gift suddenly feels sinister, as if all of nature were being manipulated behind the scenes.”
Specific criticisms of the project include an idea of “ocean dead zones,” which result from too much plankton. George has responded to this criticism by saying that iron seeding “can only work in regions of the ocean far out to sea and where the water is miles deep… such locations are as different from the shallow near shore regions where ocean dead zones exist as are grasslands and mountain tops… .”
Another criticism is that the nourishment may create toxic blooms and “domoic acid.” George has responded to this criticism by saying that previous blooms in many areas did not cause such a feature in the ocean.
Since the founding of al Qaeda in 1988 by Osama bin Laden and two other foreign nationals in Pakistan, the terrorist organization has been successful in creating new branches and offshoots. A new study from RAND Institute says that in 1988 when al Qaeda was founded, there were three jihadist groups. In 2001 there were 22. Today there are 49.
The RAND report, “A Persistent Threat The Evolution of al Qa’ida and Other Salafi Jihadists,” was written by Seth Jones, the associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The report aimed to gauge the state of al Qa’ida and other Salafi-Jihadist groups, and based its finding on thousands of unclassified and declassified documents.
The report found that the US faces a serious and growing challenge overseas, although al Qaeda still kills many more Muslims than non-Muslims, as the number of Salafi-Jihadists (characterized by attempting to emulate the earliest Muslims [salaf – “ancestors”]) groups has steadily increased, particularly in North Africa and the Levant. The number of Salafi-Jihadists has also risen steadily, and jumped markedly in 2010. The number of fighters doubled between 2010 and 2013, according to both high and low estimates.
The number of differentiated–and sometimes separated–groups has surprised many in the West, who conceive of al Qaeda as a single group tied almost exclusively to terrorist actions. This is a misunderstanding, according to foremost experts in the field.
Tom Joscelyn, senior editor at the Long War Journal whose expertise is terrorism, commented on the Western misunderstanding.
“I think there’s an intellectual confusion about what Al Qaeda is and how it operates,” Joscelynn recently said in an interview. “We still define–here in the West–we still define al Qaeda as a terrorist organization. We think big spectacular terrorist attacks are what they’re all about. They do do that. They are a terrorist organization. But they’re much more than that: they’re political revolutionaries who use terrorism as a tactic. And when you properly understand them in those terms, you understand they have designs on Libya, they have designs on Syria, they have designs on Yemen, Somalia, and other countries. They want to take control. They want power for themselves. That’s a very different dynamic than someone who’s just interested in flying planes into buildings.”
Al Qaeda members today have careers going back decades, building up their cadres of supporters–trained fighters–establishing training camps, and pushing their agendas forward.
The RAND study details examples of how Salafi-Jihadists have moved up and on from origins in al Qaeda, and become successful in many regions of the world.
One such example is the Egyptian Muhammad Jamal, who trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in the late 1980s before returning to his home country to become a top military commander for Islamic Jihad in Egypt. Jamal was released from prison in 2011, and took advantage of the permissive climate following the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, to strengthen his position among a network of militants he had met before and during his prison time. With support from his relations within al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Arabian Peninsula, Jamal and his group have been committing attacks against Egyptian, US and Western targets.
In countries such as Mali, Nigeria, Libya and Syria Salafi-Jihadists have similarly moved up the ranks and consolidated power and influence, and have also used customary political tactics to increase their authority. For example, a jihadist group that receives sanctuary in Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, has used a portrayal as a local movement to gain popular support. The groups has described their fighters as “our brave youth [who] continue the struggle,” provided security at a local hospital, publicized its charity work and used political slogans such as “Your Sons at Your Service.”
Other groups have pursued a priority of attacking Western interests–sometimes splitting from al Qaeda to do so, and sometimes joining with al Qaeda to do so. Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s al-Murabitun, which operates in North Africa and Africa, split from al Qaeda in 2012 to pursue such attacks. In Tunisia, an Ansar al-Sharia partnered with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb for a similar cause.
In a conference earlier this year, Joscelyn stated a conclusion about al Qaeda. “Al Qaeda set out in 1988 to spark a political revolution to inspire jihadism around the globe. They’ve succeeded. We’ve still not come up with a real strategy for containing or combatting that across the board.”
The breakaway faction of al Qaeda ISIS, which disobeyed al Qaeda orders–and flouted it–while another branch of al Qaeda in the area, Ahrar a-Sham, was towing the al Qaeda line of building popular support in Syria and waging a
more effective insurgency–captured large sections of Iraq in the first half of June with a grossly underestimated force. In this article, a fascinating retrospective take on ISIS from February of this year gives us a look on how al Qaeda and terrorist experts viewed ISIS before the attacks–as “a test case” of what would actually happen when a significant al Qaeda affiliate group broke loose from the core.
Gartenstein-Ross
Counter-terrorism scholar and analyst Daveed Gartenstein-Ross commented on the then-recent rebellion of ISIS in February of this year.
“You’ve certainly had infighting before. Algeria and that civil war is a good example of where you had significant splits in terms of the approach to that conflict. But in terms of this specific event, the degree to which it has happened, I would say is not precedented. It presents a very interesting situation.
“I think this presents the possibility of either fragmentation or else a strong cautionary tale to other affiliates. With respect to fragmentation, the reason why ISIS was expelled from al Qaeda is because they were basically openly flouting the central commands orders. There was infighting that was occuring within Syria and Zawahari had ordered ISIS to take part in mediation with other Jihadist groups including Jabat al Nusura. And ISIS was making a lot of noise about complying, but in fact they weren’t doing it. And so the order that came down on Sunday expelling ISIS was a rather shocking one in the world of Jihadism, which has sent immediate shock waves through that world.
“So if ISIS thrives, despite the fact that it was expelled from al Qaeda, this could, number one, make other organizations, other affiliates, say, ‘Well, what is the cost to me if I disobey senior leadership?’ Number two, they could attract some funding from traditional al Qaeda donors. Number three, you can already see on Jihadist message boards some kind of tensions that have been caused, where some members of these message boards and some Jihadists on Twitter and elsewhere are falling in with ISIS as opposed to al Qaeda.
“On the other hand, what you may have happening is ISIS being the one that fragments rather than al Qaeda. And you can already see some signs of this. For example, Abdullah al Massini, a prominent Saudi cleric who is pro-Jihadist, has called on ISIS fighters to defect. you have reports of some defections from ISIS. You may see serious fragmentation within it with splinter-groups that consider themselves loyal to al Qaeda’s core, as opposed to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is the leader of ISIS.
“So there are very interesting things that are going to emerge from this,” Gartenstein-Ross continued, referring to mechanisms of command and control. “I think actually this is a very fascinating test case where we’ll actually start to see those mechanisms of control… but you can already see multiple clerics coming down and condemning ISIS. You might see some of their funding dry up. I don’t think you’ll see this immediately, but it actually really is a test-case because because at this point it has sent… an absolute shockwave through Jihadism and one that is going to change the dynamics in one direction or another.”
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross recently published a new article on ISIS, “Welcome to the era of ISIS – and pop-up terror,” in which he wrote, “We’ve seen it all before, but it remains shocking — and the latest advance by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is arguably the most disturbing development in Iraq’s already horrifying recent history.” Gartenstein-Ross asked in the article, “How long can the group sustain these gains?”
“An examination of what might follow the jihadist groups’ inevitable setbacks shows a disturbing trend,” wrote Gartenstein-Ross. “ISIS is far from the only Islamic extremist movement to control territory and implement a strict version of sharia. Looking at groups that have done so, a clear pattern emerges in which the extremist group gains ground, announces the imposition of sharia, and governs territory. This alarms nearby states, and often those that are further away as well.
“So the extremist group’s enemies strike. They topple it from power rather quickly. Although non-state militants are formidable, they have no real response to their enemies’ air-power advantage, and haven’t been able to hold territory against the advance of professional militaries. The extremist group does its best to melt away rather than face a decisive battlefield defeat. It regroups with the intention of coming back stronger than before.
“The disturbing thing is the frequency with which militant groups are able to succeed in mounting this comeback.” Gartenstein-Ross listed several examples, including the Afghan-Soviet war and the Taliban which came to control 90 percent of Afghanistan. “After 13 years of costly war in Afghanistan, it’s now widely believed that the Taleban will remain one of the country’s most important players, and it is poised to retake territory in various regions.
“Today this pattern–of a militant group’s seizure of territory, followed by a state-led counteroffensive, and militants’ efforts to regroup–is repeating itself in several places.” Gartenstein-Ross referenced Southern Somalia, Nairobi, Kenya, Mali, Yemen, Egypt’s Sinai and the Caucasus region.
Gartenstein-Ross concluded that “though ISIS might succeed in holding a handful of cities for an extended period, it is likely to experience a reversal of some sort,” but, “If recent history is any guide, ISIS’s retreat will not mean the group’s death, and we may well see another cycle of retreat-regroup-new offensive.”
Gartenstein-Ross advised Western countries and their regional partners to work together to prevent extremist groups such as ISIS from establishing long-lasting control. “But they also need to recognise this growing boom-and-bust pattern of instability, and work to address it. Not claiming victory too soon might be a start.”
First Nations Canadians who have banded together to oppose the recently approved the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline that would connect Alberta with the British Columbia coast–albeit with 209 conditions–have rejected the government’s decision to proceed with the project. First Nations groups have stated that they “will take whatever measures are necessary to prevent that from happening.”
“Our coastline is not for sale to big oil, no matter how much money is on the table. There are thousands of British Colombians and Canadians who feel the same way, and who will stand with us to stop this dangerous project,” stated one of the opposing First Nations groups, the Heiltsuk First Nation.
First Nations groups, such as the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, First Nations Summit and B.C. Assembly of First Nations, have stated that they “unequivocally reject” the decision to approve the pipeline, and have vowed to fight the pipeline with legal and direct action.
National Program Director for Sierra Club Canada John Bennet said, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years now, and I’ve never see such strength and opposition to a project.”
Under the Canadian constitution, the government of Canada legally must consult First Nations and accommodate First Nations treaties in decisions that could impact First Nations lands and resources. First nations groups say that the government failed to consult tribal bands before approving the pipeline.
“Our position is that before a decision can be made, there has to be a complete report in accordance with the law — and the report was flawed, so the government cannot legally make the decision,” said a staff lawyer for EcoJustice, Barry Robinson. “If the courts find we are correct, then the decision made yesterday would have to be reversed.”
“The government has moved their legal responsibility to consult with First Nations to Enbridge, and that’s a wrong move on their part,” said Tl’azt’en Nation Grand Chief Edward John.
Enbridge’s Norther Gateway pipeline is a 730-mile (1175 km) that would carry tar sands oil from Alberta to Kitimat, a town on the British Columbia coast, where the oil would be loaded onto tankers for transport.
Enbridge spokesman Ivan Giesbrecht emailed a statement out that read that 60 percent of the First Nations population along the route of the pipeline had agreed to the project, but the challenges of the First Nations opposition are considered to be significant.
“We are the wall that Enbridge and Harper cannot pass,” said Chief Terry Teegee of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council, and Grand Chief Stewart Philip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs warned, “We will take whatever measures are necessary to prevent that from happening.”
Rejecting the recent approval of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, which would transport tar sands oil from Alberta to the British Columbia coast, Canada’s First Nations groups have asserted that it is illegal for the government to approve any such project without consulting First Nations.
“Our position is that before a decision can be made, there has to be a complete report in accordance with the law — and the report was flawed, so the government cannot legally make the decision,” said a staff lawyer for EcoJustice, Barry Robinson. “If the courts find we are correct, then the decision made… would have to be reversed.”
First Nations groups have asserted that under the Constitution of Canada, the government legally must consult First Nations and accommodate First Nations treaties in decisions that could impact First Nations lands and resources.
Two sections of Canada’s constitution deal specifically with native rights.
A provision in the Constitution of Canada–Section 35–although debated, has been found by courts to protect to First Nations treaty rights regarding fishing, logging, hunting and right to First Nations land.
The text reads,
35. (1) The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed.
(2) In this Act, “Aboriginal Peoples of Canada” includes the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada.
(3) For greater certainty, in subsection (1) “treaty rights” includes rights that now exist by way of land claims agreements or may be so acquired.
(4) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the aboriginal and treaty rights referred to in subsection (1) are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.
A part of the Constitution of Canada–the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the civil rights and liberties of every citizen in Canada–also provides for native rights, in Part II. Section 25 of the Charter insures that the Charter must be enforced in a way that does not diminish First Nations rights, and reads,
The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the aboriginal peoples of Canada including
(a) any rights or freedoms that have been recognized by the Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763; and
(b) any rights or freedoms that now exist by way of land claims agreements or may be so acquired.
There is a difference between Section 35 of the Constitution and Section 25 of the Charter. Section 25 does not necassarily constitutionalize aboriginal rights, although it may protect some rights. Section 35 does constitutionalize some native rights.
Both Sections 25 and 35 were not originally written into the Constitution of Canada, but were reactions to strong protests by First Nations groups who protested the lack of guarantees for Aboriginal rights when the first draft of the constitution was being negotiated after the first version of the Charter was drafted in 1980. Prior to the inclusion of Sections 25 and 35, the Constitution only had the language of Section 26, which provides a guide for interpreting how the Charter should affect Canadian society. Section 26 reads,
The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed as denying the existence of any other rights or freedoms that exist in Canada.
Section 26 requires that the Charter cannot be interpreted to deny that non-Charter rights exist–rights not within the Charter are nevertheless real as they would be if the Charter had never been written. The original 1980 draft of what would become Section 26 read provided that the Charter should not be construed as denying the existence of “any rights or freedoms that pertain to the native peoples of Canada.”
First Nations rights have been upheld in Canadian courts through Section 35 dating back to 1990, at which time a ruling handed down found that,
The constitutional recognition afforded by the provision [section 35], therefore, gives a measure of control over government conduct and a strong check on legislative power. While it does not promise immunity from government regulation in a society that, in the twentieth century is increasingly more complex, interdependent and sophisticated and where exhaustible resources need protection and management, it does hold the Crown to a substantive promise. The government is required to bear the burden of justifying any legislation which has some negative effect on any aboriginal right protected under section 35(1) (R. v. Sparrow [1990]).
Succeeding trials established that in fishing, logging, hunting and right to First Nations land, “the government must demonstrate that it has given the aboriginal fishery priority in a manner consistent with this Court’s [earlier decisions]” (R. v. Gladstone [1996]).
New York’s general assembly voted Monday on whether to drill or frack within the state. The majority voted in favor of a three-year ban on drilling and fracking.
An 89-34 vote favored a three-year moratorium on oil and gas drilling permits. The moratorium is intended in part to allow time for study of the environmental impact of drilling and fracking.
“We do not need to rush into this. The natural gas deposits within the Marcellus Shale are not going to go anywhere,” said New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
“We have heard from thousands of residents across the state about many issues associated with hydrofracking, and prudent leadership demands that we take our time to address all these concerns.”
New York State has been under moratorium since 2008. The most recent moratorium passed in 2013, and would have expired in 2015.
Gov. Cuomo of New York
Passage of the vote depends on the New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Senate.
“Now, we’re urging Gov. Cuomo and the State Senate to stand up against the out-of-state oil and gas industry, and stand up for our state’s health, environment and long-term economy by rejecting fracking,” said Alex Beauchamp of Food & Water Watch and New Yorkers Against Fracking.
Health concerns have been raised by groups such as the American Lung Association in New York, and these health concerns have been recognized by the legislation.
“Oil and gas development utilizing High volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) involves the use and/or production of numerous toxic and hazardous air and water contaminants, a number of them known or suspected carcinogens,” reads the legislation. “Oil and gas development utilizing HVHF has also been associated with a range of adverse environmental impacts, including impacts to water and air quality, land and habitat, and community character.”
University of Missouri researchers have proven that a drug used as a cholesterol lowering agent not only halts breast cancer progression, but can kill cancerous cells, offering new promise to the one-in-eight women who will suffer from breast cancer in their lives.
Salman Hyder, lead researcher
The drug therapy may even be more attractive than now-popular anti-hormone medicines, such as tamoxifen, because when tumor cells develop resistance to anti-hormone therapies the tumor cells continue to grow and spread, but because tumor cells need cholesterol to grow, the cholesterol-lowering drug starves the tumor cells. Not only that, cholesterol also contributes to anti-hormone resistance because cholesterol is converted into hormones in tumor cells, therefore lowering cholesterol should help hormone therapy.
The study, “Cholesterol biosynthesis inhibitors as potent novel anti-cancer agents: suppression of hormone-dependent breast cancer by the oxidosqualene cyclase inhibitor RO 48-8071,” was funded by a grant from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Program and the National Institutes of Health. The study was published in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.
“Because tumor cells grow rapidly they need to synthesize more cholesterol,” said Salman Hyder, lead researcher on the project. “Scientists working to cure breast cancer often seek out alternative targets that might slow or stop the progression of the disease, including the elimination of the cancerous cells. In our study, we targeted the production of cholesterol in cancer cells leading to death of breast cancer cells.”
The drug has already been tested on human breast cancer cells, and was found effective in reducing breast cancer cell growth. It also killed the cancer cells in many cases.
The research findings indicated that an estrogen receptor which causes tumor cells to grow was destroyed by the drug. This is thought to be the reason for the success of the drug in combating breast cancer.
The drug was then tested on mice with breast cancer and was found effective. The drug reduced the presence of estrogen receptors in the tumor cells.
The research team will next conduct further tests that they hope will lead to a drug that will both fight high cholesterol and breast cancer.
Answering a global outcry for urgently desired action against caste-based rape and violence against women, the UN Human Rights Council held a side-event Tuesday dedicated to the issue.
Many human rights organizations, policy makers and India’s UN representative had asked rights groups to address the problem after it received attention following the gang-rape and hanging of two girls in India May 27.
The event, “Caste-based Violence against Women: The role of the UN in combating caste-based violence and discrimination,” was co-sponsored by Human Rights Watch, the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), Minority Rights Group, Franciscan International, and the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, Norway, Denmark, and the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) at the Palais des Nations in Geneva and urged member UN members to speak up about the problem, which is thought to be increasing.
Asha Kowtal, leader of a delegation of Dalit women to the Human Rights Council, stated, “Caste-based rape and violence against Dalit women and girls is escalating as we fight to claim justice.”
“Words and legislation is not enough,” said UN Women policy director, Saraswathi Menon. “We need concrete action. Legislation alone does not address structural discrimination. The UN has an important role to play and must step up to the plate to help stop caste-based violence against women.”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, “I urge governments to fully implement all the recommendations made by international human rights mechanisms, as well as those arising from national processes. Our outrage is not enough. We must take real and focused action to mend our societies’ dramatic failure to support the rights of people of discriminated castes, particularly women and girls.”
Caste-based violence and discrimination affect women in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen and other cultures that value caste.
source of official forecasts from around the globe. It is an excellent example of international collaboration between meteorological services to better serve the public worldwide. National weather services operate standardized weather observing networks and follow the most rigorous forecasting procedures.b design will ensure that the weather information will be available in a more user-friendly manner.
In the northeast Pacific Ocean, salmon catches more than quadrupled–from 50 million to 226 million–and in BC’s Fraser River, where catches only once exceeded 25 million, 72 million fish were caught.
non-Muslims
more effective insurgency–captured large sections of Iraq in the first half of June with a grossly underestimated force. In this article, a fascinating retrospective take on ISIS from February of this year gives us a look on how al Qaeda and terrorist experts viewed ISIS before the attacks–as “a test case” of what would actually happen when a significant al Qaeda affiliate group broke loose from the core.
