That England and South Korea agreed to swap votes the day before the ballot is just one of the claims included in a dossier of files that was handed to a UK government body this weekend. The collection of documents also includes allegations against Russia and Qatar, and prompted UK MP John Whittingdale to conclude that the whole body of evidence against the World Cup was highly damning.
“When it’s taken together with all the other evidence that has already been accumulated, it does paint a picture of a deeply corrupt organisation and that the whole of the bidding process was completely flawed,” said John Whittingdale, chair of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.
The dossier was compiled by a team that included a former MI6 operative and several other investigators. The dossier was provided to the UK parliamentary body by the Sunday Times, who published some of the allegations Sunday.
Besides England and South Korea, Russia and Qatar also colluded to swap votes ahead of the ballot. Motives included financial and material incentives, according to the documents.
“I think what is alleged England to have been doing is mild compared to the allegations made against other nations,” said Whittingdale. “But nevertheless it’s obviously serious and it is a breach of the rules and therefore we will want to know whether it’s true and how the FA justify it.”
However, Whittingdale commented on the unproven nature of the documents.
“A lot of it is reports and hearsay. It isn’t necessarily hard evidence. It isn’t proven,” said Whittingdale.
This collection of damning information comes shortly after another report by US lawyer Michael Garcia, the summary of which cleared Russia and Qatar of foul play. However, Garcia commented on the summary of his report saying that it had been written by a senior FIFA ethics committee official and was factually wrong.
In response to the new dossier, Russia’s 2018 bid team issued a statement. “These allegations are not new, but the evidence has only ever indicated that Russia 2018 behaved professionally and fairly throughout the bidding process,” read the Russian teams statement, which “categorically rejected” all of the “entirely unfounded” claims published in the Sunday Times.
People are unaware that various innocuous-sounding things are actually affecting them on a regular basis, according to new research by Bayer College of Medicine. Newspapers, radio and tv can influence the way people act by using words that trigger powerful emotions, the researchers found–clean words cause clean thoughts, which produce ethical actions, and dirty words produce disgusted thoughts and immoral actions.
“People don’t know it, but these small emotions are constantly affecting them.” said Vikas Mittal, J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing Adjunct Professor of Family & Community Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, and lead researcher on the study.
“What we found is that unless you ask people, they often don’t know they’re feeling disgusted,” Mittal said. “Small things can trigger specific emotions, which can deeply affect people’s decision-making. The question is how to make people more self-aware and more thoughtful about the decision-making process.”
This is because disgust is an emotion that causes people to protect themselves–that is, focus on their self.
However, lessening disgust causes people to behave more ethically again. This can be done by causing people to think of clean things–cleaning products such as Kleenex or Windex, for example. When disgust is lessened, the likelihood of cheating goes away.
The study involved two sets of randomized experiments with 600 participants. The researchers randomly disgusted their participants in three ways.
In one, participants evaluated antidiarrheal medicine, diapers, cat litter, feminine care pads and adult incontinence products. In another experiment, participants wrote out their most disgusting memory. In a third, a disgusting scene from the film “Trainspotting” was played for the participants. The scene shows a man diving into a dirty toilet.
The disgusted participants engaged in consistently self-interested behaviors at a significantly heightened rate.
After the participants were disgusted, another set of experiments was conducted.
The researchers had some participants evaluate cleaning products–disinfectants, body washes, household cleaners. These participants were returned to a normal level of deceptive behavior.
Managers could use this information to understand how to impact decision-making and cause ethical or unethical behavior, Mittal said. He commented on office cleanliness and cleanliness in the workplace in general.
“At the basic level, if you have environments that are cleaner, if you have workplaces that are cleaner, people should be less likely to feel disgusted,” said Mittal. “If there is less likelihood to feel disgusted, there will be a lower likelihood that people need to be self-focused and there will be a higher likelihood for people to cooperate with each other.”
“If you’re making important decisions, how do you create an environment that is less emotionally cluttered so you can become progressively more thoughtful?”
The report, “Protect Thyself: How Affective Self-Protection Increases Self-Interested Behavior,” was authored by Mittal and Karen Page Winterich, associate professor of marketing at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, and Andrea Morales, a professor of marketing at Arizona State’s W.P. Carey School of Business, and will be published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Hundreds of paddle-powered boats raced at the Bon Om Touk water festival this month on the Siem Reap River, an occasion in which Cambodians celebrate the Mekong River’s biannual water flow reversal and the beginning of the fishing season. While the river itself wasn’t the main object of attention during the festivities in the Southeastern Asia country, it did serve to highlight the dire need of the country to clean up it’s drinking water after decades of inner turmoil.
There are several reasons for the lack of clean drinking water in the country, according to Nthabeleng Emmel, Programs Manager for Water for Cambodia in Siem Reap, who said that lack of access is a major inhibitor. “Most people in Cambodia have no access to safe drinking water; they use contaminated water sources such as rivers, ponds, [and] wells.” This can lead to many different kinds of complications, such as gastrointestinal diseases like diarrhea, Emmel explained. Also, many of the population, especially in the countryside, use large open jars called cisterns to collect lake, stream and rain water. If not properly treated, this water can contain mosquito larvae, leading potentially to malaria and dengue fever.
While wells can be dug and used to get water, the quality may not be so good, said Mrs. Emmel. “Deep wells are usually said to be clean and some organizations dedicate their time drilling wells for rural communities but the utilization of [these] wells is questionable. Some areas have high content of iron in the water which usually comes with color, smell and [a bad] taste.”
Emmel’s organization builds and installs Biosand Filters for rural populations–the ones which experience the greatest difficulty in obtaining clean drinking water. The filter uses sand and gravel to remove up to 99 percent of the bacteria and protozoa in the water which is poured into it. “Water for Cambodia has adopted a Biosand filter which provides safe drinking water to the rural population,” said Emmel. “By the end of 2014 we will have installed over 14,000 filters reaching out to at least 84,000 individuals.”
Once the filters have been installed, the organization soon returns to test the filtered water in their lab. “We follow up with water testing which we do in our own lab, do quality control by checking all installed filters for any maintenance that may be needed and any other support the families may need,” said Emmel. A part of this support is educating the receivers of the filter on its use. “The challenge which we hope to overcome is getting people to understand the importance of pouring water into this filter on a daily basis and doing proper maintenance which only requires a few minutes.”
Mrs. Emmel is hopeful that the Biosand filter will continue to give rural Cambodians clean drinking water well into the future. “Biosand filters are the best solution for Cambodia as they are easy to use, maintain and they have a long life span [at least 15 years]. Their maintenance is inexpensive as the contents of the filter do not need to be changed but rather cleaned [on a regular basis]”.
In what would be the first move toward cutting back pesticide use in North America, the Ontario government is planning to curb agricultural pesticides linked with honeybee deaths as part of a comprehensive Pollinator Health Action Plan. The plan seeks to battle the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, which the province’s Environment Commissioner has called the biggest threat to ecological integrity since DDT–which was banned in Canada in 1972.
“Improving pollinator health is not a luxury but a necessity,” said Environment Minister Glen Murray of the move.
“Taking strong action now to reduce the use of neurotoxic pesticides and protecting pollinator health is a positive step for our environment and our economy.”
Bee populations in Ontario and Quebec have plummeted in recent years. According to the Ontario Beekeepers’ Association, which has about 3,100 members, Ontario experienced 58 percent over-winter losses in 2014–three times the average of all other Canadian provinces and about 20 percent more than in 2012-2013.
But the plan is not sitting well with the province’s grain farmers.
“A reduction at this level puts our farmers at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the country and the rest of North America,” commented Barry Senft, the CEO of Grain Farmers of Ontario, a group that includes corn, soybean and wheat farmers, which has, according to its spokespeople, been investing in multi-year research to mitigate the risks of pesticide use on bee health.
However, a recent Health Canada report found that the majority of the bee deaths in Ontario and Quebec in 2012 had been caused by insecticides, and suggested that this was likely due to pesticide-laced dust during planting.
Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller recently called neonicotinoid pesticide use the biggest threat to ecological integrity since DDT, a pesticide that was banned in Canada in 1972.
“All the science is not done, but everything that I have before me… suggests to me that this is the biggest threat to the structure and ecological integrity of the ecosystem that I have ever encountered in my life, bigger than DDT,” said Miller.
The plan to curb bee killing pesticides is part of a comprehensive Pollinator Health Action Plan. The plan includes an 80 percent reduction in total acres planted with neonicotinoid-treated corn and soybean by 2017. It also plans to cut the over-winter mortality rate for honeybees to 15 percent by 2020.
“The province’s goal to reduce the over-winter honeybee mortality rate to 15 per cent by 2020 will bring the industry back to the pre-neonicotinoid average winter loss and will support a thriving, sustainable beekeeping industry going forward,” said Tibor Szabo, president of the Ontario Bee Keepers’ Association.
Over the next two months, the Ontario government will be seeking information about the new rules from the industry, organizations, researchers and individuals.
If the plan is finally approved, the rules will be in place by the beginning of July.
Russia President Vladimir Putin and the leader of Abkhazia have signed an agreement under which Putin will become the commander of a joint military force in the breakaway region.
“I’m sure that cooperation, unity and strategic partnership between Russia and Abkhazia will continue to strengthen,” stated Putin after signing the agreement Monday.
Russia already has a military presence in the territory. Russian troops have served in Abkhazia since it broke away from Georgia in a separatists war in the early 1990s.
The United States issued a statement in response to the deal. “The United States will not recognize the legitimacy of any so-called ‘treaty’ between Georgia’s Abkhazia region and the Russian Federation,” read a press release issued by the US State Department.
The deal was signed by this president, Raul Khadzhimba.
“The United States’ position on Abkhazia and South Ossetia remains clear,” wrote Jeff Rathke, Director of the Bureau of Public Affairs at the Office of Press Relations for the State Department, “these regions are integral parts of Georgia, and we continue to support Georgia’s independence, its sovereignty, and its territorial integrity.
“We once again urge Russia to fulfill all of its obligations under the 2008 ceasefire agreement, to withdraw its forces to pre-conflict positions, to reverse its recognition of the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, and to provide free access for humanitarian assistance to these regions.
“We renew our full support for the Geneva international discussions as a means to achieving concrete progress on security and humanitarian issues that continue to impact the communities on the ground in Georgia.”
Georgia also condemned the move towards greater Russian involvement in Abkhazia, and called on the international community to speak out against the move.
However, Khadzhimba was more optimistic in his assessment.
“Ties with Russia offer us full security guarantees and broad opportunities for socio-economic development,” said Khadzhimba.
Chinese authorities have expelled 26 nuns from a nunnery in Pekar Township, Driru County, Tibet Autonomous Region. The nuns were expelled for refusing to defame their highest spiritual leader. Chinese authorities used a new law regulating religious institutions to expel the nuns legally.
The nuns were expelled from Jhada Gon Palden Khachoe Nunnery by a large number of Chinese “work team” members tasked with removing the nuns from their the religious community.
The work team was following up on the results of a police raid on the monastery, during which many nuns refused to criticize their religious leader, the Dalai Lama, who is considered a splittest and terrorist orchestrator and is a wanted criminal in China. After the refusals, officials examined the registration records of the nunnery to check its population.
The nuns were expelled legally under new Chinese legislation that restricts the number of registered pupils that are permitted in religious institutes in Tibet. In this case the number was set at 140, and the 26 extra nuns were expelled.
This is the first instance of enforcement of a new measures detailing causes for expulsions of monks and nuns from religious institutions. The new Chinese “rectification” drive also warns of the destruction of “illegal” monasteries and mani walls.
Billions in banknotes, gold bars, land title deeds, rare images of the Buddha and other religious artifacts were seized from the home of a Thai police chief Sunday. Central Investigation Bureau commander Lt-General Pongpat Chayaphan has been charged with several crimes, including lese majeste–an offense against the dignity of a sovereign or against the state.
The case also involves six other police officers, who are being detained along with Pongpat at seven separate metropolitan police stations, as well as three civilians who are currently on the run.
The officers include Marine Police commander Maj-General Bunsueb Phrai-thuen, Samut Sakhon Immigration Chief Colonel Kowit Muangnual, Senior Sgt Major
Bangkok Post image
Surasak Jan-ngoa and Senior Sgt Major Chattrin Laothong. Malfeasance in office, taking bribes and violating protected species laws were among the charges laid against the officers.
All of the officers have confessed to the crimes, including Pongpat.
In a related incident, Thai police officer Colonel Akkharawut Limrat was killed Friday ago after falling from a height. Akkarawut had reportedly attempted suicide at least three times after he was transferred from a top position along with Pongpat.
The two officers had been transferred from top positions to inactive posts after an urgent transfer order Nov. 11.
According to police officials, Akkharawut had killed himself due to fear of prosecution for criminal activities.
Royal Thai Police spokesman Lt-General Prawut Thawornsiri said that Akkharawut had been cooperative with police in their investigation following a previous suicide attempt. Prawut said, “After giving his statements, he jumped off a building to kill himself out of distress and fear for prosecution.”
The Speaker recently interviewed Dr Shane Gero, a marine biologist who has been studying sperm whales in the Caribbean for the past 10 years. We talked to Gero
Dr Shane Gero
about his research in Dominica as well as his current project, which represents many firsts in the science of sperm whale communication. Gero’s findings offer a greater understanding of what happens when sperm whales talk to each other.
The whales, Gero has found, are using language for many communicative purposes–including, it seems, greeting other whales using first and last names. Also, sperm whales from different parts of the world and from different social groups speak the differently. Not only do they speak their language differently, they also exhibit varying cultures depending on where they live and which social group they belong to.
“The focus of my study has been at the level of the individual whale.” Gero told us. “We’ve been able to follow these animals year after year–the same about two dozen families–some of them we’ve spent hundreds of hours wit.”
“We’ve collected a huge data set on who has spent time with who–but also, from a communications standpoint, who says what to whom. And that’s really a first: being able to look at individuals chatting with each other at a conversational level.
“This new study that’s happening in the next couple of years is, for the first time, going to be able to place those conversations into a context in the open ocean.”
The new project takes Gero’s previous decade of experience with sperm whales one step further, and will serve as a lead-up to a fuller understanding of what sperm whale language is.
“Previously we would record animals, and be able to figure out who was saying what, but we didn’t know where they were relative to each other, or the ‘when’ context… in terms of when they were actually talking to each other…
“We’ve done well in the last 10 years to answer the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ of these conversations. The ‘where’ and the ‘when’ are the subject of the current research. Hopefully this will lead us to one day answer the really interesting ‘why’ questions. ‘What are they saying to each other? What does it all mean?'”
Gero gave us some details about sperm whale society. These whales live in a hierarchical society, and spend their day to day life in what the researchers call “social units.” In Dominica, there are some 400 sperm whales, and all of them belong to one matriline–grandmothers, mothers and daughters–which spend their full lives together. The Dominica group spends most of their lives within 20 miles of the shore.
“These animals in the Caribbean are really island-associated animals,” said Gero of the group. “It’s really easy to call them families, because that’s what they are.”
“On the average day, there’s only one family off the coast of the island. But every now and again, two families will join up and spend anywhere from a few hours to a few days together socializing.
When talking about language, Gero told us that we must keep in mind that sperm whale language is very different from human language–and is also different from the language of other whales–including the language of the more familiar humpback whale.
“Language is a big question. Language comes with syntax and it comes with meaning and orders, and we haven’t figured all that out yet. But what we do know is that sperm whales use a system of clicks to communicate with each other.
“It’s kind of like Morse code. So, some calls sound like this: ‘tap-tap-taptaptap,’ where others sound like this: ‘taptaptaptaptaptaptap.’ And different rhythms are used at different times. Animals exchange these back and forth, kind of like you would using Morse code.”
Sperm whales throughout the world exhibit common features of communication, but also exhibit variation, Gero explained. The variation seemingly depends on the geographic origin of a particular whale, among other factors, and serves the whales as a social marker.
“So, what’s interesting about variation in the world is that animals in the Caribbean sound different from animals in the Mediterranean, and they sound different from animals in the Gulf of Mexico and so on.
“At least in the Atlantic, it seems like it’s geographic. So all the animals in the Caribbean sound very similar, but they sound different from the animals in the Med–that sound very similar.
“But in the Pacific it’s different. In the Pacific you actually have different sperm whale dialects living in the same area. So some of the animals off the Galapagos sound one way, and some of the animals sound differently. But what’s really neat about that is that they seem to use these dialects to segregate their society.
“So as a whale that means making a certain type of coda,” said Gero. Codas are patterns of clicks used by whales to communicate.
Gero offered an example of the individuals that live in these segregated sperm whale groups. “I only spend time with animals that make that same sound. It would be similar to living in a multi-cultural country like Canada or the United States, but then only socializing with anyone who speaks the same language as you.”
“In the Caribbean we hear a lot of a one-plus-one-plus-three coda. So it sound like this: ‘tap-tap-taptaptap.’ And that’s the only place that it’s been recorded–in the Caribbean. And all the animals make it very similarly. So, we think that it acts as a marker of ‘I’m from the Caribbean.’ Whereas in the eastern tropical Pacific, the Galapagos, the coast of Chile and Ecuador–there are several different coda repertoires.”
Gero contrasted this five-part coda with the five-part codas used by other whales around the world.
“One of the groups makes very regularly timed codas. So, they’ll make a five-regular, which is five clicks that are very evenly spaced, so it sounds something like this: ‘tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.’ And they also make a six-regular and a seven-regular, and so on.
“But then there’s another dialect that’s all plus-one. So, rather than making a five-regular, they would make a four-plus-one, which sounds like this: ‘taptaptaptap-tap.’ And they also make a five-plus-one and a six-plus-one and so on.
Gero and his fellow researchers assume that the whales are using their calls to identify themselves on a first and last name basis. The assumption is based on the common usage of a one-plus-one-plus-three coda in a similar way, while each individual whale uses a five-R in a slightly different way. “It seems as though they sort of have this nested, hierarchical recognition, so there seems to be the five-R coda, which you hear everywhere in the world.”
Gero then explained the first names.
“It has the variability to function as an individual identifier,” said Gero. “It’s potentially used to mark differences between individuals. So if you’re looking within an family, you can actually tell the individuals apart by how they make that coda. So its kind of like a first name. And, at least in the Caribbean, it seems that they use different codas that are all four clicks in length, but each family unit has a different four click coda. So that’s sort of like a last name. And then we know for sure that the animals in the animals in the Caribbean use the one-plus-one-plus-three, and that’s the only place that has been recorded. So we think that it probably functions in a way of marking their geographic origin or their cultural group–the vocal dialect that they have. So they have this nested kind of first name-last name cultural group.
“In the same way, I would say that my first name is Shane, my last name is Gero, and I come from Canada.”
Gero told The Speaker that testing the function of these calls is a matter of his current research. They are looking at how the animals use the calls and when they use them. The whales may use the calls like the bottlenose dolphins being studied by the Sea Mammal Research unit at the University of St Andrews, which have been observed exchanging their calls when meeting at sea. “They actually say, ‘Hey it’s me’–‘Oh, hey, it’s you. Great,'” commented Gero.
Sperm whales not only vary in the languages they speak, they vary culturally based on what group they live among.“And the neatest part about them is that these vocal clans–these whale cultural groups that use these different dialects–don’t only segregate their society socially, but they also behave differently. They have different movement patterns and different foraging habits and reproductive success, as it turns out. And so they really are really equatable to human ethnic groups.”
When we asked Gero about whether different codas were used by the animals to represent various parts of their lives, he gave us an idea of where his research was headed.
“That’s really what I’m studying in Dominica, because it’s the first time we’ve been able to follow families over such a long period of time, and hear them communicate with each other in different contexts.”
Although the “why” of sperm whale calls is a matter of Gero’s future research, he was willing to offer some educated guesses.
“The ocean is mostly a dark space on a big-area scale of thousands of square kilometers in which there is not a lot of stuff. And the most important thing that you have with you is your family members. And so, keeping track of where your family members are as individuals–whether it’s your mom or your baby-sitter or your aunt or your grandmother–is important.
“But then even more importantly, its critical to figure out what family you’re coming up on. So if one family is swimming north and the other family is swimming south, they need to figure before it’s too late whether or not they want to spend time with each other or avoid each other, and whether or not they recognize that family group.
“So having that layer of recognition to recognize individuals and families and the society that they come from is really important when you live in a vast, dark ocean,” said Gero.
This has a lot to do with feeding habits, explained Gero.
“Sperm whales feed on squid, and squid is very patchily distributed in the ocean. And so, you don’t want to spend time in a bigger group with animals that you don’t know, in order to deplete that resource. So, we know that sperm whales–at least on the day to a week scale–travel around basically following the squid that they’re trying to eat. And so, in order to maximize the amount of food you get, you want to minimize the amount of animals that are eating that patch of squid.
“So, it’s important to find out who is there in order to maximize your foraging success in some respects.”
Tag developers Mark Johnson (right) and Peter Tyack (left) with the DTAG. (WHOI)
“D-tags were pioneered out of Woods Hole Oceanographic in the US. They are being heavily used at [Gero’s] lab at Aarhus University,” Gero told us.
“Basically, they’re about the size of your cell phone. And it works like your cell phone in some respects. It can measure the 3-d movement. So, it’s kind of like if you’re looking at a picture on your phone, and you turn your phone sideways: the picture orients itself and gets bigger. That’s because the phone knows that it’s being turned sideways. And these tags know that as well. So, we get 3-dimensional fine-scale movement by putting them out on the animal.
“But they also have two little microphones at the front, so we also get really high-resolution stereo sound.
Tagging of a Whale using a cantilever pole.
“The tags get deployed with a really long pole, and they stick to the whales with four small suction cups. So they don’t implant into the whale. You basically poke the animal with a long stick, and the suction cups stick onto the back of the animal, and then they can last for about two days. And then they computer inside tells the suction cups it’s time to release, and it lets a little bit of water into the suction cup and the suction cup falls off, and the tag floats back to the surface.
“And then it has a little VHS transmitter in it, and that allows us to track it down. Just as other biologists in Africa tracking lions or elephants would.
“And what this gives us, if we put out three of them at the same time, or five of them at the same time on a family of whales… If the family of whales is only seven animals, we get all the relative positions of all the adult females in the family. And so we get all of the exchanges of the calls between them as well. So we know that Pinchy–a female–just dove and has left her calf, Tweak, at the surface, and is now calling to Fingers, whose coming back up from the deep, and so it gives us not only the context but also what they’re saying to each other.
“And the context is really important. So now we know that it’s a mother diving, leaving her baby at the surface, and communicating with the primary baby-sitter.
“And so its a lot easier to interpret what the meaning of that conversation was, because we know all of this background information about the animals, and now we know the physical relative position of them when they’re talking with each other.”
To be continued…
Look forward to part two of this interview, in which Dr Gero explains the dangers and concerns facing sperm whales and other marine life in our increasingly trafficked oceans.
Dr Shane Gero completed his doctoral studies at Dalhousie University, Canada, and is currently an FNU Research Fellow at Aarhus University in Denmark. Gero splits his time between Dr. Peter Madsen’s Marine Bioacoustics Lab in Denmark, his human family in Canada, and the sperm whale community off the island of Dominica in the Caribbean.
Photos: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Three Fish Sleeping, Jessie Hodge, Flying Kiwi Tours, Bing, Chelsea Leven
Although the head of the Russian occupation administration in Crimea has stated that the international community would recognize Crimea when US President Barack Obama left office, the US Committee on Foreign Affairs passed the “Crimea Annexation Non-Recognition Act” Friday with a unanimous vote.
The act is modeled on a similar non-recognition policy that was enacted to deal with the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, and is based on the Stimson Doctrine, which holds that the US will never recognize any territorial changes that have been achieved solely by force.
Bill HR 5121, the “Crimea Annexation Non-recognition Act,” was drafted by Representatives Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA) and Steve Chabot (R-OH), and prohibits any recognition by the US government in law or practice of any sovereignty over Crimea by Russia, including airspace and territorial waters.
It also requires that “no Federal department or agency may take any action or extend any assistance that recognizes or implies recognition of the de jure or de facto sovereignty of the Russian Federation over Crimea, its airspace, or its territorial waters.”
The bill provides for presidential oversight, although in special circumstances. The waiver included in the bill reads, “The President may waive [the above legislation] if the President determines that it is vital to the national security interests of the United States to do so.”
The head of the Russian occupation, Sergey Aksyonov, while claiming that the international community would come to recognize Crimea as legally Russia’s, also stated that “all of the anti-Russian policy of the last two or three years” would disappear with the end of Obama’s term.
Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind), who brought the bill to the Senate in April, wrote that the bill would “ensure that the United States does not recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea nor take any action that would imply such recognition. A policy of non-recognition will communicate the seriousness of this situation and help reassure our allies and friends precariously placed on Russia’s borders that Putin must stop his aggression.
“My proposal would also prohibit the United States from financing or guaranteeing investments in Crimea with Russia as an intermediary and restrict foreign aid to countries that recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea,” wrote Coats.
A railway stretching over 850 miles (1,400 km) along the Nigerian coast is being taken on by China. Chinese officials announced this week that the $12bn contract was China’s biggest ever overseas contract.
The project is being undertaken by China Civil Engineering Group Co., Ltd. (CCECC), a subsidiary of China Railway Construction Corporation Limited. The railway will cross 10 Nigerian states, including NIgeria’s oil-producing delta, and will include 22 railway stations. The train will be designed for speeds of 120 km/h.
Officials at CCECC have said that the line could eventually be included in the proposed ECOWAS Railway, that would link the entire economic community of western African states.
Africa has seen uninterrupted growth for almost two decades. China, with a cooling domestic economy, is taking on infrastructure in Africa’s developing regions. In order to help African nations pay for the projects, China is launching new financing plans.
Transportation projects are among the biggest sectors for Chinese investment, although well below energy projects.
Analysts have noted that these transportation projects often connect inland regions to the coast, drawing obvious comparisons to China’s own three-decade growth boom, which began with the development of coastal manufacturing hubs served by ports that transported goods between China and the rest of the world.
The massive reserves accumulated by China during its growth are now being used to bankroll similar development outside its borders.
While economic expansion in the developing world is increasing demand for infrastructure–the value of which has been estimated as high as $78 trillion by 2025–this growth is expected to be funded by public finance groups such as the World Bank and its upstart rival the Asian Development Bank, as well as by private investment.
China announced last month that it would join BRICS countries to form the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which will serve 20 other Asian countries. Chinese officials said that China would pay half of the funding for the bank’s $50 billion start.
China also announced this month $40 billion in funding for the Silk Road project that will connect major Asian cities and break the “connectivity bottleneck” in the region.
Nearly five million people living illegally in the United States will be able to avoid deportation under reforms on immigration policy declared by US President Barack Obama this week. According to the president’s announcement, unregistered parents of American citizens will be granted legal residency as well as the ability to work in the US for three years. This move will affect parents who have lived in the United States for at least five years–an estimated 4.4 million people–although it will not permit them US citizenship.
In a televised speech, Obama invited illegal immigrants to come out of the shadows and receive legal rights. The move was immediately challenged by Republicans, who alleged that taking such step without congressional endorsement exceeded the presidential authority.
Speaker John Boehner warned that Obama would exceed his powers if he went ahead with his plans on immigration, and Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) said the measures would aggravate the problem of illegal immigration in the US.
US president also vowed to take resolute action to combat illegal immigration at the border. He emphasized the necessity to check undocumented migrants for criminality, and to make sure migrants payed taxes. He stated that deportations would focus on criminals, not families or kids, gang members and not mothers who were trying to help their children.
Obama Said, “If you are a criminal, you will be deported. If you are planning to enter the United States illegally, opportunities to catch you and deportations back to your country have increased.”
A top official in US Administration pointed that the plan reflects the recommendations of the Internal Security Minister and Justice Minister on what the president could do under current US laws. Obama had vowed for months to take action on immigration after Congress hampered his comprehensive immigration in 2013. The bill passed the Senate but died in the House.
There are currently about 11 million undocumented illegal immigrants residing in the United States. Obama commented on this group, saying that trying to deport all 11 million was not realistic. The president commented on the struggle of the illegals to avoid deportation.
“I’ve seen the heartbreak and anxiety of children whose mothers might be taken away from them just because they didn’t have the right papers,” said Obama.
The president said that he would sign the bill, however, to ensure a compromise on the contentious issue of immigration. Obama addressed his detractors by stating, “And to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill.”
Engineer Alain Thebault is aiming at a new record. The sailboat designer, who began his career as a teenager wanting to build a boat that would fly, has previously set the sailing speed record with his Hydrofoil, which achieved 50 knots average speed (95km/h) in 2009. Thebault is aiming for a much higher sail speed, and he aims to do it by sailing at four times the speed of wind–something that has never been done before.
Thebault’s new project is the Hydroptere Rocket. Thebault teamed with an Aeronautics engineer-led group under Philippe Perrier of Dassault Aviation and Maurice Prat of Airbus to launch the iDroptere, a glider boat which aims to push the absolute sailing speed record to 80 knots (150 km/h).
Assembly of the iDroptere Rocket has begun in the Gulf of Saint-Tropez.
“This is great news!” said Thebault. “We look forward to attending the launch of Hydroptere Rocket in the Mediterranean. Our first objective will be sailing between Lausanne and Geneva for Syz and Co Sailing Speed Records, and between Hyères and La Ciotat to climb the wall of 80 knots under sail!”
“My interest in this is to do some things that nobody has done before,” said Perrier. “Basically, hydrodynamics and aerodynamics are quite the same. The main difference is density of water, which is 800 time the one of air. But, when you go to high speed, some differences may appear.”
“In the air, you have the speed of sound, which is the sound barrier, and this creates different phenomena as the plane is pushing its noise and its perturbation in front of it. This changes completely the way it behaves.”
“The speed of sound in water is very high, so nobody will ever get it.”
“But there is another phenomenon, which is called ‘cavitation.’ At the upper side of the foil in the water you get such low pressure that the water starts to uprise, and when this starts to occur–it starts around 40-45 knots, it takes place more around 50 knots, and when you up to 55 knots, you can consider that all the upper side of the foil doesn’t work anymore in the water, but it works in the vapor of water.”
“And this changes completely the behavior in a way that is comparable to sonic and supersonic differences in aerodynamics.”
“We consider that in order to go at more than 65 knots, we must try to do it with a lower speed of wind. That means that our goal is to get 80 knots with only 20 knots of wind.”
“That means that the speed of the boat is four times the speed of the wind. This has never been done before.”
A foil that is capable of working efficiently at over 80 knots is one of the challenges the team faces, Perrault said, and referred to technical engineering partnerships the group has made, which has given them confidence that the goal is achievable.
“And the neatest part about them is that these vocal clans–these whale cultural groups that use these different dialects–don’t only segregate their society socially, but they also behave differently. They have different movement patterns and different foraging habits and reproductive success, as it turns out. And so they really are really equatable to human ethnic groups.”
