Danger lurks within each moment of our lives. Coupled with a lack of awareness and a stroke of bad luck, simple recreational activities could easily spiral down into a monumental disaster. Take a one-man fishing trip, for example.
67-year-old fisherman Ron Ingraham spent twelve days out in the rocky seas, exposed to the elements and harsh weather, with at least a couple hundred miles between the boater and his home in Hawaii, before the Coast Guard found him on Dec. 9 after he had made a last resort distress call from his makeshift radio.
Ingraham was found atop Malia, his 25-foot sailboat. He was described as weak, dehydrated and hungry, with almost no food and water supplies left, his boat with a broken mast but, much to everyone’s relief, he is alive and uninjured.
Recounting Ingraham’s tale, he set off alone on Nov. 27 from Molokai going to Lanai, a trip that he is more than capable to be doing. Unfortunately, weather conditions did not cooperate with him, forcing his ship to be taken by the water and him to make his first distress signal.
According to the U.S. Coast Guard, they had responded to his initial mayday call and launched a search effort, spanning an area of over 12,000 square miles and 59 flights with the Navy. However, with no results being produced, the search had to be called off at the time, only to be picked back up again when Ingraham’s second distress signal came twelve days later, designating his location to be around 64 miles south from Honolulu.
The crew of the Hawaii-based destroyer ship, Paul Hamilton, immediately responded to the Coast Guard’s directions to pick him up, as they were 14 miles away from where he was. They arrived half an hour later and gave him shelter until the Coast Guard arrived and took Ingraham–along with his boat in tow–back to land.
When asked how is was that he managed to survive for so long on his own, Ingraham said that he was fighting for his very life, eating the raw fish that he caught.
“I was way out there, and I was out of water, but I hydrated on fish,” Ingraham would say as he explained that he lived off from the moisture that his catches provided.
Currently, Ingraham is taking time off from his life as a fisherman as he plans to reunite with his 43-year-old son, whom he had not conversed with in 15 years.
Contrary to intuition, adding pockets of water to solids can actually make them stronger. This finding, the result of research by Yale scientists, offers “a new knob to turn” for engineers, the researchers say. Engineers will be able to add exciting new properties to composite materials–such as electromagnetism–by embedding droplets of liquid, and, on a purely scientific level, the research provides valuable insight into the nature of the material properties at small and large scales–how the relative strengths of a material at one size can be opposite to that at another size.
“This is a great example of how different types of physics emerge at different scales,” Dr. Eric Dufresne, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Yale and principle investigator of the study, told The Speaker. “Shrinking the scale of an object can really change how it behaves.”
Dr. Eric Dufresne
Usually, replacing parts of a solid with liquid–generally considered a soft material–makes the material weaker, but this is not always the case. The researchers strengthened solids with liquids by the virtue of the surface tension of liquid droplets.
“Surface tension is a force that tries to reduce the surface area of a material,” Dufresne told us. “It is familiar in fluids–it’s the force that pulls water into a sponge, makes wet hair clump together and lets insects walk on water. Solids have surface tension too, but usually the ‘elastic force’ of the solid is so strong that surface tension doesn’t have much of an effect. The ‘elastic force’ of a solid is what makes a solid spring back to its originial shape after you stop pushing on it.
Stretching droplets embedded in soft solids. The sample is clamped and stretched in the x-direction.
Because the tendency of a liquid is to have as small a surface as possible, embedding small drops of liquid–about a micron in diameter–strengthen solids because the surface tension of the water provides stiffness to the composite.
Dufresne commented on what would be, in his words, “a new knob to turn” for engineers, who can achieve greater control over the properties of composite materials by including fluids.
Example images of ionic-liquid droplets in a soft, silicone solid E = 1.7kPa. Larger droplets deform more at the same applied strain. Overlay shows small (blue), medium (red) and large (green) droplet images combined together for shape comparison.
“As the solid gets stiffer, the liquid droplets need to be smaller in order to have this stiffening or cloaking effect. By embedding the solid with droplets of different materials, one can give it new electrical, optical or mechanical properties.
“On the simple scale, they could lower the cost be replacing expensive polymers with simple liquids. More excitingly, embedded droplets could provide an electromagnetic handle to actuate structures.”
In the recent research, the team embedded the small drops of liquid into silicone and then stretched the silicone. Silicone embedded with large drops of water deformed easily–the material was weakened by the liquid. Silicone with small droplets resisted deformation–the material was strengthened.
Aspect ratio of stretched ionic-liquid droplets in a soft silicone gel as a function of size and strain. Different colors correspond to different applied strains.
The team found that a composite up to 30 percent stronger than pure silicone could be created by embedding a large amount of small liquid droplets.
Dufresne explained how the current work came about.
“A few years back, we discovered, on accident, some surprises on how liquid droplets sit on top of solid surfaces,” said Dufresne. “In the course of that work, we realized people needed to pay attention to solid surface tension. Since then, we have been looking for other examples where solid surface tension might be an important and neglected component of the behaviour of materials. These experiments were inspired by ongoing efforts in ‘metamaterials’ where engineers tune the microstructure of a material to give it new properties.”
“It turns out that the importance of surface tension is inversely proportional to the size,” Dufresne said of the study. “So what’s just a negligible force for big things becomes a strong force for very small things–which in turn can strongly affect the material as a whole.”
The report, “Stiffening solids with liquid inclusions,” was completed by Drs. W. Style, Rostislav Boltyanskiy, Benjamin Allen, Katharine E.Jensen, Henry P. Foote, John S. Wettlaufer, and Eric R. Dufresne, and was publishe in December’s Nature Physics.
Women feel what is happening to their partners over three times as much as men do. According to new research, the difference between the empathy felt by women and men was the biggest of many factors analyzed.
“In our work, we were trying to measure how partners affect each other’s mental health through life events,” Dr Cindy Mervin, research fellow at Griffith University’s Centre for Applied Health Economics and lead author of the study, told The Speaker. “[O]ur work showed that negative and positive things that happen to individuals not only affect them but also affect their family.”
Dr Cindy Mervin
Mervin explained the research team’s findings about the levels of empathy felt by women and men, most notably, that women’s levels of empathy for their partners–at 24 percent of what they would have felt had an event happened to themselves–are over 300 percent of men’s levels.
“We can interpret the 24 percent by saying that on average women will be affected by the events happening to their partner by about 24 percent of the degree to which they are affected by their own,” Mervin told us. “In other words, women are affected about four times as much by the events happening to them than events happening to their partners.”
The research involved questionnaire data from the Australian study Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) on over 20,000 people across the country. The team looked at partners in both straight and same-sex relationships who did not separate during the observed panel, which amounted to just under 11,000 individuals and over 53,000 person-year observations.
The research led the team to conclude that while women’s empathy toward their partners was the strongest found in their study, men on average were found to not be empathetic in any significant way.
“We estimated this coefficient for different types of respondents–women vs men, parents vs their counterparts, and individual from high-income households vs. those from low-income households,” stated Mervin. “The highest value we found was for women when compared to men. For men, we found a value around seven percent and therefore found that men were not significantly affected by things happening to their partner.”
Mervin clarified that the findings do not mean that men are unemotional or uncaring, but that their care does not extend to their partner the way women’s care does.
“Although the degree measured for women and men is different, it does not mean that men are unemotional as they are quite strongly affected by what happens to themselves,” said Mervin. “They are just not very emotional when it comes to their feelings of their partner.”
The report, “Is shared misery double misery,” was authored by Drs Merehau Cindy Mervin and Paul Frigters of University of Queensland’s School of Economics, and was published in the journal Social Science and Medicine.
Ten-17 and 10-19 of the radius of an atomic nucleus, or a million billionths of that nucleus. That is the range at which he expects really new physics to be found, and that is where we will find the “theory of everything,” Nobel-prize winning theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg said at Harvard’s Geological Hall this week.
The unification of the four known forces of nature can be found at what Weinberg said was a “crude estimate”–a ballpark range at which “it all seems to hang together.”
“The big question that we face… is, can we find a truly fundamental theory uniting all the forces, including gravitation… characterized by tiny lengths like 10-17 to 10-19 nuclear radii?” said Weinberg, as reported by the Harvard Gazette. “Is it a string theory? That seems like the most beautiful candidate, but we don’t have any direct evidence that it is a string theory. The only handle we have… on this to do further experiments is in cosmology.”
Weinberg referred to the level at which the four forces could be explained in his speech. The two problems that physicists consider to be the less familiar of the four fundamental forces of nature are atomic in level. One force holds a nucleus together. The other is responsible for radioactive decay, changing one particle to another. No theory exists that would explain how all four forces work. The theory of gravity explains one of the better understood of the four forces. Another theory describes the subatomic interactions of electromagnetism and strong and weak nuclear interactions.
Weinberg referred to the far extremes of tininess where the strong and weak forces converge. The strong force weakens at shorter scales and the other two nuclear interactions get stronger at the same scale, apparently.
Gravity, Weinberg said, was strongly suggested to be unified somehow with the other three forces at that same scale, because of the required mass for two protons or electrons to balance their repulsive electrical force.
However, that range is a challenging area for physicists. Required for that kind of investigation is technology beyond what scientists currently have–10 trillion times what we can currently offer physicists in terms of energy is needed, Weinberg said.
Steven Weinberg won the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his work on electroweak theory with Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam, in which the relationship between the weak force and magnetism was explained.
In what is being called an “historic shift” in U.S.-Cuba relations, talks of normalizing diplomatic relations are being explored for the first time since they were severed in 1961, more than half a century ago.
Included in the process of normalizing relations would be the opening of a U.S. embassy in Cuba’s capital Havana, as well as the easing of financial restrictions and travel ban for U.S. citizens, and efforts to push through the reduction or complete halt in the 54-year-old trade embargo.
Cuban President Raul Castro was quoted as saying he “welcomed” the open dialogue while U.S. President hailed the talks as a “new chapter” in U.S.-Cuba relations.
The talks which were brokered between Canada and the Vatican, have been over a year in the making, and the official announcement follows a development over a tentative prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Cuba.
The exchange involved the release of Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor held in Cuba on charges of “subversion” for trying to bring internet service to a Jewish community group in Cuba, and the release of three of five Cubans held in the U.S. on charges of spying on Cuban exiles in Florida while attempting to infiltrate U.S. military bases.
The “Cuban-Five” as they came to be known were apprehended in 2001 and have been held for 13 years while Alan Gross was held in Cuba for five.
President Obama in his coordinated address with President Castro said his release allows the U.S. to “cut loose the anchor of the past.” President Obama also admitted that the policy of “isolation” had failed in achieving what the U.S. had set out to do a half century ago, which was effectively deteriorate the Communist regime there.
Upon his release Alan Gross addressed the public by saying that he welcomed the shift in policy, and that it pains him to see the Cuban people hurt by “mutually belligerent policies.” Alan Gross added that “It was crucial to know I was not forgotten.”
President Castro echoed this sentiment saying that he has on “many occasions” been prepared to “hold a respectful dialogue with the government of the United States based on sovereign equality.”
Proponents of the renewed talks say the normalizing of diplomatic relations is the first step in throwing to the waste side an outdated policy of the Cold War era that only hurt the Cuban economy at the expense of its citizens. Meanwhile families who were split by the travel ban can finally be permitted to be reunited with their loved ones.
Critics of the shift, including U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, himself a refugee of Cuba, has said the move shows President Obama is trying to “appease rogue regimes at all costs,” and that any vote on funding a U.S. Embassy in Havana will be a “struggle.”
Rubio added “This president has to be the worst negotiator we’ve ever had in the White House.”
A big advantage to the shift in U.S.-Cuba policy could be handed over to the economies of both the U.S. and Cuba, as the further reduction or complete elimination of trade restrictions could foster U.S. agribusiness in exporting billions of dollars worth of goods a year. It is estimated that under President George W. Bush, $4.7 billion in exports were made to Cuba under relaxed restrictions implemented by President Clinton, and it is projected that number could skyrocket considering Cuba imports 80 percent of its food.
Proponents of the shift say it is a win-win for the economies of both nations.
The year was 1997, the place was a slum area called Los Guidos, in San José, Costa Rica. Around 100,000 families live in very poor and sometimes inhuman conditions. Families are large, most are single mothers with 5 to 7 children of different fathers. Around 85 percent of the families are illegal Nicaraguan immigrants. It was a normal Tuesday afternoon when 3 years old Pedro was outside playing. His mother inside the small “house” was doing her households. After a few hours she called her children in and Pedro is no longer outside. His brothers and sisters started looking for him with no results. Soon neighbors join the search. Night falls and the anguished mother files a report with the local police.
It takes hours before the police start the search but finally they do, and the local news start showing Pedro’s pictures in case someone has seen him.
Days go by and no results. Pedro has vanished. Nobody saw anything or heard anything. The mother is interviewed by the local news, and all she does is cry and ask for some information that will allow her to see her son again. Weeks go by and neighbors stop helping and looking. The case is open but it goes into one of the thousands of files of the OIJ (equivalent to the FBI in Costa Rica). Pedro’s mother keeps visiting the OIJ office every month to see if there is any news. The answer is always the same: “No news–we contact you if there is any changes.” After some months people forget and lose interest in the case. Everyone moves on, except Pedro’s family. For them life is never the same, Pedro is missing and they have no idea what happened to him. A mother always wonders, “Is he cold? Is he alive? Is he well? Is he hungry?” and a million more questions go through her mind.
It has been almost 18 years since this unfortunate incident happened. What is worse is that this incident happens every day in all countries of the world. Millions of children go onto a list of missing people and when there are no results they remain there, just in a list. Now more than ever we have the capacity to join forces and have an international database with updated pictures of how these millions of children would look like. Systems that make it easy for others to report any information anonymously. But we are not well organized, and the truth is that these children remain there… on the list.
Last week the Nicaraguan government sent an alert saying that they might have found Pedro. Seventeen years later. His mother traveled to the neighbor-country for a DNA test, and unfortunately the test was negative, the young man was not Pedro.
It broke my heart to hear the mother talking on the local news still asking for any information like the first day her son disappeared. It made me think of all the families that have gone through this tragedy and how they could support each other not only at a local level. My question remains if this happened in your family when would you give up? My answer is NEVER.
Authorities from Bor county have ordered the immediately return of seventeen heads of cattle that were stolen in the former Gumuruk area of Greater Pibor in November. Bor county officials say the peaceful returns of stolen cattle will create a good relationship and stability between two ethnic communities–the Dinka and Murle.
Since the government of South Sudan signed peace a agreement between the Cobra faction lead by General David Yau Yau, Jonglei state’s community has not experienced cattle rustling and child abduction due to the efforts of the Greater Pibor administration. But this year cattle thefts were committed in Bor and in western greater Pibor.
400 head of cattle returned to Gumuruk in 2012
Bor County Commissioner Mamer Ruuk confirmed that some elements from his county went to former Gurmuruk Payam and stole seventeen heads of cattle in November and drove them back towards the direction of Anyidi in Bor county.
Ruuk said South Sudan’s army and police force had intercepted the thieves before their arrival to Anyidi. He said that unfortunately the criminals had run away, leaving the seventeen heads of cattle for police force. He said Bor community doesn’t want to create other problems with Murle tribesmen.
“I want to assure our public that the government of South Sudan is ready for peace, when Murle (cattle owners) come they have to be escorted by police up to the border and Manyabol,” Ruuk said.
He urged Murle cattle owners not to fear coming to Bor. He said if they come they will go back peacefully and police will take responsibility for escorting cattle from Bor to Gumuruk area.
“Our interest is that we wanted to show the public that we need peace–we don’t need war–and it is the responsibility of the government to fight those criminals between Murle and Dinka Bor.”
Commissioner Ruuk said that the cows were now under police protection and the state government had already contacted the Greater Pibor chief of the administrative area.
Commissioner of Bor County Mamer Ruuk
But the chief administrator of greater Pibor administrative area, Gen. David Yau Yau, said that Bor county has taken a good initiative towards people of greater Pibor administrative are. Yau Yau said his administration would create a conducive atmosphere by tracing out Dinka cattle in their home land, too.
The Member of Parliament representing Anyidi Payam, Philip Thon Nyok, welcomed the decision, saying that the taking back of stolen cattle would create peace between Dina and Murle tribes.
“When the agreement between Yau Yau and the government was established we found a relative peace because what used to happen–the [cattle] raiding–the movement of Murle around the area stopped and we were hearing that it was Yau Yau who stopped them, but we have realized with the administration of Yau Yau, the thieves are known and that is why they were controlled since that [peaceful] time without anything happening up to now.”
Thon said all chief from Anyidi payam were still following the criminals seriously in order to apprehend them and bring them to justice. Thon also said the duty of the commissioner was to make sure that those cattle were taken back as soon as possible.
Jacob Kunay, a member of Bor County Youth Association said people of greater Bor are peace lovers.
“That idea for the cows to be returned is good because it has been a problem with Pibor for long and if the peace has come now, we don’t need anyone again to temper with this peace,” Kuany said.
“These people should be brought to books so that they are exemplary to whoever will go back again for stilling the cows,” Kuany said.
Four months ago, Suspected Murle criminals raided a number of cattle from Kuoingo, a village located 6 kilometers away from Bor center but up to now no criminals had been caught by authorities in the Greater Pibor administration, but the chief administrator, David Yau Yau assured the Bor County Authority to remain calm and wait for the result from him.
In 2012, Jonglei state’s Government returned more than 400 head of cattle that were stolen by criminals back to Gumuruk payam.
Outside a police station in Amchok, Tibet today, a 33-year-old man self immolated in protest of Chinese rule.
The man, one Sangye Khar, self immolated during a time of celebration in Tibet which had been marked by self immolations in the past, and his body was carried away by Chinese military police. Tibetans nearby protested the removal of the body, and the situation was reported to be tense, according to the International Campaign for Tibet.
The action took place on an anniversary celebrated by Tibetans: a religious festival commemorating the death of the founder of a particular school of Tibetan Buddhism called Gelugpa (Yellow Hat), to which both the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama belong.
The festival celebration was attended by masses of pilgrims–as well as camouflaged military troop–at Lhasa’s Jokhang temple.
Since 2009, at least 134 Tibetans have self immolated in protest of Chinese authority in Tibet, counting Sangye. All told, 140 people have self immolated for the cause. China has ruled Tibet since conquering it in 1959. Speaking in favor of their exiled spiritual high leader the Dalai Lama, as well as sharing words and singing or listening to songs that voice a desire for independence or greater autonomy from Chinese rule, are among the crimes for which Tibetans are regularly sentenced to multi-year jail terms.
Many of these political prisoners have died of torture in prison.
If global warming is not a concern for many yet, the fast pace at which the icy landmass of Greenland is melting should be something to think about. New research has suggested that Greenland is melting at a pace quicker than the one earlier models predicted.
According to new research by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, it is estimated that if Greenland’s ice sheet melted, sea level would rise six meters (or 20 feet), causing grave threats such as floods and storms, and displace millions as it happened.
In the 20th century alone, the sea level rose by 6.7 inches and it is estimated that this number will only increase, roughly by two to five times–an alarming 11 to 37 inches–by the turn of the 22nd century, according to the latest report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
To prove their point, scientists have collected data from NASA’s ICESat spacecraft and Operation IceBridge, plotting the elevation of 100,000 sites on Greenland from 1993 to 2012. According to the research, Greenland has already lost an average of 243 gigatons of ice during the period between 2003 and 2009, adding 0.027 inches to the sea level per year.
Post-analysis, researchers were able to make estimations on the amount of ice that has melted over the years. A quite intricate melting pattern in itself, scientists believe that although they cannot conclusively predict the amount of ice that will melt in Greenland in the future, the data does underline the degree of dilemma we face with regards to glacial melting now.
Beata Csatho, a study author and professor of Geology at the University at Buffalo said of past findings, “My personal opinion is that most of the predictions of this as far as Greenland is concerned are too low.”
Csatho and her colleagues found the complex pattern hard to decipher and interpret in layman’s terms because a drop in the temperature thickens the ice, instead of melting it.
To understand the research better, scientists divided Greenland’s glaciers into seven groups based on characteristics of their melting pattern from 2003 to 2009. “Understanding the groupings will help us pick out examples of glaciers that are representative of the whole. We can then use data from these representative glaciers in models to provide a more complete picture of what is happening.” Csatho concluded.
The researcher pointed out that the currently-used model ignores the extensive ice loss in southeastern Greenland, which, after all, contributes to more than half of the ice loss in Greenland. Another issue the research noted was that current predictions are based on data is being from Kangerlussuaq, Petermann, Helheim, and Jakobshavn, a team that measured only four of Greenland’s 242 glaciers. The other 238 glaciers exhibit different behaviours throughout the year, according to the researchers–a fact that has been ignored and probably contributed to the recently discovery of a rate of melting that is quite different from what was thought before.
As gas prices plummet and many O&G workers face unemployment in the upcoming year, a new report has charted the transition from oil and gas to green energy in Canada. Better prospects for jobs–sun, wind and water are more widely distributed across the nation than oil fields–and clean energy business opportunities exist in many areas that have so far not been exploited, according to Clean Energy Canada, which undertook the research. Communications Director James Glave explained some of the details about when and how the fast-approaching energy revolution will happen, as well as about the remaining questions–and challenges–of the new frontier.
“Canada-wide, working class citizens travel to oil and gas areas to work in industry. Looking at the two energy industries–oil and gas and clean energy–what is their future with regards to employment,” James Glave, communications director at Clean Energy Canada, told The Speaker.
James Glave
Glave commented specifically on the future of Canadian employment in the two markets–oil and gas and clean energy.
“Oil and gas jobs are inextricably tied to the physical locations of fossil-fuel deposits; resource sector families have long struggled with the separation of loved ones, who travel to and from work in often-remote camps,” said Glave.
“While renewable-energy project sites are similarly often also located in remote sites–as an example, I’d cite the Forest Kerr run-of-river project in remote northwestern British Columbia–clean-energy resources such as wind, sun, and water are distributed widely across the country. Opportunities exist for building and maintaining clean-energy generation from coast to coast to coast. Further, beyond putting iron in the ground, the opportunities to innovate clean energy products and services–for example, energy efficiency control software–exist anywhere, but to date have largely centred around clean tech ‘clusters’ in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax.”
Clean Energy Canada’s report, “Tracking the Energy Revolution: Canada,” found that people working for green energy companies already outnumber those who work in the so-called tar sands. In the last five years, $25 billion has been invested in the sector, and green energy work has risen 37 percent.
Capacity and sales are up as well. Solar, wind, river and biomass plant power is up 93 percent since 2009, and electric vehicle sales doubled one year (2012-2013), to list just two notable examples from the organizations findings.
However, there is no real choice between the two sectors. The future of energy is clean, and it is really a matter of when and how, according to Glave.
“The transformation of Canadian and global energy systems is inevitable,” he said. “As to when, the answer is some combination of what is possible and what is necessary.”
He spoke of Canadian energy potentials.
“On the what’s possible side, we turn to the work of Stanford University’s Mark Jacobsen. His team’s work demonstrates that on a global basis, it is possible to produce all new energy with wind, water, and solar by 2030, and possible to replace all existing energy with these sources by 2050. ‘Barriers to the plan are primarily social and political, not technological or economic,’ he writes ‘The energy cost in a wind, water and sun world should be similar to that today.’ We don’t yet have the modelling in place to confirm what specifically this means for carbon-rich Canada, but we do know that we need a plan to manage this transition to minimize economic and employment disruption.”
“As for the necessary date, the United Nations Environment Programme recently pegged it at 2070. That is the year by which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that the world must cut net CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion to ZERO if humanity is to avoid ‘severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.’ By the end of this century, ALL greenhouse gas emissions–including methane, nitrous oxide and ozone, as well as CO2–must fall to net zero or even go negative, the UN says.”
Glave provided some analysis on what Canadians should be aware of with regard to the funding of the clean energy revolution.
“Canada’s fossil fuel sector has generated and continues to generate tremendous wealth,” noted Glave. “Other oil-rich nations, particularly Norway, have done an excellent job of setting aside proceeds from oil revenues; Norway now has a near-trillion-dollar nest egg that will likely help that nation with this inevitable economic transition. Canada has not done this, though our polling suggests that strong public support exists for such an idea. It’s going to be tough to catch up and embrace a Norway-style at this late date, so the funding will likely be some combination of financing from the growing private-sector investment and targeted public support–the same kind that got the oil sands off the ground many years ago.”
For Japan’s Premier Shinzō Abe, Abenomics, a three point economic strategy to revive Japan, will be the first task he has to attend to after his landslide victory in the Lower House election was announced on Monday this week.
Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and New Kōmeitō Party, its junior ruling coalition member, swept the election by winning 326, a whopping two-thirds of the 475 seats, recording a low voter turnout nonetheless.
Despite winning the election by a landslide, only 52.66 percent of the population was recorded at the polling turnout. This is 6.66 points down from the previous election in 2012 which saw the LDP return to power ending rival Democratic Party of Japan’s first term in power. Political analysts noted that a lack of strong opposition parties, not support for Abe won him this election.
At the conference in the LDP headquarters in Tokyo, a triumphant Abe said, “We will keep prioritizing the economic agenda. We will spread (the benefits) of economic recovery to all across the country.” In order to boost Japan’s potential for growth in the future, Abenomics, the three “arrow” economic policy of more fiscal spending, structural reforms and aggressive monetary easing is what Abe promised to pursue as he announced his victory at the press conference on Monday afternoon.
The landslide victory for Abe, is an indication of the presence of few rivals internally that will challenge him at the LDP’s presidential election next year. For Abe, who has led the country as its prime minster since his second win in 2012, this win is an augury of his possible third term as the island nation’s returning leader.
The National Diet or Kokkai, Japan’s bicameral legislature is expected to hold a special session on Dec. 24 re-electing Abe for his third term, following which he will have to choose his new Cabinet. The public broadcasting network Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) reports that Abe intends to retain his Cabinet as is, although he made no comments on it, only deferring it to the future when pressed about the issue.
In his argument on Sunday, Abe believed that re-electing his coalition meant that voters endorsed his security policies for Japan, even though they are linked to a somewhat controversial reinterpretation of the pacifist Constitution. A long-held ambition, Abe is likely to call a national referendum on revising the Constitution, although it is in his best interest to tread softly on the issue. For his part, the premier pledged to enact the right of collective self-defence in the Diet session in January saying, “Of course voters gave support (to the planned security bills). We will carry out what we have promised.”
After an independent candidate joined the LDP late on Sunday, the total count came to 291 while the New Kōmeitō recorded 35 seats, and the others made up the rest. The next challenge for Shinzō Abe, will be the Upper House election in summer 2016, a move that will aid Abe in his quest to pursue amendments in the Constitution although, the charter has to be initiated by a two-thirds majority vote in both the Lower and Upper houses, before it is given the stamp of public approval in a national referendum.
Pro-ISIS tweeter Mehdi Masroor Biswas aka @ShamiWitness is a 24-year-old man believed to be the person operating under the handle and followed by many jihadist fighters according to officials who arrested Biswas in Bengaluru city, India on Saturday.
Biswas’ Twitter account had a record 17,700 followers before it was shut down following a report by Britain’s Channel 4 News. A quick search reveals another account @ShamiWitness, who describes himself as having “Studied and became a qualified cyber-sheikh, Unemployed, Twitter 24/7, Dawla fanclub and it’s apostasy if you hate Dawla!” The handler is followed by 199 users, tweeted 18 times, the last time on Nov. 18 and contains extremist propaganda.
The offensive tweets on the previously deleted account linked to [email protected], included messages praising fallen jihadists as martyrs of the faith, information for would-be recruits and footage of executions.
L R Pachuau, the police director general for the Bengaluru police in a press conference credited “credible intelligence inputs” that led to the arrest of the junior executive who works for a food conglomerate. In the early hours of Dec. 13, a team raided Biswas’ one-room apartment and seized his laptop, phone and other documents for evidence.
Of Biswas at the conference, Pauchau revealed that the millenial worked at an office in the day and spread his social media propaganda via Twitter, at night. He “ferociously” tweeted late at night after gathering information from various TV and web 2.0 news sites discussing anything related to ISIS or activity by the terrorist outfit in the Iraq and Syria region.
Particularly close to English-speaking terrorists, Biswas became the source of “incitement and information” for the youth interested in joining ISIS. Pauchau says, “ Through his social media propaganda, he abetted [Isis] in its agenda to wage war against the Asiatic powers.”
For now, the Indian police have arrested Biswas on charges of assisting war against the state. Following his arrest Biswas, who denies any wrongdoing, was quoted saying, “I’ve not harmed anybody, I haven’t broken any laws of the country, haven’t waged any war against the Republic of India … I’ve not waged any war against any allies of India.”
Channel 4 also quoted Biswas saying that he would leave everything and join the ISIS if it were not for his family who financially depended on him.
Dr. Mekail Biswas, a retired assistant engineer of the West Bengal State Electricity Board and a homeopathy practitioner believes that this is a case of mistaken identity and labeling Muslims as terrorists. He says, “You know being Muslim, we are easily identified as terrorists,” said Dr Mekail Biswas. “The days are so hard now. But I can tell you that my son … has done nothing wrong. If he has landed in trouble it is because some enemy is after him.”
did not cooperate with him, forcing his ship to be taken by the water and him to make his first distress signal.
