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UPDATE 3-Colombia’s Santos favored for runoff, markets up

June 1, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

BOGOTA, May 31 (Reuters) – Former Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos is favored to win a June run-off after a solid victory in a first round presidential vote that consolidated his position as heir to the popular incumbent.

Santos won a strong lead on Sunday against former Bogota mayor Antanas Mockus, but fell just shy of the votes needed for an outright victory to succeed President Alvaro Uribe, a U.S. ally praised for his war on leftist rebels.

Jobs, the economic recovery and Colombia’s tense relations with neighboring Venezuela will be key issues now during the run-off when Santos will seek to distance himself from scandals in Uribe’s government that helped fuel support for Mockus.

Santos, the scion of a wealthy Bogota family, won 47 percent of the votes against Mockus with 22 percent on Sunday, leaving him with a clear advantage when the two men compete in the June 20 second round run-off.

“The Colombian people didn’t want to take a leap into the dark and they showed it with this election,” Santos told local Caracol radio, calling for other parties to join him in an alliance for the second round.

Colombia’s peso COP=RR and local TES bonds strengthened after Santos’ victory, as investors applauded the win by a candidate seen as a clear guardian of Uribe’s tough security line and pro-market policies. [ID:nN31252047]

The peso rose 0.80 percent in next-day trading to 1,957 pesos against the dollar compared with Friday’s close. Benchmark July 2020 TES bond TFIT15240720 yields closed at 7.933 percent against 8.107 percent on Friday.

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Santos benefited from a fall in rebel violence, increased investment and strong rural support to finish far ahead of Mockus, despite polls before the vote showing them tied.

But Mockus managed to tap into frustration over issues such as joblessness, healthcare, and voter weariness over human rights and graft scandals that tarnished Uribe’s second term. Uribe is banned by the constitution from seeking a third term.

“There is also a strong sense in Colombia that Uribe left many issues unaddressed,” said Myles Frechette, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia. “The weight of those unaddressed challenges should prod Santos to go beyond providing a continuity of Uribe.”

Mockus had surged in polls before the election to tie with Santos with a message of clean government. But Santos revamped his campaign to focus on jobs and the economy and also benefited from gaffes by Mockus during presidential debates.

Polls may have underestimated support for Santos in rural areas, which have benefited the most from Uribe’s security drive against Marxist FARC guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and cocaine lords.

Investors applauded Santos’ wide margin as the U.S.- and British-educated former finance minister is seen as sticking closer to Uribe’s stances on regulation, taxes and fiscal restraint than Mockus.

But a Santos victory in June will test ties with Venezuela where socialist President Hugo Chavez has called the candidate a “threat” in exchanges during a diplomatic dispute that has battered trade between the Andean neighbors.

Santos is seen by Wall Street as better placed to manage Congress, where his U Party has a strong representation. Mockus’ Green party has few seats and he would struggle to push through any ambitious reforms.

Uribe’s U Party, headed by Santos, is the strongest bloc in the Congress and is a former ally with Cambio Radical, whose candidate German Vargas Lleras came third in Sunday’s vote with just over 10 percent of the votes.

While Mockus has flirted with an alliance with the leftist Democratic Pole Party or PDA, he risks alienating moderate Uribe supporters who distrust Colombia’s political left because of its association with past guerrilla movements.

“This would be a major gamble,” said Christian Voelkel, a IHS Global Insight analyst. “An alliance with the PDA, parts of which belong to the unreconstructed political left, would almost certainly alienate crucially needed centrist voters.”

(Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel, Nelson Bocanegra and Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota, Editing by Sandra Maler)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Antanas Mockus, bogota, Caracol Radio, Day Trading, defense minister, economic recovery, heir, Leftist Rebels, Market Policies, outright victory, president alvaro uribe, presidential vote, rebel violence, Regional Tensions, reuters, runoff, scandals, scion, Security Line, Tense Relations

Karzai unlikely to claim Afghan election victory soon

September 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sep.17 (ANI): With accusations of vote fraud piling up around Afghanistan’s presidential election, incumbent Hamid Karzai is unlikely to claim victory any time soon.

At the very least, a national electoral complaints commission investigating fraudulent voting will take weeks to determine how much of Karzai’s officially declared 54.6 percent of the vote will be tossed out, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

At the other extreme, a potential need for a runoff vote could end up stretching Afghanistan’s political turmoil into next spring – presenting President Obama and other NATO leaders with an unsettled and deteriorating climate just as crucial policy decisions are under review.

Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence specialist in Asian affairs now at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said:. “We face a possible constitutional crisis that, if not resolved, becomes a disaster for us, and a partner [Karzai] acting in ways that in effect raise questions as to whether he should be in there or not.”

Aside from a runoff vote, which could be declared if investigations show Karzai’s total falling below 50 percent, some parties are calling for a coalition government, while others support the idea of a nonpolitical transitional government.

That debate has crystallized in a row between foreign officials over the best way to address Afghanistan’s political predicament. Peter Galbraith, a senior US official working in Kabul as the deputy special UN representative for Afghanistan, abruptly left the country after clashing with his boss, Kai Eide, over what path forward to advocate.

Galbraith favors a larger recount of votes, even if it leads to a runoff between Karzai and his main political rival, Abdullah Abdullah, and an extended period of political uncertainty. (ANI)

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US in delicate spot over Afghan vote fraud claims: NYT

September 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sep.9 (ANI): Though Obama administration officials are reluctant to confirm that there has been wholesale fraud in the presidential elections in Afghanistan, they have recognised that with President Hamid Karzai getting a slim majority, that they will have to keep dealing with him for another five years.

While there are clearly numerous egregious instances of fraud or vote-rigging, these officials said, it would take further investigation to judge whether, as one put it, “this whole thing is rotten, top to bottom.”

According to the New York Times, their caution reflects the fact that while the initial vote-counting has reached its conclusion, the Electoral Complaints Commission, an Afghan and international panel that will certify the final count, is still in the early stages of an investigation that could take several weeks.

They know that raising too many doubts about Karzai’s legitimacy could make it impossible to work with him later.

“Even if we get a second round of voting, the odds are still high that Karzai will win. We have a fundamental interest in building up the legitimacy of the Karzai government,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who advised the administration on its Afghan policy.

European diplomats have also expressed a similar frustration that they were powerless to do much now except wait.

“There’s a great perception out there that Karzai has stolen this,” one diplomat said.

“I’m realistic enough to know that there’s not much we can do about that right now,” he adds.

The American ambassador in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, has briefed US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and has also delivered a blunt message to Karzai: “Don’t declare victory.”

The slim majority tentatively awarded to Karzai, has put the Obama administration in an awkward spot: trying to balance its professed determination to investigate mounting allegations of corruption and vote-rigging while not utterly alienating the man who seems likely to remain the country’s leader for another five years.

“We realize that the allegations have reached such a level that we need to be very careful to allow the process to breathe,” said an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“The message was, Let’s make sure that the electoral bodies do their work, and do it rigorously,” he added.

On Tuesday, the United Nations-backed commission that is the ultimate arbiter of the vote said it found “clear and convincing evidence of fraud” at several polling stations and ordered a partial recount.

Election officials said Karzai won 54.1 percent of the vote, a percentage that, if certified, would spare him a runoff against his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, who received 28.3 percent. (ANI)

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U.S.-Afghan ties strained over election: NYT

August 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New York, Aug.29 (ANI): Reports of widespread fraud in the second presidential elections in Afghanistan have introduced an unwanted strain in the relationship between Kabul and the United States.

Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission said Friday that it had received over 2,000 complaints of fraud or abuse in last week’s election.

Karzai’s biggest rival and former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, showed reporters video of a local election chief in one polling station stuffing ballot boxes.

The vote count has progressed very slowly in Afghanistan – as of Friday, preliminary results with 17 percent of the vote in gave Karzai 44 percent and Abdullah 35 percent. If no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, a runoff must be held between the top two candidates.

For US President Barack Obama, who is on vacation here in Martha’s Vineyard, and his administration, it is the worst of all possible outcomes.

According to the New York Times, administration officials have made no secret of their growing disenchantment with Karzai, who is viewed by the West as having so compromised himself to try to get elected – including striking deals with accused drug dealers and warlords for political gain.

But Karzai has shrewdly managed to turn that disenchantment to an advantage, portraying himself at home as the only political candidate willing to stand up to the dictates of the United States, according to Western officials.

Last week, Karzai and Richard C. Holbrooke, Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, are said to have had a heated interaction in Kabul over the way the elections may have been manipulated.

Holbrooke said that while Washington is maintaining a neutral position on the polls, did express concern about the complaints about fraud and ballot-box stuffing.

Holbrooke is also said to have demanded a runoff election in what one report characterized as the “explosive” meeting with Karzai.

Obama administration officials accused Karzai’s agents of leaking to the news media select portions of the exchange between the two men, in order to make it look as if Washington is trying to force the rightful winner of the Afghan presidential elections – Karzai – into holding a runoff to satisfy American demands.

Whatever the case, the atmosphere may now have become so poisoned between the United States and Karzai that the Obama administration will be hampered no matter what course it takes. (ANI)

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Dead Sea shrinking by 1 meter every year

August 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 27 (ANI): Reports indicate that the Dead Sea is still shrinking fast, with water levels continuing to drop at the rate of about 1 meter per year.

Praised far and wide for the reputed healing powers of its minerals and waters, the Dead Sea has been luring visitors for thousands of years.

But these days, tourists see a very different lake from the one that others would have witnessed a few decades ago.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the sea sits in the lowest place on earth, and for years, the water level was 1280 feet below sea level. However, in the last 40 years, it’s dropped more than 80 feet.

Today, the Dead Sea continues to drop at the rate of about 1 meter per year.

This dramatic shortage is particularly evident at Israel’s Ein Gedi Spa, on the southern shores of the Dead Sea.

“The beach was here, and now (it’s) far away. You can see it’s more than one kilometre from here. In 30 years, the beach (will have) disappeared,” said Alon Shachal, Ein Gedi Spa Manager.

The need to change the status quo and find a solution to the Dead Sea’s alarming shrinking has been a concern for years for ‘Friends of the Earth Middle East’, a non-governmental organization that brings together Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian environmentalists.

“After the ’60′s, we started to see a dramatic decrease in the surface area of the Dead Sea. And according to the different studies, in 50 years from now, at the same rate, which is 1 meter per year of drop in the surface level of the Dead Sea, means that this sea will not be the same. It will be more of a very small lake; not the same area that we have today,” said Iyad Aburdeieneh, Project Coordinator, Friends of the Earth Middle East Bethlehem.

According to Gidon Bromberg, from Friends of the Earth Middle East Tel Aviv, “The Dead Sea has had its taps closed from both ends. From the North, in fact here in front of us is where the Jordan River should be flowing to the Dead Sea, but the Jordan River basically doesn’t flow anymore.”

“Ninety-five per cent of its waters have been diverted by Israel, by Syria, by Jordan, so that what’s left in the Jordan River – a river holy to half of humanity – is little more than agriculture runoff, fish farm waste and, mostly, untreated sewage waters,” he said. (ANI)

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Government inefficiency places people in coastal zones at risk from tsunamis

July 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 11 (ANI): A team of international experts has determined that governments have largely failed to seriously implement integrated management in coastal zones, placing people at risk of disasters such as hurricane Katrina and the Banda Aceh tsunami.

This was the conclusion of 40 international experts from wide ranging disciplines including economics, social sciences and natural sciences who met for an intensive, 5 day workshop near Oslo, Norway.

Many Megacities such as Tokyo, New York and London are found in the coastal zone.

According to researchers, coastal protection measures give a sense of false security and require increasingly expensive infrastructure.

The treatment and cure of these coastal syndromes includes renewable energy, recycled water and solid waste, sourcing locally grown foods and attention to social equity issues, especially in education and healthcare.

The researchers said that up to now, governments at all scales, from local to international, have largely failed to seriously implement integrated management in coastal zones.

This has placed people at risk of disasters such as hurricane Katrina and the Banda Aceh tsunami.

The interconnection of coastal processes with upstream management in river catchment has widely been ignored, causing coastal erosion, lack of runoff, nutrient shortage and subsiding deltas.

The pace of change in general is increasing and regionally, the world is already seeing both economic and climate-change refugees.

In parallel, there are climate entrepreneurs eager to exploit Arctic resources.

Climate change is exposing the fragile Arctic coasts and ecosystems as well as their vulnerable inhabitants, who subsist on traditional lifestyles, to increasing risks.

Innovation is needed to solve the widespread problems, if we are to turn the tide of losses.

According to researchers, we must enable governance at all scales from intergovernmental engagement to the individual, personal choices that may counteract the tyranny of “small and short sighted decisions”. (ANI)

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‘Hotspots’ of human impact on coastal areas ranked

July 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 10 (ANI): A new study has ranked ‘hotspots’ among coastal marine ecosystems that are at risk worldwide as a result of human activities.

The study, by scientists at UC (University of California) Santa Barbara, US, is the first integrated analysis of all coastal areas of the world.

“Resource management and conservation in coastal waters must address a litany of impacts from human activities, from the land, such as urban runoff and other types of pollution, and from the sea,” said Benjamin S. Halpern, the study’s first author, who is based at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at UCSB.

“One of the great challenges is to decide where and how much to allocate limited resources to tackling these problems,” he said.

“Our results identify where it is absolutely imperative that land-based threats are addressed-so-called hotspots of land-based impact-and where these land-based sources of impact are minimal or can be ignored,” he added.

The hottest hotspot is at the mouth of the Mississippi River, explained Halpern, with the other top 10 in Asia and the Mediterranean.

“These are areas where conservation efforts will almost certainly fail if they don’t directly address what people are doing on land upstream from these locations,” he said.

Nutrient runoff from upstream farms has caused a persistent “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi runs into this body of water.

The dead zone is caused by an overgrowth of algae that feeds on the nutrients and takes up most of the oxygen in the water.

The researchers state that they have provided the first integrated analysis for all coastal areas of the world.

They surveyed four key land-based drivers of ecological change, namely, nutrient input from agriculture in urban settings, organic pollutants derived from pesticides, inorganic pollutants from urban runoff, and direct impact of human populations on coastal marine habitats.

Halpern explained that a large portion of the world’s coastlines experience very little effect of what happens on land-nearly half of the coastline and more than 90 percent of all coastal waters.

“This is because a vast majority of the planet’s landscape drains into relatively few very large rivers, that in turn affect a small amount of coastal area,” said Halpern.
In these places with little impact from human activities on land, marine conservation can and needs to focus primarily on what is happening in the ocean,” he added. (ANI)

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Sea-level rise may pose greatest threat to Northeast US and Canada this century

May 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 28 (ANI): A new research has suggested that the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet this century may drive more water than previously thought toward the already threatened coastlines of New York, Boston, Halifax and other cities in the northeastern United States and Canada.

The researchers suggest that moderate to high rates of ice melt from Greenland may shift ocean circulation by about 2100, causing sea levels off the northeast coast of North America to rise by about 30 to 51 centimeters (12 to 20 inches) more than other coastal areas.

The research builds on recent reports that have found that sea level rise could adversely affect North America, and its findings suggest that the situation is even more urgent than previously believed.

“If the Greenland melt continues to accelerate, we could see significant impacts this century on the northeast U.S. coast from the resulting sea level rise,” said scientist Aixue Hu, the research paper’s lead author.

“Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise,” Hu added.

To assess the impact of Greenland ice melt on ocean circulation, Hu and his coauthors used the Community Climate System Model, an NCAR-based computer model that simulates global climate.

They considered three scenarios: the melt rate continuing to increase by 7 percent a year, as has been the case in recent years, or the melt rate slowing down to an increase of either 1 or 3 percent a year.

If Greenland’s melt rate slows down to a 3 percent annual increase, the study team’s computer simulations indicate that the runoff from its ice sheet could alter ocean circulation in a way that would direct about a foot of water toward the northeast coast of North America by 2100.

This would be on top of the average global sea level rise expected as a result of global warming.

Although the study team did not try to estimate that mean global sea level rise, their simulations indicated that melt from Greenland alone under the 3 percent scenario could raise sea levels by an average of 53 centimeters (21 inches).

But if the melt rate continued at its present 7 percent increase per year through 2050 and then leveled off, the study suggests that the northeast coast could see as much as 51 centimeters (20 inches) of sea level rise above a global average that could be several feet.

According to NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, “Ocean dynamics will push water in certain directions, so some locations will experience sea level rise that is larger than the global average.” (ANI)

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“Snowball Earth” may not be responsible for mass extinction of early life on Earth

May 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 27 (ANI): New fossil findings discovered by scientists have challenged the prevailing views about the effects of “Snowball Earth” glaciations on life, which is presumed to be responsible for widespread die-off of early life on Earth.

By analyzing microfossils in rocks from the bottom of the Grand Canyon, the scientists from UC (University of California) Santa Barbara have challenged the view that has been generally assumed to be correct for the massive extinction of early life on Earth.

“Snowball Earth” is the popular term for glaciations that occurred between approximately 726 and 635 million years ago and are hypothesized to have entombed the planet in ice, explained co-author Susannah Porter, assistant professor of earth science at UCSB.

It has long been noted that these glaciations are associated with a big drop in the fossil diversity, suggesting a mass die-off at this time, perhaps due to the severity of the glaciations.

However, the research team found evidence suggesting that this drop in diversity occurred some 16 million or more years before the glaciations.

They offer an alternative reason for the drop.

A location called the Chuar Group in the Grand Canyon serves as “one of the premier archives of mid-Neoproterozoic time,” according to the research.

This time period, before Snowball Earth, is preserved as a sort of “snapshot” in the canyon walls.

The scientists found that diverse assemblages of microscopic organic-walled fossils called acritarchs, which dominate the fossil record of this time, are present in lower rocks of the Chuar Group, but are absent from higher strata.

In their place, there is evidence for the bacterial blooms that, the researchers hypothesize, most likely appeared because of an increase in nutrients in the surface waters.

This process is known as eutrophication, and occurs today in coastal areas and lakes that receive abundant runoff from fertilizers used in farming.

“One or a few species of phytoplankton monopolizes nutrients at the expense of others,” said Porter, explaining the die-off of diverse acritarchs.

“In addition, the algal blooms result in high levels of organic matter production, which we see evidence of in the high organic carbon content in upper Chuar Group rocks. As a result of high levels of organic matter, oxygen levels in the water can become depleted, resulting in widespread “dead zones”,” she added.

Porter and colleagues also found evidence for extreme anoxia in association with the bacterial blooms. (ANI)

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Natural petroleum seeps release equivalent of 8 – 80 Exxon Valdez oil spills

May 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 14 (ANI): A new study has shown that the amount of oil residue in seafloor sediments that result from natural petroleum seeps off Santa Barbara, California, is the equivalent of approximately 8-80 Exxon Valdez oil spills.

Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), did the study.

It shows the oil content of sediments is highest closest to the seeps and tails off with distance, creating an oil fallout shadow.

It estimates the amount of oil in the sediments down current from the seeps to be the equivalent of approximately 8-80 Exxon Valdez oil spills.

“Farwell developed and mapped out our plan for collecting sediment samples from the ocean floor,” said WHOI marine chemist Chris Reddy, referring to lead author Chris Farwell, at the time an undergraduate working with UCSB’s Dave Valentine.

“After conducting the analysis of the samples, we were able to make some spectacular findings,” he added.

There is an oil spill everyday at Coal Oil Point (COP), the natural seeps off Santa Barbara, California, where 20-25 tons of oil have leaked from the seafloor each day for the last several hundred thousand years.

Based on their previous research, Valentine and Reddy surmised that the oil was sinking “because this oil is heavy to begin with.”

“It’s a good bet that it ends up in the sediments because it’s not ending up on land. It’s not dissolving in ocean water, so it’s almost certain that it is ending up in the sediments,” said Valentine.

To conduct their sampling, the team used the research vessel Atlantis, the 274-foot ship that serves as the support vessel for the Alvin submersible.

The research team sampled 16 locations in a 90 km2 (35 square mile) grid starting 4 km west of the active seeps.

Sample stations were arranged in five longitudinal transects with three water depths (40, 60, and 80 m) for each transect, with one additional comparison sample obtained from within the seep field.

“The instrument reveals distinct biomarkers or chemical fossils – like bones for an archeologist – present in the oil. These fossils were a perfect match for the oil from the reservoir, the oil collected leaking into the ocean bottom, oil on the sea surface, and oil back in the sediment,” said Reddy.

“We could say with confidence that the oil we found in the sediments was genetically connected to the oil reservoir and not from an accidental spill or runoff from land,” he added. (ANI)

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Ecuador to vote on re-election of left-wing President Correa

May 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Quito – Ecuador is set to vote in a presidential contest Sunday, with incumbent Rafael Correa heavily favoured for re- election. Correa, 46, looked poised to secure victory in the first round without a runoff. The election is already historic in Ecuador as the first in which an incumbent president has sought re-election.

Recent surveys show the socialist Correa with a wide enough edge to meet Ecuador’s constitutional standards to avoid a second-round election. He would need to capture either a majority of the vote or a plurality of more than 40 per cent with a margin of at least 10 percentage points over the second-place candidate.

Correa has been polling at 48 to 51 per cent, with former president Lucio Gutierrez (2003-05) as the closest challenger, with no higher than 14 per cent.

Since winning the presidency in November 2006, Correa has won three national votes including a constitutional referendum. The new constitution is the 20th since Ecuador was founded in 1830.

If Correa can finish off his challengers in Sunday’s election, he will win a four-year term. Under the new constitution, he would be still be eligible to seek re-election to another four-year mandate.

Voting is set to start at 1200 GMT and end 10 hours later, with exit survey data expected to be made available soon after polling stations close. Observers from the European Union and the Organization of American States were in attendance.

Preliminary official results for the presidential election were expected to be issued late Sunday, though broader results were likely to take longer, with 6,000 elected positions at stake. (dpa)

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Biofuel threatens water supplies

April 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 11 (ANI): A new study has suggested that the production of bioethanol may use up to three times as much water as previously thought, thus threatening water supplies.

According to the study, a gallon of ethanol may require up to more than 2,100 gallons of water from farm to fuel pump, depending on the regional irrigation practice in growing corn.

But, the water usage isn’t quite so high everywhere.

A dozen states in the Corn Belt in the US consume less than 100 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol, making them better suited for ethanol production, the study found.

“The results highlight the need to take regional specifics into account when implementing biofuel mandates,” according to the authors.

Bioethanol, typically made from plant sources such as corn or switch grass, is often touted as a clean-burning alternative to gasoline or other fossil fuels, which give off significant amounts of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

Other studies have questioned the benefits of biofuels, noting that they may require more energy in production than they provide.

They may not reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as hoped; and the fertilizers required to grow the crops to make the fuel may exacerbate oceanic dead zones as a result of chemical runoff into streams.

Annual production of bioethanol currently sits about 9 billion gallons a year, but many experts expect this number to rise, sparking concerns over water usage in the production process, particularly in areas where there are already water shortages.

Previous studies estimated that a gallon of corn-based bioethanol requires the use of 263 to 784 gallons of water from the farm to the fuel pump.

The estimates failed to account for widely varied regional irrigation practices, the authors of the new study said.

For the new study, Sangwon Suh of the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, along with his colleagues, made a new estimate of bioethanol’s impact on the water supply using detailed irrigation data from 41 states.

The water requirements of the bioethanol produced in 2007 was possibly as high as 861 billion gallons of water from the corn field to the fuel pump, the researchers found. (ANI)

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Zimbabwe PM’s wife killed in accident, party terms it assassination bid

March 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New York, Mar 7 (ANI): Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was hurt and his wife, Susan, has been killed in a car crash about 45 miles south of Harare.

According to officials of Tsvangirai’s political party, the Movement for Democratic Change, the head on collision with a lorry was not a genuine accident. Rumours that the fatal incident was a botched assassination attempt spread quickly in the country, which has a history of political killings.

Tsvangirai was heading to his rural home Buhera for a rally on Saturday when the crash occurred on Friday afternoon. From his hospital bed in Harare he told one of his aides that a large truck driving on the other side of the road had come toward his Land Cruiser, the middle vehicle in a three-car convoy.

“What he told me was that the truck went for his car. That’s how he put it,” The New York Times quoted Dennis Murira, director of public affairs in the prime minister’s office, as saying.

The truck driver told the police that he had fallen asleep at the wheel, Murira added.

The crash, coming less than a month after Tsvangirai was sworn in as Prime Minister in a tense and long-negotiated power-sharing government with his rival, President Robert Mugabe. But most officials were careful to say that not enough was known about the collision to make any accusations of foul play.

Tsvangirai has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts during his years as an opposition leader. Last year, he fled the country, fearing for his life, after he outpolled Mugabe in March presidential elections.

Forces loyal to Mugabe had begun a campaign of violence, trying to intimidate the opposition before a June runoff election for president.

Tsvangirai ended up withdrawing before the runoff because of attacks on thousands of his supporters. When the international community concluded the election was neither free nor fair, protracted negotiations led to a coalition government, with Mugabe as president and Tsvangirai as prime minister.

On Friday night, officials with Tsvangirai’s party expressed concern that the crash had not been an accident, but they resisted reaching any conclusions.

“This will certainly demand an independent investigation,” said Eddie Cross, the policy coordinator for the Movement for Democratic Change. “We won’t accept a police report.”

Ian Makone, a secretary in the prime minister’s office, said he arrived at the crash scene about a half hour after the fact. He said one of the drivers in Tsvangirai’s convoy told him that an oncoming truck “had clipped the right rear fender of Morgan’s car.” (ANI)

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DNA microarray may help reveal reason behind coral reefs’ deaths

February 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Feb 5 (ANI): Scientists have developed a DNA microarray that may shed light on coral disease, which may help them learn how to preserve coral, one of the ocean’s most important denizens.

The scientists, who developed the innovative DNA array, were from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California (UC).

The technique catalogs the microbes that live among coral in the tropical waters off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Through this method, scientists found that as coral becomes diseased, the microbial population it supports grows much more diverse.

It’s unclear whether this surge in microbial diversity causes the disease, or is a result of it.

What is clear is that coral disease is accompanied by a microbial bloom, and the DNA array, called the PhyloChip, offers a powerful way to both track this change and shed light on the pathogens that plague one of the ocean’s most important denizens.

“The PhyloChip can help us distinguish different coral diseases based on the microbial community present,” said Shinichi Sunagawa, a graduate student in UC Merced’s School of Natural Sciences who helped to conduct the research.

“This is important because we need to learn more about what’s killing coral reefs, which support the most diverse ecosystem in the oceans. Losing them is much more than losing a reef, it means losing fish and marine mammals, even tourism,” he added.

Worldwide, coral is threatened by rising sea temperatures associated with global warming, pollution from coastal soil runoff and sewage, and a number of diseases.

The organism’s acute susceptibility to environmental change has given it a reputation as a canary in the coalmine: if it suffers, other species will soon follow.

Scientists have recently learned that healthy coral supports certain microbial populations, while coral inflicted with diseases such as White Plague Disease support different populations.

Understanding these microbial shifts could illuminate the magnitude and causes of coral disease, and possibly how to stop it, which is where the PhyloChip comes in.

The credit card-sized chip can quickly detect the presence of up to 9,000 species of microbes in specially prepared samples of air, water, soil, blood, and tissue.

The chip is carpeted with thousands of probes that scour a sample for the unique DNA signatures of most known species in the phyla bacteria and archaea. Specifically, the probes bind with a gene, called 16S rRNA, which is present in all life.

According to Todd DeSantis, on of the array’s developers, “It’s a fast and inexpensive way to conduct a complete microbial community assessment of healthy and diseased corals.” (ANI)

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Global warming would lead to expansion of ‘dead zones’ in oceans

January 26, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Jan 26 (ANI): A team of Danish researchers has shown that unchecked global warming would lead to a dramatic expansion of low-oxygen areas zones, or ‘dead zones’, in the global ocean by a factor of 10 or more.

Dead zones are low-oxygen areas in the ocean where higher life forms such as fish, crabs and clams are not able to live.

In shallow coastal regions, these zones can be caused by runoff of excess fertilizers from farming.

Whereas some coastal dead zones could be recovered by control of fertilizer usage, expanded low-oxygen areas caused by global warming will remain for thousands of years to come, adversely affecting fisheries and ocean ecosystems far into the future.

According to Professor Gary Shaffer of the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who is the leader of the research team at the Danish Center for Earth System Science (DCESS), “Such expansion would lead to increased frequency and severity of fish and shellfish mortality events, for example off the west coasts of the continents like off Oregon and Chile.”

Together with senior scientists Steffen Olsen oceanographer at Danish Meteorological Institute and Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen, physicist at National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Professor Shaffer has performed projections with the newly-developed DCESS Earth System Model, projections that extend 100,000 years into the future.

“If, as in many climate model simulations, the overturning circulation of the ocean would greatly weaken in response to global warming, these oxygen minimum zones would expand much more still and invade the deep ocean,” he added.

Extreme events of ocean oxygen depletion leading to anoxia are thought to be prime candidates for explaining some of the large extinction events in Earth history including the largest such event at the end of the Permian 250 million years ago.

Furthermore, as sub-toxic zones expand, essential nutrients are stripped from the ocean by the process of denitrification.

This in turn would shift biological production in the lighted surface layers of the ocean toward plankton species that are able to fix free dissolved nitrogen.

This would then lead to large, unpredictable changes in ocean ecosystem structure and productivity, on top of other large unpredictable changes to be expected from ocean acidification.

According to Professor Shaffer, “The future of the ocean as a large food reserve would be more uncertain. Reduced fossil fuel emissions are needed over the next few generations to limit ongoing ocean oxygen depletion and acidification and their long-term adverse effects.” (ANI)

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Two-headed fish larvae blamed on farm chemicals in Australian river

January 14, 2009 By Rajesh Leave a Comment

Canberra, Jan 13 (ANI): Scientists have blamed the presence of millions of two-headed fish larvae, found in the Noosa River in Australia, on chemical contamination from farm runoff.

According to a report in news.com.au, the disfigured larvae are thought to have been affected by one of two popular farm chemicals, either the insecticide endosulphan or the fungicide carbendazim.

Former NSW (New South Wales) fisheries scientist and aquaculture veterinarian Matt Landos yesterday called on the Federal Government to ban the chemicals and urgently find replacements.

Dr Landos said that about 90 per cent of larvae spawned at the Sunland Fish Hatchery from bass taken from the river were deformed and all died within 48 hours.

“It certainly looks like the fish have been exposed to something in the river,” he said.

“I wouldn’t like to be having kids and living next to a place that uses these chemicals and I wouldn’t like to be drinking tank water where they are in use,” he added.

Hatchery owner Gwen Gilson blames chemicals used by macadamia farmers near her Boreen Point business for the deformities.

“Some embryos split into two heads, some had two equal heads and a small tail and some had one big long head and a small tail coming out of the head,” she said.

According to Dr Landos, the chemicals were potentially human carcinogens and could have entered the river through any number of sources such as spraying or run-off even though there was no evidence of improper use.

Carbendazim had a history of causing embryonic defects and had been banned in the US, while endosulphan was banned in New Zealand.

“These chemicals mess up cell development,” said Dr Landos. “There’s no other plausible explanation for what’s going on,” he added.

Dr Landos and Dr Glanville said there was no danger for people either swimming or eating fish from the Noosa River because if chemicals were in the water, levels would likely be exceedingly low. (ANI)

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Oz mayor ‘gets the s..ts’ after whole town down with diarrhoea reports!

January 9, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Melbourne, Jan 9 (ANI): The mayor of Bluff is upset with the claims that almost all the people in the central Queensland town have contracted diarrhoea by drinking contaminated water.

Central Highlands mayor Peter Maguire hit out at the claims of resident Tim Cummings that “the water is so crook, just about everyone gets gastric sooner or later.”

Maguire said that he’s “got the s..ts” with reports.

“The whole town doesn’t have diarrhoea,” the Courier Mail quoted Maguire as saying.

“The story is that everyone in the town has got diarrhoea but that’s not true and it (the report) has given me the s..ts,” he added.

Maguire said the town had endured problems with its drinking water with runoff from a coalmine increasing salinity and a mechanical breakdown at the Blackwater Water Treatment Plant, leading to partially treated water entering the drinking supply on December 15.

Cumming had claimed that almost everyone in town had contracted diarrhoea from drinking water contaminated by the Ensham mine.

Maguire said he could definitely taste the salt in the water after an earlier release of water from the coal mine but he did not believe it had caused a diarrhoea outbreak.

“We’ve just had a lot of rain that has flushed out all that dirty water,” he said.

Residents of Blackwater and Bluff had been advised to boil their drinking water after the December 15 breakdown at the water treatment plant.

A note on the council’s website advised residents that the situation has now been resolved. (ANI)

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