It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, February 07, 2020
Climate change: Loss of bumblebees driven by 'climate chaos'
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionBumblebee collecting pollen from a flower
"Climate chaos" has caused widespread losses of bumblebees across continents, according to scientists.
A new analysis shows the likelihood of a bee being found in any given place in Europe and North America has declined by a third since the 1970s.
Climbing temperatures will increasingly cause declines, which are already more severe than previously thought, said researchers.
Bumblebees are key pollinators of many fruits, vegetables and wild plants.
Without them, some crops could fail, reducing food for humans and countless other species.
Dr Tim Newbold of University College London (UCL) said there had been some previous research showing that bumblebee distributions are moving northwards in Europe and North America, "as you'd expect with climate change".
He added: "But this was the first time that we have been able to really tie local extinctions and colonisations of bumble bees to climate change, showing a really clear fingerprint of climate change in the declines that we've seen."
Bumblebee declines are already more severe than previously thought, said lead researcher Peter Soroye of the University of Ottawa in Canada. "We've linked this to climate change - and more specifically to the extreme temperatures and the climate chaos that climate change is producing," he said.
Image copyrightANTOINE MORINImage captionNorth American bumblebee on a flower
Bumblebees are among the most important plant pollinators. Declines in range and abundance have been documented from a range of causes, including pesticides, disease and habitat loss.
In the new study, researchers looked at more than half a million records of 66 bumblebee species from 1901 to 1974 and from 2000 to 2014.
They found bumblebee populations declined rapidly between 2000-2014: the likelihood of a site being occupied by bumblebees dropped by an average of over 30% compared with 1901-1974.
'Alarming' losses
Bees have been hardest hit in southern regions such as Spain and Mexico due to more frequent extreme warm years. And, while populations have expanded into cooler northern regions, this has not been enough to compensate for the losses.
Jonathan Bridle and Alexandra van Rensburg of the University of Bristol described the findings as "alarming". Commenting in the journal Science, they said: "The new study adds to a growing body of evidence for alarming, widespread losses of biodiversity and for rates of global change that now exceed the critical limits of ecosystem resilience."
There are around 250 species of bumblebee in the world. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), declines have been documented in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia, caused by a variety of threats that range from habitat loss and degradation to diseases and pesticide use.
Kabul Taliban: Spies, militants and a mysterious assassination
By Secunder Kermani & Sami Yousafzai & Ishtiaq MehsudBBC News
Image copyright
Image captionTwo men killed in Afghanistan were senior Pakistani Taliban
The fatal shooting of two men in the heart of the Afghan capital Kabul - a city unfortunately used to violence - went almost unnoticed.
But then, the dead men had hoped to go unnoticed: according to one source, they were both carrying fake IDs.
Exactly what they were doing in Kabul, and who killed them, remains a mystery that touches upon the murky links between security services and extremist groups in the region.
Who they really were, at least, has become clear. According to sources in Pakistani intelligence and militant circles, the men were senior members of the Pakistani Taliban - a group that has killed hundreds of Pakistanis in suicide bombings and other attacks.
One of the dead men was Sheikh Khalid Haqqani, who held a key position in the Pakistani Taliban's leadership council, and formerly served as the group's deputy leader.
He had been accused of involvement in several high-profile attacks on Pakistani politicians and linked to one of the country's deadliest militant attacks, the 2014 assault on a school in Peshawar, which left more than 150 people - mainly children - dead.
The second man was Qari Saif Younis, a military commander within the group. In a statement on Thursday, the Pakistani Taliban confirmed the men's identities and their deaths but gave few other details.
According to one militant source, the men had been due to hold a secret "meeting" in Kabul, on the direct orders of the group's leadership, apparently travelling from the eastern Afghan province of Paktika.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionTheir bodies were found near the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul
The militant would not say who they were meeting. According to a source in Pakistani intelligence, the men's bodies were discovered in the vicinity of the high-end Intercontinental Hotel - the site of two deadly attacks in recent years.
The deaths occurred last week, but the source in the Pakistani Taliban said the group's leadership had initially ordered the news to be kept "secret", partly as they were rattled by the assassinations, and partly to avoid awkward questions about why the men were in the city.
It is highly unusual for senior members of the Pakistani Taliban to be travelling to Kabul. The group is an entirely separate entity from the Afghan Taliban, with different aims and different supporters. The Afghan Taliban have been fighting a long-running insurgency against the Afghan government, which is backed by US-led forces, while the Pakistani Taliban have focused their attacks inside Pakistan.
Pakistan has long been accused of sponsoring the Afghan Taliban, and providing them sanctuary within the country. It's alleged Afghan intelligence services developed links with the Pakistani Taliban in response.
The group, which has been severely weakened in recent years, is now based in the east of Afghanistan, in areas out of the control of the country's government.
The statement from the Pakistani Taliban said the men were killed in a clash with American forces. The US has been holding discussions with the Afghan Taliban, aimed at bringing an end to the 18-year insurgency. Pakistan is believed to be key in helping persuade the group to reach a negotiated settlement.
The source within the group acknowledged it was also possible that gunmen or militants linked to Pakistani intelligence services were responsible.
They have in the past conducted other audacious assassinations, targeting figures wanted by Pakistan who were living in Afghanistan. For example, in December 2018 a suicide bombing in an upmarket district of the southern city of Kandahar killed a separatist Pakistani leader who had been living there in exile.
According to sources within the Pakistani Taliban, the bodies of the men killed in Kabul, Sheikh Khalid Haqqani and Qari Saif Younis, were handed over to the group, and a large funeral was held for them on Monday in their stronghold in eastern Kunar Province.
Of course, how the bodies ended up back in the hands of their militant group remains another part of the intrigue.
News of his death was met with an intense outpouring of grief on Chinese social media site Weibo - but this quickly turned into anger.
There had already been accusations against the government of downplaying the severity of the virus - and initially trying to keep it secret.
Dr Li's death has fuelled this further and triggered a conversation about the lack of freedom of speech in China.
The country's anti-corruption body has now said it will open an investigation into "issues involving Dr Li".
The Chinese government has previously admitted "shortcomings and deficiencies" in its response to the virus, which has now killed 636 people and infected 31,161 in mainland China.
According to Chinese site Pear Video, Dr Li's wife is due to give birth in June.
Media captionCoronavirus: Shanghai's deserted streets and metro
What has the public reaction been?
Chinese social media has been flooded with anger - it is hard to recall an event in recent years that has triggered as much grief, rage and mistrust against the government.
The top two trending hashtags on the website were "Wuhan government owes Dr Li Wenliang an apology" and "We want freedom of speech".
Both hashtags were quickly censored. When the BBC searched Weibo on Friday, hundreds of thousands of comments had been wiped. Only a handful remain.
"This is not the death of a whistleblower. This is the death of a hero," said one comment on Weibo.
A photo circulating on Twitter reportedly sourced from messaging platform WeChat also shows a message in Chinese saying "Farewell Li Wenliang" written in the snow on a riverbank.
Many have now taken to posting under the hashtag "Can you manage, do you understand?" - a reference to the letter Dr Li was told to sign when he was accused of disturbing "social order".
These comments do not directly name him - but are telling of the mounting anger and distrust towards the government.
"Do not forget how you feel now. Do not forget this anger. We must not let this happen again," said one comment on Weibo.
"The truth will always be treated as a rumour. How long are you going to lie? What else do you have to hide?" another said.
"If you are angry with what you see, stand up," one said. "To the young people of this generation, the power of change is with you."
An epic political disaster
Analysis by Stephen McDonell, BBC News, Beijing
The death of Dr Li Wenliang has been a heart-breaking moment for this country. For the Chinese leadership it is an epic political disaster.
It lays bare the worst aspects of China's command and control system of governance under Xi Jinping - and the Communist Party would have to be blind not to see it.
If your response to a dangerous health emergency is for the police to harass a doctor trying to blow the whistle, then your structure is obviously broken.
The city's mayor - reaching for excuses - said he needed clearance to release critical information which all Chinese people were entitled to receive.
Now the spin doctors and censors will try to find a way to convince 1.4 billion people that Dr Li's death is not a clear example of the limits to the party's ability to manage an emergency - when openness can save lives, and restricting it can kill.
He was initially declared dead at 21:30 on Thursday (13:30GMT) by state media outlets the Global Times, People's Daily and others.
Hours later the Global Times contradicted this report - saying he had been given a treatment known as ECMO, which keeps a person's heart pumping.
Journalists and doctors at the scene said government officials had intervened - and official media outlets had been told to change their reports to say the doctor was still being treated.
But early on Friday, reports said doctors could not save Dr Li and his time of death was 02:58 on Friday.
Image copyrightLI WENLIANGImage captionLi Wenliang contracted the virus while working at Wuhan Central Hospital
What did Li Wenliang do?
Dr Li, an ophthalmologist, posted his story on Weibo from a hospital bed a month after sending out his initial warning.
He had noticed seven cases of a virus that he thought looked like Sars - the virus that led to a global epidemic in 2003.
On 30 December he sent a message to fellow doctors in a chat group warning them to wear protective clothing to avoid infection.
Four days later he was summoned to the Public Security Bureau where he was told to sign a letter.
In the letter he was accused of "making false comments" that had "severely disturbed the social order". Local authorities later apologised to Dr Li.
In his Weibo post he describes how on 10 January he started coughing, the next day he had a fever and two days later he was in hospital. He was diagnosed with the coronavirus on 30 January.
Media captionThe BBC's online health editor on what we know about the virus
Singapore has raised its Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (Dorscon) level from yellow to orange. This means that the disease is deemed severe and spreads easily from person to person but has not spread widely and is being contained
Chinese President Xi Jinping has told his US counterpart Donald Trump that China is "fully confident and capable of defeating the epidemic". The country has introduced more restrictive measures to try to control the outbreak:
The capital Beijing has banned group dining for events such as birthdays. Cities including Hangzhou and Nanchang are limiting how many family members can leave home each day
Hubei province has switched off lifts in high-rise buildings to discourage residents from going outside.
The virus has now spread to more than 25 countries. There have been more than 28,000 cases worldwide but only two of the deaths have been outside mainland China.
GETTY IMAGES
ANTOINE MORIN
