Delhi rocked by deadly protests during Donald Trump's India visit

Hindu and Communist groups clash ahead of US president’s visit, with further conflict over controversial citizenship laws


Associated Press Tue 25 Feb 2020
 

Protesters throw stones at police in eastern Delhi on Monday. 

Five people died in violence across the capital. 

Photograph: EPA


Delhi has been hit by a series of deadly protests ahead of a visit by President Donald Trump, with Hindu nationalist and communist groups holding pro- and anti-US demonstrations in the Indian capital.

Three protesters were killed during clashes in several parts of the Indian capital, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, and police said one officer died in the violence. An unnamed health official said on Tuesday that another two had died, Reuters reported.

Eleven police were injured as they were hit by rocks trying to separate rival groups, New Delhi police said.

'Namaste Trump': India welcomes US president at Modi rally

On the pro-US side, Hindu nationalists held a prayer meeting in which they put a vermilion mark on the forehead of Trump in a poster, blessing him, while a priest chanted Hindu hymns wishing Trump success in his endeavour for strong ties with India.

Vishnu Gupta, president of Hindu Sena, said: “Through a fire ritual we are invoking God to bless America and India.’’ He said he wanted Trump and Modi to fight radical Islam and the spread of terrorism.

Elsewhere in New Delhi, dozens of supporters of the Communist party of India carried a banner reading “Trump go back”. Anti-Trump street demonstrations also broke out in the cities of Gauhati in the north-east, Kolkata in the east and Hyderabad in the south.
The cars of protesters opposing a new citizenship law are set ablaze in Delhi, India. Photograph: Yawar Nazir/Getty Images

Doraisamy Raja, the Communist party’s general secretary, accused Modi of succumbing to US pressure on access to the Indian market rather than protecting India’s interests.

American dairy farmers, distillers and drugmakers have been eager to break into India, the world’s seventh-biggest economy, but talks between Washington and Delhi appeared to have fizzled. Still, the two leaders are scheduled to announce agreements at a news conference on Tuesday, capping off Trump’s two-day visit.

Also in Delhi, police fired tear gas as clashes erupted between hundreds of supporters and opponents of a new citizenship law that provides fast-track naturalisation for some foreign-born religious minorities but not Muslims.

Critics say the country is moving toward a religious citizenship test. At the rally in Ahmedabad, Trump praised India’s history of religious tolerance, saying many faiths “worship side by side in harmony”.

The protesters blocked a busy road in a north-eastern district of Delhi, replicating similar sit-ins in several parts of India since the law was passed in December.

Police used tear gas as the rival groups hurled rocks at each other in the area on Monday and set some houses, shops, vehicles and a petrol pump on fire. Police closed access to two metro stations in the area.

Delhi’s highest elected official, Arvind Kejriwal, tweeted that the violence was “very distressing”.

The New Delhi television news channel said authorities deployed paramilitary forces to defuse the situation.

Tiny Chinese seaweed is oldest green plant fossil ever found

Proterocladus antiquus carpeted seafloor 1bn years ago and was size of rice grain


Reuters Mon 24 Feb 2020
 

A Proterocladus antiquus fossil dating back 1bn years. The image was captured using a microscope as the fossil itself is 2mm long. Photograph: Virginia Tech/PA
Scientists have found in rocks from northern China what may be the oldest fossils of a green plant ever found: tiny seaweed that carpeted areas of the seafloor 1bn years ago and were part of a primordial revolution among life on Earth.

Researchers on Monday said the plant, called Proterocladus antiquus, was about the size of a rice grain and boasted numerous thin branches, thriving in shallow water while attached to the seafloor with a root-like structure.

It may seem small, but Proterocladus – a form of green algae – was one of the largest organisms of its time, sharing the seas mainly with bacteria and other microbes. It engaged in photosynthesis, transforming energy from sunlight into chemical energy and producing oxygen.

“Proterocladus antiquus is a close relative of the ancestor of all green plants alive today,” said Qing Tang, a Virginia Tech post-doctoral researcher in paleobiology who detected the fossils in rock dug up in Liaoning province near the city of Dalian and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Digital recreation of ancient microscopic green seaweed living in the ocean, while the foreground shows the seaweed being fossilised. Photograph: Dinghua Yang/Virginia Tech/PA

Earth’s biosphere depends heavily on plants for food and oxygen. The first land plants, thought to be descendents of green seaweeds, appeared about 450m years ago.

There was an evolutionary shift on Earth perhaps 2bn years ago from simple bacteria-like cells to the first members of a group called eukaryotes that spans fungi, plants and animals. The first plants were single-celled organisms. The transition to multicellular plants such as Proterocladus was a pivotal development that paved the way for the riot of plants that have inhabited the world, from ferns to sequoias to the Venus flytrap.

Proterocladus is 200m years older than the previous earliest-known green seaweed. One of its modern relatives is a type of edible seaweed called sea lettuce.

Proterocladus represents the oldest unambiguous green plant fossil. Fossils of possible older single-celled green plants are still a matter of debate.

Ancient fossil 'may prove scorpion was first land-dwelling animal'

Plants were not the first to practice photosynthesis. They had an ancestor that apparently acquired the photosynthesis cellular apparatus from a type of bacterium called cyanobacterium.


This ancestor of all green plants gave rise to two major branches, one of them includes some aquatic plants and all land plants while the other – the group to which Proterocladus belongs – is made up exclusively of aquatic plants.

Shuhai Xiao, a Virginia Tech paleobiologist and study co-author, said: “Proterocladus antiquus is the sister of the evolutionary great, great grandmother of all green plants alive today.”

The fight to save CHamoru, a language the US military tried to destroy

Residents of the Mariana Islands are pushing to revive their indigenous language amid fears it might soon die out


Anita Hofschneider in Guam Wed 12 Feb 2020 
 

Bertilia Yamasta teaches her kindergarten class at at P.C. Lujan Elementary in Guam to speak CHamoru, the traditional language of the Mariana Islands. Photograph: Anita Hofschneider/The Guardian


Bertilia Yamasta moves a pointer across letters of the alphabet decorating the wall of her classroom. She’s standing before more than a dozen kindergarten students dressed in green-collared shirts who squirm on the carpet as she leads them in familiar recitations.

“A, å, b, ch, d,” the group says, calling out the alphabet backwards and forwards.

The students are speaking in CHamoru, the indigenous language of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. And they’re among a shrinking number of people in the Marianas who actually know their ancestral tongue.


Guam: life in the nuclear firing line – in pictures


Yamasta’s class, at PC Lujan elementary, is the first publicly funded CHamoru immersion school on Guam, the southernmost and most populous island in the archipelago. The program is part of a broader effort to preserve and revitalise the CHamoru, also spelled Chamorro, language, which like many other indigenous languages worldwide is at risk of disappearing. 

Yamasta’s class is the first publicly-funded CHamoru immersion school on Guam, where US military forces once banned the language and burned CHamoru dictionaries. Photograph: Anita Hofschneider/The Guardian

Rufina Mendiola, who leads the Guam department of education’s CHamoru studies program, says the class is still a pilot program but the plan is to expand it through fifth grade.

“We cannot just stop now. We need to look ahead,” she says.

Mendiola’s sense of urgency reflects the diminishing number of CHamoru speakers. Although there’s little data about how many people still speak CHamoru, it’s clear the language is vulnerable.

The Mariana Islands are divided into two administrative areas – Guam in the south, which is a US territory with a population of 165,000, and the Northern Marianas, which has a population of about 60,000 people and, like Puerto Rico, is a commonwealth of the US.


A decade ago, the US census estimated there were about 25,827 CHamoru speakers on Guam, just 2,394 of whom were under the age of 18, and only 14,176 CHamoru speakers in the rest of the island chain.

Robert Underwood, the former president of the University of Guam, says most of the fluent speakers are likely to be over the age of 50.

“In another 20 to 30 years there may not be any real first-language speakers of CHamoru,” he says.

Underwood is leading a new effort to document the language backed by a $275,000 (£210,000) grant from the National Science Foundation.

But even if the language survives, centuries of colonisation have already irrevocably changed it. The Mariana Islands spent more than 300 years under Spanish colonial rule. Today it’s far more common to hear CHamoru speakers use Spanish numbers to count rather than the traditional numeric systems. And many words have been lost, such as the names of some colours.
Sacrificed on the altar of Americanisation

American military rule on Guam in the first half of the 20th century further contributed to the language loss. The US navy banned CHamoru in 1917 “except for official interpreting”. The naval administration even burned CHamoru-English dictionaries.

It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that the ban on speaking CHamoru in schools was lifted, says Michael Bevacqua, a CHamoru language educator on Guam. Until then, schoolchildren who spoke CHamoru were punished, and their parents were sometimes even fined.

Bevacqua says that after the second world war, many parents on Guam were afraid that teaching their children CHamoru would limit their chances of success in the US.

“One of the things that they sacrificed on the altar of Americanisation was their language,” he says. That’s why today children like those in Yamasta’s class are a “novelty”.


Ann Marie Arceo is determined to change that. In 2005, Arceo founded Chief Hurao Academy, a nonprofit organisation that offers a CHamoru summer immersion program, an after-school immersion program and a CHamoru-language preschool.

Arceo says on the first day of registration, she expected 10 children to show up. Instead, there were more than 200. The overwhelming interest reflects a broader cultural renaissance in Guam, where there’s been a resurgence in pride in CHamoru history and identity.

“This millennial generation is wanting to know who they are and thirsting to fill an identity somehow,” Arceo says.

But creating fluent CHamoru speakers isn’t easy.

CHamoru language schools need funding, and that’s not always available. Federal funding recently expired for a similar language immersion program in the Northern Mariana Islands.
Experts warn that without intervention, there may not be any first-language speakers of the CHamoru language within 30 years. Photograph: Anita Hofschneider/The Guardian

Guam’s new immersion program has two years of funding, but getting the program off the ground is still challenging. At the start of the school year, Yamasta says her students were mostly quiet and unsure. A few knew a little CHamoru and one got frustrated to the point of tears. Yamasta felt overwhelmed translating lesson plans and looking for materials to help her teach effectively.

But several months in, the children are constantly chatting in CHamoru. Every week Yamasta uses to make a new CHamoru-language book out of rough paper to help the children read. She bought child-sized kitchen and cashier sets to help them practice useful vocabulary. Their parents attend weekly CHamoru classes themselves to help keep up the language use at home.

On a recent afternoon, Yamaste watches as her class scrambles to finish addition and subtraction problems.

One by one, the children run up to her with their completed math worksheets and declare, “Esta manayan!” to indicate they’re finished.

“Maolik,” she tells them, which means good. “It makes me so proud,” she says.

Thai geologist shot dead in second mining-related killing in Bougainville

Channon Lumpoo, 27, was shot as he conducted exploration activities for a new gold mine in the region
Dickson Sorariba in Port Moresby Tue 25 Feb 2020 
 

Bougainville has a fraught relationship with mining. Disputes over the Panguna mine (pictured) were the catalyst for the decade-long civil war that devastated the region. Photograph: Ilya Gridneff/AAP


A Thai geologist working at a new gold mine in Bougainville has been shot dead in the second killing at a mining project in the autonomous region of Papua New Guinea in recent months.

Channon Lumpoo, 27, was shot by a high-powered weapon on Monday in the Kokoda constituency of south Bougainville.

Channon was a geologist with Austhai Geophysical Consultants, which is attached to a Philippines-owned company SRMO, and was involved in exploration activities at the time of his death.


Bougainville referendum: region votes overwhelmingly for independence from Papua New Guinea


Deputy police commissioner and chief of the Bougainville police service, Francis Tokura, said police were conducting investigations around Arawa because they were unable to travel further inland between South and Central Bougainville where the killing took place.

Bougainville police said the remoteness of the location made it impossible to conduct proper investigations.

Late last year, a Papua New Guinean geologist was killed in a similar manner.

Tokura said the incident continues to overshadow the image of the Autonomous Bougainville Region, which voted overwhelmingly for independence from Papua New Guinea in a referendum late last year.


Mining is a fraught subject in Bougainville, with disputes over the Panguna gold the catalyst for a decade-long civil war in the region, which ended with a peace agreement in 2001.

Tokura blamed the foreign companies operating on the island for not following proper protocols.

“If the companies had followed proper process in talking to the rightful landowners prior to conducting exploration activities, I’m sure we would have avoided such unwarranted deaths,” said Tokura.

The deputy police commissioner has called on all companies intending to enter Bougainville to talk to rightful landowners and report to the Bougainville police and the ABG government before conducting their business.

“Mining is a very sensitive issue and there are various factions who claim ownership of these mines. I appeal to all companies intending to do exploration activities to refrain from such investment until all issues are sorted out,” said Tokura.

He said there are illegal weapons still in the hands of locals and any misunderstanding may result into unnecessary killings.

The body of the Thai national killed is at the morgue in Buka while preparations are done to fly the body to Port Moresby for a postmortem.

The Thai consulate in Port Moresby said it was aware of the death of its citizen. It declined to make further comment when contacted.

Rome unveils shrine dedicated to city's mythical founder

Newly found monument honouring Romulus includes 2,600-year-old sarcophagus

Angela Giuffrida Rome correspondent Fri 21 Feb 2020
 

Archaeologists say the monument to Romulus is not a tomb but a ‘place of memory’. Photograph: Andrew Medichini/AP


A newly discovered ancient shrine believed to have been dedicated to the cult of Romulus, the legendary founder and first king of Rome, has been unveiled.

The monument was discovered by archaeologists in a chamber beneath the Roman Forum, the political heart of the Roman empire, and includes a 2,600-year-old sarcophagus and a circular stone structure that is believed to have been an altar.

The discovery was made close to the Curia-Comitium complex, where senators would meet to vote, as part of an excavation project that began last year.

In Roman mythology, Romulus founded the city after killing his twin brother, Remus. Legend also has it that he was murdered by angry senators and his body dismembered.

The existence of Romulus is disputed by historians. Alfonsina Russo, the director of the Colosseum Archaeological Park, which manages the Roman Forum, said on Friday that the tomb was not his final resting place. No bones were found inside the sarcophagus.
The temple will open to visitors in about two years. 

Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images

“It is not the tomb of Romulus but a place of memory where the cult of Romulus was celebrated, a cenotaph,” Russo said. “It is also not his tomb, as some sources say that Romulus was killed and cut into pieces, while others say he was taken up to heaven as god Quirinus.”

However, Russo believes there is some truth in the legend: “All legends and myths have a kernel of truth and I am convinced there was a founding hero.”

Romulus and Remus were said to have been the sons of Rhea Silvia, a vestal virgin and daughter of the former king Numitor, and the war god, Mars.
A 1.4-metre (55in) sarcophagus and what appears to be an altar, found in an underground chamber at the ancient Roman Forum. Photograph: Andrew Medichini/AP

As babies, they were thrown into the River Tiber in a cradle by their uncle, before being saved by a she-wolf. The symbol of Rome features a she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus.

Romulus is said to have killed Remus on what became the Palatine Hill after quarrelling over where to build Rome. It is said he went on to found the Roman senate and rule as king for almost 40 years, before vanishing one day when visiting his troops.

The discovery of the shrine was praised by the city’s mayor, Virginia Raggi, who tweeted this week: “Rome always marvels with its treasures.”

The shrine will be open to visitors in about two years.

World's oldest art under threat from cement mining in Indonesia

Hunting scene dated to 40,000 years ago ‘crumbling before our eyes’, say scientists

CEMENT IS A MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO GHG

Krithika Varagur in Jakarta Fri 21 Feb 2020
 

The cave art discovered in Sulawesi portrays a group of part-human, part-animal figures hunting large mammals with spears or ropes. Photograph: Ratno Sardi/Griffith University


The oldest known figurative paintings in the world, located near a cement mine in Indonesia, are under threat from industry, scientists have warned.

In December, cave paintings depicting a hunting scene in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi were dated to at least 40,000 years ago.

But their condition is fragile. They are located inside land controlled by the Tonasa Cement Company, which determines who is allowed to visit the site. Although Tonasa has cooperated with local bodies to secure the area, mining continues all around the site.

Regional officials and scientists are now racing to funnel more protection and resources into the archaeologically significant region of Maros-Pangkep in South Sulawesi, where even more ancient discoveries may lie.

“As a researcher who has spent my whole career in South Sulawesi, I’m very concerned about the condition of the prehistoric caves here, which are now surrounded by cement and marble mining,” said Budianto Hakim, an Indonesian archaeologist who was involved in the recent research on the rock art.

Soon after the cave paintings were discovered in 2017, Tonasa agreed to protect 3.6 hectares around the Bulu Sipong caves.

Abdul Rasak, head of mine reclamation at Tonasa, said: “As soon as we learned about the discovery [from the researchers], we raised the area’s status to a protected cultural heritage site.

“We didn’t know the significance of it, we thought they were just pictures … but now, as children of this region, we are proud of what our ancestors did.”

If the company finds any more cave art in their extensive concession, they are supposed to alert the local heritage body, said Budianto. No new discoveries have been reported so far.

“We take them at their word,” said Budianto. “But of course, they as a company have different motives than us researchers. If they report it, they may lose some profits.”

Tonasa, the largest cement producer in eastern Indonesia, continues to mine around the protected area. Trucks loaded with limestone and raw materials are visible every few minutes crossing the dirt road in front of the cave.

Maxime Aubert, an Australian archaeologist and co-author of the research about the paintings published in the journal Nature, said dust from nearby mining operations remained “the most immediate threat” to the cave paintings, along with vehicle fumes from the dirt road across the site.

The rock art is in a landscape known as karst – terrain undergirded by limestone that has a distinctive topography of caves, sinkholes and underground streams. Limestone is the raw material for cement and the global appetite for the product threatens karst ecosystems across south-east Asia.

“Nearby mining activity definitely affects these paintings, because it creates vibrations, affects the karst’s delicate hydrological system, and creates temperature changes that can damage them,” said Budianto. Tonasa representatives disagree that the mining activity has these effects.

Tonasa company officials said they were planning to expand cultural tourism to the site, build a museum and encourage more visitors to see the paintings. Currently, only four people at a time are allowed inside the chamber, but there are no physical barriers from touching the ancient artwork.

Aubert and fellow researchers wrote recently that the paintings site was “crumbling away before our eyes” and that they had “observed the alarming deterioration of this art at almost every location.” At some sites, they found 2-3cm patches of rock containing art were disappearing every couple of months.

The authors urged action to preserve what they described as “a gift from the dawn of human culture”.

“There are now over 300 prehistoric art sites in Sulawesi and [Indonesian Borneo] and dozens more are discovered every year,” said Aubert. “If only one site like that was found in France or Spain this would be a major discovery. This area … is key to understand our species’ cognitive and cultural evolution.”

'The message he’s sending is I don’t care': Mexico's president criticized for response to killings of women


Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered vague plans for ‘moral regeneration’ after string of gruesome killings of women and girls

HE IS A NEO LIBERAL IN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC CLOTHING

David Agren in Mexico City @el_reportero

Fri 21 Feb 2020
 

Demonstrators start a fire as they gather outside the national palace in Mexico City, Mexico, on Tuesday to protest against gender violence. Photograph: Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images


Mexico’s president has cast himself as the victim of feminist activists, amid an outburst of fury at the alarming violence targeting the country’s women and girls – and the seeming impunity that accompanies each crime.

A string of especially gruesome killings of women and girls has prompted widespread protests, especially in the capital. In one incident last week, masked women splashed blood-red paint on the doors of the national palace and sprayed the walls with graffiti.

‘It fills us with rage’: Mexican activists protest femicide at presidential palace


But Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has been accused of a tone-deaf response to the crisis as he offers vague plans for “moral regeneration” and protestations that all murders matter.

At his morning press conference on Thursday, he mused about the a “feminist collective” that had descended on the palace. “They opposed the moral regeneration we’re promoting. I respect their views but don’t share them. I believe we have to moralise the country, purify public life and strengthen cultural, moral and spiritual values,” he said.

“I’m not going to give up my lifelong beliefs because they came and protested. We’re going to struggle to achieve a material change, a spiritual change.”

Endless stories on horrific murders – and daily indignities such as harassment, catcalls and being groped on public transit – have prompted a burgeoning women’s movement, whose members have protested online and in the streets and called for a national women’s strike on 9 March. 

People gather in memory of seven-year-old Fátima Aldrighetti Antón at an anti-femicide monument in Mexico City, Mexico, on Wednesday. Photograph: Carlos Jasso/Reuters

In recent years, Mexican women have become increasingly ready to call out callous and inept responses from public officials, police and prosecutors in cases of femicides, but in some cases politicians have appeared to show more concern over feminist graffiti than the crimes committed against women.

Much of the recent outrage, however, has targeted López Obrador, who identifies as left-leaning but has appeared exasperated by calls to confront the issue.

This month, he responded to a question about the federal prosecutor’s proposal to scratch the concept of femicides from the criminal code by saying the issue “has been manipulated by the media”.

He also showed annoyance that the question interrupted his plans to talk about his pet project of raffling off the presidential airplane, saying: “I don’t want femicides to overshadow the lottery.”

'Why did she have to die?' Mexico's war on women claims young artist

Women’s groups say he is treating femicides in the same way as his predecessors: as a political and public relations problems rather than a crisis claiming the lives of women.

“The message he’s sending women is: I don’t care,” said Maricruz Ocampo, an activist in the state of Querétaro.

“They’ve all had the same attitude toward the problem,” she said. “This is a Mexican problem, not a women’s issue.”

Several recent high-profile crimes have been especially gruesome.

Ingrid Escamilla, 25, was murdered on 9 February by her husband, who skinned her corpse and disemboweled her. A tabloid newspaper fueled further anger by publishing photos of her corpse on its front page.

In the second crime, a seven-year-old girl, Fátima Aldrighetti Antón, was abducted and tortured after her mother got stuck in traffic and was late to pick her up from school. Her body was found in a plastic bag four days later, showing signs of torture. Two suspects were arrested on Wednesday – but not after Mexico City officials leaked information on the complicated domestic situation in Fátima’s home. 

People embrace as they gather in memory of Fátima Aldrighetti Antó at an anti-femicide monument in Mexico City, Mexico, on 19 February. Photograph: Carlos Jasso/Reuters

López Obrador responded Tuesday to questions about the femicides by blaming family breakdowns, along with “neoliberal” policies implemented over the past three decades.

He also cast the blame on his predecessors – including those in Mexico City, where he governed from 2000-2005 and has heavily influenced local politics since leaving office.

“Not only is nothing being done today, but what’s being said is discrediting women,” said Regina Tamés, director of Gire, a reproductive rights organisation.

López Obrador swept to power promising widespread social change but has consistently showed conservative tendencies on social issues. “What’s unfortunate about now, in comparison to before, is people have put a lot of hope of change in this government,” Tamés said.

Himalayan wolf lopes towards recognition as distinct species


Animal’s unique adaptation to low-oxygen life can be basis for protection, say researchers


Patrick BarkhamFri 21 Feb 2020 

Researchers want the wolf to be given conservation status. Photograph: Geraldine Werhahn/Himalayan Wolves Project


Wolves living in the Himalayas are to be recognised as a subspecies of the grey wolf, with researchers predicting that the animals will soon be declared a unique species.

The wolves surviving at high altitudes in Nepal and on the Tibetan plateau possess a genetic adaptation to cope with the lack of oxygen that is not found in any other wolf, a study reports.

The research, published in the Journal of Biogeography, reveals the evolutionary uniqueness of the wolf based on a number of different genetic markers. It will now be used as the basis to recognise the Himalayan wolf formally as a subspecies, with its own scientific name.

This taxonomic recognition will pave the way for the wolf to be given a conservation status by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), to help protect the population.

Lead researcher Dr Geraldine Werhahn, of the University of Oxford, said scientists still needed to obtain one final piece of genome data before the wolf could be classified as its own unique species.

“Everything is pointing towards it being eligible for full species status but we need to obtain high quality genetic samples, that’s the difficult part,” she said.
FacebookTwitterPinterest A Himalayan wolf pup. The animal survives on half the oxygen available to mammals at sea level. Photograph: Geraldine Werhahn/Himalayan wolves Project

Werhahn became the first known person to film a Himalayan wolf’s den during four research trips to the Himalayas.


The elusive wolf survives on half the oxygen available to mammals at sea level. “It is exhausting being up there, and that is a very strong evolutionary pressure,” said Werhahn, of WildCRU in Oxford’s Department of Zoology.

While the Himalayan wolf has hybridised with the grey wolf at lower altitudes, it has endured as a unique species at high altitudes because living there requires such strength. Grey wolves are unable to move in and take over such inhospitable territory.

The Himalayan wolf lives in packs of five animals on average – a smaller group than grey wolves – and eats marmots in summer as well as woolly hares and bharal, or Himalayan blue sheep. It prefers wild species but will also take livestock.

Werhahn said there was less conflict between Himalayan herders and the wolf than between livestock farmers and grey wolves in Europe, but Himalayan wolves are sometimes killed because of the threat they pose to yaks and other livestock. According to the researchers, local people want to help conserve the wolf and community conservation efforts have proved successful in the Himalayas. 

Conservation scientists do not know the wolf’s population because it roams across a large swath of inaccessible terrain. Photograph: Geraldine Werhahn/Himalayan Wolves Project

Researchers still need to estimate the remaining number of Himalayan wolves. Conservation scientists currently have no idea of the wolf’s population because the animal roams across such a large swath of inaccessible terrain.

An IUCN classification “is really the basis that we need to get protection for the wolf”, Werhahn said. “Something without any sort of name is hard to get conservation in place for.”

One Side of a Nuclear Waste Fight: Trump. 

The Other: His Administration.

Maggie Haberman,The New York Times•February 24, 2020

FILE - In this July 14, 2018, file photo, people leave the south portal of Yucca Mountain during a congressional tour near Mercury, Nev. President Donald Trump appears to have reversed position to now oppose creating a national nuclear waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Trump tweeted Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020, that his administration will respect the state, which has argued that the site about 100 miles from Las Vegas isn't suitable. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

Before the 2018 midterm elections, Sen. Dean Heller stood with President Donald Trump in the glittering Trump International Hotel near the Las Vegas Strip, looking out from the top floor, and pointed.

“I said, ‘See those railroad tracks?’” Heller, a Nevada Republican who lost his seat later that year, recalled in an interview. Nuclear waste to be carted to Yucca Mountain for permanent storage would have to travel along the tracks, within a half-mile of the hotel, Heller said.

“I think he calculated pretty quickly what that meant,” Heller said. “I think it all made sense. There was a moment of reflection, of, ‘Oh, OK.’”

Whether the waste would have traveled along those particular tracks is a subject of debate. But the conversation appears to have helped focus Trump, who in recent weeks seemed to end his administration’s support for moving nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, a proposal that had been embraced by his appointees for three years despite his own lack of interest


“Why should you have nuclear waste in your backyard?” Trump asked the crowd at a rally in Las Vegas on Friday, to applause, noting that his recently released budget proposal did not include funding to license the site, as previous ones had.



The story of the muddled and shifting position on Yucca Mountain is partly one of an administration focused on Trump’s reelection chances in a battleground state that he lost to Hillary Clinton by 2 percentage points in 2016. But it is also emblematic of a White House where the president has strong impulses on only a narrow set of issues, and policy is sometimes made in his name regardless of whether he approves of it.

In Trump’s decentralized administration, top aides and agency leaders have sometimes pursued their own agendas, at times creating politically perilous situations for him. The confusion around policy over the past three years has ranged from issues like the repeal of the program for immigrants in the country illegally known as DACA, largely steered by the attorney general at the time, to a more recent internal debate about a ban on some e-cigarette flavors, driven by the health and human services secretary.
Story continues

The president made his latest move after a monthslong policy debate inside the White House over finally breaking with support for Yucca, officials said.

“While Congress has played political games over Yucca Mountain for years and failed to find a solution, the president is showing real leadership by respecting the people of Nevada and their wishes,” said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman. “President Trump is committed to finding the best options for the safe and efficient disposal of our nuclear waste.”

This article is based on interviews with nearly a dozen people familiar with the administration’s knotty relationship with the proposal.

Yucca Mountain, in the desert about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was conceived as a permanent storage place for the nation’s radioactive waste, which is currently scattered across dozens of holding sites around the country.

Nationally, Republicans have long favored the proposal, which was developed in the late 1980s and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002. But Nevada politicians of both parties have remained steadfastly opposed to the policy, which is deeply unpopular in the state.

“I don’t know of a major elected official in Nevada today, or in the last five years or 10 years, for that matter, that hasn’t specifically pushed to keep the waste out of the state,” Heller said.



The project was halted by President Barack Obama, partly at the urging of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who was the Senate majority leader at the time, but most Republican leaders outside of the state remained supportive. While the plans for Yucca remain law as set under Bush, Congress has never moved to fund it since.

People close to Trump, who won the Republican nomination in what amounted to a hostile takeover of the party, say he never favored the idea despite suggesting at the end of the 2016 presidential campaign that he was looking at it. But he also did not care enough to intervene as his previous energy secretary, Rick Perry, supported the measure, and as the Office of Management and Budget listed $120 million in the president’s budget to restart the licensing process of the site. It was listed as one of the administration’s priorities.

Two of Trump’s political advisers, Bill Stepien and Justin Clark, flagged Yucca Mountain early on as a political danger zone, particularly if Trump wanted to try to put Nevada in play in 2020.

But it showed up in the budget, and Perry toured the site in March 2017, shortly after he and the Energy Department were sued by the attorney general in Perry’s home state — Texas, which has been one of the few places in the country accepting low-level nuclear waste — for not licensing Yucca Mountain.

Stepien drafted a memo in May 2017 that went to top White House officials, including the chief of staff at the time, Reince Priebus, and the president’s chief strategist at the time, Stephen K. Bannon, describing Yucca Mountain as a critical issue for a number of Nevada voters, according to people familiar with its contents. The memo mentioned that Heller was facing a reelection bid in 2018.

Priebus called a meeting in his office with Stepien; Clark; Rick A. Dearborn, then a deputy chief of staff; and Perry and his chief of staff. Priebus told aides that the president did not want to move ahead with the Yucca Mountain proposal, and that they should stop talking about it. It was to come out of the budget, he added.

But Perry continued talking about it. In June 2017, he testified at a House hearing that officials had a “moral obligation” to fund the site and continue with the nuclear waste proposal.

“Listen, I understand this is a politically sensitive topic for some,” Perry testified. “But we can no longer kick the can down the road.”

An aide to Perry did not respond to emails seeking comment as to why Perry pushed the issue so aggressively despite concerns from the White House.

Perry’s advocacy was enough to agitate Dearborn, who summoned Perry to the White House and reminded him of the directive to stop discussing Yucca Mountain publicly. In the future, he said, Stepien and Clark had to be present for any related discussions.

Still, meetings about the proposal continued to be held. At one such meeting of more than 30 people at the White House complex, Clark reminded the room that Trump did not back the project, and an administration official began yelling that it would move forward anyway, according to an attendee.

It was in the last year, and after Trump’s understanding of the potential proximity of nuclear waste to his property, that the president focused on ensuring that everyone in his administration got the message about where he stood.

“Nevada, I hear you on Yucca Mountain and my Administration will RESPECT you!” he tweeted this month. “Congress and previous Administrations have long failed to find lasting solutions — my Administration is committed to exploring innovative approaches — I’m confident we can get it done!”

Yet even after that tweet, internal confusion has been evident.

At a House energy subcommittee hearing two weeks ago, Mark W. Menezes, the president’s nominee for deputy energy secretary, prompted alarm at the White House when he said, “What we’re trying to do is to put together a process that will give us a path to permanent storage at Yucca.” After White House officials expressed concern, Menezes put out a statement saying that he fully supported Trump’s decision.

Whether that will be enough to reassure Nevadans about Trump’s intentions remains to be seen.

“Nevadans aren’t going to just forget that Trump spent the first three years of his administration trying to treat the state as a dumping site,” said Rebecca Kirszner Katz, a former adviser to Reid. “Donald Trump had an opportunity to be on the right side of a major issue in a huge battleground state, and he bungled it.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.




© 2020 The New York Times Company

NASA space telescope spots a double star system with an alter ego

Samantha Mathewson, Space.com,News•February 24, 2020


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NASA space telescope spots a double star system with an alter ego

A volatile double star system appears to change its behavior rapidly and unpredictably like a cosmic story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

This stellar duo, known as Terzan 5 CX1, lies roughly 19,000 light-years from Earth in a dense collection of stars, or globular cluster, called Terzan 5. The pair consists of a neutron star — an extremely dense remnant of a supernova explosion — and a smaller, sunlike star.

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation's Karl F. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers found that this binary star system switches between two alter egos every few years.

Data collected from more than a decade of observations show that the neutron star closely orbits its lower-mass stellar companion. The heavier neutron star pulls material from its partner into a surrounding accretion disk, which emits bright X-ray light detected by Chandra.

At this stage, the stellar duo is referred to as a low-mass X-ray binary. However, as orbiting material in the accretion disk spirals toward the neutron star, it rotates faster and transforms into what is known as a millisecond pulsar star, which emits pulses of radio waves detected by the VLA. After a few years, the stellar duo appears to return to its original state.

"The neutron star can spin faster and faster until the roughly 10-mile-wide sphere, packed with more mass than the sun, is rotating hundreds of times per second," NASA officials said in a statement. "Eventually, the transfer of matter slows down and the remaining material is swept away by the whirling magnetic field of the neutron star, which becomes a millisecond pulsar."

The data revealed that the stars' behavior changed over the course of only a couple years. Chandra observations from 2003 captured bright X-ray emissions, indicating that Terzan 5 CX1 was behaving like a low-mass X-ray binary.

However, Chandra data taken from 2009 to 2014 show that Terzan 5 CX1 was 10 times fainter in X-rays. Meanwhile, the VLA also recorded radio waves from Terzan 5 CX1 in 2012 and 2014, suggesting the stellar duo transformed into a millisecond pulsar and was blowing material out into space.

When Chandra observed Terzan 5 CX1 again in 2016, the stars had already returned to behaving like a low-mass X-ray binary, emitting brighter X-rays. This type of behavior is rarely seen in binary star systems. Typically it takes several billion years for a low-mass X-ray binary to evolve into a millisecond pulsar, according to the statement.

Additional observations using both the Chandra X-ray Observatory and VLA are needed to confirm the pattern of "Jekyll and Hyde" behavior exhibited by Terzan 5 CX1. Studying this binary system provides insight on identity-changing stars, as only three have been identified to date.

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