Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s first woman top diplomat


EURACTIV.com with AFP

 In her capacity of Green party (Die Gruenen) co-chairwoman Annalena Baerbock arrives in front of demonstrators of Fridays for Future climate movement prior to the beginning of exploratory talks between the Free Democrats (FDP), The Greens (Die Gruenen) and the Social Democrats (SPD), in Berlin, Germany, 15 October 2021. EPA-EFE/CLEMENS BILAN [EPA-EFE/CLEMENS BILAN

A former medal-winning trampolinist, Annalena Baerbock is no stranger to aiming high. But the 40-year-old’s next leap will be her biggest yet as she becomes Germany’s first woman foreign minister.

It’s a remarkable rebound for the Green party co-leader whose election campaign was derailed by a series of missteps that dashed her hopes of replacing Angela Merkel as chancellor.

Nevertheless, voter concerns about climate change and Baerbock’s pledge to bring a “fresh start” to German politics catapulted the ecologists into third place at the September 26 election, with a record score of 15 percent.

The three-way “traffic light” coalition that emerged — consisting of the centre-left Social Democrats, liberal FDP and the Greens — rewarded Baerbock with the powerful foreign ministry portfolio.

An expert in international law, Baerbock has vowed to put human rights at the centre of German diplomacy — promsing a tougher ride for Russia and China after the commerce-driven pragmatism of the Merkel era.

Missteps

The mother-of-two is described as quick on her feet and tenacious, with a meticulous attention to policy details.

“She keeps asking questions until she has really understood an issue,” a party source told the Handelsblatt daily. “She won’t be fobbed off.”

Critics point out that Baerbock has never held a government role, and was a relatively unknown politician even to many Germans not long ago.

Baerbock’s inexperience was laid bare on the campaign trail when she faced scrutiny over a belated bonus declaration, inaccuracies on her CV and allegations of plagiarism in her new book.

German Greens reject plagiarism allegations

The German Green party has dismissed as “an attempt at character assassination” plagiarism allegations against co-leader and chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock and has called in a specialist media lawyer.

The response came after an Austrian media researcher, Stefan Weber, accused Baerbock …

At one point, after fumbling a speech to a friendly audience, she was caught on microphone uttering an expletive while leaving the stage.

Baerbock admitted to having made mistakes along the way, and later pulled her book from the market.

But the Greens also hit back at the sexist attacks and online hate campaigns they said no other candidate had faced during the race.

Baerbock rode out the storm, with Greens co-leader Robert Habeck, the more charismatic of the duo, loyally rebuffing calls to replace her as chancellor candidate.

Habeck is now poised to head a new “super ministry” grouping the portfolios of economy, climate protection and energy.

‘Brave’

Raised on a farm near the northern city of Hanover, Baerbock got an early taste of politics when her parents took her to anti-nuclear demonstrations in the 1980s.

As a teenager she took part in trampoline competitions, winning three bronze medals in German championships. The sport taught her to “be brave”, she has said.



Baerbock studied political science and public law in Hanover before getting a master’s degree in public international law from the London School of Economics.

After trying her hand at journalism, she joined the Greens in 2005 and rose to become head of the party’s Brandenburg branch in 2009.

She entered the Bundestag lower house of parliament as a lawmaker in 2013.

She is married to Daniel Holefleisch, a political consultant. They have two daughters and live in Potsdam near Berlin.

As the Greens’ co-leaders since 2018, Baerbock and Habeck have been credited with completing the party’s transformation from its hippy, peace activist roots to a mainstream force to be reckoned with.

In the 2019 European Parliament elections, the Greens soared to 20.5 percent of the vote in Germany.

Against Nord Stream 2

In a break with tradition, both Baerbock and Habeck represent the “Realo” wing of the Green party, seen as more pragmatic and centrist than the radical “Fundi” camp.

Baerbock will be Germany’s second Green foreign minister, following in the footsteps of party veteran Joschka Fischer who served under Gerhard Schroeder from 1998 to 2005.

Staunchly pro-EU, Baerbock favours greater European responsibility in security and defence matters, and opposes the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with Russia that has Merkel’s backing but irked allies.

Baerbock recently accused Moscow of pushing up Europe’s energy prices by withholding gas supplies until the pipeline is fully certified, and said Germany could not let itself be “blackmailed”.

Signalling a more assertive stance on China, Baerbock has called for “dialogue and toughness” and urged the European Union “not to be naive” in its dealing with the Asian giant.

Thousands of Mexican women march in protest against violence

Issued on: 26/11/2021 -

A woman walks in front of graffiti before a demonstration to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in Mexico City 

CLAUDIO CRUZ AFP


Mexico City (AFP) – Thousands of women marched through the Mexican capital and scuffled with police on Thursday demanding an end to femicide and other gender-based violence in the Latin American country.

"They didn't die. They killed them," read one of the banners carried at the rally to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Shouting "Not one (woman) less," the crowd, dressed in black with flashes of purple, the color of the women's rights movement, demanded justice for victims of gender violence.

"Femicide Mexico! They're killing us!" one protester cried out during a brief scuffle with the police.

Tensions flared when a small number of hammer-wielding protesters tried to grab shields from police officers, who repelled them with smoke bombs.

Around 10 women are killed every day in Mexico and activists accuse the government of not doing enough to tackle the problem.

More than 10,700 women have been murdered in Mexico since 2019, according to official figures.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has criticized feminist marches on more than one occasion, suggesting that they are promoted by his enemies to undermine his government.

Around 1,500 policewomen were deployed along the route of the march from the Paseo de la Reforma avenue to the city's main square, home to the presidential palace.

Shops and prominent monuments were fenced off to prevent vandalism.

© 2021 AFP

SHOW TRIAL

Turkish Activist's Trial Resumes After Diplomatic Bust-up


By Fulya OZERKAN
11/25/21 

The trial of jailed civil society leader Osman Kavala resumes on Friday with the first hearing since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to expel 10 Western ambassadors who called for his release.

The hearing comes with Erdogan facing one of the toughest economic tests of his rule since 2003, with the Turkish lira tumbling to record lows against the dollar.

The 64-year-old civil society leader and businessman, who has been kept in jail without conviction for four years, is accused of financing 2013 anti-government protests and playing a role in the 2016 coup attempt.

If convicted, he could be jailed for life without the possibility of parole.


The philanthropist has become a symbol to his supporters of the sweeping crackdown Erdogan unleashed after the failed coup.

Kavala, who denies the charges, will snub Friday's hearing after his case sparked a diplomatic standoff last month when the 10 embassies -- including the US, France and Germany -- said in a highly unusual declaration that his continued detention "cast a shadow" over Turkey's democracy and judicial system.

Erdogan accused the diplomats of trying to "teach a lesson" to Turkey and threatened to expel them.

Kavala's case could prompt the Council of Europe human rights watchdog to launch its first disciplinary hearings against Turkey at a four-day meeting ending on December 2 -- a procedure that has only been used once before in the court's history.

The watchdog has issued a final warning to Turkey to comply with a 2019 European Court of Human Rights order to release Kavala pending trial.

The diplomatic spat was resolved after the US and several of the other countries issued statements saying they respected the UN convention requiring diplomats not to interfere in a host country's domestic affairs.

Erdogan has often compared Kavala to Hungarian-born US financier George Soros and called him "Soros leftover" in October, which drew sharp rebuke from the Paris-born philanthropist.

Philanthropist Osman Kavala has been kept in jail without conviction for four years Photo: Anadolu Culture Center via AFP / Handout

"The president's insulting and defamatory statements against a person who is not convicted and whose trial is ongoing constitutes an attack on human dignity," Kavala said in a statement.

His lawyer Tolga Aytore told AFP he had requested not to attend the hearing. "Even if he is asked to be present, he will not present a defence."

Kavala, who previously attended the hearings in Istanbul's main court via video-link from his cell in Silivri on the city's outskirts, said he had lost faith in a fair trial.

"Considering a fair trial is no longer possible under these circumstances, I believe it is meaningless for me to attend the upcoming hearings and present a defence," he said.

"It is impossible to predict what will happen in this sham process. Kavala should be released on Friday," said Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch in Turkey.

"If he is not, Turkey faces the prospect of being notified of infringement proceedings, spelling a deepening crisis at the Council of Europe level," she told AFP.

In an interview with AFP this month, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin refused to speculate on the outcome of the infringement procedures.

"I hope they (the Council of Europe) take all the facts into consideration and respect rule of law in this country... when they make a decision," he said.

Speaking to AFP from his jail cell last month, Kavala said he felt like a tool in Erdogan's attempts to blame a foreign plot for domestic opposition to his nearly two-decade rule.

"I think the real reason behind my continued detention is that it addresses the need of the government to keep alive the fiction that the (2013) Gezi protests were the result of a foreign conspiracy," Kavala said.

He was acquitted of the Gezi charges in February 2020, only to be re-arrested before he could return home and thrown back in jail over alleged links to the coup plot.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

Media organizations use last day of interventions in Rogers-Shaw merger to call on CRTC to do more

The hearing into Rogers buying out Shaw saw its last full day of interveners, who called on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to ensure the deal isn’t approved as originally presented.

© Provided by MobileSyrup Media organizations use last day of interventions in Rogers-Shaw merger to call on CRTC to do more

MobileSyrup 

Representatives from Unifor said the commission should consider the impacts on employment and local news of this merger, saying it could lead to a loss of funding for various local news channels in Western Canada.

This includes millions of dollars Shaw directs towards Corus through a federal rule mandating broadcaster distributors to direct five percent of revenue towards local content.

“The loss of $13 million in funding for local news provided by Corus television stations could be disastrous,” Katha Fortier, assistant to Unifor’s national president, said on the fourth day of the hearing.

Rogers said it will divert the funds towards CityTV, a channel it runs, through creating programs for Western Canada, competing with larger companies like Bell.

Like many interveners before, Fortier said Corus would likely have to turn to the Independent Local News Fund (ILNF), an initiative created by CRTC in 2016 to support local news by private stations. Doing so would take funds away from smaller independent organizations that rely on this fund to air content in smaller communities.

That’s exactly what representatives from Miracle Channel Association (MCA) said they would suffer from. The company licenses and operates CJIL-DT, a television station serving Lethbridge and Southern Alberta.

“There aren’t enough bandaids in the box to stop the bleeding that’s going to result.” – Robert Malcolmson, executive vice president at Bell Canada

Jeff Thiessen, MCA’s vice president, said the organization is concerned about the future of independent services. If they can’t get funding through the ILNF, they’ll have to shut down.

“That would basically show that our concern, the nightmare that would wake us up at the middle of the night, would have actually happened and the small market fund will have disappeared and be given to the largest markets,” he said.

Representatives from Unifor said local news funding provisions are there to support smaller markets so communities have access to a variety of voices focusing on local issues.

“It’s not just about how much money is in the broadcast system overall, but about how and where the money is spent, and on what,” Fortier said.

Interveners have pointed out Rogers would receive the most financial success out of this deal.

Representatives from the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) said Rogers’ current tangible benefits package is worth $5.7 million. In comparison, shareholders at Rogers will see their value increase by $1 billion every year because of the merger. “The public will only receive a couple of hours’ worth of new television programs — once,” Reynolds Mastin, CMPA’s president and CEO, said.

To right this wrong, the benefits have to be increased to offer value to the public. The way things stand, Rogers is the only one receiving value. “This inconsequential contribution will not yield any measurable improvements to the Canadian broadcasting system as a whole,” he said.

Unifor representatives also raised concerns about employment numbers, pointing to a shrinking workforce in the broadcasting realm. Randy Kitt, the organization’s director in the media sector, said mergers only make things worse because typically finances and staffing are moved away from smaller local markets to large urban centers.

“Unifor, therefore, asks that should the commission approve this sale, Rogers is mandated to continue funding for the Corus stations, until such time as a hearing can be concluded to ensure that ILNF or other such equal funds can be in place to support the need of these Canadian communities,” Kitt said.
Bell’s stance

Representatives from Bell were also present, and like Telus, asked the CRTC to reject the acquisition.

“While Rogers would have you believe there is nothing to see here, this application goes well beyond the narrow issue of one cable company stepping into the shoes of another,” Robert Malcolmson, executive vice president at Bell Canada, said.

If the merger is approved, Rogers will become a gatekeeper, and dominate the English-language market, he said. They’ll effectively be able to decide what is carried because the company will have all the power. Currently, Bell and Shaw each have 27 percent of the English language market share, and Rogers 20 percent.

Bell was in the same shoes as Rogers back in 2012 when the company came to the CRTC to acquire Astral. The request was originally denied because the CRTC didn’t see how the merger would provide “significant and unequivocal” benefits to the broadcasting system. It was eventually approved when a second application was filed reviewing the merger.

Stewart Johnston, the senior vice president of sales and sports at Bell, said if the Rogers-Shaw merger is approved, programmers will only survive if they work with Rogers given its larger market share as the reach it has with the audience will ensure advertisers and secure revenue.

“There aren’t enough bandaids in the box to stop the bleeding that’s going to result,” Malcolmson said.

Representatives from Rogers will be present Friday, the last day of the hearing, to answer questions raised throughout the week.

Image credit: CRTC (screenshot)

Survey commissioned by RCMP union suggests only nine per cent of Albertans think the province needs a provincial police force

Ashley Joannou 

Only nine per cent of Albertans believe the province needs to replace the RCMP with a provincial police force, suggests a survey commissioned by the RCMP’s union.

© Provided by Edmonton Journal The RCMP logo at K Division headquarters in Edmonton.

The online survey of 1,221 Albertans conducted between Oct. 27 and Nov. 4 by Pollara Strategic Insights found that 43 per cent of respondents thought the RCMP should “stay the course” and another 41 per cent said they have concerns about the Mounties but would support them “with improvements.”

“Albertans couldn’t be less interested in this proposal, despite repeated attempts by Premier (Jason) Kenney and others to make a case for a smaller, prohibitively costly and untested provincial police service,” Brian Sauvé, president of the National Police Federation union, said in a statement.

The survey was conducted the same week the Alberta government released a report looking into the idea of a provincial force which found that the change would cost the province hundreds of millions of dollars in start up costs and lost federal funding but could provide better service and increase the number of frontline officers and civilian specialists.

Kenney refused to answer questions about the survey at an unrelated event Thursday. He has repeatedly said that a provincial police force was worth considering because it would encourage more officers from within the communities where they work and more First Nations’ representation.

“I think it is worth taking the time to study the potential benefits, structure and cost of an Alberta provincial police force because of the huge potential of having a strong community police model in this province,” he told the Alberta Municipalities convention last week.

In a statement, Alex Puddifant, press secretary for Justice Minister Kaycee Madu, said the results should be viewed critically considering the source is the RCMP’s union and some of the people were asked before the government’s report came out.

About half of the total respondents came from Edmonton and Calgary — places that are not policed by the RCMP — and the results don’t reflect concerns from municipalities over the millions of dollars in back pay they are being expected to cover under a new collective agreement with the RCMP, he said.

Approximately 80 per cent of those surveyed in communities served by the RCMP said they were either somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with the RCMP’s policing, according to the results. Fifteen per cent said they were not very satisfied or not satisfied at all.

In an interview Thursday, Kevin Halwa, a regional director for the union, said there is always room for improvement but municipal leaders the union has spoken with support the Mounties and want more resources on the ground, which is something the province controls.

He said the survey was conducted by a professional company and even though places like Edmonton and Calgary are not policed by the RCMP those citizens are taxpayers in the province.

“It’s pretty clear that the provincial police service is going to cost a lot more and for that a lot more people are going to get a lot less service which should be concerning,” he said.

In a statement, NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley said she is not surprised Albertans rejected the idea.

“The Alberta NDP believes that if the government is prepared to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, it should be for more boots on the ground, more prosecutors in the courtroom, and more support for the social service agencies and non-profits on the frontlines of addressing the root causes of crime: poverty, homelessness and addiction,” she said.

Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population. If the data were collected through a random sample, the margin of error would be plus or minus 2.7 per cent.

ajoannou@postmedia.com

twitter.com/ashleyjoannou

Canada worst on climate of G7: commissioner

Issued on: 25/11/2021 

People dip fake money bags into poured paint and spread it as though it were oil in a protest against the Royal Bank of Canada’s investment in pipelines in Montreal, Canada on October 29, 2021 Andrej Ivanov AFP


Ottawa (AFP) – Canada has failed in its efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warning, the environment commissioner said Thursday, ranking it as the "worst performer" among Group of Seven industrialized nations.

A series of reports by independent parliamentary watchdog Jerry DeMarco looked at decades of government climate action that yielded an increase of more than 20 percent in emissions since 1990.

Canada "has become the worst performer of all G7 nations since the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted in 2015," DeMarco, whose title is environment commissioner, told a news conference.

"We can't continue to go from failure to failure; we need action and results, not just more targets and plans," he said.

DeMarco pointed to, for example, a government fund to help Canada's oil and gas sector slash their CO2 emissions. Some 40 funded projects allowed companies to increase their production and related emissions.

He also said reporting by a dozen government departments on sustainable development was poor. "They did not report results for almost half their actions," he said.

While Canada represents about 1.6 percent of global CO2 emissions, it is among the top 10 largest emitters globally and one of the highest emitters per capita.

The nation is also the world's fourth largest producer and exporter of oil. And Canada's energy regulator projects that, while domestic consumption declines, its fossil fuel production will grow because of exports.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault welcomed the reports, but said the commissioner's "retrospective study" doesn't take into account more than 100 recent measures undertaken by Ottawa.

Those include proposed green home retrofits, putting a cap on oil and gas emissions, and ramping up electric vehicle sales.

Guilbeault also pointed to a carbon tax that is set to rise to Can$170 per tonne by 2030.

DeMarco in fact did consider government pledges made this year, but noted that Ottawa has yet to issue an updated climate plan. Also, the most recent emissions data available is for 2019.

The commissioner concluded that a concerted government effort on a grab bag of actions, including the targeting of high-emission industries, is needed to get Canada back on track to meeting its new goal of cutting emissions 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

© 2021 AFP

COULD NOT SHOULD,QUIT FREAKIN OUT
David Suzuki apologizes for saying pipelines could be 'blown up'
CBC/Radio-Canada 

© CBC Arts Environmentalist David Suzuki issued an apology through his foundation on Thursday, and said he had spoken out of extreme frustration.

Environmentalist David Suzuki has apologized for saying pipelines would be "blown up" if government leaders don't take action on climate change.

Suzuki made the comments during an interview with CHEK News on Saturday, amid a protest in Victoria organized by the environmental group Extinction Rebellion.

"We're in deep, deep doo-doo," Suzuki said at the time.

"And the leading experts have been telling us for over 40 years. This is what we've come to. The next stage after this, there are going to be pipelines blown up if our leaders don't pay attention to what's going on."

The environmentalist issued an apology through his foundation on Thursday, and said he had spoken out of extreme frustration.

"The remarks I made were poorly chosen and I should not have said them," the statement said.

"Any suggestion that violence is inevitable is wrong and will not lead us to a desperately needed solution to the climate crisis. My words were spoken out of extreme frustration and I apologize."
Condemnation in Alberta

Suzuki's remarks prompted swift condemnation from the Alberta government, including Premier Jason Kenney, Energy Minister Sonya Savage and government House Leader Jason Nixon.

Kenney first accused Suzuki of inciting violence Monday on Twitter, and later, at a news conference on Tuesday, when he reiterated that he believed Suzuki was implicitly inciting people to commit eco-terrorism.

"It's like in the gangster movies where they say, 'You know, nice little pipeline you've got there. It'd be a terrible thing if something happened to it.' This is totally irresponsible," Kenney said.

He added that Suzuki has a track record of outrageous comments that should have had him "cancelled."

He cited an example from 2016, when Suzuki opined that former prime minister Stephen Harper should serve prison time for "wilful blindness" to climate change, which was reported by the National Post at the time.

"We resolve differences peacefully and democratically — not by threatening to throw our opponents in jail," Kenney said.

"And now he's basically saying, 'Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, be a terrible thing if something happens to those pipelines.' This is outrageous and should be called out as such."

THE KENNEY GOVT IS A PR FIRM FOR BIG OIL

The premier also criticized the CBC and other organizations for giving Suzuki a platform.

A formal condemnation of Suzuki's comments was moved in the Alberta Legislature on Tuesday.

Members of Alberta's Official Opposition spoke out against Suzuki's remarks as well.

Kathleen Ganley, the NDP representative for Calgary–Mountain View, said both sides of the house can agree that "violence or incitement of violence to make any point" should be condemned.

Before issuing his apology, Suzuki told CBC News he does not condone blowing up pipelines. But he suggested he fears it may happen if groups get fed up with inaction.

"Our leaders are not listening to the urgency that is demanded to meet the issue of climate change. And I was worried that this is just the next step — if it goes on — to people blowing up pipelines," he said.

Many climate-related protests have been examples of "peaceful civic disobedience," Suzuki said, suggesting the violence is coming from government and the RCMP.

"If you look at the people at Fairy Creek, what are they doing? They're fighting to protect Mother Earth, and the violence is all coming from the forces that want to maintain the status quo," said Suzuki, referring to anti-logging protests on Vancouver Island that have continued for more than a year.

The Mysterious Island (1929) -

Jules Verne Movie - Sci-Fi Movie On a volcanic island near the kingdom of Hetvia rules Count Dakkar, a benevolent leader and scientist who has eliminated class distinction among the island's inhabitants. Dakkar, his daughter Sonia and her fiance, engineer Nicolai Roget have designed a submarine which Roget pilots on its initial voyage just before the island is overrun by Baron Falon, despotic ruler of Hetvia. Falon sets out after Roget in a second submarine and the two craft, diving to the ocean's floor, discover a strange land populated by dragons, giant squid and an eerie undiscovered humanoid race

  

The Mysterious Island (1929 film) - Wikipedia

The Mysterious Island is a 1929 American science fiction film directed by Lucien Hubbard based on Jules Verne's 1874 novel L'Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island). It was photographed largely in two-color Technicolor and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a part-talkie, with some scenes that featured audible dialog and some that had only synchronized music and sound effects.^[1]

Cast[edit]

• Lionel Barrymore as Count Dakkar
• Jacqueline Gadsden as Sonia Dakkar
• Lloyd Hughes as Nikolai Roget
• Montagu Love as Falon
• Harry Gribbon as Mikhail
• Snitz Edwards as Anton
• Gibson Gowland as Dmitry
• Dolores Brinkman as Teresa
• Karl Dane (uncredited)
• Robert Dudley as Workman (uncredited)
• Angelo Rossitto as Underwater Creature (uncredited)
• Carl 'Major' Roup as Underwater Creature (uncredited)
• Billy Schuler (uncredited)
• Pauline Starke (uncredited)
• Jack Stoutenburg (uncredited)
• Harry Tenbrook as Workman (uncredited)
• Robert McKim (uncredited)

Droves of red crabs cause traffic jams and swarm on Christmas Island beaches in epic migration to sea

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Some people get 'freaked out,' while others lie down and

 let themselves be covered in crabs, park manager says

Thomson Reuters · Posted: Nov 23, 2021

 

An 'epic' migration of crabs is underway on Australia's Christmas Island, as millions of red crabs make their way to the ocean to spawn. (Park Australia/Reuters) 0:59

In an annual phenomenon unmatched anywhere in the world, millions of red crabs emerged from the forest on Christmas Island Tuesday, swarming over roads and beaches on their way to the sea to breed.

Every year the large crabs migrate across the Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, south of Indonesia.  

Celebrated naturalist Sir David Attenborough once filmed the event, and later described it as one of the most memorable moments of his career.

WATCH | Attenborough lets crabs crawl on him as he visits the migration event:

"This year's migration has just been absolutely epic," said Christmas Island National Park natural resource manager Brendan Tiernan.

"The roads have been a seething mass of red crabs. It's caused traffic jams on this small island and people having to get out of their cars and rake them out the way."

Nowhere else in the world does the ecological phenomenon occur on such a scale.

"Some people were quite freaked out by the fact that they're surrounded by millions of crawling arthropods, whereas other people are just immersed — basically [they] do a little red crab angel," Tiernan said. "They'll lie on ground and let themselves get covered in red crabs."

'Sometimes we call it red crab island'

According to Parks Australia, the migration starts with the first rainfall of the wet season — usually in October or November.

The red crabs time their march carefully. Their spawning is always in synch with the last quarter of the moon, so that it happens before dawn on a receding high-tide.

"Sometimes we call it red crab island,' Tiernan said. "The island's community acknowledge just how important red crabs are to our ecosystem and to our economy, to tourism."
 
The Christmas Island red crab is unique to the island and protected by Australian law. 

New possibilities for life at the bottom of Earth's ocean, and perhaps in oceans on other planets

by Karin Valentine, Arizona State University

A chimney structure from the Sea Cliff hydrothermal vent field located more than 8,800 feet

 (2,700 meters) below the sea’s surface at the submarine boundary of the Pacific and 

Gorda tectonic plates. Credit: Ocean Exploration Trust

In the strange, dark world of the ocean floor, underwater fissures, called hydrothermal vents, host complex communities of life. These vents belch scorching hot fluids into extremely cold seawater, creating the chemical forces necessary for the small organisms that inhabit this extreme environment to live.

In a newly published study, biogeoscientists Jeffrey Dick and Everett Shock have determined that specific hydrothermal seafloor environments provide a unique habitat where certain organisms can thrive. In so doing, they have opened up new possibilities for life in the dark at the bottom of oceans on Earth, as well as throughout the solar system. Their results have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.

On land, when organisms get energy out of the food they eat, they do so through a process called cellular respiration, where there is an intake of oxygen and the release of carbon dioxide. Biologically speaking, the molecules in our food are unstable in the presence of oxygen, and it is that instability that is harnessed by our cells to grow and reproduce, a process called biosynthesis.

But for organisms living on the seafloor, the conditions for life are dramatically different.

"On land, in the oxygen-rich atmosphere of Earth, it is familiar to many people that making the molecules of life requires energy," said co-author Shock of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration and the School of Molecular Sciences. "In stunning contrast, around hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, hot fluids mix with extremely cold seawater to produce conditions where making the molecules of life releases energy."

In deep-sea microbial ecosystems, organisms thrive near vents where hydrothermal fluid mixes with ambient seawater. Previous research led by Shock found that the biosynthesis of basic cellular building blocks, like amino acids and sugars, is particularly favorable in areas where the vents are composed of ultramafic rock (igneous and meta-igneous rocks with very low silica content), because these rocks produce the most hydrogen.

Besides basic building blocks like amino acids and sugars, cells need to form larger molecules, or polymers, also known as biomacromolecules. Proteins are the most abundant of these molecules in cells, and the polymerization reaction (where small molecules combine to produce a larger biomolecule) itself requires energy in almost all conceivable environments.

"In other words, where there is life, there is water, but water needs to be driven out of the system for polymerization to become favorable," said lead author Dick, who was a postdoctoral scholar at ASU when this research began and who is currently a geochemistry researcher in the School of Geosciences and Info-Physics at Central South University in Changsha, China. "So, there are two opposing energy flows: release of energy by biosynthesis of basic building blocks, and the energy required for polymerization."

What Dick and Shock wanted to know is what happens when you add them up: Do you get proteins whose overall synthesis is actually favorable in the mixing zone?

They approached this problem by using a unique combination of theory and data.

From the theoretical side, they used a thermodynamic model for the proteins, called "group additivity," which accounts for the specific amino acids in protein sequences as well as the polymerization energies. For the data, they used all the protein sequences in an entire genome of a well-studied vent organism called Methanocaldococcus jannaschii.

By running the calculations, they were able to show that the overall synthesis of almost all the proteins in the genome releases energy in the mixing zone of an ultramafic-hosted vent at the temperature where this organism grows the fastest, at around 185 degrees Fahrenheit (85 Celsius). By contrast, in a different vent system that produces less hydrogen (a basalt-hosted system), the synthesis of proteins is not favorable.

"This finding provides a new perspective on not only biochemistry but also ecology because it suggests that certain groups of organisms are inherently more favored in specific hydrothermal environments," Dick said. "Microbial ecology studies have found that methanogens, of which Methanocaldococcus jannaschii is one representative, are more abundant in ultramafic-hosted vent systems than in basalt-hosted systems. The favorable energetics of protein synthesis in ultramafic-hosted systems are consistent with that distribution."

For next steps, Dick and Shock are looking at ways to use these energetic calculations across the tree of life, which they hope will provide a firmer link between geochemistry and genome evolution.

"As we explore, we're reminded time and again that we should never equate where we live as what is habitable to life," Shock said.NASA study reproduces origins of life on ocean floor

More information: Jeffrey M. Dick et al, The Release of Energy During Protein Synthesis at Ultramafic‐Hosted Submarine Hydrothermal Ecosystems, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2021JG006436

Provided by Arizona State University 

Researchers study factors that impact degree of pleasure derived from hugs

Criss-cross hug left and neck-waist hug right. Credit: Acta Psychologica (2021). 

DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103441

A small team of researchers at the University of London has attempted to measure the factors that influence the amount of pleasure a person receives from hugging another person. In their paper published in the journal Acta Psychologica, the group describes two separate experiments they conducted to learn more about the experience of hugging, at least in the U.K.

Common sense suggests that the act of hugging is different in different places, as is the reason for its occurrence. Hugs can be used as a greeting, as a way of expressing intimacy, as a means of consolation and at times as a way to express attraction. In this new effort, in their first experiment, the researchers attempted to measure pleasure levels under very constrained circumstances: Females not known to each other, hugging only female partners in a clinical setting. Also, all of the volunteers were asked to wear blindfolds to prevent them from seeing the person they would be hugging. The experiment consisted of asking 48 female volunteers to hug a female researcher. Due to the blindfolds, the type of hug was in the control of the researcher and consisted of either a criss-cross hug or a neck-waist hug. Afterward, each of the volunteers was asked to rate their level of pleasure regarding the hug.

In looking at their data, the researchers found that the only factor that appeared to influence pleasure levels from hugging was how long it lasted. The volunteers in general did not care for short hugs. They preferred them to be at least five or ten seconds long.

In the second experiment, the researchers walked around the University of London campus asking paired people they encountered to hug one another. In some cases, the pairs were same gender; in others they were opposite-gender. Each of the people in the pairs was then asked about their degree of pleasure from the hug. As with the first experiment, the respondents responded most favorably to longer hugs, as opposed to shorter hugs. They also found little difference in pleasure between pairs who hugged criss-cross versus hip-waist, except for when the hug was between two males. In that case, most preferred criss-cross.Heart rate synchronization and palm sweat found to be signs of attraction

More information: Anna L. Dueren et al, The influence of duration, arm crossing style, gender, and emotional closeness on hugging behaviour, Acta Psychologica (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103441

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