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WEEKLY UPDATE: Greenpeace seeks to protect Papua’s ‘lost world’
JAKARTA: Greenpeace is seeking to raise awareness of the need to protect ancient forests in Indonesia’s Papua, where a virtual “lost world” of new species was discovered last year, an activist said on Tuesday.
Deforestation rates in Indonesia are among the highest in the world and in the last five years the archipelago nation has lost an average area equivalent to six football fields a minute, Greenpeace says.
Scientists from environmental group Conservation International (CI) last December found an area dubbed a “lost world” that was home to dozens of new species in Papua’s Foja Mountains.
Experts found species that had never been described before, including frogs, butterflies, plants and an orange-faced honeyeater, the first new bird found on the island in more than 60 years.
“Our discovery of new species underlined the importance of saving the pristine forests of Papua. Possibilities are high that we will find more new species in the area,” CI director Jatna Supriatna said.
“These forests, however, are under threat from large-scale destruction before we may fully know what kind of flora and fauna live in them.”
Indonesia has already lost more than 72 per cent of its large intact ancient forest areas and 40 per cent of its forests have been completely destroyed.—AFP
Asia-Pacific meeting on Aids and children
HANOI: East Asia and Pacific health experts met at a conference in the Vietnamese capital on the impact HIV/Aids has on the region’s half a billion children and young people.
“For the most part, children remain off the radar screen when we measure the risk and impact of HIV and Aids” in Asia, the part of the world where the virus is now spreading the fastest, said regional Unicef director Anupama Rao Singh.
The organizers of the three-day event, including several UN agencies and non-government groups, said steps must be taken to limit the spread of the killer virus to children and to help those infected or orphaned by it.
They called for progress in halting mother-to-child transmissions, improving care and treatment, making anti-retroviral drugs more widely available, and educating societies that often treat sufferers and Aids orphans as outcasts.
More than 30,000 children were infected last year, over a third of whom had caught the visus in 2005, according to United Nations estimates.
By the end of last year, 450,000 children in the East Asia and Pacific region had lost one or both parents to Aids, and hundreds of thousands more were living with a chronically ill parent.
Children are especially vulnerable to the disease because of poverty, violence, human trafficking and the breakdown of families in an economically dynamic region that is rapidly industrialising and urbanising, says Unicef.
The region’s first conference of its kind brings together more than 200 delegates from 20 countries, including 14 children from as far as Mongolia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea who have been affected by the disease.—AFP
Air travellers may lose 30 million bags in 2006
GENEVA: Some 30 million pieces of airline luggage — about one per cent of the bags passengers check in — will go astray this year, the air travel industry’s information technology systems provider SITA said.
The Geneva-based company, which tracks baggage in 220 countries and territories, said virtually all missing bags would be returned to their owners within an average of 31 hours after being reported missing.
Around 204,000 pieces — a minute proportion of the three billion bags expected to be checked in at world airports by around two billion passengers in 2006 — would never be found after getting lost in the system or stolen.—Reuters
Palm biofuel cars
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Tuesday launched the country’s first fleet of cars using palm biofuel in a bid to promote alternative fuels and reduce dependence on petroleum.
“Envo Diesel” biofuel, a brand name coined to appeal to Malaysians, consists of five per cent palm oil and 95 per cent diesel, and Abdullah hailed its inaugural use by government cars as a major development for the country.
“I hope this move will bring about a huge change in the use of fuels nationwide,” Abdullah said in a speech.—AFP
Ancient coin found in Sargodha
SARGODHA:Ghaus Muhammad, a booking clerk posted at the local railway station, claimed to have found a coin belonging to 13th century A.H.
The coin carries names of the four pious caliphs of Islam with Kalima Tayyaba on its one side, while on the other side an image of the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is inscribed along with words ‘Madina’.
Ghaus Muhammad said he found the coin while digging earth at his native Ghundi village (Mianwali).
However, neither the worth of the brass coin, nor the name of the country to which it belonged could be ascertained as it seemed to have blurred due to remaining under the earth surface for a long time.
Mr Ghous said archaeologists should try to ascertain facts about the coin, suggesting that the department concerned should undertake excavation at the site where the coin was found, which might lead to more discoveries.—Dawn
Wanted — Australian spies who love to shop
CANBERRA: Australia’s top intelligence agency is promoting the chance to go shopping during work as one of the benefits of working as a spy, using case studies from real agents to try to attract new recruits.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) wants to double its staff numbers by 2011 and has used testimonials from real agents, who it names as Andrew and Alison, to promote the benefits of the job.
Alison says the job has not curbed her social life, but Andrew, a 40-year-old career agent, admits the work can be boring at times and tough on family life.—Reuters
Fall from 11th floor
MOSCOW: A Russian woman fell 35 metres from the eleventh floor of her apartment building and survived, Russia’s Channel One television reported on Tuesday.
The 21-year-old woman, who was not named, is in hospital being treated for concussion, bruises and a displaced spine. Doctors say she should make a full recovery.
Doctors said a thick covering of snow broke the woman’s fall, and her body was relaxed because she was not fully conscious at the moment of impact. The incident happened in the Ural Mountains region of Bashkortostan.—Reuters
Colombo: A school child looks at a painting on show for a competition, “Expressions of the Future” in Colombo, on March 21. The competition aims at focusing on rebuilding the island nation which has been hit by decades of ethnic strife and a devastating tsunami in December 2004.—AFP
JAKARTA: Indonesian environmental activists display placards during a demonstration to observe the World Water Day in Jakarta, on March 22. The United Nations warned that trouble caused by the world's dwindling supply of fresh water goes far beyond perpetual thirst for billions around the globe. Inadequate potable water is an immediate problem for billions of people as some 1.1 billion people go without safe drinking water and 2.6 billion, or 40 per cent of the world's population, lack decent sanitation, according to UN figures.—AFP
Perth (AUSTRALIA): French woman windsurfer Raphaela Le Gouvello tests her boat off Fremantle Perth, on March, 22. Le Gouvello will make a solo attempt to conquer the Indian Ocean, 6,300kms, on April 5 starting from Ex-mouth in north west Aus-tralia and finishing at Reunion Island.—AFP
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