Hundreds of dead turtles were found washed ashore along the coastal lines
\nfrom Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar to St Martin’s island with bruises all over
\ntheir bodies.<\/p>\n
A herd of 70 to 75 elephants of the Dalma forest have strayed into five
\nvillages of West Midnapur district and damaged large tracts of crops and
\ndestroyed several houses.<\/p>\n
The World Bank warned that up to 53 million more people around the world
\ncould fall into poverty in 2009 as a result of the global economic slump,
\nand up to 400,000 more children could die each year as a result of rising
\ninfant mortality. The statistics highlight the worldwide character of the
\nsocial catastrophe being caused by the deepening crisis.<\/p>\n
Armies of ants from Solomon Islands have invaded Papua New Guinea and are
\nthreatening to wipe out the economy in at least one part of the country. A
\nreport from Bougainville says the ants from across the border in the
\nSolomon Islands are destructive to plants and human beings.<\/p>\n
Tonga’s Government has elected to renew emergency powers in parts of capital city.
\nThe acting chief secretary and the secretary to the cabinet, confirmed that the Public
\nSafety and Public Security Regulations had been extended. The regulations were
\nrenewed based upon the recommendation by the Minister of Police.<\/p>\n
More than 700 people in Papua New Guinea’s Western Highlands province have
\nbeen left homeless after a river burst its banks following weeks of heavy
\nrain.<\/p>\n
Over 400 female dead turtles have floated ashore over the last two weeks
\nalone, locals claimed.<\/p>\n
A District Forest Officer said the pachyderms damaged
\npaddy and sugarcane in about 45 hectres in Tarrui, Gopalbar, Pundra, Sinda,
\nMohanpur villages. They also destroyed five mud houses.<\/p>\n
The rescuers recovered at least 27 bodies and over 10 people still remained
\nmissing as a passenger launch capsized in the country’s southern Barisal
\ndistrict. The incident took place in Kirtonkhola River when a sand-laden
\ncargo ship SM-Selim hit the Mehendiganj-bound launch ML-Happy from Barisal,
\nwith over 100 passengers on board, locals and survivors said.<\/p>\n
In Vanuatu, a volcanic archipelago in the South Pacific, root and tuber
\ncrops ensure the subsistence and self-sufficiency of the islands’
\ninhabitants. Be they taro (Colocasia esculenta) or the greater yam
\nDioscorea alata, which are traditional crops introduced by the first
\nsailors to have travelled to the islands some 3500 years ago, or other
\nplants that have been grown for some time or were introduced more recently,
\nroot and tuber crops, which are propagated vegetatively, replanted and
\npropagated by cuttings, are the mainstay of the Melanesian diet. However,
\nit is the maintenance of the diversity of these plants that lies behind the
\nfood security strategy adopted by the islands’ inhabitants. Melanesian
\ngardens are a prime example of this: by mixing crops, they provide
\nprotection against pathogens, ensure better use of soils and sunlight, make
\ncertain plants more drought-resistant, allow harvests to be spread over
\ntime, and provide a more varied diet.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think the government has understood the gravity of the crisis or
\nfigured out how to tackle such an unprecedented situation.” A British
\nrodent ecologist — in Bangladesh studying the impact of the rat
\ninfestation — said the rodent population was doubling in size every three
\nweeks. This means, of course, they must spread into new areas in search of
\nfood. “In addition to destroying nearly all field crops in the region, the
\nrats get into people’s houses, eating stored food and damaging all sorts of
\npersonal possessions and biting people while they sleep.”<\/p>\n
The ants are believed to have transferred during the Bougainville crisis
\nwhen there was no quarantine service. The ants from Solomon Islands are
\nattacking and killing the local PNG ants, vegetables and cash crops.<\/p>\n
The World Bank released its forecast to coincide with the Group of Seven
\n(G7) summit of finance ministers and central bank governors in Rome.
\nAnti-poverty organisations from the UN Millennium Campaign joined the bank
\nin lobbying for the establishment of a “Vulnerability Fund” in which each
\ndeveloped country would devote 0.7 percent of its stimulus package to aid
\nimpoverished “developing” countries.<\/p>\n
The body of a woman named Dipti Dey, 30, was first recovered shortly after
\nthe disastrous ferry accident. Later, bodies of 26 other launch passengers
\nwere retrieved from inside the sunken launch after it was salvaged, raising
\nthe death toll to 27, officials confirmed. The Prime Minister has
\ncondoled the death of people and asked the officials to take necessary
\nsteps for treatment of survivors.<\/p>\n
The root and tuber species grown in Vanuatu were inventoried in ten
\nvillages representative of the communities in the archipelago. Five
\nprimarily grow taro, the other five yam, for both cultural and climatic
\nreasons. With more than 1000 varieties of thirteen species, the inventory
\nconfirmed the varietal diversity of the crops grown. The archipelago’s
\nagro-biodiversity comprises three types of plants: plants that arrived
\nnaturally, for instance on the wind, those imported by the first immigrants
\n– taro and greater yam in this case – and those introduced recently, also
\nby man, in particular cassava.<\/p>\n
“The whole region has been affected by localised famine, forcing people to
\ndepend on food aid. Food shortages will be a permanent feature here for
\nmany years. We have captured 2,000 big rats from one hectare (2.47 acres)
\nof land. I can tell you the situation is worsening as rats are invading new
\nterritories.” The WFP will begin a 2.6-million-dollar programme to help the
\nthousands of people who have lost their livelihoods because of the rats.<\/p>\n
Even this utterly inadequate proposal received short shrift from the G7
\nministers. In their final communiqu\u00e9, a single one-sentence reference to
\npoorer economies said: “The G7 also stresses the need to support emerging
\nand developing countries’ access to credit and trade financing and resume
\nprivate capital flows, and is committed to explore urgently ways, including
\nthrough multilateral development banks, to enhance this support.” In other
\nwords, the plight of hundreds of millions of destitute people must be left
\nin the hands of the same financial system and “private capital flows” that
\nhave broken down, producing the worst global collapse since the 1930s.<\/p>\n
A worried cocoa farmer on Buka Island, Aloysius Sammy, said the ants were
\nalso attacking people and the victims were developing swollen bodies from
\nthe ant bites. The ants were found in decaying biscuits and other food
\nitems on cargo storage compartments on banana boats.<\/p>\n
The bank’s new estimates for 2009 suggest that lower economic growth rates
\nwill force 53 million more people to exist on less than $2 a day than was
\nexpected prior to the downturn. This is on top of the 130-155 million
\npeople pushed into poverty in 2008 because of soaring food and fuel prices.<\/p>\n
An estimated 25 hectares of land was inundated when the Waghi River
\nflooded, swamping vegetable gardens, cash crops and livestock.<\/p>\n
Experts said these turtles met their death as they travelled the stretch of
\nnearly 120km from Sonadia Island in Cox’s Bazar to St Martin’s island to
\nlay eggs on the shore.<\/p>\n
Villagers alleged that the forest department, despite repeated requests,
\ndid not take any steps to drive out the elephants. Four “Hulla Parties” had
\nbeen deployed to push the elephants to the Nayagram forest.<\/p>\n
The bank’s extremely low benchmark for poverty\u2014$2 a day\u2014suggests that its
\nfigures vastly underestimate the actual number of people around the world
\nwho are barely able to feed, clothe and house themselves.<\/p>\n
Under these renewed powers the police have the authority to stop and search
\nany vehicle without a warrant, as well as to seek evidence inside of any
\nvehicle. The powers also allow officers wider authority to make arrests.
\nThese powers have been criticized by international rights organizations
\nfor being an abuse of power and an attempt to frustrate the pro-democracy
\nmovement.<\/p>\n
Mr Sammy, who owns a two-hectare cocoa block, said half of his crop had been
\ndestroyed by the ants. He said in south and central Bougainville, there
\nwere no longer any signs of Papua New Guinea ants. Mr Sammy said he placed
\nsome PNG tree ants on his cocoa trees and in just five seconds they were
\nattacked by Solomon ants.<\/p>\n
The country’s National Disaster Centre committed $50,156 to the Western
\nHighlands provincial government to help more than 700 displaced villagers
\nin the Dei region, it said. The works department and two local construction
\ncompanies were partly to blame for failing to build adequate drainage.<\/p>\n
The turtles get entangled in the fine fishing nets used indiscriminately by
\nfishing trawlers. The fishermen, instead of releasing them back to the sea,
\nbeat them to death with sticks and dumped their bodies in the sea, experts
\nalleged.<\/p>\n
Bangladesh’s remote Chittagong Hill Tracts region faces a serious risk of
\nprolonged famine and bubonic plague unless a ballooning rat population is
\nbrought under control, experts say.<\/p>\n
Preliminary estimates for 2009 to 2015 forecast that an average 200,000 to
\n400,000 more children a year, a total of 1.4 to 2.8 million over the
\nsix-year period, may die if the crisis persists.<\/p>\n
The emergency powers were originally put into place in November 2006 after
\na riot broke out in the heart of the capital city of Nuku’alofa. The riot
\nbegan when a group broke away from a political reform rally and began
\nlooting local businesses. Throughout the course of the riot 150
\nbusinesses, mostly owned by people of Chinese origins, were destroyed.<\/p>\n
A disabled gunsmith has been arrested in Papua New Guinea for manufacturing
\nguns and ammunition in his backyard shed. The 39-year-old wheelchair bound
\nman known as “Harzem” was also reportedly found with numerous books on
\nIslam, terrorism and war.<\/p>\n
Some fishermen from Sonadia, preferring anonymity, confirmed this saying
\nit’s a tedious task to release the turtles back into the waters.
\nOrganisations working for the protection of sea turtles have recovered 62
\ncarcasses from Cox’s bazaar area. They have expressed
\nconcern about the environmental pollution caused by such large number of
\ncarcasses.<\/p>\n
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) began distributing three million
\ndollars of emergency food supplies to some 120,000 people in the
\nsoutheastern tribal area bordering India and Myanmar, after the rat
\npopulation exploded.<\/p>\n
This is a very serious problem and the Autonomous Bougainville Government,
\nespecially the Department of Primary Industry (DPI) and Agriculture, should
\ndo some serious research on how to get rid of these ants, Mr Sammy said.
\nWith the absence of mining on Bougainville the economy was predominantly
\nagriculture-based, which meant cash crops like copra and cocoa were the
\nones driving the economy. And without control, the Solomon Islands ants are
\ndestroying cash crops, the farmer said.<\/p>\n
In addition, millions of people already living in poverty “will be pushed
\nfurther below the poverty line,” according to the World Bank policy
\nnote,”The Global Economic Crisis: Assessing Vulnerability with a Poverty
\nLens.” The note states: “Almost all developed and developing countries are
\nsuffering from the global economic crisis. While developed countries are
\nexperiencing some of the sharpest contractions, households in developing
\ncountries are much more vulnerable and likely to experience acute negative
\nconsequences in the short- and long-term.”<\/p>\n
People residing at Shortland borderline between Papua New Guinea and
\nSolomon Islands have raised grave concern over increased border crossing by
\nforeigners into Solomon Islands and vice versa. The people fear this might
\nlead to allowing terrorists to enter Solomon Islands illegally or drug
\nsmuggling.<\/p>\n
Most of the turtles found in this area are of the Olive Ridley, one of the
\nsmallest species of sea turles. This species weighs between 10 to 20kg, 63
\nto 70cm length and 60 to 67cm in breadth.<\/p>\n
Police made the arrest at Dami village in PNG’s West New Britain Province,
\nan island region in northern PNG, as part of an operation to reduce gun
\nproliferation. The area has been experiencing ongoing local clashes fuelled
\nby homemade weapons and firearms. Harzem is believed to be the main weapon
\nsupplier in the tribal conflict.<\/p>\n
The rats — some weighing as much as 1.5 kilogrammes (3.3 pounds) — feed
\non bamboo forests in the hilly region. A Dhaka University zoology professor
\nrecently visited the hill tracts and sounded the alarm over the
\n“devastating” impact of the year-long rat plague.<\/p>\n
Almost 40 percent of 107 developing countries are “highly exposed” to the
\npoverty and hardship effects of the crisis and the remainder are
\n“moderately exposed,” according to the report. The bank warns that three
\nquarters of these countries will be unable to raise funds domestically or
\ninternationally to finance job-creation, the delivery of basic
\ninfrastructure and essential services\u2014including health, education and core
\npublic administration\u2014and safety net programs for the vulnerable.<\/p>\n
Borderline representatives appearing before the Committee alleged that
\nforeigners illegally entered Solomon Islands through Bougainville. Recent
\npast crossings happened because Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea did
\nnot have borderline check points where Immigration, Customs and Quarantine
\nofficials manned the posts.<\/p>\n
The West New Britain Police Commander said Harzem was in police custody and
\nwould appear in court as soon as possible. “I have given instructions to
\nfast track his case because of his condition,” he said. Police confiscated
\nseveral weapons and ammunition and are continuing their operation in a
\nneighbouring areas.<\/p>\n
The root and tuber crop panel of ten villages in Vanuatu comprises more
\nthan 1000 varieties of thirteen species. the primary aim of farming in this
\nvolcanic archipelago in the South Pacific is to ensure food
\nself-sufficiency.<\/p>\n
The threats of a famine-fuelled conflict are real as the rats are
\ndestroying everything in the hills. Adding to the urgency of the situation,
\nauthorities must act fast to avoid an outbreak of deadly bubonic plague.<\/p>\n
The statistics provide only a pale outline of the impoverishment,
\nmalnutrition and misery caused by the global recession. These outcomes are
\nan indictment of the anarchy of the private profit system. First, the
\nspeculative escalation of food and fuel prices of 2007-08 threw up to 155
\nmillion people into poverty; and now the financial crash is threatening
\nmany millions more. These forecasts make a mockery of the United Nation’s
\nMillennium Development Goals, which set targets to overcome poverty by
\n2015.<\/p>\n
Solomon Islands and PNG have cross-border entries like a traditional
\npractice before, but people from other countries who came with yachts
\nabused this privilege. The Foreign Relations Committee also met with
\npeople of Choiseul in Taro.<\/p>\n
In most of the villages, notably those attached to their traditions,
\nancestral crops are predominant. However, in villages subject to severe
\nenvironmental constraints (acid rain or ash showers due to active
\nvolcanoes, cyclones, etc), there are more either local or newly introduced
\ncrops. These crops bolster food security by making the cropping systems
\nmore resilient. In other Pacific archipelagos, such as New Caledonia and
\nthe Solomon Islands, the introduction by the Europeans of new root and
\ntuber species, combined with the arrival of a market economy, has totally
\ndisrupted the existing systems. Ancestral species have disappeared and food
\ncrop production has become uniform, making the production systems more
\nfragile and reducing the quality of the local diet. Conversely, in Vanuatu,
\nwhile the local populations are increasingly accepting and growing new
\nplants, those plants have had to fit into the existing agro-biodiverse
\nsystems without adversely affecting the other species grown. In the most
\nfragile zones, they even help to overcome the shortages resulting from the
\nseasonal nature of traditional crops. The food production strategy in
\nVanuatu is not yet under threat, as culturally speaking, owners set great
\nstore by their Melanesian gardens, which is continuing to maintain their
\ncharacteristic agro-biodiversity, despite the growing role played by cash
\ncrops grown for export.<\/p>\n
“I have approached certain people in the DPI division and reported this
\ncase but my case has fallen on deaf ears.” Mr Sammy also said when a border
\npost was set up, every boat whether traditional border crossers or not,
\nmust still be quarantined and customs checks should be enforced. A lot of
\nants have also been brought into Bougainville by plant hunters or
\ncollectors, especially for flowers like roses and orchids from Solomon
\nIslands, which are regarded as some of the most beautiful and rare in the
\nworld. Bougainvilleans are appealing to the Government to do something
\nbefore cash crops are wiped out in Bougainville.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hundreds of dead turtles were found washed ashore along the coastal lines from Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar to St Martin’s island with bruises all over their bodies. A herd of 70 to 75 elephants of the Dalma forest have strayed into five villages of West Midnapur district and damaged large tracts of crops and destroyed several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","spay_email":""},"categories":[50,5,7,8,11,12,16,17,18,24,30,31,33,35,39,43,47],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}