Colmillos falsos de marfil con rastreadores GPS

Cada año, más de 30.000 elefantes son asesinados en el continente africano, sobre todo por su marfil. Bryan Christy, un periodista de investigación de National Geographic, decidió realizar un seguimiento de cómo sucede el contrabando de marfil.  La estrategia fue encargar aun taxidermista crear dos colmillos de elefante falsos integrados con dispositivos de localización GPS, y éstos se plantaron en la cadena de contrabando de marfil de la República Centro-Africana.

A través de los rastreadores GPS Christy y su equipo siguieron el rastro de los colmillos falsosutilizando la herramienta de Google Earth, dicho rastro inició en la República Centro-Africana y continuó en Kafia Kingi un área en disputa en el sur de Sudán.

Kafia Kingi, según  National Geographic es un territorio en donde se encuentra la base de Joseph Kony cabecilla del ejercito de resistencia, dicho ejercito a cometido crímenes atroces en las últimas dos décadas como robo de niños para convertirlos en militares. El mismo Kony a sido acusado de crímenes de lesa humanidad.

Según la investigación de Christy, este grupo guerrillero está involucrado en el tráfico de los preciados colmillos y su ruta de tráfico comienza en la reserva nacional de Garamba en la República Centro-Africana  y se abre paso hacia el sur de sudan en donde se presume que los colmillos de marfil son intercambiados por armamento y medicina con los militares de ese país.

Desde Sudan la ruta se abre a Ed Daein una ciudad al sureste de Darfur desde allí, es más fácil exportarlo a ciudades como Khartoum, Accra and Maputo y eventualmente a el continente asiático  para productos naturistas, joyas, palillos etc.

La demanda de china es tan grande que si redujera la compra de marfil, se acabaría el financiamiento de la guerra africana y las matanzas indiscriminadas de elefantes en el continente africano.

Cada par de colmillos de marfil es un elefante muerto, hagamos algo.

Que es el zoroastrismo?

La Religión Zoroastriana ha sido percibida por muchos como una religión estrictamente iraní o parsi. Pero de hecho es la primera religión Universal y con adoración de un solo dios en la historia de mundo.

Los preceptos principales del zoroastrismo parecenser lo que necesita la sociedad hoy en día, puntos de respeto hacia nosotros mismos, nuestros semejantes y a la naturaleza; Los principales puntos de esta religión son los siguientes:

Igualdad: igualdad de todos, al margen de diferencias de sexo, raza o religión.

Respeto a todas las formas vivientes. Condena de la opresión del ser humano, y de la crueldad y sacrificio de animales.

Ecologismo: la naturaleza es central en la práctica del zoroastrianismo y muchos importantes festivales son celebrados en la naturaleza: el día de año nuevo, el primer día de primavera, el festival de agua en verano, el festival de otoño al final de la estación y el festival de fuego de la mitad de invierno.

Trabajo duro y caridad.

Lealtad y fidelidad a la familia, la comunidad y el país.

Dios en el zoroastrismo no es de miedo, culpa, tormento y condenación. Ante los ojos de Dios no existe ni pecado, ni pecadores y en el corazón de Dios no hay ni condenación, ni maldición. Por tanto no hay un juicio final divino, es la propia conciencia que al momento de cruzar el puente, hace un auto examen y si el remordimiento es tanto, el alma no cruza el puente hasta que haya encontrado la iluminación para sus errores. “Quien teme a Dios, no conoce a Dios.”

Existen algunos ángeles de esta religión los cuales tienen atribuciones especificas y los cuales conoceremos más adelante.

"El niño" may be historical this year.

El niño it’s continuing to strengthen as expected.The ongoing event is already quite strong, and although much has been made of daily fluctuations in the Niño region ocean temperatures, all available evidence continues to point toward continued strengthening into the fall months and persistence through winter 2015-2016.
Interestingly, the strongest westerly wind burst yet this year has just occurred in the western tropical Pacific, which has initiated a powerful new Kelvin wave that is now propagating eastward across the Pacific basin and will continue to reinforce the strengthening event through September. It’s still too early to say exactly how El Niño will influence California’s upcoming winter, though it still appears that there’s a significantly increased chance of a wetter-than-average winter. Of shorter-term interest: extremely warm near-shore sea surface temperatures off the Mexican and California coasts will continue to present an increased potential for East Pacific tropical remnant events through September and possibly October.
“We’re predicting this El Niño could be among the strongest El Niños in the historical record,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a teleconference with reporters. This year’s El Niño is already the second strongest for this time of year in more than 60 years of recordkeeping, he said.
Conditions in the Pacific Ocean suggest that what has formed there is as big as anything seen since 1997-1998, a system that brought the term “El Niño” into popular culture, and which is remembered for the catastrophic amounts of water it dumped on California, triggering flooding and mudslides.

Huge explosions in China's Tianjin port area kill 17, hurt 400.

Two massive explosions caused by flammable goods ripped through an industrial area in the northeast Chinese port city of Tianjin late on Wednesday, killing 17 people and injuring around 400, official Chinese media reported.

President Xi Jinping demanded that authorities quickly extinguish the fire caused by the blasts and "make full effort to rescue and treat the injured and ensure the safety of people and their property", China Central Television (CCTV) said on its official microblog.

CCTV said the blasts erupted in a shipment of explosives at around 11:30 p.m. local time (1530 GMT), triggering a blast wave that was felt kilometres (miles) away. The second blast came roughly 30 seconds after the first, state media said.

The official People's Daily newspaper said the death toll was 17 while other state media said three firefighters were among the dead. The official Xinhua news agency said around 400 were hurt.

Video posted on YouTube from what appeared to be an apartment building some distance from the scene showed fire shooting into the night sky from the initial blast when the second, much bigger, explosion rocked the area, sending a huge fireball into the air.

Human Rights activist released today.

BEIRUT — Syrian authorities on Monday released an award-winning human rights activist after more than three years in jail in a rare goodwill gesture by President Bashar Assad's government amid intense diplomatic maneuvering to end the country's civil war.
The release of Mazen Darwish was welcomed by activists as a positive development amid Syria's daily carnage. An outspoken critic of the government's crackdown on protests that erupted against Assad's rule in March 2011, he became a symbol of the battle for human rights in Syria following his detention less than a year later.
Amnesty International said Darwish should never have been jailed in the first place and called on the government to halt its campaign targeting those who dare speak about the "appalling human rights violations" in Syria.
Darwish was the director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression when he was arrested in February 2012 in a Damascus security raid, along with two of his colleagues, Hani al-Zitani and Hussein Gharir. The organization confirmed his release on Monday but said he is still standing trial and is scheduled to attend a court hearing on Aug. 30. His two colleagues were released last month.
"After an arbitrary arrest that lasted three years, five months and 23 days, Mazen Darwish has been released from prison today," the group said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from the government, which continues to hold thousands of political prisoners, according to human rights groups.
The Syria that Darwish steps into when he leaves prison is drastically different than the one he knew more than three years ago. What began as an Arab Spring-style uprising against Assad's rule became a full-blown civil war and the country has sunk into chaos.
The conflict, now in its fifth year, has killed at least 250,000 people, wounded more than a million and displaced half the population, according to the United Nations. The Islamic State group, which emerged as an al-Qaida splinter group and is now its main rival, has seized about a third of both Syria and Iraq.
Darwish's release comes amid stepped-up diplomatic activity aimed at finding a political way out of the conflict.
Assad's main backers, Russia and Iran, are trying to set the stage — following the Iran nuclear deal — for a political transition in Syria. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia also appear to be more inclined to engage with the Iranian-backed government of Assad on ways to end the war. Although he still clings to power and is unlikely to step aside, Assad's enormous territorial losses may also be pushing him to explore diplomatic options to resolve the crisis.
It was not clear if Darwish's release was directly related to the diplomatic activity. He has been standing trial on charges of "promoting terrorist acts," and his organization said his release followed an amnesty issued last month by Assad that supposedly covered his case. But he still has to appear in court end of the month.

"Darwish and his colleagues should never have been in jail in the first place. His release today is long overdue, but comes as a welcome relief after three and half years of anguish and uncertainty," said Said Boumedouha, chief of Amnesty's Mideast and North Africa program.

In October 2014, Indian-born author Salman Rushdie shared the 2014 PEN Pinter International Writer of Courage Award with Darwish. According to the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, Darwish is also the winner of the Reporters Without Borders award in 2013.

http://www.political.jp/walls/#light

London Tube strike causes major disruption

Millions of Londoners have been forced to walk, cycle or take packed buses to and from work as Underground staff staged their second strike in a month.
London Underground staff walked out on Wednesday evening and will not return until Friday morning, causing a shutdown of the world's oldest subway network and severely disrupting transport in the capital.
Four trade unions are locked in a months-long dispute with management over London Mayor Boris Johnson's plans to run a 24-hour Tube service on Fridays and Saturdays from September 12.
An extra 250 buses, additional rental bikes and increased river boat services were laid on to help ease the disruption, while overground trains were operating as normal.
But the Tube handles four million journeys every day, meaning many trains and buses were overcrowded on Thursday.
It is the second time the service has shut down in a month, after a similar strike on July 8 and 9 caused the first network-wide closure for 13 years.

Embrace divorcees, pope asks church

"These people are not excommunicated ... And they absolutely must not be treated as such. They are still part of the church,"Pope Francis said at his weekly general audience at the Vatican. Speaking ahead of a highly anticipated global meeting on family life in October, he said "awareness that a brotherly and attentive welcome ... is needed towards those who ... have established a new relationship after the failure of a marriage, has greatly increased".
The church does not recognise divorce but divorcees can still take communion unless they remarry, which is considered to be adultery.

"No closed doors! Everyone can participate some way or another in the life of the church," Francis said, in a clear call for Catholic bishops and priests to treat those in so-called "irregular situations" with greater compassion.
The issue of remarried divorcees is likely to be addressed at the upcoming synod on the family that Francis hopes will help reconcile Catholic thinking with the realities of believers' lives in the 21st century.

A first synod last year saw riled conservative bishops move to block the approval of language heralding an unprecedented opening on the treatment of divorced Catholics, who are unable to take communion.
The Argentine pontiff said the church risked alienating children by treating their parents as outcasts. "If we look at these new relationships through the eyes of young children . we see even greater the urgency of developing in our communities a real welcome towards those who are living such situations," he said.

Children, he said, "are the ones who suffer the most" from broken families.
It would be difficult to call on parents "to do everything to educate their children according to Christian values ... if we keep them at a distance from community life, as if they were excommunicated," he explained.

AFP.

Putin still wants the Arctic regions.

Russia, the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway have all been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, which is believed to hold up to a quarter of the planet’s undiscovered oil and gas. Rivalry for resources has intensified as shrinking polar ice is opening up new exploration opportunities
Russia has submitted a bid to the UN claiming vast territories in the Arctic.
The country’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Russia has renewed its efforts to claiming 1.2m sq km (over 463,000 sq miles) of sea shelf extending more than 350 nautical miles (about 650km) from the shore.
Earlier this year, Russia's military conducted exercises in the Arctic that involved 38,000 servicemen, more than 50 surface ships and submarines and 110 aircraft.

Vladimir Chuprov, campaigner for Greenpeace Russia, said:

“The melting of the Arctic ice is uncovering a new and vulnerable sea, but countries like Russia and Norway want to turn it into the next Saudi Arabia. Unless we act together, this region could be dotted with oil wells and fishing fleets within our lifetimes.”

Let's talk about Caspar David Friedrich (1774 – 1840)

Friedrich's paintings commonly employed the Rückenfigur—a person seen from behind, contemplating the view. The viewer is encouraged to place himself in the position of the Rückenfigur, by which means he experiences the sublime potential of nature, understanding that the scene is as perceived and idealised by a human.Friedrich created the notion of a landscape full of romantic feeling—die romantische Stimmungslandschaft.
His art details a wide range of geographical features, such as rock coasts, forests, and mountain scenes. He often used the landscape to express religious themes. During his time, most of the best-known paintings were viewed as expressions of a religious mysticism.

He was one of the first artists to portray winter landscapes in which the land is rendered as stark and dead. Friedrich's winter scenes are solemn and still—according to the art historian Hermann Beenken, Friedrich painted winter scenes in which "no man has yet set his foot. The theme of nearly all the older winter pictures had been less winter itself than life in winter. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was thought impossible to leave out such motifs as the crowd of skaters, the wanderer... It was Friedrich who first felt the wholly detached and distinctive features of a natural life. Instead of many tones, he sought the one; and so, in his landscape, he subordinated the composite chord into one single basic note".