Endangered species face social media threat in Asia
Wildlife monitor says online sites help illegal traders of animals, including rhinos and orangutans, evade authorities.
| Environment, Asia Pacific, China, Indonesia, Malaysia
Social media outlets including Facebook and Instagram are increasingly being used in Asia as platforms for the illegal trade in a range of threatened species such as orangutan and sun bears, a wildlife monitor has said.
UK-based wildlife monitor Traffic said in a report, released to coincide with World Wildlife Day on Thursday, that the trend poses a new major threat to wildlife in a region where products derived from exotic or endangered animals are widely sought for traditional medicines or prized as pets.
"Traders are clearly moving to non-conventional methods of sale such as utilising online portals and social media in order to evade detection, reach a broader audience, and increase transaction efficiency and convenience," Traffic's report said.
China to increase defence spending by '7-8%' in 2016 - official
The rise to around $150bn a year is still dwarfed by the US budget which stands at $573bn
China’s budget will rise to around around 980bn yuan ($150bn) as the Beijing regime increases its military heft and asserts its territorial claims in the South China Sea, raising tensions with its neighbours and with Washington.
Defence spending last year was budgeted to rise 10.1% to 886.9bn yuan ($135.39bn), which still only represents about one-quarter that of the United States. The US defence budget for 2016 is $573bn.
Cholera in Haiti: Political crisis and poor sanitation mean thousands are dying unnecessarily in the Caribbean nation
An average of 37 people in Haiti are still dying from cholera every month, six years on from an earthquake which devastated the country’s capital Port au Prince.
At least 770,000 people have caught the disease since October 2010 and 9,200 have died.
The cholera outbreak began ten months after the quake, which killed between 100,000 and 300,000 people in January 2010, andis the first recorded incidence of the bacterial illness in the country for 150 years.
'Islamic State' using water as a weapon
The terror group "Islamic State" has taken control of six of the eight major dams in Syria and Iraq. It is systemically exercising control by using water. The decline of "IS" now actually poses another kind of threat.
An abundant water supply means life, but excess water or water scarcity can mean death. Grave concerns have arisen over the dams that the so-called "Islamic State" (IS) has strategically taken in northern Iraq and Syria. IS controls six of the eight large dams on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and is now continuously attacking a seventh one.
IS is specifically using the natural resource as a weapon, observes the conflict researcher Tobias von Lossow at Berlin's Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). "On one hand, IS is damming the river to retain water and dry up certain regions, thereby cutting off the water supply to villages and communities. On the other hand ,it has also flooded areas to drive away their inhabitants and to destroy their livelihoods," said von Lossow in an interview with DW.
India's female scavengers are slaves of their caste, gender
Rina Chandran
Mumbai: New legislation in India to crack down on the practice of forcing mainly the poorest women to clear other people's excreta will have little impact unless deeply entrenched sexism and caste bias are changed, activists said.
Manual scavenging, a euphemism for disposing of faeces from dry toilets and open drains by hand, has long been an occupation thrust upon members of the Dalit group, traditionally the lowest ranked in India's caste system.
At least 90 per cent of India's estimated 1.3 million manual scavengers are women, according to campaign group Jan Sahas.
Gunmen kill Berta Caceres, Honduran indigenous activist
Caceres, a 40-year-old Lenca Indian activist, had previously complained of receiving death threats from police, soldiers and local landowners because of her work.
TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS — Honduran indigenous leader Berta Caceres, who won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize for her role in fighting a dam project, was shot dead Thursday by multiple gunmen who broke into her home, authorities said.
Caceres, a 40-year-old Lenca Indian activist, had previously complained of receiving death threats from police, soldiers and local landowners because of her work.
Tomas Membreno, a member of her group, the Indian Council of People's Organizations of Honduras, said at least two assailants broke into a home and shot Caceres to death early Thursday in the town of La Esperanza.
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