news20090903nyt

[Today's Newspaper] from [The New York Times]

[Asia Pacific]
Japan’s New Leader Reassures U.S. on Alliance
Japan's next Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, said on Thursday that he would not change the alliance with the United States.
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: September 3, 2009

TOKYO — Scrambling to mend fences with his country’s biggest ally, Japan’s next leader, Yukio Hatoyama, told the United States ambassador on Thursday that the American alliance was the basis of Japanese foreign policy, hours after he said the same thing by phone to President Obama.

In the phone call early Thursday morning with the White House, Mr. Hatoyama said he reassured Mr. Obama that he would not change the alliance with the United States. It was his first conversation with the president since his party defeated Japan’s long-governing incumbent party in Sunday’s landmark election.

“We reaffirmed that the Japan-U.S. alliance is the foundation” of Japanese foreign policy, Mr. Hatoyama told reporters.

Mr. Hatoyama was seeking to quell worries that his slightly left-of-center government, elected after more than a half-century of rule by the conservative, pro-American Liberal Democratic Party, will pull Japan away from the United States.

During the campaign, his party, the Democratic Party, promised to seek a more “equal partnership” with Washington and build closer ties with China and other Asia countries. But the biggest problems were caused by an essay by the Stanford-educated Mr. Hatoyama, published in the International Herald Tribune and on the Web site of The New York Times, that called Japan’s ailing economy a victim of American-led globalization.

The resulting stir in Washington confronted Mr. Hatoyama’s inexperienced government-in-waiting with its first crisis since the Democrats’ landslide victory on Sunday. American criticism of the essay was front-page news in major Japanese newspapers on Thursday, reflecting the still widely held sentiment here that Tokyo must stay close to the United States, especially with a fast-rising China and nuclear-armed North Korea nearby.

Mr. Hatoyama has tried to control the damage, stressing that he has no intention of fundamentally altering the alliance, although his party wants some minor changes to agreements covering the 50,000-strong American military presence. He has also said the essay was misunderstood, and not intended to be anti-American.

Still, Japanese political analysts have been sharply critical of Mr. Hatoyama for failing to manage his image, and for letting the essay, a translation of a longer article in a Japanese magazine, be the first statement of his views to the world after his party’s historic victory.

“The article itself is minor,” said Koji Murata, a professor of international relations at Doshisha University in Kyoto. “But the sense of timing of Mr. Hatoyama and those around him raises substantial doubts about his diplomatic sense.”

According to Mr. Murata and others, the row also reflected the lack of information about Mr. Hatoyama and his party in Washington, which had grown used to decades of dealing with the Liberal Democrats, while largely ignoring the opposition.

Mr. Murata also faulted American officials for their immediate rejection of the Democrats’ campaign pledges, such as reexamining an agreement to relocate the Marine Corps airfield at Futenma to another site on the Japanese island of Okinawa. He said such hard stances would only back the Democrats into a corner, souring relations.

“If they say things like Futenma is not negotiable, this will just make the Democratic Party become more obstinate as well,” Mr. Murata said.

On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Hatoyama met for 45 minutes with the new United States ambassador, John Roos, a California lawyer and fundraiser for Mr. Obama.

“We spent a lot of time talking about how to enhance and deepen the relationship across a broad range of issues, not only strategic issues, but scientific issues, cultural matters,” Mr. Roos told reporters.

Mr. Hatoyama said that he told Mr. Roos that the alliance “should be further strengthened in a constructive, future-oriented manner.” Earlier in the day, Mr. Hatoyama had described his 12-minute phone conversation with the American president as friendly and constructive.

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[Today's Newspaper] fom [The Washington Post]

[Asia/Pacific]
Japan's Hatoyama, U.S. envoy talk shared interests
By Chisa Fujioka and Linda Sieg
Reuters
Thursday, September 3, 2009; 8:03 AM

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's new leader and Washington's envoy bonded over a football helmet on Thursday as they sought to allay concerns about their alliance after an election win by Yukio Hatoyama's party, which has pledged a more independent diplomatic course.

The prospect of a Democratic Party administration in Japan, ruled for most of the past half-century by conservatives who put the U.S. partnership at the core of their security stance, has raised worries in Washington about a tilt away from the alliance.

Most analysts say no huge shift is in store after Hatoyama takes up the premiership on September 16, but investors are also concerned about a possible rocky road ahead.

Eager to soothe concerns, Japan's next leader and the U.S. envoy to Tokyo stressed shared interests on Thursday -- including memories of college days.

"We talked about the very deep relationship between the United States and Japan," U.S. ambassador John Roos said after a meeting that began with a chat about their common alma mater, Stanford University, and American football while Hatoyama displayed a red and white helmet inscribed with an "S."

"We spent a lot of time talking about how to enhance and further deepen that relationship across a broad range of issues, not only strategic issues, but scientific issues, cultural matters ... because the two countries have shared values and shared interests," Roos told reporters.

"We have lot of work to do but we are going to do it together," added Roos, a lawyer and major donor to President Barack Obama's campaign, who assumed the post last month.

The meeting followed an early morning phone conversation in which Hatoyama sought to reassure Obama that the relationship would stay central to Tokyo's diplomacy.

"I told him we think the U.S.-Japan alliance is the foundation (of Japanese diplomacy) and I would like to build U.S.-Japan relations with eyes on the future," Hatoyama said.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) pledged in their campaign platform to create a more equal partnership with Washington while forging warmer ties with Asian neighbors such as China.

NEED TO SEND MESSAGE

The U.S.-educated Hatoyama also raised eyebrows in Washington with a recent essay, published in English, in which he attacked the "unrestrained market fundamentalism" of U.S.-led globalization. He has since sought to play down those comments.

U.S. officials including Roos himself, however, have raised eyebrows in Tokyo by forcefully reiterating Washington's position that deals on U.S. forces in Japan were not up for renegotiation.

"Obama needs to send a message to the whole administration to bite their tongues or they will provoke a fight," said Columbia University professor Gerry Curtis.

"The internal politics of the DPJ and its coalition don't allow them to just walk away from his platform a few days after the election. But give them a few months and there will be ways to deal with these issues."

The Democrats, themselves a mix of former members of the Liberal Democratic Party that ruled for decades, ex-socialists and younger conservatives, are trying to form a coalition with two tiny parties, including the leftist Social Democrats, whose support is needed in parliament's upper house.

The new ruling party has said it wants to re-examine an agreement governing U.S. military forces in Japan and a deal on rejigging U.S. troops under which about 8,000 Marines would leave for the U.S. territory of Guam and a Marine air base be shifted to a less populated part of the southern island of Okinawa.

Asked whether the party still wants to move the Marine base at Futenma away from Okinawa, instead of to the north of the Okinawa island as Tokyo and Washington have agreed, Hatoyama said: "This issue can work out only after wishes of the Japanese and U.S. governments and people of Okinawa come together."

"I understand this won't be solved quickly, but we are not changing our thinking," he said, adding that building a trusting relationship with Obama was important when seeking a review on the future of U.S. military bases in Japan.

Few analysts expect a Democratic Party government to make big changes in the alliance, given Japan's reliance on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to protect it from such regional threats as unpredictable neighbor North Korea.

But Washington would do well to avoid a strident tone in talks with Japan's government-in-waiting, some analysts said.

"Japan is so heavily reliant on the United States that radical change is not going to happen," said Koichi Nakano, a professor at Tokyo's Sophia University.

"But American senior officials taking such a haughty stance after the Japanese people have spoken in favor of a change of government is not diplomatically very sound.

"They have to be careful. They don't want a backlash."


[Asia/Pacific]
Japan's Hatoyama to meet U.S. envoy
By Linda Sieg
Reuters
Thursday, September 3, 2009; 2:34 AM

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's next leader Yukio Hatoyama was to meet the U.S. ambassador on Thursday as concerns simmered about the allies' ties after an election win by Hatoyama's party, which has pledged a more independent diplomatic course.

Hatoyama, whose Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) crushed the long-ruling Liberal Democrats in Sunday's election, sought to reassure U.S. President Barack Obama in a phone call early on Thursday that the relationship would stay central to Tokyo's diplomacy.

"I told him we think the U.S.-Japan alliance is the foundation (of Japanese diplomacy) and I would like to build U.S.-Japan relations with eyes on the future," Hatoyama told reporters after his conversation with Obama.

The prospect of a Democratic Party administration in Japan, ruled for most of the past half-century by a conservative party that put the U.S. partnership at the core of its security stance, has raised worries in Washington about a tilt away from the alliance.

Most analysts say no huge shift is in store once Hatoyama takes up the premiership on September 16 but investors are also concerned about a possible rocky road ahead.

The Democrats pledged in their campaign platform to create a more equal partnership with Washington while forging warmer ties with Asian neighbors such as China.

The U.S.-educated Hatoyama also raised eyebrows in Washington with a recent essay, published in English, in which he attacked the "unrestrained market fundamentalism" of U.S.-led globalization. He has since sought to play down those comments.

"It was an error of judgment on the part of Hatoyama and the DPJ to have the essay published in English," said Koichi Nakano, a professor at Tokyo's Sophia University.

"It was for domestic consumption and had its purpose in the campaign context, but putting it out in English for an American audience was unwise."

U.S. officials, however, have raised eyebrows themselves in Tokyo by forcefully reiterating Washington's position that deals on U.S. forces in Japan were not up for renegotiation.

RISKING BACKLASH?

The Democrats have said they want to reexamine an agreement governing U.S. military forces in Japan and a deal on rejigging U.S. troops under which about 8,000 Marines would leave for the U.S. territory of Guam and a Marine air base be shifted to a less populated part of the southern island of Okinawa.

"Just to make it abundantly clear, both the United States and Japan, at the government-to-government level, have made it absolutely clear that these agreements have been signed, agreed to, and are going forward," new U.S. ambassador John Roos said in an interview with U.S. National Public Radio on Wednesday.

Roos was scheduled to meet Hatoyama later on Thursday.

Few analysts expected a Democratic Party government to make big changes in the alliance, given decades of close ties and Japan's reliance on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to protect it from such regional threats as unpredictable neighbor North Korea.

But Washington would do well to avoid a strident tone in talks with Japan's government-in-waiting, some analysts said.

"Japan is so heavily reliant on the United States that radical change is not going to happen," Sophia University's Nakano said.

"But American senior officials taking such a haughty stance after the Japanese people have spoken in favor of a change of government is not diplomatically very sound.

"They have to be careful. They don't want a backlash."

Such concerns may have been reflected in comments in Washington by the top U.S. diplomat for Asia, Kurt Campbell, who said Washington saw no contradiction between a call for more independence from Washington and a healthy alliance.

"For the alliance to maintain its relevance and its influence ... a degree of independence, of confidence, is absolutely essential on the part of Japan," Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told a think tank in Washington. "The United States supports that."

news20090903wsj

[Today's Paper] from [The Wall Street Journal]

[ASIA NEWS]
ASIA NEWS SEPTEMBER 3, 2009, 11:46 A.M. ET
Hatoyama Reassures U.S. on Ties
By ALISON TUDOR and YUKA HAYASHI

TOKYO -- Incoming Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama moved to assure the U.S. that the relationship between the two nations remains a strong one, an apparent attempt to calm nervousness among some foreign policy experts in Washington over a possible policy shift.

Mr. Hatoyama and U.S. President Barack Obama spoke via phone on Wednesday U.S. time, agreeing to build an "even more effective relationship," the White House said in a statement.

On Thursday, he met with John Roos, the new U.S. ambassador to Japan, for the first time since his Democratic Party of Japan swept into office in a landslide election Sunday. In both conversations, he stressed the importance of the U.S.-Japanese alliance.

"The Japan-U.S. alliance is the axis of Japan's foreign policies," Mr. Hatoyama told Mr. Roos during the meeting, according to a statement from the Japanese leader's office. "We would like to further enhance the Japan-U.S. relationship."

Many observers of U.S.-Japan relations don't expect major changes but see the potential for subtle shifts. "We've got an unparalleled opportunity here for the US and Japan to sit down and freshen up their alliance within the framework of the old," said Walter Mondale, the former U.S. vice president and Democratic presidential candidate, who was an ambassador to Japan during the Clinton administration.

He added, "This would be a good time to look at the relationship with fresh eyes."

As Mr. Hatoyama prepares to take office on Sep. 16, Washington faces the challenge of cultivating fresh ties with the untested DPJ after over five decades of dealing with the Liberal Democratic Party, a staunch ally with conservative policies.

The DPJ has kept U.S. policy experts on alert with its proposals to renegotiate the terms of the U.S. military presence in Japan and to discontinue Japan's refueling of U.S. warships in the Indian Ocean to support the war in Afghanistan. In its campaign policy pledge, the party said it would seek a "close and equal" relationship with the U.S., a statement largely interpreted as its desire to reduce Japan's reliance on their bilateral national security alliance.

Speaking to reporters after his call with Mr. Obama, Mr. Hatoyama said he assured the president the U.S.-Japan alliance is the "foundation" of Japan's foreign policy.

The White House said the two leaders also agreed to work together on various areas including strengthen global economic recovery, combat climate change, ensure the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and defeat al Qaeda.

Mr. Mondale said the dialogue between the two new administrations could make progress in resolving some lingering issues between the two.

For example, it could lead to a resolution to a 1995 agreement between the two to move a U.S. military base on Okinawa to another part of the island. The move has been delayed for years, some Japanese residents there want the base moved altogether. "It's now 14 years later and I believe it's time for the sides to sit down and resolve this issue," said Mr. Mondale, who was involved in the original negotiations.

Mr. Hatoyama made a rocky debut in the eyes of some foreign policy experts in the U.S. Some pointed to an essay he wrote that appeared in a Japanese journal last month, in which he described Japan at one point as a victim of U.S.-led market fundamentalism. The essay was later translated and printed in U.S. publications.

"That was a huge mistake to publish that piece," said Gerald Curtis, professor of Japanese politics at Columbia University. "I hope he will learn his lesson and that we'll see a much more sensible position."

Mr. Hatoyama's camp has said excerpts were taken out of context, and a DPJ spokeswoman said Thursday that the matter hadn't hurt relations and had been blown out of proportion.

Mr. Mondale said the dialogue between the two new administrations may lead to changes that strengthen their relationship.

"The tone of the relationship needs to be carefully tended to," he said. "I think sometimes when there are tensions in the world, we're not too careful about how abrupt we are in this alliance. It would be good at this time to refresh the relationship and make it clear that the Japanese will get the elbow room they desire."

—Daisuke Wakabayashi and Miho Inada contributed to this article.


[ASIA NEWS]
ASIA NEWS SEPTEMBER 3, 2009
Strategist Rises in Japan Power Shift
By YUKA HAYASHI

TOKYO -- The election victory of Japan's main opposition party will bring many new faces to a long-staid political scene, a change that will give considerable clout to a familiar figure: Ichiro Ozawa, who led the party until May and helped to orchestrate its rise.

The Democratic Party of Japan captured the lower house of parliament Sunday in part because of the strategies of Mr. Ozawa, 67 years old, who now works as a top aide to party leader and likely new prime minister Yukio Hatoyama.

"In effect, this is going to be an Ozawa administration," says Eiken Itagaki, a political analyst who has written several books on the DPJ and Mr. Ozawa. "Mr. Hatoyama and other leaders will be obliged to listen to what he wants."

Mr. Ozawa's aide referred questions to a DPJ spokesman, who said he had no comment.

With the backing of many DPJ loyalists, Mr. Ozawa will have a strong chance of implementing policies he has long promoted, including lessening Japan's traditional reliance on the U.S. and implementing costly social programs such as an allowance to all families with children.

Some analysts say Mr. Ozawa should be given an important cabinet position to dispel any impression that he is running the show from behind the scenes.

He may prefer to stay offstage, however. "Mr. Ozawa will probably want to forgo a formal position in the cabinet and focus on preparations for the upper-house elections [in July]," says Fusao Ushiro, a political-science professor at Nagoya University. "Becoming a prime minister isn't his ambition, even down the road."

Mr. Ozawa stepped down as DPJ president in May after his top aide was indicted for violating political fund-raising rules, though he denied wrongdoing. But he has remained key to the party's election planning. He picked a number of Sunday's victorious candidates, trained them and matched them with opponents in ways that played up their strengths and stirred voter interest, political analysts said.

Young social activists often were thrown after incumbents. In a Tokyo district, Ai Aoki, a 44-year-old former day-care teacher, successfully took on Akihiro Ota, the 63-year-old head of New Party Komei, the coalition partner of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. In Gifu, in central Japan, Masanao Shibahashi, a 30-year-old former bank loan officer, ran against with Seiko Noda, 48, one of the two female ministers in outgoing Prime Minister Taro Aso's cabinet.

The DPJ was already expected to perform strongly against the LDP, which has dominated Japanese politics for decades and presided over a long economic decline and suffered from a number of political scandals. Still, analysts said about 70 of the 193 seats it gained in the lower house came in part from Mr. Ozawa's guidance.

"When it comes to election strategies, no one in Japanese politics comes even close to Mr. Ozawa," said Hirotada Asakawa, an analyst who has written books about Mr. Ozawa.

Takatane Kiuchi, who defeated an LDP incumbent in Tokyo Sunday, prepared for the elections under Mr. Ozawa's guidance. "People call him 'god of elections' but a lot of what he says is quite basic," says the 43-year-old former investment banker who once worked for Merrill Lynch. "He tells you to greet voters at train stations every morning and visit community leaders frequently."

Mr. Kiuchi said his goal as a politician is to help rebuild Japan's semiconductor industry through public funds and restructuring. "When you are a newcomer with no baggage on your back, you can do a whole lot," he says.

The Japanese media have nicknamed the newly elected lawmakers "Ozawa children," a reference to "Koizumi children," a group of young politicians mentored by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi who were swept to office in the last lower-house election in 2005. Most of them were defeated by DPJ candidates in the latest elections.

Mr. Ozawa started out as a conservative politician who over decades gained influence within the LDP. He left the party in 1993 amid an internal power struggle, and helped form a coalition government made up of small parties. That government lasted only 11 months before the LDP returned to power.

In 2003, Mr. Ozawa joined the DPJ and soon became its leader. He led the party to a victory in upper-house elections in 2007, accelerating the LDP's decline.

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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]


[Guardian Environment Network]
Himalayans needs climate change science to get its fingers dirty
Dipak Gyawali, research director of the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, explains that an area as diverse as the Himalayas needs localised, 'toad's-eye' science if it is to learn how to adapt to climate change. Interview by Isabel Hilton, editor of ChinaDialogue, part of the Guardian Environment Network

From ChinaDialogue, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009 12.05 BST Article

Isabel Hilton (IH): How accurate are predictions of future climate impacts in the region?

Dipak Gyawali (DG): Here is a sense of confusion: the implications of what is happening seem more and more horrendous and some things are pretty certain. Beyond that, though, the models predict all kinds of things. The question of the Himalayas has not really begun to be addressed and the science has a very long way to go on precipitation and the social effects.

IH: How can science become more relevant to the region?

DG: The effects in different parts of the Himalaya and south Asia will be very different and it's not all about glaciers. The Maldives will be drowned; Sri Lanka may have more tsunamis and more intense storms; Bangladesh will have its own problems. They will not be impacted directly by the glaciers; the interest in the glaciers is that they are powerful indicators: they tell you clearly that something is wrong. It's like going to the doctor with a fever: you know you are sick. But we don't have the science to be able to make accurate predictions of impacts over a hugely diverse region. If you look at the last IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report, for instance, the whole of the Himalayas was a blank. People are already suffering but whether we can take any one instance as directly related to climate change is not certain.

We did local consultations from every part of Nepal, bringing farmers together to ask what they are experiencing as a result of climate change. Many of them cannot relate what they are experiencing to carbon dioxide emissions, and one problem is that over a large part of the region there is no difference between the word for climate and the word for weather. But when we asked them what is happening to their agriculture, we discovered a whole series of impacts.

Some of them are predictable: spring is coming a week earlier, for instance; things begin to grow, but it is not "real" spring and it can be followed by a blast of terrible cold weather. It seems to be having an impact on cucumbers: they are getting a much higher volume of male flowers to female flowers, so the crop is smaller. The mangoes come into flower and start to grow, but then the fruits shrivel up and drop off, so the mango harvest is shrinking. Lowland pests have started moving up into the mountains and certain weeds from the lowlands are being found at higher altitudes.

We also looked at some major regional catastrophes, signature events like the failure of the Indian monsoon or the floods in the Terai, to see how people were affected. It's essential to find out what is happening, and we believe we need to rethink development in the light of climate change. That has not happened yet.

IH: Presumably it has not happened because the development agencies have not had this kind of detailed input?

DG: That's precisely the point. The remote sensing and the satellites give us the eagle-eye view, which is essential but not enough. In a country as diverse geographically and socially as Nepal – there are more than 90 languages and 103 caste and ethnic groups – the eagle-eye view needs to be complemented by the view from the ground, what I call "toad's-eye" science.

IH: Because high-level science can't be broken down into what is happening in any given local area?

DG: Yes. You are dealing with such diversity: ecological, geographical, cultural and ethnic diversity. The reason we focussed on this toad's-eye view is that we found people were not sitting around waiting for an agreement at the COP15 in Copenhagen. Millions are voting with their feet every day at the grass-roots level, reacting with civic science and traditional knowledge. This is what people are basing their everyday decisions on.

High science to come down off its high horse and meet up with civic science and traditional knowledge, in order to understand what is happening, so that national governments can also plan. The high science has to start looking at why there are more male flowers on the cucumbers, why berries are ripening at the wrong time.

Just to take one example: nobody has studied what is happening to soil fauna. Soil fauna are essential to everything and they are one of the first indicators that things are going wrong. They affect everything from plants to birds and nobody knows what is happening with them.

IH: Have you a better idea of who is vulnerable as a result of this work?

DG: Yes. The conventional wisdom is that the most vulnerable people are the poorest of the poor, but we have found that it is actually the lower middle classes. The reason is that the poorest of the poor have never had enough land to keep their families for the whole year, so they have always had to diversify their sources of income: they do seasonal labour and have those networks and connections already. They have a built-in resilience, so if their harvest is worse than usual, they just go and work longer.

The lower middle classes, though, have had enough land to be able to depend on their crops. They might survive one bad year, but two or three wipe them out, and then you get what you are seeing in India – farmers committing suicide. That is also happening in Nepal. The poorest are suffering, but it is not fatal. The people who are really being hit are the lower middle classes and upwards, which has implications for social stability.

IH: What adaptation is possible in these circumstances?

DG: The solutions have to come out of the watershed and out of the problem-shed. You can talk about big solutions – building high dams – which can take 40 years. We don't know in Nepal if a government will last 40 days. The solutions have to be what these millions of households can take. Can they be helped? How can they be helped? We just haven't done the science for that. We need civic science; ground-level truth.

We have some suggestions for how to do it. For instance, you put a weather monitoring station in every school in Nepal, and get the children to do the readings and get the schoolmaster to fax the readings back, your data points increase from around 450 to around 4,000. You are suddenly rich in data, and the local people are involved in understanding the dimensions of the problem.

It will be a long, drawn out process, but it is starting with rain gauges in the schools, linked up with the local FM radio stations. Suddenly the FM stations are very excited because they are talking about what is happening in their area instead of reading out a weather report from Kathmandu that might have no relevance to them.

We hope our report will point to some things that are essential and some things that local people are already doing to adaptat: building houses on stilts, for instance, so they can move upstairs during the flood season and the people will be safe – their rice will be safe and they can move back down again when the danger is past. Some villages have raised the level of their plinths, just a little bit, but enough to get above the floods.

IH: But won't future floods be much worse?

DG: Not all major floods are caused by high volumes: the Kosi breach, for instance, happened at a time when the flow was lower than usual. It was the failure of a poorly constructed dam and 3.5 million people were displaced in the state of Bihar, India, and 6,500 in Nepal. If tomorrow the floods get worse, expect more Kosi breaches. We expect that the intensity and frequency will be greater, but we don't know exactly what is going to happen.

news20090903gc

[Environment] from [scientificamerican.com]

[Environment]
September 2, 2009
The Real Sea Monsters: On the Hunt for Rogue Waves
Scientists hope a better understanding of when, where and how mammoth oceanic waves form can someday help ships steer clear of danger
By Lynne Peeples

A near-vertical wall of water in what had been an otherwise placid sea shocked all on board the ocean liner Teutonic—including the crew—on that Sunday in February, more than a century ago.

"It was about 9 o'clock, and [First Officer Bartlett], as he walked the bridge, had not the slightest premonition of the impending danger. The wave came over the bow from nobody seems to know where, and broke in all its fury," reported The New York Times on March 1, 1901: "Many of the passengers were inclined to believe that the wave was the result of volcanic phenomena, or a tidal wave. These opinions were the exception, however, for had the sea been of the tidal order Bartlett would have seen it coming." The volcano theory was just as unlikely: "Absurd, absurd," one of the Teutonic's officers told the Times. "It was a giant sea, and there is no doubt of that."

This is just one of the many anecdotal accounts in maritime history of waves upward of 30 meters devouring ships, even swallowing low-flying helicopters. But what sea captains and scientists have long believed to be true only gained widespread acceptance after the first digitally recorded rogue wave struck an oil rig in 1995. "The seamen tales about large waves eating their ships are correct," says Tim Janssen, an oceanographer at San Francisco State University. "This was proof to everybody else, and a treat for scientists. They suspected it, but to see it and have an observation is something else."

Now that there is no longer a question of rogue waves' existence, other mysteries have arisen: How frequently do they occur? Just how do they come about? Are there areas or conditions where they are more likely? Janssen is among a growing group of researchers in search of answers to these questions, which could someday lead to safer seas.

Rogue waves by the numbers
Before any answers could be attempted, scientists first had to characterize a rogue (or freak) wave. The widely accepted definition, according to Janssen, is a wave roughly three times the average height of its neighbors. This is a somewhat arbitrary cutoff. Really, he notes, they are just "unexpectedly large waves." The wave that swept onlookers off the coast in Acadia National Park in Maine on August 23 may not fit the former definition, for example, because background waves were already quite large due to Hurricane Bill, and rogues typically occur in the open ocean. Yet that wave has still been readily referred to as a "rogue".

No one is certain yet just how frequently freak waves form; accurate numbers are extremely difficult to collect given the waves' rare and transient nature. With more sophisticated monitoring and modeling—and as first-hand accounts are taken more seriously—the waves' prevalence appears to be rising. "[Rogue waves] are all short-lived, and because ships are not everywhere, the probability that a ship encounters one is relatively small," says Daniel Solli, who studies the optical version of rogue waves at the University of California, Los Angeles. "But with increasing amounts of oceanic traffic in the future, the likelihood of encountering them is getting larger."

Some areas seem to breed the waves more than others. Janssen and his colleagues recently used computer models to determine that regions where wave energy is strongly focused could be up to 10 times more likely to generate a freak wave. He speculates that approximately three of every 10,000 waves on the oceans achieve rogue status, yet in certain spots—like coastal inlets and river mouths—these extreme waves can make up three out of every 1,000 waves. A paper describing these results was published last month in the Journal of Physical Oceanography.

Forming fearsome waves
Various theories exist for how rogue waves form. The simplest suggests that small waves coalesce into much larger ones in an accumulative fashion—a faster one-meter wave catches up with a slower two-meter wave adding up to a three-meter wave, for example. Janssen and his colleagues build on this with a more complex, nonlinear model in their recent paper. Waves might actually "communicate—sometimes in a bad way—and produce more constructive interferences," Janssen explains. By communicating, he means exchanging energy. And because the conversations aren't necessarily balanced, he says, "Communication can get amplified enough that a high-intensity large wave develops." In other words, one burgeoning wave can actually soak up the energy of surrounding waves.

Again, in those places where variations in water depths and currents focus wave energies, this line of communication can get especially busy. Janssen's models identified these rogue-prone zones. Certain conditions such as winds and wave dissipation, however, could not be included, limiting the simulation's predictive power.

Meanwhile, Chin Wu, an environmental engineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison sees another likely scenario spurring the monster waves: "If a wave propagates from east to west, and the current moves west to east, then a wave starts to build up," says Wu, who studies wave–current interactions in a 15-meter pool. The wave basically climbs the current's wall, rising out of what appears to be nowhere. Rogue waves have in fact been more common in regions such as the east coast of South Africa where surface waves meet currents running in the opposite direction.

Focusing on forecasts
The only way to really know what is going on in the unpredictable oceans is to watch, Wu says. He acknowledges, however, that the investments in the instruments and time necessary for such fieldwork are immense. "We need to identify places where [rogue waves] are more likely to occur," he says, emphasizing the importance of numerical models—including the nontrivial accounting of wind and wave breaking—at this step, "and then focus on those areas."

Focusing on an optical wave analogue may actually help scientists limit where they need to look. Light waves travel in optical fibers similarly to water waves traveling in the open ocean. "In optics we're dealing with a similar phenomenon, but doing experiments on the tabletop and acquiring data in only a fraction of a second," says U.C. Los Angeles's Solli. Although he doesn't suggest that optical experiments should replace ocean research, he suggests it could be a guide. Mapping light-wave conditions to the ocean could uncover parallel parameters that give rise to water waves. "Instead of looking for a needle in a haystack in the water, you could benefit from some beginning wisdom and narrow down the range," adds Solli, who co-authored a paper on optical rogue waves in the December 2007 edition of Nature. (Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group.)

Janssen agrees with the need for more direct observations of ocean behavior. "We can make a theoretical prediction," he says. "But then we have to go out and see if nature agrees." If it does, the results "could provide a prediction scenario—made visible on maps—of hot spots that could change day to day," Janssen says. This could work much like tornado forecasting.

Only two passengers were seriously hurt in the Teutonic incident—one suffered a broken jaw and the other a severed foot. They were fortunate. "Had it struck us later on in the day many passengers would have been promenading in the sunshine, without doubt," Officer Bartlett told the Times. "There is no telling how many of them would have been injured." Extreme waves do not always offer such merciful timing, however. Forecasts could be crucial in helping future ocean liners evade the voracious sea monsters.

news20090903gc2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment >Wildlife]
400 of Britain's rarest lizard released acro

00ss UK sitesThe endangered lizard has almost disappeared from Britain due to loss of its heath and sandy habitats from agriculture, forest and building developments

Hundreds of sand lizards are being released at sites across England and Wales in an attempt to bring back the UK's rarest lizard to areas where it has disappeared, conservationists said today.

The reintroductions at five sites in Surrey, Dorset and mid Wales are part of efforts to "turn back the clock on amphibian and reptile declines" in Britain, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation said.

Native frogs toads, newts, lizards and snakes have been hit by loss of their habitats, often as a result of changes to agriculture, planting of forests and building developments.

The first release of around 80 2in-long baby lizards, which have been reared in special hatcheries, will take place at a National Trust nature reserve in Surrey today, the newly formed conservation group said.

Almost 400 young sand lizards will be released over the next fortnight.

The sand lizard was once a common sight on heathland across parts of England and Wales, but widespread destruction of its heath and sand dune habitats led to extinctions at many sites.

According to Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, the lizard was lost altogether from a number of counties including Kent, Sussex, Cornwall, Cheshire and north and west Wales, while more than 90% of suitable habitat has vanished from Surrey, Merseyside and Dorset.

But the wildlife group, formed by the merger of charities Froglife and the Herpetological Conservation Trust, said the animals and their habitats were now protected under the law.

The organisation's Nick Moulton said: "It's great to see them going back, now safely protected, where they belong."

The young lizards have been bred in captivity at a number of locations including Chester and Marwell zoos and even specially modified back gardens.

The breeders have had to minimise contact with the animals to prevent them becoming too tame, which would leave them at risk of being eaten by their main predator, the threatened smooth snake, if they were released.

The five nature reserves, managed by the National Trust, Surrey Heath Borough Council, Dorset Wildlife Trust, the Forestry Commission and the Countryside Council for Wales, have all been assessed over a number of years to make sure they provide the right habitat to be the lizards' new homes.

Further releases of captive-bred animals will take place over the next few years.

The reintroduction of the sand lizards is part of a 133-point action plan designed to reverse the declines in the UK's frogs, toads, lizards and snakes, including research, monitoring of species and encouraging land-owners to create habitats such as ponds to help the wild animals flourish.

Dr Tom Tew, chief scientist at Natural England, the government's conservation agency, said: "Reptiles and amphibians are coming under pressure from an increasing number of factors including habitat loss, disease and a future of climate change.

"This important reintroduction programme is an example of the action that must be taken to reverse the decline in England's biodiversity and to conserve the habitats that our unique wildlife relies upondoubt.

news20090903gc3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News > Green party]
Tatchell hitches wagon to Green party with promise to make trouble
The human rights activist tells Hélène Mulholland why he has embraced parliamentary politics – and why he is standing for the Greens
Hélène Mulholland
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009 09.29 BST Article history

If Peter Tatchell defies his doctors' advice, and electoral norms, and makes it to parliament at the next election, he can foresee trouble, pretty much straight away – from himself.

"I suspect I might be quite a troublesome MP, starting with the oath of allegiance," says the 57-year-old Australian-born activist, who is standing for the Green party in Oxford East. He has no intention of giving away what he plans to do, other than to say he has "something expressive in mind" if the time comes.

"I would be very happy to swear allegiance to democracy, human rights and to my constituents, but I am not very happy about the idea of tugging my forelock to an unelected monarch."

Tatchell has made his mark as a human rights activist in campaigns stretching back more than 40 years and is an unusual suspect among the candidates selected so far by the Greens. If he wins Oxford East, there is absolutely no chance of him dampening his zealous tendency to stand up and be counted.

While he first shot to public prominence as the Labour candidate in the notorious Bermondsey byelection in 1983, where he was the subject of a bitter political and media campaign, Tatchell admits that he is "not primarily a party activist". But, as the Greens prepare for their annual conference in Hove, starting today, he hopes that the forthcoming general election will be a breakthrough for the party in Westminster.

"Obviously I believe there is a role for parliament because I am standing for election, but I do not see parliament as the be all and end all. Grassroots extra-parliamentary protests are still important to keep politicians on their toes and bring marginalised issues to the central political stage. As an MP, my hope is to bring the issues of campaigns that I work on outside of parliament into the parliamentary arena. So for me parliament is not a replacement to my human rights campaigning but an addition to it."

If Tatchell were elected to parliament, he would be making history for the party, which has so far failed to get a seat in the Commons. A recent Guardian/ICM poll, however, showing just 3% of the public intends to vote Green at the next national poll, suggests they will still struggle. In his constituency, the Greens polled 4.3% at the last election, although in this year's Oxfordshire county council elections the Greens polled highest in East Oxford.

An advocate of proportional representation, Tatchell says that the first-past-the-post system can dissuade the electorate from voting for minority parties. Yet he seems optimistic that, this time around, the public will think seriously about an alternative.

"In the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal it is time for change, for new faces and new ideas in parliament. It is time we had some Green MPs. There are already Labour, Tory and Lib Dems, so what is the point of having more MPs from the big established parties? It won't make any difference, while electing a Green MP will make history."

The party still suffers from the perception that it is solely concerned with the environment. "That is a very big problem for us and it is compounded by the fact that political commentators, when they write stories on education, housing, employment and health, very rarely seek quotes from the party spokesman, and that means a lot of people are not aware that we have got policies on these wider issues."

Tatchell says he has always had a green side, and was busy trying to forge an alliance between socialists and the Greens as far back as the 1980s. It wasn't until 2004 that he finally signed up to the party, four years after terminating a 22-year relationship with Labour over the 75p rise in the state pension and the attempt to stop Ken Livingstone from becoming the party's candidate for mayor of London. In between, he stood as an Independent Green Left candidate in the first round of London assembly elections in 2000, where he garnered just 22,000 votes without any party funding to support his campaign.

Of his new party, he says: "I just felt I wanted to support a party that was standing for the kind of values I believe in and the Green party fitted that bill. I was really surprised to see what strong progressive policies they had on a whole range of issues such as housing, education and employment."

He hopes that the current mood of anger towards mainstream parties will work in his favour, and that his own reputation will stand him in good stead. "I am critical of the political establishment, an outsider and someone who stands up for what they believe in."

His home is not in Oxford, but in south London, where he lives in a one-bedroom council flat, scratching a living of around £8,000 a year from journalism, research work, speaking engagements, and slim royalties from his books.

For Tatchell, activism means doing whatever it takes to bring injustices to attention. But it is this very passion that could thwart his chances of making it all the way to polling day. The man who cannot bear to see other people suffering doesn't seem so bothered about his own. In March 2001, in Belgium, he received seven blows at the hands of Robert Mugabe's bodyguards after attempting a citizen's arrest of the president of Zimbabwe over human rights abuses, leaving him with lasting injuries.

He was knocked unconscious and left with poor vision in his right eye. Other long-term effects include poor memory, concentration, balance and coordination. These injuries were compounded in 2007, just a month after he was selected as a parliamentary candidate, when he suffered severe concussion following an attack by neo-Nazis at a gay pride event in Moscow. Some of the damage, he says, is "probably permanent". His physical problems deteriorated further after he was out campaigning for a Cornish parliament in south-west England when the bus he was sitting on swerved and he hit his head on a metal rail.

"The doctor keeps saying I need to radically reduce my workload for a period of up to a year. At the moment I am saying: 'No, there is a general election.'"

Nevertheless he admits he is struggling on the campaign front, which involves travelling back and forth between London and Oxford. "I am finding it quite stressful at the moment," he said. "It has not stopped me campaigning but it has made me slower and made campaigning more difficult."

Might he be forced to pull out? "Not at this stage. I am determined to carry on." Despite his confident words, his voice betrays traces of doubt.

news20090903nn

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 2 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.878
News
Europe's oldest axes discovered
Sophisticated tool-making skills more widespread than previously thought.
Rex Dalton

Hand axes were made by early humans in Europe around 900,000 years ago.CHRISTIAN JEGOU PUBLIPHOTO DIFFUSION/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYHand axes from southern Spain have been dated to nearly a million years old, suggesting that advanced Stone Age tools were present in Europe far earlier than was previously believed.

Acheulian axes, which date to at least 1.5 million years ago, have been found in Africa, and similar tools at least 700,000 years old have been found in Israel and China. But in Europe, sophisticated tool-making was thought to stretch back only around 500,000 years.

Cave sediment levels that included the two axes also held what some archaeologists believe may be small tools made using the so-called Levallois technique of shaping stone, known to have existed in Europe only about 300,000 years ago.

"Up to now, no one imagined this level of tool-making was going on in Europe about a million years ago," says Michael Walker, an archaeologist at the University of Murcia who has studied the region near Granada where the axes were found.

Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis are all species known to be associated with Acheulian axes, which have two-sided cutting faces that were made of many types of stone for still-unconfirmed uses.

The Iberian axes, reported in Nature¹ today, were found at two sites dated to at least 760,000 and 900,000 years old, respectively. Gary Scott and Luis Gibert of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California dated the sites using palaeomagnetic analysis, which uses known changes in the orientation of Earth's magnetic field over time.

Thomas Wynn, a cognitive evolutionary biologist from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, says: "This [find] tells us some things about these early humans' brains, like the development of spatial conception. But not much, as cognitive ability changes very, very slowly."

Age surprise

For co-author Luis Gibert, the report is the culmination of years of field studies in the Quipar Valley, where his late father, Josep Gibert Clols, pioneered research. "This is an amazing site," says Gibert.

The Quipar Valley has historically been home to a lake environment of marshes and shallow lagoons. The Solana del Zamborino and Estrecho del Quípar caves in the valley, where the axes were found, were first thought to be only about 200,000 years old.

But after dates of stone flakes at a nearby location indicated they were much older, Gibert, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Berkeley centre, and Scott homed in on the caves' rich sediments.

In addition to the palaeomagnetic technique, Gibert notes that a record in rock layers of the remains of micro-mammals such as rodents, developed by Walker's team at Estrecho del Quípar, was crucial in confirming the dates. The Solana del Zamborino cave hadn't been studied in more than 30 years.

The older dates for the Spanish axes are now expected to generate new studies at other European rock shelters bearing Acheulian artefacts. But those studies may be hampered by the lack of appropriate sediments with which to identify palaeomagnetic polarity reversals, says Walker.

References
1.Scott, G. R. & Gibert, L. Nature 461, 82-85 (2009). | Article | PubMed

news20090903bn

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 17:11 GMT, Thursday, 3 September 2009 18:11 UK
Indonesia quake search stepped up
Rescuers in Indonesia are searching the rubble of collapsed buildings for survivors after a powerful earthquake, with the toll expected to rise.

At least 57 people are confirmed dead and thousands of homes ruined after the 7.0-magnitude quake hit on Wednesday.

More than 100 people are in hospital and dozens are still missing.

Damaged roads and poor weather are hampering efforts to get heavy rescue equipment to the worst-hit areas in the West Javan district of Cianjur.

At least 40 people remained missing in the village of Cikangkareng after a landslide buried a row of homes.

Police, military personnel and villagers are using their bare hands to try to reach survivors buried in the rubble.

"You can't see the roofs at all, everything is completely buried," Priyadi Kardono, spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, said.

"The chances of anyone surviving is very, very small."

Desperate search

More than 18,000 homes across West Java province have been damaged, about 9,000 seriously, Mr Kardono said.

{AT THE SCENE
Karishma Vaswani, BBC News, Cianjur
After the quake, villagers are too afraid to go back to their homes.
They are worried that aftershocks or more earthquakes could damage the flimsy structures, and they would rather brave the elements than risk the possibility of being trapped.
Darsa, 48, told me he was taking no chances and that he was willing to live in a tent for up to two weeks.
"I am very afraid," he said. "My home is very near where the landslide happened. And I'm worried there will be more landslides because of further aftershocks or earthquakes. I don't want to go back."
It's a refrain I hear often as I travel around this area.}

At least 110 people have been hospitalised with 10 in a critical condition, he added.

Indonesian television showed people being treated in temporary tents, while others were being attended to outside in hospital grounds.

Garut and Tasikmalaya districts, along with Cianjur, about 100km (62 miles) south of Jakarta, were among the worst hit.

Food and water packages have arrived in some districts but some remote villages are yet to receive any assistance, the BBC's Karishma Vaswani reports from the area.

Rescue efforts are being hampered as several roads have been badly damaged and it has begun to rain. As a result, heavy digging equipment has not reached the hardest-hit villages, she adds.

Communications links to settlements on the south coast were broken by the quake, so the extent of damage and casualties is not yet known.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is visiting the area, told our reporter that the government had everything under control and international assistance was not yet necessary.

Fear and uncertainty

About 5,000 people have sought shelter in makeshift tents. "They have taken refuge not only because their houses were ruined, but also because they fear there will be aftershocks," said local official Obar Sobarna.

The quake epicentre was about 115km off the south coast of Java, near Tasikmalaya.

Mudslides inundated homes, collapsed rooftops and damaged properties in Tasikmalaya, including the mayor's home and a mosque.

The tremors were felt in the capital, Jakarta, 200km to the north, where hundreds fled into the streets from offices and shops.

A local tsunami alert was issued but revoked shortly afterwards.

The quake was also felt 500km away from its epicentre in Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, and on the resort island of Bali.

In December 2004, an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people around Asia.
Our correspondent says memories of the 2004 disaster are still fresh in the minds of people.

She says the Indonesian government has implemented an early warning system for tsunamis since then, but it is not fully operational yet.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the most active areas for earthquakes and volcanic activity in the world.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 08:41 GMT, Thursday, 3 September 2009 09:41 UK
Suu Kyi launches detention appeal
Lawyers for Burma's pro-democracy opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, have launched an appeal against the extension of her house arrest.

Last month a court sentenced Ms Suu Kyi to a further 18 months for violating the terms of her detention by allowing an uninvited US man into her home.

The American, John Yettaw, was given a seven year sentence but freed at the intervention of a visiting US senator.

Ms Suu Kyi's detention means she cannot take part in elections next year.

'Wrong law'

"We submit the appeal because the judgment against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was wrongful," one of her lawyers, Nyan Win, said.

Daw is a Burmese term of respect for a woman.

Nyan Win said the divisional court in Rangoon would decide on Friday whether to hear the appeal.

If the court does not accept the appeal, Nyan Win said the lawyers would appeal to the High Court.

Ms Suu Kyi's legal team argued at her trial that she was not guilty and that the law she was being tried under had been superseded by a new constitution approved in a controversial referendum last year.

"Altogether there are 11 reasons for the appeal, but the main thing we will point out is about the constitution," her chief lawyer Kyi Win said.

Her conviction was "not in accordance with the law", he added.

Her sentencing to a further term of house arrest in August drew widespread international condemnation.

Ms Suu Kyi, 64, a Nobel Peace laureate, has spent nearly 14 of the past 20 years in detention.

Her National League for Democracy won the last elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 05:11 GMT, Thursday, 3 September 2009 06:11 UK
Australia's warm winter a record
Australia has experienced its warmest August on record amid soaring winter temperatures.
By Phil Mercer
BBC News, Sydney

Climatologists have blamed both the effects of climate change and natural variability.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology says that August was a "most extraordinary month" with mean temperatures 2.47C above the long-term average.

August in Australia culminated in a record-breaking heat-wave across much of the continent.

In the Queensland town of Bedourie the temperature reached 38.5C.

Elsewhere, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia have had their warmest winters on record.


{We needed rain most probably a fortnight ago for our crops to realise their full potential and every day it doesn't rain that will fall quite dramatically
John Ridley
New South Wales farmer}

Blair Trewin, from the National Climate Centre, says the past month has brought unprecedented conditions.

"Early last week we saw a number of locations in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland break their August record-high temperatures by four or five degrees. And to break records by that sort of margin is something which is extremely rare," said Mr Trewin.

Scientists believe that such unseasonal temperatures are the result of global warming and of the climate's natural variability.

There are warnings that spring in this part of the southern hemisphere is likely to bring more hot weather, exacerbating a long-standing drought.

John Ridley, a grain farmer in New South Wales, is a worried man.

"We needed rain yesterday, right. We needed rain most probably a fortnight ago for our crops to realise their full potential, but most probably been 30% of our yield potential gone and every day it doesn't rain that will fall quite dramatically from there," said Mr Ridley.

The warm, dry conditions have also prompted the authorities to warn that Australia's annual bushfire season is again likely to be severe.

Already serious outbreaks have flared to the north and south of Sydney, the country's most populous city.