Myanmar anti-coup resistance drags military into bloody stalemate

Hong Kong (AFP)

Oct 1, 2021

Corpses piled high next to a rice field in northern Myanmar show the bloody consequence of a hot-blooded, uncoordinated attack by villagers on battle-hardened junta troops.

Eight months after deposing Aung San Suu Kyi's government, Myanmar's military regime finds itself mired in a bloody stalemate, unable to crush fighters resisting its rule who are themselves not strong enough to topple a powerful army.

"We need to be wise with our timing and plan," a member of the local "People's Defense Force" told AFP after the September 25 clash in the small northwestern village of Gone Nyin.

Similar clashes between anti-coup militias and junta troops have escalated in recent weeks, along with bomb blasts and targeted killings of those suspected of collaborating with the regime, leading to bloody reprisals on both sides.

Local media last week reported a whole family -- including a 12-year-old child -- had been shot dead for allegedly helping troops during a search for protesters.

Dissidents have also attacked and disabled cell towers belonging to a military-owned company to deprive the junta of revenue.

A parallel government made up largely of lawmakers from Suu Kyi's party has also sought to fan the flames, calling for a "defensive war" against junta troops and assets.

- Shelling -

Villagers have accused soldiers of torching their homes and massacring their neighbors in acts of vengeance directed at those resisting military rule.

Almost the entire population of the western town of Thantlang fled after troops fired artillery shells following clashes with anti-junta fighters last month, a 50-year-old resident told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Terrified inhabitants had used buckets of water to fight a blaze that started after a shell hit a house and threatened to consume others in the neighborhood, he said.

The fire service was not working because the wife of the head of the fire department was hit by a shell fragment during the fighting, he said, with the tide turning thanks to a sudden change in the weather.

"Due to the help of God, it rained that day," he said.

Many made the arduous journey across rivers and hills to cross into India for the relative safety of a refugee camp.

On the other side of the country, villagers in eastern Kayah state also fled army shelling after clashes earlier this week, according to a local anti-junta militia.

More than 1,100 civilians have been killed and some 8,000 arrested since the coup, according to local observers.

The junta says the death toll is much lower and denies its troops have committed massacres and torched homes.

- 'Crush dissent' -

The military has ramped up violence to "crush dissent and prevent the resistance movement from gaining any ground" after the NUG's call to arms, Manny Maung, Myanmar researcher at Human Rights Watch told AFP.

As fighting rages, democracy icon Suu Kyi, 76, is all but absent from the scene, with contact with the outside world limited to meetings with her lawyers ahead of hearings in her trial in a junta court.

Non-violence is a core principle of Suu Kyi's and was a defining characteristic of the democracy movement she led against a previous junta decades ago.

But many in Myanmar now believe violent tactics are the only way to root out military dominance of the country's politics and economy.

"Much of the population is determined to prevent a return to military rule, at the cost of their lives if necessary," said Richard Horsey of the International Crisis Group.

"The stage is set for an extended violent stalemate."

For those caught in Sagaing, which has seen some of the most intense recent clashes, there is no end in sight.

Farmers "cannot grow food on their farms," a Buddhist monk from Kani village, upstream from Gone Nyin, told AFP.

"They have to run and hide often," said the monk, who wished to remain anonymous.

"They are exhausted. But they do not like the army."

Source: Terra Daily.

Link: https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Myanmar_anti-coup_resistance_drags_military_into_bloody_stalemate_999.html.

'Urgent' international response needed in Myanmar after coup: UN

United Nations, United States (AFP)

Sept 29, 2021

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an "urgent" international response to the political crisis created in Myanmar by the February 1 military coup, in a new report released by the United Nations on Wednesday.

In the document on "the situation of human rights of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar," the UN chief also said he feared that the military's grip on power would become increasingly difficult to counter.

"It is urgent to mount a unified international and regional response to help to put Myanmar back on the path to democratic reform," he said in the document dated August 31.

No explanation was given by the UN for the long delay in its publication.

The text was approved by 119 countries, with 36 including China abstaining and one, Belarus, voting against.

The international effort "must be accompanied by the immediate release of President Win Myint, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and other government officials," Guterres said in his report.

There must also be "immediate humanitarian access and assistance, especially to vulnerable communities, among them the Rohingya Muslims, many of whom are living in exile in Bangladesh and elsewhere," he added.

"The opportunity to prevent the military from entrenching its rule could be narrowing," and it is important to support "the democratic aspirations of the people of Myanmar," Guterres continued.

Myanmar has been in the grip of unrest since the coup on February 1.

The military has launched a bloody crackdown on opponents, with more than 1,100 civilians killed and 8,400 imprisoned, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

At the UN, Myanmar's ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun, who was appointed by the former civilian leader Suu Kyi, has retained his country's seat, defying the junta to do so.

He is an outspoken supporter of democracy and supported by the international community. In May, the junta appointed a former general to replace him, but the United Nations has not yet approved the appointment.

He had not spoken by the time the UN's annual General Assembly closed on Monday.

The withdrawal of his appearance came after a high-level UN diplomat told AFP that an agreement had also been reached between the United States, Russia and China preventing him from doing so.

Source: Terra Daily.

Link: https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Urgent_international_response_needed_in_Myanmar_after_coup_UN_999.html.

Aerosols released from Australian bushfires triggers algal blooms

Paris (ESA)

Oct 01, 2021

Australia's deadly bushfires in the 2019-2020 season generated 700 million tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - triggering vast algal blooms in the Southern Ocean. Using satellite data, two new studies published in Nature prove how satellites can illuminate the complicated ways in which Earth is responding to climate change in an era of worsening wildfires.

Australia is no stranger to bushfires, however the 2019-2020 season proved to be unprecedented. As of March 2020, the fires burned an estimated 18.6 million hectares (or 186 000 sq km) destroying over 5000 buildings and killed over 400 people. It was estimated that more than a billion animals perished from the bushfires, with several endangered species facing the risk of total extinction.

Based on a new paper, published in Nature, the extreme bushfires across southeast Australia released 715 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air - more than double the emissions provided by fire emission inventory datasets.

In southeast Australia, the fires were both intense and extensive. As much as 74 000 sq km of mostly eucalyptus forest, roughly 2.5 times the area of Belgium, was affected. Previous estimates from global inventory datasets of wildfire emissions based on satellite fire data and modelled quantities of standing biomass suggested that the fires released on average 275 million tons of carbon dioxide between November 2019 and January 2020.

However, the new analysis indicates that this figure was a gross underestimate. Using data from the Tropomi instrument on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, the research team were able to obtain a more accurate estimate of the emissions.

While Tropomi doesn't directly measure carbon dioxide, the instrument takes daily snapshots of carbon monoxide levels in the atmospheric column beneath it. The research team used these data to calculate a more detailed estimate of the carbon monoxide emissions from the bushfires, which they used as a proxy for calculating carbon dioxide emissions.

The team were able to then conclude that the bushfires released 715 million tons in just three months. This is twice the amount of carbon dioxide that had previously been suggested by fire inventory estimates and surpasses Australia's normal annual bushfire and fossil fuel emissions by 80%.

Ivar R. van der Velde, an environmental scientist at the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, in Utrecht, and at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, commented, "The Tropomi data of atmospheric carbon monoxide concentrations provide us with invaluable information on all kinds of wildfires around the world. When the Australian fires raged in December 2019, we immediately sense that there was very interesting science hidden in the vast amount of Tropomi data.

"The disastrous impact the fires had on the local population and local air quality was already known. What we didn't know yet was the magnitude of the pollutants and greenhouse gases emitted by the fires."

Droughts, driven by climate change, are causing an increased frequency and intensity of wildfires. These have been a global problem since the fires release such an enormous quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, further driving climate change and raising global temperatures, driving a perpetual feedback loop.

The question then remains: what happens to all this carbon dioxide emitted in the long-term?

Another recent paper, also published in Nature, suggests that the aerosols generated by the record Australian bushfire season were 'sucked up' by a gigantic phytoplankton bloom thousands of kilometers away in the Pacific Southern Ocean.

The paper found that during the fires, vast plumes of smoke which are rich in nutrients, were swept away over the ocean. Within days, these aerosols had infused the waters with iron, nourishing phytoplankton - microscopic plants - which then absorbed carbon dioxide equivalent to as much as 95% of the emissions from the fires.

Phytoplankton are known to help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as these tiny organisms consume carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. These extensive phytoplankton blooms are said to have covered an area approximately the size of the Sahara Desert, more than 9.4 million sq km.

The researchers monitored aerosol plumes using data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) which include aerosol information from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). They then compared the aerosol observations to ocean chlorophyll concentrations recording by ESA's Ocean Color Climate Change Initiative project and found peaks in chlorophyll concentrations a few days to weeks later.

Thomas Jackson, an Ocean Color Scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), and a member of ESA's Ocean-Color Climate Change Initiative, commented, "It was an honor to work with this group of international scientists on such an interdisciplinary problem, with each one bringing their expertise to put the whole story together.

"The phytoplankton response to the fallout of the Australian wildfires was impressive in terms of both its geographical extent and the magnitude of the anomaly. Phytoplankton have long been considered sentinels of change, responding at both short and long timescales to changes in the physical and chemical state of the oceans.

It will be interesting to see if 'megablooms' such as these become more common, and what the ecological impacts of such blooms could be, as wildfires and other extreme environmental events become more frequent as a result of climate change."

Shubha Sathyendranath, also from PML and ESA's Ocean Color Climate Change Initiative project, added, "This work highlights the intricate interplay among various components of Earth's climate system. The paper shows how fire, aerosols, winds and phytoplankton interact with each other across thousands of kilometers."

The findings from both studies highlight the significance of wildfires on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations but also how they can directly influence ocean processes. However, more research needs to be undertaken to understand where the carbon taken up by the plankton eventually goes and whether this is re-released into the atmosphere.

Source: Terra Daily.

Link: https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Aerosols_released_from_Australian_bushfires_triggers_algal_blooms_999.html.

Australia's Daintree rainforest returned to Indigenous owners

Brisbane, Australia (AFP)

Sept 30, 2021

Australia's Daintree rainforest has been returned to its Indigenous owners as the government begins to cede control of the world's oldest tropical forest.

The UNESCO World Heritage-listed Daintree National Park -- a 135-million-year-old tropical rainforest -- was handed back to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people in a ceremony in the remote town of Bloomfield on Wednesday.

The vast and steamy jungle is teeming with ancient and rare species -- from a giant clawed cassowary bird to plants that have existed since the age of the dinosaurs.

Eastern Kuku Yalanji traditional owner Chrissy Grant said the move was a historic event that put the community "in control of our own destinies".

In total, 160,000 hectares (about 395,000 acres) of land on the Cape York peninsula -- the northeast tip of Australia -- is being returned to the area's traditional Aboriginal owners as part of reconciliation measures.

British settlers arrived in Australia in 1788, colonizing the continent and leaving Aboriginal groups marginalized.

The national parks will initially be jointly managed with the Queensland state government, before being transferred into the sole care of the Indigenous group.

Grant said a foundation would be created to provide training and employment for local First Nations people in areas such as land management, tourism and research.

Queensland state environment minister Meaghan Scanlon said the return of lands was a key step on the path toward reconciliation after an "uncomfortable and ugly" past.

"The Eastern Kuku Yalanji people's culture is one of the world's oldest living cultures and this agreement recognizes their right to own and manage their country, to protect their culture and to share it with visitors as they become leaders in the tourism industry," she said.

The government has handed back control of 3.8 million hectares on Cape York to Indigenous traditional owners to date, she added.

Source: Terra Daily.

Link: https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Australias_Daintree_rainforest_returned_to_Indigenous_owners_999.html.

Great ape's consonant and vowel-like sounds travel over distance without losing meaning

Warwick UK (SPX)

Oct 01, 2021

Scientists have shown that orangutan call signals believed to be closest to the precursors to human language, travel through forest over long distances without losing their meaning. This throws into question the accepted mathematical model on the evolution of human speech according to researchers from the University of Warwick.

The currently accepted model, developed by mathematicians, predicts that human ancestors strung sounds together in their calls in order to increase their chances of carrying a signal's content to a recipient over distance. Because signal quality degrades over larger distances, it is proposed that human ancestors started linking sounds together to effectively convey a package of information even if it is distorted.

Researchers from the University of Warwick's Department of Psychology set out to collect empirical data to investigate the model. They selected a range of sounds from previously collected audio recordings of orangutan communications. Specific consonant-like and vowel-like signals were played out and re-recorded across the rainforest at set distances of 25, 50, 75 and 100 meters.

The quality and content of the signals received were analyzed. The results are revealed in the study: Orangutan information broadcast via consonant-like and vowel-like calls breaches mathematical models of linguistic evolution published in Biology Letters.

The team found that although the quality of the signal may have degraded, the content of the signal was still intact - even at long distance. In fact the informational characteristics of calls remained uncompromised until the signal became inaudible. This calls into question the existing and accepted theory of language development.

Dr Adriano Lameira, an evolutionary psychologist from the University of Warwick, led the study. He said:

"We used our bank of audio data recordings from our studies of orangutan in Indonesia. We selected the clear vowel-like and consonant-like signals and played them out and re-recorded them over measured distances in a rainforest setting. The purpose of this study was to look at the signals themselves and understand how they behaved as a package of information. This study is neat because it is only across distance that you can hope to assess this error limit theory - it disregards other aspects of communication like gestures, postures, mannerisms and facial expressions.

"The results show that these signals seem to be impervious to distance when it comes to encoding information.

"It calls into question the existing thinking based on the model set out 20 years ago by Harvard scientists. Their work assumes that the signals that our ancestors were using were reaching an error limit - a moment when a signal is received but stops being meaningful. They concluded that our ancestors linked sounds together to increase the chance of content travelling over distance.

"We know sound degrades the further away from the source you are. We have all experienced this effect when shouting for your relative or your friend. They don't hear all the words you say - but they recognize you are talking to them and that it is your voice. By using actual great ape communication sounds, which are the closest to those used by our hominid ancestors, we have shown that although the sound package is being distorted and pushed apart, the content remains unaltered. It's a call to the scientific community to start thinking again about how language evolved."

Dr Adriano Lameira and his team used orangutan calls because they were the first species to diverge from the great ape lineage but are the only great ape which uses the vowel and consonant like sounds in a complex way - giving a parallel with human speech.

His research team is now moving on to deciphering the meaning of their calls. The research involves pulling together all the ways orangutan combine calls, putting the consonant and vowel sounds together to get meaning.

He said: "We still don't know what they are referring to, but right now what is completely clear is that the building blocks of language are present. Although other animal sounds and signals are complex, they are not using the same building blocks. We are focused here on the building of language - exactly the component the great apes use. It gives us the parallel to human language.

"The Harvard model has been the accepted theory for years and if you ask a mathematician if language origins were still a puzzle they'd say no - but evolutionary psychologists are still working on it. But we haven't solved the puzzle either - if anything we have just gone deeper down the rabbit hole.

"We are proposing that mathematical models be applied to the real life data to see what we can come up with together."

Source: Terra Daily.

Link: https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Great_apes_consonant_and_vowel_like_sounds_travel_over_distance_without_losing_meaning_999.html.

Cutting-edge drones displayed at show

Zhuhai, China (XNA)

Oct 01, 2021

Three cutting-edge military drones built by Aviation Industry Corp of China, the nation's leading aircraft maker, have gone on display at the Zhuhai Airshow in Guangdong province, highlighting the huge strides made by the company in manufacturing unmanned craft.

The WZ-7 reconnaissance aircraft, the WZ-8 high-altitude, high-speed reconnaissance drone and the GJ-11 stealth strike drone are among the biggest attractions at the ongoing 13th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, aviation experts said.

The biennial exhibition is China's largest defense technology show.

It is the first time the WZ-7 has been shown to the public, sparking enthusiastic interest from aviation fans. The Chinese military and AVIC have published no information or photos of the craft since 2006, when a conceptual model was unveiled at the Zhuhai Airshow. Even its service code name, WZ-7, was classified.

Called Xianglong, or Soaring Dragon, by industry sources, the WZ-7 is an unusually shaped drone and is regarded as China's answer to the United States' Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, a high-altitude, long-endurance craft with surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

Featuring an innovative "joined tandem wing" design, the WZ-7's aerodynamic configuration is different from all other Chinese manned and unmanned planes-It has a main conventional swept wing joined with a smaller forward swept wing, which makes it look like a traditional Chinese kite.

The drone is 14-meters-long, 3.9-meters-tall and has a long wingspan of 22.8 meters, according to AVIC.

Equipped with infrared and optical imagers, it is tasked with providing imagery intelligence to the People's Liberation Army for strategic and tactical reconnaissance, the State-owned defense conglomerate said.

A special characteristic of the WZ-7 is that it is only the second unmanned aircraft in the world that is able to fly at the same altitude and speeds as commercial aircraft, the company said.

Fu Qianshao, a retired equipment researcher with the PLA Air Force, said the WZ-7 has extensively improved the PLA Air Force's reconnaissance capability and has a proven service record.

The WZ-7 is one of the largest unmanned reconnaissance drones in the world and can fly higher and faster than the RQ-4 Global Hawk.

The WZ-8 and GJ-11 were first shown to the public at the National Day parade in October 2019 in Beijing. The Zhuhai Airshow is the first to present the public an up-close view of them.

According to AVIC, the WZ-8 integrates aircraft and spacecraft technologies and travels in near space, the part of Earth's atmosphere 20 to 100 kilometers above sea level. The altitudes are above where commercial airliners fly, but lower than where satellites orbit.

Source: Space War.

Link: https://www.spacewar.com/reports/Cutting_edge_drones_displayed_at_show_999.html.

In first, ocean drone captures footage from inside hurricane

Washington (AFP)

Sept 30, 2021

In a world first, US scientists on Thursday piloted a camera-equipped ocean drone that looks like a robotic surfboard into a Category 4 hurricane barreling across the Atlantic Ocean.

Dramatic footage released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed the small craft battling 50-feet (15 meter) high waves and winds of over 120 mph (190 kph) inside Hurricane Sam.

The autonomous vehicle is called a "Saildrone" and was developed by a company with the same name.

Powered by wind and 23 feet (seven meters) in length, it carries a specially designed "hurricane wing," designed to withstand punishing conditions as it collects data to help scientists learn more about one of Earth's most destructive forces.

Saildrone's website indicates it can record measurements like wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, temperature, salinity, humidity and more.

"We expect to improve forecast models that predict rapid intensification of hurricanes," said NOAA scientist Greg Foltz in a statement.

"Rapid intensification, when hurricane winds strengthen in a matter of hours, is a serious threat to coastal communities," and data collected from uncrewed systems will help improve models, he added.

Scientists warn that climate change is warming the ocean and making hurricanes more powerful, posing an increasing risk to coastal communities.

Source: Terra Daily.

Link: https://www.terradaily.com/reports/In_first_ocean_drone_captures_footage_from_inside_hurricane_999.html.