Bees have their own built-in TomTom

Sydney - Rather than buzzing around in a random search for nectar, bees think carefully about their foraging trips - and even calculate the amount of energy they need to expend for a given return. They can also convey this intelligence to other members of the hive by waggling their bottoms a particular way, a researcher at Sydney's Macquarie University said.

"The bee brain has an incredibly simple make-up and yet it appears to possess an onboard calorimeter or stopwatch," Andrew Barron said. "Our study showed that bees can separately calculate distance travelled and foraging efficiency, and communicate both independently using different elements of their dance language."

Barron set up an experiment to see how well bees can estimate energy expenditure and whether they could convey this information to other bees.

He built a 20-metre tunnel, and one half that length, placing feeders at the end of the tunnels to attract the bees. To fool the bees into believing that the closest feeder was actually the one furthest one away, he rigged up a device creating that optical illusion.

"When bees return from a foraging expedition they let the other bees in the colony know where they have been and how good the nectar was by performing what's known as the waggle dance," Barron said.

"The waggle-dance performed by the bees in this study indicated that they were fooled by the illusion and believed that the feeder in the 10-meter tunnel was furthest away. Yet they could still tell somehow that they weren't using up as much energy by flying to that feeder - they favored that one anyway and advised the other bees to do the same."

The study, written up in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, argued that the bees were definitely not using distance alone to estimate return on effort. However, the study didn't offer an alternative hypothesis.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301166,bees-have-their-own-built-in-tomtom.html.

British citizen faces imminent execution in China

Beijing - Family members of a British citizen due to be executed for drug smuggling have arrived in China to make a final plea for clemency to authorities, a rights group said. Akmal Shaikh, 53, is due to be executed on Tuesday morning in Beijing after he was convicted of trafficking 4 kilograms of heroin to Urumqi in China's western Xinjiang region.

"We plead for his life," his cousin Soohail Shaikh said in a petition that is to be delivered Monday to the court in Urumqi, as well as to President Hu Jintao, the National People's Congress, and Supreme People's Court, Britain-based activist group Reprieve, said.

Shaikh's supporters have argued that the father-of-three suffers from a mental illness, bi-polar disorder, and that he was manipulated by a drug gang into smuggling the heroin.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown earlier in the month had called for clemency. However, Shaikh's final appeal was turned down on December 21, Reprieve said.

China maintains that Shaikh's trial was fair, and that there was no evidence that he was suffering from a mental illness.

"During the entire process, the litigation rights and the relevant rights and interests of the defendant were fully respected and guaranteed. China has offered prompt consular information to the United Kingdom and arranged consular visits," the state-run China Daily news quoted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu as saying.

In an earlier report, the ministry said that Shaikh himself had denied a family history of mental illness.

Under Article 347 of China's Criminal Law, for those found guilty of smuggling, trafficking, or transporting heroin, the threshold for a death sentence is 50 grams.

But, according to Article 18 of the Criminal Law, a mental patient can have his or her criminal responsibility exempted.

Shaikh's family were asking "that a full mental health evaluation be conducted to assess the impact of his mental illness, and that recognition be made that he is not as culpable as those who might, under Chinese law, be eligible for the death penalty."

If Shaikh's execution is carried out, it will be the first execution of an European Union national in China in 50 years, local media said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301168,british-citizen-faces-imminent-execution-in-china.html.

South Korea hopes to build nuclear power plants in Asia

Seoul - South Korea hopes to have gained a foothold in the global market for nuclear power plants by winning a milestone contract with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), South Korea's president said. The UAE said Sunday that it had chosen a South Korean-led consortium for a 20-billion-dollar deal to build four nuclear power plants to be completed by 2020 - the largest deal in the energy sector this year.

The South Koreans' safety record and competitive price were cited as giving them the edge over a General Electric-Hitachi Ltd team-up and a French consortium that included Electricite de France and Areva.

"I hope this will be a start to reviving the old Middle East boom of the 1970s when South Korean construction companies worked to build infrastructure of roads, dams and ports in the Middle East," President Lee Myung Bak was quoted as saying by the Yonhap News Agency.

Under the deal announced in Abu Dhabi, Korea Electric Power Corp is to lead a group that includes Westinghouse Electric Company, a US subsidiary of Japan's Toshiba Corp, in designing, building and helping to operate four 1,400-megawatt nuclear power plants for the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation.

Lee said he hoped the deal would help South Korea win orders from Asia. "This deal will also be a stepping stone for South Korea to build some of the 430 units to be built around the world until the end of 2030," Lee was quoted as saying.

South Korea is eying Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia as well as Jordan and Turkey as the next likely countries to build nuclear power plants.

"We are in talks with Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia to build nuclear power plants," Park Ki Chull, head of state-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co, was quoted as saying.

South Korea operates 20 nuclear power plants and has eight units under construction. "We are planning to construct about 10 units until 2030 so that we can generate 59 per cent of our electricity with nuclear power plants until then," Park said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301175,south-korea-hopes-to-build-nuclear-power-plants-in-asia.html.

Insurgent violence rises in eastern India

New Delhi - Parts of eastern Indian states Orissa and Bihar were tense Monday as Maoist militants carried out a series of attacks targeting state-owned transport and facilities, news reports said. The rebels torched four passenger buses and triggered explosions to destroy a communication tower and a forest department office in parts of southern Orissa, ahead of their statewide shutdown Monday to protest "police excesses," the PTI news agency reported.

Armed guerrillas forced passengers off public buses in Gajapati district around midnight before setting the vehicles ablaze.

They also blew up a forest department office and mobile tower in the Malkangiri district.

The militants blocked roads at different places in the districts by felling trees on the roads, the IANS news agency reported. Police and the local administration was placed on high alert in the region fearing further attacks.

Rebels also blew up a state-run school in Bihar's Aurangabad district on Sunday morning, police said.

Maoist rebels claim they are leading an armed rebellion to secure the rights of India's poor and marginalized and operate in some of the poorest regions in the country.

Insurgents are active in 20 of India's 28 states and have been described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the gravest internal security threat facing India.

More than 2,700 people including civilians, security personnel and rebels have been killed in the insurgency since 2006, according to the Home Ministry.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301188,insurgent-violence-rises-in-eastern-india.html.

Philippine troops guard against tourists around erupting volcano

Manila - Philippine troops were dispatched Monday to guard against foreign and local tourists venturing into danger zones around an erupting volcano in an eastern province, officials said. Captain Razaleight Bansawan, a military spokesman, said local guides have been taking tourists to Mayon volcano in Albay province, 360 kilometers south-east of Manila, despite warnings of a possible explosion.

"A platoon of soldiers were deployed to beef up the present strength of soldiers manning six military checkpoints in the south-east sector of Mayon," he said.

Bansawan said Albay provincial Governor Joey Salceda vowed to take "punitive actions" against local tourist guides who were defying his order to stop all human activity in the danger zones around Mayon.

Mayon, famous for its nearly symmetrical cone, has been erupting since December 14, forcing nearly 50,000 residents to flee their homes and spend Christmas in cramped evacuation centres.

State volcanologists warned that the volcano appears to be gearing up for a explosion.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said it recorded at least seven ash explosion overnight, with the columns reaching a maximum height of 2 kilometers above the summit.

Mayon was also continuously ejecting fiery rock fragments, while lava flowed more than 5 kilometers downslope in at least four sections of the volcano.

The 2,472-meter volcano has erupted about 50 times since 1616. It last erupted in July 2006, forcing more than 30,000 people to flee their homes.

Mayon's most violent eruption was in 1814 when more than 1,200 people were killed and a town was buried in volcanic mud. An eruption in 1993 killed 79 people.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301189,philippine-troops-guard-against-tourists-around-erupting-volcano.html.

Three rescued from fire at Malaysian embassy - Summary

Wellington - Three people were hospitalized after being rescued when fire broke out in Malaysia's diplomatic mission in the Wellington suburb of Brooklyn on Monday evening. A Fire Communications spokesman said the ground floor of the High Commission - the British Commonwealth equivalent of an embassy- was "well alight" when fire engines arrived, the Stuff news website reported.

The blaze was quickly put out and three people who had to be assisted from the building were treated for smoke inhalation and taken to hospital for observation, news reports said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301196,three-rescued-from-fire-at-malaysian-embassy--summary.html.

Thai troops raid camp, deport 4,000 Hmong to Laos

By JERRY HARMER, Associated Press Writer

PHETCHABUN, Thailand – Thailand sent army troops with shields and batons to evict more than 4,000 ethnic Hmong asylum-seekers Monday and send them back to Laos despite strong objections from the U.S. and rights groups who fear they will face persecution.

Under tight security, all 4,371 of the Hmong were loaded onto covered military trucks and driven out of the camp by late afternoon toward buses waiting near the Lao border, Thai authorities said. Journalists kept at a distance from the camp could see many children inside the trucks.

Col. Thana Charuwat said Thai troops "didn't even touch" the Hmong who offered no resistance as they were taken from the camp.

With the eviction under way, the United States called for it to stop.

"The United States strongly urges Thai authorities to suspend this operation," U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in a statement, noting that the United Nations and Thailand in the past had deemed that many of the Hmong in this group were "in need of protection because of the threats they might face in Laos."

The Hmong, an ethnic minority group from Laos' rugged mountains, helped U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. Many Hmong fought under CIA advisers during the so-called "secret war" in Laos before it fell to the communists in 1975.

Since the communist victory, more than 300,000 Laotians, mostly Hmong, are known to have fled to Thailand. Most were either repatriated to Laos or resettled in third countries, particularly the United States. Smaller numbers found refuge in France, Australia and Canada.

The Hmong claim they have been persecuted by the Lao government, but Washington has said it has no plans to resettle more of them in the U.S.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, commending the smooth operation Monday, said that Thailand had received "confirmation from the Lao government that these Hmong will have a better life."

The Thai government claims most of the Hmong are economic migrants who entered the country illegally and have no claims to refugee status. The group was being held at an overcrowded camp in northern Thailand that the government wants to close.

Thana, the Thai army's coordinator for the operation, denied an allegation of brutality by one human rights group, which said callers from inside the camp had used their mobile phones to report violence and bloodshed.

"There has been no violence and nobody has been injured," Thana said, noting it was impossible for anyone in the camp to call outside because the military had jammed mobile phone signals.

Thana said 5,000 soldiers, officials and civilian volunteers were involved in the eviction. He said the troops carried no firearms and that their shields and batons met international standards for dealing with situations in which people are being moved against their will.

"There was no resistance from the repatriated Hmong because we used psychological tactics to talk with them, to assure them that they will have a better life in Laos as the Lao government has confirmed," he told reporters.

Journalists and independent observers were barred from the camp and were allowed no closer than a press center about 7 miles (12 kilometers) away.

The Hmong were driven out of the camp in military trucks and were then to be put on 110 buses going to the Thai border town of Nong Khai, and then across to Laos, heading to the Paksane district in the central province of Bolikhamsai, Thana said.

Laos Foreign Ministry spokesman Khenthong Nuanthasing rejected international concerns, saying the government has a "humanitarian policy" for resettling the Hmong.

He told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that the group would initially be placed in a temporary shelter and then housed in two "development villages" — in Bolikhamsai province and in Vientiane province — where each family will receive a house and a plot of land that international observers will be welcome to inspect.

New York-based Human Rights Watch on Monday called the deportation "appalling" and a low point for Abhisit's government.

"As a result of what Thailand has done to the Lao Hmong today, Prime Minister Abhisit sinks Thailand's record on contempt for human rights and international law to a new low," said Sunai Phasuk, a Thai representative for Human Rights Watch.