U.S. Steps Up Fight Against Poaching and Wildlife Trafficking

Image Credit: KAREL PRINSLOO, EYEVINE/REDUX

With the slaughter of elephants and rhinos in Africa at record levels, lawmakers in the U.S. are stepping up efforts to save some of the world’s most iconic species.

An Obama administration task force is expected to make recommendations on how the federal government do more to fight wildlife trafficking, a trade that largely revolves around elephant tusks and rhino horns, by the end of the month.

On Thursday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to discuss legislation to strengthen law enforcement efforts against wildlife trafficking by bolstering resources, improving information sharing among agencies, and stiffening penalties for traffickers. A similar bill is working its way through the House of Representatives.

Last month, more than one ton of confiscated elephant ivory was crushed in Times Square, which followed similar events in Asia, Europe, and Africa and came on the heels of new ivory sale bans in New York and New Jersey.

And on Wednesday, a group of high-profile conservationists, lawmakers, and officials convened in Washington for a wildlife trafficking summit at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Addressing wildlife trafficking is a rare bipartisan issue in Congress, says Ginette Hemley, senior vice president for wildlife conservation with the World Wildlife Fund.

But for now, the slaughter continues. More than 100 elephants are being killed across Africa every day. Since 1989, the population of African elephants has fallen by half, to about 500,000. Similar declines have been seen with rhinos.

The killings are fueled by a demand for tusks and horns in Asia that has made ivory and rhino horn more valuable than gold or cocaine. Illicit wildlife trafficking generates $8 to $10 billion annually, Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), the chair of the subcommittee on African Affairs, said at the Wednesday summit. It also threatens international security through links to drug trafficking, violence, corruption, and terrorism.

“The big question is where do we focus our time, on reducing demand in Asia, finance efforts, or community-based efforts?” asked Flake. “My feeling is that it will be a combination of those.”

Ivory in the U.S. 

Demand for wildlife products has been driven largely by a rising middle class in China and Southeast Asia, whose ranks increasingly desire ivory, horns, and other materials for trinkets and medicinal products that Western scientists say don’t really work.

Although the Chinese market is responsible for an estimated 70 percent of global poaching, “we’ve also got an ivory problem here in the U.S.,” says Hemley,  noting that the U.S. is considered the world’s second biggest market for ivory products.

Cleaning up the domestic ivory market will go a long way to stopping the slaughter and will send a vital message to Asian countries that the U.S. is serious about the problem, she says.

Read Full Article: National Geographic

Highlights of the Iran nuclear deal

Image Credit: Aljazeera

VIENNA (AP) — Iran and six world powers reached a landmark deal on Tuesday meant to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. A look at the main points:

—ENRICHMENT: Iran will reduce the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges it has from almost 20,000 to 6,104, and reduce the number of those in use from some 10,000 to about half that. Those limits will be in place for 10 years, then gradually relaxed over the next three. Iran also commits to using only its current models, rather than more advanced centrifuges it had wanted to install. Centrifuges spin uranium to concentrate it into levels that can range from reactor fuel to the fissile core of a nuclear weapon.

—STOCKPILE: Iran has already rid itself of stockpiled uranium that was enriched to one step from weapons-grade material. It is now committed to reducing its remaining stockpile — less-enriched uranium that is harder to use for nuclear arms — from about five tons to 300 kilograms (less than 700 pounds) for 15 years. U.S. officials say that at this level it would take Iran at least a year to enrich enough uranium for a nuclear weapon.

—UNDERGROUND SITE: Iran committed to convert its Fordo enrichment site — dug deep into a mountainside and thought impervious to air attack — into a research center. The site will still house centrifuges but they will make medical isotopes instead of enriching uranium, and there will be less than a tenth as many of them as there originally were.

—TRANSPARENCY: Iran will give more access to its nuclear program to the U.N. nuclear agency. If that agency identifies a suspicious site, an arbitration panel with a Western majority will decide whether Iran has to give the agency access within 24 days. All sites, including military ones, may be inspected if the agency has solid evidence of undeclared nuclear activity.

—REACTORS AND REPROCESSING: Iran must redesign its nearly built reactor at Arak so it can’t produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

—SANCTIONS: All U.S. and European Union nuclear-related sanctions will be suspended after experts have verified that Iran is hewing to its commitments. If at any time Iran fails to fulfill its obligations, those sanctions are supposed to snap back into place. An arms embargo will stand for five years and restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programs for eight.

Read Full Article: AP

Which States Are Searching for Ways to Save the World?

Image Credit: Jake Wyman/Getty Images

There’s a lot of talk about “renewable energy” and “being green,” but who’s actually putting their money where their mouth is?

The team at Save On Energy, a resource tool that lines up the best energy options for consumers, decided to dig into some data and see which states care the most about the environment, based on residents’ online searches.

Using Google Trends data, the team looked up search phrases such as “how to save energy,” “eco-friendly,” and “electric cars” to find out what residents were looking for in terms of ways to help the environment.

Not surprisingly, California ranked high on phrases like “electric cars,” “carpool,” and “eco-friendly,” but there were some surprises too, said Amanda Milligan, account manager at Save On Energy.

“Seeing Georgia in the top five for searching ‘how to reuse’ and ‘electric cars’ was unexpected,” Milligan said.

It was also unexpected how many states didn’t register on Google’s analytics at all, she said.

“You have to have a certain amount of searches of a certain phrase for Google to even track it, and some states didn’t have much eco-friendly Googling going on,” Milligan said. One such example was the phrase “how to install solar panels.” California was the only state that registered enough searches for Google to track it.

“It’s a way to present who’s looking for answers to environmental topics in an unbiased way,” Milligan said.

So, Why Should You Care? Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires that people switch from fossil fuels to carbon-free sources of energy and trade in their gasoline-powered vehicles for battery-powered ones.

Here are a few maps showing the top five states searching for topics including “how to reuse,” “wind power,” “solar power,” and “electric cars.” To see Save On Energy’s full results, click here.

“Reusing”

(Map: Courtesy SaveOnEnergy)

“Wind Power”

(Map: Courtesy SaveOnEnergy)

“Solar Power”

(Map: Courtesy SaveOnEnergy)

Read Full Article: Take Part

Stress from heat, drought on fish spurs push to reduce kills

Image Credit: Bob Pennell/The Mail Tribune via AP, File

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Drought and record hot weather are producing lethal conditions for salmon and trout in rivers across the West.

A recent survey released Wednesday of the lower reaches of 54 rivers in Oregon, California and Washington by the conservation group Wild Fish Conservancy showed nearly three-quarters had temperatures higher than 70 degrees, considered potentially deadly for salmon and trout.

Low river flows from the record low winter snowpack, which normally feeds rivers through the summer, combined with record hot weather have created a “perfect storm” of bad conditions for salmon and trout, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supervisory fisheries biologist Rich Johnson.

“It’s unprecedented, I’d say,” Johnson said.

Oregon Climate Center Associate Director Kathie Dello says the entire West Coast saw record low snowpack last winter, leading to low rivers this summer. All three states had record high temperatures for June, with Oregon breaking the record by 3 degrees, and the three-month outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is for continued warmer and drier-than-normal weather made worse by the ocean-warming condition known as El Nino, she added.

“This is the worst case scenario playing out right now, a warm winter and then a warm and dry summer,” she said.

The Willamette River saw scores of dead salmon in June.

This week, state biologists examined about 50 dead sockeye salmon in the mouth of the Deschutes River. State fisheries biologist Rod French said they appeared to have been infected with a gill rot disease associated with warm water, and had probably left the warm waters of the Columbia River in search of cooler water.

In California, inland fisheries manager Roger Bloom says they are considering emergency fishing closures on several rivers so that fish weakened by the warm water do not die from being played by an angler, even if they are released. They include the lower Merced, the American and the Klamath.

In Washington, two federal fish hatcheries in the Columbia Gorge released 6 million juvenile salmon two weeks early in the Columbia River, in hopes they would have a better chance of reaching the ocean before temperatures got even warmer, said Johnson.

“It’s just a perfect storm of bad weather conditions for salmon,” he said. “Pray for rain and snow.”

River flows are so low, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is sending out crews to clear out impromptu dams people build with rocks to create a pool to cool off in, so the salmon can swim upstream to spawn, said department drought coordinator Teresa Scott. Rivers are at levels normally not expected until September, and no one knows if they will drop even further.

“This is such a huge magnitude compared to previous droughts,” she said. “Records available from before don’t come close to preparing us for what we are encountering this year.”

In Oregon, deputy fisheries chief Bruce McIntosh says they have imposed closures around cool water areas where salmon seek refuge at the mouths of tributaries flowing into the lower Umpqua River, but he did do not anticipate any more closures unless things get worse.

“Certainly we’ve had significant droughts in the past, such as the late 70’s,” he said. “But the challenge this year has been not only are there drought conditions, we’re having August temperatures in June. That combination we really have not seen before.”

Liz Hamilton of the Northwest Sportfishing Association, said closures are not needed, because when temperatures get too warm, fish go off the bite, and anglers quit fishing anyway.

Read Full Article: AP

America challenges Japan to real-life battle of giant robots

Image Credit: MegaBots/S.N. Jacobson

Finally, let the robot wars begin! MegaBots is laying the foundation for what could be the prequel to the giant mech vs. giant monster flick “Pacific Rim.” The Boston-based company on Tuesday challenged Japan’s Suidobashi Heavy Industries, creator of the Kuratas giant robot, to a duel against its Megabot Mark 2.

If you’re having as a hard time as I repressing the geek-gasm over the news, you might not want to watch the video below from MegaBots (complete with Japanese subtitles) that highlights both giant, pilotable fighting robots before issuing the official trans-Pacific challenge.

“Suidobashi, we have a giant robot, you have a giant robot; you know what needs to happen,” says MegaBots co-founder Matt Oehrlein in the video, while wearing an American flag as a cape. “We challenge you to a duel.”

According to the video, the Mark 2 weighs six tons and is piloted by a team of two capable of firing three-pound paint cannonballs up to 100 miles per hour. Kuratas is lighter at just 4.5 tons but boasts a pair of Gatling guns and advanced targeting system with a heads-up display.

Oehrlein says both teams will need time to make battle modifications. He tells Suidobashi to name a battlefield where their giant robots can face off in one year. No word yet on whether the Japanese team has accepted the challenge.

I’d be happy to coordinate hosting the battle here in New Mexico if that’s what it takes to make sure this happens. I definitely know we’ve got some giant robot enthusiasts in the neighborhood, and who doesn’t love a good giant robot battle on a Southwestern summer day?

Read Full Article: CNET

California’s Drought Is Part of a Much Bigger Water Crisis

Image Credit: Madison

Why do I keep hearing about the California drought, if it’s the Colorado River that we’re “killing”?
Pretty much every state west of the Rockies has been facing a water shortage of one kind or another in recent years.  California’s is a severe, but relatively short-term, drought. But the Colorado River basin—which provides critical water supplies for seven states including California—is the victim of a slower-burning catastrophe entering its 16th year. Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and California all share water from the Colorado River, a hugely important water resource that sustains 40 million people in those states, supports 15 percent of the nation’s food supply, and fills two of largest water reserves in the country.

The severe shortages of rain and snowfall have hurt California’s $46 billion agricultural industry and helped raise national awareness of the longer-term shortages that are affecting the entire Colorado River basin. But while the two problems have commonalities and have some effect on one another, they’re not exactly the same thing.

Just how bad is the drought in California right now?
Most of California is experiencing “extreme to exceptional drought,” and the crisis has now entered its fourth year. This month, signaling how serious the current situation is, state officials announced the first cutback to farmers’ water rights since 1977, and ordered cities and towns to cut water use by as much as 36 percent. Those who don’t comply with the cuts will face fines, but some farmers are already ignoring the new rules, or challenging them in court.

The drought shows no sign of letting up any time soon, and the state’s agricultural industry is suffering. A recent study by U.C. Davis researchers projected that the drought would cost California’s economy $2.7 billion in 2015 alone.

In addition to the economic cost, the drought has subtle and not-so-subtle effects on flora and fauna throughout the region. This current drought may be contributing to the spread of the West Nile virus, and it’s threatening populations of geese, ducks and Joshua trees. Dry, hot periods can exacerbate wildfires, while water shortages are making firefighters’ jobs even harder.

And a little bit of rain won’t help. NOAA scientists say it could take several years of average or above-average rainfall before California’s water supply can return to anything close to normal.

What about a lot of rain? Couldn’t that end the drought in California and across the West?
Not necessarily. A half-decade of torrential rains might bail California out of its crisis, but the larger West’s problems are more structural and systemic.  “Killing the Colorado” has shown that people are entitled to more water from the Colorado than has flowed through it, on average, over the last 110 years. Meanwhile much of the water is lost, overused or wasted, stressing both the Colorado system, and trickling down to California, which depends on the Colorado for a big chunk of its own supply. Explosive urban growth matched with the steady planting of water-thirsty crops – which use the majority of the water – don’t help. Arcane laws actually encourage farmers to take even more water from the Colorado River and from California’s rivers than they actually need, and federal subsidies encourage farmers to plant some of the crops that use the most water. And, as ProPublica has reported, it seems that “the engineering that made settling the West possible may have reached the bounds of its potential”—meaning that even the big dams and canals we built to ferry all this water may now be causing more harm than good.

Water use policies—perhaps more than nature—have caused the water crisis in the West. As the former Arizona governor and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt told ProPublica: “There is enough water in the West‚ [but] there are all kinds of agriculture efficiencies that have not been put into place.”

While there are mixed views on whether climate change can be blamed for California’s drought, a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report found climate change was not the cause. Global warming has caused excessive heat that may have worsened the drought’s effects, but it isn’t necessarily to blame for the lack of rain. It’s true that recent years have yielded much less rain and snow than previous times in history, the NOAA report explains, but that’s just a result of “natural variance” and not necessarily because of man-made pollution. But in both California and the larger Colorado River basin, mismanagement of the water supply has left the West more vulnerable to both short and long-term changes in climate.

What do you mean by mismanagement?              
When officials divvied up rights to Colorado River water nearly a century ago, it happened to be a wetter period than usual. The result? The states vastly overestimated the river’s annual flow. Today, the river’s reserves are especially low and states are stillclaiming the same amount of water from the Colorado River that they always have — which is 1.4 trillion gallons a year more than the river actually produces. This sort of oversubscription is similar in California, where historic water rights give many farms first rights to California’s streams and rivers, and haven’t been adjusted as the state’s population has increased and its cities have grown.

Wait—don’t we all have equal water rights?
Well, if you believe Steve Yuhas, a resident of affluent Rancho Santa Fe, California, “we’re not all equal when it comes to water.” (Yuhas made the unfortunate mistake of complaining on social media that he and his neighbors deserve more water because they pay more property taxes, and “should not be forced to‚ golf on brown lawns,” and was pilloried by readers of the Washington Post article that drew attention to his comments.) But actually, every state has its own laws about who gets how much water—and it has nothing to do with property taxes.

To the uninitiated, “water law” is arcane and confusing—hence the need for, yes, water lawyers). Sometimes, water law seems to defy common sense. For instance, in Colorado, if you put a barrel in your yard to collect rainwater for your plants, you are technically “stealing” that water right out of the sky; under water law,” nearly every drop is spoken for.”

But the underlying rule of water in the West is that the first people to show up and claim it were the first people to get it, and everyone who came after took a place further back in line. Called “prior appropriation,” this remains the dominant thread in Western water issues, more than 100 years later.

So where is all this water going?
For all of the warnings people in the West get about taking shorter showers and turning off sprinklers, the fact remains that agriculture uses the most water, by far. Farming and agriculture use more than 70 percent of the water that flows from the Colorado River to the seven river basin states.

In addition to those crops, cotton is one of the thirstiest crops a farmer can grow,especially in a desert. As it happens, many of the crops that use less water entitle farmers to fewer federal subsidies, and so farmers don’t have much of an incentive to switch crops. Though cotton production has dropped steeply in California, since 1995, California farmers have gotten $3 billion in federal subsidies to grow it. On top of subsidies, ” Use it or Lose It” clauses in state water laws actually encourage farmers to flood their fields with much more water than they need lest they lose the right to that amount of water in the future.

Urban development is also a big factor. Las Vegas has grown faster than any other city in the West, its footprint doubling in the past 25 years as more and more people have moved there. It is far from the only urban strain on the West’s water supplies, but its approach to growth is emblematic of cities from Phoenix to San Diego. Denver’s metro population hit 2.7 million in 2013, more than three times what it was in 1960. For all its problems, Las Vegas pioneered ways to save water and incentivize efficiency more than a decade ago that Los Angeles is only beginning to adopt today.

What is California doing to address its water problems? Is it working?
Californians do seem to be answering the call to use less water in their daily lives after Gov. Jerry Brown imposed cutbacks in March. The state’s “water czar,” Felicia Marcus, continues to crack down on water waste, and creative ad campaigns are finding varying degrees of success. The state has cut deliveries of water to farmers through the state and federal aqueduct systems, and is now beginning to tackle the tough tasks of reforming water rights and curtailing some of the state’s most senior users.

The federal government is also sending millions of dollars in “drought aid,” and local counties are exploring how to desalinate ocean water to replenish water supplies. Some enterprising individuals are even proposing to revive old plans to tow icebergs or haul water down from Alaska.

Meanwhile, like any prolonged crisis, the drought is drawing out the best and worst in people. Some people are conscientiously conserving water in their homes in little ways—by not washing their cars or by capturing shower water from inside for their gardens outside, for instance. The drought has also inspired innovation in water conservation for restaurants, pools and lawns. Meanwhile, others have been caught stealing water from their neighbors and drought-shaming campaigns have multiplied online.

To the extent that climate change exacerbates the drought, California’s efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions may eventually help. In 2006 the state passed a law mandating that it buy less coal-fired energy. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is now also selling its stake in the Navajo Generating Station to invest in clean energy alternatives, though the plant (which generates more climate-warming gases than almost any other plant in the nation) will continue pumping Colorado River water to Arizona.

Will California cutbacks alleviate the larger Colorado River problem?
California uses almost one-third of the entire Colorado River flow, having a larger share than any other Colorado River basin state. California gets 16 percent of its surface water—water that comes from snowpack, streams and rivers—from the Colorado River via two huge aqueducts. The California Aqueduct runs beneath mountains into Riverside County and eventually toward Los Angeles, providing a substantial supply for both L.A. and San Diego. The All-American Canal moves water along the tail-end of the Colorado River near the Mexican border, nourishing one of the state’s most valuable agriculture areas, Imperial County, where a large proportion of the nation’s winter fruits and vegetables are grown.

Of the seven basin states, California holds the most senior legal rights to the Colorado, which entitle it to keep drawing water even as Lake Mead runs dry and the rest of the Colorado River states suffer through shortages. That means in the short term, not much that California does will change the situation on the Colorado, unless it were to voluntarily surrender more of its entitlement to the river. But should Colorado River shortages worsen to the point that the states ever re-negotiate that division of water, a reduction of California’s Colorado River water rights could have a brutal impact on California’s remaining supplies. Officials in California, like every other state in the region, are now facing a “new normal,” as nature places new limits on the state’s previously unchecked growth.

I don’t live in California or the West, so why is this my problem?
California grows and exports a majority of the fruits and nuts eaten by the rest of the country, so water shortages there affect food supply everywhere. Calculations by the Pacific Institute indicate that, by eating food grown in California, each American indirectly uses more than 300 gallons of the state’s water each week. Almonds, which require a comparatively huge amount of water to produce, have become the most visible scapegoat for an enormous problem of which they are only one small part. One almond takes almost an entire gallon of water to produce—but so does a tiny slice of cantaloupe, four strawberries, two florets of broccoli, or a fraction of an egg.

In fact, some of the biggest “water hogs,” indirectly, are meat and dairy. Cows and chickens and other animals eat a lot of crops, which in turn require a lot of water. So it takes 86 gallons of water to make just 1.75 ounces of beef. Some research has suggested that the country’s meat industries create such a high demand for water-thirsty feed crops, that if every American ate meat one less day a week, it could save as much water as flows through the Colorado River in an entire year.

Read Full Article: Scientific American

Why China warned the US to stay away

A group of islands in the South China Sea may not sound particularly significant, but these recently-formed pieces of land could be the key to Beijing’s future military strategy.

I suspect that until a few weeks ago the South China Sea was not a place most people around the world gave much thought to, or any thought at all. The Spratly Islands even less so. Unless you are a China geek you’ve probably hardly heard of them. But google Spratly islands today and you will find a sudden deluge of articles, all proclaiming the same sort of sentiment: “China and the US are on a collision course and it could end in war!”

Could it? Probably not, not anytime soon anyway. But what’s going on in the South China Sea is still very significant.

This of course is all about China, or rather China’s intentions.

For the best part of two millennia China was the dominant power in Asia. But then along came European expansion and the industrial revolution and the arrival on China’s shores of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and of course eventually the British. China was brought to its knees, carved up, its palaces burned, its people hooked on opium supplied by Britain. Then came a revolution, a civil war, a world war, another revolution and 30 years of Maoist madness.

Now, finally, is China emerging from those two centuries of chaos. It is once again wealthy, united and strong. None of us really knows what that will mean. One reason is that China’s secretive Communist Party leadership never tells anybody its intentions.

And so we are left to read the “China tea leaves”, look at what China is doing and try to work out its intentions.

And so that brings me to the South China Sea. The southern part of it, close to the Philippines, is dotted with treacherous coral reefs, rocks and sandbars. Only a handful are big enough to be called islands. China, Vietnam and the Philippines have been quarrelling over who owns them for decades. But last year there was a sudden and dramatic change.

Aerial photos taken by the Philippine navy showed a fleet of dredgers anchored off one of the Chinese-controlled reefs. They were seen pumping millions of tonnes of material on to the reefs to form an artificial island.

A media frenzy ensued in which I played my own small part. I think I have a fair claim to being the first Western journalist to see the strange new Chinese islands with my own eyes. Last July I set out on a Filipino fishing boat to try to find them. One morning, ploughing through a heavy swell 300 nautical miles off the Philippine coast, we suddenly saw land ahead where my chart said there shouldn’t have been any. Even the latest Philippine navy flights had not detected any work on this particular reef. But there it was – a brand new, yellowish piece of land at a place called Gaven Reef.

This year China’s work on the islands has accelerated dramatically. More than 2,000 acres of new land has been created on six reefs. In April fresh photos showed the outlines of a runway beginning to be laid on one.

So what is China up to? Some pro-Beijing scholars have tried to claim the islands are for both military and civilian use. There will be lighthouses and shelters for fishermen they say.

Well maybe, but Beijing is not spending billions of dollars on huge land reclamation hundreds of miles from its own coast to help fishermen. These islands are military and strategic. China is alone in claiming the whole of the South China Sea. Now it is creating “facts on the ground”. That runway is not for tourist flights.

A few weeks ago a US surveillance plane deliberately flew close to the new islands. The crew recorded the immediate and angry Chinese response.

“Foreign military aircraft, this is Chinese navy,” the operator announced, “You are approaching our military alert zone. Leave immediately!” The warning was repeated with growing irritation until the radio operator was left spluttering, “You go!”

Read Full Article: BBC News

Anger, no surprise as US newly accused of spying in France

Image Credit: CMH

PARIS (AP) — Embarrassed by leaked conversations of three successive French presidents and angered by new evidence of uninhibited American spying, France demanded answers Wednesday from the Obama administration and called for an intelligence “code of conduct” between allies.

France’s foreign minister summoned the U.S. ambassador to respond to the WikiLeaks revelations, as French eyes fixed on the top floor of the U.S. Embassy after reports that a nest of NSA surveillance equipment was concealed behind elaborately painted windows there, just down the block from the presidential Elysee Palace.

“Commitments were made by our American allies. They must be firmly recalled and strictly respected,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. “Being loyal doesn’t mean falling into line.”

President Barack Obama told French President Francois Hollande in a phone conversation Wednesday that the U.S. wasn’t targeting his communications. The White House said Obama told Hollande that the U.S. was abiding by a commitment Obama made in 2013 not to spy on the French leader after Edward Snowden disclosed the extent of NSA surveillance powers.

The White House said Obama also pledged to continue close cooperation with France on matters of intelligence and security.

If not a surprise, the latest revelations put both countries in something of a quandary.

France’s counter-espionage capabilities were called into question at the highest level. The United States, meanwhile, was shown not only to be eavesdropping on private conversations of its closest allies but also to be unable to keep its own secrets.

“The rule in espionage — even between allies — is that everything is allowed, as long as it’s not discovered,” Arnaud Danjean, a former analyst for France’s spy agency and currently a lawmaker in the European Parliament, told France-Info radio. “The Americans have been caught with their hand in the jam jar a little too often, and this discredits them.”

The French aren’t denying the need for good intelligence — they have long relied on U.S. intel cooperation to fight terrorism for example, and are trying to beef up their own capabilities, too.

The release of the spying revelations appeared to be timed to coincide with a final vote Wednesday in the French Parliament on a bill allowing broad new surveillance powers, in particular to counter threats of French extremists linked to foreign jihad.

Hollande, calling the U.S. spying an “unacceptable” security breach, convened two emergency meetings as a result of the disclosures about the NSA’s spying.

The documents appear to capture top French officials in Paris between 2006 and 2012 talking candidly about Greece’s economy, relations with Germany, and American spying on allies.

The top floor of the U.S. Embassy, visible from France’s Elysee Palace, reportedly was filled with spying equipment hidden behind tromp l’oeil windows, according to the Liberation newspaper, which partnered with WikiLeaks and the website Mediapart on the documents.

U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry, where she promised to provide quick responses to French concerns, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. He said he understood eavesdropping for counterterrorist reasons, “but this has nothing to do with that.”

Hollande was sending his top intelligence coordinator to the U.S. to ensure that promises made after earlier NSA spying revelations in 2013 and 2014 have been kept.

Valls said the U.S. must do everything it can, and quickly, to “repair the damage” to U.S.-French relations from the revelations.

“If the fact of the revelations today does not constitute a real surprise for anyone, that in no way lessens the emotion and the anger. They are legitimate. France will not tolerate any action threatening its security and fundamental interests,” he said.

Government spokesman Stephane Le Foll told reporters, “France does not listen in on its allies.” He added, “we reminded all (government) ministers to be vigilant in their conversations.”

Two of the cables — dealing with then-President Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac, his predecessor — were marked “USA, AUS, CAN, GBR, NZL” suggesting that the material was meant to be shared with Britain, Canada and other members of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence alliance.

The disclosures, which emerged late Tuesday, mean that France has joined Germany on the list of U.S. allies targeted by the NSA.

An aide to Sarkozy told The Associated Press that the former president considers these methods unacceptable. There was no immediate comment from Chirac.

As the lower house of parliament prepared to vote Wednesday on the new surveillance measures, the French government again denied accusations that it wants massive NSA-style powers.

“I will not let it be said that this law could call into question our liberties and that our practices will be those that we condemn today,” Valls said.

And while the French rhetoric was lively Wednesday, the high-level U.S.-French meetings showed that the countries remain important allies, and suggested they were ready to paper over their differences.

In Germany, revelations that the NSA was listening to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone weighed on relations with the U.S. for a while but it has very much receded from the top of the political leaders’ agenda.

Le Foll, the French government spokesman, who was heading Wednesday to Washington on a previously scheduled trip, said it wasn’t a diplomatic rupture, riffing that France was sending not an aircraft carrier to the U.S. but a replica of the Hermione, the ship that carried General Marquis de Lafayette from France to America in 1780 to offer help in the Revolution.

Read Full Article: AP

Russia calls investigation into whether US moon landings happened

The increasingly tense relationship between the United States and Russia might be about to face a new challenge: a Russian investigation into American moon landings.

In an op-ed published by Russian newspaper Izvestia, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the government’s official Investigative Committee, argued that such an investigation could reveal new insights into the historical space journeys.

According to a translation by the Moscow Times, Markin would support an inquiry into the disappearance of original footage from the first moon landing in 1969 and the whereabouts of lunar rock, which was brought back to Earth during several missions.

“We are not contending that they did not fly [to the moon], and simply made a film about it. But all of these scientific — or perhaps cultural — artifacts are part of the legacy of humanity, and their disappearance without a trace is our common loss. An investigation will reveal what happened,” Markin wrote, according to the Moscow Times translation.

The op-ed is unlikely to raise worries among Nasa officials. In 2009, Nasa itself admitted that it had erased the original video recordings of the first moon landing among 200,000 other tapes in order to save money, according to Reuters. However, Nasa has since restored copies of the landing, using recordings from other sources such as CBS News. The organization says that due to restoration efforts, the recordings’ quality is superior to the original one that has gone missing.

Nasa did also emphasize the uniqueness of lunar soil and rock in the past. “They differ from Earth rocks in many respects,” David McKay, chief scientist for planetary science and exploration at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center, where most of the material is stored, was quoted as saying by Nasa’s website in 2001.

So, why is Investigative Committee member Markin speculating about conspiracy theories surrounding US moon landings that happened decades ago? In his op-ed, the Russian official also emphasized that “US authorities had crossed a line by launching a large-scale corruption probe targeting nine Fifa officials,” according to the Moscow Times.

Read Full Article: The Independent

Average American woman now weighs as much as average 1960s man – CDC

Image Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

New statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that American women are heavier than they have ever been before.

Both men and women have gained weight over the last 50 years, with each gaining roughly 30 pounds, according to the CDC. But one statistic is jarring: the average American woman today weighs 166.2 pounds, or 18.5 percent more than in the 1960s and just a hair below the average American man’s weight of 166.3 pounds at that time. American men have risen from that number to 195.5 pounds today, an increase of 17.6 percent.

A small amount of this weight gain can be attributed to men and women becoming taller – men and women have both grown about an inch on average since the 1960s.

But the study concludes that the bulk of the weight gain is due to lifestyle changes. Americans are exercising less, choosing to eat unhealthier food and eating more of it. But why is this happening?

More than half Americans’ food budget is spent on restaurant foods or processed, easy-to-make meals, which are more likely to be calorie-heavy food choices, reported Vox. The average American’s caloric intake grew from 2,109 calories in 1970 to 2,568 calories in 2010, which is “the equivalent to an extra steak sandwich every day,” according to Pew Research.

Comparing these numbers against other nation’s citizens, average Americans are 33 pounds heavier than their French counterparts and 40 pounds heavier than someone from Japan. This is a stark difference, especially considering that these countries have highly developed economies with similar standards of living to the United States.

Read Full Article: RT

House votes to repeal country-of-origin labeling on meat

Image Credit: The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under threat of trade retaliation from Canada and Mexico, the House has voted to to repeal a law requiring country-of-origin labels on packages of beef, pork and poultry.

The World Trade Organization rejected a U.S. appeal last month, ruling the labels that say where animals were born, raised and slaughtered are discriminatory against the two U.S. border countries. Both have said they plan to ask the WTO for permission to impose billions of dollars in tariffs on American goods.

The House voted 300-131 to repeal labels that tell consumers what countries the meat is from — for example, “born in Canada, raised and slaughtered in the United States” or “born, raised and slaughtered in the United States.”

The WTO ruled against the labels last year. The Obama administration has already revised the labels once to try to comply with previous WTO rulings. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has said it’s up to Congress to change the law to avoid retaliation from the two countries.

The law was initially written at the behest of northern U.S. ranchers who compete with the Canadian cattle industry. It also was backed by consumer advocates who say it helps shoppers know where their food comes from. Supporters have called on the U.S. government to negotiate with Canada and Mexico to find labels acceptable to all countries.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, said repeal would be premature, adding, “Our people deserve a right to know where their food is produced and where it comes from.”

Meat processors who buy animals from abroad as well as many others in the U.S. meat industry have called for a repeal of the law they have fought for years, including unsuccessfully in federal court. They say it’s burdensome and costly for producers and retailers.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, has long backed the meat industry’s call for repeal.

“Although some consumers desire (country-of-origin labeling) information, there is no evidence to conclude that this mandatory labeling translates into market-measurable increases in consumer demand for beef, pork or chicken,” Conaway said on the House floor.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said after the vote that the last thing American farmers need “is for Congress to sit idly by as international bureaucrats seek to punish them through retaliatory trade policies that could devastate agriculture as well as other industries.”

The bill would go beyond just the muscle cuts of red meat that were covered under the WTO case, repealing country-of-origin labeling for poultry, ground beef and ground pork. The chicken industry has said the labeling doesn’t make much sense for poultry farmers because the majority of chicken consumed in the United States is hatched, raised and processed domestically.

The legislation would leave in place country-of-origin labeling requirements for several other commodities, including lamb, venison, seafood, fruits and vegetables and some nuts.

Canada and Mexico have opposed the labeling because it causes their animals to be segregated from those of U.S. origin — a costly process that has led some U.S. companies to stop buying exports.

The two countries have said that if they are allowed by the WTO, they may impose retaliatory measures such as tariffs against a variety of U.S. imports. Their list includes food items like beef, pork, cheese, corn, cherries, maple syrup, chocolate and pasta, plus non-agricultural goods such as mattresses, wooden furniture and jewelry. The retaliatory measures could total more than $3 billion, the countries said.

Congress required the labels in 2002 and 2008 farm laws. The original labels created by USDA were less specific, saying a product was a “product of U.S.” or “product of U.S. and Canada.” The WTO rejected those labels in 2012, and USDA tried again with the more detailed labels a year later. The WTO rejected those revised rules last year, and the United States filed one last appeal, rejected in May by the WTO.

Read Full Article: AP

Jack Ma: World War III is coming, but in a good way

Image Credit: CNBC

World War III is coming, but it will be a good thing, according to one of Asia’s richest men.

Jack Ma , founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA), said Tuesday that the Internet and its various platforms will usher in a wave of global conflict. It will not, however, pit countries against each other, but instead will see the likes of China and the U.S. teaming up to defeat societal ills.

“The third world war is going to happen, and this war is not between nations,” Ma said during a speech hosted by the Economic Club of New York. “In this war we work together against the disease, the poverty, the climate change-and I believe this is our future.”

Ma said working to incite such a conflict is his life’s passion, and Alibaba’s mission of globalizing e-commerce can help.

“It’s not about the money, it’s about the dreams,” he said of the Internet’s future.

Alibaba, the massive Chinese e-commerce firm, is working to expand its international presence, and Ma is touring the U.S. this week to pitch his platform to American businesses. Although some have suggested it could potentially bring its marketplace to the U.S. as a direct competitor to the likes of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), others remain skeptical that such a move could work.

Ma, however, emphasized that his company is not analogous to Jeff Bezos’ Internet giant.

“From the American point of view, Amazon probably is the only business model for e-commerce, but no, we are different,” he said, explaining that Alibaba does not buy, sell or even deliver products-nor does it have any inventory or warehouses.

Instead, Ma pitched Alibaba as a way for small businesses to find success in the global digital marketplace, and he called for American firms to get involved.

“We show great respect for eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) and Amazon, but I think the opportunity and the strategy for us is helping small business in America go to China, sell their products in China,” he said, adding that the Chinese middle class is already about the size of the American population, and it continues to grow.

Ma said Alibaba’s new tactic will present just as much of an opportunity for Americans looking to expand their customer bases as it does for his own attempts at building a global empire.

“China has been focused on exporting for the past 20 years, and I think in the next 10-20 years China should be focusing on importing. China should learn to buy, China should spend the money, China should buy a lot of its things globally,” he said. “And I think that American small business, American-branded products, should use the Internet and go to China.”

Ma focused squarely on e-commerce during his Tuesday address, but his company has other important irons in the fire. Alibaba struck a number of deals to bring its cloud computing operations to the world-a challenge to not only Amazon, but also Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL)and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

Read Full Article: Yahoo News