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Latest News

Indonesia on security alert as police probe attacks

Friday, Jan 15, 2016,10:53 IST By Metrovaartha A A A

Jakarta | Army trucks thundered through Indonesia’s capital today as authorities boosted security at possible terror targets and probed a suspected Islamic State cell blamed for Jakarta’s deadly terror attacks. A series of bombings and subsequent gun battles yesterday between the attackers and police in a busy part of the capital lined with malls and foreign missions left two civilians and five attackers dead. Police in the world’s most populous Muslim country have blamed the carnage on a network of Islamic State fighters from Southeast Asia forged in the radical jihadist group’s war in Syria and Iraq.

An alert has been imposed throughout Indonesia, said national police spokesman Anton Charliyan. National police are on their highest alert, especially in areas considered targets of terror, like police stations, government offices, embassies, with army backup. He did not elaborate on the army’s role but AFP reporters saw a passing convoy of a half-dozen military trucks filled with heavily armed soldiers in central Jakarta, and heightened security elsewhere, with police patrolling in flak jackets. A police car and a half-dozen officers were seen guarding the French embassy near the attack site.

Charliyan added police would be conducting raids Friday as they probe those responsible for the bloodshed, which spilled out in dramatic fashion on a bustling street in the mid-morning. He declined to offer further details on the planned raids. The assault left five attackers, a Canadian and an Indonesian man dead and 20 others injured, according to police, in what the country’s president called acts of terror. Police have singled out Indonesian extremist Bahrum Naim as being behind the planning.

Naim, believed to be in Syria, is said by authorities to be a founding member of Katibah Nusantara, the grouping of Southeast Asian fighters there. Terror analysts warn that the group, believed to include fighters predominantly from Indonesia but also Malaysia and elsewhere in the region, has threatened for more than a year to bring the jihad home. Indonesian authorities were yet to offer concrete details from their investigations. Muhammad Iqbal, Jakarta’s police spokesman, told authorities were working to establish the identities and connections of the dead attackers.

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Latest News

Asia most exposed to disasters, Africa most vulnerable

Thursday, Mar 24, 2016,15:23 IST By Metrovaartha A A A

Paris | Countries and mega-cities across Asia are highly exposed to natural hazards ranging from cyclones to earthquakes, but people in sub-Saharan Africa are more vulnerable, according to a report. Nearly 1.4 billion people in South Asia — India, Bangladesh, Pakistan — face at least one major threat from Nature, especially flooding, severe storms boosted by rising seas, and quakes.

In the case of Bangladesh, 100 per cent of its population is exposed, compared to 82 percent for India and 70 per cent in Pakistan. China, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines are also among the nations with the largest numbers of people in harm’s way.

The United States, Mexico and Brazil round out the top ten. When it comes to vulnerability, however, Africa is the continent where people are most likely to suffer injury, disease and death as a result of natural disasters, according to the Natural Hazards Vulnerability Index from risk analysts Verisk Maplecroft.

The capacity to cope with disaster can determine whether a high-magnitude earthquake, for example, will cause hundreds of deaths, as happened in Chile in 2010, or hundreds of thousands, as befell Haiti in the same year. Nine out of ten countries ranked as most vulnerable to natural hazards in the index are in sub-Saharan Africa, and 23 of 25 are on the continent. South Sudan — plagued by drought and war — heads the list of the countries most defenceless against disaster, followed by Burundi, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Chad, Niger, Sudan, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The frequency and magnitude of natural hazard events cannot be controlled, the report noted. But the development and implementation of disaster risk reduction strategies can help minimise the humanitarian and economic impacts, said the report released yesterday.

Among mega-cities, Manila — facing a triple threat from cyclones, superstorms and earthquakes — tops the list of urban areas with the highest number of people exposed. Tokyo and Jakarta and in second and third place, with Dongguan in southern China, Dhaka and Kolkata following close behind. Mexico City, Delhi and Sao Paulo all have huge populations exposed to major storms.

This analysis shows that governance is key to lower vulnerability, the report said. Without major reforms and political stability, countries such as India and the Philippines are unlikely to see improvements in the near term.

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Latest News

Palestinian stabs Israeli police in east Jerusalem, is shot

Monday, Sep 19, 2016,13:21 IST By metrovaartha A A A

Jerusalem | A Palestinian stabbed and wounded two Israeli police officers in east Jerusalem near the Old City before being shot by forces at the scene, police said.

Medics said a policewoman in her 20s was seriously wounded in the attack and a 45-year-old policeman was moderately wounded. A police spokeswoman said the perpetrator was a 20-year-old from east Jerusalem and believed to be in critical condition.

Monday was the sixth attack on Israeli security forces or civilians since Friday after a three-week lull in a nearly year-long wave of violence.

The attack took place by the Herod’s Gate entrance to the Old City, a short distance from the Damascus Gate where on Friday a Jordanian was shot dead after attempting to stab a police officer.

Since October, 227 Palestinians, 34 Israelis, two Americans, one Jordanian, one Eritrean and a Sudanese have been killed in ongoing violence, according to an AFP count.

Israeli forces say most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks. Others were shot dead during protests and clashes.

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Nature nurtures Cradle's art

Angus Taylor's Morphic Resonance was made by packing earth and other materials into a mould. (Supplied)

Angus Taylor's Morphic Resonance was made by packing earth and other materials into a mould. (Supplied)

I’m always struck by the perfect quality of light at this time of year, as autumn turns to winter. This, combined with the cooling temperatures makes it the perfect time to visit the Cradle of Humankind. And what better excuse to visit than art, specifically the Nirox Sculpture Winter 2014 opening, the second instalment of a very successful exhibition hosted by the Nirox Foundation.

The exhibition features nearly 100 works by more than 50 South African artists, both established and emerging. And, if the promise of art isn’t enough to entice you to make the trek, the food and wine on offer at the Winter Sculpture Fair on May 10 and 11 – which also marks the opening of the exhibition to the public – just may be. The best of Franschhoek’s wineries and restaurants will set up stalls in the 15-hectare grounds and it will be almost twice the size of last year’s event.

The curator of the exhibition, Mary-Jane Darroll, describes it as being without an agenda or thematic construct, although she says “there is a serious underpinning of excellence. This is an exhibition of the very best of sculpture in South Africa.”

Supporting role
Broad in scope, the show brings together artists at different stages of their careers. Darroll approached individuals, galleries and institutions (including the Michaelis School of Fine Art, the universities of the Witwatersrand, Pretoria and Johannesburg and the Bag Factory Artist’s Studios) to find the best sculpture.

“We have the perfect conditions for sculpture – our climate, our landscape,” Darroll says. As an outdoor show, it’s only natural that the environment will play a supporting role, but many of the works take landscape in an almost literal fashion.

Angus Taylor’s massive reclining male figure, Morphic Resonance, is made of rammed earth – soil and other materials have been tightly packed into a mould. The resulting sculpture is both physically intimidating and structurally fragile; moving the work is nearly impossible. It is of the Earth but it is also transient, speaking to the fragility and power of the human/nature balance.

This tension between the monumental and the fragile is echoed in Ledelle Moe’s Study for Traces. For her work, she will live on site for a week, sleeping in a tent and creating small castings and carvings from cement, mixing it with earth and aggregate collected from different places in the reserve and using basic casting techniques. The sculptures will be small – no more than 30cm – and form a single installation. For Moe, connecting with the space physically highlights the impossibility of owning land, and the act of claiming some of the earth to be incorporated in her work is a reflection on bigger issues, such as land claims and contested territories.

But, ultimately, Moe’s repetitive act of collecting, casting and carving is driven by something broader. “It gives voice to the place while considering the collective, history and migratory patterns of animals and humans,” she says.

Also interested in the relationship between animal and human are Johan Thom and Guy du Toit. Their work for this exhibition is one of a number of collaborative works Thom has created, all reinterpreting work by Henry Moore made after an elephant skull that was given to him. In Elephant Skull Plate 1, Thom and Du Toit take an elephant skull, open it and cast it in bronze.

“I’m interested in thinking about the complexities of the material encounter of an artist and an elephant, the shared lineage of bone and flesh – the human and animal relationship,” Thom says. But the work can also be read as a return of sorts, bringing the bones of this African animal home. “This is not just a found object. It retains the trace of something. This is something you simply cannot discard.”

Refugee camps
This is South Africa and the tradition of politically potent work is strong. In this exhibition, we see the politics of place coming into play in several of the works. Zimbabwe-born Michele Mathison’s installation, Refuge, is a replica of tented refugee camps set up by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in South Africa in 2008 after xenophobic violence broke out in several cities and displaced tens of thousands of people.

The tents, made of mealie meal bags, are the same size as the originals but, instead of doors or windows, there are incisions in the fabric, calling to mind the violence of the attacks and the viewer’s inability to penetrate the experience. You can walk around them but cannot enter.

Aliza Levi’s installation, Own, takes on a different aspect of belonging and identity. After spending many years in Australia she recently returned to South Africa, which provides “a very different context to work in, in that one is presented daily with very raw, visible encounters”.

Her installation addresses this. She has acquired a guardhouse, which will be placed on the lawns at Nirox. She will also hire a guard to inhabit it. Perceptions of the familiar object in this context, a nature reserve, are destabilised, particularly because it is inhabited. Who or what is the guard protecting? And for whom?

From the political landscape to the spiritual, Jo’burg’s Kim Lieberman uses her cable-tatting technique to construct a whole universe in Tutto/The Landscape. A steel frame holds the world together as figures and forms – a pregnant woman, a gaggle of children, two whales about to breach, a self-portrait – are suspended in the air. Lieberman describes the lace as representing “events, or even incidents, that have happened that pattern out in waves. If you imagine a war, or a deep celebration, [and] how it can affect everything. The lace is the invisible waves that move out from mighty things that happen.”

The cables link the whole work together, tensile but fragile – break one and the rest are affected; one interaction has an impact on everything else.

This year, Frank van Reenen, who is known for his clever, toy-inspired works, has been commissioned to create a sculpture, and he is going big – at 5m high, The Giant is not just a clever name. Many of the artists participating have been part of the Nirox Foundation’s residency programme. As a result, this exhibition is not only focused on finding the best sculpture in South Africa but also on fostering it.

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Giant dinosaurs and super galaxies

'Dreadnoughtus schrani' weighed more than seven Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs. (John McCann, M&G)

'Dreadnoughtus schrani' weighed more than seven Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs. (John McCann, M&G)

It weighed more than seven Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs, making Dreadnoughtus schrani the largest known accurately measured land animal. Excavated over four years in Argentina, this 26m-long herbivore weighed nearly 60 000kg, more than a Boeing 737. One of its femurs is longer than a tall man, at almost two metres.

“Shockingly, skeletal evidence shows that, when this 65-tonne specimen died, it was not yet full grown,” said Kenneth Lacovara, a professor at Drexel University in the US who headed up the research that was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Even though it was a herbivore, scientists have named the dinosaur after the fearsome battleship of the early 20th century. “With a body the size of a house, the weight of a herd of elephants and a weaponised tail, Dreadnoughtus would have feared nothing,” he said.

To study this giant creature, which lived in the late Cretaceous period, between 84-million and 66-million years ago, the researchers had to go digital.

“Digital modelling is the wave of the future. It’s only going to become more common in palaeontology, especially for the studies of giant dinosaurs such as Dreadnoughtus where a single bone can weigh hundreds of pounds,” said Matthew Lamanna from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in the US.

Although we should be impressed by the sheer proportions of this creature, the biggest known mammal remains the blue whale. It’s longer by a few metres and almost double the weight of Dreadnoughtus. So, although we consider the prehistoric landscape to be fraught with dangers, dinosaurs and certain death, remember that the sea is also peppered with gigantic primordial creatures, and they are not fossils.

Where are we now?
After thousands of years of scientific inquiry, it seems peculiar that we have only recently figured out where we are in the universe.

We know that our planet orbits the sun, which is one of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and that galaxies themselves form clusters in groups ranging from dozens to hundreds, known as superclusters.

In research published last week in the scientific journal Nature, scientists have finally defined the boundaries of our supercluster, in effect marking where our galaxy is in the universe. It is part of a newly identified gigantic supercluster of galaxies the researchers have named Laniakea, meaning “immense heaven” in Hawaiian.

“We have finally established the contours that define the supercluster of galaxies we can call home,” said lead researcher R Brent Tully, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

“This is not unlike finding out for the first time that your home town is actually part of a much larger country that borders other nations.”

These superclusters are among the largest structures in the known universe and, although scientists “know that they are interconnect, they have poorly defined boundaries”, said the United States’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which was involved in the research.

“To better refine cosmic mapmaking, the researchers are proposing a new way to evaluate these large-scale galaxy structures by examining their impact on the motions of galaxies,” it said.

“A galaxy between structures will be caught in a gravitational tug-of-war in which the balance of the gravitational forces from the surrounding large-scale structures determines the galaxy’s motion.”

Sarah Wild

Sarah Wild

Sarah Wild is a multiaward-winning science journalist. She studied physics, electronics and English literature at Rhodes University in an effort to make herself unemployable. It didn't work and she now writes about particle physics, cosmology and everything in between.In 2012, she published her first full-length non-fiction book Searching African Skies: The Square Kilometre Array and South Africa's Quest to Hear the Songs of the Stars, and in 2013 she was named the best science journalist in Africa by Siemens in their 2013 Pan-African Profiles Awards. Read more from Sarah Wild

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New fraud mars Temer's deficit win

Crisis mode: Women shout slogans during a protest against Brazil’s interim President Michel Temer (Nacho Doce, Reuters)

Crisis mode: Women shout slogans during a protest against Brazil’s interim President Michel Temer (Nacho Doce, Reuters)

Brazil’s interim president Michel Temer celebrated a first victory on Wednesday for his urgent economic reforms after Congress agreed to widen the budget deficit, but fresh corruption allegations haunted his government.

The leaking of a secret recording in which his powerful ally, Senate president Renan Calheiros, is said to discuss a plan to weaken a huge anti-corruption probe posed fresh embarrassment for the new administration.

The 2016 budget plan, given the green light after more than 16 hours of debate overnight in Congress, will allow the government to run up a primary deficit — the difference between public spending and revenue, before interest payments on debt — of 170.5-billion reais ($48 billion).

Temer was quoted by the Globo news site as hailing the “beautiful victory” after the vote. The record sum will buy his administration some time and  flexibility to enact austerity measures and other market-oriented reforms to pull Brazil out of deep recession.

Although pro-Temer lawmaker Dagoberto Nogueira praised the move authorising a deficit increase, Communist Party lawmaker Jandira Feghali criticised “giving the government a blank cheque”.

Temer, who was vice-president and took over from president Dilma Rousseff after her suspension for an impeachment trial on May 12, is racing against time to stamp his authority on the economy and Congress.

Not only is the country in economic disarray, but his fledgling government is already suffering serious fallout from a corruption scandal sweeping through the country’s elite.

On Tuesday, one of Temer’s main allies, Romero Juca, was fired from his planning minister post after the leaking of a recording in which he apparently discussed using Rousseff’s impeachment as a way to derail a huge probe into an embezzlement and bribery scheme at state oil company Petrobras.

The probe, code-named Operation Car Wash, has seen investigations and prosecutions opened against dozens of politicians and executives, including Juca.

Rousseff, who is being impeached on charges that her government broke budget accounting rules, called Juca’s leaked comments proof of a coup plot against her.

On Wednesday, Folha newspaper published another leaked recording, this time involving the president of the Senate, who is from the acting president’s centre-right Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) and a key figure in the coming impeachment trial of Rousseff.

Comments in the recording allegedly show Calheiros discussing weakening the law on the use of plea bargains, a technique that Car Wash prosecutors have used to devastating effect to turn corruption suspects into witnesses for the state.

Calheiros is also being probed in the Petrobras embezzlement scheme. He told Folha that his comments were misinterpreted.

The new budget deficit target marks a dramatic loosening of purse strings for Temer. Rousseff’s government had estimated that it would only need a target deficit of 97-billion reais.

According to Temer’s team, the higher figure reflects a more realistic portrait of the economy. Rousseff is accused of having taken unauthorised loans to keep the budget going and mask the depth of the financial holes.

She denies this and says the accounting manoeuvres were common practice with past governments and a temporary measure that did not constitute an impeachable crime.  According to Rousseff, the impeachment is being pushed by Brazil’s right to demolish her Workers’ Party after 13 years in power.

There has been only muted popular support for Rousseff. She suffers from near single-digit approval ratings and frustration from a country fed up with economic drift, political paralysis and the never-ending corruption revelations.

Temer is also highly unpopular but his economic team has backing from investors and his PMDB party appears able to get legislation moving again in Congress, meaning he has a window to bring change.

Other Temer economic proposals include possibly cashing in a sovereign wealth fund and considering asking the state development bank BNDES to repay about $28-billion in debt owed to the government.

A centrepiece of his reforms —pegging public spending increases before debt servicing to the previous year’s inflation rate — will require Congress to approve a constitutional amendment.

“It won’t be 12 days or two months that will pull Brazil out of crisis,” Temer warned on Tuesday, as he presented his austerity measures to lawmakers.

In addition to high inflation, the effect of low commodity prices and rising unemployment, investors are spooked by Brazil’s political instability. Rousseff’s trial could go on for as long as six months and she has vowed to fight all the way, although analysts say she is not expected to win. — AFP

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