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AFP

  • Earth has three trillion trees: study

    A 15-nation team led by Yale University experts used a combination of old-fashioned headcounts and state-of-the-art satellite and supercomputer technology to produce what they claim is the most comprehensive tree census ever.

    “I don’t know what I would have guessed, but I was certainly surprised to find that we were talking about trillions,” said the study’s lead author Thomas Crowther of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in Connecticut in the United States.

    But there was bad news, the researchers reported in the journal Nature.

    The calculation revealed that tree cover had nearly halved since the start of human civilisation.

    And the pace of deforestation has not abated: our species is currently felling some 15 billion trees every year, the study found.

    The team based their research on verified tree counts from some 400,000 forest plots.

    They then used satellite imagery to determine how factors like climate, topography, vegetation, soil conditions and human impact affected tree density.

    Developing models to estimate tree numbers at regional levels, they then drew a global map of Earth’s estimated 3.04 trillion trees.

    “The highest densities of trees were found in the boreal forests in the sub-arctic regions of Russia, Scandinavia and North America,” a Yale University statement said.

    “But the largest forest areas, by far, are in the tropics, which are home to about 43 percent of the world’s trees.”

    The bad news

    The team’s calculations revealed that of all the factors impacting tree numbers, human activity had by far the biggest effect, largely through deforestation and land-use change.

    There has been in total a 46-percent drop in tree numbers since humans began to clear land to plant seeds, the study found.

    “In short, tree densities usually plummet as the human population increases,” said the statement.

    “We’ve nearly halved the number of trees on the planet, and we’ve seen the impacts on climate and human health as a result,” said Crowther. “The study highlights how much more effort is needed if we are to restore healthy forests worldwide.”

    Apart from offering oxygen, fuel and shelter, trees store important quantities of carbon, which, if released, contribute to global warming.

    Simon Lewis of University College London, who was not involved in the study, said this was the first robust, global tree estimate.

    Quantity over quality?

    “Care is required when talking about numbers of trees as they are usually not the most important attribute of an ecosystem,” he said in comments to the London-based Climate Media Centre.

    “A plantation forest of many small trees all of the same type isn’t better than a patch of pristine Amazon rainforest with fewer very large trees of all different species.”

    Measuring a forest’s carbon storage capacity also requires more than counting trees, he added, as most carbon is held in large trees.

    A study by the World Resources Institute earlier Wednesday said the world last year lost some 18 million hectares (45 million acres) of tree cover-equivalent to two Portugals- more than half of it in the tropics.

    Halting deforestation is a key focus of UN negotiations, underway in Bonn, for a global pact to limit disastrous climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Wozniacki crashes out in second round at US Open

    Cetkovska outlasted Wozniacki 6-4, 5-7, 7-6 (7/1) in a night match at Arthur Ashe Stadium to book a third-round match against Italian 26th seed Flavia Pennetta.

    With the departure of former world number one Wozniacki, the US Open runner-up in 2009 and last year, the only top-10 seeds remaining in the year’s final Grand Slam tournament from the original draw are top-ranked Serena Williams, Romanian second seed Simona Halep and Czech fifth seed Petra Kvitova.

  • Sri Lanka coach quits after losing Tests

    Atapattu, 44, the seventh Sri Lanka head coach in the past five years, had tendered his resignation which was accepted, the cricket board said in a statement.

    “Sri Lanka Cricket thanks Mr. Atapattu for his efforts as Head Coach and Batting Coach of the Sri Lanka cricket team, and we wish him every success in all his future endeavours,” the statement said.

    It did not say why he resigned four weeks before his one-year contract was due to expire. Atapattu was also not immediately available for comment.

    His resignation followed India’s 2-1 win of a Test series in Colombo on Monday. India’s last series success in Sri Lanka came under Mohammad Azharuddin’s captaincy in 1993 when they won 1-0.

    Atapattu took over the team as its coach in September last year after Englishman Paul Farbrace abruptly quit months earlier to become deputy coach of England.

    Atapattu was the latest addition in a succession of coaches for Sri Lanka since 2010, following Trevor Bayliss, Stuart Law, Rumesh Ratnayake, Geoff Marsh, Graham Ford and Farbrace.

    He was asked to prepare the national team to face the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, but Atapattu later blamed lack of fitness and poor form for the team’s failure to progress beyond the quarter finals.

    A prolific right-hander, Atapattu scored 5,502 runs from 90 Tests, including six double-hundreds, after making his debut against India in 1990. His 8,529 one-day runs included 11 hundreds.

  • Israel targets Hamas base after bullet fire from Gaza

    Shots from Gaza had on Wednesday hit a number of houses in Netiv Haasara, just north of the Palestinian enclave, causing damage but harming none, it said in a statement.

    “In response to the shooting, an IAF (Israel air force) aircraft targeted a Hamas military post in the northern Gaza Strip, from where the shots were fired,” it read.

    The army could not say whether the shots from Gaza had been deliberate or stray fire from the Hamas position, identified in Israeli media as a training base.

    There were no reports of casualties as a result of the Israeli attack.

  • China flexes military muscle as Xi lauds its power

    Speaking on the Tiananmen Rostrum where Mao Zedong declared the formation of the People’s Republic in 1949, Xi said “total victory” over Japan “restored China’s status as a major country in the world”.

    China

    After a 70-gun salute thousands of troops — including a detachment from Russia, whose President Vladimir Putin was the highest-profile foreign guest — marched in formation through the square, with tanks and missiles following and a flypast by around 200 aircraft in blue skies overhead.

    China

    Xi said that Beijing will “not seek hegemony” and China’s military — the largest in the world — would be reduced by 300,000 troops.

    China

    Authorities have previously made personnel cuts to the 2.3 million strong People’s Liberation Army in a bid to make it a more efficient fighting force.

    Beijing officially calls the conflict the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and World Anti-Fascist War, and regularly criticises Tokyo for what it says is insufficient contrition over wartime atrocities.

    But it has repeatedly insisted the parade was not aimed at any particular country, including Japan.

    China

    “The unyielding Chinese people fought gallantly and finally won total victory against the Japanese militarist aggressors, thus preserving China’s 5,000-year-old civilisation and upholding the cause of peace,” Xi said.

    He described the conflict as “a decisive battle between justice and evil, between light and darkness”.

    The equipment on show for the first time included DF-21D missiles, an anti-ship ballistic missile seen as a “carrier-killer” that could alter the balance of power with the US in the Pacific Ocean.

    China

    A commentator on Chinese television described the weapon as a “trump card”.

    Under Xi, Beijing is moving farther away from former leader Deng Xiaoping’s dictum to “hide one’s capabilities, bide one’s time” and is becoming more willing to take harder lines, both externally and against domestic opponents.

    Putin was given a prominent position next to Xi on the rostrum, as were ranks of former Chinese leaders, including Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.

    Also present were leaders of Kazakhstan and Venezuela, as well as Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir — indicted by the International Criminal Court — and authoritarian Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko.

    More mainstream guests included South Korea’s Park Geun-Hye, whose country was colonised by Japan, Jacob Zuma of South Africa — which with China is part of the BRICS groups of major emerging economies -– and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

    China

    Pakistan’s President Mamnoon Hussain was also present at the parade.

  • Iran police to confiscate cars of 'poorly veiled' women

    “If a (female) driver in a car is poorly veiled or has taken her veil off, the vehicle will be seized in accordance with the law,” the head of Tehran’s traffic police, General Teymour Hosseini, was quoted as saying by the official ISNA news agency.

    He added that any woman who had her car seized would need to obtain a court order before getting it back.

    Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, wearing a veil in public has been mandatory for all women in Iran.

    But recent decades have seen a loosening of the rules governing female dress and many women in Tehran dress in a way that is far removed from the strict clothing regulations in other observant Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia.

    “Unfortunately, some streets of the capital have come to resemble fashion salons,” Iran’s judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani said this week, questioning the “tolerance” that has led to “such a situation”.

    Iran’s moderate President Hassan Rouhani has since his June 2013 election overseen some political and social reform but much of the country’s political establishment remains deeply conservative. –AFP

  • Nine Syrian refugees die off Turkish coast — heart-rending images surface on social media

    A Turkish official said that three migrants were rescued and six more were missing after a fibreglass boat, which was carrying 16 Syrians, sank after leaving Turkey’s Bodrum peninsula for the Greek Aegean island of Kos.

    The corpses of seven migrants from the boat were found, the official told AFP.

    In a separate incident, two people died when a boat carrying six Syrians towards Kos sank just off Bodrum, according to the same official. Two people were rescued and search operations were continuing for the two others still missing.

    In both accidents, the coastguard was mobilised after hearing cries for help from the sea.

    There has over the last week been a dramatic spike in the numbers of migrants — mainly from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Africa — seeking to leave Turkey by sea for Greece in the hope of finding new lives in the European Union.

    The Turkish government said on Tuesday that the coastguard rescued over 42,000 migrants in the Aegean Sea since the beginning of 2015 and more than 2,160 in the last week alone.

    Migrants, many of whom have paid over $1,000 to smugglers for the risky passage, are taking advantage of the calm summer weather which makes this the best time for the crossing.

  • Oil prices extend losses in Asian trade

    US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for October delivery fell $1.03 to $44.38, while Brent crude for October sank $1.02 to $48.54 in afternoon trade.

    WTI sank $3.79 and Brent lost $4.59 on Tuesday after China and the United States, the world’s top two crude consumers, posted weak factory activity data.

    Beijing’s official Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for the manufacturing sector slumped to a three-year low of 49.7 in August from 50.0 in July. A reading below 50 indicates contraction.

    The US Institute for Supply Management PMI fell to 51.1, the lowest level so far this year, from 52.7 in July.

    “With manufacturing PMI not showing results, markets turned bearish again,” said Daniel Ang, investment analyst at Phillip Futures in Singapore.

    “The market has been flocking between the bulls and the bears, causing huge volatility in oil prices.”

    Ang said dealers expect a further drop in oil prices after the release later Wednesday of the official US stockpiles report for the week to August 28.

    Energy analysts are predicting a 900,000-barrel jump in US supplies, Bloomberg News reported. A jump in stockpiles typically signals weaker demand.

    US overall crude reserves remain at lofty levels for this time of the year.

    Dealers had been hoping that an uptick in US demand, coupled with a slowdown in output, could whittle down the huge global supplies that were a key reason for the collapse in prices from around $120 in June last year.

  • Asia doing pretty well despite China slow down: Lagarde

    Lagarde’s comments in Indonesia come as financial markets gyrate over concerns about the health of China’s economy — the world’s second-largest — and its effect emerging economies and their currencies.

    World stock markets plunged further this week as more evidence emerged of China’s economic slowdown, triggering heavy sell-offs from Tokyo to New York and spurring cuts to global growth forecasts.

    Lagarde, in Jakarta for a two-day visit, said the recent turmoil highlighted the “extraordinary gains” made by Asian economies but warned further volatility was on the horizon.

    “Now the situation is changing yet again, and we are all feeling the impact of China’s rebalancing and moving to a revised business model,” she told a conference.

    “What has been demonstrated in the last few weeks is how much Asia is at the core of global economy, and how much disruptions occurring in one market in Asia can actually spill over to the rest of the world.”

    Slower growth in major economies like China and Japan, lower commodity prices and the prospect of higher interest rates in the United States would continue to weigh on regional markets, Lagarde added.

    Despite external pressures and the slower pace of expansion in Asia, the IMF chief said “this whole region, in the world, is doing pretty well”, and would continue to be a key source of global growth.

    Lagarde this week added her voice to private sector economists that have already cut their world growth estimates, conceding growth would likely be weaker than the 3.3 percent estimate the IMF made just two months ago.

  • China screams for Tojo ice cream on war anniversary

    Iceason parlours are selling ice cream bars on a stick with the image of Tojo, former Japanese army general and prime minister, in a campaign with the slogan “10,000 people together eat the Japanese war criminal.”

    An advertising poster displayed at one store in central Shanghai showed a chocolate Tojo, complete with glasses and a moustache, with the words: “Never forget national humiliation.”

    Another store in Shanghai’s financial district on Wednesday offered five Tojo flavours: vanilla, blueberry, mocha, mango and tiramisu. But it had few takers for the ice cream, priced at 30 yuan (around $4.70), even during the lunch hour.

    Customers who buy 50 yuan-worth of ice cream can get a free Tojo bar if they use the online payment service of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba, store employees said.

    Beijing will commemorate the 70th anniversary of victory over Japan and the end of World War II with a huge military parade through Tiananmen Square on Thursday, amid tense ties with Tokyo over territorial claims and wartime history.

    “It’s just ice cream,” one online commentator said of the Tojo bars. “There’s no reason why you can’t eat it.”

    But another declined to partake. “It’s hilarious, but I have always thought that phase of history isn’t fit for consumption.”