Aug132017

North China panda celebrates 11th birthday

East Asia

Female giant panda Sijia celebrated her 11th birthday Saturday, one year after she and her playmate Youyou moved to their new home in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.

About 1,500 visitors joined in Saturday’s celebration. Sijia enjoyed a rose-shaped ice cake at the ski resort of Yabuli, thousands of kilometers from their home in Sichuan Province.

Sijia and Youyou moved to Yabuli last July. Of all of China’s pandas, the two live the furthest north. Pandas in Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland are 1,200 km further north, but the climate there is much less harsh.

Wei Rongping, scientist with the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, said the resettlement of the pair was an attempt to expand the range of the species and could help researchers better understand the living conditions of pandas at high latitudes.

“The pair has adapted well to the local climate,” said Yan Hongbin, who feeds the pandas. Last December, the pair enjoyed their first winter and played cheerfully outdoors when a blizzard dumped 40 cm of snow o the ski resort of Yabuli.

Pandas were downgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in September last year thanks to continued efforts to protect the species by Chinese scientists.

But the number of pandas living in the wild is still fewer than 2,000 and around 400 lived in captivity as of the end of 2013, according to data from China’s State Forestry Administration.

Aug132017

Pedestrian safety near Roseangle playpark #dundeewestend

Fraser Macpherson
I have previously raised residents’ concerns about pedestrian safety near the Roseangle playpark since the playpark was improved and footfall significantly increased.

Having have received more concerns, I again contacted the City Council’s roads and transportation division about this and have received the following feedback from one of the roads engineers :

“Myself and three other colleagues visited this location to assess the situation.
As you are aware, our road safety budget is prioritised by identifying accident cluster sites within the city and providing improvements to reduce the likelihood of recurrences. At the location in question, there have been no recorded injury accidents at this location in the last three years and so would not displace any other cluster site under consideration.
While we were on site … vehicle speeds approaching this crossing point were not excessive and those vehicles approaching from Riverside Drive were slow having turned the tight radius onto the railway bridge.
I will carry out further surveys at this location to determine if there is a significant problem.”

I will be continuing to pursue this issue and will keep residents updated.

Aug132017

Another ‘comfort woman’ passes away in China

East Asia

A Chinese woman forced into front-line brothels for Japanese troops during World War II died on Saturday, bringing the number of surviving “comfort women,” a euphemism for sex slaves, to only 14 on the Chinese mainland.

Huang Youliang died at the age of 90 at her home in Yidui Village in China’s southern island province of Hainan.

In October 1941, 15-year-old Huang was raped when the Japanese troops invaded her hometown. She was later put into a brothel and forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers for two years.

In July 2001, Huang and seven other “comfort women” sued the Japanese government, demanding an apology, but the Japanese court repeatedly rejected their appeals over the past decade, claiming that individuals have no right to sue the state.

Women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II were called “comfort women.” Research shows some 400,000 women in Asia were forced to be “comfort women” for the Japanese army during World War II, nearly half of whom were Chinese.

However, the Japanese government has refused to acknowledge legal responsibility for the “comfort women” issue so far.

Efforts by a total of 24 Chinese “comfort women” to sue the Japanese government in four cases since 1995 all failed. Huang is also the last victim to have sued the Japanese government over sex slavery on the Chinese mainland, according to Su Zhiliang, director of a research center on comfort women under the Humanities and Communication College of Shanghai Normal University.

Aug132017

Mr Trump’s threats

John Redwood MP

It is not easy being the world’s superpower. Mr Trump swept into office on a programme of America First. He envisaged doing good deals for the USA. He did not seem keen on military interventions around the world of the kind favoured by the Clintons and the Bushes, by the State department and the Pentagon. Many people warmed to the idea that the west had intervened too much. Maybe the west had resorted to arms in too many cases where it did not have the political ability and influence to settle things well after its force had dislodged dictators or unsettled evil regimes.

Mr Trump has avoided escalation of military involvement in the Middle East. He has tried rapprochement with Russia, though this has been badly knocked by outraged Democrat opposition seeking to allege that it was all to do with Russian help for his election campaign. Just as it seemed he was turning to the main economic matters which dominated his election statements, the absurd and unpleasant dictator of North Korea decides to provoke and taunt the USA with stories of breakthroughs in weaponry, tests of missile systems, and his usual threatening language.

US policy seemed to be based on the diplomatic playbook. The State department engaged with the UN and the leading powers Russia, China and Japan to back an important UN Resolution. This pledges all to seek diplomatic solutions, whilst imposing much tougher sanctions which seek to block one third of all North Korea’s exports by value. There are also travel bans and other restrictions imposed on 9 senior officials and four institutions of the North Korean state.

It therefore looked as if it came as a surprise to the US establishment when Mr Trump started talking of massive military responses should North Korea threaten the USA and its allies and territories. They soon came into line with their President and pictures emerged of the kind of weaponry the US could deploy from Guam and their carriers if need arose. This builds on the traditional exercises conducted annually with South Korea under previous Presidents to display to North Korea ability to fight and resolve to defend.

Some think Mr Trump was right to speak in the kind of language the No0rth Korea dictator uses. Others think it is unhelpful and gives too much publicity to North Korea. I would be interested in your views.