darfur deaths underplayed
TRANSCRIPT
News in perspective
Upfront–
the Foundation for Biomedical
Research in Washington DC.
“We’re pleased that the judge has
made clear that such actions will
not be tolerated.”
Despite the convictions, Trull
says new legislation is needed to
deal with the growing number of
attacks by animal rights activists
in the US. Earlier this month,
Republican senator James Inhofe
and Democratic senator Dianne
Feinstein introduced the Animal
Enterprise Terrorism bill, which
would increase protection for
anyone associated with animal
research. The bill is under
consideration by the Senate and
House Judiciary committees.
ABORTION rates are climbing in
the UK despite increased access to
emergency contraception.
The number of British women
aged 15 to 44 opting for abortions
rose from 11 per 1000 in 1984 to
18 per 1000 in 2004, even though
the morning-after pill has been
available over the counter since
2000. Advocates of emergency
contraception argue that it helps
to lower the risk of unwanted
pregnancy, so it ought to have a
knock-on effect on abortion rates.
DRAINING reservoirs may not
sound like the best solution to
water shortages, but in parts of
the US it may be the only answer.
Overuse of underground water
in states such as Kansas and
New Mexico is causing aquifers to
empty at alarming rates. Similar
overuse of reservoirs combined
with the earlier springtime
melting of snow packs, caused
by global warming, is shrinking
them too. So how best to make use
of the dwindling supplies?
Refilling the aquifers may
provide a solution by avoiding
the evaporation that takes place
from reservoirs, according to Tom
Brikowski of the University of
Texas at Dallas. He told delegates
at a meeting of the Geological
Society of America in Longmont,
Colorado, on Monday that slowly
releasing some reservoir water
can allow it to soak into the river
bed downstream, refilling the
aquifers beneath.
Brikowski studied the town
of Hays, Kansas, which loses
75 per cent of its water supply,
stored in the nearby Grand Bluffs
reservoir, to evaporation. Using a
computer model of the subsurface
sand and gravel, he showed that
releasing reservoir water would
recharge the local aquifer and
ensure that the town would have
enough water to survive any
repeat of past droughts.
“This is a radical new way of
thinking about how we manage
our water, but we have no choice,”
Brikowski says. “Kansas is at
the forefront of this problem.
As climate change continues,
the rest of the West will
experience it as well.”
“STOP Huntingdon Animal
Cruelty is basically now defunct
in the US,” says Jacquie Calnan of
Americans for Medical Progress
in Alexandria, Virginia.
Three US-based members of
this animal rights campaign group
were each sentenced last week to
between four and six years in
prison for inciting violence against
people associated with research
organisation Huntingdon Life
Sciences. Three other SHAC
members will be sentenced
within the next two weeks.
“This has been a very ugly
campaign,” says Frankie Trull of
It has been called the first genocide of
the 21st century. Now it seems that the
crisis of death and displacement in the
Darfur region of Sudan has been
underestimated. A new analysis suggests
that hundreds of thousands of people
have died in the conflict rather than
the tens of thousands earlier reported.
John Hagan at Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois, and
Alberto Palloni at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison used UN counts
of refugees living in camps in western
Darfur and combined them with the best
available surveys which had interviewed
internally displaced people living in
these camps. They then extended this
ratio of death to displacement across
northern and southern Darfur.
“It is likely that the number of deaths
DARFUR DEATHS UNDERPLAYEDfor this conflict in greater Darfur is
higher than 200,000 individuals, and it
is possible that the death toll is much
higher,” Hagan and Palloni write in
the journal Science (vol 313, p 1578).
Earlier estimates relied on data from
restricted areas over shorter periods
and failed to take into account the
elevated death rates among people
living in refugee camps.
Sudan was high on the agenda at
a meeting of the UN General Assembly
in New York this week, where officials
were expected to push for UN troops
and logistical support to back up
the African Union peacekeeping forces
already in the area.
Sudan’s President Omar Hassan
Bashir continues to oppose UN
intervention in the country.
SVEN
TORF
INN/
PANO
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–Peaceful protests only–
MEL
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“This is a radical new way of thinking about managing water, but we have no choice”
–Survivors of genocide–
4 | NewScientist | 23 September 2006 www.newscientist.com
Water wisdom Activists jailed
The morning after
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