NATION/WORLD
Saturday, October 7, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 13A
BRIEFLY
Russian says North
Korean missiles
can reach U.S.
AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
Roberto Figueroa Caballero sits Thursday on a small table in his home that was destroyed by Hurricane Maria in La Perla neighborhood on
the coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Figueroa, who wanted to stay at home with his dog during the storm, said he was evicted by police
and taken to a shelter for the night. When he returned the next day and saw what was left of his home, he decided to put his salvageable
items back where they originally were, as if his home still had walls, saying that it frees his mind.
Hurricane mauled renowned Monkey Island
CAYO
SANTIAGO,
Puerto Rico (AP) — As
thousands of troops and
government
workers
struggle to restore normal
life to Puerto Rico, a small
group of scientists is racing
to save more than 1,000
monkeys whose brains may
contain clues to mysteries of
the human mind.
One of the first places
Hurricane Maria hit in the
U.S. territory Sept. 20 was
Cayo Santiago, known as
Monkey Island, a 40-acre
outcropping off the east
coast that is one of the
world’s most important
sites for research into how
primates think, socialize and
evolve.
The storm destroyed
virtually everything on the
island, stripping it of vegeta-
tion, wrecking the monkeys’
metal drinking troughs
and crushing the piers that
University of Puerto Rico
workers use to bring in bags
of monkey chow — brown
pellets of processed food
that complete the primates’
natural vegetation diet.
“All of our tools were
destroyed,” said Angelina
Ruiz Lambides, the director
of the Cayo Santiago
facility. “Does FEMA cover
this? Does the university’s
insurance cover this? I don’t
know.”
Incredibly, as far as the
scientists can tell so far,
the monkeys survived the
direct hit from the hurri-
cane, perhaps by seeking
high ground and clustering
together at the base of trees.
AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
Police lift the coffin on Sept. 29, of fellow officer Luis Angel Gonzalez Lorenzo,
killed during the passage of Hurricane Maria when he tried to cross a river in his
car, during his funeral at the cemetery in Aguada, Puerto Rico. With many of the
U.S. territory’s communities still waiting for power and clean water, there is con-
cern about others reaching a breaking point.
No bodies have been
found and a census is not
detecting large numbers of
missing macaques.
The island’s history as a
research center dates to 1938,
when the man known as the
father of American primate
science brought a population
of Indian rhesus macaques to
the United States.
Clarence Ray Carpenter
wanted a place with the
perfect mix of isolation
and free range, where the
monkeys could be studied
living much as they do in
nature without the difficul-
ties of tracking them through
the wild.
Since then the 400 or so
macaques have reproduced
and expanded their numbers,
becoming the world’s most
studied free-ranging primate
population and something of
a living library.
Every animal born on
the island is tattooed for
easy identification, and
the skeleton of every one
that has died over nine
generations has been saved
for future reference. About
100 have had their entire
genetic makeup sequenced,
and hundreds more have had
at least some of their DNA
analyzed.
Researchers from Yale,
the University of Pennsyl-
vania, New York University
and others have been
spending much of the year
on the island studying every-
thing from the monkeys’ eye
movements to the genes and
behavior of socially aberrant
individuals that may provide
insight into the causes of
autism.
“It’s completely unprec-
edented in its breadth and
size,” said James Higham,
a professor of biological
anthropology at NYU who
is studying the monkeys’
behavior, cognition and
communication.
Now the university staff
and local employees who
keep Monkey Island running
are frantically ferrying bags
of chow in a tiny skiff,
feeding the macaques a
survival diet and trying to
reassemble the rainwater
collectors and drinking
troughs that keep the animals
alive in the tropical sun.
Mainland scientists are
bringing in equipment from
chain saws to a portable pier,
funded by tens of thousands
of dollars raised so far in
university departments and
online.
Complicating the effort,
the monkeys all carry herpes
B, a version of the virus that
is harmless to macaques
but can be fatal in humans.
Anyone who comes into
contact with monkey saliva
or urine must undergo
rigorous decontamination
and treatment with antiretro-
viral drugs.
Humans also pose risks
for the monkeys. Because
the hurricane destroyed the
island’s chemical toilet,
researchers and workers
can stay only until they
need a bathroom break:
Human waste could start an
epidemic that could wipe out
the monkeys.
While the rescue effort
is heroic, “it’s not sustain-
able,” said Higham, who is
bringing in a container full
of supplies. “They’re doing
the best they can do under
very difficult conditions, but
it needs help and attention.”
Myanmar claims success in stopping exodus; refugees disagree
BANGKOK (AP) —
More Rohingya Muslims
fleeing violence in Myanmar
streamed toward the border
Friday, despite government
assurances that it was stop-
ping the massive exodus of
refugees to Bangladesh.
A video obtained by
The Associated Press that
villagers said was shot
Thursday
in
northern
Rakhine state shows dozens
of Rohingya attempting to
swim across the currents of
a muddy river, from where
it is a more than a 12-mile
walk through jungles to the
border. Many more people,
from young children to old
men, stand huddled with
their belongings on the
riverbank.
Myanmar has come
under international criti-
cism for failing to stop the
violence, and in turn the tide
of more than half a million
Rohingya who have made
the often perilous journey
to Bangladesh since late
August, the largest refugee
crisis to hit Asia in decades.
The Myanmar government’s
information committee said
in a statement late Thursday
that it had stopped 17,000
Rohingya from fleeing in
just four days last week.
“The Myanmar authori-
ties in northern Rakhine went
to the border areas where
thousands of Bengalis await
to flee and talked to them,”
it said. “The local authorities
told the Bengalis if they
have difficulties with their
livelihood, they will provide
food and security and to
return to their villages. The
Bengalis agreed to stay.”
Myanmar doesn’t recog-
nize Rohingya as an ethnic
group, instead insisting they
are Bengali migrants from
Bangladesh living illegally
in the country.
The government may
have had some success
in keeping Rohingya in
Myanmar in recent days, but
villagers say Rohingya are
still attempting to leave and
many are gathered on the
beaches just across the water
from Bangladesh waiting
for a chance to leave the
country.
“There are more than
a thousand villagers at the
beach in Alel Than Kyaw
village off the shore trying
to flee but the authorities
are not letting them go,”
one villager told the AP
by phone on Friday. The
villager spoke on condition
of anonymity due to security
concerns.
Bangladesh in particular
AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe, File
Newly arrived Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar look out from a madrasa
window Monday that they used as a shelter in Shahparirdwip, Bangladesh.
has been pushing Myanmar
to stem the tide of refugees,
who are straining resources in
the already poor nation. The
current exodus is in addition
to hundreds of thousands
of Rohingya who fled prior
violence in Buddhist-ma-
jority Myanmar, where the
Muslim ethnic group has
faced decades of persecution
and discrimination.
The latest violence
began when a Rohingya
insurgent group launched
deadly attacks on security
posts Aug. 25, prompting
Myanmar’s military to
launch “clearance opera-
tions.” Those fleeing have
described
indiscriminate
attacks by security forces
and Buddhist mobs. The
government has blamed the
Rohingya, saying they set
fire to their own homes, but
the U.N. and others accuse it
of ethnic cleansing.
Though Myanmar leader
Aung San Suu Kyi has said
that the security forces have
ceased clearance operation
since early September,
witnesses say Rohingya
villages continue to be
burned in the region.
In a statement Friday,
Amnesty International said
Myanmar’s security forces
have engaged in an unlawful
and
disproportionate
campaign of violence.
MOSCOW (AP) — A
Russian lawmaker says
that he and colleagues who
recently visited Pyongyang
were shown North Korean
calculations indicating that
their missiles could reach the
U.S. West Coast.
Anton Morozov of
the nationalist Liberal-
Democratic Party said in
remarks carried by Russian
state news agency RIA
Novosti on Friday that
North Korea is preparing to
test-fire a long-range missile
“in the nearest future.”
Morozov, who visited
North Korea with two
fellow lawmakers earlier
this week, said that their
interlocutors told them
that Pyongyang has the
technology that would allow
missile warheads to survive
the heat while entering the
atmosphere.
He said North Koreans
also showed them
“mathematical calculations
which they say prove that
their missile is capable of
reaching the U.S. West
Coast.”
Canada pays
indigenous people
taken from homes
TORONTO (AP) — The
Canadian government has
agreed to pay compensation
to indigenous people who
were taken from their
homes and adopted into
non-indigenous families.
Indigenous Relations
Minister Carolyn Bennett
announced the settlement
Friday in what’s known
as the “Sixties Scoop.”
Indigenous children were
robbed of their cultural
identities by being placed
with non-native families by
child welfare services during
the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Many lost touch with their
culture and language.
The settlement for an
estimated 20,000 people
is aimed at resolving
numerous related lawsuits.
The victims will share
750 million Canadian
dollars ($596 million), with
individual amounts to be
determined later. Many said
they expected a settlement
of around 50,000 Canadian
dollars each.
Lead plaintiff Marcia
Brown Martel, who was
taken by child welfare
officials and adopted by a
non-native family, called
events the “stealing of
children.”
“I have great hope that
because we’ve reached this
plateau that this will never,
ever happen in Canada
again,” said Brown Martel.
Mexico’s ex-first
lady leaves party,
hints at run
MEXICO CITY (AP) —
Mexico’s former first lady
Margarita Zavala announced
she is resigning from the
conservative National Action
Party, known as the PAN.
Zavala is the wife
of ex-President Felipe
Calderon, who governed
from 2006 to 2012. She had
announced her intention
to run for the party’s
presidential nomination,
but found herself in open
conflict with party leader
Ricardo Anaya, who also
wants the nomination.
In a video, Zavala
accused the leadership of
cancelling internal elections
and said they “handed the
party’s most important
decision to others.”
That was an apparent
reference to last month’s
announcement of an
alliance between the PAN
and center-left Democratic
Revolution Party for the July
2018 presidential elections.
Zavala did not mention
Anaya by name, but the
two have had public, heated
exchanges recently. In
the video, she said PAN
leaders “have imposed
anti-democratic conditions
that we criticized for so long
in the PRI,” referring to the
long-ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party.
Zavala hinted she might
run for the presidency
outside her party but was
not clear, sayingshe does
not resign “from my duty to
participate in politics.”