On March 2nd 1997 the Albanian President Sali Barisha declared a state of emergency after weeks of unrest and violence prompted by the collapse of unregulated pyramid schemes. The investment scams had brought the country to the brink of economic meltdown. Monica Whitlock has spoken Lorina Naci who lived through the chaos in the Albanian capital Tirana.
19 March 2017
The Conversation: Humans may have transformed the Sahara from lush paradise to barren desert
Once upon a time, the Sahara was green. There were vast lakes. Hippos and giraffe lived there, and large human populations of fishers foraged for food alongside the lakeshores. [...]
The stark difference between 10,000 years ago and now largely exists due to changing orbital conditions of the earth – the wobble of the earth on its axis and within its orbit relative to the sun. [...]
The most commonly accepted theory about this shift holds that devegetation of the landscape meant that more light reflected off the ground surface (a process known as albedo), helping to create the high-pressure ridge that dominates today’s Sahara.
But what caused the initial devegetation? That’s uncertain, in part because the area involved with studying the effects is so vast. But my recent paper presents evidence that areas where the Sahara dried out quickly happen to be the same areas where domesticated animals first appeared. At this time, where there is evidence to show it, we can see that the vegetation changes from grasslands into scrublands. [...]
If you remove the threat of predation, the prey behave differently. In Yellowstone National Park, the absence of predators is argued to have changed grazers’ habits. Prey felt more comfortable grazing alongside the exposed riverbanks, which increased the erosion in those areas. The re-introduction of wolves into the ecosystem completely shifted this dynamic and forests regenerated within several years. By altering the “fear-based ecology”, significant changes in landscape processes are known to follow.
America Magazine: De-Christianization in the West is a real threat. But Putinism isn’t the answer.
Patriarch Kirill went on to enumerate the ravages of de-Christianization, or this “evil political force disguised as tolerance.” In his words, these included people “banned” from wearing crosses at the office and from wishing each other a Merry Christmas; the expansion of same-sex marriage and the “refusal to understand marriage as a sacred union between man and woman”; and abortion and skyrocketing divorce rates.
This was not the first time the patriarch had called for a united ecumenical front against secularization. In a January speech to the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, he underscored the need for “mutually respectful” dialogue between religious leaders in the common struggle “to protect traditional values.” Meeting President Horacio Cartes of Paraguay last year, Patriarch Kirill lamented how “Christian values are being marginalized in lives of people in several countries.” He warned: “Europe must not lose its Christian roots.” [...]
The message from Moscow has resonated with some leading Christian thinkers in the West. Vladimir Putin might be a thug, in their view, but in the rearguard action to preserve faith, family and nationhood against the liberal and “globalist” onslaught, the Russian strongman is no enemy. He deserves at least a sympathetic hearing, they think, and he might even prove to be a useful tactical ally. Call it the Putin Option. [...]
When the Islamist regimes in, say, Iran or Turkey behave this way, Christians do not hesitate to denounce the repression, and rightly so. Yet there is a tendency in some conservative Christian quarters to ignore or play down Mr. Putin’s assaults on political and religious liberty, or else to use sophistic relativism to excuse him.
Motherboard: Could Fast Radio Bursts Be Aliens? It's Not Impossible
In 2007, a team of astronomers at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia discovered the first "fast radio burst," a millisecond-long flash of radio waves that has so far defied a natural explanation. To date, fewer than two dozen fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been discovered and many seem to originate from galaxies that are billions of light years away. And when you can't pin something on a natural explanation in science, you might as well pin it on aliens. [...]
Based on their calculations, they found that if such a transmitter were solar powered, it would require the amount of energy roughly equal to that of all the sunlight falling on a planet twice the size of Earth. The next question was if an artificial structure would even be able to withstand that much concentrated energy, or whether it would simply melt. According to Loeb and Lingam, it's possible if the massive device is water-cooled. While such a construction project is way beyond the capabilities of Earthlings, it is at least physically possible.
So what interest would an extraterrestrial civilization have in building such a massive, powerful device? Loeb and Lingam theorize that it might be used as a way to propel gigantic light sails across interstellar distances. Indeed, according to their calculations, the amount of power generated by this device would be strong enough to push a craft weighing about 1 million tons, or about 20 times heavier than the largest cruise ship on Earth.
Politico: Merkel’s Ivanka moment
In the end, Angela Merkel couldn’t hide it. Seated next to Ivanka Trump at a White House meeting with business leaders on Friday, the German leader tilted her head in the first daughter’s direction as Ivanka spoke, a look of bewilderment tinged with disdain enveloping her face.
“Why are you here,” Merkel, never a good pretender, seemed to be thinking. [...]
The strategy appears to have succeeded. Trump praised Germany’s vocational training system as a model for the U.S. Though he stopped short of calling for even closer business ties, something German industry had been hoping for, Trump stressed the importance of strong trade between the two countries, as long as it was “fair.” [...]
Given Trump’s repeated and harsh insults of Merkel and her refugee stance during the campaign and afterwards, a warm embrace would have been both unrealistic and unconvincing. Most of this disharmony was non-verbal. Merkel shot Trump a skeptical glance during the press conference, for example, when he quipped that both of them appeared to have been wiretapped by the Obama administration. Trump either didn’t hear or ignored her when she suggested they shake hands in front of reporters (they had shaken hands at other times on Friday).
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