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[Time1] U.S. to beef up missile defense against North Korea, Iran
The United States will deploy additional ground-based missile interceptors on the West Coast as part of efforts to enhance the nation's ability to defend itself from attack by North Korea, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Friday.
Still relatively new in his post, the Pentagon chief told reporters that 14 additional interceptors to be installed by 2017 would bring the total to 44. It is part of a package of steps expected to cost $1 billion, officials said.
"The reason that we are doing what we are doing and the reason we are advancing our program here for homeland security is to not take any chances, is to stay ahead of the threat and to assure any contingency," Hagel said.
Friday's move came after North Korea recently threatened a pre-emptive nuclear attack on South Korea and the United States in response to stepped-up U.N. Security Council sanctions over its latest nuclear test last month.
In December, North Korea successfully launched a long-range rocket for the first time under what the United States and other Western nations say was the guise of putting a satellite into orbit.
Moreover, Pentagon officials said they became concerned about a mobile missile spotted in a parade last April. The KN-08 missile can be moved around the country and hidden, making it harder to detect compared to a missile on a launch pad.
"We believe the KN-08 does have the range to reach the United States," said Adm. James Winnefeld.
North Korea also said last week it was nullifying the joint declaration on the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. One of the country's top generals, according to published reports, claims Pyongyang has nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles that are ready to be fired.
While Hagel said the steps he announced were aimed at addressing the threat from North Korea and Iran, the focus was clearly on the potential for North Korea to some day follow through on its belligerent rhetoric.
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[Time2]
Iran also is believed to be continuing its efforts to develop nuclear weapon capability.
Military and White House officials have said current U.S. missile defenses are adequate for the present level of threat, and President Barack Obama said in an interview with ABC News this week that he does not think North Korea can carry out a missile attack on the United States.
"They probably can't but we don't like the margin of error," Obama said.
Hagel said Friday that U.S. missile defense systems in place provide protection from "limited ICBM attacks," but added that "North Korea, in particular, has recently made advances in its capabilities and has engaged in a series of irresponsible and reckless provocations."
However, Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund told CNN the planned expansion would only spend more money on a system that doesn't work to protect against a still unrealized North Korean threat.
The existing missile defense system was "deeply flawed," said Cirincione, whose foundation opposes nuclear weapons. He added that North Korea was "years away from the ability to field a missile with a nuclear warhead that could hit the United States."
Hagel acknowledged a problem with the guidance system of missile interceptors and said further testing would occur this year.
"We certainly will not go forward with the additional 14 interceptors until we are sure that we have the complete confidence that we will need," Hagel said. "But the American people should be assured that our interceptors are effective."
He also announced the military will work with Japan to increase radar capability to improve early warning and tracking of any missile launched from North Korea.
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[Time3] To be or not to be
Outside the Bible, these six words are the most famous in all the literature of the world. They were spoken by Hamlet when he was thinking aloud, and they are the most famous words in Shakespeare because Hamlet was speaking not only for himself but also for every thinking man and woman. To be or not to be, to live or not to live, to live richly and abundantly and eagerly, or to live dully and meanly and scarcely. A philosopher once wanted to know whether he was alive or not, which is a good question for everyone to put to himself occasionally. He answered it by saying: "I think, therefore am."
But the best definition of existence ever saw did another philosopher who said: "To be is to be in relations." If this true, then the more relations a living thing has, the more it is alive. To live abundantly means simply to increase the range and intensity of our relations. Unfortunately we are so constituted that we get to love our routine. But apart from our regular occupation how much are we alive? If you are interest-ed only in your regular occupation, you are alive only to that extent. So far as other things are concerned--poetry and prose, music, pictures, sports, unselfish friendships, politics, international affairs--you are dead.
Contrariwise, it is true that every time you acquire a new interest--even more, a new accomplishment--you increase your power of life. No one who is deeply interested in a large variety of subjects can remain unhappy; the real pessimist is the person who has lost interest.
Bacon said that a man dies as often as he loses a friend. But we gain new life by contacts, new friends. What is supremely true of living objects is only less true of ideas, which are also alive. Where your thoughts are, there will your live be also. If your thoughts are confined only to your business, only to your physical welfare, only to the narrow circle of the town in which you live, then you live in a narrow cir-conscribed life. But if you are interested in what is going on in China, then you are living in China~ if you’re interested in the characters of a good novel, then you are living with those highly interesting people, if you listen intently to fine music, you are away from your immediate surroundings and living in a world of passion and imagination.
To be or not to be--to live intensely and richly, merely to exist, that depends on ourselves. Let widen and intensify our relations. While we live, let live!
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[Time4] Gettysburg Address
(Delivered on the 19th Day of November, 1863 Cemetery Hill, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania )
Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new Nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now, we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that Nation, or any nation soconceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who gave their lives that Nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that this Nation, under GOD, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the People by the People and for the People shall not perish from the earth."
Abraham Lincoln
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[Time5]
A sales manager who worked for me once had a big meeting coming up with an important client, and he was worried he wouldn't be able to close the deal. I spent time coaching him on how to present our product, and over time he felt much more confident. However, I wasn't completely sure he was ready, and I didn't want to risk losing the business. I told him I'd go to the meeting with him and make the pitch myself while he watched.
It wasn't until later -- when he was no longer working for me -- that I found out how resentful he had been that I had stepped in and decided to try to solve his problem for him.
Early on in my managerial career, my instinct was to jump in and solve my team's problems by myself. I finally realized that taking on too many of the issues they should be solving on their own made it impossible for me to scale my attention as the company grew. I also frustrated many of the people on my team.
To sum it up, I only do what only I can do. And I realized that -- as a CEO -- I need to spend my time doing five things that no one else can do:
1. Strategy: Make sure that I create a coherent strategy for the business (in conjunction with other team members, of course; doing this in a vacuum is perilous).
2. Communication: Making sure that this strategy is communicated clearly to everyone on my management team and throughout the organization. Everyone needs to be on the same page about what we have to do.
2. Communication: Making sure that this strategy is communicated clearly to everyone on my management team and throughout the organization. Everyone needs to be on the same page about what we have to do.
3. Hiring: Put the right people in place.
4. Help: Remove any obstacles so that the team can succeed at doing the things at which they excel.
5. Financing: Making sure we have enough capital to achieve our goals (and getting that funding in place if we don't).
This does not mean I abdicate responsibility for any of the departments that report to me. I am directly involved with product, ad sales, editorial, marketing, PR, etc. on a daily basis to help steer them in the right direction. However, unless I believe those managers are making egregious errors in judgment (which rarely happens), I let them lead and only overrule something when I absolutely have to.
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OBSTACLEHong Kong is fast becoming the Fort Knox of ivory.
As one of the chief gateways to mainland China -- the world's largest market for ivory, according to animal welfare groups -- Hong Kong has seized tons of what Chinese collectors call "white gold."
In the last six months alone, more than six tons of elephant ivory worth close to $HK50 million ($US6.5 million) was confiscated in Hong Kong. In one shipment alone, Hong Kong authorities seized 3.8 tons of tusks, equivalent to one-sixth of the total illegal ivory confiscated worldwide last year.
Where this ivory is stored in Hong Kong is a closely guarded secret.
"For security reasons, we are not in a position to disclose further details of the keeping premises and the seized items," a spokesman for Hong Kong's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department told CNN.
With a black market price of almost $3,000 a kilogram, Hong Kong's authorities are taking no chances.
"The keeping premises are equipped with adequate security measures such as security guards and CCTV surveillance," he said.
But high-profile thefts in Zambia and Botswana have highlighted the security headache and the drain on resources that ivory stockpiles pose for countries.
"For many countries where ivory is detected entering the country illegally and seizures take place, especially involving large amounts of ivory, there is the very real possibility, given its current high value and the expense involved with maintaining security, of it finding its way onto the market," said Dr Naomi Doak, the Greater Mekong Program Coordinator for the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.
"A number of countries have come out and acknowledged that they have lost ivory from stockpiles," she added.
Part of the problem, she said, was that countries are only required by international agreements on animal trade to report the weight rather than the number of tusks confiscated.
"If (countries) have to provide detailed records including the number of pieces as well as the weight of individual items, it makes it easier to verify and also allows more information to be used in analysis such as transportation trends," she said.
Scientists have begun a program of mapping poaching hotspots by analyzing DNA from seized tusks. For Grace Ge Gabriel, regional director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, stockpiles are an invaluable resource in creating a crime database.
"There is a lab that has been set up in the University of Washington in the U.S. where they have already constructed a map of African elephant DNA which will help them pinpoint which country the ivory came from and where the poaching hotspots are," she told CNN.
Gabriel said that more often than not, poaching is repeated in the same areas. Information of this type helps law enforcers to choke off the trade at source.
While the Hong Kong stockpile is among the best protected in the region, and authorities have been quick to cooperate with the DNA database program, Gabriel said stockpiles in general present a risk.
"We feel that confiscated ivory requires a lot of capacity to keep it in a secure location and leaving it in these places will always tempt people to get their hands on it."
According to the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species (CITES) which wrapped up in Bangkok this week, a large amount of confiscated African ivory goes missing every year.
"The size of ivory stockpiles in many countries in and outside Africa, and their possible contribution to the illegal ivory supply chain, remains another important gap in the current understanding of the dynamics of the illegal ivory trade," a report unveiled at CITES -- entitled "Elephants in the Dust, The African Elephant Crisis" -- stated.
"This gap could be substantially narrowed through mandatory, regular inventorying," it said. "Forensic techniques may help to establish the extent to which ivory in illegal trade is derived from poaching or was leaked from official stockpiles."
The report said the number of large-scale seizures of ivory (more than 800kgs) destined for Asia had more than doubled since 2009, reaching an all-time high in 2011.
Illegal ivory trade activity has more than doubled since 2007 and is now over three times larger than it was in 1998, the report said.
The report also said that highly-organized criminal networks operate with relative impunity to move large shipments of ivory to markets in Asia as a result of weak governance and collusive corruption at all levels.
While ivory has since 1989 been on Appendix I of CITES -- which outlaws its international trade -- critics blame a one-off sale of ivory stockpiled in Africa to China and Japan in 2008 for the latest spike in illegal ivory trading.
As elephant numbers increased following the ban, CITES officials agreed to the sale of 68 tons of ivory from stockpiles in the hope that regulated ivory would flood the market, putting further pressure on poached ivory.
The paper trail set up by the Chinese government to cover the newly regulated ivory products became the perfect cover for illegal traders. A flurry of false documentation branded poached ivory legal for trade and elephants have been slaughtered in greater numbers than ever.
In one case reported by the Environmental Investigation Agency, the employees of a major Chinese ivory distributor were able to register and legalize 'new', or illegal ivory, simply by declaring to provincial customs authorities that they had forgotten to register ivory before the ban, but wanted to "register it now."
According to CITES figures, the number of slain elephants in Africa was estimated at 17,000 in 2011, 7.5% of the continent's elephant population.
Conservation groups say nothing short of a complete ban will halt poaching.
Meanwhile, alternatives such as mammoth ivory -- legal because the mammoth has been extinct for more then 4,500 years -- has done little to stem the poaching, claim experts, instead fueling demand for ivory products.
A report on the mammoth ivory trade commissioned by Care for the Wild in 2010 found that buyers of mammoth ivory were sometimes undiscriminating about the provenance of the piece.
"Some buyers of mammoth ivory items may notice that the quality of elephant ivory is usually superior for larger pieces and may switch to elephant ivory objects, which might encourage more elephant poaching," the report said.
"If mammoth ivory objects were to be introduced into Africa, businessmen might try to use them as a cover for their illegal elephant ivory objects; small items can be difficult to distinguish."
In Hong Kong, one of the main hubs for Russia's $20m-a-year mammoth tusk industry, finding mammoth tusks that are large enough to sculpt is becoming increasingly difficult.
"(Fossickers) can only work in summer because the tundra in Russia is frozen for the rest of the year and even then they're having to dig deeper to get the larger tusks," said one Hong Kong trader who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity surrounding all ivory trade. "It seems like all the bigger, easy-to-get pieces have already been extracted."
Despite the legality of the mammoth tusk industry, he said people still come into his shop on Hong Kong's fine arts and antiques strip on Hollywood Road asking to buy elephant ivory.
"Many times, many times (people ask for ivory). Do they know it's illegal? Some do, some don't," he said.
Conservation groups have now targeted what they call the "gang of eight" nations at the center of the illegal ivory trade -- Kenya, Thailand, Uganda, Tanzania, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines and China.
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[The Rest]
Tom de Meulenaer, a senior CITES official, said the convention's ruling committee had "run out of patience" over the ivory issue and last week it moved to toughen up action against the worst offending countries.
At its final session in Bangkok, CITES delegates approved a decision to demand an action plan from the so-called "gang of eight" to reduce the trade in ivory within 12 months. If these countries do not meet these targets, delegates said, they would likely be hit with sanctions barring their own legal wildlife and plant trades.
TRAFFIC's elephant and rhino expert Tom Milliken said it was time for countries on ivory trade routes to produce blueprints for curbing the ivory trade.
"We've seen trade in illegal ivory double since 2007 and the illegal killing of elephants double since 2005. We're really at the highest levels of illegal killings and illegal trade in two decades," Milliken told CNN. "There is a general sense that things are beginning to spin out of control."
He said that while Chinese demand was driving the trade due to its increased economic power and its history of ivory consumption, no other country was doing more in terms of making seizures.
"Unfortunately, it's just not yet registering a deterrent effect," he said.
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发表于 2013-3-17 00:23:06
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henomenon: 1.The largest ivory black market of all----Hong Kong, has recently confiscated tons of ivory by the authority and police force. 
