Amazon forest fires 'on the rise'

The number of fire destroying the Amazon rainforests is increasing, studies have found.

A team of scientists in the region said the fire may release similar amounts of carbon as a deliberate deforestation.

Writing in Science, they said fire occurrence rate was increased to 59% of areas with reduced deforestation.

As a result, the rise in the fire could jeopardize the long-term success of schemes to reduce emissions from deforestation, they added.

The researchers - from the University of Exeter, UK, and Brazil's National Institute for Space Research - based their findings on satellite-derived data on deforestation and forest fires.

"The result was a surprise because we expected that the fire is reduced to decrease deforestation," said co-author Luiz Aragao from the University of Exeter.

"The implications for Redd is that we first need a system that can monitor the fire," he told Science journal.

"There is also a need to shift land use in the Amazon in a system where the fire is not used."
'Slash and burn'

Redd (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest degradation) schemes aim to create a financil value for carbon stored in the developing countries' tropical forests.
It gives countries incentives to protect forest areas from a variety of effects that release carbon into the atmosphere, including tree felling and logging, agricultural expansion, land degradation.

As deforestation accounts for about 20% of the emissions resulting from human activity, the Redd program is considered a key element in global efforts to curb climate change.

"Fire the following year drought is likely to release a similar amount of carbon emissions from deforestation as deliberate," the researchers wrote.

"The higher the probability of a drier Amazon in the 21st Century predicted by several global circulation models ... Amazonia could push an amplified fire-prone system."

They added that previous studies showed that fires in the region increased after large-scale droughts in 1998 and 2005.

"Forest landscapes in Amazonia is becoming more fragmented and, therefore, a growing proportion of forests are exposed to leakage of accidental fire from neighboring farms," they suggested.

The practice of "slash and burn" is widely used by farmers in the Amazon region to clear secondary forest and allow food and cash crops cultivated.
But Dr. Aragao said: "We need to change the way people use and manage their land so that they can do it without fire."

Says the paper's findings, Andrew Mitchell, director of the canopy Global Programme, said: "These results have important implications for Redd negotiations.

"If we were to control deforestation, you have got to look at what local people are doing out of the woods," he told BBC News.

"The whole regime Redd need to encourage a more efficient use of land without fire.

"But if they do not use fire, which is cheap, and then what they are going to use - strimmers? Chainsaws? Tractors?

"It means that money from Redd programs need to go to people who not only live within the forest, but also the farmers who live outside of it."

Dr. Aragao agreed, adding that the move to fire-free land management deforested areas lie adjacent to forests could be "drastically reduce the heat and carbon emissions."

"It would be expensive," he observed, "but it will protect the stability of carbon stocks and Amazonian diversity."

Pieter van Lierop, a forestry official for Food and Agriculture Organization (yet) - a member of the UN's program Redd, said the findings are relevant to policies aimed at reducing deforestation.

"The article clearly shows that within Redd, particular attention should go to the assessment of the role of fire and propose more responsible use of fire and / or alternatives for the fire," he told BBC News.

"However, we should also consider that the article is mainly discussing fire incidence and circumstances, construed as a fire and not the size of emissions."

READ MORE - Amazon forest fires 'on the rise'

Climate change made apes vanish in ancient Europe

Great apes were swept away in the old Europe, when their environment changed dramatically around nine million years ago, scientists say.

A study of fossil teeth of grazing animals sheds light on what Europe was like during the late Miocene.

Researchers say that changes in European climate and the environment at the time replaced by many forests with grasslands - apes and monkey.

The scientists described their findings in a Royal Society Journal.

Ancient relatives of modern orang-utans, gorillas, chimpanzees and gibbons were able to survive in Asia and Africa, where these changes are not as drastic.

A team led by Dr. Claude Bernard Lyon Gildas Mercerón of a University in France, looked at fossil teeth of ancient antelope that lived alongside monkeys during the Miocene epoch - in what is now Germany, Hungary and Greece.

The researchers tried to determine what these animals ate millions of years ago.

"The best way to reconstructing the past environment is to determine the types of vegetarian diets. Here we used fossils of antelopes, because these animals dominated the fauna in Europe at the moment," Dr. Mercerón told BBC News.

The scientists then analyzed "micro scars" - the specific pattern of wear, indicating that the researchers clues about the animals' diet - in the teeth of this antelope.

They found that when these mammals on land shared with great apes, the landscape was very different from Europe became gradually.

The change does not happen overnight - it took thousands of years, says Dr. Mercerón. But when the monkeys' natural habitat change and forests disappeared, the animals slowly became extinct in Europe.

Monkeys were eventually replaced by their smaller cousins - a species of monkey called Mesopithecus, said the researcher.
Risk of extinction

Today, humans can cause changes in the environment much faster than what happened millions of years ago. People must become aware of their negative impact on the animal world, said Dr. Mercerón.
"If we cut down our forests and dry swamps, in the end we can make a very uniform environment and a decline in biodiversity", says the scientist.

"Deforestation leads to possible isolation of different populations of great apes in small woods. If their isolation, it becomes impossible for them to have a genetic exchange between populations - and the population started to decline."

Numbers of monkeys now living have fallen sharply in recent years. Elevated levels of poaching and deforestation are considered the main factors for the decline.

Many species are endangered - only about 6,000 Sumatran orangutans and so little about 700 mountain gorillas are thought to remain in the wild.

But there's more, says Dr. Mercerón's colleague, Dr. Ellen Schulz of the University of Hamburg in Germany.

"Great apes are threatened with extinction, mainly because the human habitat destruction," she said.

"But there is something else - people tend to forget that the conservation of biodiversity important for their own survival and - we never know what awaits us in the future."

READ MORE - Climate change made apes vanish in ancient Europe

US missile 'used in Yemen raid'

American missiles were used in a raid against al-Qaida in Yemen, where women and children died in December, the rights group Amnesty International says.

Amnesty has released images taken after the raid, which he says shows remnants of a US-made Tomahawk cruise missile.

Cluster bombs were apparently used in the attack, which Amnesty describes as "irresponsible".

The U.S. has said its troops gave support to the invasion of Abyan province.

But Yemeni officials have denied any U.S. involvement.
Obama congratulates

At the end of 2009 suddenly entered Yemen offensive against al-Qaeda militants.

The authorities began a series of raids, saying intelligence showed that Western targets were in great danger.

On December 17 attack on two militant targets were reportedly more than 30 militants dead, the raids were hailed as a great success in Yemen.

U.S. President Barack Obama telephoned his Yemeni counterpart, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in order to offer his congratulations.

But Amnesty says that since the U.S. actually supported the raid by cruise missiles.

"A military attack of this kind against suspected militants without an attempt to hold them to at least unlawful," said Philip Luther Amnesty.

"The fact that so many of the victims were women and children in fact indicates that the attack was in fact indefensible, particularly given the likely use of cluster munitions."

Unnamed U.S. officials have said that the elite U.S. troops support essential contradiction Yemeni government claims that it was entirely their operation, says the BBC's Sebastian Usher.

But the U.S. has denied reports it had cruise missiles - the core of the new allegations by Amnesty International released to confirm.

Analysts say the U.S. is intimately involved in station in the country against al-Qaeda.

But Yemeni leaders are not keen to appear too closely tied to U.S. interests - one reason why the U.S. is the extent of its military role in the country to keep under wraps, our correspondent adds.

READ MORE - US missile 'used in Yemen raid'

Kouchner and Hague pressure Israel over Gaza

The EU could play a greater role in ensuring aid gets into Gaza and weapons are banned, the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

He urged Israel to an international investigation into the deaths of nine activists to accept a Turkish aid ship.

He spoke alongside the British Secretary of State William Hague, who said that Europe would maintain pressure on Israel.

Israel, the Gaza Strip and blocks over fears of missile attacks, has ruled out international involvement in a probe.

The dead one week ago there was worldwide condemnation, but opposition from Israel, which claims it has the right to defend itself.

Another aid ship, owned by Irish Rachel Corrie, was intercepted by Israel on Saturday and officials began deporting the crew and activists.
'Transparency' needed

In response to criticism that Europe is not enough measures, Mr Kouchner said the EU was willing to charge to check the ships in Gaza, and more a role in the control of the Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza to play .
"The European Union should participate in politics and specifically more than it already does - and does a lot already - on the road to peace," he said.

Mr Hague stopped short of calling for an international investigation, but called on Israel to a "credible and transparent" investigation to accept.

"We believe there should be an international presence on the minimum value in this investigation or the investigation," he said.

The BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris, says Mr Hague will be the same message as his Rome, Berlin and Warsaw later this week visiting key.

Earlier, the UN proposals for an international probe hardened, and their plans to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But Israel's U.S. ambassador Michael Oren said his country would reject the proposals and reiterated that an internal investigation would be held.

He said that Israel would not apologize for the incident in which eight Turkish citizens and a joint US-Turkish nationals were slain by Israeli commandos.
"State Terrorism"

One of the groups that support has helped to organize the mission to Gaza, Turkish-based IHH, new photos released of the incident on Sunday.

The images show battered and bloodied Israeli commandos surrounded by protesters at the Mavi Marmara Turkish ship, heading to Gaza as part of a flotilla aid.
The IHH apparently hoped that the images would show how the activists had medical attention paid to the affected Israelis when they were attacked.

But Israel said that the back-up views of her version of events: that the troops were attacked by "extremists" and acted in self-defense.

Turkey has strongly criticized Israel over the killings, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan labeling the command operation "state terrorism".

Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, a visit to Turkey on Monday and intends to pay his respects to the dead activists.

His government is the bitter rival of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, Mr. Abbas of the Fatah movement in 2007.

Israel - the most access to Gaza, controlled since withdrawing troops and settlers in 2005 - tightened the blockade of the Gaza Strip after the Hamas takeover.

READ MORE - Kouchner and Hague pressure Israel over Gaza