(Photo: Steve Evans/Flickr/CC-BY)

For many years now, Kashmir had been known to be a dangerous place to live because of conflicts surrounding the region, making peace elusive among its people. The conflict, however, does not stem from the country itself like other conflict-ridden countries but from its neighbors, such as Pakistan and India. Both countries are considered nuclear powers in conflict with one another in such a small space, threatening the Kashmir region.

The unresolved conflict of Kashmir

FOR more than 60 years ago, Kashmir has been the root cause for conflicts as to whether India or Pakistan should claim this tiny country. A total of three wars have been fought over this nation and its people, with no clear victor. Without conclusion of the conflict, the people of Kashmir face an uncertain future. This place was once a beautiful nation with a growing tourist industry, but now the beauty has been replaced with destructive terrorist activities and military incursions.

Kashmir’s dispute

Kashmir’s dispute stemmed from the separation of two British Indian Empire states into independent states, which turned into the Muslim Pakistan and the Hindu India. The Partition, as referred to by historians, started because of religion and threats of annihilation. Muslims in India believed their religious status would be overwhelmed in a Hindi Indian controlled state, thus the Muslim League demanded that Hindu and Muslim India should be separated. The Indian National Congress, which would later become the ruling party of India, rejected the proposal of the Muslim Indians but compromised by creating Pakistan.

Unknown to all at that time, the leaders of the ruling party expected Pakistan to eventually collapse from ongoing turmoil. However, Pakistan rose to become an independent and aggressive nation. The process of The Partition left traumatic memories on both sides because of  killings on the boarders of the two countries, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and millions of families homeless. With such animosity toward each other, it is impossible to see a peaceful resolution.

Hopes for a peaceful settlement

With activities such as rogue military movements, holding of elections, hosting human rights conventions and helping refugees, the United Nation’s mandate on the solution of the peace process will ensure a long term effect to both parties. Kashmir does hope that this governing body has the ability to pacify hostilities and ensure an effective conflict resolution. Sometimes, funding for these conventions may require some form of credit, like a payday loan or a low-rate personal loan, among other types.

Source

http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/1439.pdf

The yellow marks Arunachal Pradesh in India, where koro was discovered among more than 100 other languages. (Photo Credit: CC BY/Immanuel Giel/Wikipedia)

The discovery of language previously unknown to the world at large is a momentous occasion. The window of opportunity to record that expression of human culture is limited at best. National Geographic’s “Enduring Voices” project has opened the window for koro, a language spoken by about 800 people in India’s northeastern-most state, Arunachal Pradesh, reports the Wall Street Journal.

In the foothills of the Himalayas lies koro

English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote that “Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquest.” Coleridge no doubt knew the import of his words, as conquered peoples and dead languages litter human history.

Two researchers discovered koro in about a dozen hunter-gatherer villages in the Arunachal Pradesh region of India. More than 120 languages are spoken in the state. According to Dr. Gregory Anderson of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, koro is “quite distinct on every level — the sound, the words (and) the sentence structure.” Koro deals with reality in ways very different than English. The ways in which elements of the natural world are codified in koro are untranslatable in a “major” world language, says Anderson. Koro also has no written form, which makes dissemination more difficult.

Further details of koro will be published soon in the journal Indian Linguistics.

There are nearly 7,000 known languages spoken on Earth

Experts predict that of the nearly 7,000 known languages spoken today, roughly half will die before the 21^st century is complete. Estimates indicate that thousands of languages have already perished over the course of human history. It is also estimated that the last known fluent speaker of a language dies every two weeks, writes the WSJ. In the case of koro, the more that youth go off to schools where only Hindi and English are spoken (a common occurrence), the more likely koro is to fade quickly.

Sources:

Wall Street Journal

More on the National Geographic “Enduring Voices” project

Brits have caught a deadly virus by traveling to India for plastic surgery. CC by aesop

Instead of souvenirs, Brits looking for discounted nip-and-tucks in India have brought home a new superbug infection that could spread worldwide. A new class of superbug has infected plastic surgery patients in south Asia who have carried it to the U.K., and from there it could spread around the globe. A gene interchangeable with bacteria in the new superbug makes infections resistant to the most powerful antibiotic drugs. Experts say governments should come up with programs to coax more antibiotic research from Big Pharma, which is preoccupied with profitable maladies such as erectile dysfunction.

Drug-resistant superbug gene makes bacteria deadly

Researchers say there are few drugs available to defeat this superbug. Reuters reports that a newly discovered gene — New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1 — has been found by researchers in patients in both south Asia and the U.K. Bacteria are altered by the NDM-1 gene to become highly resistant to most antibiotics, including carbapenems, the most powerful class available. Drug experts say the research pipeline has no new antibiotics in progress to suppress it. Timothy Walsh, who led the study, told Reuters he fears the new superbug could soon spread across the globe with international travel for cheap cosmetic surgery procedures increasing.

Superbug lives to migrate and mutate

The superbug gene was already circulating widely in India, the researchers said in an article published online Wednesday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases. The Associated Press reports that 37 people in the U.K. who had plastic surgery in India or Pakistan and contracted antibiotic-resistant infections have been diagnosed with the superbug gene. Medical researchers in Australia, Canada, the U.S., the Netherlands and Sweden have also detected the superbug gene. The authors of the Lancet article said the gene is detected on DNA structures called plasmids that are copied and passed on with ease between bacteria, leading them to declare that the superbug has “an alarming potential to spread and diversify.”

Money, not superbugs, entice Big Pharma

Superbugs don’t pique the pharmaceutical industry’s interest. Because bacteria adapt so quickly, new antibiotics don’t have the shelf life to be sufficiently lucrative. The Wall Street Journal reports that to ensure they get an adequate return on investment to shareholders for addressing a global health threat, some pharmaceutical companies are looking for government subsidies. Strict research and development demands from official regulators are also blamed for cutting into future earnings. However, some big drug companies are jumping into the antibiotic research pool, including Pfizer and Merck in the U.S., Novartis in Switzerland and GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca in the U.K.

More on this topic

Reuters

Associated Press

Wall Street Journal

New Moore Island is just one of many islands that are sinking into the sea. Image from Flickr.

New Moore Island is just one of dozens of islands around the world that are slowly but surely sinking into the sea. Situated between India and Bangladesh, New Moore Island has long been the subject of a diplomatic dispute between the two countries. Residents of Bangladesh have long since taken a short term loan of living space on other, drier shores, but the issue will only get worse as time goes on. Rising sea levels have claimed more than just New Moore Island, but this tiny disputed island is bringing more attention to the issue than ever before.

New Moore Island by any other name

The disputed New Moore Island was a tiny chunk of land – less than 2 miles long and 1.5 miles wide. The government of India claimed the island as part of its territory, saying that New Moore Island fell within established maritime borders. However, the government of Bangladesh also claims the island, which they call South Talpatti.

There have never been any permanent settlements on New Moore Island. The island came under dispute only about 40 years ago, when New Moore Island/South Talpatti appeared after the Bhola cyclone. India had at one point established a base on South Talpatti/New Moore Island, but international opinion was split on the question.

Rising sea levels engulf New Moore Island

The School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta reported to the BBC recently that New Moore Island had been entirely engulfed by rising sea waters. Confirmed by local fishermen and satellite pictures, New Moore Island is officially no more. Before the year 2000, sea levels in most of the world went up by approximately 3 millimeters a year, but between 2000 and 2010 sea level has risen at about 5 millimeters per year. In the Bengal Basin region and Sundarban Island chain, where New Moore Island was situated, sea levels have been rising by about 3.14 centimeters a year. New Moore Island is the fifth island in the Sundarbans to sink into the sea – preceded by Bedford, Lohachara, Kabasgadi, and Suparibhanga.

Other island nations at risk

New Moore Island and the Sundarban Island chains are not the only islands at risk of sinking into the ocean. The Maldives, an island nation in the Indian ocean, has been losing land mass to the sea for years. The highest point in the Maldives is only 8 feet above ocean level, so even a high tide can cause problems for residents. The government of the Maldives is building an artificial island called Hulhumale nearby for residents to move to. Tuvalu, a Pacific Ocean island between Hawaii and Austrailia, is also quickly losing land mass. Tuvalu has 11,000 residents, and experts estimate the island will be entirely engulfed by the sea in as little as 50 years. Each year, 75 Tuvalu residents can use military personal loans to move to New Zealand – but many more are left behind. Tonga, Kirbati, and the Marshall Islands are also at risk of disappearing just like New Moore Island did.

How to stop the sinking?

In the end, there is no way to accurately measure the cause and effect of small islands ending up in the ocean. Sea levels rise and fall regularly, and island land masses can also rise and sink on their own. There are also arguments about if the increased water levels are due to global climate change or natural variations in the climate. No matter who or what is to blame, though, island nations that are sinking are being forced to find solutions – because there is not yet a way to simply stop the rise and fall of an island in the ocean.

Sources:

Times of India
BBC News
Wikipedia