Section:GDN 1N PaGe:34 Edition Date:190815 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 14/8/2019 18:56 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Thursday 15 Aug ust 2019
(^34) World
Two farmers jailed for smuggling
pig semen in shampoo bottles
Lisa Martin
Sydney
Two pig farmers in Western Australia
have been jailed after being convicted
yesterday of illegally importing Dan-
ish pig semen concealed in shampoo
bottles, in breach of Australia’s strict
quarantine and biosecurity laws.
The Perth district court was
told boar semen had been illegally
imported from Denmark many times
between May 2009 and March 2017. It
was used in an artifi cial breeding pro-
gramme for a pork producer, GD Pork.
Torben Soerensen got three years
and Henning Laue two years after
pleading guilty to breaching quaran-
tine and biosecurity laws.
The federal agriculture minis-
ter, Bridget McKenzie, said breaches
would not be tolerated.
“This case shows a disturbing
disregard for the laws that protect
the livelihoods of Australia’s 2,700
pork producers, and the quality of
the pork that millions of Australians
enjoy each year. GD Pork imported
the semen illegally to get an unfair
advantage over its competitors,
through new genetics.”
Western Australian Farmers
Federation said the entire industry
could have been crippled.
18.75 GH Regular
Heady please in
pls here and vey
much 300
Kate Lyons
Funafuti, Tuvalu
“Australia has to answer to the Pacifi c”
on climate change, New Zealand’s
prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said
yesterday, adding that her country
was doing what it could to limit global
emissions to 1.5C and expected other
nations to do the same.
Speaking at the Pacific Islands
Forum (PIF) in Tuvalu, she neverthe-
less stopped short of saying that New
Zealand would throw its weight behind
the smaller Pacifi c nations, which
want Australia to commit to a rapid
transition from a coal-based economy.
“Issues around Australia’s domestic
policy are issues for Australia,” Ardern
said when asked about Australia’s coal
use. She said she expected that this
year’s forum would be dominated by
climate change, and reiterated her gov-
ernment’s commitment to reducing
emissions, citing the goal of reaching
net-zero carbon emissions by 2035.
“Like our Pacifi c Island neighbours,
we will continue that international
call, we will continue to say that New
Zealand will do our bit and we have an
expectation that everyone else will as
well – we have to,” Ardern said.
Pacifi c leaders have this week been
urging Australia to commit to urgent
action to reduce emissions.
On Monday, Fiji’s prime minister,
Frank Bainimarama, appealed to Aus-
tralia “to do everything possible to
achieve a rapid transition from coal to
energy sources that do not contribute
to climate change”, saying it posed an
“existential threat” to Pacifi c islands.
Ardern refused to comment on
reports that Australia has been trying
to water down the language on climate
change in the communique that is due
to be issued by the PIF today.
Climate Home News reported that
an annotated draft of the PIF decla-
ration showed Australia trying to
suppress references to the climate
“crisis”, the 1.5C limit, carbon neutral-
ity, a ban on new coal power stations
and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.
Greenpeace said any plan to water
down the communique would make
Australia “the pariah of the Pacifi c”.
The Samoan campaigner Joseph Moe-
ono-Kolio said: “How does [Australian
prime minister Scott] Morrison recon-
cile calling the Pacifi c ‘family’ while
he persistently ignores our demands
for Australia to reduce its emissions?”
Morrison said at the PIF that it was
a “family gathering” and that “when
families come together they talk about
the stuff that matters .” His only refer-
ence to what are likely to be heated
debates on the climate crisis was to
say leaders would be “talking about
the future of our environment”.
Australia
isolated
at Pacifi c
forum on
climate
▼ Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s
prime minister, arrives in Tuvalu.
She said ‘Australia had to answer to
the Pacifi c’ PHOTOGRAPH: MICK TSIKAS/EPA
Justin McCurry
Tokyo
People in Japan hoping to predict the
next big earthquake should ignore
mysterious deep-sea fi sh after experts
said rare sightings of the creatures on
the country’s beaches did not foretell
a seismic calamity.
University researchers said they had
debunked the widely believed theory
of oarfi sh as a harbinger of doom by
comparing sightings of deep-sea fi sh,
including those caught in fi shermen’s
nets, with earthquake records going
back more than 90 years.
“We thought if we could understand
the connection, it would be useful for
disaster prevention,” said Yoshiaki Ori-
hara of Tokai University’s Institute of
Oceanic Research and Development.
The experts, however, found no
correlation between the sightings and
serious earthquakes.
They uncovered 363 reported
sightings since 1928 of oarfi sh and
seven other species of deep-sea fi sh
that have long been associated with
earthquakes, while there were 221
earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater
over the same period.
But the team, whose findings
were published in the Bulletin of the
Seismological Society of America, dis-
covered that just one of those quakes
- in July 2007 – had occurred within
30 days of a fi sh sighting.
“It was disappointing to fi nd no
correlation, but we also want to inves-
tigate any connection between mass
beachings of dolphins and whales
with earthquakes in the future,” Ori-
hara told Kyodo News.
The oarfi sh theory’s roots lie in
Shokoku Rijin Dana, a collection of
mystery stories published in the 18th
century that makes a connection
between deep-sea fi sh and seismic
activity. Some experts have speculated
that the fi sh move to shallower waters
when they sense changes caused by
tectonic movement.
Japanese urged
not to see rare
fi sh as omen
of earthquake
The pig semen was brought
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