Cambodia spots newborn rare Mekong dolphin, bringing total population to 111
The latest newborn dolphin calf, about two days old, was spotted on Sunday at the Kampi dolphin pool in Kratie province's Preaek Prasab district by a team of researchers from the Fisheries Administration and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
"This newborn dolphin was seen swimming alongside a pod of four adult dolphins," the press release said. "It is the seventh dolphin calf born in 2025."
The Mekong River Irrawaddy dolphins have been listed since 2004 as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species.
In 2024, the South-East Asian country recorded a total of nine newborn dolphin calves, with four deaths, according to the news release.
The MAFF estimates that to date, there are 111 Irrawaddy dolphins living along a 120-km main channel of the Mekong River in northeast Stung Treng and Kratie provinces. - Xinhua
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The Star
17 minutes ago
- The Star
Japan's wartime children in Philippines search for kin, identity
SAN PABLO CITY, Philippines: After a lifetime of searching, Jose Villafuerte this month finally found the Japanese father he lost during the dark years of World War II in the occupied Philippines. The 82-year-old, a former gravedigger, was still in the womb of his Filipina mother, Benita Abril, when her partner, imperial army officer Ginjiro Takei, returned to Japan during its brutal occupation of the archipelago from 1942-45. His quest ended this month, days before the 80th anniversary of Japan's surrender on Aug 15, 1945, after an advocacy group found Takei's tomb in Japan, where he had raised a family following the war. A living half-brother and half-sister were also found, with DNA swabs sealing the family ties. "I'm excited. My mother had spent years trying to make this happen," Villafuerte, a slightly built father of eight, told AFP at his home in San Pablo city, south of Manila, ahead of his first visit to Japan. Escorted by his son, he lit a candle and prayed before his father's tombstone in the city of Takatsuki, between Kyoto and Osaka, on Aug 7. Jose Villafuerte (centre) praying with his son Avelino Villafuerte (left) and his Japanese half-brother Hiroyuki Takei (right) at the gravesite of their father Ginjiro Takei together for the first time, in the city of Takatsuki in Osaka prefecture. - AFP He met his half-brother Hiroyuki Takei for the first time a day earlier and now expects to get a Japanese passport, as well as visas for his children and grandchildren. Villafuerte is one of more than 3,000 "Nikkei-jin", offspring of Japanese who were in the Philippines before or during World War II. Japan has in recent years begun helping in "recovering their identity", said Norihiro Inomata, country director for the Philippine Nikkei-jin Legal Support Center (PNLSC). Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met Villafuerte and two other Nikkei-jin during a visit to Manila in April. However, only 100 or so are still alive more than two decades after the effort was launched in 2003, Inomata told AFP. The oldest is 97. "Time is running out," he said. "It was fate's design that I would be able to visit my father's grave. I am very much blessed, because I saw my brother and he guided me here to see the tomb of my father and their relatives," Villafuerte told reporters during the Takatsuki visit. His father Takei, a Japanese army engineer, worked on the Philippine railway system as part of the occupation forces but was sent home during the war, Inomata said. Growing up in post-war Philippines, Villafuerte was the target of merciless bullying, blowback from a conflict in which half a million of the South-East Asian country's 17 million people were killed, most of them civilians. An obelisk stands in the Chinese cemetery in San Pablo as a memorial to more than 600 male residents rounded up by Japanese troops and bayoneted to death in February 1945. "People kept reminding me my father was an evil person who killed many Filipinos," Villafuerte said, adding that it nearly caused him to drop out of school. "It hurt, because it was never my choice to have a Japanese parent." Manila grocer Maria Corazon Nagai, an 82-year-old widow and mother of three, gave up her Philippine passport for a Japanese one last April with PNLSC's help. She told AFP that her Japanese father, Tokuhiro Nagai, a civil engineer, had lived with her mother in Manila during the war. "In my family, I was the only one who looked different," said Nagai, who quit school after sixth grade when family finances bottomed out following her father's post-war death. She went to live with her maternal grandmother when her mother remarried and began working as a sales clerk in her teens. Maria Corazon Nagai showing her Japanese passport at her home in Manila. - AFP "I'm happy now that I've found my identity," said the bespectacled, soft-spoken Nagai, who still tends a cramped stall selling shampoo, noodles and condiments in Manila's downtown Zamora market. Nagai said she hid her parentage as she reached adulthood to avoid the bullying she endured as a child. She was "relieved to learn my father was not a soldier" when she obtained her birth records at the civil registry in the 1990s. Before the invasion, small groups of Japanese migrated to the Philippines from the late 19th century to escape "overpopulation", with some marrying locals, said Inomata, the legal centre director. Their offspring went into a "spiral of poverty" when the state confiscated their assets after the war, and many were unable to obtain a formal education, he said. One male descendant hid in the mountains of the southern Philippines for 10 years after the war fearing he would be harmed, Inomata said. Views towards Japan began changing in the 1970s as Tokyo completed war reparations that helped rebuild the Philippines, and Japanese investors built factories and created jobs. The two countries are now security allies. Nagai has been unable to find any Japanese relatives and couldn't locate her father's grave during her 2023 trip to Tokyo, but she will fly to Japan for a second time later this year for a holiday. Though she does not speak the language, Nagai said she now considers herself Japanese. For Villafuerte, the situation is more ambiguous. "Of course, it is difficult being a Filipino for 82 years and suddenly that changes," he said. "The past is past, and I have accepted that this is how I lived my life." - AFP
Malay Mail
28-07-2025
- Malay Mail
Jeju Air crash: Pilots shut down working engine after bird strike, probe reveals
SEOUL, July 27 — A Jeju Air plane that crashed in December during an emergency landing after a bird strike could have kept flying on the damaged engine that was still working after pilots shut down the other one, according to an update from South Korean investigators. The Boeing 737-800 instead belly-landed at Muan airport without its landing gear down, overshot the runway and erupted into a fireball after slamming into an embankment, killing all but two of the 181 people on board. Investigators have not yet produced a final report into the deadliest air disaster on South Korean soil, but information about the plane's two engines has begun to emerge. According to a July 19 update prepared by investigators and seen by Reuters but not publicly released following complaints from victims' family members, the left engine sustained less damage than the right following a bird strike, but the left engine was shut down 19 seconds after the bird strike. The right engine experienced a 'surge' and emitted flames and black smoke, but investigators said it 'was confirmed to be generating output sufficient for flight,' in the five-page update, which included post-crash photos of both engines. No reason for the crew's actions was given and the probe is expected to last months as investigators reconstruct the plane's technical state and the picture understood by its pilots. Experts say most air accidents are caused by multiple factors and caution against putting too much weight on incomplete evidence. More questions So far, public attention has focused on the possibility that the crew may have shut down the less-damaged engine, rekindling memories of a 1989 Boeing 737-400 crash in Kegworth, England, where pilots shut down a non-damaged engine by mistake. The disaster led to multiple changes in regulations including improvements in crew communication and emergency procedures. A source told Reuters on Monday that the South Korea-led probe had 'clear evidence' that pilots had shut off the less-damaged left engine after the bird strike, citing the cockpit voice recorder, computer data and a switch found in the wreckage. But the latest update on the crash also raises the possibility that even the more heavily damaged engine that was still running could have kept the plane aloft for longer. It did not say what level of performance the operating engine still had, nor what extra options that might have given to the plane's emergency-focused crew before the jet doubled back and landed in the opposite direction of the runway from its initial plan with its landing gear up. Both engines contained bird strike damage and both experienced engine vibrations after the strike. The right engine showed significant internal damage, the Korean-language update from South Korea's Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) said, but it did not describe the damage found in the left engine. The update did not say how the left engine was operating nor the state of systems connected to either engine, said former US National Transportation Safety Board investigator Greg Feith when shown the document translated by Reuters. It contains some new facts but omits far more, resulting in a 'cryptic' document, he said. ARAIB, which plans to issue a final report next June, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Safety experts say it is common for early reports to contain sparse facts and limited analysis while investigations continue. A preliminary report released in January said feathers and blood stains from ducks were found in both engines. The engines — made by CFM International, jointly owned by and France's Safran — were examined in May and no defects or fault data were found beyond the bird and crash damage, the report said. Families of those who died in the disaster were briefed on the engine findings but asked investigators not to release the July 19 report, saying that it appeared to apportion blame to the pilots without exploring other factors. The report was withheld but Reuters and South Korean media obtained copies. Boeing and GE referred questions about the crash to ARAIB. Safran did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Jeju Air has previously said it is cooperating with ARAIB and is awaiting publication of the investigation. Under global aviation rules, civil air investigations aim to discover crash causes without assigning blame or liability. The Jeju Air pilots' union said ARAIB was 'misleading the public' by suggesting there was no problem with the left engine given that bird remains were found in both. A source who attended the briefing told Reuters that investigators told family members the left engine also experienced a disruptive 'surge,' citing black box data. The pilot union and representatives of bereaved families have asked that evidence be released to support any findings. Relatives say the investigation also needs to focus on the embankment containing navigation equipment, which safety experts have said likely contributed to the high death toll. Global aviation standards call for any navigation equipment in line with runways to be installed on structures that easily give way in case of impact with an aircraft. South Korea's transport ministry has identified seven domestic airports, including Muan, with structures made of concrete or steel, rather than materials that break apart on impact and has said it will improve them. Designs for the new structures are in progress, a ministry official told Reuters last week. — Reuters
The Star
24-07-2025
- The Star
Giant rats sniff out land mines in Cambodia
Mott Sreymom, 34, a rat handler with Apopo carries an African giant pouched rat back from a landmine field. — Photos: ANTON L. DELGADO/AP Rats may send some squealing, but in Cambodia, teams of the not-so-little critters have become indispensable in helping specialists detect land mines that have killed and maimed thousands in the South-East Asian country. The African giant pouched rats, which can grow up to 45 centimetres and weigh up to 1.5 kilograms, are on the front line, making their way nimbly across fields to signal to their handlers when they get a whiff of TNT, used in most land mines and explosive ordnance. "While working with these rats, I have always found mines and they have never skipped a single one,' said Mott Sreymom, a rat handler at Apopo, a humanitarian demining group that trains and deploys rodent detection teams across the world. A mine detection rat with the humanitarian demining organisation Apopo works in a landmine field in Siem Reap, Cambodia. "I really trust these mine detection rats," Mott said while on her lunch break after working on a land mine field in the province of Siem Reap. After three decades of conflict in the previous century, remnants of war littered approximately 4,500sq km of Cambodian land, according to a survey by the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA) in 2004. This affected all 25 Cambodian provinces and nearly half of the country's 14,000 villages. As of 2018, CMAA reported 1,970sq km remain uncleared. Rat detection teams march in line towards a landmine field. The rats have a keen sense of smell, making them a favorite at Apopo, which also employs land mine-detecting dog teams. "Dogs and rats are better compared to other animals because they are trainable,' said Alberto Zacarias, a field supervisor of Apopo's technical survey dog teams, adding that they are also friendly and easily learn commands. Rat detection teams deployed to a landmine field. Since demining officially began in Cambodia in 1992, more than 1.1 million mines have been cleared, as well as approximately 2.9 million other explosive remnants of war, according to a 2022 government demining progress report. And the African giant pouched rats are doing their part. "We work with them almost daily, so we get closer,' Mott said. "They are very friendly and they don't move around and get scared. They are like family.' – AP
