March
8, 2002
Baby found frozen in Holman, NWT
Last Friday the body of
a seven-week-old infant was found outside a home in Holman, NWT, clad only in
a T-shirt and diaper.
RCMP Cpl. Debra Morris
said she is continuing her investigation into the death of Joretta Inuktalik,
to learn how the baby died and how her body came to be outside on Friday morning.
Temperatures had dipped
to -27 C during that night.
At 6:40 a.m. Cpl. Morris
was called to a home in Holman. Cpl. Morris and a nurse arrived to find Joretta
lying in the house.
An autopsy carried out
in Edmonton this week was expected to shed more light on the causes of the baby’s
death.
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March
8, 2002
Kugaaruk’s longtime priest dies
On Feb. 22 Franz Van de
Velde, an Oblate missionary, died in Belgium where he had been living for the
past 15 years. The former longtime resident of Kugaaruk was 93 years old.
Father Van de Velde spent
50 years in the Eastern Arctic, from 1935 to 1986. During this period he lived
in today’s communities of Hall Beach and Kugaaruk.
In Kugaaruk Father Van
de Velde was instrumental in building the community’s stone church, now
an historic monument.
According to Bishop Reynald
Rouleau from the Roman Catholic Diocese in Churchill, Father Van de Velde was
a strong and stubborn man.
"He was a pioneer,
an example of huge determination," Bishop Rouleau said.
Father Van de Velde spoke
Inuktitut fluently and had a special interest in the family histories of Inuit
who lived in the area.
Last year in the legislature
Akulliq MLA Ovide Alakannuark remembered Van de Velde, citing the kindness and
generosity of the missionary.
"Our community was
called Pelly Bay at that time, but has changed it’s name to Kugaaruk. There
was no Hudson’s Bay Company post, no RCMP and no doctor or nurse. The only
non-Inuk in Kugaaruk at the time was a Roman Catholic missionary named Father
Van de Velde.
"There were occasional
visits from one of the priests, but most priests lived a solitary life. To say
the least, many of the missionaries wore many hats besides their spiritual guidance.
As far as legal prescription would allow it, they distributed medicines and
provided medical help to those in need. I salute the many missionaries of the
days gone by that cared about our well-being then," Alakannuark said.
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March
8, 2002
Japanese to hunt endangered whales
Japan plans to beef up
its research whaling this year by catching sei whales, despite criticism from
environmental groups who say this species faces extinction.
The World Wide Fund for
Nature, which considers the 12 to 17 metre pointed-snout sei whales an endangered
species, said Japan was "thumbing its nose" at the International Whaling
Commission (IWC) and world opinion. Japan maintains sei whales aren’t an
endangered species.
Japan has come under fire
for carrying out its so-called "scientific research" whaling since
1987 even after it gave up commercial whaling in line with an international
moratorium in 1986. Japan says its whaling is conducted solely for research
purposes, but some of the whale meat ends up being used by Japan’s restaurant
industry.
Under a plan submitted
to the IWC, Japan’s research fleet in the North Pacific plans to catch
50 sei whales in addition to 150 minke whales, 50 Bryde’s whales and 10
sperm whales this year.
Japan wants to expand its
research whaling to see how much fish whales consume.
"Whales are eating
large amounts of fish at a time when Japan’s haul of fish has been decreasing,"
said a Japanese fisheries official, adding that production by Japan’s fisheries
industry has been halved over the last 20 years.
"We want to do a
survey on how much fish whales are eating. Fish populations are falling and
there is a need to control whales."
The plan could change after
a meeting of the scientific committee of the IWC from April 25 to May 9 in Shimonoseki
in southwestern Japan just ahead of an IWC annual meeting in the same city.
The WWF criticized Japan’s
plan to increase its catch of whales, saying the sei whale is an endangered
species about which scientists knew very little.
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March
8, 2002
European Union supports pact to fight global warming
This week 15 European Union
member states agreed to be formally bound by the Kyoto treaty on cutting the
pollution blamed for global warming, which the U.S. has rejected.
By June 1, the EU will
complete the ratification of the Kyoto treaty.
The 1997 United Nations
pact commits the EU to reduce its emissions of so-called greenhouse gases by
eight per cent of 1990 levels during the five-year period 2008 to 2012. The
main gas concerned is carbon dioxide, emitted when fossil fuels are burned.
U.S. president George
W. Bush pulled out of the pact last year saying it would hurt the economy. In
the absence of the world’s biggest polluter, almost all other developed
countries must ratify Kyoto if it is to come into legal force.
Since the U.S. pullout,
the EU is lobbying to ensure countries such as Russia, Japan and Canada stick
with Kyoto. Those countries have said they will ratify but have yet to do so.
Critics in Canada say the
deal will cost Canada $30 billion by 2010 and lead to an erosion in social programs.
Prime minister Jean Chrétien has called for more study and consultation
on the Kyoto Treaty.
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March
8, 2002
Russia to dump nuclear waste on Arctic island
Russian officials have
decided to build a nuclear waste dump on an Arctic Ocean island off Russia’s
northern Archangelsk region.
The decision was made at
a meeting of the Russian state ecological service, grouping local officials,
representatives from defense enterprises, ecological organizations and the ministry
of atomic energy, the Interfax news agency reported.
The burial site, on the
grounds of a former nuclear weapons test range on Novaya Zemlya, meets all the
standards of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the participants concluded.
Moreover, "the subsurface
at Novaya Zemlya is perfect for long-term storage of radioactive wastes, as
permafrost makes it impossible for water to leak into the storage facility,"
a statement quoted by the news agency said.
According to Agence France
Presse, the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, adopted several
amendments to the environment protection law last June. These allow Russia to
import up to 20,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel and store nuclear waste and
by-products on a "temporary" basis.
The dump could earn Russia
some 21 billion dollars over the next 10 years, according to official estimates.
According to a poll taken
last summer, some 62 per cent of Russians are against importing nuclear waste.
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