Monthly Archives: February 2014

Asia, China, Foreign Affairs, Taiwan

The meeting between China and Taiwan has symbolic meaning…

ASIA

Intro: Despite more than six decades of bitter hostilities, China and Taiwan came together recently in a diplomatic meeting in Nanjing. Its significance was hugely important

Following months of dogma and revival of old tensions in East Asia, an unexpected break in relations has occurred as representatives of China and Taiwan sat down together in Nanjing last week in an attempt to improve bilateral relations.

Little of substance was expected from the talks, but in retrospect that hardly mattered. More important was the symbolism.

Ever since Mao’s Red Army chased the nationalist Kuomintang into the sea in 1949, the two Chinas have been locked in antagonism. For the better part of six decades, two distinctly unique populations with the most ancient and intimate links have been embroiled in bitter hostility. On a couple of occasions now these hostilities have threatened to spill over into outright war.

Taiwan’s President, Ma Ying-jeou, was elected in 2008, but his political dream to bring Taiwan closer to the mainland has been embraced by Xi Jinping, the mainland’s President. Whilst the two sides met in Nanjing, the capital under Chiang Kai-shek, the significance is that all flags, maps or other visual reminders of Beijing’s longstanding claim to rule all China, including Taiwan, had been removed prior to the meeting. More significant – highly significant from Taiwan’s point of view – was the fact that both sides addressed each other by their official titles. With China never likely to relinquish or ever intending to modify its claim to the island, here is an instance where goodwill can still flourish even after decades of stalemate and diplomatic limbo.

In the wider context of the region, this meeting mattered. The ongoing disputes surrounding China’s claims to sovereignty over much of the East and South China Seas have caused tensions to rise to dangerous and unprecedented levels. The recent flashpoints over the group of uninhabited rocks – known to the Japanese as Senkaku, and to the Chinese as Diaoyu – have been under Japanese influence since the end of the 19th century. Now, though, they are being claimed and fiercely contested by China with increasing vehemence. Similar disagreements have set Vietnam and the Philippines at odds, too, against their giant and emerging superpower neighbour.

None of the disputes are anywhere near close to being resolved. But a chink of light through the quiet and mannerly discussions between old adversaries has raised hope that diplomacy may yet prevail.

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Health, Medical, Research, Science, Scotland, Society

A breakthrough treatment in beating superbugs…

GALLIUM

Scottish scientists may have discovered a ‘silver bullet’ in winning the war against infection.

For some time now it has been feared that antibiotics are becoming increasingly powerless in the face of lethal bacteria which are developing resistance to the drugs.

The latest breakthrough, however, suggests that a revolutionary new treatment could turn the tide.

Scientists and researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Zurich, in Switzerland, found that germs are not only killed off by the element gallium but that they also struggle to evolve into resistant strains.

In tests carried out, the metal was pared against a highly-resistant bacterium commonly found in hospitals which can cause pneumonia and septic shock.

The researchers noted that the bug continued to multiply when faced with antibiotics but stalled when it came up against gallium.

Scientists also found that three-quarters of infected moth larvae survived when given the treatment compared with only 5 per cent of those which went without.

The study states: ‘Crucially, while resistance soon evolved against conventional antibiotic treatments, gallium treatments retained their efficacy over time.’

It adds: ‘In light of our results, we contend that this approach could curb microbial virulence… and therefore represents a promising alternative to our dwindling succession of traditional antibiotics.’

The team behind the research said they hoped their work would lead to a new breed of drugs.

The team’s lead author, Dr Adin Ross-Gillespie, said:

… It’s crucial that alternatives to antibiotics are found. Humanity is facing what has been described as a catastrophic threat: conventional antibiotics are losing efficacy due to the worldwide rise and spread of multi-drug resistant bacteria and very few new antibiotics are on the horizon.

The key to gallium’s success is its chemical similarity to iron, which bacteria cells need to flourish.

They send out molecules, called siderophores, which search for and track down the essential nutrient.

These are then tricked into binding with gallium instead. As the cells become starved of iron, they dispatch even more siderophores, a process which eventually wears them out.

Gallium’s subtler approach limits the chances of a resistant strain evolving. Unlike antibiotics, it works outside of the cell so the odds are slim of a mutation which survives and then evolves further.

Last year, Scotland’s chief medical officer, Sir Harry Burns, wrote to all health boards in Scotland warning of increasing numbers of bugs resistant to the most powerful antibiotics. There was only one such case in 2007, but 25 cases in 2012.

ABOUT GALLIUM:

Gallium is a soft, silvery metal which forms a brittle solid at lower temperatures.

The heat of a human hand is enough to convert it into a shiny liquid that at first glance resembles mercury. This is because the melting point is usually low for a metal, being about 29.76c – only a few degrees above the usual room temperature of about 21c.

Gallium was first isolated in its elemental form in 1875 by French scientist Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who named it after the Latin name for his homeland, Gallia.

Despite its ability to interfere with cells’ uptake of iron, gallium is not normally considered toxic in low doses.

 

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Britain, Economic, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

Addressing corruption in the EU is an urgent matter…

EUROPEAN UNION

Intro: Corruption throughout the EU is endemic. It needs urgent and effective attention

In southern and eastern European countries corruption is much more widespread than it is in Britain.

Cecilia Malmström, the EU’s Home Affairs commissioner, estimates that across the EU, the amount of money paid in bribes and racketeering may add up to more than a £100 billion.

This is a staggering sum of money. The estimate given is based on surveys of people who were asked whether they knew about specific cases of having to pay a bribe and what their general perceptions of the problems of corruption in their country were.

In the UK, less than 0.5 per cent of people had either experienced, or knew of, an instance of bribery, the lowest percentage in the EU’s member states. This compares extremely favourably to respondents in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, where between 6 and 29 per cent of those questioned indicated  that they were asked or had been expected to pay a bribe in the last 12 months.

Yet, the perceived rates of blackmail and extortion related activities in the UK compared to others in the EU are much closer. Even in Britain, where the actual rates are deemed low, 64 per cent of people think corruption is widespread. Across the EU, an average of 74 per cent believes this is the case. In Greece, the perceived rate rises to an astonishing 99 per cent.

The gap between actual experience of corruption and perceptions of it can be accounted for by the widespread publicity which is given to instances of political corruption and the attention which is drawn to interest and exchange-rate fixing scandals still emerging from the financial industry (such as LIBOR, the price of oil and, more worryingly, the true value of gold).

In those countries with the highest experience of financial bribery, most instances relate to healthcare. This has stemmed from the inadequacy of public health provision which has led people to bribe and blackmail doctors to secure early treatment of illness.

Ms Malmström, a Swede, asserts that stamping out corruption is not the responsibility of the European Commission. Rather, she says, that responsibility lies with national governments, on whom she is calling to do more. She is certainly right to argue that instances of bribery is not just draining resources from legal activity and feeding criminality, but that such activity is also undermining the trust that the public has in democratic institutions.

What is more, however, is that in the UK the report’s findings may well have the unintentional consequence of further eroding the fragile belief in the EU. Whilst this report makes clear that the Commission’s own anti-corruption unit is under-resourced and has a vast swathe of fraud allegations in EU spending it will never likely investigate properly, the unit has long been the subject of reports of incompetence and irregularities in the management of its own budget.

Rectifying this situation should be an EU priority. But the EU’s bribery report may well have the effect of colouring the view that many Britons already have – that it is even more corrupt than they ever thought. It is right to ask if British taxes which flow to the EU are being wasted or, worse still, whether they are being harnessed to feather criminal nests and extortion rings.

The possibility exists in the UK for an in-or-out referendum on British membership of the EU in 2017, following the pledge given by the Prime Minister since he has held office. But, this recent EU report will only confirm Eurosceptical prejudices. For Europe to be cleansed of endemic corruption, the European Commission must act with a degree of urgency and effectiveness in dealing with the issues that underpin it.

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