The US military has stopped using a type of landmine often condemned as a long-term threat to civilians and has ordered its stock of 1.3 million of the mines be set aside for destruction, officials say.
The decision to move ahead with a long-standing policy to end the use of persistent landmines — those that cannot be set to self-destruct or deactivate — by the end of last year comes as US President Barack Obama’s administration continues to study whether to join a global treaty banning anti-personnel mines.
The US is not a party to the 12-year-old international Mine Ban Treaty and it reserves the right to use so-called smart mines that can deactivate or self-destruct.
Persistent mines are criticized because they can pose a threat to civilians long after fighting ends. Landmines and other war debris caused about 4,000 casualties in 2009, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines says.
The US Army in December directed its field operations “to assign all stocks of persistent landmines, both anti-personnel and anti-vehicle, for demilitarization [destruction],” a US Department of Defense spokesman said in an e-mail on Monday.
He said a small quantity of the persistent mines would be retained for demining and counter-mine testing and training.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
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