The Cleveland Daily Banner Sunday, January 10, 2016 | Page 12

12—Cleveland Daily Banner—Sunday, January 10, 2016

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Huge Catholic
parade held
under heavy
security
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A
massive crowd of Filipino Roman
Catholic
devotees
jammed
Manila’s streets Saturday for an
annual procession of a centuriesold statue of Jesus Christ, which
was held under extra heavy security following the Paris attacks.
About 5,000 police and soldiers
were deployed to secure the daylong procession of the Black
Nazarene in one of Asia’s largest
religious festivals, although no
specific threat has been monitored. The huge crowd has
reached more than a million by
Saturday noon, Manila police
Chief Superintendent Rolando
Nana said.
The raucous gathering is a
security nightmare in a poor
Southeast Asian country still battling Muslim extremists in the
south and widespread crimes.
Police sharpshooters stood by
and surveillance drones were
flown over the slow-moving procession.
More than 100 people fainted
or got bruised in the initial hours
while jostling through the thick
crowds to get close to or have
their white towels wiped on the
wooden statue of Christ, which
was on a carriage pulled by a rope
by men in maroon shirts, according to the local Red Cross.
The wooden statue of a Christ,
crowned with thorns and bearing
a cross, is believed to have been
brought from Mexico to Manila on
a galleon in 1606 by Spanish missionaries. The ship that carried it
caught fire, but the charred statue survived. Some believe the
statue’s survival from fires and
earthquakes through the centuries, and intense bombings
during World War II, is a testament to its mystical powers.
The spectacle reflects the country’s
unique
brand
of
Catholicism, which includes folk
superstitions, in Asia’s largest
Catholic nation. Dozens of
Filipinos have themselves nailed
to crosses on Good Friday in
another tradition to emulate
Christ’s suffering that draws
huge crowds each year.
Mostly barefoot, the devotees
from all walks of life brave the
crowds and heat to pray for good
health, jobs, fortune and solution
to all sorts of predicaments.
Dante Avila, a 22-year-old factory worker, said he has been
wrongly implicated in the shooting to death of a child in a gang
brawl in November in his neighborhood in suburban Caloocan
city. Fearing for his life, he said
he fled from home and hid in a
province and showed up at the
procession to pray to the
Nazarene to help him prove his
innocence.
“I swear to God I’m innocent,”
Avila said from a stretcher in a
first-aid station, where medics
treated the injured.
After struggling to touch
Christ’s statue, he got crushed by
the crowd and fainted.
Another
devotee,
Arvin
Tamayo, and his family rented a
truck to parade life-size statues of
Christ and the Virgin Mary, a ritual they have been doing every
year since his father died of cancer in 2009.

Star clusters might
host intelligent
civilizations — study
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) —
Densely packed clusters of stars
on the fringes of our Milky Way
galaxy may be home to intelligent
life. That’s the word from an
astrophysicist who’s new to probing extraterrestrial territory.
The approximately 150 globular clusters in our galaxy are old
and stable, a plus for any civilization, said Rosanne Di Stefano of
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. In addition, so
many stars are clumped together
it would be easy to hop from one
place to another, keeping an
advanced society going.
The first step, she said, is to
locate more planets in these clusters. So far, only one has been
found. The sweet spot would be a
habitable zone around a star
where life could flourish, yet
dense enough to enhance travel
among inhabitants.
Di Stefano presented her theory Wednesday at the American
Astronomical Society’s annual
meeting in Kissimmee, Florida.
Her paper stood out among the
hundreds of research papers; an
AAS official called the results
“provocative.”
A global cluster can hold a million stars in a compact ball an
average 100 light-years across.

WildCam Gorogosa via AP

In thiS WebCAm image taken
and supplied by
WildCam
Gorongosa,
baboons walk at a
watering hole in
the Gorongosa
National Park, central Mozambique.
Lions are getting
pregnant and the
waterbuck population is soaring at
one of
Mozambique’s
main national
parks, once the
scene of fighting
during a civil war
whose combatants
virtually wiped out
the park’s lions,
elephants and
many other
species.

At Mozambique park

Wildlife numbers grow in wake of war

JOHANNESBURG (AP) —
Lions are getting pregnant
and the waterbuck population is soaring at one of
Mozambique’s main national
parks, once the scene of
fighting during a civil war
which virtually wiped out the
park’s lions, elephants and
many other species.
The 15-year conflict that
killed up to 1 million people
ended in 1992, and some former battlefield foes are now
working together as rangers
at Gorongosa National Park,
where foreign donors and
conservationists
helped
launch a turnaround on a
continent accustomed to bad
news about wildlife welfare.
Still, the park remains vulnerable to poachers and
other problems. Tourism
dropped in 2013 and 2014
during sporadic violence
linked to the rivalry between
Renamo, Mozambique’s main
opposition group, and its former adversary during the
civil war, the ruling Frelimo
party. The park is also in
Sofala province, an opposition stronghold in central
Mozambique.
Gorongosa
became
a
national
park
under
Portuguese colonizers in
1960. The decade that followed is considered the
park’s heyday; actors John
Wayne and Gregory Peck and
author James Michener
went on safari there, according to the park’s website.
The civil war began in
1977 after Portugal’s exit
from Mozambique. Fighters
killed Gorongosa’s elephants
for their ivory and slaughtered other animals, emptying a once-teeming landscape. Widespread poaching
continued after a peace deal.
Today, there is a lot to see,
thanks largely to a 2008 deal
in which a non-profit group
founded by American philanthropist
Greg
Carr
pledged at least $1.2 million
annually to the restoration
of Gorongosa for 20 years.
More funding came from
European governments, the
United States Agency for
International Development
and other donors.

WildCam Gorogosa via AP

in thiS WebCAm image taken and supplied by WildCam Gorongosa, buck drink at a watering
hole in the Gorongosa National Park, central Mozambique.
Workers
have
built
tourism facilities, planted
trees and relocated buffalos,
hippos and elephants from
neighboring South Africa
into Gorongosa; money has
flowed to poor local communities whose support for the
park is seen as indispensable.
“Things are really starting
to go quite fast,” said Marc
Stalmans, director of scientific services at Gorongosa,
which encompasses 1,570
square miles (4,070 square
kilometers) and was expanded to include the mountain
of the same name in 2010.
The numbers tell a
remarkable story of recovery, particularly at a time
when populations of threatened species are under pressure from poachers and
human encroachment elsewhere in Mozambique and in
much of the rest of Africa.
Even so, the counts in
Gorongosa are generally far
below what they were before
the war.

The estimated elephant
population went from 2,500
in the early 1970s, to fewer
than 200 in 2000, and more
than 500 in 2014. Similarly,
researchers have counted
nearly 60 lions, double the
number a few years ago, but
below the estimated 200 in
1972.
Four lions were pregnant
in December, and at least
one of them has produced a
litter, Stalmans wrote in an
email to The Associated
Press.
“The biggest cause of mortality is lions becoming ‘bycatch’ in snares and traps
set for antelopes by the
poachers,” Stalmans said. “A
significant percentage of our
lions have lost toes or part of
a paw to snares and traps
but managed to break loose.
Some unfortunately die.”
The waterbuck population
is more than 34,000, 10
times the figure recorded 40
years ago. It is likely the single largest group of waterbuck in Africa, according to

WildCam Gorogosa via AP

A bird And other wildlife drink at watering hole in the Gorongosa National Park, central
Mozambique. Lions are getting pregnant and the waterbuck population is soaring at one of
Mozambique’s main national parks, once the scene of fighting during a civil war whose combatants
virtually wiped out the park’s lions, elephants and many other species.

park managers.
Jen Guyton, an ecologist
working
in
Gorongosa,
believes one reason that
waterbucks have bred so fast
is because, unlike other
antelope, they like eating
weeds that replaced grasses
on floodplains, a change in
vegetation possibly related to
the massive loss of wildlife
during the war. Experts have
noted significant changes in
the ecosystem, apparently
linked to the animal slaughter, and are trying to understand them.
Another theory is that
waterbuck survived the civil
war in greater numbers than
other species, and are simply
growing in population at what
is considered a normal rate.
Most of the park is inaccessible by road. To keep
track of wildlife, researchers
have installed 50 motionsensitive cameras, amassing
several hundred thousand
images. Some cameras can
only be reached by helicopter, including in limestone
gorges. Some cameras were
destroyed by elephants or
inundated by rising rivers
and were replaced.
Under
Gorongosa’s
“WildCam” project, online
volunteers help sort the vast
amount of data, logging onto
an interactive website and
identifying animals in photos, noting how many are visible and reporting what they
are doing (“resting” and “eating” are options).
The wildlife resurgence has
led to new challenges,
including conflict between
villagers and elephants
encroaching on farmland.
Also, the goal of a park
reliant on its own revenue is
distant — it reported just
2,300 tourists in 2015, far
below visitor numbers in
major parks in, for example,
South Africa and Kenya.
Gorongosa’s last rhinos, a
species under heavy threat
today, were wiped out in the
1970s. One day, park managers hope, rhinos will again
roam there.
—http://www.gorongosa.org/
http://www.wildcamgorongosa.org/#/

More armed
men visit site
of Oregon
wildlife refuge
BURNS, Ore. (AP) — A group of
armed men from around the
Pacific Northwest who arrived at a
wildlife refuge on Saturday morning left several hours later after
people leading an occupation of
the refuge told them they weren’t
needed.
Todd MacFarlane, a Utah
lawyer acting as a mediator, said
occupation leader Ammon Bundy
and others were concerned about
the perception the armed visitors
conveyed.
“This was the last thing in the
world they wanted to see happen,” MacFarlane told The
O r e g o n i a n
(http://is.gd/gSSbJN).
Bundy didn’t request the presence of the Pacific Patriot
Network, he said, and has “tried
to put out the word: ‘We don’t
need you.’”
The network, a consortium of
groups from Oregon, Washington
and Idaho, arrived at Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge midmorning in a convoy of about 18
vehicles, carrying rifles and handguns and dressed in military
attire and bulletproof vests.
Some of the men told journalists they were there to help with
security for the group that has
occupied the headquarters of the
refuge since Jan. 2.
Their leader, Brandon Curtiss,
said the group came to “de-escalate” the situation by providing
security for those inside and outside the compound.
One of the original occupiers of
the refuge, LaVoy Finicum, said
earlier on Saturday that the network’s help is appreciated, but
“we want the long guns put
away.”
Bundy has repeatedly rejected
calls to leave buildings at the
refuge despite pleas from the
county sheriff, from many local
residents and from Oregon’s governor, among others.
On Saturday, militants drove
government-owned vehicles and
heavy equipment around the
compound, saying the trucks and
backhoes now belong to the local
community. They also covered the
national refuge sign with a new
sign saying: “Harney County
Resource Center” in white block
letters over a blue background.
The Harney County Joint
Information Center put out a
statement on Saturday, saying
they continue to work for a peaceful solution.
“The FBI’s investigation is
ongoing so it would not be appropriate to provide details at this
time,” the statement said.
The local school district
announced there would be classes on Monday, after a week without school because of safety concerns.

Report: Toddler
drives his big
wheel near
busy road
CRYSTAL RIVER, Fla. (AP) —
Authorities say they found a 3year-old in a diaper driving a
motorized big wheel alongside a
busy Florida highway, reports
say.
Citrus County Sheriff’s officials told local media outlets
they were alerted by motorists
who feared for the child’s safety.
Deputies said several vehicles
created a blockade around the
boy to keep him from entering
traffic. Authorities said the
child, clad in a shirt and diaper,
was in the toy vehicle’s driver
seat
when
they
arrived
Wednesday.
Authoriti es didn’t release the
father’s name. Reports say he
told deputies he was in the bathroom when his son used a small
chair to unlock a door and left
without his knowledge. WFTS
Tampa Bay reports the father
said he immediately began
searching for him.
Authorities didn’t immediately
return calls for further information.

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