OCR Text |
Show Wilkens shares stories from Rwandan Genocide SOURCE: CARL WILKENS Carl Wilkens works with children for his World Outside My Shoes project. BY MICHAEL ANDERSON news reporter | The Signpost @alonewithAS In 1994, Carl Wilkens signed a document refusing help from the United States government, which was working to get him out of Rwanda safely. The only American to stay in Rwanda during the genocide, Wilkens spoke to attendees Friday evening in the first of many lectures held at Weber State University to commemorate the 20th year since the Rwandan Genocide. Wilkens moved to Rwanda to work for Ad- ventist Development and Relief Agency, an organization with the Seventh-day Adventist Church that does development and humanitarian projects all over the world. Wilkens was able to get his wife and children out of Rwanda safely, but he stayed behind to continue to help the people of Rwanda. "My wife and I, we talked, and we prayed, and we both just felt that this is the right thing to do," Wilkens said. Wilkens kept in contact with his wife through ham radio. He said the radio contacts SOURCE: WORLD OUTSIDE MY SHOES were instrumental in letting his wife know he was all right and her letting him know she still supported the decision for him to stay in the country. "Those radio connections went a long way, dealing with the separation," Wilkens said. He had no idea how long the conflict would last, thinking it would only be a few weeks for the violence to dissipate. The genocide ended up lasting more than three months and claiming millions of lives. "We had no idea how many people would be killed," he said. The Rwandan Genocide began in 1994 after a plane carrying Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana was shot down. The assassination of Uwilingiyimana escalated the racial tensions between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority. The Hutu blamed the Tutsi for her assassination and began a systematic extermination of the Tutsi. "They had machetes, they had killing lists, they had a plan," said Stephanie Wolfe, WSU political science professor. Wolfe said that while there is academic debate on who shot down the plane, she believes Hutu extremists committed the murder in See RWANDA page 5 Thawing permafrost reveals undiscovered viruses BYSKYLERPYLE news editor | The Signpost @)SkylerPyle Although there is no definitive consensus as to the cause of global warming, there is evidence that the global temperature is continuously rising, and scientists are finding things under the permafrost that could be dangerous to humans. Scientists in France have recently thawed and revived an ancient virus found in the Siberian permafrost. Although this 30,000-year-old one-celled organism, known as Pithovirus si- bericum, is not dangerous to humans, it leaves many questioning what else may be lurking underground that would revive on its own as permafrost thaws due to global warming. "The revival of such an ancestral amoeba-infecting virus . . . suggests that the thawing of permafrost either from global warming or industrial exploitation of circumpolar regions might not be exempt from future threats to human or animal health," according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Craig Oberg, Weber State University microbiology professor, said microorganisms that cause disease are usually found in places not normally inhabited by humans. "As far as things that have been frozen away for time, the best example of that is the influenza pandemic of 1918- 19," Oberg said. "When this strain of influenza swarmed around the world that year, it killed an estimated 20-30 million people, making it the greatest single pandemic of recorded history." Dan Bedford, WSU geography professor, said the Arctic is warming at twice the global rate that temperature change and data shows the Arctic Sea ice is shrinking and permafrost is thawing. "This single-celled harmless organism is not the only thing down there," Bedford said. "We are inadvertently thawing out permafrost where these things reside. As if we didn't have Permafrost I Isolated Atlantic Ocean j Sporadic -11 Discontinuous ^M Continuous Map by Philippe Rekacewicz, UNEP/GRID-Arendal; data from International Permafrost Association, 1998; Circumpolar Active-Layer Permafrost System, version 1.0, and National Snow and Ice Data Center. enough to worry about from the thawing of permafrost in the first place." A study by researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and the National Snow and Ice Data Center estimate that "one- to two-thirds of Earth's permafrost will disappear by 2200." When permafrost thaws, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, contributing to the increase in global temperature. According to National Snow and Ice Data Center scientist Kevin Schaefe, "29-59 percent of the permafrost will disappear by 2200. That permafrost took tens of thousands of years to form, but will melt in less than 200." See VIRUS page 5 Ogden City Council encourages beekeeping to preserve species BY RAYCHEL JOHNSON editor-in-chief | The Signpost @raychelNEWS Bees have become a buzzworthy topic in Ogden recently. The Ogden City Council Changes made changes to municipal code and adopted a new ordinance allowing residents to keep bees. Previously, residents of Ogden City known to have verboten beehives didn't register with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food for fear of the city finding out and confiscating the hives. Richard Hyer, Ogden City Council chair, is himself an avid beekeeper and headed the effort to change Ogden's bee policy. "I think there are quite a few closet beekeepers because of the ordinance that we just replaced," Hyer said. "Life will be much better for the bees and the beekeepers." Hyer said he suspects Ogden City will see an influx of bee-related products at the upcoming farmers market and in local stores because of the new ordinance. He said garden production goes up nearly 400 percent due to the bees helping with pollination. "Many beekeepers don't even harvest the honey. They just keep the bees so that their garden and their fruit trees will do better," Hyer said. "The entire neighborhood benefits from having a hive." Local beekeeper and National Forest Service etymologist Darren Blackford has looked after the black-and-yellow insects for over five years. He agreed with Hyer, saying honey is secondary to the benefit of better produce. "Folks don't leave enough resources for the bees to survive in their hives, because they want more honey for themselves," Blackford said. "So the pollination from the bees and honey are the two big benefits of being a beekeeper." Blackford said that while bees aren't technically endangered, their populations are declining nationwide with few explanations. See BEES page 5 |