Mexico City (AFP) - Authorities in Mexico have found more than 370 children dumped by people smugglers while trying to make their way into the United States.

The National Institute of Migration (INM) said the huge number of children, from different nations in Central America, were discovered in just a single one-week period in March.

The figure included some 163 children who were abandoned because they were not traveling with an adult family member or an acquaintance, the INM said in a statement.

In many cases, the children had been left in dangerous or difficult transit points by guides who had been paid between $3,000 and $5,000, it said.

The children were found between March 17 and 24 across 14 states, the INM said, without specifying the ages and nationalities of the children.

"The children showed signs of extreme fatigue, foot injuries, dehydration, disorientation and not knowing where they were abandoned," it said.

Authorities arrested nine suspected traffickers in connection with the case.

INM has said the numbers of immigrant children traveling alone through Mexico "has increased significantly" in recent months.

Some 140,000 undocumented immigrants, the vast majority from Central America, attempt to make the perilous journey through Mexico into the United States every year.

Many travel with children and trust "coyotes" to guide them across the border into the United States.

The migrants are often targeted by criminal gangs, with robberies, extortion, rapes, kidnappings and murders common.

Authorities in Mexico say they have found 370 children who have been left behind by families heading to the U.S.
9 suspects arrested

'Small' Nuclear War Could Trigger Catastrophic Cooling

Even a relatively small regional nuclear war could trigger global cooling, damage the ozone layer and cause droughts for more than a decade, researchers say.

These findings should further spur the elimination of the more than 17,000 nuclear weapons that exist today, scientists added.

During the Cold War, a nuclear exchange between superpowers was feared for years. One potential consequence of such a global nuclear war was "nuclear winter," wherein nuclear explosions sparked huge fires whose smoke, dust and ash blotted out the sun, resulting in a "twilight at noon" for weeks. Much of humanity might eventually die from the resulting crop failures and starvation. [Doomsday: 9 Real Ways the Earth Could End]

Today, with the United States the only standing superpower, nuclear winter might seem a distant threat. Still, nuclear war remains a very real threat; for instance, between developing-world nuclear powers such as India and Pakistan.

To see what effects such a regional nuclear conflict might have on climate, scientists modeled a war between India and Pakistan involving 100 Hiroshima-level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT — just a small fraction of the world's current nuclear arsenal. They simulated interactions within and between the atmosphere, ocean, land and sea ice components of the Earth's climate system.

Scientists found the effects of such a war could be catastrophic.

"Most people would be surprised to know that even a very small regional nuclear war on the other side of the planet could disrupt global climate for at least a decade and wipe out the ozone layer for a decade," study lead author Michael Mills, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, told Live Science.

The researchers predicted the resulting firestorms would kick up about 5.5 million tons (5 million metric tons) of black carbon high into the atmosphere. This ash would absorb incoming solar heat, cooling the surface below.

The simulations hint that after such a war, global average surface temperatures would drop suddenly by about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius), their lowest levels in more than 1,000 years. In some places, temperatures would get significantly colder — most of North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East would experience winters that are 4.5 to 10.8 degrees F (2.5 to 6 degrees C) colder, and summers 1.8 to 7.2 degrees F (1 to 4 degrees C) cooler. The colder temperatures would lead to lethal frosts worldwide that would reduce growing seasons by 10 to 40 days annually for several years. [The Top 10 Largest Explosions Ever]

The ash that absorbed heat up in the atmosphere would also intensely heat the stratosphere, accelerating chemical reactions that destroy ozone. This would allow much greater amounts of ultraviolet radiation to reach Earth's surface, with a summertime ultraviolet increase of 30 to 80 percent in the mid-latitudes, posing a threat to human health, agriculture and ecosystems on both land and sea.

The models also suggest colder temperatures would reduce global rainfall and other forms of precipitation by up to about 10 percent. This would likely trigger widespread fires in regions such as the Amazon, and it would pump even more smoke into the atmosphere.

"All in all, these effects would be very detrimental to food production and to ecosystems," Mills said.

Previous studies had estimated that global temperatures would recover after about a decade. However, this latest work projected that cooling would persist for more than 25 years, which is about as far into the future as the simulations went. Two major factors caused this prolonged cooling — an expansion of sea ice that reflected more solar heat into space, and a significant cooling in the upper 330 feet (100 meters) of the oceans, which would warm back up only gradually.

"This is the third independent model examining the effects a regional nuclear conflict on the atmosphere and the ocean and the land, and their conclusions all support each other," Mills said. "It's interesting that every time we've approached this same question with more sophisticated models, the effects seem to be more pronounced."

These findings "show that one could produce a global nuclear famine using just 100 of the smallest nuclear weapons," Mills said. "There are about 17,000 nuclear weapons on the planet right now, most of which are much more powerful than the 100 we looked at in this study. This raises the questions of why so many of these weapons still exist, and whether they serve any purpose."

The scientists detailed their findings in the March issue of the journal Earth's Future.

Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — In an authoritative report due out Monday a United Nations climate panel for the first time is connecting hotter global temperatures to hotter global tempers. Top scientists are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems, such as civil wars, strife between nations and refugees.

They're not saying it will cause violence, but will be an added factor making things even more dangerous. Fights over resources, like water and energy, hunger and extreme weather will all go into the mix to destabilize the world a bit more, says the report by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The summary of the report is being finalized this weekend by the panel in Yokohama.

That's a big change from seven years ago, the last time the IPCC addressed how warming affected Earth, said report lead author Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution of Science in California. The summary that political leaders read in early 2007 didn't mention security issues will, he said, because of advances in research.

"There's enough smoke there that we really need to pay attention to this," said Ohio University security and environment professor Geoff Dabelko, one of the lead authors of the report's chapter on security and climate change.

For the past seven years, research in social science has found more links between climate and conflict, study authors say, with the full report referencing hundreds of studies on climate change and conflict.

The U.S. Defense Department earlier this month in its once-every-four-years strategic review, called climate change a "threat multiplier" to go with poverty, political instability and social tensions worldwide. Warming will trigger new problems but also provide countries new opportunities for resources and shipping routes in places such as the melting Arctic, the Pentagon report says.

After the climate panel's 2007 report, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote that along with other causes, the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan "began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change. " While the IPCC report this year downplays global warming's role in that particular strife, saying other issues were far more influential, the report's drafts do add that there is "justifiable common concern" that climate change increases the risk of fighting in similar circumstances.

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FILE - In this Dec. 17, 2011 file photo, an Egyptian protester throws a stone toward soldiers, unsee …

"Climate change will not directly cause conflict — but it will exacerbate issues of poor governance, resource inequality and social unrest," retired U.S. Navy Adm. David Titley, now a Pennsylvania State University professor of meteorology, wrote in an email. "The Arab Spring and Syria are two recent examples."

But Titley, who wasn't part of the IPCC report, says "if you are already living in a place affected by violent conflict — I suspect climate change becomes the least of your worries."

That illustrates the tricky calculus of climate and conflict, experts say. It's hard to point at violence and draw a direct climate link — to say how much blame goes to warming and how much is from more traditional factors like poverty and ethnic differences. Then looking into future is even more difficult.

"If you think it's hard to predict rainfall in one spot 100 years from now, it's even harder to predict social stability," said Jeff Severinghaus, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution for Oceanography who isn't part of this climate panel. "Obviously that's going to be controversial. The most important thing is that it's going to be talked about."

Severinghaus and other scientists say this will be one of the more contentious issues as the panel representing more than 100 nations meets here and edits word-by-word a 30-page summary of the multi-volume report for political leaders. Observers said the closed door meeting went through the security and climate section Sunday, in the hurried last hours of editing.

There's an entire 63-page chapter on security problems, but most leaders will read the handful of paragraphs summarizing that and that's where there may be some issues, he says.

Climate change & city planning in 25 yearsPlay video

The chapter on national security says there is "robust evidence" that "human security will be progressively threatened as climate changes." It says it can destabilize the world in multiple ways by making it harder for people to make a living, increasing mass migrations, and making it harder for countries to keep control of their populations.

The migration issue is big because as refugees flee storms and other climate problems, that adds to security issues, the report and scientists say

While some climate scientists, environmental groups and politicians see the conflict-climate link as logical and clear, others emphasize nuances in research.

The social science literature has shown an indirect link, especially with making poverty worse, which will add to destabilization, but it is not the same as saying there would be climate wars, said University of Exeter's Neil Adger, one of the study's lead authors. It's not exactly the four horsemen of the apocalypse, he adds.

Joshua Goldstein, an international relations professor and expert on conflict at the University of Massachusetts, sees that link, but says it is probably weaker than people think. It's not as a big a problem as other impacts from climate change, like those on ecosystems, weather disasters and economic costs, he says.

Poverty is the issue when it comes to security problems — and policies to fight climate change increase poverty, says David Kreutzer at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

But environmental groups such as the Environmental Justice Foundation are issuing reports that dovetail with what the IPCC is saying.

Titley, the retired admiral, holds out hope that if nations deal with climate change jointly, it can bring peace instead of war to battling regions.

___

Online:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Read also here

Global warming driving humanity to new risks

A United Nations panel of scientists says the dangers are going to get worse as the climate changes even more.
'We’re all sitting ducks'

The Hague (AFP) - The United Nations' top court on Monday ordered Japan to end its annual Antarctic whale hunt, saying in a landmark ruling that the programme was a commercial activity disguised as science.

"Japan shall revoke any existent authorisation, permit or licence granted in relation to JARPA II (research programme) and refrain from granting any further permits," said the International Court of Justice's Judge Peter Tomka.

Agreeing with Australia, which in 2010 hauled Japan before the Hague-based ICJ in a bid to end whale hunting in the Southern Ocean, Tomka said that "special permissions granted by Japan are not for purposes of scientific research."

"The evidence does not establish that the programme's design and implementation are reasonable in relation to its stated (scientific) objectives," Tomka said.

While Norway and Iceland have commercial whaling programmes in spite of a 1986 International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium, Japan insisted its programme was scientific, while admitting that the resulting meat ended up on plates back home.

Tokyo was accused of exploiting a legal loophole in the 1986 ban on commercial whaling that allowed the practice to collect scientific data.

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Fact file on the minke whale, main target of Japanese whale hunters in the Antarctic (AFP Photo/Gal …

Conservation groups hailed the ruling, which Japan said it would respect despite "deep disappointment".

"As a state that respects the rule of law… and as a responsible member of the global community, Japan will abide by the decision of the court," chief negotiator Koji Tsuruoka told reporters outside the ICJ.

Geert Vons, director of the Sea Shepherd conservation group in The Netherlands, told AFP that while the ruling applied to Japan's JARPA II programme, a scientific programme with a more solid base could see a return to whaling in the Antarctic.

"If Japan or another country comes up with another programme for scientific research that is built a lot better, whaling could resume," Vons said.

Japanese government spokesman Noriyuki Shikata did not exclude seeking a resumption of Antarctic whaling.

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(L-R) Members of the Japanese delegation, Koji Tsuruoka, Masaru Tsuji, Payam Akhavan, Alan Boyle and …

- 'All eyes on Japan' -

"In terms of a future course of action, we have to carefully examine the content of the judgement," Shikata told AFP.

Australia said that since 1988 Japan has slaughtered more than 10,000 whales under the programme, putting the Asian nation in breach of international conventions and its obligation to preserve marine mammals and their environment.

"This decision sends a clear message to governments around the world that the exploitation of animals will no longer be tolerated and animals must be protected at the highest level," said Claire Bass, head of wildlife campaigns at the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

"All eyes are now on Japan to respect this decision," she said.

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This photo taken on June 25, 2008 shows a Japanese fishermen cutting up a 10m-long bottlenose whale …

The court ruled overwhelmingly in favour of Australia in the case, which the country launched in 2010.

Clare Perry of the Environmental Investigation Agency said the ruling "lays to rest, once and for all, the grim travesty of Japan's so-called 'scientific' whaling."

"Next, the world needs to focus its attention on Japan's whaling in the North Pacific, where it continues to issue permits to kill up to 500 whales annually in hunts using the same 'scientific' clause that has now been condemned beyond dispute by the international court."

While Japan said its research programme was aimed at studying the viability of whale hunting, the ICJ found that it had failed to examine ways of doing such research without killing whales, or at least while killing fewer whales.

Japan has consistently defended the practice of eating whale meat as a culinary tradition and vowed it would "never stop whaling".

In April last year Tokyo announced its whaling haul from the Southern Ocean was at a record low because of "unforgivable sabotage" by Sea Shepherd activists.

Sea Shepherd had called the ICJ case make-or-break for whales in the Southern Ocean.

Established in 1945 to rule in disputes between countries, the ICJ is the United Nations' highest judicial body and the only one of five principal UN bodies not located in New York.

Japan is ordered to end whale hunt

The U.N.'s top court says the nation's annual Antarctic event is a commercial activity disguised as science.
Response

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North and South Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells into each other's waters Monday in a flare-up of animosity that forced residents of five front-line South Korean islands to evacuate to shelters for several hours, South Korean officials said.

The exchange of fire into the Yellow Sea followed Pyongyang's sudden announcement that it would conduct live-fire drills in seven areas north of the Koreas' disputed maritime boundary. North Korea routinely test-fires artillery and missiles into the ocean but rarely discloses those plans in advance. The announcement was seen as an expression of Pyongyang's frustration at making little progress in its recent push to win outside aid.

North Korea fired 500 rounds of artillery shells over more than three hours, about 100 of which fell south of the sea boundary, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said. South Korea responded by firing 300 shells into North Korean waters, he said.

No shells from either side were fired at any land or military installations, but Kim called the North's artillery firing a provocation aimed at testing Seoul's security posture. There was no immediate comment from North Korea.

In Washington, White House spokesman Jonathan Lalley called North Korea's actions "dangerous and provocative" and said they would further aggravate tensions in the region.

Monday's exchange was relatively mild in the history of animosity and violence between the Koreas, but there is worry in Seoul that an increasingly dissatisfied North Korea could repeat the near-daily barrage of war rhetoric it carried out last spring, when tensions soared as Pyongyang threatened nuclear strikes on Washington and Seoul in response to condemnation of its third nuclear test.

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Amphibious assault vehicles of the South Korean Marine Corps throw smoke bombs as they move to land …

Residents on front-line South Korean islands spent several hours in shelters during the firing, and officials temporarily halted ferry service linking the islands to the mainland. Kang Myeong-sung, speaking from a shelter on Yeonpyeong island, which is in sight of North Korean territory, said he didn't hear any fighter jets but heard the boom of artillery fire.

The poorly marked western sea boundary has been the scene of several bloody naval skirmishes between the Koreas in recent years. In March 2010, a South Korean warship sank in the area following a torpedo attack blamed on Pyongyang that left 46 sailors dead. North Korea denies responsibility for the sinking. In November 2010, a North Korean artillery bombardment killed four South Koreans on Yeonpyeong.

The North has gradually dialed down its threats since last year's tirade and has sought improved ties with South Korea in what foreign analysts say is an attempt to lure investment and aid. There has been no major breakthrough, however, with Washington and Seoul calling on the North to first take disarmament steps to prove its sincerity about improving ties.

Recent weeks have seen an increase in threatening rhetoric and a series of North Korean rocket and ballistic missile launches considered acts of protest by Pyongyang against annual ongoing springtime military exercises by Seoul and Washington. The North calls the South Korea-U.S. drills a rehearsal for invasion; the allies say they're routine and defensive.

"The boneheads appear to have completely forgotten the fact that Yeonpyeong island was smashed by our military's bolt of lightning a few years ago," a North Korean military official, Yun Jong Bum, said Monday, according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

Pyongyang also threatened Sunday to conduct a fourth nuclear test, though Seoul sees no signs it's imminent. Wee Yong-sub, a deputy spokesman at the South Korean Defense Ministry, said the North Korean warning about the live-fire drills Monday was a "hostile" attempt to heighten tension on the Korean Peninsula.

Recent threats are an expression of anger and frustration over what the North sees as little improvement in progress in its ties with South Korea and the U.S., said Lim Eul Chul, a North Korea expert at South Korea's Kyungnam University. Lim said the North might conduct a fourth nuclear test and launch other provocations to try to wrest the outside concessions it wants.

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The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. About 28,500 American troops are deployed in South Korea to deter potential aggression from North Korea.

Two Koreas trade fire across sea border

The South's military says it acted in response to shells landing in its waters from a North Korean live-fire drill.
Island residents evacuated