Latest news with #Shou
Otago Daily Times
26-06-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Student bitten by the bug
A Mountainview High School international student's report on South Canterbury creepy-crawlies has made it on to Japanese bookshelves. Avid bug and insect hunter Shou Saito, 17, has been studying in South Canterbury since arriving from Japan in 2023. His report, "Living in a remote corner on the frontier of the South Island, New Zealand", has been published in the latest edition of the Japanese Strange Insect quarterly magazine. It featured images and descriptions of South Canterbury fauna he had come across like the Neotrichozetes spinulosa, a native spiky mite found in Claremont Bush, and the Alexander beetle, a species of South Island endemic ground beetle that can be found near the Otipua Wetland. Shou said he had been asked to write the report by an acquaintance in Japan after having previously published a small scientific report on a moth in another magazine last year. "I got a message asking if I would like to write about a New Zealand living thing and I was like 'oh yes'. "It's quite a nerdy magazine and features creatures from all around the world. People can purchase the magazine in museums in Japan, or bookstores in Tokyo or other towns. "Not a lot of Japanese people come to New Zealand and especially this place [South Canterbury] because it's quite rural and in the countryside, so it would be quite uncommon for them to know about it." After working at a Timaru restaurant part-time, he saved up, bought a camera and said he now spends a lot of his time exploring and capturing different aspects of nature in the region. "I've been interested in nature ever since I was small. I was living in an old apartment in Japan which had many creatures like geckos and big beetles nearby. "I like to get out and take photos every day of any living things. I often post my observations on a website called iNaturalist, which is a non-profit social network of naturalists and citizen scientists. "Claremont Bush, Otipua Wetland and the Washdyke Lagoon are my favourite places to visit in the area." He said there were a lot of differences between Japanese and New Zealand nature. "New Zealand nature is great because it's quite bushy and there is a lot of moisture. Japan is closer to the equator which makes it a lot drier. "There are still lots of interesting things in Japan but not like New Zealand with its more jungle-like bush. "A lot of the nature in South Canterbury is gone because of farming and many of the living things have gone extinct such as giant moa. The introduction of pests and introduced species destroyed a lot of the environment but there are still a few places the native species can relax. "I am impressed with the resilience of the native species here." Shou said his dream was to eventually write and publish his own book or photography magazine on his findings. "I'm just really interested in nature things. "This is my last year in the country so I would like to explore even more of New Zealand. I especially would like to see some native gecko species, bones of extinct birds and the Helmes beetle. "I am also looking forward to starting as a volunteer at the South Canterbury Museum soon, and in the future I plan to study invertebrate or content related them at university."
Telegraph
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Germany has been betrayed again on migration
Somewhere in Pakistan a plane is preparing to carry Afghans to Germany. It is the third one to take off since the election, after a pause before Germans voted in February. Since the fall of Kabul in 2021, Germany has flown in 36,000 Afghan asylum seekers, with another 10,000 waiting to come, even though almost none of them had any connection to Germany. Some of them have even been arrested on arrival for using false papers. Heiko Teggatz, the chairman of the Federal Police union, has warned that NGOs are teaching Afghans how to deceive the authorities: don't mention if you have Taliban links; do claim you are persecuted. In one case NGO workers are said to have stated that an Afghan was at risk because he is gay, only for him to rage that he wasn't when officials asked him about his sexual orientation. The absurdity doesn't end there. In Munich, public officials are under investigation for giving immigration permits in return for cash, handbags, events and limousine rides. Unsurprisingly, the German public, following the infamous 2015 asylum crisis and years of expanding legal routes, want less immigration. Yet, despite the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)'s win in last month's elections, it seems like this sincere wish is about to be betrayed. That's because the CDU has ruled out any deal with the hard-Right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which means it has to go into coalition with the Left-wing Social Democratic Party (SPD) and form an 'Albania coalition' (so-called because the colours of the two parties are black and red, like the Albanian flag). Without the possibility of accepting the votes of the AfD, the CDU has little leverage in the coalition negotiations. That's why the SPD has felt confident to release a new immigration paper which calls for a move away from 'limiting' to 'regulating' immigration. While the CDU promised it will reduce immigration, this paper instead demands half a million immigrant workers every year; those who are in Germany illegally should, in most cases, be allowed to stay; deportation should become a last resort; foreign nationals should be allowed to vote in Germany so long as they've lived there long enough; and anyone who lives in Germany for 25 years should get citizenship without any conditions, so presumably even if they can't speak the language. The SPD, formerly the party of the working class, seems to have decided that rather than trying to win back the voters it lost in the last election, it can instead introduce policies aimed at attracting an entirely different voting bloc. Having slumped to one of its worst electoral performances, with working-class strongholds like Gelsenkirchen being won by the AfD on comfortable margins, it has ended up reliant on the immigrant vote: Die Linke, a hard-Left party born out of East German communism, won 29 per cent of the immigrant vote, while the SPD won 28 per cent. Both parties promised more liberal immigration laws and more generous welfare. Should this go ahead, Germany will find its already creaking infrastructure under even more pressure. The housing market is still struggling to keep up with the pace of current migration, while the construction industry has seen profits falling as the cost of building materials increased and regulations worsened. If the CDU accepts any points of the SPD's immigration working paper, it will betray its voters. Sixty-eight per cent of Germans want fewer asylum seekers and 57 per cent want asylum seekers who arrive illegally to be turned away at the border. A mere 3 per cent want more refugees. That the AfD won 20.8 per cent of the vote, double the result of the last election, should then come as no surprise. Those who worried about immigration but put their trust in the CDU one last time will have nowhere else to turn to in future. After the election Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU and likely the next chancellor, said that 'Left politics is over.' But the many Germans who voted for a Right-wing Government seem to have yet again been given thoroughly Left-wing politics. By seeking a coalition with the SPD, and giving them the advantage by ruling out working with the AfD, Merz is in danger of disproving his own boast.
