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Pic Worth 10,000 Words...

Weekly InSight | 7 March 2014 Special - Corruption in El Salvador: Politicians, Police and Transportistas ...

 

Weekly InSight | 7 March 2014

Special - Corruption in El Salvador: Politicians, Police and Transportistas (Web)

The Infiltrators: Corruption in El Salvador's Police Ricardo Mauricio Menesses Orellana liked horses, and the Pasaquina rodeo was a great opportunity to enjoy a party. He was joined at the event -- which was taking place in the heart of territory controlled by El Salvador's most powerful drug transport group, the Perrones -- by the town's mayor, Hector Odir Ramirez, and the infamous drug and people trafficker Jose Natividad Luna Pereira, alias "Chepe Luna." Also present were undercover narcotics agents, who immediately recognized Menesses as the director of El Salvador's National Civil Police (PNC). Read More 'Chepe Luna,' the Police and the Art of Escape The United States -- which through its antinarcotics, judicial and police attaches was very familiar with the routes used for smuggling, and especially those used for people trafficking and understood that those traffickers are often one and the same -- greeted the new government of Elias Antonio Saca in 2004 with a proposal: take down this Chepe Luna. Read More   Operation Chameleon in El Salvador: Anatomy of a Failure How an El Salvador Drug Trafficker Smuggled Cocaine Into the US The Fixer and El Salvador's Missed Opportunity Perrones Profile

This Week's Analysis

How to Reach New Criminal-Political Equilibrium in Mexico's Post-'Chapo' Vacuum With Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman now back in a cage many analysts and ordinary Mexicans alike fret about the expected knock-on effects. What those effects are, and how bloody they might be, will depend on President Enrique Peña Nieto's next moves in dealing with both the power vacuum Guzman leaves and the political and financial networks that supported his grip. Report Shows Crime's Rising Impact on LatAm Media Freedom         In Case You Missed It: World's Most Wanted, "Chapo" Guzman, Caught in Mexico 'Chapo' Guzman Capture Provides Glimpse of Mexico's Past, Future Sinaloa Cartel Succession in Mexico: More Political Intrigue than Violence End of Celebrity Capos in Mexico Means Govt Can Get to Work

News

Paraguay Uncovers Multinational Group Linked to Domestic Cocaine Processing US State Dept Report Shows Central America Still Main Cocaine Corridor UN Report Slams Moves Toward Drug Legalization El Salvador Gang Truce 'Technically' Finished: Police Hit and Run Bank Robbers Plague Small Town Brazil US Treasury Keeps Pressure on Sinaloa Cartel After 'El Chapo' Arrest More News

Multimedia

Map showing the cocaine trafficking routes used by acriminal group in Paraguay made up of Bolivians, Colombians and nationals. US Treasury chart detailing the network of aMexican businessman linked to Sinaloa Cartel kingpin "El Azul."

InSight is Sponsored by: American University Open Society Foundations International Development Research Centre

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Sharks with cameras attached to their fins reveal surprising behavior

Instruments strapped onto – and in some cases swallowed by – sharks are shedding new light on how sharks swim, eat, live, and interact with other marine life.

By Sudeshna Chowdhury, Staff writer / February 28, 2014

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Scientists attach a combined sensor and video recorder to a shark.

Mark Royer, University of Hawaii

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Thanks to some innovative technology, details about the lives of the most mysterious underwater creatures are now coming to the surface.

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Scientists at the University of Hawaii and the University of Tokyo are attaching sophisticated sensors and video cameras to sharks, giving them a "shark's eye" view of the ocean and revealing new findings about how sharks swim and live in their natural environment.

Apparently, researchers have found that different species of sharks congregate together, challenging the widely held image of sharks keeping to themselves, or at least sticking with their own kind, says Kim Holland, a researcher at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology, who was involved with the study.

Scientists also learned that sharks frequently use powered swimming, instead of gliding, to move through ocean waters.  

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To learn about the sharks' lives, researchers from the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology and the University of Tokyo equipped several sharks from five different species with video cameras and instrument packages. These packages are like "flight data recorders," says Carl Meyer, an assistant researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The instruments recorded details such as the speed, temperature, and body orientation of sharks.

The packages were strapped to their pectoral fins, and were set to detach from the animals after one week, Dr. Meyer says. The packages then floated to the surface and sent out radio signals that allowed researchers to find them. 

The method, says Meyer, gave them a "shark's eye" view of how the fish formed into and disbanded schools. This study was carried out among wild sharks.

But to learn about the food habits of sharks, researchers studied captive sharks, who swallowed small computers fitted with various sensors that are 2.5 inches long; an inch wide and half an inch thick – roughly the size of a lighter, says Dr. Holland.

The researchers got the sharks to ingest these computerized tags by placing them into the body cavities of smaller fish that they fed to the sharks. The sharks couldn't actually digest the tags, so they regurgitated them after a while. While the tags were in the sharks' stomachs, they measured the electrical conductivity of the stomachs' contents.

As of now, it is easy for the scientists to look within the pen and locate the tags. The researchers say that they hope to develop a tag that can be monitored via satellite.

Through this study, scientists are trying to get "a much deeper understanding of sharks’ ecological role in the ocean, which is important to the health of the ocean and, by extension, to our own well-being," said Meyer in a press release. 

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• Scientist identifies an ancient shark nursery in ... Illinois
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