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Around the World

Malaysian deputy jailed for six years

The term bars Anwar from politics for at least five years after his release from prison. He had repeatedly declared his innocence, saying he was the victim of a political conspiracy to eliminate his challenger.

There were gasps in the courtroom and protests in the streets at the sentence, although Anwar seemed unmoved.

"My body may be incarcerated," he said, "but my soul is free."

Azizah Ismail, Anwar's wife and now the leader of his political reform movement, fought tears as she spoke to reporters outside the courthouse.

"Our family is sad. My children are deprived of their father," she said. "But we don't regret it. We feel proud with my husband's stand and the principle we all fight for."

Azizah, who has tried to keep her husband's crusade for political change alive since he was jailed last September, pressed ahead yesterday in attempts to forge consensus, meeting with leaders of the Islamic and centrist parties.

Fragmented opposition groups saw common ground in Anwar's arrest, and began to jointly focus on the what they call Malaysia's unjust and corrupt government. Many of them felt that Anwar's sentence could generate a sympathy vote in a general election expected later this year.

"I am happy because it has made the people aware of what is happening to the country," said Syed Husin Ali, head of the Malaysian People's Party.

Judge Augustine Paul found Anwar guilty on all four corruption charges. Paul - who served as judge and jury during the sensational 7-month trial - sentenced Anwar to six years on each charge, with the terms to be served concurrently.

As Paul read the verdict, hundreds of supporters of the ousted deputy prime minister demonstrated violently outside, vowing to continue his campaign to rid Malaysia of corruption and Mahathir.

Chanting "Reformasi!" - the Malay word for reform and Anwar's political rally cry - protesters brought part of downtown Kuala Lumpur to a standstill as they rampaged in the capital's streets, lighting bonfires, hurling rocks at police and smashing car windows.

Police lobbed tear gas, sprayed yellow-dyed liquid from water cannons and kicked and punched Anwar's supporters. Police said they arrested 18 people, but did not say how many others were injured.

Human rights activists in New York, London, Bangkok said they were shocked. Amnesty International, the London-based human rights watchdog group, called Anwar was a prisoner of conscience and that the charges were a "pretext to remove him from further participation in public life."

In Washington, White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said the United Ss has "expressed serious concern over the last couple of months about the lack of due process and those concerns remain."

"There were serious flaws in the way they proceeded with this prosecution," he added.

Anwar has repeatedly argued that he was framed by political enemies for challenging his former mentor and threatening the cozy relationship between the government and the Malaysian corporate world.

Frogs disappear due to global warming

The frog declines, which included the infamous extinction of the Golden Toad, coincided with a sudden reduction in moisture levels on the continental divide atop Monteverde in Costa Rica's central highlands, according to J. Alan Pounds, of the University of Miami, and his colleagues.

The discovery is evidence that global warming is affecting wildlife in previously unrecognized ways, he said. "Biological communities are responding to climate change more quickly than we thought," he said. "We've observed a pattern here, and our responsibility is to sound an alarm."

Monteverde was settled in the 1950s by Quakers from the United States who set aside a large area of "cloud forest" as a nature preserve. Moisture-laden trade winds off the Caribbean cool as they rise up the eastern slope, forming a cloud bank on the mountaintop and shrouding the jungle in mist.

The cloud forest is home to an enormous diversity of plants and animals dependent on its extreme moisture levels. Conversely, other species adapted to drier, warmer conditions live further down the mountainside, below the base of the cloud.

Pounds and his collaborators, Michael P.L. Fogden and John Campbell, discovered that amphibians and reptiles living at upper elevations had simultaneously suffered severe population

reductions. At the same time, a number of bird species from lower sections of the mountain began an

upward migration. Toucans, previously found only in the lowlands, now live side-by-side with

Monteverde's Resplendent Quetzal, the colorful, long-tailed bird identified with the cloud forest going

back to pre-Colombian times.

All of these changes coincided with unusually warm, dry conditions produced by a combination of the

El Nino weather pattern and a more general, long-term rise in sea-surface temperatures, the

researchers found. These effects, Pounds said, are amplified at higher altitudes and have caused the

base of the cloud bank to lift. As the cloud recedes up the mountain, the misting and condensation

essential to life atop Monteverde have decreased.

When the scientists examined stream flow and ocean temperature data, plus daily records of air

temperature and mist frequency near the continental divide, they discovered that the dry season had

become not only warmer and drier, but that dry days now come in longer sustained runs at

Monteverde.

Unlike birds, earth-bound amphibians have limited upward mobility. The Golden Toad, which lived

only in several wetlands in a small area almost at the mountaintop, had nowhere to go. It was last seen

in 1989.

Global warming probably was not the immediate cause of the Golden Toad's demise, Pounds said.

More likely the climate fluctuation weakened the animals and made them vulnerable to an epidemic

involving a pathogen or parasite, such as the chytrid fungus implicated last year in other frog die-offs

around the world. But Pounds said no one will ever know the exact cause of death in the case of the

Golden Toad.

"At the time of the crash we weren't aware of what was happening," Pounds said. "Nobody looked

at the animals to see what killed them."

Pounds' research, published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, appears to confirm the

warnings of many scientists that amphibians are reacting to widespread environmental degradation in

even seemingly pristine habitats.

"This is very important," said Andrew Blaustein, a biologist at Oregon State University. "It's a

convincing scenario for why the Golden Toad and other species went down the tubes. It also shows

how incredibly complex these environmental interactions can be."

04-15-99