Trump rebuke of Nordstrom blurs lines between family business, politics

'My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by Nordstrom,' Trump tweeted (Reuters)

By Douglas Gillison- Thursday 9 February 2017 

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at department store chain Nordstrom for dropping his daughter's clothing line, again spotlighting the intermingling of the US presidency with the Trump family businesses.

The public rebuke, which the White House later defended, called renewed attention to the potential tangle of business interests Trump brought with him upon taking office last month.

In a tweet posted moments after he wrapped up an address to US law enforcement, Trump hit out at the high-end retailer for announcing last week it had decided to discontinue sales of Ivanka Trump's fashion line amid poor sales.

"My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by Nordstrom," Trump wrote. "She is a great person - always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!"

Since his surprise victory in the November presidential election, Trump has used his Twitter feed to lambast individual companies - from General Motors to Boeing - be it for off-shoring jobs or allegedly overcharging the federal government for aircraft.

Family business

But the latest tweet was different in that it sought to defend part of Trump's family business empire, which critics have said could be a source of profound conflicts of interest for the White House.

Trump made sure to give his message on Ivanka maximum reach by posting it both on his personal handle @realDonaldTrump and on the official account of the US presidency @POTUS.

 Follow

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person -- always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!

10:51 AM - 8 Feb 2017

 
•  26,85926,859 Retweets
 
•  137,523137,523 likes

Since his November victory, Trump has touted an effort to remove himself from running his business empire, transferring corporate control to his sons. But he has resisted divesting, as a government ethics watchdog had called on him to do.

Critics say the Trump businesses still pose a significant ethical quandary.

'What this suggests is that he hasn't fully internalised the consequence of being the most important public official in the country'

-Richard Briffault, expert in government ethics

Further playing into the running debate, Pentagon officials said on Wednesday they were looking to rent space in Trump Tower, Trump's flagship Manhattan luxury building, to accommodate equipment and staff who accompany the president during his stays there.

That came on the heels of a lawsuit filed by Melania Trump in New York, which claimed that damaging rumours reported by a British tabloid had interfered with her "unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to earn millions of dollars because of her raised profile as first lady.

Boycott calls

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday defended Trump's Nordstrom tweet, saying the president was standing up for a family member.

"There's clearly efforts to undermine that name based on her father's issues or particular policies," Spicer told reporters.

"For someone to take out their concern of the policies against a family member of his is simply not acceptable and he has every right to speak out about it."

Nordstrom responded on Wednesday, reiterating that its decision to drop the Ivanka Trump line was made purely on business grounds.

"Over the past year, and particularly in the last half of 2016, sales of the brand have steadily declined to the point where it didn't make good business sense for us to continue with the line for now," the company said in a statement to AFP, adding that it had "a great relationship" with Ivanka Trump's business.

Nordstrom is one of several US businesses that has faced boycott calls for its association with the Trump brand. It is among the firms targeted in a "Grab Your Wallet" campaign launched by anti-Trump activists in protest at the Republican billionaire's agenda.

The campaign on Wednesday was still targeting other retailers including Macy's, Bloomingdale's and Dillard's for carrying Ivanka Trump products.

Other companies, including PepsiCo and Budweiser, have faced backlashes from the opposite camp after moves that were deemed critical of the Trump administration.

Ethical obligations

Richard Briffault, an expert in government ethics at Columbia Law School, told AFP that Trump's use of the presidential bully pulpit to defend his daughter's business "was inconsistent with any notion of the ethical obligations of a public official".

"What this suggests is that he hasn't fully internalised the consequence of being the most important public official in the country," Briffault said.

Since a 1989 executive order, federal officials have been barred from using public office for private gain, Briffault said, adding that any public criticism from a sitting president could be interpreted as an attempt to influence that company's business decisions.

"It gives the appearance that he is using his position to promote the business interests of a close relative," said Briffault.

Unlike other companies he has attacked on Twitter, including Lockheed, Boeing and Ford, which saw their share prices suffer following criticism from Trump, Nordstrom's stock finished up more than 4.0 percent on Wednesday.

The news of Trump's remarks preceded a report from The New York Times on Wednesday, which said TJX Companies, the parent of clothing retailers TJ Maxx and Marshalls, had told employees to discard all Ivanka Trump promotional signs and not display her clothing separately.

 Trump’s Russia strategy collides with foreign policy reality in leaked call with Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a Security Council meeting in Moscow on Feb. 9. (Alexei Nikolsky/AP)

By Andrew Roth February 10 at 12:34 PM

MOSCOW — President Trump’s heady campaign rhetoric about possible detente with Russia is coming face to face with the realities of his chaotic new administration. 

Details emerged Thursday about a telephone call between Trump and Russian President Vladi­mir Putin in which Trump blasted a treaty negotiated under the Obama administration that limits nuclear weapons deployments — after Trump reportedly paused the call with Putin to ask an aide about the treaty. According to a report by the Reuters news agency, Trump then denounced the New START treaty as favoring Russia. 

[Details of Trump-Putin call raise new White House leak concerns]

The Kremlin refused to comment Friday on the leaked details of the telephone call.

“I couldn’t confirm this,” Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, said in a phone call with journalists. “We’ve already reported everything that we considered necessary about the results of the telephone conversation. We have nothing to add.” 

President Donald Trump railed against a key nuclear treaty in his initial call with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, although Putin indicated he wanted to extend the treaty.(Reuters)

White House press secretary Sean Spicer earlier challenged the report in remarks to The Washington Post, saying that Trump knew what the treaty was but was merely asking an aide for advice.

Russia is enthusiastic about Trump’s rhetoric about bettering relations and his re-examination of American exceptionalism, a philosophy that Putin has blasted as dangerous. 

[Officials: Trump security adviser discussed sanctions with Russian envoy]

But the more concrete (and still unclear) elements of Trump’s foreign policy, including new negotiations on arms control, are non-starters in Moscow, analysts say. And there is concern that Trump’s mercurial style will not be to Moscow’s benefit.

“It isn’t even his unpredictability that’s so worrying to Moscow, it’s the unilateral way in which he is acting,” said Alexey Makarkin, deputy director at the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow. 

Although politicians have praised Trump on television, the Kremlin has had those concerns about the president since before the elections, Makarkin added.

The Obama administration has become a convenient target for Kremlin anger about U.S. foreign policy — although certain elements, such as the Iran nuclear deal, are seen in Russia as beneficial. Russia and the United States were among the six world powers that negotiated the nuclear pact with Iran in 2015.

“The problems start when we get into concrete policies,” Makarkin said. “Trump is interested in reviewing the entire legacy of the Obama administration. He rejects even those things that may be mutually beneficial, like the New START treaty.” 

Moscow has limited hopes for Trump’s foreign policy and may be happy to see him spend more time focusing on his domestic goals, said Sergei Karaganov, a political scientist and dean of international relations at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

[Putin won 2016, but Russia has its limits as a superpower]

“There is some skepticism about whether he can actually deliver,” Karaganov said, referring to Trump. “The best scenario is that we would stop cursing each other and have a slightly more civilized relationship.”

There may be a chance for cooperation fighting the Islamic State and finding a deal on managing the Ukraine conflict, he said.

But, he added: “Russia is not controlled in any kinds of agreements on nuclear arms control.”

Moscow has previously downplayed suggestions by Trump about reductions in nuclear arms, including the suggestion of a “grand bargain” following Trump’s interview with several European news agencies that suggested a nuclear arms treaty for sanctions relief. 

“They have sanctions on Russia — let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russia,” Trump was reported as saying, according to Reuters and other news outlets. “For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it. But Russia’s hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen that a lot of people are going to benefit.” 

The Kremlin shot that down. 

“Tying the issue of sanctions and the issue of nuclear reductions would unlikely be possible in the future from the expert viewpoint,” Peskov said in a televised interview the day after Trump’s inauguration in January. “Our president has said repeatedly that the issue of sanctions is not on our agenda. Russia wasn't the initiator of this issue. And, in Putin's words, it won't be the one to initiate lifting the restrictions.” 

Putin supports disarmament, Peskov said, “but it must be fair, proportionate and without upsetting this balance.” 

The New START treaty set limits on both countries’ deployed strategic warheads to no more than 1,550 each. It does not limit non-deployed warheads.

Trump mentioned the treaty, which he called the “start-up,” in all three debates with Democrat Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign. He charged that Russia had increased its warheads inventory and said, erroneously, that the United States was not permitted to do the same for non-deployed weapons.

Pakistan Is the Crisis Flying Under the Radar

Why the Trump administration needs a plan for Pakistan, now.

BY JAMES STAVRIDIS-JANUARY 24, 2017

The set of foreign-policy challenges headed like a freight train at the Trump administration is obvious: the Islamic State and the associated tragedy of Syria; a bubbling North Korea led by an unpredictable dictator with a fistful of nuclear weapons; an angry China hypersensitive about Taiwan and the South China Sea; and Russian cyber-activity roiling domestic political waters alongside Moscow’s ongoing occupation of Crimea and destruction of Syria. But flying under the radar is a dangerous problem not receiving a great deal of attention: Pakistan.

As the sixth-most-populous country in the world (ahead of Nigeria, and behind Brazil), Pakistan is home to more than 200 million people and, by some accounts, the world’s second-largest city, Karachi. When Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was elected in May 2013, the country marked its first democratic transition between political parties since partition in 1947. Recently, the strength of the country’s nascent democracy has been questioned as Sharif confronts protests in response to the Panama Papers, which revealed that his family hid wealth in overseas accounts to avoid paying taxes. This highlights the ongoing challenge of corruption (Transparency International rates the country 117 out of 168 on its Corruption Perception Index) that threatens Pakistan’s democratic stability and long-term growth potential. The nation also faces a virulent terrorism problem from the Pakistani Taliban, which has killed tens of thousands of civilians and troops over the past five years. Since 2006, more than 60,000 Pakistanis have been killed in terrorist events — essentially two 9/11 tragedies per year in a country with a population much smaller than the United States.

Looming over all of this are the issues associated with Pakistan’s long, unsettled relationship with India. Tensions between India and Pakistan have been especially high since September, when Pakistani terrorists attacked an Indian army base in Kashmir, leaving 19 soldiers dead; the two countries have since exchanged daily cross-border fire, leading to the deaths of soldiers and civilians on both sides. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal probably contains over 100 warheads, existing as a hedge against a similar Indian arsenal.While under a reasonable level of military security at the moment, the nuclear weapons represent the world’s least-stable nuclear capability — with the possible exception of North Korea.
Given this tableau of political instability, terrorism, and nuclear weapons, the United States should be thinking hard about how to help create a more stable situation in Pakistan, a nation that is a friend and partner, but with whom we have had significant differences over the past decades.

First, the Trump administration should recognize that our levers to influence Pakistan are limited — but not entirely impotent. While we can and should be working to strengthen national ties with India, this must be done in a way that is not threatening to Pakistan. Thus, the first best option to help achieve stability in South Asia is to do all we can to encourage India to try to resolve differences with its neighbor. Washington’s role could include top-level official visits to both capitals; offering unofficial “Track 2” negotiating programs; and explicitly making peace and stability in South Asia a U.S. strategic interest, identified in our national strategic planning documents.

Second, the Trump administration should increase military assistance to Pakistan in the counterterrorism fight on the Afghan-Pakistani border. A long source of frustration for U.S. military planners — including during my time as NATO’s supreme allied commander responsible for combat operations in Afghanistan — has been Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban. Developing a package of counterterrorism incentives for Pakistan that requires a quid pro quo of their reducing and eventually dropping support for insurgents within Afghanistan is key. Such incentives could include more robust intelligence sharing; better surveillance and strike technology; and joint operations. Washington’s efforts to sell weapons, surveillance, and intelligence systems to Islamabad have been uneven to say the least. Setting out a coherent, reliable pipeline of military assistance and sales would be very helpful.

A third idea would be to increase soft-power support in Pakistan. When the United States and NATO led relief efforts following the massive earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, it had a significant and positive impact on America’s image in the country. Providing more financial aid tied to education, medicine, and humanitarian projects could help. This is an area where much suspicion lingers following medical programs that are perceived to have been tied to intelligence gathering. We need effective strategic communications alongside the aid to help recover.

A question that arises in the context of soft power is whether to impose conditions on Pakistan in return for the aid it receives. While Republicans in Congress have pushed a more conservative approach to use aid as a tactic to pressure Pakistan, it is unclear how the new administration will approach this. In general, it would be wise to consider both our short- and long-term priorities in the region: Too often, a focus on eradicating terrorism today fails to address the circumstances that drive people to extremism in the first place. Using aid to strengthen democratic stability, create opportunities for citizens, and increase investments to grow the economy will translate into long-term benefits that help minimize incentives to turn to extremism.

Fourth and finally, it would make sense to internationalize our efforts. Working with other nations — Britain or Germany, for example — could leverage the impact of our efforts. There are also international organizations, such as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, that exercise considerable influence in Pakistan. Strategizing jointly with international partners can help.

For the Trump administration, the first set of challenges will come fast and furious, and responses will tend to be tactical. Spending some strategic time analyzing the possibility of a classic Black Swan event (low probability, high impact) like the destabilization of Pakistan would make sense. Investing time and effort early with this huge and important nation, while working closely with India, could pay significant dividends in global stability during the next few years.

Photo credit: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/Getty Images

Russia suspected over hacking attack on Italian foreign ministry

Exclusive: Italian government official says no classified emails were compromised in attack believed to have lasted more than four months last year

Italy’s prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, was foreign minister at the time of the hack, but sources say he was not affected. Photograph: Dadi/AGF/Rex/Shutterstock

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome-Friday 10 February 2017

Russia is suspected by Italian officials of being behind a sustained hacking attack against the Italian foreign ministry last year that compromised email communications and lasted for many months before it was detected, according to people familiar with the matter.

An Italian government official confirmed that the attack took place last spring and lasted for more than four months but did not infiltrate an encrypted system used for classified communications.

Paolo Gentiloni, the Italian prime minister who was serving as foreign minister at the time, was not affected by the hack, according to the official, who said Gentiloni avoided using email while he was foreign minister.

The foreign ministry’s “field offices”, including embassies and staff members who report back to Rome about meetings with foreign officials, were affected by the malware attack. But the government official said sensitive information had not been compromised because it would also have been encrypted.

The official did not confirm that Moscow was behind the attack. But two other people with knowledge of the attack said the Russian state was believed to have been behind it. The hacking is now the subject of an inquiry by the chief prosecutor in Rome.

“There were no attacks on the encrypted level. So the information – delicate, sensitive information – that is usually shared in this net, which is restricted by code, has never been attacked or part of this attack,” the government official said.

The person said that after the attack was discovered, the foreign ministry modified its online “architecture” and introduced new instruments to enhance internal security. The official declined to comment on how the intrusion was detected.

The revelation comes amid heightened concerns that Russia has targeted Nato members, including the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Bulgaria, as part of a cyber campaign that seeks to weaken the governments of those countries and disrupt critical infrastructure.

In the US, intelligence agencies have blamed Russian government-sponsored hacking groups for breaching the Democratic National Committee and officials in Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 presidential elections, in part to try to help Donald Trump win the White House.

People who discussed the matter with the Guardian on condition of anonymity said they believed the attack against the foreign ministry was an attempt to gain insight into decision-making within the Italian government.

If Russia did attack Italy, it was targeting a country generally considered less hostile to it than other EU countries such as Germany or the UK. While Italy has supported sanctions against Russia that were imposed following the annexation of Crimea, the government under former prime minister Matteo Renzi strongly opposed a proposal to levy new sanctions against Moscow for its role in the Syrian conflict.

News of the hacking could stoke concerns that Russia may seek to influence the next Italian election, which could be called as early as June. In an interview with the Guardian late last year, a foreign diplomat in Rome questioned whether the current centre-left government, which will face a tough re-election challenge, had prepared itself for possible interference by Russia.

The government’s main opposition, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, has adopted pro-Russian positions on topics ranging from Vladimir Putin’s military intervention in Syria, to his invasion of Ukraine, to a call for Italy to lift sanctions against Russia and reassess its commitment to Nato.

A representative of the Russian government was quoted by Ansa, the Italian news agency, as saying the allegations were unproven.”There are no facts that prove this statement,” Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, said in a WhatsApp message in response to a question about the veracity of the hacking allegation.

Raffaele Marchetti, a political scientist and cybersecurity expert at LUISS University in Rome, said Italy had stepped up its attention to security recently and that he had been encouraged by the appointment of Marco Minniti as interior minister because of Minniti’s expertise on the cyber issue.

“But of course much more needs to be done and implemented,” Marchetti said.

Italy’s vulnerability to cyber-attacks was exposed earlier this year following the arrest of a brother-sister hacking duo who were accused of trying to illegally gain access to the email accounts of Renzi when he was prime minister, as well as several other prominent Italian politicians and business executives.

Giulio Occhionero and his sister Francesca Maria, who was born in the US and is an American citizen, maintained servers in the US that were seized by the FBI as part of the investigation.

The servers are due to be sent to Italy and officials have said the extent of the pair’s alleged crimes will only be known once the servers are examined. While they are not believed to have gained access to Renzi’s email account, there is deep suspicion within the security community in Italy that the two were likely working with or on behalf of other foreign or domestic interests.

The two are still being held in jail. Their lawyers have denied the siblings committed any wrongdoing.

Indonesia: Govt to push for eradication of bigotry in schools, mosques

Indonesian Students read the Quran. Source: AP.

10th February 2017

STRICT guidelines on Islamic educators and preachers will soon be implemented in Indonesia in a push by government to quash bigotry and maintain religious harmony in the country.

According to Jakarta Post, the Religious Affairs Ministry has announced policies that require all Islamic education teachers in public and private schools to have a Bachelor’s degree in Islamic Studies, as well as for preachers to follow guidelines on what they are not allowed to say in Friday sermons.

The move comes after a number of studies showed that the majority of Islamic educators were themselves intolerant.

A 2016 study by the Center for the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) (reported by the Jakarta Post) revealed that 87 percent of Islamic education teachers were opposed to the appointment of non-Muslims as school principals, and nearly 90 percent of them refused to vote for non-Muslims as mayors or regents.

A troubling 78 percent of Islamic education teachers also supported organisations that demanded the implementation of sharia law in the country.

SEE ALSO: Indonesia’s blasphemy laws and the oppression of minorities

The ministry’s Islamic education director-general Komaruddin Amin told Jakarta Post that the ministry plans to distribute circulars to regional administrations and schools, requesting they no longer employ people without the appropriate qualifications.

“All teachers with insufficient educational backgrounds must be replaced. To avoid [students] being misled, we must not entrust those who are lacking competence to teach religious education,” he said.

Indonesia is currently experiencing a shortage of Islamic education teachers with 230,000 schools in need of one, according to the ministry (as reported by Jakarta Post), but the Indonesian Islamic Education Teachers Association (AGPAII) believes this policy is important as several of their members do not have formal education in Islamic studies and they fear this may be why they have failed to understand the need of promoting tolerance.

Another target of the ministry’s strategy is religious sermons being delivered in mosques.

The ministry has stressed that it will not directly intervene as it is not their “domain” but will work with mainstream Muslim clerics to create guidelines to act as a reference point for preachers on what they can and cannot say.

SEE ALSO: Indonesia: Ahok ahead in polls following first debate

Muslim protesters hold a banner calling for the arrest of Jakarta’s ethnic Chinese and Christian Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as “Ahok”, outside the City Hall. Source: AP

The move comes after complaints from some Muslims surfaced expressing concern that Friday sermons in several mosques had been inaccurate and inflammatory.

There have been mixed responses from Muslim scholars, with some criticising the move saying the government should not be telling preachers what they can say. Many others, however, have come out in support believing that the government is only trying to ensure that preachers are competent.

This should be welcome news in a country in which underlying religious and ethnic tensions have been in the spotlight recently.

Concerns about rising hardline Islamic sentiment have grown since Christian Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama was accused of blasphemy by hardline Muslim groups back in November of last year.

He has since been charged and is undergoing trial despite maintaining his position as a candidate in the ongoing Jakarta gubernatorial race.

More than 150,000 Muslims took to the streets of Jakarta in protest of the governor despite reports that Ahok’s supposedly inflammatory comments were in fact edited out of context and no offence was intended.

Some analysts believe that the decision to pursue the case against Ahok was a blow to democracy and diversity, as well as a test to Indonesia’s secular foundations.

Race to save 100 stranded whales on New Zealand beach

• 10 February 2017
• 
  

Volunteers in New Zealand are racing to rescue survivors after more than 400 pilot whales beached themselves.

About 300 stranded whales died overnight at Farewell Spit, on the South Island, in one of the worst such cases the country has seen.

Hundreds of locals and conservation officers have been trying to rescue the survivors since early Friday and formed a human chain to refloat the whales.

Scientists do not know what exactly causes whales to beach themselves.

But it sometimes happens because the whales are old and sick, injured, or make navigational errors particularly along gentle sloping beaches.

Sometimes when one whale is beached, it will send out a distress signal attracting other members of its pod, who then also get stranded by a receding tide.

Are whales attempting suicide when they strand themselves?

REUTERSImage caption-Volunteers have been trying to refloat the surviving whales

The conservation department said it had received a report about a possible stranding on Thursday night, but did not launch the rescue operation until Friday morning as it was too dangerous to attempt a rescue in the dark, reported the New Zealand Herald.

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Andrew Lamason, the departments regional manager, said it was one of the largest mass beachings recorded in New Zealand.

New Zealand marine mammal charity Project Jonah which is leading efforts to save the whales said a total of 416 whales were stranded.

It said the surviving whales are "being kept cool, calm and comfortable" by medics and members of the public.

Some of the refloated whales tried to swim back to shore, and the human chain was trying to herd them out to deeper waters, said volunteer Ana Wiles.

Farewell Spit often sees whale strandings

She told news outlet Stuff that there were "so many fins in the air, no breathing".

"We managed to float quite a few whales off and there were an awful lot of dead ones in the shallows so it was really, really sad."

"One of the nicest things was we managed to float off a couple [of whales] and they had babies and the babies were following," Ms Wiles added.

New Zealand has one of the highest stranding rates in the world, with about 300 dolphins and whales ending up on beaches every year, according to Project Jonah.

Many of these incidents happen at Farewell Spit. Experts say its shallow waters seems to confuse whales and hinder their ability to navigate.

Danny Glover, one of the rescuers at the site, told the BBC it was known as a "whale trap", with its incredible tidal range where the tide may come in as far as 5km (3miles) but with only a 3-metre drop in depth.

In February 2015 about 200 whales beached themselves at the same location, of which at least half died.

Does Your Fish Burger Contain Shark Meat Tainted With Mercury?

"Consumers are being deceived and are unaware of the type of fish being sold and ultimately ingested."

By Robin Hicks / Eco-Business-February 7, 2017

A study of shark meat in Indonesia—the world’s largest shark fishery—has found dangerously high levels of mercury build-up in catches bound for overseas fish markets.

Research conducted at the Seafood Inspection Laboratory in Bali found that mercury concentrations in processed, export-ready shark tissue exceeded twice the commonly accepted safe consumption limit.

This is the first time that mercury levels have been tested in Indonesia-caught sharks bound for markets overseas, where importers and consumers are unaware that the fish that goes into fish burgers and fish and chips meals is shark.

Shark fillets being prepared at a market in Bali, Indonesia. Image: Bali Shark Rescue Center

Bull shark meat tested on January 26, 2017, was found to contain 2.431 parts per million (PPM) of mercury. The consumption limit for predatory fish species in key Indonesian export markets such as Australia, Singapore and New Zealand, and also Indonesia, is 1.0 PPM.

Bronze whaler meat—commonly sold as “flake” in Australia and cooked in batter for fish and chips dish—tested a week earlier was found to have a mercury concentration of 1.829 PPM.

Bull shark meat sourced from the same location just a year ago was found to contain a significantly lower concentration—1.368 PPM.

Green School of Bali taking shark samples at Jimbaran fish market, Bali, Indonesia. Image: Bali Shark Rescue Center

“Consumers are being deceived and are unaware of the type of fish being sold and ultimately ingested,” commented Paul Friese, founder of Bali Shark Rescue Center, whose non-government organisation partnered with sustainability college Green School of Bali to conduct the study.

Fisherman preparing Bull shark head. Image: Bali Shark Rescue Center

In Indonesia, most sharks are harvested for their valuable fins and liver first, and those parts sold to specialist buyers. The animal is then skinned, beheaded and the meat is filleted and moved back into the fish market unmarked.

Shark fin can fetch up to IDR 2,500,000 (US$200) for a set, but locally sold shark meat sells for as little as IDR 25,000 (US$2) per kilo, and is used in street foods such as sate, fish cakes and meat balls. Overseas, shark meat is typically breaded and deep fried as fish burgers or used in the classic fish and chips dish.

The sale of shark meat is also masked by transshipping, the process of transferring fish caught at sea from ship to ship, which makes the source harder to trace.

Shark is particularly risky to eat because mercury bioaccumulates—the concentration of the heavy metal increases as it passes along the food chain, from plankton to shellfish, to small fish and onto larger predatory species.

Mercury has entered marine ecosystems as a result of discharge from coal-fired power stations, residential heating systems, waste incinerators and mining, and also from volcanic activity.

The main health risk from mercury consumption is damage to the nervous system. Unborn babies are particularly at risk from mercury pollution and, if exposed, may suffer impaired cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language and fine motor and visual spatial skills in childhood.

Meanwhile, shark populations in Indonesia have been under increasing pressure, as more than three million sharks are killed every year for their fins alone. Sharks are a tempting target for fishermen, particularly in remote island areas where the fins of the predators can bring lucrative returns.

This story was originally published on Eco-Business and reproduced with permission.

 

A zoology graduate turned journalist, Robin's first published words were in the Journal of Experimental Biology on the escape response of Xenopus laevis, a type of African frog. He spends his Saturdays as a volunteer for animal rescue charity ACRES. During the week, he's deputy editor of Eco-Business. Robin has spent a decade living and working in Asia Pacific, and has 17 years of experience in journalism.
Contact him at robin@eco-business.com.