What Caught My Eye Today - Kenya, China, Volcanoes

Kenya - Kenyan lawmakers backed a motion to pull out of the International Criminal Court, an angry snub to The Hague-based tribunal ahead of the upcoming trial of Vice President William Ruto on three counts of crimes against humanity for allegedly organizing 2007-2008 post-election unrest that killed at least 1,100 people and displaced more than 600,000. I'm confused. If I understand this correctly, boyfriend is Vice President, right? So what exactly was his motivation for allegedly (sure, let's give him the benefit of the doubt) inciting all this unrest? Ruto's trial comes about two months ahead of that of President Uhuru Kenyatta, who faces five charges of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, persecution and deportation. No offense, Kenya, but maybe you should conduct some better background checks on your elected officials. Sort of a due diligence thing to ensure they don't try to massacre you after they've attained office. Both Kenyatta and Ruto have said they will cooperate fully with the court and deny the charges against them. The symbolic vote offers a defiant message to the ICC, but does not impact upcoming trials of the east African nation's leadership, and parliament must now vote on a bill to formalize steps for an actual withdrawal. Lawmakers have branded the ICC a "neo-colonialist" institution that only targets Africans and said leaving the ICC would defend the country's constitution and "redeem the image of Kenya". I wonder what gotten the Kenyan government's knickers in a bunch with the ICC? The ICC was set up in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes, and countries voluntarily sign up to join. The ICC has only indicted Africans, a fact that has opened the court to severe criticism on the continent. I did not know that. I suppose one could be bothered by such a bias if, in fact there is bias. Then again, maybe African leaders are exceedingly good at doing heinous things. Kenya is the first country to hold such a vote to leave the world court. Any actual withdrawal requires the submission of a formal request to the United Nations, and could preclude the ICC from investigating and prosecuting any future crimes. I'm curious how the U.N. will handle this and if it has the ability to prevent Kenya from withdrawing. Alas, the United States, probably won't have much say in how this gets resolved. The United States is not one of the 153 member states that recognizes the jurisdiction of the ICC.

China - China's Ministry of Education said that only 70% of the country could speak the national language Mandarin, many of them poorly, and the remaining 30% or 400 million people could not speak it at all. It's worth bearing in mind that China has 1,353,821,000 people, so you could see how getting everyone to read from the same page (so to speak) could be a bit challenging. That said, we're talking about a number that exceeds the entire United States that cannot speak the official language. China's ruling Communist Party has promoted Mandarin for decades to unite a nation with thousands of often mutually unintelligible dialects and numerous minority languages, but has been hampered by the country's size and lack of investment in education, especially in poor rural areas. Officials have admitted they will probably never get the whole country to be able to speak Mandarin, formally called Putonghua in China, meaning "common tongue." Still, the government can be proud of the fact that it has successfully imposed a single timezone on the entire country, which geographically spans at least four.  The promotion of Mandarin has long been a contentious issue in China, despite the practical benefits of having the entire population fluent in one tongue. I don't know. Canada seems to do okay being bi-lingual (English and French), as does Belgium with its 3 languages (Dutch, French and German; they might not be able to agree on a government, but they seem to be able to talk to each other), and how about a shout out to Switzerland and it four languages (French, German, Italian and Romansh). Then again, the populations of these 3 nations is about the same as the populations of China's 3 largest cities.

Volcanoes - Researchers have announced the world's largest volcano lurks beneath the Pacific Ocean. Called the Tamu Massif, the enormous mound dwarfs the previous record holder, Hawaii's Mauna Loa, and is only 25% smaller than Olympus Mons on Mars, the biggest volcano in Earth's solar system. One wonders with all the technology at our disposal, how we could have missed something this big for so long. And yes, that is totally a leading question. Read on, my friends. Tamu is 400 miles wide but only about 2.5 miles tall. It erupted for a few million years during the early Cretaceous period, about 144 million years ago, and has been extinct since then. Until now, geologists thought Tamu Massif was simply part of an oceanic plateau called Shatsky Rise in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Oceanic plateaus are the biggest piles of lava on Earth. The outpourings have been linked to mass extinctions and climate change. Still awake? Hang in there, we're almost done. The volume of Tamu Massif alone is about 600,000 cubic miles. The entire volcano is bigger than the British Isles or New Mexico. Despite Tamu's huge size, there is little evidence the volcano's top ever poked above the sea. The world's biggest volcano has been hidden because it sits on thin oceanic crust, which can't support its weight. Its top is about 6,500 feet below the ocean surface today. There, don't you feel like you learned something?