By Takashi Hirokawa and Isabel Reynolds - 2012-08-17T03:17:47Z

Japan said it will deport 14 Chinese nationals arrested for visiting an island in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, defusing an incident that revived tensions between Asias two biggest economies.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said the group of activists from Hong Kong were sent to immigration authorities to begin the deportation process. China demanded their release after they planted a Chinese flag on one of the islands known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese.

The arrests reignited bilateral animosity at a time when Japan is mired in a separate territorial dispute with South Korea. Both involve sovereignty over areas with energy reserves and all three countries are seeking to bolster domestic support ahead of leadership contests this year.

Standard rules of the road are to charge these people and release them to China, said Brad Glosserman, executive director of Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based research institute. Were in the middle of political transition and uncertainty. Everyone needs to be dialing back their rhetoric.

The decision to deport the activists preceded a trip beginning tomorrow to the islands by a Japanese group including opposition lawmakers. The group is scheduled to arrive in the area by boat on Aug. 19 and will travel around the area without landing.

Territory is not just a physical thing, its also about sovereignty and pride, said Satoru Mizushima, the head of Ganbare Nippon, the group organizing its 10th tour around the uninhabited islands that are administered by Japan. The government should be in charge of this, but they are doing nothing, so China is making these claims.

Opposition Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers Yoshitaka Shindo and Eriko Yamatani are among the group of about 150.

Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun called his Japanese counterpart yesterday and asked for the immediate release of the illegally arrested activists, according to a statement posted on Chinas Foreign Ministry website.

The collision of a Chinese fishing boat with two Japanese Coast Guard vessels near the islands in September 2010, sent bilateral relations to the lowest level in at least five years. The captain of the boat was detained for 17 days before being released.

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Japanese Group Heads to Disputed Islands After Chinese Arrested

Quantum teleportation is reaching greater distances, and hopes are high that satellites will be able to use the technology.

The European Space Agency's Optical Ground Station in the Canary Islands.

If only we were quantum states, we'd be playing Kirk and Scotty, popping around the universe until the inevitable failure in the transporter circuits.

European and Canadian scientists are pushing the envelope on quantum teleportation after having succeeded in beaming quantum states across some 90 miles in the Canary Islands.

The laser-locked telescopes on the islands of La Palma and Tenerife served as transporter rooms, teleporting information about the state of a pair of "entangled" particles.

The entanglement links the particles such that a change in one is registered in the other despite great distances between them.

Quantum teleportation was first demonstrated in 1997, but distances are growing longer. A Chinese team of researchers also reported teleporting quantum states across a significant distance, 60 miles, in the journal Nature this month.

While quantum teleportation is subject to the cosmic speed limit, the speed of light, the technology could be harnessed to create satellite communications networks that are super-secure.

Eavesdropping on such transmissions would instantly alter them, so quantum satellites are being explored as a means to securely send military transmissions or even distribute films.

"Our work proves the feasibility of both ground-based and satellite-based free-space quantum teleportation," the European authors write. "Our experiment represents a crucial step toward future quantum networks in space, which require space to ground quantum communication."

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Scientists teleport info 90 miles across islands

Published: Aug. 16, 2012 at 8:07 AM

TOKYO, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- Japan has detained 14 Chinese activists who evaded the coast guard to land on a tiny group of contested islands in the East China Sea.

Controversy over the islands has been blamed on potential oil and reserves in the region and on fishing resources, but actually originated with the end of World War II, the International Herald Tribune reported.

The islands are claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan, with each nation calling them by different names. To Japan, they are the Sensaku. To China, they are the Diaoyu.

The activists, who had sailed from Hong Kong, slipped onto the islands Wednesday and planted the Chinese and Taiwanese flags, setting off the latest controversy. However, the issue of who owns the islands dates back to 1945 when Japan surrendered to Allied powers. The treaties it signed set up post-war conditions that Tokyo would have to live by, but left unsettled smaller matters such as who controlled the islands that lie between Japan and China.

Japan is in a similar dispute with South Korea over the Dokdo islands, or Takeshima as they are known in Japan, another thorny leftover from the war.

"The sense of victimization at the hands of the Japanese remains a powerful sense of identity," said Daniel C. Sneider, associate director for research at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. "In Korea the feeling is: 'We were the victims, and that's it.' "

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak visited the Dokdo islands last week, setting off a three-way diplomatic row. Japan recalled its ambassador from Seoul, while a state-run Chinese newspaper, the People's Daily, said relations between Japan and China were now at "the freezing point."

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Islands row picks at WWII political scab

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong activists trying to reach disputed islands claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan on Wednesday said they were surrounded by Japanese coast guard ships trying to stop them, the latest flare up in territorial disputes that are raising tensions among Asian powerhouses.

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Hong Kong activists' boat nears disputed islands

Wildfires raging on the Spanish Canary Islands of La Gomera and Tenerife have forced the evacuation of more than 4700 people in two days, officials say.

Firefighters battling the blazes on the islands off Morocco were up against "high temperatures, low humidity and wind" that fanned the flames, said regional economy minister Javier Gonzalez Ortiz.

A pitiless heatwave originating from north Africa that follows Spain's driest winter in seven decades has shown no sign of letting up, and fires were also raging in the Galicia region.

On La Gomera, the most devastating fires in a decade have ravaged some 3000 hectares of land, including about a tenth of the Garajonay nature reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

About 2500 people from 13 villages in the island's west and southwest were evacuated as a precaution, the regional government said in a statement on Saturday.

On the other Canaries island of Tenerife, more than 2200 people were moved from their homes.

"The fires are still burning on three fronts," an emergency services spokesman said earlier. "There is no positive change for the moment."

Water-dropping aircraft again flew missions on Saturday as blazes erupted anew in the Garajonay reserve, home to rare subtropical forests which boasts 450 plant species, including eight found only in the park.

Ventura del Carmen Rodriguez, the island's environment secretary, said last week it would take 30-40 years for Garajonay's burned areas to recover.

Three more villages were evacuated after 300 people fled their homes to safety on Friday, as roads leading to the affected areas were cut off.

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Thousands evacuated from Canary Islands

Kermadecs Islands: Whales on the starboard bow

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Kermadecs Islands: Whales on the starboard bow

Regional tensions flared on the emotional anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender as activists from China and South Korea used Wednesday's occasion to press rival territorial claims, prompting Japanese authorities to arrest 14 people.

China's official Xinhua News Agency said the arrests of the 14 people, who included Hong Kong residents and mainland Chinese, had caused tensions over its territorial dispute with Japan to surge "to a new high."

Within hours, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying summoned Japan's ambassador to China, Uichiro Niwa, and called her Japanese counterpart, Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, to protest the detention of Chinese citizens, the Foreign Ministry said.

Fu demanded that Japan release the detainees immediately and without condition, the ministry said in a statement.

The 14 people who were arrested had traveled by boat from Hong Kong to a set of uninhabited islands controlled by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan. Japanese police initially arrested five activists who swam ashore in the East China Sea chain, known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese.

Japanese coast guard officers later arrested nine others who stayed on the fishing boat, the Kai Fung 2, including two who had earlier landed on one of the islands and went back on board, officials said. Coast guard officials said the activists were likely to be taken to Naha, the capital of Okinawa prefecture, which has jurisdiction over the islands, for further questioning.

"We want the world to know that this is way back in history the territory of China, and as Chinese people we can go there fishing, touring at our own right," David Ko, a spokesman for the activists, said in a telephone interview from Hong Kong. "The Japanese have no right to stop us."

Chinese activists last landed on the island in 1996, and seven who were arrested were repatriated quickly.

Japan says it has controlled the five main islands for more than 100 years. It has been trying to place four that are privately held under state ownership to bolster its territorial claim.

Chinese patrol vessels have been spotted frequently in the waters, prompting Tokyo to repeatedly protest and beef up its own patrols in the area.

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HK Activists' Boat Nears Disputed Islands

Kermadecs Islands: Shark fishing with Clinton Duffy

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Kermadecs Islands: Shark fishing with Clinton Duffy

Wildfires drove thousands of people from their homes near a rare nature reserve in Spain's Canary Islands on Monday after a separate mainland blaze killed two, authorities said.

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Wildfires displace thousands on Spanish islands

Kermadecs Islands: Dolphin chasing, whale watching and wrestling the Galapagos shark

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Kermadecs Islands: Dolphin chasing, whale watching and wrestling the Galapagos shark

A wildfire that displaced thousands of people on Spain's Canary Islands eased as the wind changed on Tuesday and firefighters worked to snuff it out, officials said.

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Canary Islands wildfire eases

14 August 2012 Last updated at 09:21 ET

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Footage showed the extent of the fires on the mainland and La Gomera in the Canary Islands

Firefighters in Spain's Canary Islands are still struggling to contain a blaze on La Gomera described by a local official as an "ecological disaster".

Five planes and seven helicopters are supporting firefighters on the ground.

But a change in wind direction means the flames are not spreading as quickly as before, Spanish media report.

About 5,000 people were evacuated on the island, but most of them can return to their homes now, officials say. So far the fire has destroyed 39 homes.

Morocco is sending a firefighting plane to help Spain tackle the fire.

About 25% of the Garajonay nature reserve, a Unesco World Heritage site, has been destroyed by fire. The area measures about 750 hectares (1,853 acres).

The woodland is a unique ecosystem, believed to be millions of years old. Javier Gonzalez Ortiz, the Canary Islands' head of security and emergencies, described it as "an ecological disaster".

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Canary Islands fire still raging

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will send two navy vessels to the disputed Kuril islands in the Pacific, the Defence Ministry said on Tuesday, in a move likely to anger Japan which lays claim to them. The dispute has strained relations between the two countries since World War Two, when Soviet forces occupied the four islands at the southern end of the Kuril chain. Japan says the islands are part of ...

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Russia to send navy vessels to disputed Pacific islands

Kermadecs Islands: Becoming a Raoulie

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Kermadecs Islands: Becoming a Raoulie

The Canary Islands are battling forest fires that have caused around 4,700 people to evacuate their homes.

Spanish firefighters are struggling to contain the blazes as high temperatures and strong winds spur on the flames, BBC News reported.

A statement issued to reporters said that officials were finding it difficult to limit the spread of fire," the Associated Press reported.

We are living through hell, we have asked the central government for more resources with which to fight the fire, said Casimimo Curbelo, local government leader of La Gomera, according to the AP.

The fires are the worst the Islands, which are located off the coast of Morocco, have experienced in at least a decade, and follow the driest winter in 70 years, Deutsche Welle reported.

More from GlobalPost:New Mexico forest fires expected to set record for largest in state's history (VIDEO)

They have destroyed over 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of land on the island of La Gomera where they first broke out a week ago, including a section of UNESCO World Heritage site Garajonay nature reserve, Agence France Presse reported.

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The fires on neighboring island Tenrife have spread over around 370 hectares, Deutsche Welle reported.

"It is going to be a difficult day for everyone, most of all for those fighting the fire," Jan Manuel Santana, the regional head of the Canary Islands emergency services, told reporters in Tenrife on Sunday.

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Canary Islands forest fires force 4,700 out of their homes

13 August 2012 Last updated at 10:15 ET

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Evacuees talk about the moment they were rushed to the ferry

Firefighters are battling a forest fire on La Gomera in Spain's Canary Islands which forced the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people by ferry overnight.

The worst affected area on La Gomera is Valle Gran Rey. Road access has been cut by the fire, which has spread with high winds and tinder-dry vegetation.

A smaller area is ablaze on Tenerife.

On the mainland, two firefighters died while helping to extinguish a wildfire in Torremanzanas, a village north of the eastern coastal town of Alicante.

Spain's El Pais news website says eight helicopters and six planes helped firefighters on the ground to douse the Torremanzanas blaze.

Aircraft are also being used on La Gomera, where fires are advancing on three fronts.

Two boats took 910 people from Valle Gran Rey to La Gomera's main town, San Sebastian. In all, more than 5,000 have been evacuated since Friday.

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Fire forces Canary Islands exodus

irishtimes.com - Last Updated: Monday, August 13, 2012, 14:04

Wildfires in the Canary Islands haved forced the evacuation of thousands of residents.

Fires on the Canary islands of La Gomera and Tenerife have led to the evacuation of more than 4,000 residents and the cutting off of many roads as precautionary measures, the regional government said.

As of yesterday afternoon, residents were being kept out of 18 towns and villages - eight on Tenerife and 10 on La Gomera. The fires are also threatening some of Spains most treasured national parks, including a Unesco world heritage site.

Regional officials said there was evidence that the fire on La Gomera was started deliberately as it had two focal points two miles apart that began burning within a short time of each other.

A statement said firefighting crews working on the islands were finding it difficult to limit the spread of fire.

On La Gomera, one of the less popular tourist destinations in the Canaries, is Garajonay National Park, a world heritage site. It contains prehistoric woodland, dating back 11 million years, according to experts.

Aircraft that were previously dousing the fires with water when they first broke out a week ago were sent away as it was thought the fire was under control, but winds and high temperatures have helped rekindle the flames, an official said.

The island is 850 miles off the coast of the mainland, so it can take up to a day for firefighting planes to return after being sent back to Spains southwestern tip.

A hot summer has followed a dry winter in Spain, with temperatures reaching 44 degrees in southern areas in recent days. The state meteorological agency has warned of a high risk of fires in the country.

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Canary islands suffer wildfires

HONG KONG: A group of pro-China activists from Hong Kong and Macau set sail Sunday for a chain of East China Sea islands at the centre of a simmering territorial dispute between Tokyo and Beijing.

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Pro-China activists depart for disputed islands

Published: Aug. 12, 2012 at 8:13 AM

MADRID, Aug. 12 (UPI) -- Nearly 5,000 people in Spain's Canary Islands have been evacuated as wildfires race through tinder-dry forests and fields, regional officials said.

The worst affected islands are Tenerife and La Gomera, Britain's Sky News television network reported.

More than 7,400 acres of land, including part of a World Heritage nature reserve, on La Gomera have been scorched since Friday, officials said.

"There is no positive change for the moment," an emergency official told reporters.

Firefighters on the ground were being helped by water-dropping aircraft, the report said.

The islands, located off the coast of Morocco, have experienced the driest conditions in some 70 years, the broadcaster said.

Adding to the woes, a heat wave from Africa last week created perfect conditions for the fires with temperatures above 100 degrees, low humidity and breezes.

The environmental secretary for the island of La Gomera, Ventura del Carmen Rodriguez, told reporters it would take at least 30 years for the nature reserve to recover from the fires.

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Wildfires ravaging the Canary Islands

On paper, it's California State University Channel Islands, but many students call it Channel Islands or simplyC.I.

To the chagrin of university officials, some call it sushi andsea-sucky.

Whatever you call it, the youngest school in the Cal State system is a big draw simply because of its name. It doesn't hurt that "islands" is in the title. Students and faculty members are lured by the prospect of beach life and the seasidebreeze.

"It gives us a buzz," said CSU Channel Islands President RichardRush.

When the school opened its doors a decade ago, officials had to break the news to some students that classes were not actually held on anisland.

"In the beginning, people asked, 'Where do you take the boat?' " Rushsaid.

A prospective student from New Jersey, who thought the California waves would lap up against the campus, said his main reason for applying was to join the surfclub.

"We had to write him to say, 'Not quite,' " said J. Handel Evans, who led the development of the university as the planningpresident.

Naming the Camarillo school was an important milestone, particularly in early fundraising efforts for theuniversity.

"One of the most important things during this process is surprisingly getting the right name so you have something to talk about," Evans said. "When I came here, it was the Ventura Project, but when it was named, it became auniversity."

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CSU Channel Islands benefits from its unique name