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Journalist says she was detained for 3 years in China for breaking an embargo_我的网站

一 |     ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Greg Schneider scans rows upon rows of liquid-filled glass jars containing coiled snake specimens, just a portion of the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology's reptile and amphibian collection believed to be the largest held by any research institution in the U.S. thanks to a recent donation. The museum this fall acquired tens of thousands of reptile and amphibian specimens from Oregon State University, many of which are snakes. The development places the university in a unique position, according to Schneider, the research museum collections manager for the museum's division of reptiles and amphibians.“I’m fairly confident we’ll have the largest snake collection in the world,” he said. The extensive new additions also will allow scientists to conduct new snake and amphibian research, perhaps looking at trait evolution in mothers and their offspring. Numerous studies have been conducted in recent years about declining amphibian and reptile populations, Schneider said, noting they “are very good biological indicators of the health of the environment and ecosystems,” especially the amphibians.“Amphibians, unlike people, breathe at least partly through their skin, which is constantly exposed to everything in their environment,” he said, adding that “the worldwide occurrences of amphibian declines and deformities could be an early warning that some of our ecosystems, even seemingly pristine ones, are seriously out of balance.”Boxes containing water snakes, garter snakes, woodland salamanders, dusky salamanders and other species arrived last month. They were euthanized and ultimately placed in a solution that is 75% ethanol. The donations represent the lifetime work of two retired Oregon State professors, Lynne Houck and Stevan Arnold, who received a doctorate from Michigan in 1972.Schneider has yet to complete the painstaking process of cataloging the new material, but estimates it contains around 30,000 snakes. He said that would give Michigan a total of between 65,000 to 70,000 of the slithering vertebrates, surpassing collections at the Smithsonian in Washington, the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the University of Kansas. Some of the specimens housed at the museum prior to the Oregon State donation predate the Civil War.The "largest snake collection" title would be nice, but Schneider said the true promise of a big collection is new research opportunities. “The more stuff you have and the more associated materials that you have, the more things you can do,” Schneider said.The newly acquired Oregon State collection also includes about 30,000 associated frozen tissue samples. Along with advances in molecular genetics and more sophisticated DNA analyses, the samples will allow research that could result in a better understanding of inheritance, evolutionary relationships and “has huge applications in medicine,” said Hernán López-Fernández, an associate professor in Michigan's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.A number of the newly acquired jars contain both snakes and litters of their newborns, which Michigan professor Dan Rabosky said “is very, very rare for museum collections and is incredibly powerful for research, because it lets researchers ask questions about genetics that would otherwise not be possible.” Despite the daunting task of organizing the new collection, Schneider said he and his colleagues have noticed renewed excitement in team members who staff the university’s 153,375-square-foot (14,249-square-meter) Research Museums Center, where the specimens are housed.“Since these specimens arrived, people are very, very, very enthusiastic and supportive,” Schneider said. “And excited about the kinds of research that are going to be done with these collections.”。    CANBERRA, Australia -- Australian journalist Cheng Lei says she spent more than three years in detention in China for breaking an embargo with a television broadcast on a state-run TV network.Cheng‘s first television interview since she was freed was broadcast in Australia on Tuesday almost a week after she returned to her mother and two children, aged 11 and 14, in the city of Melbourne.The Chinese-born 48-year-old was an English-language anchor for state-run China Global Television Network in Beijing when she was detained in August 2020.She said her offense was breaking a government-imposed embargo by a few minutes following a briefing by officials.Her treatment in custody was designed to “drive home that point that in China that is a big sin,” Cheng told Sky News Australia. “That you have hurt the motherland and that the state’s authority has been eroded because of you.” “What seems innocuous to us here is –- I’m sure it’s not limited to embargoes, but many other things -- are not in China, especially (because) I’m given to understand that the gambit of state security is widening,” she said.Cheng did not give details about the embargo breach.Her account differs from the crime outlined by China’s Ministry of State Security last week.The ministry said Cheng was approached by a foreign organization in May 2020 and provided them with state secrets she had obtained on the job in violation of a confidentiality clause signed with her employer. A police statement did not name the organization or say what the secrets were.A Beijing court convicted her of illegally providing state secrets abroad and she was sentenced to two years and 11 months, the statement said. She was deported after the sentencing because of the time she had already spent in detention.Observers suspect the real reason Cheng was released was persistent lobbying from the Australian government and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s planned trip to China this year on a date yet to be set.Cheng said that a visit to a toilet at the court on the morning before she was sentenced was the first time in more than three years that she had sat on a toilet or seen her reflection in a mirror.Her commercial airline flight from Beijing to Melbourne was the first time she had slept in darkness in three years because the lights were always left on at night in the detention facilities.Cheng migrated to Australia with her parents at age 10. She said she struggles to answer when asked how she has been since her return.“Sometimes I fell like an invalid, like a newborn and very fragile,” Cheng said. “And other times I feel like I could fly and I want to embrace everything and I enjoy everything so intensely and savor it.”。

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