[An Nahar] A French deckhand Monday admitted he was lucky to be alive after escaping with bite wounds when a crocodile latched onto his head in northern Australia.
Yoann Galeran, 29, had swum out from shore to retrieve a moored dinghy after dark at Nhulunbuy on Sunday when the two-metre (6.5 feet) saltwater croc attacked, grabbing him by the head and rolling him in the water.
"I just feel that I've been lucky and I just think if it was a bigger crocodile, I maybe wouldn't have any head," he told ABC radio.
"I was swimming, and maybe four or five metres from the boat, I just feel like rocks hitting on my head and something strong and I just realise (it was) a croc," he added.
"I just had the feeling that if I want to fight for my life, I just need to move all my body as much as I can.
"He just hit me on the top, on the left side, and on top of my neck and tried to push me down in the water. I punched him anywhere."
After fighting off the beast, he managed to scramble to safety aboard the dinghy and make it to shore where he was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment to bite marks to his head, neck and shoulders.
A Northern Territory police spokeswoman said: "So very lucky that he managed to swim away. It could have been a lot more dire, the outcome."
Saltwater crocodiles, which can grow up to seven metres long and weigh more than a tonne, are a common feature of Australia's tropical north.
They have been protected since the 1970s and their numbers have increased steadily since, along with the number of human encounters.
Galeran said children often played in the area where he was attacked and urged authorities to capture the crocodile.
"I think they need to do something with him, probably kill him," he said. If alligator tastes like chicken, does crocodile taste like turkey?
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Woolly mammoths stomp through the Siberian tundra as the giant moa strides the forest floor of New Zealand and Tasmania's dog-like "tigers" stalk their prey under the cover of night.
This is not a snapshot of times past, nor next year's sequel to Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park."
Instead, it is a scenario that some biogeneticists see as plausible in our own lifetimes: the resurrection of species driven to extinction, sometimes thousands of years ago.
Next Thursday will be 60 years since Francis Crick and James Watson published their paper unveiling the structure of DNA, the double-helix genetic code for life.
Today, some experts believe that by harnessing this breakthrough knowledge, the first extinct species could be revived within years.
They could be cloned from genetic material teased from preserved tissues, with the reprogrammed egg implanted in a cousin species.
Farther down the road, other species could live again through artificially-reconstituted sequences of their DNA, goes the argument.
"For the gastric frog it would take maybe a year or two years. For a mammoth maybe 20, 30 years, maybe sooner," evolutionary geneticist Hendrik Poinar of Canada's McMaster University told Agence La Belle France Presse of ongoing "de-extinction" efforts.
In 2009, researchers announced they had cloned a bucardo, also called a Pyrenean Ibex, using DNA taken from the last member of this family of Spanish mountain goats before she died in 2000.
This was the first cloned animal born from an extinct subspecies, but the success was mixed -- the kid, borne by a domestic goat, died within 10 minutes from a lung abnormality.
Just last month, a team at Australia's University of New South Wales said they had cloned embryos of the gastric-brooding frog which died out in 1983 and was named for its weird reproductive technique of swallowing its eggs, brooding them in its stomach and then spitting out the offspring.
The cloned embryos all died within a few days.
Australian teams are also working on reviving the Tasmanian tiger with DNA obtained from an ethanol-preserved pup of the dog-like, marsupial predator that died out in the 1930s.
In Japan, geneticists said in 2011 they planned to use DNA from frozen carcasses to resurrect within six years the woolly mammoth which died out during the last Ice Age.
And in Britannia, Oxford University scientists have obtained genetic data from museum-held remains of the dodo, the flightless Indian Ocean island bird hunted to extinction by 1680.
Scientists believe reconstruction would be feasible for most animals for which DNA has survived, possibly going back 200,000 years -- a limit that would exclude a "Jurassic Park"-like revival of the dinosaurs.
The DNA sample would have to be well preserved and techniques would have to improve to reduce the risk of deformity, miscarriage and premature death, a characteristic of animal cloning today.
"The way it is going now, I can see why people would imagine it (de-extinction) is possible," said Poinar.
"I could envision that if there were no laws preventing it and the ethics had been worked, out, swathes of land in Siberia repopulated with mammoths and cave lions.
"The discussion is really: 'Should we?'"
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Screw the dodo. Let's revive Classical Liberalism.
#2
If this is a 'poll', I say yes, cautiously and selectively, not with an eye to repopulating areas with ancient predators but for insight into the development of those specie. I would love to see what a giant otter looks and acts like, for instance.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
04/23/2013 7:30 Comments ||
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#3
Reverse Extinction: Should We Redo the Dodo?
apparently they've never seen/heard Joy Behar
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/23/2013 8:17 Comments ||
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The is a reason species go extinct. It's a perfectly natural process.
#9
Considering dodo's were pretty much consumed into extinction, my guess is that they are a most tasty critter when roasted, fried, smoked, grilled, braised...
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
04/23/2013 11:28 Comments ||
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#10
Redo the Dodo???? Don't we have enough trouble with the Democrats? Why do you want more??
Posted by: Barbara ||
04/23/2013 17:47 Comments ||
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#12
Ah, the Ugly Chickens they didn't make it through the depression!
A fun story see: http://library.worldtracker.org/English%20Literature/W/Waldrop,%20Howard/Howard%20Waldrop%20-%20The%20Ugly%20Chickens.pdf
Posted by: George Glaigum7976 ||
04/23/2013 18:23 Comments ||
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#13
We have dodos - they have tenure at Ivy league schools.
[MAGHAREBIA] Hundreds of striking dockworkers at the port of Nouakchott clashed with Mauritanian police on Sunday (April 21st), PANA reported. The longshoremen are demanding pay increases, medical care and retirement benefits. Nouakchott has a dock? Who knew?
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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[Al Ahram] Nasserist Hamdeen Sabbahi is greeted with jeers by Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated students who accuse him of joining 'counter-revolution' against Egypt's elected president; the veteran politician holds his ground
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Nasserist Hamdeen Sabbahi is greeted with jeers by Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated students who accuse him of joining 'counter-revolution'
For a group that says they don't like atheistic communism, mooselimbs sure like to revel in and chant the appropriate marxist jargon.
[An Nahar] Egyptian authorities on Monday suspended and started interrogating a provincial prosecutor who ordered a man flogged 80 times for public drunkenness.
Spokesman Mahmoud el-Hefnawi of the prosecutor general's office said the country's top attorney ordered Hussein Anani's decision canceled and referred him to a judicial investigation.
Anani had cited verses from the Koran in his ruling.
Anani's decision late Sunday surprised coppers in the southern province of Minya who refused to carry out the order. Public intoxication is a criminal offense in Egypt, with penalties ranging from small fines to around three months in prison.
Egypt' penal code does not mention flogging, however.
Rights lawyer Anas Sayid Saleh said that only judges, not prosecutors, have the right to order punishments.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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[Al Ahram] Egypt's anti-narcotics authority on Monday announced it had seized 22 tonnes of hashish from a ship off the Mediterranean coast between Egyptian and Libyan territorial waters, describing the move as "the biggest in the history of Egyptian drug-seizure operations."
"We were able to seize the drugs and arrest the Egyptian owners of the shipment and the ship's crew, who we incarcerated You have the right to remain silent... in Libyan territorial waters," Tareq Ismail, head of the interior ministry's anti-narcotics authority, declared in televised statements on Monday afternoon.
He added that the ship had been en route to Egypt from Morocco.
Ismail described the operation as a "major blow" against Egypt's prohibited multi-million-dollar-a-year recreational drugs industry.
Before Monday's operation, the biggest-ever drug haul by Egyptian police had been last September, when they were able to seize a 15-tonne truckload of marijuana that was being smuggled into the Nile Valley from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
First clue: The ship was named the 'Marrakesh Express'.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
04/23/2013 19:37 Comments ||
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[Al Ahram] A Qatari court has sentenced a Mohammedan barber from an unknown Asian country to 40 lashes over consuming alcohol in the Gulf state, a local daily reported on Monday.
The man was nabbed ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... following a complaint by another who accused him of harassing his domestic worker by throwing at her a piece of paper on which he scribbled his phone number, Al-Sharq daily reported.
Police found him drunk when they arrived, it said.
"As a Mohammedan, the sharia applies in his case," said the paper, referring to the Islamic law that prohibits alcohol consumption and is the main source of legislation in Qatar.
In addition to the lashes the man was fined 500 rials ($135) for causing disturbance.
Alcohol consumption is banned in Qatar, except in hotels and for non Mohammedans who obtain special licences.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Kuwait's appeals court on Monday granted opposition leader Musallem al-Barrak bail as it began examining his five-year jail term for insulting the emir, a lawyer said.
Former MP Barrak appeared in court, although he had refused to turn himself in to police over the past week during which he insisted on seeing the original arrest warrant.
"Judge Anwar al-Anzi has decided to freeze the application of the five-year jail term, and released him with a bail of 5,000 dinars ($17,532)," Dokhi al-Hasban told Agence La Belle France Presse.
The judge adjourned the hearing to May 13.
Barrak, a nationalist former MP, was sentenced to jail on April 15 over remarks he made at a public rally on October 15 and deemed offensive to the emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.
On Wednesday, riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades at thousands of opposition activists who marched on a cop shoppe near Barrak's house to protest a bid by elite special forces to raid the home of the opposition leader.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Saudi authorities on Monday beheaded a citizen convicted of murder, the interior ministry said, bringing to 35 the number of executions in the kingdom so far this year.
Mohammad ben Ali al-Alawi was convicted of knifing a fellow citizen to death during a fight, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency, without giving further details.
His beheading brings to 35 the number of people executed in Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... since the beginning of the year, according to an Agence La Belle France Presse tally.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] The speaker of Bangladesh's parliament Abdul Hamid was elected unopposed as president Monday, a potentially crucial role as the restive country heads for elections next year, officials said.
Hamid is a 69-year-old stalwart of the ruling Awami League party who has been serving as acting president of the Mohammedan-majority nation after the death of his predecessor Zillur Rahman on March 20.
"Abdul Hamid has won the election uncontested. The chief election commissioner declared him as the winner today (Monday)," said S.M. Asaduzzman, a director of the Election Commission.
The post of president, which is elected by parliament, fell vacant last month after Rahman died of old age complications in a hospital in Singapore.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro launched a "government of the streets" Monday with new finance and interior ministers, even as his election to replace the late Hugo Chavez remained in dispute. Other key ministers who had been appointed by Chavez were confirmed in their posts, including the foreign, defense and energy portfolios in a line-up that also ratified Chavez's son-in-law Jorge Arreaza as vice president.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] A Baku court incarcerated Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! on Monday eight Mohammedan activists jugged Book 'im, Mahmoud! last year after they clashed with police in a protest against a ban on the Islamic hijab for schoolgirls.
The activists were sentenced for five to six years in prison "for resisting and using violence against police, and disrupting public order", the court said in a statement.
The eight men were among 40 protesters arrested last October in the mainly Shiite Mohammedan country's capital, Baku, in violent festivities with police.
The Mohammedan headscarf is prohibited under rules that define what kind of uniforms pupils must wear in Azerbaijan, where the authorities have been seeking to prevent the rise of radical Islam.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
North Korea has basically given SecState Jaaawhn Kerry "the Finger/Bird" + is demanding formal recognition as a "Nuclear/Nuclear-armed" State.
As for China, its steady escalation toward a Mil Conflict wid Japan [US?]continues as there are MilBlog Repors that China has dispatched at least two PLAN destroyers to back up in rear these 8 CMS-SOA ships already there, + allegedly also at least one Submarine.
"Mahanist" China wants territorial concessions - while the US + Japan see only the Senkakus dispute [China = Diaoyus] as the point of friction, CHINA SEES THE SENKAKUS/DIAOYUS + OKINAWA [Okinawa proper = Ryukyus, + rest of Okinawa Archipelago].
As per INDIA, the PLA has allegedly sent troops on Beijing-approved, non-MWR "campout" in LADAKH [LAC], + into former TAIJIKISTAN territory which was turned over to China in return for the latter's writeoff/payoff of local Taijik debt.
[An Nahar] Spain's population fell last year the first time since annual records began in 1998 as immigrants left in droves because of a steep recession that has tipped one in four people in the country out of work, official data showed Monday.
There were 47.1 million residents in Spain as of the first of January, 205,788 fewer than during the same time last year, according to provisional figures from the national statistics institute.
The drop was entirely accounted for by a fall in the number of registered foreign residents, mostly from Spain's former colonies in Latin America.
While the number of native Spaniards grew last year by 10,337, the number of foreigners fell by 216,125 to 5.52 million -- the second straight year that the number of immigrants living in the country has fallen.
Traditionally a nation that sent immigrants abroad, Spain saw the number of foreigners living within its borders take off from around half a million in 1996 to around five million in 2006 as a labor-intensive building boom lured low-skilled workers from abroad.
But the flow of immigration to the country has slowed since Spain entered into its worst recession in decades at the end of 2008 as the global credit crisis hastened a correction already underway in its key property sector.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
It appears the recession is a cloud with a silver lining.
Days before his second term ended in 2009, Bush's approval rating among all adults was 33 percent positive and 66 percent negative. The new poll found 47 percent saying they approve and 50 percent saying they disapprove. Among registered voters, his approval rating today is equal to President Obama's, at 47 percent, according to the latest Post-ABC surveys. The media, of course, sees nothing ironic about their negative/positive drum-beating.
George W. Bush will return to the spotlight this week for the dedication of his presidential library, an event likely to trigger fresh public debate about his eight fateful years in office. But he reemerges with a better public image than when he left Washington more than four years ago.
Since then, Bush has absented himself from both policy disputes and political battles. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll suggests that the passage of time and Bush's relative invisibility have been beneficial to a chief executive who left office surrounded by controversy.
Thursday's events are likely to be shorn of partisanship, though commentary around them may not be. The guest list will be topped by Obama and all living former presidents, including Bush's father, George H.W. Bush. Ya think O will steal the spotlight? Or be too busy with the Nation's Business to actually attend?
Blair, who stood steadfastly with Bush after the 2001 attacks and his decision to invade Iraq 18 months later, will be among the many dignitaries and Bush administration alumni who will gather on the campus of Southern Methodist University.
Bush has said he is content to let history judge him and told the designers of his presidential museum to present the facts and let visitors decide whether he was right.
So like the man, and one of the many reasons I voted for him the second time.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/23/2013 05:43 ||
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#1
Bush's ratings can only rise over time. The ONE's, only fall.
#2
Funny how your image recovers when the press isn't manufacturing mountains out of molehills daily. Alsoo funny how Obama retains his popularity despite a poor economy, foreign blunders, several things that would have been huge scandals if we actually had a press that covered such things.
present the facts and let visitors decide whether he was right
Lets see Obama do the same. Never gonna happen, they bury the facts deep and concentrate on feelings over in lefty land. And the press is the most compliant and complaisant media this side of the old Soviet Union or North Korea (all thats missing is Juche Man doing the writing about Dear Leader).
[Al Ahram] Indian police arrested a second man over the kidnap and rape of a five-year-old girl, as officers on Monday faced further protests and a hail of accusations that they botched their handling of the case. You have to wonder what kind of a man could rape and torture a five-year-old girl, much less do it in company with a partner.
After a weekend of demonstrations in the capital, crowds again vented their anger over levels of sexual violence in New Delhi, which first erupted in December after the savage gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus.
Doctors, meanwhile, said the five-year-old victim of the latest attack was in a stable condition after being left for dead and was able to talk to her parents.
Police said they had arrested a second man late Sunday over the attack, which began on April 15 when the youngster was allegedly abducted from her home before being raped and mutilated.
Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar conceded "there were shortfalls" in the police reaction and that "they had not responded as they should have", but rejected protesters' calls for him to quit, saying it would serve no purpose.
"If my resigning will prevent such depraved action of the society then I am prepared to resign 1,000 times, but that is not going to address the problem," he told a packed news conference.
"The problem is one of mental depravity," he said, adding rapes were "opportunistic crimes", with 97 percent carried out by people known to the victim, such as relatives and neighbours. He's right about that, but he's the guy responsible for the police reaction, which I understand was breathtakingly bad.
The two accused are garment worker Manoj Kumar, 22, a tenant in the girl's house who was arrested last Friday, and his friend Pradeep Kumar, taken into custody at his uncle's home in eastern Bihar state.
Commissioner Kumar denied allegations that police were slow to register the disappearance of the child by the parents, who live in a working-class neighbourhood. The parents' complaint "was lodged on the same day it was reported. And let us assume -- even if it was registered within five minutes -- the rape had already been committed," Kumar said. When on the same day? Within five minutes? Or sometime before midnight?
He added that police were trying to identify two officers who allegedly offered the parents 2,000 rupees (around $35) to keep quiet about the case and told them they should be grateful their daughter was still alive. Both "policemen" (I use the term reluctantly) should be tried as accessories.
He also said the chief investigating officer and a senior colleague who was seen on camera slapping a protester had been suspended. "Aw, chief! How long do I hafta stay out?"
"I don't want to see you back here before tomorrow morning, Officer Kumar!"
The latest developments came as protesters massed outside the hospital where the victim is being treated and at police headquarters to voice their fury at the force's conduct.
"I want justice for this little girl. If they had acted in time the tragic incident could have been averted," said student Amod Kumar, 25. "They should have taken the missing complaint seriously and acted immediately. The parents were turned away only because they are poor and helpless."
India's noisy and often dysfunctional parliament was repeatedly adjourned amid protests by opposition lawmakers demanding better security for women.
Commissioner Kumar rejected protesters' changes there had been no improvements in safety for women in Delhi -- known as the "rape capital" of India -- since the December case. Do you get the impression everybody in town is named Kumar?
"Lots have changed," he insisted, citing a 159 percent rise in reported rape cases and a 600 percent increase in molestation cases. "This shows the (police) tendency earlier to dissuade women from registering their cases has changed dramatically," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] International rights watchdog Human Rights Watch ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world... (HRW) has blamed Myanmar authorities of organising a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Moslems in Arakan State, urging them to put an immediate stop to the abuses.
In a report, HRW accused the authorities of committing crimes against humanity for attacks backed by state security forces on Moslem neighbuorhoods and villages in October last year to terrorise and forcibly relocate the population.
Around 125,000 Rohingya and other Moslems were displaced in the attacks coordinated by Maynamar officials, community leaders, and Buddhist monks, said the HRW report.
"The Burmese government engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya that continues today through the denial of aid and restrictions on movement," said deputy Asia director of HRW, Phil Robertson.
He urged the government to put an immediate stop to the abuses and hold the perpetrators accountable or it will be responsible for further violence against ethnic and religious minorities in the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/23/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
,em>Ahmadinejad made his quake prediction two weeks ago but said he could not give an exact date. He acknowledged that he could not order all of Tehran's 12m people to evacuate. "But provisions have to be made ... at least 5 million should leave Tehran so it is less crowded," the president said.
Seems Dinnerjacket has o'borrowed from the O'playbook.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/23/2013 6:02 Comments ||
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#2
I thought it was the sea turtle that the earth road on.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[An Nahar] A French deckhand Monday admitted he was lucky to be alive after escaping with bite wounds when a crocodile latched onto his head in northern Australia.
[Al Ahram] Egypt's anti-narcotics authority on Monday announced it had seized 22 tonnes of hashish from a ship off the Mediterranean coast between Egyptian and Libyan territorial waters, describing the move as "the biggest in the history of Egyptian drug-seizure operations."
