First jaguar photo taken at Smithsonian Research Station in Panama
May 4th, 2009
Barro Colorado Island in Panama, home of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s premier tropical biology field station, has been described as the best-studied piece of tropical real estate in the western hemisphere. Although the island has been a mecca for biologists for nearly 90 years, no one has ever photographed an elusive island visitor, the jaguar—until now.
Montclair State University zoologist Jackie Willis and her husband Greg mount cameras with infrared sensors on trees to photograph passing animals as part of their annual mammal census of the island, which they have been conducting since 1982. What the cameras captured April 20 was not only a surprise, but a first—an adult jaguar tripped the camera’s sensor at 3:07 a.m., thus creating a self-portrait photograph.
“Our photo of a jaguar on Barro Colorado is a sign of hope,” said Jackie Willis. “It proves jaguars are still in this area.” Greg Willis spotted a jaguar on the island in 1983, but there have been very few sightings on Barro Colorado since.
Living With Jaguars: Getting Up Close With Animals at Bolivia’s Ambue Ari Reserve: here.
Military chaplains stationed in the U.S. air base at Bagram were also filmed with Bibles printed in the country’s main Pashto and Dari languages.
In one recorded sermon, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, the chief of the U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling Soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him”.
“The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down,” he says.
“Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.”
According to Christian theology, Jesus is not in this world, but in the hereafter. So, in Christian fundamentalist logic, presumably, by killing Afghan civilians, US American soldiers are supposedly doing them a favour by bringing them to Jesus … Very recently, Silvio Berlusconi‘s Italian NATO soldiers killed a twelve year-old Afghan girl, on her way to a wedding party. As that probably was not a Christian wedding party, we are supposed by the fundamentalists to believe that her uniformed murderers actually did the girl a favour.
Super Size Me is an Academy Award-nominated 2004 documentary film, directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. It follows a 30-day time period (February 2003) during which Spurlock subsists exclusively on McDonald’s fast food and stops exercising regularly.
The film documents this lifestyle’s drastic effects on Spurlock’s physical and psychological well-being and explores the fast food industry’s corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit. During the filming, Spurlock dined at McDonald’s restaurants three times per day, sampling every item on the chain’s menu at least once. He consumed an average of 5,000 calories (the equivalent of 9.26 Big Macs) per day during the experiment.
In February 2005, Super Size Me Educationally Enhanced DVD edition was released. It is an edited version of the film designed to be integrated into a high school health curriculum. MSNBC has also broadcast an hour long version of the film, in addition to the regular version.
Baby foods ‘contain more saturated fat than a McDonald’s burger’
Monday 04 May 2009
SOME baby foods contain higher levels of saturated fat and sugar than equivalent portions of chocolate biscuits or a cheeseburger, the Children’s Food Campaign (CFC) said on Monday.
The campaign described as “staggering” the results of a survey of more than 100 products aimed at babies and toddlers.
It found that 100g of Farley’s Original Rusks contains more sugar (29g) than the same weight of McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives (27.3g).
And Heinz Toddler’s Own Mini Cheese Biscuits contains 7.3g of saturated fat per 100g, more than the 6.7g found in a piece of McDonald’s quarter-pounder burger with cheese of the same weight.
The CFC, which is an arm of the food and farming group Sustain, also found that Cow & Gate’s Baby Balance Bear Biscuits were improperly labelled and did not make it clear to parents that they contained trans fats, which have been linked to heart disease.
CFC joint co-ordinator Christine Haigh said: “The results of this survey are staggering.
Britain: LOW-PAID workers in the food industry are getting squeezed by bosses who are cutting pay in an attempt to claw back holiday costs, a new report revealed on Tuesday: here.
USA: A Tuesday morning explosion at the ConAgra Foods plant in Garner, North Carolina has left three workers dead and at least 41 injured, including three firefighters: here.
Extinct in UK rivers, the burbot fish now swims at ZSL London Zoo
A fish which disappeared from UK waters over 30 years ago has been cast a lifeline by ZSL.
Four burbot fish are now being displayed in one of the Aquarium’s freshwater tanks, giving members of the public their first ever glance at the mysterious species which originate from the streams and lakes of North America and Europe.
The fish, which hasn’t been seen or caught in UK waters since the 1970s, is the only freshwater member of the cod family and joins over 200 different species in our own collection.
Near Maastricht, the mallow skipper butterfly has been observed, a species which had been seen in the Netherlands for the last time in 1953. This species is helped by warming …
