Believe it or not but this long thing isn’t adult yet… it gets twice the size. Spieces: Phobaeticus serratipes Instar: 5th Gender: female Length: 30 cm
This species may reach about 50 cm long, including the legs. The longest insect, also a Phobaeticus species, is 55 cm. The animals here, juveniles still, are already over 30 cm. Newly born animals, called nymphs, are already about 8 cm.
Some of the strangest (and large!) insects in the world: here.
Thousands of Hondurans took to the streets this day (8-10-09) demanding the return of their elected government and President, Zelaya. Filmed by Shaun Joseph.
LITTLE COMPETITION: A soldier reads El Heraldo while on guard near the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. The pro-coup newspaper bragged on Monday that government edicts were only being aimed at dissenting media such as Channel 36 and Radio Globo
Mr Zelaya, who has now been holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa for over a week, called on his supporters not to be provoked into violence.
But he insisted that the coup chiefs, who have snubbed repeated calls from the international community to form a national unity government under the constitutional premier, must ultimately be forced from office.
Talks between Mr Zelaya and interim officials aimed at resolving the political standoff triggered by the coup have gone nowhere.
And prospects for a compromise deal appeared to recede further after the government expelled at least four members of a team from the Organisation of American States who had arrived on Sunday to re-open negotiations.
OAS special adviser John Biehl told reporters that he and four other members of the advance team – including two US citizens, a Canadian and a Colombian – were stopped by pro-coup forces after landing at Tegucigalpa’s airport on Sunday.
Mr Biehl, who is Chilean, said that he had later been told he could stay, but the others had been put aboard flights out of the country.
“We were detained in the airport before a high-ranking official told us we were expelled,” he said.
Officials loyal to the de facto administration also issued an ultimatum to Brazil on Sunday, giving it 10 days to decide whether to turn Mr Zelaya over for arrest or grant him asylum and, presumably, take him out of Honduras.
They did not specify what they would do after the 10 days were up.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva responded by saying that his democratically elected government “doesn’t accept ultimatums from coup plotters.”
The German federal election held Sunday produced a historic defeat for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and a sharp drop in support for all of the parties involved in Germany’s outgoing coalition government.
The SPD polled just 23.0 percent, down more than 11 percent from the last federal election in 2005, when the party polled 34.2 percent. The result is the worst ever for the SPD since World War II. Its decline of over 11 percent is the biggest loss ever recorded by a German party in a federal election since 1949.
The SPD’s main partners in Germany’s grand coalition government, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Bavarian-based Christian Social Union (CSU), were also punished by voters. The so-called “union” parties emerged with the largest share of the vote—a combined total of 33.8 percent—but recorded their second worst result in postwar history.
The tally for the union parties was 1.4 percentage points less than their result of 35.2 percent in 2005, and far removed from the 40 percent-plus vote recorded in the majority of elections held in the postwar period. Many CDU-CSU voters evidently switched to the pro-”free market” Free Democratic Party (FDP), which polled 14.8 percent, a gain of 5 percentage points compared to 2005.
The Christian Social Union (CSU) also registered its worst ever result in a federal election since World War II. The party which has long dominated politics in Germany’s biggest state gained just 41.0 percent in Bavaria—less than the disastrous 43.4 percent recorded by the party in the last Bavarian state election.
Even under conditions where voters turned away in droves from the conservative CSU, the SPD was unable to benefit. Instead, the SPD also recorded its worst ever result in Bavaria, receiving just 16.5 percent of the vote.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of the CDU announced Sunday evening that she would form a coalition government with the pro-business Free Democrats. It is estimated that this coalition will control some 323 seats in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, giving it a majority of approximately 15 seats.
Under conditions where the electorate turned away from all of the parties involved in the CDU-CSU-SPD grand coalition, opposition parties were able to increase their share of the vote.
The Green Party won 10.6 percent, up 2.5 percentage points from 2005, while the Left Party won 12.5 percent, 3.8 percentage points higher than its result in 2005.
A comment on the SPD defeat, by Fredrik Jansson from Sweden:
European Social Democracy needs to get over the cul-de-sac that the third way and the new middle were. We must understand that we can’t win elections through triangulation and great coalitions. SPD lost this election when they discarded the red-green majority that the German people elected in the last election.
Germany: Big gains for Die Linke as Social Democrats’ support collapses: here.
A top German court ruled on Wednesday that spooks have the right to “monitor” members of the increasingly popular Left Party, Die Linke, which won representation in the Bundestag in 2005: here.
Elections in Germany, Japan, Greece, Portugal: here.
PARIS: An ancient site of worship for the dugong, or sea cow, has been discovered in the Persian Gulf and predates other known dugong worship sites by more than 5,000 years.
The sanctuary, believed to date back between 3500 and 3200 BC, was discovered on Akab Island in the United Arab Emirates, 50 km north of Dubai.
A French archaeological mission in the Emirates and the Umm al-Quwain museum in the UAE said in the archaeology magazine Antiquity that the sanctuary on the deserted island provided key details “on the rituals of prehistoric coastal societies in the Gulf.”
Insights into prehistoric coastal societies
Akab was a tuna fisherman’s village more than 6,500 years ago with circular buildings and a pile of dugong bones detected in the 1990s.
The species of marine mammal (Dugong dugon) still exists in the Gulf, with adults growing up to four metres long and weighing up to 400 kg.
The sanctuary was first thought to be an abattoir, but on detailed analysis was found to be a carefully constructed platform on two levels containing the remains of around 40 dugongs as well as tools, stones and ornaments.
The archaeologists said the Akab monument was used for rituals celebrating the giant mammal and “has no parallel in Neolithic times in other parts of the world.”
Similar structures have been found off the Australian coast but are only a few hundred years old.
Dugon[g]s have been hunted for thousands of years because of their valued meat and blubber. Today, the IUCN lists the dugong as a species vulnerable to extinction.
November 10, 2009—Along the coast of Abu Dhabi, development is spilling into the sea, smothering the sea grass beds that nourish rare marine mammals called dugongs: here.
4 dugong killed by illegal fishermen in Queensland: here.
Blue-green algae is threatening to smother the Western Australian seagrass beds that dugongs feed off: here.
