Giant fossil rabbit discovery in Spain

From LiveScience:

King of Rabbits: Ancient, Gigantic Bunny Discovered

Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor

Date: 21 March 2011 Time: 03:02 PM ET

Just in time for Easter, the skeleton of a giant rabbit has been discovered, one that was once about six times the size of today’s bunnies.

The fossils of the giant were discovered on the island of Minorca off the coast of Spain, a fact reflected in the rabbit‘s scientific name, Nuralagus rex, “the Minorcan king of the rabbits.” [Illustration of giant rabbit]

“I needed four years to recover a good sample of N. rex bones because they were in very hard red stone,” paleontologist Josep Quintana at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona, Spain, told LiveScience. “To pull the bones out from the matrix, it was necessary to use some hundreds of liters of acetic acid, a very concentrated vinegar — very hard and patient work! But it was worthwhile, of course.”

When the bunny lived approximately 3 million to 5 million years ago, it weighed about 26 pounds (12 kilograms), about six times the size of the living European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus). [Fossils of Oldest Rabbit Relative Found]

The fact that it got so big on Minorca seems to follow the so-called “island rule.” On islands, big animals often get smaller, due to limited food, while small animals often get bigger, due to lack of predators.

“For most of their over 40-million-year history, members of the rabbit family have fit well within the size range exhibited by relatively well-known modern members of the family. Now, discoveries on Minorca have added a giant to the mix, a 25-pound, short-legged rabbit,” said rabbit researcher Mary Dawson at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, who did not take part in this study.

As big as it was, N. rex might have been easy prey today — it lost the ability to hop. The long, springy spine of a typical modern rabbit was lost in N. rex, replaced by a short, stiff spine that would make leaping difficult.

“I think that N. rex would be a rather clumsy rabbit walking — imagine a beaver out of water,” Quintana said.

The giant probably also had poor hearing and vision, with relatively small eye sockets and internal ear parts. Its senses likely deteriorated for the same reason it got so large — it did not have predators to worry about. As such, it probably lacked another key trait often associated with rabbits — long ears. The bunny likely sported relatively small ears for its size.

Based on the rabbit’s curved claws, the researchers suspect the animal was most probably a digger that lived on roots and tubers it unearthed. Its neighbors included bats, large dormice and giant tortoises.

Quintana proposes that this newfound giant might make a good mascot for the island. “I would like to use N. rex to lure students and visitors to Minorca,” he said.

The scientists detailed their findings online today (March 21) in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

See also here.

It’s actually the European hare, or brown hare, that holds the impressive credential of being the original Easter Bunny: here.

April 2011: Populations of brown hares are holding up in the Braydon Forest area of North Wiltshire, a survey of landowners by the Wiltshire wildlife trust reveals. Sixty seven per cent of those taking part in the survey reported seeing hares on their land: here.

One of South Africa’s most endangered mammals, the Riverine Rabbit will again receive a helping hand from Lindt Master Chocolatiers when it donates a percentage of sales from their Lindt Gold Easter Bunnies to the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) Riverine Rabbit Programme 2012: here.

From miniature elephants to monster mice, and even Hobbit-sized humans, size changes in island animals are well-known to science. Biologists have long believed that large animals evolving on islands tend to get smaller, while small animals tend to get bigger, a generalization they call “the island rule”: here.

Afghan civilians murdered by US troops’ photos

From Associated Press:

German news group runs photos of Afghan killings

March 21st, 2011 @ 7:21am

By GENE JOHNSON

SEATTLE – Graphic photos showing U.S. troops and dead Afghans that the Army was keeping under wraps for a war crimes probe were carried by a German news organization Monday, with one showing a soldier smiling as he posed with a bloodied and partially clothed corpse.

The photos published by Der Spiegel were among several seized by Army investigators looking into the deaths of three unarmed Afghans last year. Five soldiers based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle, have been charged with murder and conspiracy in the case.

Der Spiegel did not return calls seeking comment Monday, and it wasn’t known how the organization obtained copies.

Editions with the photos were on newsstands Monday, a day after Der Spiegel published them digitally.

Officials involved in the courts-martial had issued a strict protective order, seeking to severely limit access to the photographs due to their sensitive nature. Some defense teams had been granted copies but were not allowed to disseminate them.

“Today Der Spiegel published photographs depicting actions repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army,” the Army said in a statement released by Col. Thomas Collins. “We apologize for the distress these photos cause.”

One of the published photographs shows a key figure in the investigation, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock of Wasilla, Alaska, grinning as he lifts the head of a corpse by the hair. Der Spiegel identified the body as that of Gul Mudin, whom Morlock was charged with killing on Jan. 15, 2010, in Kandahar Province.

Another photo shows Pvt. 1st Class Andrew Holmes, of Boise, Idaho, holding the head of the same corpse. His lawyer, Daniel Conway, said Sunday that Holmes was ordered “to be in the photo, so he got in the photo. That doesn’t make him a murderer.”

The photo was taken while the platoon leader, Lt. Roman Ligsay, was present, Conway said. Ligsay has asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to testify in the legal proceedings against his troops.

Conway sought copies of the photographs so that he could present them to a ballistics expert, who he argued might be able to tell whether the victim had been struck by the weapon Holmes was carrying. His request was rejected.

“I’m very disappointed that in an American judicial proceeding, I have to get potentially exculpatory evidence from a German newspaper,” Conway said.

A third photo depicts two apparently dead men propped against a small pillar. Der Spiegel said the photo was seized from a member of the platoon, but did not involve the deaths being investigated as war crimes. Soldiers have told investigators that such photos of dead bodies were passed around like trading cards on thumb drives and other digital storage devices.

The killings at issue occurred during patrols in January, February and May 2010. After the first death, one member of the platoon, Spc. Adam Winfield, sent Facebook messages to his parents, telling them his colleagues had slaughtered one civilian, were planning to kill more and warned him to keep quiet about it.

His father notified a staff sergeant at Lewis-McChord, but no action was taken until May, when a witness in a drug investigation in the unit separately reported the deaths. Winfield is accused of participating in the final killing.

Morlock has given extensive statements claiming the murder plot was led by Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs of Billings, Mont.; Gibbs maintains the killings were legitimate.

Morlock told investigators he threw a grenade and Holmes shot Mudin without cause; Holmes says that he fired when Morlock told him to, believing that Morlock had perceived a legitimate threat.

Morlock’s court martial was scheduled for Wednesday. He has agreed to plead guilty to murder, conspiracy and other charges and to testify against his co-defendants in exchange for a maximum sentence of 24 years in prison.

Meanwhile, military judge Lt. Col. Kwasi Hawks ruled late last week that Winfield can present evidence at his court martial that he tried to blow the whistle on the violence.

Prosecutors had tried to bar evidence that he sent the messages to his family.

Winfield has given a videotaped statement saying he took part in the final killing because he was afraid other soldiers might kill him if he didn’t.

However, the judge sided with prosecutors on whether to suppress Winfield’s videotaped statement as coerced.

In addition to the five soldiers charged in the deaths, seven soldiers in the platoon were charged with lesser crimes, including assaulting the witness in the drug investigation, drug use, firing on unarmed farmers and stabbing a corpse.

___

Associated Press writers Richard Lardner in Washington, D.C., and Kirsten Grieshaber and Tomislav Skaro in Berlin contributed to this report.

The ‘Kill Team’ Images. US Army Apologizes for Horrific Photos from Afghanistan: here.

More Damaging Than Abu Ghraib? Repugnant Army ‘Kill Team’ Took Photos, Trophies from Murdered Afghan Civilians: here.

See also here.

Afghan rights group demand US investigate ‘kill teams’ crimes: here.

Seymour Hersh on the “Kill Team” photographs: “In a sense, we’ve seen that smile before”: here.

Afghan activist Malalai Joya barred from entering the US: here.

Let Malalai Joya speak! What you can do to help: here. And here. And here.

Vote count grows for quick withdrawal from Afghanistan: here.

Afghanistan And Libya Have Something In Common– More Death, Destruction And Wasted Tax Dollars: here.

Short-tailed nurse shark babies in Amsterdam

This video is called How to Identify Caribbean Fish: How to Identify a Nurse Shark.

Another video about sharks is here.

News from Artis Aquarium of the Amsterdam zoo:

Baby short-tailed nurse sharks

A global first in the Artis Aquarium

Since Wednesday morning 23 January, two young small short-tailed nurse sharks are swimming around in the Artis Aquarium. As the first aquarium anywhere in the world, Artis has succeeded in breeding this shark species, which is rare in aquariums. During the breeding, it was discovered that this shark lays eggs; though it had been thought that short-tailed nurse sharks were ovoviviparous.

Sharks in the Pacific: here.

Shark species face extinction amid overfishing and appetite for fins: here. And here.

Sharks’ ‘DNA postcodes’ will help the fight against shark finning: here.

Sharks are dying by the dozen due to internal bleeding, via Discovery News: here.

Analysis of fins from the shark fin trade finds that 45% contain mercury, lead, or arsenic exceeding max safe levels: here.

Turning the tables: Attack Survivors Help Sharks: here.

Marine researchers are reporting the discovery of a previously unknown breeding ground for great white sharks in the Gulf of California: here.

7 Key Shark Habitats That Need Conservation Now: here.

Shark attacks are rare – and related deaths even rarer: here.

Tiny aquarium holds just 10ml of water: here.

Haiti from Toussaint l’Ouverture to today

This video is called Toussaint Louverture – Haiti (Death Certificate & Signature).

From British daily The Morning Star:

A revolution ignored

(Sunday 10 February 2008)

Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment by Peter Hallward
(Verso, £16.99)

MICHAL BONCZA reads Peter Hallward’s edge-of-the-seat expose of the shocking history of colonialism, tyranny and rebellion in Haiti.

These days, the mere mention of Haiti brings on an overwhelming sense of dread and foreboding.

It is the most salient and vicious example of meddling US imperialism with its textbook two-faced approach to sovereignty, human rights and democracy driven by xenophobia and deep-seated intolerance.

A friend who spent a long time there working with an international organisation trying to secure an implementation and strict observance of democratic procedures and principles complained frequently about the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest democracy” systematically obstructing any such initiatives on behalf of the local people.

Haiti has literally nothing of value left that might tempt an imperial power except for its people’s indomitable spirit of resistance and rebellion passed down through the generations from L’Ouverture and Dessalines.

The slave rebellion of 1791, with its living heritage, remains the singular most astonishing political accomplishment of the western hemisphere.

Here is a clue. Talleyrand, the most effective European diplomat ever and, during the French Revolution, co-author of The Rights of Man, wrote thus to the US Secretary of State James Madison: “The existence of Negro people in arms, occupying a country it has soiled by the most criminal acts, is a horrible spectacle for all white nations.”

Say no more. What followed was an embargo which, in its severity, was not dissimilar from the one visited on another “insolent” island, Cuba, close to 200 years later.

The sophisticated new social and political ideas of European Enlightenment and, paradoxically, the ideals of the French Revolution were put into rigorous practice by black revolutionaries such as the proto-socialist Dessalines.

“We have all (negroes and mulattoes) fought against the whites. The properties we have conquered by the spilling of our blood belong to us all. I intend that they be divided with equity.”

But they weren’t. The nouveau riche, arriviste elite of opportunists had other plans. In October 1806, Dessalines was assassinated.

As Hallward points out, “The colonial race war with France was over, Haiti‘s postcolonial class war began.”

And so it continued for the next 200 years. The mulatto oligarchy has clung to power by a succession of murderous regimes of which the names of “Papa and Baby Doc” Duvalier became synonymous with crimes against humanity.

The cycle is temporarily broken when the ideals of the slave rebellion are given new impetus by the catalytic adoption in the 1980s of the theology of liberation. Enter the revolutionary and charismatic priest Father Bertrand Aristide.

From March 2011: Exclusive Interview with Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide From His Flight Home to Haiti: here.

Video: Watch our report on Aristide’s return to Haiti: here.

For more on Haiti‘s controversial election, read Dan Coughlin’s article “Haiti Abstains” in The Nation.

WikiLeaks: US knowingly supported rigged Haitian election: here.

The Haitian elections were marked by wholesale fraud, disenfranchisement and gross intervention by Washington and the so-called “world community,” both bent on installing a pliant regime to help suppress the population: here.

Amy Goodman’s weekly column, “Aristide’s Return to Haiti: A Long Night’s Journey Into Day.” READ/PODCAST: here. See also here.

Haiti’s outgoing president criticised the UN security council on Wednesday for being too slow to switch its peacekeeping mission in the Western hemisphere’s poorest country from military operations to development: here.

Haitians Face Imminent Eviction From Makeshift Tent Camps By Landowners in Haiti. @sharifkouddous reports: here.

Haiti: US opposed minimum wage rise, cables show: here.

Haiti finds itself with a president-elect with ties to the extreme right — thanks to a concerted effort by foreign powers to continue thwarting the social justice aspirations of the Haitian people: here.

Haiti – USA : Deported Haitians are illegally detained in Haiti: here.

Haiti’s Displaced: Caught Between Greedy Landlords and an Absentee Government. Vince Warren and Laura Raymond, Truthout: “Recently, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) delegation in Haiti visited the Barbancourt II displacement camp in Port-au-Prince. This camp is home to 310 families who lost their homes in the earthquake and have set up tents, tarps and corrugated metal structures with the few possessions they have left on the corner of an industrial company’s property. We talked with camp leaders and other residents who told us that the owner has notified them that they will be evicted in a week. This is the latest in what has been a series of threats; last November, the owner showed up with 24 police with guns drawn”: here.

Deportations to Haiti: Still a Death Sentence. Vince Warren, Carrie Bettinger-Lopez and Sunita Patel, Truthout: “The massive earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, left nearly 300,000 Haitians dead and over 1.2 million more displaced and homeless. Overnight, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere was catapulted into a crisis of unthinkable proportions. Basic sanitation, adequate food, potable water and shelter were absent…. The situation is particularly bad in Haitian detention centers – where deportees are locked up and where cholera has already claimed approximately 60 lives”: here.

Anti-Rape Legal Experts Mobilize for Change in Haiti: here.

Yemeni women fight dictatorship

From the New York Times in the USA today:

3 Senior Yemeni Officers Back Antigovernment Protesters

By LAURA KASINOF

Published: March 21, 2011

SANA, Yemen — In an apparent erosion of military support for Yemen‘s embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, three army commanders gave their backing to protesters on Monday. The move came a day after the president fired his cabinet following the deaths of at least 45 people killed by government-linked forces.

Translated from a report by Ellen van Dalen in Dutch daily De Pers:

In Yemen, women now demonstrate as well

Published: yesterday 9:12 p.m.
Update: yesterday 9:33 p.m.

As in Egypt, the popular uprising in Yemen is not an exclusive male domain. Again, women are participating.

“I have a dream” is on the laptop of Tawakkol A. Karman. Karman (32) is a human rights activist and member of the conservative opposition party Islag. After the start of the revolution in Yemen, she has turned increasingly into one of the leaders of the protests against the regime in Yemen. “My dream is that our President Ali Abdullah Saleh quits. He is a criminal, a butcher.”

Every day there are more women demonstrating. Last Friday there were not less than ten thousand in the capital Sanaa. They scream even more loudly than the men that Saleh has got to leave. The bravest women even have a tent on the demonstration grounds. Tawakkol also lives there. Her tent has now become the place where students, tribal leaders and oppositionists meet every day. She placed her children with her ​​mother because she thinks the situation is too dangerous for them.

And not entirely unjustifiedly so. This Friday, the government turned the demonstration shortly before the noon prayer into a massacre. The women were unharmed, but helped as doctors and nurses in the emergency room. To demonstrate as a woman takes courage in this conservative Islamic country. Nadia (19), disguised by her niqab – her veil which covers all- says: “My parents know nothing. When they hear that I’m here, I guess I will have to stay at home forever. “

One of the first women in the square was Farida (49), she also lives in her tent in between the other demonstrators. “I’ll only leave here when Saleh is also gone, ” she says determinedly.

America’s Saudi air war. A plan to train Saudi air force pilots in Idaho is turning former allies into bitter enemies: here.

EGYPT: Revolutionary Youth Gives Clinton The Cold Shoulder: here.

Egyptian feminist urges us to keep fighting: here.

Egyptian Women Protesters Forced to Take ‘Virginity Tests,’ Says Amnesty International: here.

Former Mubarak minister charged over deaths: Habib al-Adly, former Egyptian interior minister, accused: here.

Birds and flowers of spring

This morning, quite some tufted ducks in ditches near the train. Also, courting great crested grebes.

this is a tufted duck video.

Spring flowers near the canal near the railway station: coltsfoot and lesser celandine.

Little Libyan girl killed

Translated from war reporter Arnold Karskens’ report in Dutch daily De Pers today:

They don’t believe it in Tripoli

Published: Today 6:12
Update: Today 6:40

Grief and cheers alternate in the Libyan capital. Operation Odyssey Dawn seems far from over.

Three-months-old Seham was laying in her crib when a missile hit. “A loud bang and the wall fell over her, ” says a heartbroken father Farag at the cemetery of the martyrs Shat Alhanshir near the beach in Tripoli. She was his third child. Two sons survived the crash in the district Tajoura, near an army base.

The little corpse itself is not visible, but around the fresh graves thousands are chanting that Gaddafi should hit back U.S. President Barack Obama. After the prayer, three civilians and 23 soldiers are buried. Gunshots are heard. Disapprovingly, clerical worker Salah el Hamroni (43) shakes his head about the violence that affects his country: “You cannot create democracy in this way.”

Israeli blogger Reuven Kaminer on the Libyan war: here.

British blog Lenin’s Tomb on the Libyan war: here.

Michael Lind: “There is no doubt that U.S. participation in the attack on Libya is completely unconstitutional”: here.

VoteVets.org, the largest progressive veterans group in America, is releasing a statement that lays out why the group cannot support military operations in Libya launched by the Obama administration over the weekend. The group’s chair said that there were far too many unanswered questions, and raised concern that operations took place without Congressional approval: here.

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich suggests President Obama should be impeached over Libya attack – TPM: here.

US’s most outspoken congressman on issues of war & peace calls for congressional action to defund undeclared Libya war: here.

Robert Naiman, Truthout: “The US is now at war in a third Muslim country, according to the ‘official tally’ (that is, counting Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, but not Pakistan or Yemen, for example.) But Congress has never authorized or debated the US military intervention in Libya. (A sharply disputed claim holds that the Pakistan and Yemen actions are covered by the 2001 authorization of military force, but no one has dared to argue that the 2001 authorization to use military force covers Libya.) Some will no doubt claim that the president is acting in Libya within his authority as commander in chief. But this is an extremely dangerous claim”: here.

The bombs of the U.S. and its allies are never used to save lives or bring justice: here.

The African Union (AU) has urged the United States, France and Britain to “immediately stop” military aggression against Libya: here.

Britain: Stop The War convener Lindsey German declared today that the phalanx of Labour MPs who voted in favour of the Libyan war should be “absolutely ashamed” of themselves; here.

The government refused to rule out deploying British troops to Libya today, claiming a distinction between occupation and intervention: here.

Britain: Libya conflict: MPs voice unease over military action: here.

Media and the Libyan war: here.

Civilians will bear the brunt of the the US-EU war on Libya, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper warned today: here.

Why we shouldn’t invade Libya: here.

Why is US backing force in Libya but not Bahrain and Yemen? Here.

Donald Trump took Qaddafi’s money: here.

Gaddafi regime fed names of jihadists to the CIA and to Britain; Australian: here.

Libya War: U.S. F-15 Military Plane Crashes, Two Crew Members Ejected: here.

Bahrain pro-democracy movement continues

This video is called Teachers strike in Bahrain‘s revolution.

A strike wave is growing and demonstrations continue in Bahrain, despite brutal attempts by the regime to put down the uprising: here. And here.

Bahrain: Police beats a man with sticks at a checkpoint: here.

Many Bahrain Protesters Angry With United States: here.

ICRC: Bahrain: medical personnel must have unimpeded access to the injured: here.

BLOOMBERG : Bahrain Shia Village Treats Injured Protesters in Homes Amid Arrest Fears: here.

Japan’s nuclear disaster and corporate profits

By Mike Head:

Japanese government delayed nuclear emergency measures to protect TEPCO profits

21 March 2011

It is now clear that Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which owns the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant, delayed essential measures to tackle the emergency at the facility in order to protect TEPCO’s investments. There is also mounting evidence that joint government-TEPCO cover-ups have continued throughout the unfolding crisis.

More than a week after the earthquake and tsunami that hit the country, the situation at the facility remains on a knife edge despite days of desperate fire-hosing, water-bombing and other activities that have exposed the plant workers and fire fighters to extreme radioactivity levels.

Nuclear experts warned that the restoration of power to some Fukushima units on Sunday and the reported placing of two other reactors into “cold shutdown” did not necessarily end the dangers. “Overall, the situation remains very serious,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said at a media conference yesterday.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the weekend that TEPCO had considered using sea water to cool one of the plant’s six reactors as early as the morning of March 12, the day after the quake struck, but delayed until that evening and did not use seawater at other reactors for another day. The company’s concern was to protect its long-term investment in the Fukushima complex, because seawater can corrode a nuclear reactor, rendering it permanently inoperable.

TEPCO “hesitated because it tried to protect its assets,” Akira Omoto, a former TEPCO executive and member of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, told the financial newspaper. A government official stated: “This disaster is 60 percent man-made. They failed in their initial response. It’s like TEPCO dropped and lost a 100 yen coin while trying to pick up a 10 yen coin.”

A new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists documents in chilling detail 14 instances of “near-misses” at US nuclear power plants in 2010. Published in the midst of the Japanese nuclear emergency following the earthquake and tsunami, the report exposes the danger posed to the population and the planet by the for-profit US energy companies overseen in an often slipshod manner by US government regulators: here.

Sushi restaurants drop Japanese fish on radiation fears: here.

Nuclear crisis: How safe is Japan’s food and water? Here.

Officials: Tokyo Water Unsafe for Infants: here.

Anger is mounting among ordinary people in Japan over the Democratic Party government’s inadequate response to the earthquake and tsunami disaster, and particularly its failure to provide basic services to the nearly half a million people rendered homeless: here.

On Monday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) delivered a letter to energy firm Entergy stating that it may keep running its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant through March, 21, 2032. The reactor in the aged plant, which is known to have released radiation into groundwater, is virtually identical to that of the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, whose flaws some scientists claim have contributed to the world’s worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl meltdown: here.