A new species of snake found in northern Vietnam, southern China and central Laos
Nagao Kukri snake
October 2012. A new species of snake, Oligodon nagao or the Nagao Kukri Snake, has been discovered in in South East Asia. With about 75 currently recognized species the genus, Oligodon remains one of the largest genera of Asiatic snakes. It is widespread throughout tropical Asia but is especially speciose in the large area known as the Indochinese Peninsula.
Laos, Vietnam & China
Three specimens recently collected in Lang Son and Cao Bang provinces, extreme northern Vietnam, one specimen found in Khammouane Province, central Laos, and the fifth one from extreme southwest Guangxi Autonomous Region, southern China, proved to be morphologically distinct from all other species known from this region. Especially noteworthy is the fact that all these specimens were collected in karst hills. Oligodon nagao is currently known from a small area straddling over Vietnam and China, and from central Laos.
Karst scenery
This species has been found only in karst environment. The Vietnamese and Chinese specimens were all collected at night in karst forests. The specimen from Cao Bang was found at night near the limestone cliff surrounded by secondary forest made of short hardwood, shrubs and vines. No water was observed in the vicinity. The Laotian specimen was collected in a large cave of a karst massif located in the corridor connecting Phou Hin Boun National Park to Nakai Nam Theu National Park. The Oligodon specimen did not attempt to bite when it was collected but it showed the usual behaviour of many species of the genus Oligodon when they feel threatened, i.e. showing the bright colour of the ventral side of its tail curled in a spiral.
Critically endangered Vietnamese box turtles have been bred successfully for the first time in a British zoo.
A baby Vietnamese box turtle, which is one of the world’s rarest turtles, was born at Bristol Zoo in July and is now roughly the size of a matchbox.
Reptile curator, Tim Skelton, said it was a 40-year “career highlight” as the species was very difficult to breed.
The youngster, called Vernon, is being kept in a climate-controlled room and hand fed chopped worms by keepers.
He currently weighs 28g and measures around 5cm (2in) long.
‘Boggy tank’
“Not a lot is known about this species so we can learn an awful lot from this baby to improve our chances of breeding more in future,” said Mr Skelton.
“These are secretive animals so we are keeping it in a warm, humid and quiet room with a constant temperature, in a boggy tank to replicate its natural habitat where it can burrow among the soil and leaves.”
As well as being a UK first, Bristol Zoo is also only the second in Europe to have bred the species, with success also having been seen at a zoo in Germany.
The zoo is part of a European breeding programme with private turtle experts and now has a total of seven Vietnamese box turtles.
Hunting for their meat, or medicinal use, or as pets, led to the species being listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
An adult box turtle weighs around 1kg (2.2lbs), measures around 20cm (7.9in) long and can live for up to 50 years.
Vietnamese Flowerback Box Turtle
Scientific name: Cuora bourreti
Continent: Asia
Diet: Aquatic plants, molluscs, crustaceans, worms, fungi, fallen fruits
Habitat: Shallow swamps, streams, ponds, flooded rice paddies
Conservation status: Critically endangered
Called a box turtle because the animal can box up completely within its shell
Malcolm Browne: man behind iconic burning monk photograph dies aged 81
Browne was a hero of photojournalism whose best work was beautifully judged and infused with a dignified power
Malcolm Browne’s 1963 photograph of a monk on fire in Saigon retains its power even after half a century. Browne has died aged 81, but his most famous picture will endure as a classic. Violent history has continued to create violent pictures ever since. But the dreadful act of self-immolation seemed a new kind of protest then. …
Yet still, this photograph has tragic power.
This is partly because it is in black and white, a restrained palette that worked well for news in the past because of its dignifying effect. The monochrome flames engulfing the monk are somehow more a matter for the imagination than they would be in gory colour. This slight holding back of horror allows a brief moment of thought and reflection to the observer of what is, by any standards, a shocking scene.
Yet the power of the picture ultimately comes from the stillness and calm of the monk, Thich Quang Duc. His composure as he is engulfed by agonising, petrol-fuelled fire is profoundly unsettling. The contrast between his suffering and his meditative pose is unearthly, and Browne’s photograph serves the self-sacrificing monk perfectly, for the photographer too seems to have worked carefully, rather than simply seizing a shot. The balanced, calm composition of the picture is what allows it to do justice to the scene.
USA: in 1965 a 31 year old Quaker named Norman Morrison set himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war. Morrison doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire below Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s office: here.
How’s this for a head turner? A tiny new species of fish from Vietnam sports its genitalia on its noggin.
Phallostethus cuulong is only the 22nd known species of its family, Phallostethidae, all of which bear their copulatory organs just behind their mouths.
As with all Phallostethus—”penis chest” in Greek—species, the male uses its bony “priapium” to clasp a female while he inserts sperm into her urogenital opening, also located on the head, said Lynne Parenti, curator of fishes at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Parenti remembers seeing another species of priapiumfish mate at a lab in Singapore. Attached at the head and together forming a v, the fish “looked like a little pair of scissors, darting around the tank together,” she said.
For many fish, such as guppies, mating is almost instantaneous, but priapiumfish “actually couple, staying together for a remarkable period of time,” she noted.
P. cuulong, like most members of its family, is less than an inch (2.5 centimeters) long and mostly transparent, according to the study, published July 3 in the journal Zootaxa.
The new species was identified via measurements of nine specimens found during a field survey in shallow river waters in Vietnam’s Mekong Basin—just the sort of brackish coastal habitat priapiumfish typically call home.
Such habitats have undergone heavy development in Vietnam in recent decades, but the fish have proved highly resilient and seem to have adapted to modern life. Scientists have even collected priapiumfish “in a ditch on the side of the road,” Parenti said.
Partly due to these overlooked and possibly unappealing study sites, the fish “tend to be ignored by a lot of biologists,” she said.
Clue to Front-Loaded Genitalia
That may explain why the fish’s front-loaded genitalia remains an evolutionary mystery, she added.
There are some clues, though: For one thing, the Phallostethidae family is part of a larger group that includes many species that fertilize their eggs internally. (The vast majority of fish species fertilize their eggs outside the body.)
Many of the males in the family have physical modifications that allow them to internally fertilize females, so it makes sense that priapiumfish would also have evolved an adaptation.
For another thing, head-to-head mating is apparently “a very efficient way to do it,” Parenti added. While examining preserved female priapiumfish, she has found oviducts filled with sperm, meaning almost all the eggs had been fertilized.
“There’s still a lot more to discover” about Phallostethus, she added—P.cuulong is only third species found in its genus.
“It’s a lovely little fish with a very complex anatomy,” she said, “and I’m just delighted that we’re finding more of them.”
September 2012. Hydropower dams planned for the lower Mekong River could decimate fish populations and with them the primary source of protein for 60 million people. The impact of the dams would extend far beyond the river, as people turn to agriculture to replace lost calories, protein and micronutrients, according to a new study by WWF and the Australian National University: here.
The United States finally began to clean up the defoliant Agent Orange today – 50 years after it was first sprayed by US planes on Vietnam‘s jungles: here. See also here.
Dozens of cyclists decorated with balloons and rainbow flags streamed through the Vietnamese capital Hanoi today for the country’s first-ever gay pride parade.
Organised by the city’s small but growing LGBT community, the event went ahead peacefully with no attempt by police to stop the colourful convoy of about 100 activists despite their lack of official permission.
In a surprise move late last month Justice Minister Ha Hung Cuong said that it might be time to consider a change in the law to recognise same-sex marriage.
Vietnam currently forbids same-sex unions. Any move to legalise gay marriage would make Vietnam the first nation in Asia to do so.
The cyclists voiced strong support for the possible legal changes, calling for equal rights for gays and lesbians.
Vietnam lesbian couple talks of hope for marriage, LGBT rights: here.
In the early 1960s in South Vietnam, Buddhist monks committed suicide by setting themselves on fire.
Not a method of protest which I would recommend to anyone. Also not a method recommended by Buddhist religion. The monks did this out of despair, because of the bloody persecution of Buddhists by the United States-supported Saigon regime of dictator Diem and fanatically Roman Catholic First Lady Madame Nhu.
This lethal form of protest did manage to focus attention on the oppression. Soon, dictator Diem was deposed by a coup. Later, in the 1970s, the whole Saigon regime collapsed.
In Czechoslovakia, on 19 January 1969, student Jan Palach committed suicide by setting himself on fire, as a protest against the invasion of his country by Warsaw Pact troops. Though that was, again, an act of despair which I would not recommend, it did play a role in delegitimizing the post-Warsaw Pact invasion government. Which finally collapsed in 1989.
In Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia in December 2010, young unemployed graduate Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire as a protest against poverty and oppression under the Ben Ali dictatorship. This caused big indignation; which soon drove away dictator Ben Ali.
Protester in serious condition after he poured gasoline on his body and set himself on fire; in letter he left behind, he says, ‘the state of Israel robbed me.’
By Yaniv Kubovich, Ilan Lior and Talila Nesher | Jul.14, 2012 | 10:54 PM
An Israeli man set himself on fire Saturday during a Tel Aviv demonstration marking the anniversary of last summer’s social protests.
As thousands marched down Kaplan street in Tel Aviv to mark one year since the start of social protests, one of the protesters, a 52-year-old man, poured gasoline on his body and set himself on fire. The man was evacuated to Ichilov Hospital shortly afterward.
In a letter he left at the scene, he wrote that, “The state of Israel stole from me and robbed me. It left me helpless.”
“Two Housing and Construction Ministry committees rejected me, even though I had a stroke,” he wrote in the letter said, saying that the facts could be checked with a public housing company in Haifa.
In the letter, he said that he blames “the state of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, for the humiliation that the weakened citizens go through every day, taking from the poor and giving to the rich.”
Yonatan Sahar, a protester who witnessed the incident, said that he was standing next to the man, when suddenly he set himself on fire. “I saw him holding something burning,” he said. When suddenly he poured gasoline on himself and immediately caught fire. “I didn’t know what to do,” he added.
According to medical officials, the man is currently in serious condition.
Dozens of protesters arrived at Ichilov Hospital after hearing about the incident. Police forces prevented their entry, while filming the protesters who held signs condemning the Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai. Protesters also remained at the site where the man lit himself on fire.
Ofer Barkan, a social protest activist from Haifa, said that the man was an activist in last year’s protests. “We met him last summer,” Barkan said, “he was a completely normative person who lived in Tel Aviv but then his business went under. He became a cab driver and suffered a stroke which left him unemployed. He moved from Tel Aviv to Haifa because he could not afford life in the city.” According to Barkan, he had threatened to light himself on fire multiple times. “We felt that he was close to do it, but we didn’t know,” he added.
Activists are planning to march from Silman’s home to the Haifa municipality tomorrow.
Earlier on Saturday, thousands of Israelis gathered in several cities throughout the country to mark one year since the start of the social protests.
Thousands protested in Tel Aviv, while hundreds took to the streets in Haifa, Be’er Sheva, Jerusalem, and Afula.
Daphni Leef, the woman who launched the social protest, told Haaretz on Saturday that one year later, the activists’ message hasn’t changed.
“We want a fair society,” she said. “Today we are also celebrating. Suddenly, when people take to the streets they understand that they have power and that they are right.”
Between Tunisia and Israel: A personal tragedy becomes the symbol of Israel’s social struggle. The tragic act of Moshe Silman setting himself on fire during a social protest reflects the depth of the gaping chasm between the people and the government: here.
“Between Realization and Dehydration” – a comprehensive report published by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) – presents for the first time the processes and methods by which successive Israeli governments have cut back social services over the past three decades. Housing, education, heath, employment, welfare and more – all these were drained as Israel turned itself into a country where many people find it difficult to exercise their right to a dignified life: here.
A quarter of adults in England and Wales have considered suicide, the Campaign Against Living Miserably (Calm) said today: here.
A broad campaign to aid severely suffering Vietnamese victims of US defoliant Agent Orange went into a higher gear today with surging support at Westminster.
Even Prime Minister David Cameron signalled a nod of approval at a fundraising event organised by MPs on Monday night – although there is still no sign of large-scale British government cash aid.
In a symbolic gesture, Mr Cameron donated a signed copy of one of his favourite books to help raise cash for a new cancer hospital in Da Nang and a treatment centre in Ho Chi Minh City.
His choice of “Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45″ by Max Hastings raised £350 in an auction held in Parliament’s Attlee Suite.
Labour leader Ed Miliband raised £400 with a signed copy of one of his most-loved books, written by Gillian Slovo, daughter of leading South African communists Joe Slovo and Ruth First.
Thirty-seven years after the end of the Vietnam war, children are still being born with severe disabilities arising from US use of Agent Orange, and 4.8 million people are living with the effects.
Parliament’s all-party Vietnam group chair George Howarth MP organised Monday’s event after MPs were moved to tears at a Ho Chi Minh hospital on a visit to severely disabled child victims.
Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society secretary Len Aldis hailed the event, which raised over £5,000, and urged trade unionists to weigh in with support.
He urged this year’s TUC congress to endorse the fund-raising campaign for Agent Orange victims.
Mr Aldis said he had personally delivered a letter to Olympics organiser Sebastian Coe from the Vietnamese confederation of trade unions protesting against sponsorship by Dow Chemicals, one of the major US companies involved in producing Agent Orange and Napalm.
Speaking at the Westminster event, Vietnamese ambassador Vu Quang Minh expressed continued gratitude for the huge protests in Britain against the war.
He added that Anglo-Vietnam relations were now “the best ever.”
Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne predicted an “extremely bright” future for Vietnam.
It was still a poor country, but was “on a real forward trajectory, with a hard-working, educated, young population.”
From Agent Orange to “Kill Lists”: “Brilliant” Psy-Ops Become the News. John Pilger, Truthout: “In 1970, a US Senate report revealed that ‘the US has dumped [on South Vietnam] a quantity of toxic chemical amounting to six pounds per head of population, including woman and children.’ The code name for this weapon of mass destruction, Operation Hades, was changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand. Today, an estimated 4.8 million victims of Agent Orange are children”: here.
The Toxic Effects of Agent Orange Persist 51 Years After the Vietnam War: here.
This video is about opposition to the Vietnam war by world boxing champion Muhammad Ali.
Vietnam Era Memoir Shows Working Class History of Anti-War Organizing. John Maher, Charles Street Press: “I was convinced that the ultimate success of the anti-war movement depended on its support in working-class and minority communities, where the war hit hardest in terms of its economic consequences, lives disrupted, and lives lost. In twelve months spanning 1965-66, 85 percent of all men drafted had a high-school education or less. I joined the Boston Draft Resistance Group, a disciplined and creative effort to build the anti-war movement in working-class and minority communities”: here.
