Rare butterflies discovered in northern Australia


White albatross butterfly

From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

Rare butterflies spotted in the Top End

Rare butterflies which had not been seen in Australia for 30 years have been found in the Northern Territory.

The white albatross, asian tiger and northern argus butterflies have been spotted by the CSIRO at the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park on the Cobourg Peninsula, north-east of Darwin.

Entomologist Dr Michael Braby says the Indonesian species have set up breeding populations in the Top End.

He says the discovery shows that many areas are still poorly surveyed and that little is known about butterflies in the territory.

U.S. troops in Iraq often abuse prisoners: report


This is a video of Abu Ghraib, Iraq, torture photos.

From People’s Daily in China:

U.S. troops in Iraq often abuse prisoners: report

The United States has a flagrant record of violating the Geneva Convention in systematically abusing prisoners during the Iraqi War and the War in Afghanistan, says the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2006 issued on Thursday.

A report released in News Night of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), originally provided by the U.S.-based Human Rights First, showed that since August 2002, 98 prisoners had died in American-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among the dead, 34 died of premeditated murder, 11 deaths were suspicious, and 8 to 12 were tortured to death, according to an AFP report on Feb. 21, 2006.

A Human Rights Watch report in July 2006 said torture and other abuses against detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq were authorized and routine.

Detainees were routinely subject to severe beating, painful stress positions, severe sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme cold and hot temperatures.

Soldiers were told that many abusive techniques were authorized by the military chain of command and Geneva Conventions did not apply to the detainees at their facility.

Detainees at Camp Nama, a U.S. detention center at the Baghdad airport- in violation of international law- not registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross, were regularly stripped naked and subject to beatings.

Some detainees were used for target practice. In May 2006 human rights group Amnesty International condemned the detention of some 14,000 prisoners in Iraq without charge or trial.

On February 15, 2006, Australia’s SBS TV aired more than 10 pictures and video clips taken at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison; the images included: a man’s throat was cut off, left forearm of a man was left with burns and shrapnel wounds, a blood-stained interrogation room, and a seemingly insane man’s body covered with his own feces.

U.S. army’s criminal investigation division gathered materials including 1, 325 photographs and 93 video clips of suspected abuse of detainees, 546 photographs of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, all recorded between Oct. 18 and Dec. 30, 2003, reported the Guardian on Feb. 17, 2006.

Another report carried by the New York Times in December 2006 says a man named Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor, was detained by American soldiers and put into detention center Camp Cropper for 97 days.

The man said American guards arrived at his cell periodically, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation.

When he was returned to his cell, he was fatigued but unable to sleep, for the fluorescent lights were never turned off and at most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor.

He was not allowed to use telephone and denied the right to a lawyer at detention hearings.

The New York Times reported on March 18, 2006 that an elite Special Operations forces unit Task Force 6-26 converted one of Saddam Hussein’s former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center.

There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government’s torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room. In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts.

According to another report by British newspaper The Independent, 460 people were confined in the Guantanamo prison camp, including dozens of adolescent prisoners, with more than 60 under 18 and the youngest only 14.

A young man named Mohammed el-Gharani was allegedly accused of member of al-Qaeda and conspiracy in the 1998 al-Qaeda London terrorist conspiracy when he was only 12. In 2001, he was arrested at the age of 14.

According to a report by the Washington Post, on May 30, 2006, 75 prisoners in Guantanamo went on a hunger strike against U.S. soldiers’ maltreatment.

On June 10, 2006, three prisoners hung themselves with bed sheets and clothing, reported the Associated Press on June 11, 2006.

Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi’s family said his organs including the brain, liver, kidney and heart were all taken away when the corpse arrived.

Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi’s cousin said that might be done to conceal the truth behind his brother’s death.

Another Saudi Arabian prisoner’s father thought his son’s death was not suicide but intentional hanging as he found bruises on his son’s body.

The Amnesty International described it as another “indictment” of the worsening U.S. human rights record.

Human rights experts with the United Nations have condemned the United States for long-term arbitrary detention of suspects and abuses of detainees as serious violations of international law and relevant international conventions.

The U.S. Military Commissions Act signed into law on October 17, 2006 allows more severe means be used to interrogate terrorist suspects.

Iraqi civilian tortured: here.

Latin American governments’ criticisms of US government report on human rights in Latin America: here.

New cartoon animation on Ann Coulter


This 18 June 2007 cartoon animation from the USA is about extreme Right Republican Party ideologist Ann Coulter. It says about itself:

Ann Coulter is married to Hitler but her old boyfriend Satan still wants a piece of the ass.

Talking about Coulter: one of her far Right associates, Matt Sanchez, turns out to have a gay porn past.

A bit embarrassing for Coulter’s anti gay and pro Iraq war campaigns.

See also here.

And here.

And here.

New Mark Fiore animation on Walter Reed hospital scandal


This video from the USA says about itself:

Walter Reed Patients Told to Keep Quiet

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

The new animation by Mark Fiore, “Ouchie”, has just been posted to the Internet.

It is here.

Its subject is the Walter Reed hospital scandal in the USA, of wounded Iraq war veterans in squalid conditions.

From The BRAD BLOG in the USA, on the US media:

Anna Nicole Story Trounces Walter Reed Story on Fox ‘News’

So Much for ‘Supporting the Troops’

MSNBC Doesn’t Have Much to Be Proud of Either…

Cartoons on Walter Reed scandal: here.

Replacement of General Kiley: here.

Many new marine animal species discovered near Panama


This is a video about the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, USA.

From the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in the USA:

Smithsonian scientists discover new marine species in eastern Pacific

For 11 days, scientists lived aboard STRI’s R/V Urraca, a 95-foot vessel, part of the NSF/UNOLS fleet (a set of vessels designated for NSF-sponsored research).

Click here for more information.

Smithsonian scientists have discovered a biodiversity bounty in the Eastern Pacific—approximately 50 percent of the organisms found in some groups are new to science.

The research team spent 11 days in the Eastern Pacific, a unique, understudied region off the coast of Panama.

Coordinated by Rachel Collin of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, a team of Smithsonian scientists and international collaborators with expertise in snails, crabs, shrimp, worms, jellies and sea cucumbers participated in an intensive effort to discover organisms from this ecosystem.

Although they expected to find new species, Collin was surprised by the sheer number of novel marine organisms.

“It’s hard to imagine, while snorkeling around a tropical island that’s only a three-hour flight from the United States, that half the animals you see are unknown to science,” Collin said.

“Overwhelming diversity,” said Jon Norenburg, an expert in ribbon worms from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

More than 50 percent of the ribbon worms he collected have never been seen before.

Norenburg studies ribbon worms ranging from those so tiny they live between grains of sand to 6-foot-long specimens that eat entire crabs and sea hares.

During the expedition, Norenburg discovered new species of ribbon worms that live and reproduce among crab eggs.

These worms can be important pests of commercial species, but they are often overlooked because they are smaller than the eggs themselves.

“All the tedious dissections and microscope preparations done on a rolling, vibrating ship have really paid off,” Norenburg said.

One of the unique features of the islands off the coast of Panama is that they host animals that normally are found in the Indo-Pacific, half a world away.

“To think that the larvae of Hymenocera picta, a little shrimp we collected on Isla Seca, can survive a journey of more than 3,000 miles from the Indo-Pacific to the coast of Panama is mind blowing!” said Darryl Felder from the University of Louisiana.

Felder will use samples collected on this expedition as part of the crustacean Tree of Life, a project funded by the National Science Foundation, which aims to determine the relationships among all families of crabs and shrimps.

Even soft corals, a relatively well-studied group, yielded 15 new species over 3 years in a complimentary project organized by STRI Staff Scientist Hector Guzman.

This marine snail, Tylodina fungina, was collected in a dredge sample with its host sponge. This species feeds exclusively on a single species of sponge that matches its yellow…
Click here for more information.

Marine life and the formation of the Panama isthmus: here.

Marine larvae: here.

Parakeets, swans, and geese


ChaffinchOn my way to the nature reserve, chaffinches singing.

The two white storks are again on their nest.

In the reserve, the sounds of the great tit, great spotted woodpecker, jay, jackdaw.

Three ring-necked parakeets flying in formation.

On the meadow east of the reserve: 16 Egyptian geese, 18 mute swans, 6 gray lag geese.

Pink footed geese and other birds in Norfolk, England: here.

Humans acquired pubic lice from gorillas


Mountain gorilla

From BigNews Network:

Humans acquired pubic lice from gorillas

ANI

Washington, Mar 8 : Humans acquired pubic lice from gorillas several million years ago, a new University of Florida study has revealed.

And no it rather due any interaction of an intimate kind, but rather from sleeping in gorilla nests or eating the giant apes that helped in transmitting the insects onto humans, said David Reed, assistant curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus and one of the study’s authors.

“It certainly wouldn’t have to be what many people are going to immediately assume it might have been, and that is sexual intercourse occurring between humans and gorillas.

Instead of something sordid, it could easily have stemmed from an activity that was considerably more tame,” said Reed in his study in the current edition of the BMC Biology journal.

According to Reed, around 3.3 million years ago, lice found on gorillas began to infest humans.

While humans play host to two kinds of lice, one on the head and body (Pediculus), and the other on the pubic region, crab lice (Pthirus), chimps and gorillas have lice only on the head and pubic region respectively.

That they took up residence in the pubic region may have coincided with humans’ loss of hair on the rest of their bodies and the lack of any other suitable niche, said Reed.

Reed said understanding the history of lice is important because these tiny insects give clues about the lifestyles of early hominids and evolution of modern humans.

See also here.

New National Park in Cameroon to protect Cross river gorilla: here.

Bonobos, including video: here.

Putting on clothing to protect our woefully hair-deficient bodies is one of the key moments in the history of becoming human. Just when our species took this step, however, is open to a fair amount of guesswork—scientists can’t exactly dig up fossilized parkas and trousers. But what scientists can do is determine roughly when two species diverged, and that has made all the difference: Using the lice that have traveled with people for thousands of years, a team has tracked the time that humans first became dedicated followers of fashion—perhaps as long as 170,000 years ago: here.

Guardian: Jumping fleas reveal their secrets to Cambridge scientists: here.

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UK: Blair government admits sending child soldiers to Iraq war


Child soldier cartoonBy Simon Whelan:

British Army used under-18-year-old soldiers in Iraq occupation

8 March 2007

A recent written answer to a parliamentary question from the Liberal Democrats revealed that the British Army sent 15 soldiers under the age of 18 to fight in Iraq, contravening a United Nation’s protocol on children’s rights.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 38, (1989) insists: “State parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities.”

The optional protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict to the Convention that came into force in 2002 stipulates that its state parties “shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons below the age of 18 do not take a direct part in hostilities and that they are not compulsorily recruited into their armed forces.”

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour government ratified the optional protocol against the deployment of those aged 18 and under to war on June 24, 2003.

At almost the same time it was sending them to participate in the occupation of Iraq.

See also here.

USA, Bush refuses helping Alabama, Georgia tornado victims


Alabama school damaged by tornado, photo by Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

From British daily News Line:

Thursday, 8 March 2007

BUSH REFUSES TO AID VICTIMS OF ALABAMA AND GEORGIA TORNADOES

THE AFL-CIO US trade union federation has condemned President Bush for his lack of any action in support of the victims of the recent tornadoes in Alabama and Georgia.

Its statement said: ‘In the play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the heroine Blanche DuBois says: “Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

‘President Bush seems to hope there are lots of kind strangers out there to help the victims of the tornadoes that ripped through Alabama and Georgia last week – because his government certainly won’t.

‘While saying help is on the way, Bush told residents of Americus, Ga., to “hang in there,” and urged generous Americans to donate money to help.

He said some of our poor citizens “may or may not qualify” for federal aid and “they are going to need the help of their fellow citizens.”

‘The fact that the most vulnerable survivors cannot expect help from the Bush administration sounds like more of the same to residents of New Orleans, who are still trying to get real federal help 19 months after their homes, jobs and lives were devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Bush prefers to spend money on the war in Iraq; which the AFL-CIO states it opposes.