Internet activism saves rainforest in French Guiana

Translated from Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, paper edition, 7 February 2008:

An Internet campaign, started by a student and a scientist from Utrecht [in the Netherlands] has stopped the coming of a gold mine to a nature reserve in French Guiana.

According to scientist Pita Verweij, the Canadian gold corporation Cambior already had all government permits for a mine next to the Trésor nature reserve.

This forest estate, 2,500 hectare in size, is owned by a Dutch foundation. Together with student Liesbeth Fontein, Verweij studied the consequences of gold mining, like deforestation and water pollution.

Some weeks before the French government was supposed to grant Cambior its final permit, Verweij and Fontein started an e-mail campaign with the organization Ecological Internet. According to Verweij, ten thousands of protest mails have been sent to the French government. The government then decided not to grant the permit. Cambior gave up trying.

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Mitt Romney now ex-US presidential candidate

This video from the USA is called Romney ad becomes parody of itself.

By Liz Sidoti in the USA:

Mitt Romney suspended his faltering presidential campaign. …

Romney’s final pitch was to label McCain a liberal like Clinton and Obama, a charge tantamount to heresy in the GOP [Republican party]. He was backed by conservative media voices like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

It is to be hoped that all Republican candidates will follow Romney’s good example and give up.

Another Mitt Romney Campaign Ad Parody video: here.

See also here.

And here.

And here.

McCain and nuclear power: here.

Head lice accompanied prehistoric humans out of Africa

This is a ‘Video of ordinary head lice – but, at 200X magnification. ‘

From Reuters:

Head lice came with us out of Africa

Thursday, 7 February 2008 Maggie Fox

Head lice taken from 1000-year-old mummies in Peru support the idea that the little creatures accompanied humans on their first migration out of Africa 100,000 years ago, researchers report.

Genetic tests show the lice are nearly identical to strains found around the world that have been dated to when humans first began to colonise the rest of the world.

“It tells us that this genetic type got around the globe right as humans spread and migrated around the globe,” says Dr David Reed of the University of Florida, who worked on the study.

“We know that this parasite was distributed all over the globe along with us.”

Writing online in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the researchers note there are three known strains, or clades, of head lice: A, B and C.

Clade A is found everywhere, clade B is common in both North America and Europe and clade C is rare.

Egyptian geese and buzzard

This is a video from the Netherlands about a buzzard on a fence.

Today, on the meadow east of the nature reserve: Egyptian geese grazing; and a buzzard sitting on a fence.

Tornado tragedies in the USA

From the USA, this is a video about the February 5, 2008 tornadoes.

US tornado photos: here.

By Jerry White:

Tornadoes kill at least 54 in Southern US states

7 February 2008

At least 54 people were killed and hundreds more injured as a series of powerful tornadoes swept across five Southern US states late Tuesday and overnight, destroying and damaging homes, schools, hospitals, businesses and factories from Arkansas to Kentucky. …

As is the case in so many natural disasters, there was a social component to this tragedy. Inevitably, those who suffered the most were working class families forced to live in homes vulnerable to high winds and extreme weather.

In western Kentucky, for example, three people were killed as a storm tore through a trailer park outside of Greenville in Muhlenberg County, one of two mobile home parks hit in the county, state police said.

Trailer homes—which an increasing number of families are compelled to buy to save money—are known as “tornado deathtraps,” accounting for more than 40 percent of all tornado deaths in the US since 1985, and more than 50 percent in recent years. In 2007, 52 of 81 people killed in tornadoes lived in mobile homes, while 16 lived in permanent homes, according to the National Weather Service.

Recent tornadoes in the Southern US: both a natural and social disaster: here.

US Bush administration admits waterboarding torture

This video from the USA is called Keith Olbermann: “Waterboarding is Torture”, and It’s Settled Law – 4/23/09.

By Joe Kay:

Bush administration acknowledges and defends use of torture technique

7 February 2008

The White House publicly acknowledged on Wednesday that President Bush has authorized the use of waterboarding, and that he may do so again in the future. The statements amount to an open admission of criminal activity on the part of the US government.

The acknowledgement from White House deputy spokesman Tony Fratto came a day after testimony from CIA Director Michael Hayden before the Senate Intelligence Committee. For the first time, Hayden officially stated that the Bush administration had used waterboarding on three prisoners in 2002 and 2003.

Waterboarding is a form of torture used since the Spanish Inquisition. It involves pouring water over a prisoner’s head to cause drowning, and has been prosecuted as torture by the United States government in the past. While the Bush administration is now stretching language and credulity to claim that it should not be categorized as torture, the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, acknowledged on Wednesday that “taken to its extreme, [the consequences of waterboarding] could be death; you could drown someone.”

Pentagon plan against Internet free speech

From Knowledge Driven Revolution in Canada:

The Pentagon’s Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy “weapons system”.

The 2003 Pentagon document entitled the Information Operation Roadmap was released to the public after a Freedom of Information Request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in 2006.

See also here.

And here.

New bird subspecies discovered in Nepal

From the BBC:

‘New type of bird’ found in Nepal

By Charles Haviland

BBC News, Kathmandu

A previously unknown sub-species of bird has been discovered in the southern grasslands of Nepal, scientists say.

The bird is a warbler with a very long tail and slender beak and has been named the Nepal Rufous-vented Prinia.

Scientists say the bird provides an important geographical link between previously-known varieties in Pakistan and India.

But they warn its tiny population means the sub-species is endangered.

The bird was first spotted in 2005 in a wetland area.

But it is only now that taxonomists have decided it is distinctive enough to be described as a separate sub-species.

‘Exciting find’

It has different dimensions from the two other types of Rufous-vented Prinia, and in colour comes between the rich chestnut of its western neighbour and the grey of the one to the east.

Hem Sagar Baral of Bird Conservation Nepal said the find is exciting because while the other two types belong to Pakistan’s Indus river basin and the Brahmaputra of north-east India, this Nepalese sub-species fills the gap.

The latest find “appears to form the link” between the two pre-existing sub-species, he said.

The new find brings the number of bird species spotted in Nepal to an exceptionally high 862.

But the conservationists are warning that with habitat loss and degradation, the newly-identified variety is highly threatened, with at most 500 birds currently alive.

They are however elated that it has been found in a reserve which is well monitored by bird-watchers, and are now speculating that there may be more species waiting to be found – new to Nepal, or even to the world.

See also here.