A Bosnian Jew and an ethnic Roma have taken Bosnia to the European Court of Human Rights because the country’s US-drafted constitution prevents them from running for presidency and parliament.
Minority Rights Group International (MRGI), which backs their case, reported that the two challenged the state at the highest chamber of the European Court in Strasbourg.
Bosnia’s constitution, which was drafted in Dayton, Ohio, by US officials in a hurry to stop Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, allows only Muslim Bosniaks, Christian Orthodox Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats to run for president or parliament.
Bosnian citizens Jakob Finci, a prominent Jew, and Dervo Sejdic, of Roma ethnicity, are arguing that, by preventing people from certain religious and ethnic communities from running, the Bosnian constitution and relevant election laws are discriminatory and violate key UN conventions and European treaties.
MRGI head of law Lucy Claridge noted that such constitutional limitations are “not only discriminatory but they also exclude people from some ethnic and religious groups from participating fully and effectively in public life.”
Blears was facing removal from the Cabinet after it was revealed she failed to pay capital gains tax on the sale of her second home. Brown described her failure to do so as “totally unacceptable”. Despite insisting that she acted within the rules, Blears later agreed to pay £13,332 to the Inland Revenue.
The fact Blears announced her resignation so shortly before tomorrow’s elections will fuel speculation that she is encouraging a leadership challenge to Brown.
[Ken] LIVINGSTONE ON THE CRISIS IN THE LABOUR PARTY: here.
Latest: the MP for South Antrim in Northern Ireland, William McCrea, of the Protestant fundamentalist party DUP of “Dr” Ian Paisley, is now also in trouble in the expenses scandal.
After Iceland, there is also an electoral shift to the left in Greenland; with the left party doubling its vote percentage to become the biggest party.
From Associated Press:
Left-wing opposition wins Greenland election
3 June 2009
By JAN M. OLSEN, Associated Press Writer
COPENHAGEN – A left-wing opposition party won Greenland’s parliamentary election and was set to oust the long-governing Social Democrats as the ice-capped island prepares for more autonomy from Denmark, official results showed Wednesday.
The next government will be the first to lead the semiautonomous Danish territory under an expanded home rule agreement that takes effect later this month.
With all districts counted, the left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit party, or IA, won nearly 44 percent of the vote, doubling its support from the last election four years ago, the election commission said.
The governing Siumut party, in power since 1979, got just over 26 percent, apparently punished by voters in Tuesday’s election for a series of corruption scandals.
With 14 seats, the IA still needs support from smaller parties to have a majority in the 31-member assembly.
“Greenland deserves this,” IA leader Kuupik Kleist told celebrating supporters in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. He didn’t say which parties he would approach for coalition building but ruled out Premier Hans Enoksen’s Siumut party.
Enoksen called the snap election after Greenlanders decided in a November referendum to loosen ties with Denmark, which has controlled the giant island since the 18th century.
The new arrangement, which takes effect on June 21, will make Greenlandic, an Inuit tongue, the official language and gradually shift control over the local police force, courts and the coast guard to Greenland‘s government.
The plan also sets out new rules for splitting potential oil revenue with Denmark — a key issue in a region where new natural resources could be exposed by melting sea ice and glaciers. Talks with Denmark on implementing the program are set to begin later this month.
Copenhagen, whose subsidies account for two-thirds of the island’s economy, will still control defense and foreign policy and Danish figurehead monarch Queen Margrethe remains the head of state.
More than 70 percent of the 40,000 eligible voters turned out for the election, which was dominated by allegations of nepotism and misuse of public funds.
Several politicians, including top Siumut members, have been found guilty of using public money for private uses. Former Housing Minister Jens Napaattooq was convicted of spending 128,366 kroner ($24,000) in taxpayer money on personal dinners, trips and alcohol, and was sentenced to four months in prison.
The Siumut party was also hurt by an internal power struggle, with Alega Hammond, a former finance minister, trying to oust Enoksen as party leader.
“The figures are, of course, thought-provoking,” Enoksen told the Greenland newspaper AG in response to the election results.
Siumut and its coalition partner Atasut together won 12 seats, losing their majority in the Landsting, or parliament. The center-right Democrats won four seats
The Danish government announced last week it would expand its permanent military presence in the Arctic. To advance its claims, the Danish bourgeoisie must secure its control over Greenland and the Faroe Islands, and rebuff the territorial ambitions of its rivals in the region: here.
Greenland demands apology for Danish child experiments: here.
Hyaenodon (“hyaena-toothed”) is an extinct genus of Hyaenodonts, a group of carnivorous creodonts of the family Hyaenodontidae endemic to all continents except South America, Australia and Antarctica, living from 42—15.9 mya, existing for approximately 26.1 million years.[2]
Some species of this genus were amongst the largest terrestrial carnivorous mammals of their time; others were only of the size of a marten. Hyaenodon was one of the latest genera of the Hyaenodonts and is known from the Late Eocene to Early Miocene. Remains of many species are known from North America, Europe, Asia and Africa (In 1993 42 species were distinguished).[3]
Typical of early carnivorous mammals, the Hyaenodon had a very massive skull but only a small brain. It had a long skull with a narrow snout – much larger in relation to the length of the skull than in canine carnivores, for instance. Its neck was shorter than its skull, while its body was long and robust and terminated in a long tail. Despite the name, these creatures are not related to hyenas.
The average weight of adult or subadult H. horridus, the largest North American species, is estimated to about 40 kilograms (88 lb) and may not have exceeded 60 kilograms (130 lb). H. gigas, the largest Hyaenodon species was much larger, being 500 kilograms (1,100 lb) and around 10 feet.[4] H. crucians from the early Oligocene of North America is estimated to only 10 to 25 kilograms (22 to 55 lb). H. microdon and H. mustelinus from the late Eocene of North America were even smaller and weighed probably about 5 kilograms (11 lb).
Prehistoric Arctic ‘hippo’ teeth offer clues to mammal evolution
By Randy Boswell
June 1, 2009
An analysis of the 53-million-year-old fossilized teeth of huge, hippo-like animals found on Canada’s once-temperate Ellesmere Island has produced what scientists are calling a “smoking gun” discovery about the migration and evolution of large mammals in ancient North America.
Researchers have long known that Canada’s northernmost Arctic islands were once relatively warm, lush environments inhabited by alligators and other creatures associated today with southerly latitudes.
But the latest findings, according to Canadian and U.S. researchers who’ve published a study in the latest issue of the journal Geology, shed new light on the diets and movements of Arctic animals in the post-dinosaur age and “may provide the behavioural smoking gun for how modern groups of mammals like ungulates — ancestors of today’s horses and cattle — and true primates arrived in North America.”
The team’s claims are based on an analysis of isotopes found in the teeth of the prehistoric creatures, which reveal information about the locations and kinds of plants they ate and the time of year they migrated and reproduced.
Among the remains analyzed were teeth from the extinct Coryphodon, a semi-aquatic mammal resembling the modern hippopotamus. Teeth from two other species — an extinct ancestor of today’s tapirs and a rhinoceros-like animal called brontothere — also were examined and confirmed the team’s findings.
Each of the animals would have weighed around 500 kilograms, the researchers note.
“We were able to use carbon signatures preserved in the tooth enamel to show that these mammals did not migrate or hibernate,” Eberle said in a summary of the study released on Monday. “Instead, they lived in the high Arctic all year long, munching on some unusual things during the dark winter months.”
The “dietary chemical signatures” found in the animals’ teeth, along with the three extinct species’ “portly shapes and fossil evidence for babies and juveniles in the Arctic,” prove the creatures did not undertake long migrations to the south each winter, the summary stated.
The animals are believed to have fed in summer mainly on flowering plants and deciduous leaves. In winter, the researchers found, they switched to eating twigs, pine needles and fungi.
“In order for mammals to have covered the great distances across land bridges that once connected the continents, they would have required the ability to inhabit the High Arctic year-round in proximity to these land bridges,” said Eberle, referring to Arctic ridges believed to have linked North America and Asia at that time.
“The study has implications for the dispersal of early mammals across polar land bridges into North America and for modern mammals that likely will begin moving north if Earth’s climate continues to warm.”
While the recently announced discovery of “Ida,” a remarkably well-preserved early primate fossil, promises insights into the evolution of later primate forms, including humans, the way it has been presented to the public distorts both its significance and the processes of biological evolution: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 