This video shows male birds of goosander, red-breasted merganser and smew.
Goosander, red-breasted merganser and smew
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Daily Archives: February 25, 2017
Saudi air force bombs Yemeni funeral again
This video from the USA says about itself:
ANOTHER Yemeni Funeral Bombed, Women & Children Killed
23 February 2017
A U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition airstrike killed at least eight women and a child at a funeral reception near Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, on Thursday, witnesses told AFP.
Read more here.
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New marsupial species discovery in Brazil
THis video from the USA says about itself:
8 May 2012
My daughter’s grandfather captured this video of a mother [Virginia] opossum transporting 15 baby opossums on her back. Amazing!
From National Geographic:
New Redheaded Opossum Named After Magical Gnome
The rat-size marsupial prowls the tropical rain forests of northern Brazil at night.
By Carrie Arnold
PUBLISHED February 23, 2017
A chance finding at a Brazilian museum has revealed a brand-new species of opossum.
Biologist Silvia Pavan first discovered an unnamed mammal specimen with rich mahogany fur in 2008 at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Belém.
The rat-size marsupial’s reddish head inspired its name: Monodelphis saci.
Brazilian folklore features a gnome called the saci (pronounced sah-SEE), who wears a magical red cap that lets him disappear and reappear at will. (See “Unbelievably Cute Mammal With Teddy Bear Face Rediscovered.”)
Just like the saci, the new species of opossum has a red cap—and had been hiding in plain sight.
“I analyzed the specimen right away when it was brought to the museum, and I noticed it didn’t have a name,” says Pavan, lead author of the new study in the journal American Museum Novitates.
After that, she was able to find other specimens representing the same unnamed species in Brazilian collections.
Playing PossumOpossums evolved in the South American tropics; several dozen species live in the Americas, but only the Virginia opossum made it as far north as the United States.
All opossum species are nocturnal omnivores, eating a range of fruit, insects, and small mammals—a flexibility that has allowed them to spread far and wide. (Read how opossum blood may help snakebite victims.)
As part of her Ph.D. work at the American Museum of Natural History, Pavan wanted to piece together the opossum family tree. But with so many species sprinkled across so many habitats, Pavan went to museums to supplement her search for opossums in the wild.
After she came across the gnome opossum, her colleagues traveled to the source—Itaituba I National Forest in Pará, Brazil—to see if they could find live animals.
Mysterious MarsupialsPavan’s colleagues set up a series of humane pitfall traps—basically small buckets that capture opossums as they prowl the tropical rain forest at night.
To her surprise, Pavan discovered several more gnome opossums in her buckets. (Also see “Newly Discovered Carnivore Looks Like Teddy Bear.”)
“They’re not really that rare, but they only appeared in scientific collections relatively recently when people started using the pitfall traps,” she says.
The species doesn’t appear to be threatened with extinction, though more people have been collecting the animal in the wild in the weeks since her discovery was announced, she says.
Guillermo D’Elia, a biologist at the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia, says there are likely more marsupials to be identified.
“I am pretty sure there are several new species of opossum to come in the future,” D’Elia says, “now that researchers are collecting in new areas, rechecking museum specimens, and using DNA.”
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Bittern in national park
This 25 February 2017 video shows a bittern in Biesbosch national park in the Netherlands.
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Jordanians demonstrate against austerity
This 2015 video is about Sudanese refugees in Jordan demonstrating.
From Middle East Eye:
Jordanians hit streets to protest against austerity tax rises
Hundreds flock to central Amman and other cities in protest over price rises on basic goods due to new sales tax
Friday 24 February 2017 16:53 UTC
Hundreds of Jordanians protested Friday across the kingdom against the government’s decision to impose new taxes on a string of goods and services, calling on the cabinet to resign.
The government earlier this month imposed new sales taxes on internet and mobile use, bread, domestic fuel and petrol, cigarettes and fizzy drinks.
About 1,500 Jordanians took to the streets of central Amman …
“The people of Jordan are on fire, all because of the rise in prices,” some chanted, AFP correspondents said.
“The government that raises prices must fall, the government that impoverishes people must go,” was another rallying cry, as demonstrators held up signs that read: “Raising prices is playing with fire.”
Similar protests were also staged in the northwestern city of Salt, as well as in the regions of Karak and Madaba, south of the capital.
The price rises come as Jordan faces a public debt of about $35bn and after Amman struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund to secure a $723m three-year credit line.
The loan, the IMF said in August, is aimed at supporting Jordan to push through with an economic and financial reform programme.
Jordan’s economy has been rattled from the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and the country has taken hundreds of thousands of refugees from its neighbours over the years, stretching its meagre resources.
Growth has slumped and unemployment has jumped to 14 percent of the kingdom’s population of 9.5 million, with the young the worst hit, according to government figures, while unofficial estimates put it as high as 30 percent.
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Roe deer and reed buntings video
This 24 February 2017 video shows roe deer and reed buntings on Voorne island in the Netherlands.
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Donald Trump bans even right-wing Daily Mail
This video from the USA says about itself:
Anti-Trump demonstrations held in cities around the globe
21 January 2017
Protesters in the tens of thousands snaked through the streets of London in solidarity with the Women’s March on Washington. From Paris to Prague, Rome to Berlin, even as far away as Japan and Australia, they are vastly different worlds united under one message. Jonathan Vigliotti reports.
From the Huffington Post in the USA:
BBC, Guardian And Daily Mail Among Those Banned From White House Press Briefing
Just after Trump described them as the ‘enemy of the people’.
25/02/2017 11:14
Sarah Ann Harris, News Reporter, The Huffington Post UK
Donald Trump’s press secretary caused outrage after banning a number of news organisations, including the BBC, from a White House press briefing on Friday.
The Guardian and The Daily Mail were also blocked from the meeting in a move that has angered supporters of a free press’s role in a democracy.
That even the British Daily Mail, with its history of vile attacks on immigrants and other far-right policies, looks like being not far-right enough for the Trump administration is remarkable.
Maybe the Daily Mail angered the Trump administration with a few less far-right reports on police racism in Ferguson, Missouri?
President Donald Trump delivered a violent, ultra-right speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday, attacking the media and reprising many of the “America First” themes outlined in his inauguration address one month ago: here.
Kuwait Celebration At Trump Hotel Raises Conflict Of Interest Questions. February 25, 20176:33 AM ET: here.
USA: Amnesty International starts campaign to free “dying” undocumented mom from ICE: here.
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Albatrosses dancing in Hawaii
This video from Hawaii says about itself:
Courtship Dancing in Kauai – Feb. 24, 2017
4 February 2017
Bill-clapping, sky pointing, and whinnying are just some of the cornerstone dance moves used by Laysan Albatrosses in their elaborate courtship rituals.
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More dead Iraqi, Syrian civilians under Trump?
This video from the USA says about itself:
500,000 Iraqi Civilians Died In Iraq War
17 October 2013
New research on the human cost of the war in Iraq estimates that roughly half a million men, women and children died between 2003 and 2011 as a direct result of violence or the associated collapse of civil infrastructure.
Other estimates are over a million dead Iraqi civilians.
By Bill Van Auken in the USA:
Pentagon prepares for bigger, bloodier war in Iraq and Syria
25 February 2017
The Pentagon has prepared recommendations to be submitted to President Donald Trump at the beginning of next week for a major escalation of the US military intervention in Iraq and Syria.
According to unnamed US officials cited Friday by the Wall Street Journal, the proposal is expected to include “sending additional troops to Iraq and Syria” and “loosening battlefield restrictions” to “ease rules designed to minimize civilian casualties.”
The new battle plans stem from an executive order signed by Trump on January 28 giving the Pentagon 30 days to deliver a “preliminary draft of the Plan to defeat ISIS [Islamic State] in Iraq and Syria.”
According to independent estimates, as many as 8,000 civilians have already died in air strikes carried out by US and allied warplanes against targets in both Syria and Iraq, even as the Pentagon routinely denies the vast majority of reported deaths of unarmed men, women and children resulting from US bombings. The new policy to be rolled out next week, which the Journal reports is aimed at “increasing the number and rate of operations,” will inevitably entail a horrific intensification of this bloodletting.
Speaking before the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Thursday, the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, said that the Pentagon would be presenting Trump with a “political-military plan” to deal not only with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but to “advance our long-term interests in the region.”
Referring to the intense contradictions besetting the US intervention in the region, which has relied on the use of Kurdish militias as proxy ground troops in Syria, even as Washington’s NATO ally, Turkey, has intervened to militarily counter their influence, Dunford insisted that Washington “can’t be paralyzed by tough choices.”
Pointing to the regional scope of the planned US military escalation, Dunford echoed earlier bellicose rhetoric from the administration against Iran, listing it alongside Russia, China, North Korea and “transnational violent extremism” as the major targets of the US military.
The US military commander stated that “the major export of Iran is actually malign influence across the region.” He said that the US military buildup against Iran was designed to “make sure we have freedom of navigation through the Straits of Hormuz, and that we deter conflict and crisis in the region, and that we advance our interest to include our interest in dealing with violent extremism of all forms.” All of these alleged aims are pretexts for continuous US provocations aimed at countering Iran’s regional influence and furthering the drive for US hegemony in the Middle East.
In relation to Iraq, Dunford signaled US intentions to maintain a US military occupation long after the campaign against ISIS is completed. He referred to a “dialog about a long-term commitment to grow the capacity, maintain the capacity of the Iraqi security forces,” adding that Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider Abadi had spoken of “the international community continuing to support defense capacity building.”
Dunford’s comments echoed those of Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis during a trip earlier this week to Baghdad. While disavowing Trump’s crude comments last month—“We’re not in Iraq to seize anybody’s oil,” Mattis said—he also suggested that plans are being developed for a permanent US military presence in the country.
“The Iraqi people, the Iraqi military and the Iraqi political leadership recognizes what they’re up against and the value of the coalition and the partnership in particular with the United States,” Mattis told reporters Monday. “I imagine we’ll be in this fight for a while and we’ll stand by each other.”
Currently, Washington has more than 5,000 US troops in Iraq and another 500 Special Forces troops operating inside Syria. These forces are backed by tens of thousands of military contractors as well as other military units that are rotated in and out of the region. The plan to be presented next week will likely involve the deployment of thousands more US combat forces.
Trump has repeatedly indicated his support for establishing “safe zones” in Syria, an intervention that would require large numbers of US soldiers backed by air power to seize and control swathes of Syrian territory. It would also entail threats of military confrontation with Russian warplanes operating in support of the Syrian government.
As the Pentagon prepares its plans for military escalation in the region, US ground forces have reportedly entered Mosul, operating on the front lines with Iraqi forces in the bloody offensive to retake Iraq’s second-largest city from ISIS. American Special Forces “advisers” joined Iraqi troops Thursday in the first incursion into western Mosul, with the retaking of the Mosul International Airport as well as a nearby military base. The operation was conducted with close air support from US warplanes.
The airport and the base, located in the southern part of western Mosul, are to be used as the launching pad for a major assault into the most densely populated area of the city, where an estimated three quarters of a million civilians are trapped with no means of escape.
The International Rescue Committee warned that this stage of the offensive would represent the “most dangerous phase” for civilians.
“This will be a terrifying moment for the 750,000 people still in the west of the city, and there is a real danger that the battle will be raging around them for weeks and possibly months to come,” said Jason Kajer, the Iraq acting country director for the humanitarian group.
Referring to the increasingly desperate plight of civilians in western Mosul, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s field coordinator in Erbil, Dany Merhy, said: “Supply routes have been cut from that side of the city and people have been facing shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine. We can only imagine the state people will be in.”
As in previous US-backed offensives against Fallujah and Ramadi, Mosul faces the prospect of being reduced to rubble. It is in this city where the proposed changes in the “rules of engagement” will find their first expression in the elevated slaughter of Iraqi civilians.
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Four baby snow leopards in Mongolia
This January 2017 camera trap video shows a snow leopard with four babies in Mongolia. Four young snow leopards is very rare.
A recent research paper reveals that there are three sub-species of snow leopard. Until now, researchers had assumed this species, Panthera uncia, was monotypic: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 