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Saturday, December 17, 2011
MegaUpload Goes Through with Record Label Lawsuit Over Mega Song Censorship [File Sharing]
Friday, December 16, 2011
Rare robin breeding sites found
15 December 2011
Last updated at 01:48
Rare black-throated robins have been recorded in the Qinling mountains, north central China, by scientists.
The 14 new sightings double the total number for the species since its first discovery 125 years ago.
A team of Chinese and Swedish researchers located two breeding areas after hearing the males' distinctive calls.
The national nature reserves where the birds were found are also home to rare giant pandas and snub-nosed monkeys.
Also known as the blackthroat and black-throated blue robin, the species (Luscinia obscura) was first discovered in 1886.
The birds resemble a European robin in size and shape but the males sport a jet-black throat and chest rather than the familiar red.
To date, very little is known about the species and there have never been any definitive sightings of females.
"The species is extremely secretive and difficult to see in the dense bamboo where it lives," explained Prof Per Alstrom, of the Swedish Species Information Centre, a part of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala.
Prof Alstrom and colleagues were able to identify the birds' breeding grounds after hearing their distinctive song.
"It's likely that there are approximately as many females in the wild as there are males, but males are more easy to find [because] they sing," he said.
Precious neighbourhoodThe team recorded seven males each in Foping and Changqing National Nature Reserves.
"In view of the [number of birds] birds we found, this species is apparently not as rare as was previously thought, although it seems to be very local," Prof Alstrom told BBC Nature.
"We spent three and a half weeks exploring different parts of the Qinling mountains, but we found this bird only in two places."
The birds' choice of habitat gave the team of taxonomists and ornithologists hope for the survival of the species.
"The breeding areas that we discovered are well protected, as they are home to some rare mammals, such as giant panda and golden snub-nosed monkey," said Prof Alstrom.
The scientists took a number of recordings of the birds singing in the hope that this will aid future identification and greater understanding of the enigmatic robins.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16112187
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Putin a hero of Kosovo Serb defiance (AP)
MITROVICA, Kosovo ? Nobody questions Vladimir Putin here.
Images of the Russian prime minister are plastered all over the walls in Serb-run northern Kosovo as Russian flags flutter in the wind. Tens of thousands of Serbs in the region have recently sought Russian citizenship.
Banners reading "Russia Help!" or displaying Putin's portrait with the message "He's Watching After You" hang across the streets of Mitrovica, the divided northern Kosovo town that has been the center of recent tensions between Serbs and majority Albanians.
Moscow has become the champion of the Serb defiance against Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia. The local Serbs are frustrated by Belgrade's refusal to use force to save them from ethnic Albanian rule.
The Kosovo Serbs have been desperately courting Moscow to press their sense of abandonment over Belgrade's enthusiastic pursuit of European Union membership, which could lead to Serbia dropping its designs on a territory it considers its spiritual homeland.
"These traitors in Belgrade will trade us for EU membership," said Milorad Jovanovic, a Serb from Mitrovica. "Only Putin and mother Russia and can save us from extermination."
Serbs have a historic affinity with Russia because of common Slavic roots and the Christian Orthodox religion. But their relations have gone up and down; former Russian President Boris Yeltsin tacitly supported NATO's 1999 air war against Serbia that stopped its government crackdown against Kosovo Albanian separatists.
Beyond handouts and diplomatic opposition to Kosovo statehood at the United Nations, Moscow's interest in the Kosovo Serbs is at best marginal.
Moscow recently rejected some 22,000 Kosovo Serb applications for Russian citizenship, citing its strict citizenship laws.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich said that it was obvious from the citizenship requests that "the people are in a difficult situation and feel hopeless."
But the Kremlin has offered only humanitarian aid. On Tuesday, some 25 trucks were bringing aid to the Kosovo Serbs, and even that symbolic mission failed to progress swiftly.
By afternoon, only two trucks carrying food, blankets and tents passed through a NATO checkpoint manned by American peacekeepers at a border point with Serbia.
Earlier, a convoy of EU police dispatched to provide security for the incoming trucks was turned back by the Serbs who are blocking roads and refusing passage for members of the 3,000-strong EU rule of law mission.
Russia's ambassador to Serbia, Aleksandr Konuzin, was escorting the Russian aid convoy Tuesday. He hugged Serbs manning the barricades in apparent support of their continued defiance. Associated Press video showed Konuzin meeting Krstimir Pantic, a Kosovo Serb leader, close to the border crossing.
The Russian diplomat blamed EULEX for blocking the convoy and setting conditions for entry through a different crossing point, Merdare, where Kosovo customs are stationed.
"We will not go through Merdare because the controls there are done by Pristina authorities and they are not considered as legitimate by Russia and Serbia," Serbia's official Tanjug news agency quoted Konuzin as saying.
For months, Serbs have dumped rocks and soil on roads coming from the ethnic Albanian dominated south to block Kosovo authorities from stamping their authority over the defiant northern strip bordering Serbia.
Tensions rose this summer after Pristina's botched attempt to send customs officials into the Serb area. Since then Serb protesters have clashed with NATO peacekeepers and EU police, both seen by many Serbs as supporters of Kosovo's statehood.
Dozens of NATO soldiers from Germany and Austria were injured in a clash early this month, some by small arms fire, and scores of Serb protesters were hit by rubber bullets and tear gas canisters.
The violence prompted Germany to block Serbia's bid for EU candidate status last week. Approval for Serbia's candidacy was deferred until March 2012, conditional on Serbia persuading Kosovo Serbs to remove their roadblocks.
___
Dusan Stojanovic contributed from Belgrade.
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Polemical journalist and atheist Christopher Hitchens dead at 62 (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? British-born journalist and atheist intellectual Christopher Hitchens, who made the United States his home and backed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, died on Thursday at the age of 62.
Hitchens died in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of cancer of the esophagus, Vanity Fair magazine said.
"Christopher Hitchens - the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant - died today at the age of 62," Vanity Fair said.
A heavy smoker and drinker, Hitchens cut short a book tour for his memoir "Hitch 22" last year to undergo chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer.
As a journalist, war correspondent and literary critic, Hitchens carved out a reputation for barbed repartee, scathing critiques of public figures and a fierce intelligence.
In his 2007 book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," Hitchens took on major religions with his trenchant atheism. He argued that religion was the source of all tyranny and that many of the world's evils have been done in the name of religion.
The son of a British naval officer, Hitchens studied at Oxford University and worked as literary critic for the New Statesman magazine in London before moving to New York to work as a journalist in 1981. He settled in Washington the following year, initially as correspondent for the left-wing magazine The Nation. He retained his British citizenship when he became an American citizen in 2007.
Hitchens was not one to mince words. In his book on Bill Clinton "No one left to lie to", he called the former U.S. president a "rapist" and a "con man." He once referred to Mother Teresa of Calcutta as a "fanatical Albanian dwarf."
The author of 25 books - including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and George Orwell - and countless articles and columns, Hitchens never lost his biting humor.
"I'm a member of a cancer elite. I rather look down on people with lesser cancers," Hitchens said in an interview with CBS "60 Minutes" aired on March 6, 2011.
In a 2010 interview with Reuters, Hitchens dismissed criticism that he moved from left to right and helped former U.S. President George W. Bush sell the 2003 war with Iraq to the American public with what turned out to be bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.
"Saddam was an enemy of the civilized world and he should have been taken out a long time before," Hitchens said of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "I have no regrets about that at all."
The 2001 attacks on the United States by Islamic fundamentalists in hijacked passenger planes made Hitchens ever more critical of the role of religion in the world, and led him to appreciate the merits of American democracy.
"I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion, and organized religion," he wrote.
(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
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Fallout from FAMU: Ga. high schools suspend bands
ATLANTA (AP) ? The fallout from the death of a Florida A&M University drum major broadened Wednesday to nearly two dozen high schools in Georgia, where marching band activities were suspended over concerns of "inappropriate physical activity" between band mates.
A metro Atlanta school district began investigating after Robert Champion died Nov. 19. The Southwest DeKalb High graduate was found unresponsive on a bus parked in front of an Orlando hotel after a university football game, and authorities said his death involved hazing.
Another Florida A&M student, Bria Shante Hunter, who also attended Southwest DeKalb, told police she was severely beaten in a hazing ritual about three weeks before Champion's death.
Hunter, a freshman and clarinet player, said she was repeatedly hit in her legs by members of the "Red Dawg Order," a band club for Georgia natives. Authorities have said Champion was hazed, but have not described how.
Three band members were arrested in Hunter's case and charged with hazing. Two were also charged with battery.
Meanwhile, Florida authorities looking into Champion's death opened a new investigation after they uncovered possible employee fraud and misconduct at the university, according to documents released Wednesday.
In Georgia, Walter Woods, spokesman for the DeKalb County school district, said they were investigating marching bands at the district's 21 high schools after two problems over the summer. He declined to say whether the incidences involved hazing and said the students involved were not injured.
"Our interest is in protecting students, the safety of the students," said Woods. "We have notified schools to be vigilant of our existing policy, which is zero tolerance for harassment of any kind."
The bands' busy season ended last week with the conclusion of football season, but the Atlanta-area bands will still be able to perform in the Martin Luther King Day parade in Stone Mountain in January, Woods said. No marching bands are scheduled to perform in a football bowl game.
Decatur resident Keith Sailor, who is the president of the marching band booster club at Southwest DeKalb High School, said his son, a sophomore, has never had any problems with hazing.
"I'm pretty comfortable with him participating in the band," he said, declining further comment.
Experts say hazing has been found in students as young as 12, particularly when it involves a team activity like sports or band. Richard Sigal, a retired New Jersey sociology professor and expert on hazing, said schools need to examine whether it is happening.
"I think anytime you get a group of young people together, at some point, a tradition becomes established and that's what perpetuates hazing," Sigal said. "It's up to coaches, it's up to the principals, it's up to the band leaders to stop it."
In Florida, the state law enforcement agency sent letters to the head of the FAMU board and the head of the state university system, but they did not detail the potential fraud or misconduct, saying only that it involves school employees as well as "persons associated" with the university.
The school's president, James Ammons was hired more than four years ago as part of an effort to clear up past problems at the university. State audits found that some financial records could not be verified and there was questionable contracting. The college also could not account for millions of dollars in inventory.
Last week, the school's board of trustees publicly reprimanded Ammons after a contentious debate on whether he should have been placed on leave.
Solomon Badger, chairman of the FAMU board, said the university would cooperate with the new investigation.
"I didn't know anything about the fraud and I still don't," Badger said.
University officials have suspended the famed Marching 100 band from performances until the investigation into Champion's death is completed.
___
Fineout reported from Tallahassee.
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Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Condor recovery program beset by bullets (Providence Journal)
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