In the mountains of northeastern Mexico, archaeologists have unearthed thousands of ancient paintings on the walls of caves and ravines from a time before Spanish rule.
The rock art offers rare evidence from native cultures living in the area around the Sierra de San Carlos, a mountain range in Mexico's state of Tamaulipas, researchers say.
Almost 5,000 of these paintings were found across 11 different sites in the region, the researchers said. Created with red, yellow, black and white pigments, the images show animals from deer to lizards to centipedes, as well as people. Depictions of tents, hunting, fishing and possibly astronomical charts also offer a glimpse into the life of this mysterious culture.
The findings document the presence of pre-Hispanic groups, "where before it was said that there was nothing, when in fact it was inhabited by one or more cultures," archaeologist Gustavo Ramirez, of the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History, said in a statement.
The ancient people who once inhabited the mountains of Tamaulipas left very little behind for modern archaeologists to pore over. There is little known of their languages, rituals and customs, besides references to them by conquistadors and friars who colonized and Christianized the region.
Another archaeologist, Martha Garcia Sanchez, said these people were able to resist Spanish rule by living in the mountains, "where they had water, plants and animals to feed themselves."
The rock art was rediscovered in 2006, and archaeologists first started studying the site two years ago. Researchers have not yet been able to precisely date the paintings but further testing on samples of the pigments could reveal the age of the rock art.
"We have not found any ancient objects linked to the context, and because the paintings are on ravine walls and in the rainy season the sediments are washed away, all we have is gravel," said Ramirez.
The findings were presented during the Second Conference of Archaeological History in Mexico City.
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
Gallery: Europe's Oldest Rock Art Amazing Caves: Pictures of the Earth's Innards In Photos: Enormous Ancient Mexican Temple Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
Besieged Mexican town cheers arrival of soldiers
LA RUANA, Mexico (AP) Residents of a western Mexico area who endured months besieged by a drug cartel cheered the arrival of hundreds of Mexican soldiers Monday.
People in La Ruana in Michoacan state lined the main road to greet more than a dozen troop transports and heavily armed Humvees with applause and shouts of joy.
The town's supplies had been blocked after the Knights Templars cartel declared war on the hamlet. The cartel dominates much of the state, demanding extortion payments from businessmen and storeowners, and even low-wage workers.
In February, the town formed self-defense squads to kick the cartel out, drawing the wrath of the gang. Convoys of cartel gunmen attacked the town, which was forced to throw up stone barricades and build guard posts.
Supplies like gasoline, milk and cooking gas began to run low as cartel gunmen threatened to burn any trucks bringing in goods.
On Monday, hundreds of soldiers moved in, erecting checkpoints on the highway leading into La Ruana and setting up an operating base in the town.
"This war has been won!" Hipolito Mora, leader of the self-defense movement, told hundreds of cheering townspeople gathered along the main road, including dozens of self-defense patrol members wearing white T-shirts and carrying shotguns.
Mora said the town had agreed to stop community patrols and let the army take over security in La Ruana. But he said the community would keep its weapons and would start patrols again if the army left.
The idea that troops might come in and seize a town's weapons, or stay only a few weeks, worried people throughout the crime-ridden area. So in town after town along the main highway through Michoacan's hot lowlands known as the Tierra Caliente, self-defense squads welcomed the army's arrival, but vowed to keep their guns.
The highway is littered with the charred hulks of supply trucks, the smoking remains of burned-out sawmills and the fire-blackened walls of fruit warehouses set afire by the Knights Templars cartel in retaliation for the towns' rebellion.
In the nearby town of Buenavista, many of the masked, lightly armed self-defense patrol members manning a highway checkpoint said they welcomed the army but vowed to resist any attempts to take their guns.
They hung a banner beside the roadway: "Gentlemen of the federal police and the Mexican army, we would prefer to die at your hands, than at those of these stupid, stinking scum," it said, referring to the cartel.
A healthy dose of skepticism remained about the chances of success for sending the army into Michoacan a tactic that then-President Felipe Calderon used to launch his offensive against drug cartels in 2006.
The Michoacan-based Knights Templar is, by all accounts, at least as strong today as its predecessor cartel, the La Familia gang, was in 2006. Instead of attacking the cartel's strongholds in nearby cities like Apatzingan, the troops are fighting a sort of rear-guard action, protecting towns outside the main urban areas without going to the root of the problem.
Rafael Garcia Zamora, mayor of Coalcoman, a town largely cut off from the outside world after it formed its own self-defense force last week, said residents welcomed the arrival of troops, but worried the force might soon leave again and expose the town to the cartel's wrath.
"We don't doubt their ability," he said of the army. "But we need them to help us" root out the criminals and not let the cartel continue to grow.
"The government should have mobilized the army to do this 10 or 12 years ago," Garcia Zamora said.
"We have had temporary raids, with three or four thousand soldiers, but they come and they leave. And you know what? Every time after there is a raid, severed heads show up," he said, referring to drug cartel retaliation against those who help the army.
"People have the courage to speak up, but that has its consequences," he said.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Fighting to Save an Endangered Bird With Vomit
A psychological warfare program centered on vomit could help save the marbled murrelet, an endangered seabird that nests in California's old-growth redwood forests.
The robin-sized murrelet lives at sea but lays one pointy, blue-green egg each year on the flat, mossy branch of a redwood. While breeding, its back feathers morph from black to mottled brown to better match the forest. For two months, both parents race back and forth to the coast as far as 50 miles (80 kilometers) each day at speeds of up to 98 mph (158 km/h) while evading peregrine falcon and hawk attacks. After the chick hatches, it pecks off its redwood-colored down and, flying solo, launches straight for the ocean. Penguins have nothing on the murrelet.
"They're a seabird like a puffin, and they have this crazy lifestyle that's like a living link between the old-growth redwood forests and the Pacific Ocean," said Keith Bensen, a biologist at Redwood National Park. "It's strange to have an animal with webbed feet in the forest," he said.
Despite its amazing skills, the marbled-murrelet population is down by more than 90 percent from its 19th-century numbers in California, thanks to logging, fishing and pollution. Murrelets live as far north as Alaska, but the central California population is most at risk. Yet even though the state's remaining old-growth redwood trees are now protected, the murrelets continue to disappear.
The culprit: the egg-sucking, chick-eating Steller's jay.
About 4,000 murrelets remain in California, with about 300 to 600 in central California's Santa Cruz Mountains. Squirrels, ravens and owls also swipe murrelet eggs, but jays are the biggest thieves in California, gobbling up 80 percent of each year's brood. Unless more eggs survive, the central California population will go extinct within a century, according to a 2010 study published in the journal Biological Conservation.
To boost California's murrelet numbers, biologists in California's Redwood National and State Parks are fighting back against Steller's jays and their human enablers.
The art of avian war
With cash earmarked for murrelets from offshore-oil-spill restoration funds, the parks have the rare ability to fund research studies and restore habitat. The two-pronged approach will teach the black-crested jays to avoid murrelet eggs on pain of puking. More importantly, it will shrink the jay population by thwarting access to their primary food source human trash and food. [Image Gallery: Saving the Rare Marbled Murrelet]
"Every time folks throw out crumbs to bring out jays and squirrels, it's having a real impact on a very rare bird nesting overhead in an old-growth redwood tree," Bensen told OurAmazingPlanet.
A Western bird, the blue and black Steller's jays like to frequent cleared forest edges which are filled with bugs and berry bushes and campgrounds littered with tasty trash and crumbs. As humans spend more time in the forest, the jay's numbers are booming. Their density in campgrounds is nine times higher than in other forest areas, said Portia Halbert, an environmental scientist with the California State Parks.
"We see this crazy overlap of jays in campgrounds because of the density of food," Halbert told OurAmazingPlanet. The overpopulation also menaces federally protected species, such as snowy plovers, desert tortoises and California least terns the jays eat their eggs too.
Steller's jays don't seek out murrelet eggs. But when the birds circle picnic areas near murrelet nests, some discover the chicken-size eggs make a fine treat. The smart, savvy birds will return to the same spot over and over, searching for food. Murrelets, to their misfortune, nest in the same tree every year.
Masters of disguise, the first marbled murrelet nest wasn't discovered by scientists until 1974, in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. The seabird doesn't actually build a nest, instead choosing a flat branch covered in cozy moss and needles, with cover to hide from airborne predators. At dawn and dusk, parents switch roles, flying offshore to dive for fish and invertebrates. [Watch the mysterious marbled murrelet]
"For an animal that lives for some 20 years, losing an egg is a terrible, terrible loss," Bensen said. "They're investing an enormous amount of energy into that one baby."
Killing Steller's jays won't help the murrelets; even more of the marauding birds will invade campgrounds to compete for vacant territory, biologists have concluded. Plus, jays are part of the natural ecosystem, said Richard Golightly, a biologist at Humboldt State University in California. Instead, researchers think aversion training is the cheapest, most effective way to stop Steller's jays from snacking on murrelets.
"It freaks everybody out to train wild animals to do what you want, but it surprised the heck out of all of us how much more feasible it was than we thought," Bensen said.
World's worst Easter egg hunt
The plan, the brainchild of Humboldt State graduate student Pia Gabriel, centers on carbachol, an odorless, tasteless chemical that provokes vomiting with just a small swallow. Researchers fine-tuned the correct dose with lab tests at Humboldt State in 2009. Small chicken eggs, dyed blue-green and speckled with brown paint, were offered as meals to jays, with carbachol hidden inside. Wild Steller's jays in this first treatment group usually tried just one taste of the carbachol-filled fake eggs.
"All of a sudden, their wings will droop, and they throw up. That's exactly what you want a rapid response so within five minutes, they barf up whatever they ate," Bensen said. The quick action helps the jays link the eggs with the illness.
Some jays wouldn't even touch the eggs evidence that murrelet egg-nabbing is a learned behavior, Golightly said.
In spring 2010 and spring 2011, a team zip-tied hundreds of the copycat eggs to redwood-tree branches in several parks. Each chicken egg was painstakingly colored (Benjamin Moore Oceanfront 660) and speckled to resemble murrelet eggs. A control batch of red speckled eggs also decorated the forest.
"We've been accused of being the Easter bunny in the woods," Golightly told OurAmazingPlanet.
A second wave of eggs set out a few weeks later measured whether wild jays learned to avoid tossing their lunch. The mimic eggs reduced egg-snatching by anywhere from 37 percent to more than 70 percent, depending on where the eggs were deployed. For instance, one spot lost eggs to bears, so not as many jays got to sample the carbachol. (The bogus eggs were set low on branches, to avoid drawing jays toward real murrelet eggs.)
A retched success
The tests were so successful that Halbert applied for oil-spill restoration funds to start training Steller's jays in the state parks. In spring 2012, during murrelet nesting season, researchers spread hundreds of vomit-inducing eggs throughout Butano State Park and Portola Redwoods Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. This year, the project included Memorial Park, a county park with old-growth redwoods. [Nature's Giants: Tallest Trees on Earth]
"It's worked amazingly well," Halbert said."We've found a significant decrease in predations by jays, the number of times eggs get broken," she said. The effects were monitored with camera traps and a second wave of mimic eggs.
Reducing predation on murrelet nests by 40 percent to 70 percent would stabilize the Santa Cruz Mountains murrelet population, according to the 2010 study published in the journal Biological Conservation. That 40 percent minimum would drop the extinction risk from about 96 percent to about 5 percent over 100 years, and result in stable population growth, reported lead study author Zach Peery of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In 2012, the smallest cutback in egg attacks by Steller's jays and other predators was 44 percent, and the biggest was as much as 80 percent in the two state parks, researchers reported. The project cost $80 per treated hectare (2.4 acres).
When the enemy is full, starve them
Here's why taste aversion works so well for Steller's jays. Their fiercely territorial social structure keeps out untrained birds. Long-lived, with excellent memories, the jays will recognize and avoid those rare blue-green eggs that made them retch. Nothing else in the forest looks like a murrelet egg. If taste-aversion training were to spread through the murrelet's range, it would not be the first time a bird would require human babysitters to survive think of condors, who need devoted monitoring and care..
But Halbert said all the efforts to stop egg-stealing won't matter if the parks can't shrink the jay population by getting rid of their campground crumb food source. That's where the human psychology comes in. The parks hired an expert in public education and natural resources, Carolyn Ward, to help craft a message as finely tuned as any advertising company's.
"We're coming up with creative ways to change people's behavior," Halbert said.
Ward's research revealed most park visitors only read the first sentence on signs, so starting with the marbled murrelet's history was wasted effort. Now, with everything from stickers on the back of bathroom stalls to new signs at campsites, Redwood Parks visitors are warned to "Keep it crumb clean." This summer marks the new program's first big push, with campfire talks, tchotchkes for kids, brochures and YouTube videos that highlight the murrelet's plight.
At Big Basin Redwood State Park, Halbert has also installed animal-proof food lockers and trash cans. At Redwood National Park, the staff reconfigured the outdoor sinks so jays and squirrels can't steal leftovers from dishes.
While Redwood National Park is going crumb clean, the park will wait on the vomit eggs, Bensen said. "We're basically trying to prevent any food access to even the smallest crumb," he said. "With Steller's jays, just a couple Cheetos is enough. They'll keep coming and coming, and then eat the marbled murrelets. We want to cut that process off at the knees."
Future development
The "crumb clean" push comes as Big Basin gears up for a struggle over its first general plan, which will guide the park's future. The proposed plan, published in 2012, will expand areas of the park to new public use. But some groups, including the California Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, think the park should either close or restrict certain areas during murrelet breeding season, to help the endangered species recover.
A public hearing on the draft plan will be held today (May 17) in Santa Cruz, Calif., and a copy of the plan is available online.
"If people are looking for someone to blame for the problem the murrelet is having, I think everybody has some of that blame," Golightly said. "Cutting of the old-growth forests in the past is the primary thing that put us to this point, but presently, if you visit the parks and feed the animals, you're contributing, too. It is coming at the expense of the murrelet."
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas 12 Species on the Brink of Extinction 10 Species Success Stories Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The robin-sized murrelet lives at sea but lays one pointy, blue-green egg each year on the flat, mossy branch of a redwood. While breeding, its back feathers morph from black to mottled brown to better match the forest. For two months, both parents race back and forth to the coast as far as 50 miles (80 kilometers) each day at speeds of up to 98 mph (158 km/h) while evading peregrine falcon and hawk attacks. After the chick hatches, it pecks off its redwood-colored down and, flying solo, launches straight for the ocean. Penguins have nothing on the murrelet.
"They're a seabird like a puffin, and they have this crazy lifestyle that's like a living link between the old-growth redwood forests and the Pacific Ocean," said Keith Bensen, a biologist at Redwood National Park. "It's strange to have an animal with webbed feet in the forest," he said.
Despite its amazing skills, the marbled-murrelet population is down by more than 90 percent from its 19th-century numbers in California, thanks to logging, fishing and pollution. Murrelets live as far north as Alaska, but the central California population is most at risk. Yet even though the state's remaining old-growth redwood trees are now protected, the murrelets continue to disappear.
The culprit: the egg-sucking, chick-eating Steller's jay.
About 4,000 murrelets remain in California, with about 300 to 600 in central California's Santa Cruz Mountains. Squirrels, ravens and owls also swipe murrelet eggs, but jays are the biggest thieves in California, gobbling up 80 percent of each year's brood. Unless more eggs survive, the central California population will go extinct within a century, according to a 2010 study published in the journal Biological Conservation.
To boost California's murrelet numbers, biologists in California's Redwood National and State Parks are fighting back against Steller's jays and their human enablers.
The art of avian war
With cash earmarked for murrelets from offshore-oil-spill restoration funds, the parks have the rare ability to fund research studies and restore habitat. The two-pronged approach will teach the black-crested jays to avoid murrelet eggs on pain of puking. More importantly, it will shrink the jay population by thwarting access to their primary food source human trash and food. [Image Gallery: Saving the Rare Marbled Murrelet]
"Every time folks throw out crumbs to bring out jays and squirrels, it's having a real impact on a very rare bird nesting overhead in an old-growth redwood tree," Bensen told OurAmazingPlanet.
A Western bird, the blue and black Steller's jays like to frequent cleared forest edges which are filled with bugs and berry bushes and campgrounds littered with tasty trash and crumbs. As humans spend more time in the forest, the jay's numbers are booming. Their density in campgrounds is nine times higher than in other forest areas, said Portia Halbert, an environmental scientist with the California State Parks.
"We see this crazy overlap of jays in campgrounds because of the density of food," Halbert told OurAmazingPlanet. The overpopulation also menaces federally protected species, such as snowy plovers, desert tortoises and California least terns the jays eat their eggs too.
Steller's jays don't seek out murrelet eggs. But when the birds circle picnic areas near murrelet nests, some discover the chicken-size eggs make a fine treat. The smart, savvy birds will return to the same spot over and over, searching for food. Murrelets, to their misfortune, nest in the same tree every year.
Masters of disguise, the first marbled murrelet nest wasn't discovered by scientists until 1974, in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. The seabird doesn't actually build a nest, instead choosing a flat branch covered in cozy moss and needles, with cover to hide from airborne predators. At dawn and dusk, parents switch roles, flying offshore to dive for fish and invertebrates. [Watch the mysterious marbled murrelet]
"For an animal that lives for some 20 years, losing an egg is a terrible, terrible loss," Bensen said. "They're investing an enormous amount of energy into that one baby."
Killing Steller's jays won't help the murrelets; even more of the marauding birds will invade campgrounds to compete for vacant territory, biologists have concluded. Plus, jays are part of the natural ecosystem, said Richard Golightly, a biologist at Humboldt State University in California. Instead, researchers think aversion training is the cheapest, most effective way to stop Steller's jays from snacking on murrelets.
"It freaks everybody out to train wild animals to do what you want, but it surprised the heck out of all of us how much more feasible it was than we thought," Bensen said.
World's worst Easter egg hunt
The plan, the brainchild of Humboldt State graduate student Pia Gabriel, centers on carbachol, an odorless, tasteless chemical that provokes vomiting with just a small swallow. Researchers fine-tuned the correct dose with lab tests at Humboldt State in 2009. Small chicken eggs, dyed blue-green and speckled with brown paint, were offered as meals to jays, with carbachol hidden inside. Wild Steller's jays in this first treatment group usually tried just one taste of the carbachol-filled fake eggs.
"All of a sudden, their wings will droop, and they throw up. That's exactly what you want a rapid response so within five minutes, they barf up whatever they ate," Bensen said. The quick action helps the jays link the eggs with the illness.
Some jays wouldn't even touch the eggs evidence that murrelet egg-nabbing is a learned behavior, Golightly said.
In spring 2010 and spring 2011, a team zip-tied hundreds of the copycat eggs to redwood-tree branches in several parks. Each chicken egg was painstakingly colored (Benjamin Moore Oceanfront 660) and speckled to resemble murrelet eggs. A control batch of red speckled eggs also decorated the forest.
"We've been accused of being the Easter bunny in the woods," Golightly told OurAmazingPlanet.
A second wave of eggs set out a few weeks later measured whether wild jays learned to avoid tossing their lunch. The mimic eggs reduced egg-snatching by anywhere from 37 percent to more than 70 percent, depending on where the eggs were deployed. For instance, one spot lost eggs to bears, so not as many jays got to sample the carbachol. (The bogus eggs were set low on branches, to avoid drawing jays toward real murrelet eggs.)
A retched success
The tests were so successful that Halbert applied for oil-spill restoration funds to start training Steller's jays in the state parks. In spring 2012, during murrelet nesting season, researchers spread hundreds of vomit-inducing eggs throughout Butano State Park and Portola Redwoods Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. This year, the project included Memorial Park, a county park with old-growth redwoods. [Nature's Giants: Tallest Trees on Earth]
"It's worked amazingly well," Halbert said."We've found a significant decrease in predations by jays, the number of times eggs get broken," she said. The effects were monitored with camera traps and a second wave of mimic eggs.
Reducing predation on murrelet nests by 40 percent to 70 percent would stabilize the Santa Cruz Mountains murrelet population, according to the 2010 study published in the journal Biological Conservation. That 40 percent minimum would drop the extinction risk from about 96 percent to about 5 percent over 100 years, and result in stable population growth, reported lead study author Zach Peery of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In 2012, the smallest cutback in egg attacks by Steller's jays and other predators was 44 percent, and the biggest was as much as 80 percent in the two state parks, researchers reported. The project cost $80 per treated hectare (2.4 acres).
When the enemy is full, starve them
Here's why taste aversion works so well for Steller's jays. Their fiercely territorial social structure keeps out untrained birds. Long-lived, with excellent memories, the jays will recognize and avoid those rare blue-green eggs that made them retch. Nothing else in the forest looks like a murrelet egg. If taste-aversion training were to spread through the murrelet's range, it would not be the first time a bird would require human babysitters to survive think of condors, who need devoted monitoring and care..
But Halbert said all the efforts to stop egg-stealing won't matter if the parks can't shrink the jay population by getting rid of their campground crumb food source. That's where the human psychology comes in. The parks hired an expert in public education and natural resources, Carolyn Ward, to help craft a message as finely tuned as any advertising company's.
"We're coming up with creative ways to change people's behavior," Halbert said.
Ward's research revealed most park visitors only read the first sentence on signs, so starting with the marbled murrelet's history was wasted effort. Now, with everything from stickers on the back of bathroom stalls to new signs at campsites, Redwood Parks visitors are warned to "Keep it crumb clean." This summer marks the new program's first big push, with campfire talks, tchotchkes for kids, brochures and YouTube videos that highlight the murrelet's plight.
At Big Basin Redwood State Park, Halbert has also installed animal-proof food lockers and trash cans. At Redwood National Park, the staff reconfigured the outdoor sinks so jays and squirrels can't steal leftovers from dishes.
While Redwood National Park is going crumb clean, the park will wait on the vomit eggs, Bensen said. "We're basically trying to prevent any food access to even the smallest crumb," he said. "With Steller's jays, just a couple Cheetos is enough. They'll keep coming and coming, and then eat the marbled murrelets. We want to cut that process off at the knees."
Future development
The "crumb clean" push comes as Big Basin gears up for a struggle over its first general plan, which will guide the park's future. The proposed plan, published in 2012, will expand areas of the park to new public use. But some groups, including the California Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, think the park should either close or restrict certain areas during murrelet breeding season, to help the endangered species recover.
A public hearing on the draft plan will be held today (May 17) in Santa Cruz, Calif., and a copy of the plan is available online.
"If people are looking for someone to blame for the problem the murrelet is having, I think everybody has some of that blame," Golightly said. "Cutting of the old-growth forests in the past is the primary thing that put us to this point, but presently, if you visit the parks and feed the animals, you're contributing, too. It is coming at the expense of the murrelet."
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas 12 Species on the Brink of Extinction 10 Species Success Stories Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Video: Balloon crash in Turkey kills 1 injures 24
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Two hot air balloons collided mid-air during a sightseeing tour of volcanic rock formations in Turkey on Monday, causing one of them to crash to the ground, officials said. One Brazilian tourist was killed while 24 other people on board were injured.
The ascending balloon struck another balloon's wicker basket above it, causing a tear that sent it plunging to the ground, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
The passengers on board the balloon that crashed were mostly tourists from Asia, Spain and Brazil, according to Abdurrahman Savas, the governor of Nevsehir province. Many had fractured bones and one of them, an elderly passenger, was in serious condition.
The balloons were flying above scenic canyons and volcanic cones of the Cappadocia region, a popular tourist destination some 300 kilometers (190 miles) from the capital, Ankara. Cappadocia is famed for its "fairy chimney" volcanic cones and its subterranean cities carved out of soft stone.
It was the second fatal accident in Cappadocia since balloon sightseeing tours were launched there more than a decade ago. In 2009, a British tourist died when two balloons also collided mid-air.
In February, a balloon caught fire and crashed in Egypt, killing 19 tourists.
The ascending balloon struck another balloon's wicker basket above it, causing a tear that sent it plunging to the ground, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
The passengers on board the balloon that crashed were mostly tourists from Asia, Spain and Brazil, according to Abdurrahman Savas, the governor of Nevsehir province. Many had fractured bones and one of them, an elderly passenger, was in serious condition.
The balloons were flying above scenic canyons and volcanic cones of the Cappadocia region, a popular tourist destination some 300 kilometers (190 miles) from the capital, Ankara. Cappadocia is famed for its "fairy chimney" volcanic cones and its subterranean cities carved out of soft stone.
It was the second fatal accident in Cappadocia since balloon sightseeing tours were launched there more than a decade ago. In 2009, a British tourist died when two balloons also collided mid-air.
In February, a balloon caught fire and crashed in Egypt, killing 19 tourists.
Wildlife Bandits: How Criminology Can Fight Poaching
Newark, N.J. With no shortage of human-on-human misdeeds, criminologists haven't typically concerned themselves with crimes against wildlife and the environment. But with poaching raging out of control in several areas of the world, that may be changing.
"There is a growing sense of urgency about what's going on in the environment," Todd Clear, dean of Rutgers University's School of Criminal Justice, said here at a symposium Tuesday (May 14) on wildlife crime.
A variety of new research projects highlighted during the conference show that poaching and crimes against wildlife do follow patterns seen in other areas of criminology, knowledge that could be used to prevent these misdeeds. Famed Rutgers criminologist Ronald Clarke called on biologists and criminologists to work together to fight poaching and other issues where illegal acts are committed against nature.
As with other crimes, poaching often takes place in certain hotspots where conditions are optimal. Rhinos and elephants, for example, are often shot near watering holes where they predictably return to drink and the poaching of elephants and rhinos is at an all-time high in many areas. Poaching has already pushed rhinos to extinction in Vietnam, for example. [Black Market Horns: Images from a Rhino Bust]
Andrew Lemieux, a scientist at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, has outfitted rangers in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park with GPS-enabled cameras that allow them to cheaply document signs of crimes like poaching, setting animal snares or harvesting of firewood. The project, which began earlier this year, will help rangers know where to go to best prevent these illicit activities, he said during his presentation.
'Hot products'
Animals like parrots are also desirable to poachers in the same way certain "hot products" like cellphones and jewels are desirable to thieves. These products can be described by the acronym "CRAVED," which stands for concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable and disposable, Clarke said. Most parrots poached from the Peruvian Amazon, for example, meet these criteria, and are opportunistically plucked from the forest by villagers looking for supplemental income, said Stephen Pires, a Florida International University researcher.
The same goes for fish, which are illegally caught more often when they are CRAVED. Fish found in multiple recipes, a measure of enjoyableness, are nine times more likely to be caught illegally than those less often found in cookbooks, said Gohar Petrossian, a researcher at William Paterson University in New Jersey. There are also 10 ports around the world that account for a large percentage of illegal and unregulated fishing, she said. In the same way the most crimes occur near a perpetrator's home, the illegal fishing tended to take place near these ports, Petrossian said.
Poverty also plays a large role, said Kenyan scientist and conservationist Richard Leakey, in his keynote address at the conference. In many cases poachers are opportunistic, poaching to supplement their incomes, or merely survive. Throwing money at the problem, like hiring rangers, doesn't necessarily help, Leakey said. Some rangers in East Africa make about $500 per month. If you've got 10 elephant tusks, though, you could make a cool $10,000. It's easy to see how rangers could be bought off, especially if poaching seems like the only viable way to feed one's family, said Leaky, who is the son of famed paleontologist and fossil hunters Louis and Mary Leakey, and himself a paleoanthropologist.
"If you haven't got enough money to see your kid through the next semester of school, and if you can be offered several years worth of income by turning a blind eye who wouldn't?" Leakey said. "Hell, I would if my family were at stake."
Too often Westerners ignore the underlying poverty and assume the people committing these crimes have completely different values, Leakey said. "I think we need to change the idea that if you went to Cambridge or Rutgers, you have a different value set."
Taking aim at poaching
Besides dealing with poverty, Leakey offered two options to fight poaching. First, he advocated building more fences around large reserves a suggestion that was met with some resistance by at least one ecologist at the conference, who questioned Leakey after his talk about the fence's ability to stop elephants. Leakey noted that electrified fences were quite capable of stopping the large animals. In places where they've been installed, he added, sheep herders have come to rely on fences to protect their flock from predators inside the parks meaning they can help both people and animals, he said.
Fenced reserves have helped South Africa prevent more poaching than many of its neighbors, Leakey added (athough even in South Africa rhino poaching is at a record high). While this takes funding, he said, the problem is not lack of money per se, but a lack of political will.
By making it harder to enter and exit reserves, fences increase both the risks and difficulties involved in poaching, both widely accepted tenets of crime prevention, Clarke said.
The second tool to fight poaching is awareness. One of the main reasons that poaching of elephants and rhinos has shot up in the past few years is due to growing demand in China for ivory and medicinal products (although rhino horns are made of the same material in finger nails and have no curative properties, they are desired for their supposed healing powers in traditional Chinese medicine). But Leakey said that most of these consumers buying ivory trinkets, or visiting traditional pharmacies have no idea these animals are dying out. [10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye]
Increasing awareness would likely reduce demand for these products. As with other illegal activities, reduced rewards mean reduced crime, Clarke said.
In 1989, when Leakey headed the Kenya Wildlife Service, he came up with the idea to burn 12 tons of elephant tusks to bring public attention to poaching, which in the late '80s had flared up. The ploy worked, cutting the value of ivory by a factor of 30 and almost single-handedly suppressing elephant poaching for nearly two decades, Clarke said.
Perhaps it's time to do something similar, he said. But as to what exactly that might be, Leakey didn't have any concrete suggestions.
"We need to get youngsters in the conservation world to think outside the box," he said. "Thinking inside the box isn't working... continuing to talk, talk, talk nothing gets done."
Email Douglas Main or follow him on Twitter or Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook or Google+. Article originally on LiveScience.com.
In Images: 100 Most Threatened Species In Photos: Endangered and Threatened Wildlife Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
"There is a growing sense of urgency about what's going on in the environment," Todd Clear, dean of Rutgers University's School of Criminal Justice, said here at a symposium Tuesday (May 14) on wildlife crime.
A variety of new research projects highlighted during the conference show that poaching and crimes against wildlife do follow patterns seen in other areas of criminology, knowledge that could be used to prevent these misdeeds. Famed Rutgers criminologist Ronald Clarke called on biologists and criminologists to work together to fight poaching and other issues where illegal acts are committed against nature.
As with other crimes, poaching often takes place in certain hotspots where conditions are optimal. Rhinos and elephants, for example, are often shot near watering holes where they predictably return to drink and the poaching of elephants and rhinos is at an all-time high in many areas. Poaching has already pushed rhinos to extinction in Vietnam, for example. [Black Market Horns: Images from a Rhino Bust]
Andrew Lemieux, a scientist at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, has outfitted rangers in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park with GPS-enabled cameras that allow them to cheaply document signs of crimes like poaching, setting animal snares or harvesting of firewood. The project, which began earlier this year, will help rangers know where to go to best prevent these illicit activities, he said during his presentation.
'Hot products'
Animals like parrots are also desirable to poachers in the same way certain "hot products" like cellphones and jewels are desirable to thieves. These products can be described by the acronym "CRAVED," which stands for concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable and disposable, Clarke said. Most parrots poached from the Peruvian Amazon, for example, meet these criteria, and are opportunistically plucked from the forest by villagers looking for supplemental income, said Stephen Pires, a Florida International University researcher.
The same goes for fish, which are illegally caught more often when they are CRAVED. Fish found in multiple recipes, a measure of enjoyableness, are nine times more likely to be caught illegally than those less often found in cookbooks, said Gohar Petrossian, a researcher at William Paterson University in New Jersey. There are also 10 ports around the world that account for a large percentage of illegal and unregulated fishing, she said. In the same way the most crimes occur near a perpetrator's home, the illegal fishing tended to take place near these ports, Petrossian said.
Poverty also plays a large role, said Kenyan scientist and conservationist Richard Leakey, in his keynote address at the conference. In many cases poachers are opportunistic, poaching to supplement their incomes, or merely survive. Throwing money at the problem, like hiring rangers, doesn't necessarily help, Leakey said. Some rangers in East Africa make about $500 per month. If you've got 10 elephant tusks, though, you could make a cool $10,000. It's easy to see how rangers could be bought off, especially if poaching seems like the only viable way to feed one's family, said Leaky, who is the son of famed paleontologist and fossil hunters Louis and Mary Leakey, and himself a paleoanthropologist.
"If you haven't got enough money to see your kid through the next semester of school, and if you can be offered several years worth of income by turning a blind eye who wouldn't?" Leakey said. "Hell, I would if my family were at stake."
Too often Westerners ignore the underlying poverty and assume the people committing these crimes have completely different values, Leakey said. "I think we need to change the idea that if you went to Cambridge or Rutgers, you have a different value set."
Taking aim at poaching
Besides dealing with poverty, Leakey offered two options to fight poaching. First, he advocated building more fences around large reserves a suggestion that was met with some resistance by at least one ecologist at the conference, who questioned Leakey after his talk about the fence's ability to stop elephants. Leakey noted that electrified fences were quite capable of stopping the large animals. In places where they've been installed, he added, sheep herders have come to rely on fences to protect their flock from predators inside the parks meaning they can help both people and animals, he said.
Fenced reserves have helped South Africa prevent more poaching than many of its neighbors, Leakey added (athough even in South Africa rhino poaching is at a record high). While this takes funding, he said, the problem is not lack of money per se, but a lack of political will.
By making it harder to enter and exit reserves, fences increase both the risks and difficulties involved in poaching, both widely accepted tenets of crime prevention, Clarke said.
The second tool to fight poaching is awareness. One of the main reasons that poaching of elephants and rhinos has shot up in the past few years is due to growing demand in China for ivory and medicinal products (although rhino horns are made of the same material in finger nails and have no curative properties, they are desired for their supposed healing powers in traditional Chinese medicine). But Leakey said that most of these consumers buying ivory trinkets, or visiting traditional pharmacies have no idea these animals are dying out. [10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye]
Increasing awareness would likely reduce demand for these products. As with other illegal activities, reduced rewards mean reduced crime, Clarke said.
In 1989, when Leakey headed the Kenya Wildlife Service, he came up with the idea to burn 12 tons of elephant tusks to bring public attention to poaching, which in the late '80s had flared up. The ploy worked, cutting the value of ivory by a factor of 30 and almost single-handedly suppressing elephant poaching for nearly two decades, Clarke said.
Perhaps it's time to do something similar, he said. But as to what exactly that might be, Leakey didn't have any concrete suggestions.
"We need to get youngsters in the conservation world to think outside the box," he said. "Thinking inside the box isn't working... continuing to talk, talk, talk nothing gets done."
Email Douglas Main or follow him on Twitter or Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook or Google+. Article originally on LiveScience.com.
In Images: 100 Most Threatened Species In Photos: Endangered and Threatened Wildlife Top 10 Craziest Environmental Ideas Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Amalric plays a Frenchman in America in 'Jimmy P'
CANNES, France (AP) Playing a Freudian analyst helped Mathieu Amalric overcome his fear and loathing of psychotherapy.
The French actor depicts a maverick academic counseling Benicio Del Toro's Native American war vet in "Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian," director Arnaud Desplechin's Cannes Film Festival contender.
Based on a true case study from the late 1940s, it's the story of two men doctor and patient who go on difficult journeys into their own minds.
Amalric says he went on a similar trip himself. Before making the movie, psychoanalysis "frightened me so much that I rejected it, because my parental culture that told me maybe psychoanalysis had to do with weakness."
"You are not supposed to show weakness. You are supposed to 'be a man' ... That's what my father would think of psychoanalysis."
What the 47-year-old actor found through the movie was something different "a world of adventure: of research, of physical danger and how the body and the mind expand."
Analysts could put that on their calling cards. No wonder Desplechin says the movie is "a manifesto for psychoanalysis," as well "a film about a man who needs to heal his own soul."
Amalric most famous internationally as the villain in James Bond adventure "Quantum of Solace" plays real-life French analyst Georges Devereux, who moved to the United States in the 1930s. He spent time living with Mojave Indians and helped develop the field of ethnopsychiatry, which studies the ways mental illness is understood in different cultural contexts.
Del Toro is his patient Jimmy Picard, who returned from World War II service in France with a head injury and debilitating psychological symptoms his doctors were unable to diagnose.
One of 20 films competing for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the movie is a trans-Atlantic hybrid an American story told by a French writer-director with a cast including Amalric, Puerto Rico-born Del Toro and British actress Gina McKee as Devereux's sophisticated love interest.
Desplechin says he sees it less as a specifically American tale than as a story of displaced people: both Jimmy, living on a Montana reservation, and Devereux, who initially struggled to find support for his ideas in the U.S.
Amalric, one of France's busiest actors, is such a Cannes darling he once appeared in three competition films in the same year. This year he's in two "Jimmy P." and Roman Polanski's "Venus in Fur."
He says he enjoyed his time as a fish out of water filming in the U.S. "Jimmy P." was shot in Monroe, Michigan, a place Amalric remembers with a shudder of Gallic horror: "There was nothing there. Nothing."
"It was very intense, and the situation of the shooting itself made it even stronger, the fact that we would live all together in a hotel where there was nothing to do," he said during an interview on a Cannes rooftop terrace that would be idyllic if not for a bitter wind off the Mediterranean. "It was very close to the situation they were living in the middle of nothing."
The actor and Del Toro share a strong onscreen bond in the talk-heavy film. For long stretches the movie is an intense two-hander, with the slight Amalric and the beefy Del Toro making a compelling double act. Del Toro plays Jimmy with stoic understatement, while Amalric's Devereux is a piano-playing bundle of energy.
Amalric said he was initially surprised by Del Toro's working method. The actor didn't like to socialize off the set, or to rehearse a technique Amalric now says turned out to be invaluable.
"During psychoanalysis, the words surprise you," he said. "You don't know why these words are coming out. But an actor is supposed to know his lines by heart, so you have this paradox.
"I didn't understand it," he said. "I understood it yesterday after seeing the film."
___
Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless
'Trek' does $70.6M but falls short of studio hopes
LOS ANGELES (AP) "Star Trek: Into Darkness" has warped its way to a $70.6 million domestic launch from Friday to Sunday, though it's not setting any light-speed records with a debut that's lower than the studio's expectations.
The latest voyage of the starship Enterprise fell short of its predecessor, 2009's "Star Trek," which opened with $75.2 million.
Since premiering Wednesday in huge-screen IMAX theaters and expanding Thursday to general cinemas, "Into Darkness" has pulled in $84.1 million, well below distributor Paramount's initial forecast of $100 million. The film added $40 million overseas, pushing its total to $80.5 million since it began rolling out internationally a week earlier.
The "Star Trek" sequel bumped "Iron Man 3" down to second place after two weekends on top. Robert Downey Jr.'s superhero saga took in $35.2 million domestically to lift its receipts to $337.1 million. Overseas, "Iron Man 3" added $40.2 million, raising its international total to $736.2 million and its worldwide tally to nearly $1.1 billion.
While "Iron Man 3" and "Into Darkness" did well overseas, they were outmatched by the debut of Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby," which followed its domestic debut a week earlier with a wide rollout internationally. "Gatsby" pulled in $42.1 million overseas, coming in a bit ahead of both "Iron Man 3" and "Into Darkness."
Domestically, "Gatsby" held up well at No. 3 with $23.4 million, lifting its total to $90.2 million.
In today's Hollywood of bigger, better sequels, follow-up films often outdo the box office of their predecessors, as each "Iron Man" sequel has done. While "Into Darkness" earned good reviews and is getting strong word-of-mouth from fans, the film did not quite measure up to the opening weekend of director J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" reboot from four years ago, at least domestically.
"'Star Trek' remains a fan-boy movie. It doesn't seem to have the same kind of cross-over appeal as say an 'Iron Man' or some of these others," said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com. "It's a very specific brand, but I think the general public would love this movie, because it's such an action movie. But to get a hundred-million-plus opening weekend, unless you're 'Twilight,' you really have to cross over to all audiences."
Paramount points out that overseas business is up in many markets, though, so worldwide, the sequel is off to a better start.
"Because of the nature of the franchise, because of how many movies have been made and the various forms of the TV shows, I'm not sure that 'Star Trek' goes by the rules of normal sequels. I think each movie stands on its own, because it's a unique franchise," said Don Harris, Paramount's head of distribution. "My goal was always that we grow the franchise. We're clearly seeing by today's numbers that the movie is being embraced on a worldwide basis in a way we've never seen before."
Harris said that domestically, "Into Darkness" finished its first weekend 6 percent ahead of revenues for 2009's "Star Trek," which got a head-start with $4 million in Thursday night previews to give it a $79.2 million haul through the first Sunday.
But "Into Darkness" had a full day of screenings Thursday plus its Wednesday IMAX business. Unlike the first movie, which played only in 2-D, the sequel also had the benefit of 3-D screenings that cost a few dollars more. Yet even with the 3-D upcharge and the earlier debut, it came away with just $4.9 million more than its predecessor through Sunday.
Still, it's a solid starting place for the movie to live long and prosper at theaters, with Paramount hoping "Into Darkness" can surpass the $385 million worldwide total of "Star Trek."
"I think we're well along on that road," Harris said.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Star Trek: Into Darkness," $70.6 million ($40 million international).
2. "Iron Man 3," $35.2 million ($40.2 million international).
3. "The Great Gatsby," $23.4 million ($42.1 million international)
4. "Pain & Gain," $3.1 million.
5. "The Croods," $2.75 million.
6. "42," $2.73 million.
7. "Oblivion," $2.2 million.
8. "Mud," $2.16 million.
9. "Peeples," $2.15 million.
10. "The Big Wedding," $1.1 million.
__
Estimated weekend ticket sales at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for films distributed overseas by Hollywood studios, according to Rentrak:
1. "The Great Gatsby," $42.1 million.
2. "Iron Man 3," $40.2 million.
3. "Star Trek: Into Darkness," $40 million.
4. "Epic," $14.5 million.
5. "Fast & Furious 6," $13.8 million.
6. "The Croods," $10.6 million.
7. "Evil Dead," $5.6 million.
8. "Oblivion," $4.7 million.
9. "Montage," $4.1 million.
10. "Mama," $1.7 million.
__
Online:
http://www.hollywood.com
http://www.rentrak.com
___
Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.
Jon Stewart's humor a hit with millions of envious Chinese
By Jane Lee
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Humor may not always translate well, but Jon Stewart is picking up millions of fans in China, where his gloves-off political satire is refreshing for many in a country where such criticism is a rarity - especially when directed at their own leaders.
A recent segment on North Korea scored over 4 million views on microblogger Sina Weibo, and even stodgy state broadcaster CCTV has used Stewart's "The Daily Show" in a report, though they wouldn't let a Chinese version of him near their cameras.
Recent popular sequences have included one in which Stewart lampooned the Chinese hackers who hacked into the New York Times computer system earlier this year, wondering if that was the best they could do.
But far from squelching Stewart, CCTV even used one of his sequences on Guantanamo Bay to criticize Obama in a regular broadcast - a move widely derided by netizens.
In China, however, such criticism tends not to be welcomed by the government. Dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who regularly criticizes the government for what he sees as its flouting of the rule of law and human rights, was detained for 81 days in 2011, sparking an international outcry.
"There's nothing like political satire here," said David Moses, who studies and writes about Chinese humor.
Though the exact timing of Stewart's entrance to China is unclear, many have been watching him for four or five years, mainly through the Internet and Weibo.
"Being a journalist, you have to find out the truth," said Mao Moyu, a Shanghai journalism student who got hooked on Stewart four years ago.
"If there's ... something that hurts the public interest you have to stand out, no matter how sharp the thing is. You have to stand out and say that's not right."
Part of Stewart's popularity is that he seems cool to young people in love with all things foreign, but a thirst for satire that is not afraid to show its face contributes too, Moses said.
The closest thing that exists in China is coded references and puns that tweak official pronouncements or sound like obscenities.
"That's just shooting a finger at the government. But this is full-fledged jokes and routines about North Korea or about China and trade...It's just what they wish they could do here," Moses said.
Free translations into Chinese by Stewart's fans have boosted his popularity. In fact, one - known as Gu Da Bai Hua - now even has his own fan base.
China's thirst for foreign satire is so great that Stewart is not the only popular U.S. comic. Some Chinese say they prefer rival television satirist Stephen Colbert - although humor may not be the only issue at stake.
"I think I like Stephen Colbert's pronunciation more because it's much clearer for me," said Shanghai student Peng Cheng.
(Editing by Elaine Lies and Michael Perry)
Frogs Swallow Using Eyeballs: Exhibit Reveals Creatures' Quirks
NEW YORK Neon green, vivid orange, striped and spotted the frogs are back! An exhibit featuring live frogs from around the world is returning to the American Museum of Natural History here in New York.
The exhibition, entitled "Frogs: A Chorus of Colors," features more than 150 live frogs from approximately 25 species, from the brilliantly colored poison dart frog to the giant African bullfrog. The exhibit opens Saturday (May 18) and runs through Jan. 5, 2014.
"Frogs are so weird that although we might think we know frogs really well, there's just so much about their biology and what they do which is a chance in the exhibition to really surprise people," exhibit curator Christopher J. Raxworthy, a curator in the museum's department of herpetology and faculty member in its Richard Gilder graduate school, told LiveScience at a press preview of the exhibit.
The display introduces visitors to the biology and evolution of these wacky and wonderful amphibians, as well as their importance to ecosystems and the dangers they face. The colorful creatures, which were bred in captivity, peer through glass cases containing recreations of their natural habitats. [Image Gallery: Cute and Colorful Frogs]
Highlights include the pale-blue Mexican dumpy frog from the semiarid subtropical lowland forests in Mexico and the appropriately named tomato frog from the lowlands of Madagascar.
The frogs possess a certain mystique for visitors. People are drawn to the amphibians' bright colors and strange physiques. "I think that, aesthetically, it really gives people a high," Raxworthy said. In addition, there are the quirky things frogs do.
For example, many frogs swallow using their eyeballs. "Once they have prey in their mouth, to help force it down their throat, they actually pull their eyeballs down," Raxworthy said. And here s another wacky tidbit: African clawed frogs were once used for pregnancy tests.
The exhibit's centerpiece is a large poison-dart-frog vivarium containing more than 80 frogs, including bumblebee poison frogs, Bastimentos strawberry poison frogs and green-leg poison frogs. In the wild, poison dart frogs concentrate the toxins found in ants and other insects they eat into a powerful poison that the Ember , the indigenous people of northwestern Columbia, rub onto darts for weapons.
Active research in the museum's department of herpetology is also featured in the exhibit. Biologists are still discovering new frog species. More than 6,000 species have been described so far, and that number is increasing rapidly, Raxworthy said.
Nonetheless, frog populations are dwindling around the world, and the exhibit features a short video about some of the threats frogs face. Nearly one-third of amphibians 88 percent of which are frogs are threatened, and at least 34 species of frogs (and possibly many more) are extinct. Habitat loss is a major cause, but a mysterious disease caused by the chytrid fungus is also to blame.
"There's lots we don't fully understand, but it s very sad to see a big chunk of amphibian diversity now also suffering because of this disease," Raxworthy said.
The purpose of the exhibit is to educate people about these fascinating creatures, Raxworthy said. For visitors, he said, "This is a great chance to find out interesting facts about frogs you probably have no idea about. The more you dig, the more weird and wonderful it gets."
Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
40 Freaky Frog Photos Album: Bizarre Frogs, Lizards and Salamanders 6 Strange Species Discovered in Museums Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The exhibition, entitled "Frogs: A Chorus of Colors," features more than 150 live frogs from approximately 25 species, from the brilliantly colored poison dart frog to the giant African bullfrog. The exhibit opens Saturday (May 18) and runs through Jan. 5, 2014.
"Frogs are so weird that although we might think we know frogs really well, there's just so much about their biology and what they do which is a chance in the exhibition to really surprise people," exhibit curator Christopher J. Raxworthy, a curator in the museum's department of herpetology and faculty member in its Richard Gilder graduate school, told LiveScience at a press preview of the exhibit.
The display introduces visitors to the biology and evolution of these wacky and wonderful amphibians, as well as their importance to ecosystems and the dangers they face. The colorful creatures, which were bred in captivity, peer through glass cases containing recreations of their natural habitats. [Image Gallery: Cute and Colorful Frogs]
Highlights include the pale-blue Mexican dumpy frog from the semiarid subtropical lowland forests in Mexico and the appropriately named tomato frog from the lowlands of Madagascar.
The frogs possess a certain mystique for visitors. People are drawn to the amphibians' bright colors and strange physiques. "I think that, aesthetically, it really gives people a high," Raxworthy said. In addition, there are the quirky things frogs do.
For example, many frogs swallow using their eyeballs. "Once they have prey in their mouth, to help force it down their throat, they actually pull their eyeballs down," Raxworthy said. And here s another wacky tidbit: African clawed frogs were once used for pregnancy tests.
The exhibit's centerpiece is a large poison-dart-frog vivarium containing more than 80 frogs, including bumblebee poison frogs, Bastimentos strawberry poison frogs and green-leg poison frogs. In the wild, poison dart frogs concentrate the toxins found in ants and other insects they eat into a powerful poison that the Ember , the indigenous people of northwestern Columbia, rub onto darts for weapons.
Active research in the museum's department of herpetology is also featured in the exhibit. Biologists are still discovering new frog species. More than 6,000 species have been described so far, and that number is increasing rapidly, Raxworthy said.
Nonetheless, frog populations are dwindling around the world, and the exhibit features a short video about some of the threats frogs face. Nearly one-third of amphibians 88 percent of which are frogs are threatened, and at least 34 species of frogs (and possibly many more) are extinct. Habitat loss is a major cause, but a mysterious disease caused by the chytrid fungus is also to blame.
"There's lots we don't fully understand, but it s very sad to see a big chunk of amphibian diversity now also suffering because of this disease," Raxworthy said.
The purpose of the exhibit is to educate people about these fascinating creatures, Raxworthy said. For visitors, he said, "This is a great chance to find out interesting facts about frogs you probably have no idea about. The more you dig, the more weird and wonderful it gets."
Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
40 Freaky Frog Photos Album: Bizarre Frogs, Lizards and Salamanders 6 Strange Species Discovered in Museums Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Turkey: 2 Brazilians killed in balloon crash
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) A hot air balloon collided with another balloon mid-air during a sightseeing tour of volcanic rock formations in Turkey and crashed to the ground on Monday, killing two Brazilian tourists and injuring 23 other people on board, officials said.
The accident occurred above central Turkey's Cappadocia region, when an ascending balloon struck another balloon's wicker basket above it, causing a tear in the balloon's fabric and sending it plunging to the ground.
The accident the second fatal one in Cappadocia since operations began more than a decade ago has put the spotlight on balloon safety and Turkey's civil aviation agency said it had launched an inquiry into the accident. As the tours become increasingly popular, there are questions as to whether too many balloons may be launching over Cappadocia at the same time. In 2009, a British tourist was killed and nine other people were injured when two balloons also collided.
The passengers on board the balloon that crashed were mostly tourists from Brazil, Argentina and Spain, according to Abdurrahman Savas, the governor of Nevsehir province. Many had fractured bones and were being treated in hospital around Nevsehir.
A Canada-based American tourist who witnessed the accident from another balloon, said and the crash occurred some 45 minutes after as many as 100 balloons had taken off for the early morning tour.
"We could hear the radio chatter and we knew something was happening. There was a frantic urgent transmission: 'Release your parachute! Release your parachute!" said Ross, whose balloon was some 200 meters (yards) away from the vessel that crashed.
"It was probably some 300 meters in the air and it descended increasingly rapidly to the ground," he said in a telephone interview. "There was a large tear in the fabric, probably some 10 to 15 meters long."
As his balloon flew directly over the crash site, Ross said he saw one person lying on the ground while other passengers were still inside the basket. Several ambulances and trucks were converging on to the scene.
Ross, a professor at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said that he and his wife had commented before the accident that some of the balloons were travelling "quite close to each other."
Halil Uluer, owner of Anatolian Balloons which operated the tour, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that it appeared that one of the tourists had died of a heart attack. Savas, the governor, said the second person died in hospital. They were aged 71 and 65, Anadolu said.
The balloons were flying above scenic canyons and volcanic cones of the Cappadocia region, a popular tourist destination some 300 kilometers (190 miles) from the capital, Ankara. Cappadocia is famed for its "fairy chimney" volcanic cones and its subterranean cities carved out of soft stone.
In February, a balloon caught fire and crashed in Egypt, killing 19 tourists.
S_47P::::10 Things to Know for Today
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:
1. GOP LOOKS TO CAPITALIZE ON OBAMA WOES
Many Republicans would like to deny the president a victory in immigration reform, which is being considered by the Senate today.
2. FIERCE FIGHTING ON BORDER AS KERRY PRESSES FOR PEACE IN SYRIA
Twenty-three fighters from the militant Hezbollah group were killed in a fight for a strategic town near Lebanon on the day Kerry is flying to the Middle East.
3. TORNADOES LASH MIDWEST
An Oklahoma trailer park was destroyed and one man killed as the dangerous storms moved east.
4. THE TOLL OF MILITARY SEX ABUSE
The AP reports that more than 85,000 veterans were treated last year for injuries or illnesses stemming from sex assault or harassment at work.
5. HOW MUCH POWERBALL JACKPOT COULD BUY
The $590.5 million winning ticket, which was bought in Zephyrhills, Fla., but hasn't been claimed, could pay for the small Florida city's budget 12 times over.
6. SPLIT-SECOND DECISION BEFORE A HOSTAGE WAS KILLED
A Long Island police officer fired when a masked man holding the college student in a headlock pointed the gun at him, killing the gunman and the 21-year-old hostage.
7. HOT AIR BALLOONS COLLIDE
The two balloons crashed in Turkey during a sightseeing tour of volcanic rock formations, killing a Brazilian tourist and injuring over 20.
8. WHY MEASLES ARE SURGING IN THE UK
Officials attribute the spike in cases to the parents who declined vaccines more than a decade ago because of research that suggested a link to autism.
9. TAYLOR SWIFT NABS 8 TROPHIES AT BILLBOARD AWARDS
Justin Bieber and Madonna were also big winners, but the country star won for top artist and top Billboard 200 album for "Red."
10. WHO'S FOOTING THE BILL FOR SOCHI OLYMPICS
The Russian government has gotten state-controlled companies and tycoons to cover more than half of the $51 billion price tag for the 2014 Winter Games.
Breakaway Scotland to face high saver protection costs - UK study
By William James
LONDON (Reuters) - The cost of protecting Scottish savers would prove difficult to bear if the country broke away from the rest of the UK, a study by the Treasury said on Monday.
The findings come in the latest paper from the British government on how independence would impact the country. On Sunday the Treasury said an independent Scotland would have a huge financial sector relative to its economy, leaving it vulnerable to a Cyprus-style banking crisis.
Existing schemes to provide a deposit guarantee to British savers and protect pension payouts would not cover Scotland if its voters decide to break away from the UK in a referendum due to be held next September, the Treasury said on Monday.
"Arrangements that protect UK savers from financial shocks could be difficult and expensive to maintain in an independent Scotland," the report said.
The UK currently guarantees bank deposits up to 85,000 pounds ($129,100), paid for by a levy on its financial sector. However the likely structure of the Scottish banking industry would prove less suited to such a system.
"The retail deposit market in a separate Scotland would be dominated by only two large banks and, if one of these were to fail, the costs for compensating the depositors would fall almost entirely on the one remaining bank," a Treasury statement accompanying the report said.
The Scottish National Party which controls Scotland's devolved government and is behind the independence campaign has dismissed the Treasury report and is due to issue its own study on Tuesday, highlighting the benefits of a split from Britain. ($1 = 0.6582 British pounds)
(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Chinese Premier Li seeks trust in India, border issue irks
By Frank Jack Daniel
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is seeking to build trust with India on his first foreign trip since taking office, which comes just a few weeks after a military standoff between the Asian giants on their ill-defined border in the Himalayan mountains.
The number two in the Chinese leadership offered India a "handshake across the Himalayas" in an editorial published on Monday in The Hindu newspaper and said that together the emerging economic giants could become a new engine of the world economy.
China and India disagree about large areas on their 4,000-km (2,500-mile) -long border and fought a brief but bloody war 50 years ago. There has not been a shooting incident in decades, but the long-running dispute gets in the way of improving economic relations between the world's two most populous nations.
The editorial was part of a media campaign apparently aimed at cooling Indian public anger against China following the three-week standoff on a freezing Himalayan plateau that ended on May 3.
In an impromptu speech after an official welcome ceremony at India's colonial-era presidential palace on Monday, a relaxed-looking Li stood with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and said he wanted to build trust and cooperation on his trip.
"World peace and regional stability cannot be a reality without strategic mutual trust between India and China. And likewise, the development and prosperity of the world cannot be a reality without the cooperation and simultaneous development of China and India," he said.
The two leaders held closed-door talks on Sunday, shortly after Li arrived in the Indian capital.
Singh told Li that friction on the border could affect relations. He pressed his counterpart to do more to redress a trade imbalance that has left a $29 billion deficit with China at a time India is struggling with a record current account gap that has emerged as its main economic weak point.
The latest incident distracted diplomats' attention from negotiations on investment and trade ahead of Li's trip and soured Indian public opinion toward China.
Also raised in the meeting was the issue of the Dalai Lama, who China considers a separatist and who lives in exile in India.
India repeated its position that the Dalai Lama is a spiritual and religious leader, a senior Indian government official said. On Monday, a protester dodged tight security to unfurl a banner saying "Tibet will be free" in front of the hotel where Li is staying in Delhi.
TRADE
Bilateral trade between the two countries touched $73 billion in 2011, making China India's largest trade partner, but slipped to $66 billion last year.
Singh told Li it was important to balance out trade as the two countries aim for $100 billion in bilateral trade by 2015.
"While we are committed to the $100 billion by 2015 we will have to have a more balanced rate," said the senior government official, who was briefed about the restricted meeting.
India is pressing for greater access for its pharmaceuticals and IT services.
The official described the conversations as constructive and cordial. Earlier statements from Chinese officials have given some hope that India's gripes are being heard.
"China attaches great importance to the China-India trade deficit issue. We are willing to expand our market for India's products and provide facilitation," deputy foreign minister Song Tao said last week.
Up from next to nothing in the 1990s, trade has been heavily skewed in favor of China. It exports power and telecoms equipment to its neighbor, which as one of the world's fastest growing major economies could offer brighter opportunities for business than the stagnant West.
Li said trade, an economic corridor and industrial loans would feature in the talks being held on Monday. A joint statement is due to be signed later in the day.
Prior to the visit, Li said he chose his first destination on the four-nation tour to show how important India is for China and also because he had fond memories of visiting as a Communist youth leader 27 years ago.
India's Economic Times newspaper said the Essar Group conglomerate would sign a financial agreement with China's China Development Bank and China's largest oil and gas producer PetroChina Company during the trip.
After India, Li is due to visit Pakistan, Switzerland and Germany and is likely to carry a message that China wants more open foreign relations and should not be seen as a threat.
"We stand ready to embrace the world with a more open mind and hope that the world will view China with a calm frame of mind," he wrote in the editorial.
(Additional reporting by Satarupa Bhattacharjya and Anindito Mukherjee in NEW DELHI; by Michael Martina and Sui-Lee Wee in BEIJING; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Small Fla. city anxious to learn jackpot winner
ZEPHYRHILLS, Fla. (AP) It could be an anxious wait of up to two months for people in a small Florida city to find out who won the highest Powerball jackpot in history: an estimated $590.5 million.
The lucky ticket was bought sometime Saturday or earlier at a Publix supermarket in Zephyrhills, a city of about 13,000 people best known around the state for its brand of spring water with the same name.
The winner has 60 days to claim the lump-sum cash option, estimated around $376.9 million, at the Florida Lottery's office in Tallahassee. No one had come forward as of Sunday afternoon.
"It never happens this quickly," lottery spokesman David Bishop said. "If they know they won, they're going to contact their attorney or an accountant first so they can get their affairs in order."
The winner wasn't Matthew Bogel. On Sunday, he loaded groceries into his car after shopping at the Publix. He shook his head when asked about the jackpot.
"It's crazy, isn't it?" he said. "That's so much money."
It's an amount too high for many to imagine. Compare it to the budget for the city of Zephyrhills: This year's figure is just more than $49 million. The winning Powerball jackpot is 12 times that.
Publix spokeswoman Maria Brous said there are a lot of rumors about who won, but the store doesn't know. "We're excited for the winner or winners," she said.
Plenty of people in Zephyrhills are wondering whether it's someone they know.
Joan Albertson drove to the Publix early Sunday morning with her camera in hand, in case the winner emerged. She said she bought a ticket at a store across the street, and the idea of winning that much money was still something of a shock.
"Oh, there's so much good that you could do with that amount of money." Albertson said. "I don't even know where to begin."
Zephyrhills is a small city in Pasco County, about 30 miles northeast of downtown Tampa. Once a rural farming town, it's now known as a hotbed for skydiving activity, and the home to large retiree mobile home parks and the water bottled from the natural springs that surround the area.
And now, one lucky lottery ticket.
"I'm getting text messages and messages from Facebook going, 'uh, did you win the lottery?'" Sandra Lewis said. "No, I didn't win, guys. Sorry."
Sara Jeltis said her parents in Michigan texted her with the news Sunday morning.
"Well, it didn't click until I came here," she said, gesturing to the half-dozen TV live trucks humming in the Publix parking lot. "And I'm like, 'Wow I can't believe it, it's shocking!' Out of the whole country, this Publix, in little Zephyrhills would be the winner."
With four out of every five possible combinations of Powerball numbers in play, lottery executives said Saturday that someone was almost certain to win the game's highest jackpot, a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars and that's after taxes.
The winning numbers were 10, 13, 14, 22 and 52, with a Powerball of 11.
Estimates had earlier put the jackpot at around $600 million. But Powerball's online site said Sunday that the jackpot had reached an estimated $590.5 million.
The world's largest jackpot was a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot in March 2012.
Terry Rich, CEO of the Iowa Lottery, initially confirmed that one Florida winning ticket had been sold. He told The Associated Press that following the Florida winner, the Powerball grand prize was being reset at an estimated jackpot of $40 million, or about $25.1 million cash value.
The chances of winning the prize were astronomically low: 1 in 175.2 million. That's how many different ways you can combine the numbers when you play. But lottery officials estimated that about 80 percent of those possible combinations had been purchased recently.
The longshot odds didn't deter people across Powerball-playing states 43 plus Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands from lining up at gas stations and convenience stores Saturday.
Clyde Barrow, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, specializes in the gaming industry. He said one of the key factors behind the ticket-buying frenzy is the size of the jackpot people are interested in the easy investment.
"Even though the odds are very low, the investment is very small," he said. "Two dollars gets you a chance."
Lewis, who went to the Publix on Sunday to buy water, said she didn't play and she isn't upset about it.
"Life goes on," she said, shrugging. "I'm good."
___
Rodriguez reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press Writer Kelli Kennedy in Miami contributed to this report.
___
Follow Tamara Lush at http://twitter.com/tamaralush .
Follow Barbara Rodriguez at http://twitter.com/bcrodriguez .
Swift leads, Miguel hurts fans at Billboard Awards
Taylor Swift is red hot.
The singer, who is nominated for 11 Billboard Music Awards, was the show's early leader with seven wins so far, including top Billboard 200 album and country album for "Red." She topped it off with a colorful performance of her hit "22" starting backstage and working her way to the main stage on the back of a bike with help from a dozen background dancers and a flurry of red balloons.
Miguel, too, had a show-stopping performance, though he seemed to kick a fan when he jumped over the crowd during a performance of his hit "Adorn." The R&B singer seemed to have landed part of his body on one girl, who walked away, and kicked another girl, who held her head low.
Maroon 5 and fun. were also nominated for 11 awards and won honors in a pre-telecast announcement. Gotye and Rihanna are behind Swift with four awards each.
Bruno Mars and his band kicked off the show in silky red suits that matched their silky dance moves, with bright gold disco balls hanging above them. Mars performed his new single, the upbeat and old-school flavored "Treasure."
Justin Bieber, who won top male artist, is also up for the night's biggest award, top artist. Other nominees include Swift, Rihanna, One Direction and Maroon 5.
"This is not just my award," Bieber said, thanking his fans and team.
He performed his song "Take You" in leather pants, a leather vest and a black shirt that had one sleeve, as blue laser lights beamed.
Nicki Minaj, who is set to perform with Lil Wayne, won the first award in the live telecast for top rap artist, beating out Drake, Flo Rida, Pitbull and Psy.
"I definitely did not expect this one," she said, wearing a bright red dress.
But the awards show, airing live from MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on ABC, is less about the trophies and more about the performances. Selena Gomez sang her seductive new hit, "Come & Get It," while Chris Brown danced around the stage to his latest single, "Fine China," though his voice began to crack during the performance. Duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis also performed their massive hit, "Thrift Shop," which won top rap song.
"First and foremost, gotta thank Goodwill, gotta thank Value Village," Macklemore said to laughs.
Prince, who will receive the icon award, will also hit the stage. Madonna was named top touring artist.
"Thank you for supporting me for three decades. Without you I truly wouldn't be here," she said.
Bieber, Swift and Mars are also up for the fan-voted milestone award.
Comedian-actor Tracy Morgan is the show's host, and he dressed as Psy in a bright yellow suit when the rapper-singer was onstage to present an award. They had a dance battle to Psy's new single, "Gentleman."
Pitbull made two appearances, one with Jennifer Lopez and another with Christina Aguilera. His hit with Aguilera, "Feel This Moment," samples A-Ha's "Take On Me" and Morten Harket came out to sing a line from the song.
____
Online:
http://www.billboard.com/bbma
___
Follow Mesfin Fekadu at http://www.twitter.com/MusicMesfin
The singer, who is nominated for 11 Billboard Music Awards, was the show's early leader with seven wins so far, including top Billboard 200 album and country album for "Red." She topped it off with a colorful performance of her hit "22" starting backstage and working her way to the main stage on the back of a bike with help from a dozen background dancers and a flurry of red balloons.
Miguel, too, had a show-stopping performance, though he seemed to kick a fan when he jumped over the crowd during a performance of his hit "Adorn." The R&B singer seemed to have landed part of his body on one girl, who walked away, and kicked another girl, who held her head low.
Maroon 5 and fun. were also nominated for 11 awards and won honors in a pre-telecast announcement. Gotye and Rihanna are behind Swift with four awards each.
Bruno Mars and his band kicked off the show in silky red suits that matched their silky dance moves, with bright gold disco balls hanging above them. Mars performed his new single, the upbeat and old-school flavored "Treasure."
Justin Bieber, who won top male artist, is also up for the night's biggest award, top artist. Other nominees include Swift, Rihanna, One Direction and Maroon 5.
"This is not just my award," Bieber said, thanking his fans and team.
He performed his song "Take You" in leather pants, a leather vest and a black shirt that had one sleeve, as blue laser lights beamed.
Nicki Minaj, who is set to perform with Lil Wayne, won the first award in the live telecast for top rap artist, beating out Drake, Flo Rida, Pitbull and Psy.
"I definitely did not expect this one," she said, wearing a bright red dress.
But the awards show, airing live from MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on ABC, is less about the trophies and more about the performances. Selena Gomez sang her seductive new hit, "Come & Get It," while Chris Brown danced around the stage to his latest single, "Fine China," though his voice began to crack during the performance. Duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis also performed their massive hit, "Thrift Shop," which won top rap song.
"First and foremost, gotta thank Goodwill, gotta thank Value Village," Macklemore said to laughs.
Prince, who will receive the icon award, will also hit the stage. Madonna was named top touring artist.
"Thank you for supporting me for three decades. Without you I truly wouldn't be here," she said.
Bieber, Swift and Mars are also up for the fan-voted milestone award.
Comedian-actor Tracy Morgan is the show's host, and he dressed as Psy in a bright yellow suit when the rapper-singer was onstage to present an award. They had a dance battle to Psy's new single, "Gentleman."
Pitbull made two appearances, one with Jennifer Lopez and another with Christina Aguilera. His hit with Aguilera, "Feel This Moment," samples A-Ha's "Take On Me" and Morten Harket came out to sing a line from the song.
____
Online:
http://www.billboard.com/bbma
___
Follow Mesfin Fekadu at http://www.twitter.com/MusicMesfin
Global shares grind higher, yen edges up on Amari comments
By Marc Jones
LONDON (Reuters) - Rising optimism about global growth pushed world shares to a near five-year high on Monday, while comments from Japan's economy minister that consumers could suffer if the yen falls further lifted it off a 4-1/2 low.
Data last week that showed U.S. consumer sentiment at its strongest in nearly six years continued to support equity markets. MSCI's world index is at its highest since June 2008 as top European shares started the week up 0.2 percent.
With risk appetite dominating, safe-haven German Bunds fell 45 ticks, while gold, also pressured by signs the U.S. Federal Reserve could start winding down its support, extended it longest losing streak in four years to hit a 1-month low.
"We have started to see a series of positive readings coming out of the United States. We are positioned for a rising market and think that the best way is to invest in financials," said HSBC equity strategist Robert Parkes.
In the currency market, focus remained largely on the yen and it edged up from last week's 4-1/2 year low after Japan's economy minister suggested over the weekend the government might be satisfied with its level after it recent slump.
"People say the excessively strong yen has corrected quite a bit. If the yen continues to weaken steadily from here, negative effects on people's lives will emerge," Japanese Economics Minister Akira Amari told a Sunday talk show.
As European trading gathered pace Brent crude held steady at $104.60 a barrel while copper eased 0.36 percent to $7,282.50 a metric ton (1.1023 tons) as the talk of the Fed tapering its bond purchases weighed on sentiment.
(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Toby Chopra)
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Edward Furlong arrested in West Hollywood
LOS ANGELES (AP) A Los Angeles sheriff's spokesman says 'Terminator 2' star Edward Furlong has been arrested on suspicion of violating a restraining order filed by his ex-girlfriend.
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said that deputies responding to the scene Thursday in West Hollywood found Furlong hiding in a nearby property.
Jail records show he was released Saturday just after noon after being held on $100,000 bail.
In March, the 35-year-old actor had been sentenced to six months in jail for violating his probation in a 2010 case for violating a similar restraining order.
He has been the subject of such orders taken out by both his ex-wife and ex-girlfriend.
The actor was also charged in January of battery of an ex-girlfriend.
British PM urges more action on tax from UK territories
By William James
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain called upon its overseas territories to "get their house in order" over the sharing of tax information on Monday as the UK looks to lead a global fight against tax evasion ahead of a meeting of the world's wealthiest states.
Britain is using its presidency of the Group of Eight (G8) leading economies, which holds its annual summit on June 17-18, to push for a global clampdown on complex arrangements used to disguise wealth and minimize tax payments.
Prime Minister David Cameron wrote to leaders of Britain's offshore territories and other self-governing regions, urging them to sign up to international protocols on information exchange, and improve their transparency.
"With one month to go, this is the critical moment to get our own houses in order," Cameron said. "I respect your right to be lower tax jurisdictions ... But lower taxes are only sustainable if what is owed is actually paid."
The Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and other British overseas territories have become major international financial centers thanks to low taxation, light-touch regulation and limited requirements for those who invest there to disclose information about their affairs.
Big businesses say they use such jurisdictions to help avoid double taxation on international trade, but critics say the territories help companies to avoid paying tax on their profits and to facilitate money laundering and tax evasion on the part of rich individuals.
Some of the 10 countries that received the letter were identified by British tax authorities this month as home to complex tax arrangements.
Cameron asked all the letter's recipients to sign up to the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Assistance - a protocol developed by the Council of Europe and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that facilitates cooperation between states on tax matters.
In addition, Cameron said the territories needed to produce an action plan on how to improve their transparency with respect to ownership of assets and companies.
"Put simply, that means we need to know who really owns and controls each and every company," he said.
Such steps would make the territories less attractive locations for hiding stolen assets or evading taxes, but are unlikely to affect the kind of shifting of corporate profits that has angered British lawmakers and the public, since this rarely involves hiding beneficial ownership.
In early May, Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands joined the Caymans and Gibraltar in agreeing to provide Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain with details of bank accounts held by their citizens in the territories.
The territories receiving the letter were Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
(Additional reporting by Tom Bergin; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Swift, Bieber, more ready for Billboard Awards
They battle it out weekly on the Billboard charts, and now they're competing at the Billboard Music Awards.
Today's biggest stars from Taylor Swift to fun. to Maroon 5 are the key finalists at Sunday's awards show, airing live from MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on ABC. Those acts are up for 11 awards each; Rihanna, Carly Rae Jepsen and One Direction are up for 10, nine and eight trophies, respectively.
Most of the top stars will also blaze the stage, too, including Swift, Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars, Miguel, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Chris Brown, Selena Gomez and others.
Prince, who will receive the icon award, will also hit the stage, and Madonna, to be named top touring artist, will make an appearance.
Jepsen, whose nine nominations include top Hot 100 song for the ubiquitous "Call Me Maybe," top female artist and top new artist, will present an award this year.
"The Billboard Awards is kind of a nostalgic one for me because it was the first awards show I attended outside of Canada," the 27-year-old recalled in an interview. "I had never really done anything quite so big. And to be going back a year later, and to be nominated, and then to also being doing all the fun stuff like pick a dress, and see the party, and watch the show I feel just lucky to be involved."
Jepsen's mentor, Bieber, is up for the night's biggest award, top artist. Other nominees include Swift, Rihanna, One Direction and Maroon 5. Swift is the only U.S. act nominated for top Billboard 200 album for her multiplatinum "Red," which will compete with One Direction's first and second albums "Up All Night" and "Take Me Home" Mumford & Sons' "Babel" and Adele's 10 million-selling "21," which won the award last year.
Bieber, Swift and Mars are also up for the fan-voted milestone award.
Comedian-actor Tracy Morgan will host the Billboard Music Awards, which is celebrating its third year back on the scene following a five-year break.
Jepsen, whose new single "Tonight I'm Getting Over You" features Nicki Minaj, said she's excited to see the rapper perform with Lil Wayne on Sunday, but she's also happy to be in her seat and not onstage.
"I can remember being like just a big bundle of nerves last time," she said. "I've had a year of experience under my belt, and I'll probably still be nervous, but I'll be way more excited than anything."
Jennifer Lopez, The Band Perry, Pitbull, Christina Aguilera, Ed Sheeran, David Guetta and Kacey Musgraves will also perform Sunday night. Presenters include Shania Twain, Psy, Celine Dion, Miley Cyrus and CeeLo Green.
____
Online:
http://www.billboard.com/bbma
___
Follow Mesfin Fekadu at http://www.twitter.com/MusicMesfin
Today's biggest stars from Taylor Swift to fun. to Maroon 5 are the key finalists at Sunday's awards show, airing live from MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on ABC. Those acts are up for 11 awards each; Rihanna, Carly Rae Jepsen and One Direction are up for 10, nine and eight trophies, respectively.
Most of the top stars will also blaze the stage, too, including Swift, Justin Bieber, Bruno Mars, Miguel, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Chris Brown, Selena Gomez and others.
Prince, who will receive the icon award, will also hit the stage, and Madonna, to be named top touring artist, will make an appearance.
Jepsen, whose nine nominations include top Hot 100 song for the ubiquitous "Call Me Maybe," top female artist and top new artist, will present an award this year.
"The Billboard Awards is kind of a nostalgic one for me because it was the first awards show I attended outside of Canada," the 27-year-old recalled in an interview. "I had never really done anything quite so big. And to be going back a year later, and to be nominated, and then to also being doing all the fun stuff like pick a dress, and see the party, and watch the show I feel just lucky to be involved."
Jepsen's mentor, Bieber, is up for the night's biggest award, top artist. Other nominees include Swift, Rihanna, One Direction and Maroon 5. Swift is the only U.S. act nominated for top Billboard 200 album for her multiplatinum "Red," which will compete with One Direction's first and second albums "Up All Night" and "Take Me Home" Mumford & Sons' "Babel" and Adele's 10 million-selling "21," which won the award last year.
Bieber, Swift and Mars are also up for the fan-voted milestone award.
Comedian-actor Tracy Morgan will host the Billboard Music Awards, which is celebrating its third year back on the scene following a five-year break.
Jepsen, whose new single "Tonight I'm Getting Over You" features Nicki Minaj, said she's excited to see the rapper perform with Lil Wayne on Sunday, but she's also happy to be in her seat and not onstage.
"I can remember being like just a big bundle of nerves last time," she said. "I've had a year of experience under my belt, and I'll probably still be nervous, but I'll be way more excited than anything."
Jennifer Lopez, The Band Perry, Pitbull, Christina Aguilera, Ed Sheeran, David Guetta and Kacey Musgraves will also perform Sunday night. Presenters include Shania Twain, Psy, Celine Dion, Miley Cyrus and CeeLo Green.
____
Online:
http://www.billboard.com/bbma
___
Follow Mesfin Fekadu at http://www.twitter.com/MusicMesfin
Smuggled Dinosaur's Return May Boost Mongolian Paleontology
When Mongolia s most famous dinosaur, a relative of T. rex, returns to the Asian country on May 18, it returns to a homeland rich in dinosaur fossils, but with scant resources to display and study them.
But there are signs this dinosaur's celebrity status the Tarbosaurus skeleton made headlines as the subject of a custody battle and federal smuggling case here in the United States may help change that.
"We didn't have a single star who can be a representation of the whole paleontological heritage that we have," Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, Mongolia's minister of culture, sports and tourism, told LiveScience at a repatriation ceremony for the fossil. "That's why [the dinosaur] became like a hero that fascinates everyone and just awakened the Mongolian public to learn more about paleontological heritage of the country." [Tarbosaurus: See Images of the Celebrity Dinosaur]
When the dinosaur arrives on Saturday (May 18), the new national Dinosaur Day, it will return to a country with no dedicated dinosaur museum, only three doctorate-level paleontologists, and no university-level courses in paleontology. However, Mongolian officials have plans to change all of this.
Unrecognized national treasures
A landlocked nation situated between China and Russia, Mongolia is slightly smaller than the state of Alaska, and is home to 3.2 million people. In 1990, the country left behind its communist Soviet system for democracy and a free market.
A number of factors including the prolongedeconomic depression following this transition, little access to English in the past, a publishing industry that was nonexistent until recently, a shortage of paleontologists, and cultural attitudes toward bones and the dead have inhibited the Mongolian public's interest in the country's fossil heritage, Oyungerel told LiveScience.
In recent years, mining has spurred economic growth in Mongolia, and more Mongolians are learning English. As a direct result of the Tarbosaurus case, plans are underway to establish the country's first dedicated dinosaur museum, the Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs, and to train the paleontologists needed to staff it and study the nation's fossils.
Currently, one museum in Mongolia, the national natural history museum, displays dinosaur fossils. But this museum's building is old and at risk of collapsing, Oyungerel said.
In need of a new generation
While many foreign paleontologists come to Mongolia to work, the country has only three doctorate-level, or full-fledged, vertebrate paleontologists, who study the fossils of animals with backbones, including dinosaurs.
One of the three paleontologists, the youngest and the only one trained in the United States, Bolortsetseg Minjin, has been tapped as assistant director of the new museum and its chief paleontologist. The other two were trained by the Soviets, while Mongolia was a communist country.
"We really need to work hard to have a young generation (of paleontologists) as soon as possible," Bolortsetseg said.
The Mongolian government hopes to establish the dinosaur museum, with the Tarbosaurus as its first specimen, in an old Lenin museum. This museum was established during communist times to display art and artifacts related to the life of the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. [Image Gallery: Amazing Dinosaur Fossils]
However, ownershipof the former Lenin museum building is now tied up in a court case. After the dinosaur arrives on May 18, the country's new National Dinosaur Day, officials plan to house it in a temporary exhibition hall in the main square of the capital Ulaanbaatar, Oyungerelsaid.
The new museum will register all Mongolia dinosaurs, including those sent abroad on loan.
More fossils and more museums
Mongolian law makes all fossils found within its borders state property; U.S. officials seized the Tarbosaurus from a Florida fossil hunter and dealer, Eric Prokopi, charging that he smuggled it into the United States.
At 8 feet tall (2.4 meters) and 24 feet long (7.3 meters) when assembled, this juvenile Tarbosaurus bataar, requires some space to display, but it isn't the only large dinosaur heading back to Mongolia.
As part of the federal case, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office and Homeland Security Investigations have seized additional dinosaur fossils from Prokopi and a British dealer, Chris Moore. These include other large dinosaurs, among them more Tarbosauruses. Traveling dinosaur exhibitions in Europe and Japan will add to the tally when they return to Mongolia, Oyungerel said.
"Just one giant is enough to fill the biggest hall of any museum, so we need to accommodate this list, like 20 giants, somewhere. So we are envisioning a big Giants' House in the south of Ulaanbaatar," Oyungerel said.
South Gobi province is also interested in establishing a museum commemorating the expeditions by the paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews in the 1920s, and there is also discussion of a national dinosaur park, she said.
Studying abroad
Mongolia has provided foreign paleontologists with a rich source of fossils from the Mesozoic Era (251 million to 65.5 million years ago), but many would like to see more Mongolians studying the fossils unearthed in their country.
When Jack Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, first visited Mongolia about 20 years ago, he noticed the absence of young Mongolian scientists.
"Even though Mongolia had some paleontologists they weren't training anyone to replace them, and a lot of other institutions were going in there and collecting fossils and bringing them out and preparing them and publishing papers on them, and they also were not preparing Mongolian students," Horner said.
He has since worked with Bolortsetseg to train Mongolian students and to reach out to the public through a nonprofit she established called The Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs. Bolortsetseg has plans to begin another student-training program this summer, within another year, she hopes to have two future Mongolian paleontologists ready to begin graduate programs abroad. [Science Education: Top and Bottom States (Infographic)]
No paleontology courses are currently available in Mongolian universities, although there are plans for one to begin in 2014, Oyungerel told LiveScience.
After a visit to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University on May 9, Bolortsetseg said she found it to be an appealing place to send future Mongolian paleontology students.
Through a long-term project conducting environmental research at the ancient Lake Khuvshulin Mongolia, the Academy has helped produced 14 Mongolian doctorates and more than 20 master's degrees for Mongolians.
Involving Mongolians, or any local people, in research based in their country is a moral imperative, since the work is being done on their property, Clyde Goulden, who initiated the Khuvhsul project and serves as director of the Academy's Asia Center, told LiveScience in an email. It also makes for better science by deploying more researchers to explore and test hypotheses, he wrote. "Who else can do a better job of that than the scientists who live nearby and can continuously study and explore."
Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
Image Gallery: 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts Paleo-Art: Dinosaurs Come to Life in Stunning Illustrations Dinosaur Detective: Find Out What You Really Know Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
But there are signs this dinosaur's celebrity status the Tarbosaurus skeleton made headlines as the subject of a custody battle and federal smuggling case here in the United States may help change that.
"We didn't have a single star who can be a representation of the whole paleontological heritage that we have," Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, Mongolia's minister of culture, sports and tourism, told LiveScience at a repatriation ceremony for the fossil. "That's why [the dinosaur] became like a hero that fascinates everyone and just awakened the Mongolian public to learn more about paleontological heritage of the country." [Tarbosaurus: See Images of the Celebrity Dinosaur]
When the dinosaur arrives on Saturday (May 18), the new national Dinosaur Day, it will return to a country with no dedicated dinosaur museum, only three doctorate-level paleontologists, and no university-level courses in paleontology. However, Mongolian officials have plans to change all of this.
Unrecognized national treasures
A landlocked nation situated between China and Russia, Mongolia is slightly smaller than the state of Alaska, and is home to 3.2 million people. In 1990, the country left behind its communist Soviet system for democracy and a free market.
A number of factors including the prolongedeconomic depression following this transition, little access to English in the past, a publishing industry that was nonexistent until recently, a shortage of paleontologists, and cultural attitudes toward bones and the dead have inhibited the Mongolian public's interest in the country's fossil heritage, Oyungerel told LiveScience.
In recent years, mining has spurred economic growth in Mongolia, and more Mongolians are learning English. As a direct result of the Tarbosaurus case, plans are underway to establish the country's first dedicated dinosaur museum, the Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs, and to train the paleontologists needed to staff it and study the nation's fossils.
Currently, one museum in Mongolia, the national natural history museum, displays dinosaur fossils. But this museum's building is old and at risk of collapsing, Oyungerel said.
In need of a new generation
While many foreign paleontologists come to Mongolia to work, the country has only three doctorate-level, or full-fledged, vertebrate paleontologists, who study the fossils of animals with backbones, including dinosaurs.
One of the three paleontologists, the youngest and the only one trained in the United States, Bolortsetseg Minjin, has been tapped as assistant director of the new museum and its chief paleontologist. The other two were trained by the Soviets, while Mongolia was a communist country.
"We really need to work hard to have a young generation (of paleontologists) as soon as possible," Bolortsetseg said.
The Mongolian government hopes to establish the dinosaur museum, with the Tarbosaurus as its first specimen, in an old Lenin museum. This museum was established during communist times to display art and artifacts related to the life of the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. [Image Gallery: Amazing Dinosaur Fossils]
However, ownershipof the former Lenin museum building is now tied up in a court case. After the dinosaur arrives on May 18, the country's new National Dinosaur Day, officials plan to house it in a temporary exhibition hall in the main square of the capital Ulaanbaatar, Oyungerelsaid.
The new museum will register all Mongolia dinosaurs, including those sent abroad on loan.
More fossils and more museums
Mongolian law makes all fossils found within its borders state property; U.S. officials seized the Tarbosaurus from a Florida fossil hunter and dealer, Eric Prokopi, charging that he smuggled it into the United States.
At 8 feet tall (2.4 meters) and 24 feet long (7.3 meters) when assembled, this juvenile Tarbosaurus bataar, requires some space to display, but it isn't the only large dinosaur heading back to Mongolia.
As part of the federal case, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office and Homeland Security Investigations have seized additional dinosaur fossils from Prokopi and a British dealer, Chris Moore. These include other large dinosaurs, among them more Tarbosauruses. Traveling dinosaur exhibitions in Europe and Japan will add to the tally when they return to Mongolia, Oyungerel said.
"Just one giant is enough to fill the biggest hall of any museum, so we need to accommodate this list, like 20 giants, somewhere. So we are envisioning a big Giants' House in the south of Ulaanbaatar," Oyungerel said.
South Gobi province is also interested in establishing a museum commemorating the expeditions by the paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews in the 1920s, and there is also discussion of a national dinosaur park, she said.
Studying abroad
Mongolia has provided foreign paleontologists with a rich source of fossils from the Mesozoic Era (251 million to 65.5 million years ago), but many would like to see more Mongolians studying the fossils unearthed in their country.
When Jack Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, first visited Mongolia about 20 years ago, he noticed the absence of young Mongolian scientists.
"Even though Mongolia had some paleontologists they weren't training anyone to replace them, and a lot of other institutions were going in there and collecting fossils and bringing them out and preparing them and publishing papers on them, and they also were not preparing Mongolian students," Horner said.
He has since worked with Bolortsetseg to train Mongolian students and to reach out to the public through a nonprofit she established called The Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs. Bolortsetseg has plans to begin another student-training program this summer, within another year, she hopes to have two future Mongolian paleontologists ready to begin graduate programs abroad. [Science Education: Top and Bottom States (Infographic)]
No paleontology courses are currently available in Mongolian universities, although there are plans for one to begin in 2014, Oyungerel told LiveScience.
After a visit to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University on May 9, Bolortsetseg said she found it to be an appealing place to send future Mongolian paleontology students.
Through a long-term project conducting environmental research at the ancient Lake Khuvshulin Mongolia, the Academy has helped produced 14 Mongolian doctorates and more than 20 master's degrees for Mongolians.
Involving Mongolians, or any local people, in research based in their country is a moral imperative, since the work is being done on their property, Clyde Goulden, who initiated the Khuvhsul project and serves as director of the Academy's Asia Center, told LiveScience in an email. It also makes for better science by deploying more researchers to explore and test hypotheses, he wrote. "Who else can do a better job of that than the scientists who live nearby and can continuously study and explore."
Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
Image Gallery: 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts Paleo-Art: Dinosaurs Come to Life in Stunning Illustrations Dinosaur Detective: Find Out What You Really Know Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Why the Blues Are Blue
When you listen to a lively Mozart piece in a major key, what colors do you see? If bright yellows and oranges swirled in your mind, it wouldn't surprise a group of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley.
Their new study found that people associate upbeat, major-key music with lighter, more vibrant yellow-toned colors, while slower music in minor keys actually gives people the blues.
These results were the same for participants in both California and Mexico, suggesting humans may have a surprisingly universal emotional color palette. [Eye Tricks: Gallery of Visual Illusions]
"The results were remarkably strong and consistent across individuals and cultures and clearly pointed to the powerful role that emotions play in how the human brain maps from hearing music to seeing colors," study researcher Stephen Palmer, a UC Berkeley vision scientist, said in a statement.
"Surprisingly, we can predict with 95 percent accuracy how happy or sad the colors people pick will be based on how happy or sad the music is that they are listening to," Palmer added.
Palmer and his colleagues studied nearly 100 men and women, half in the San Francisco Bay Area and half in Guadalajara, Mexico. The participants listened to 18 varied pieces of classical music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms. They also were given a 37-color palette and told to choose five colors that best matched each song.
Overall, most people chose an array of warm colors to accompany the upbeat songs and darker, grayer, bluer colors to go with the more somber ones.
The researchers saw the same pattern when they tweaked the experiment to use facial expressions instead of colors happy faces were matched with upbeat music in major keys, while sad faces were paired with gloomier tunes. The results suggest emotions are responsible for music-color associations.
The scientists hope to expand their research to study other musical norms and cultures. Next, they plan to recruit participants in Turkey, where traditional music often uses scales beyond major and minor keys.
"We know that in Mexico and the U.S. the responses are very similar," Palmer said. "But we don't yet know about China or Turkey."
The study seems consistent with previous research on color associations. One such study published in the journal BMC Medical Research Methodology in 2010 found that people with depression or anxiety were more likely to associate their mood with the color gray, while happier people preferred yellow.
The new research was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and will be presented at the International Association of Colour conference at the United Kingdom's University of Newcastle in July.
Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
7 Things That Will Make You Happy 10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain Tip of the Tongue: The 7 (Other) Flavors Humans May Taste Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Their new study found that people associate upbeat, major-key music with lighter, more vibrant yellow-toned colors, while slower music in minor keys actually gives people the blues.
These results were the same for participants in both California and Mexico, suggesting humans may have a surprisingly universal emotional color palette. [Eye Tricks: Gallery of Visual Illusions]
"The results were remarkably strong and consistent across individuals and cultures and clearly pointed to the powerful role that emotions play in how the human brain maps from hearing music to seeing colors," study researcher Stephen Palmer, a UC Berkeley vision scientist, said in a statement.
"Surprisingly, we can predict with 95 percent accuracy how happy or sad the colors people pick will be based on how happy or sad the music is that they are listening to," Palmer added.
Palmer and his colleagues studied nearly 100 men and women, half in the San Francisco Bay Area and half in Guadalajara, Mexico. The participants listened to 18 varied pieces of classical music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms. They also were given a 37-color palette and told to choose five colors that best matched each song.
Overall, most people chose an array of warm colors to accompany the upbeat songs and darker, grayer, bluer colors to go with the more somber ones.
The researchers saw the same pattern when they tweaked the experiment to use facial expressions instead of colors happy faces were matched with upbeat music in major keys, while sad faces were paired with gloomier tunes. The results suggest emotions are responsible for music-color associations.
The scientists hope to expand their research to study other musical norms and cultures. Next, they plan to recruit participants in Turkey, where traditional music often uses scales beyond major and minor keys.
"We know that in Mexico and the U.S. the responses are very similar," Palmer said. "But we don't yet know about China or Turkey."
The study seems consistent with previous research on color associations. One such study published in the journal BMC Medical Research Methodology in 2010 found that people with depression or anxiety were more likely to associate their mood with the color gray, while happier people preferred yellow.
The new research was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and will be presented at the International Association of Colour conference at the United Kingdom's University of Newcastle in July.
Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
7 Things That Will Make You Happy 10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain Tip of the Tongue: The 7 (Other) Flavors Humans May Taste Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)