blog-heap o' links
An
Austrian scuba diver died after a shark bit his leg in the Bahamas...
Federal wildlife managers said Thursday they want to increase by
more than 20-fold the amount of land designated as critical habitat for the
threatened Canada lynx, to nearly 43,000 square miles in six states... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:47:43At
least 600 rare Himalayan goats that provide the soft wool for Kashmir's prized
Pashmina shawls have died of starvation... thousands more goats face death
after their desert habitat was blanketed with snow during the region's heaviest
snowfall in 30 years... hosted.ap.org/ ... 16:43:54
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas... When tourists found a 5-inch
green sea turtle bloody and missing three of her flippers, the people who run a
hospital for the endangered animals here gave her little chance of survival.
But the turtle persevered, thanks to injections of antibiotics and a forced
diet of squid. Somehow, she swam with just one flipper, even though she can
only move in counterclockwise circles and has to push her now 10-pound body off
the bottom with her head to breathe... Now, her caregivers hope to make her
what's believed to be the first sea turtle fitted with a prosthetic flipper...
Army Spc. Orlando
A. Perez, 23, of Houston, died Feb. 24 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered
from small arms fire during dismounted operations. He was assigned to the 2nd
Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, Vilseck, Germany.defenselink.mil/ ... 00:54:46Army Spc. Micheal
E. Phillips, 19, of Ardmore, Okla., died Feb. 24 in Baghdad, Iraq, from
wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. He
was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat
Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky. defenselink.mil/ ... 00:54:33Army Spc. Kevin
S. Mowl, 22, of Pittsford, N.Y., died Feb. 25 at the National Naval Medical
Center, Bethesda, Md., of wounds suffered in Baghdad, Iraq on Aug. 2, 2007,
when the vehicle he was in encountered an improvised explosive device. He was
assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade
Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis Wash. 
In an interview with ABC News' Cynthia McFadden to air on
this evening's "Nightline," Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., says it's tougher for
her to run as a woman than it is for her male opponent... sfgate.com/ ...
23:19:44Editorial... You can't be serious, Ralph... Ralph Nader sure
knows how to marginalize his candidacy for president: He picked a brooding,
far-left running mate who couldn't get elected mayor of San Francisco... boston.com/ ... 23:09:17Ralph
Nader... announced his running mate... Matt Gonzalez... In 2000, he won a seat
on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming the first Green Party
candidate to get elected in the city by the bay. The Texas-born activist and
lawyer previously lost a race for district attorney in 1999, then lost a race
for San Francisco mayor in 2003... Nader, whom many Democrats blame for costing
Al Gore the White House in 2000, has insisted he did not swing that race... He
has also criticized Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for voting to
fund the war in Iraq and to increase the military budget opposing a
single-payer, government-run healthcare system, supporting nuclear power, and
for not advocating sweeping changes in US policy in the Middle East... news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 20:46:34
Hillary Clinton has lost a prominent black supporter,
Democratic Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, to her rival Barack
Obama. The defection comes the day after the two main Democratic presidential
candidates clashed in a TV debate... 
16-foot python stalked a
family dog for days before swallowing the pet whole in front of horrified
children in the Australian tropics... "The lady who was there threw some
plastic chairs at the snake, but you've got to remember that this is about 50
kilograms (110 pounds) of aggressive muscle..." will soon be relocated...
breitbart.com/ ... 21:59:03for at
least one species of male spider: playing dead... strategy that works best...
to score with the ladies... 
Dayton [Ohio]
police and U.S. marshals called for backup from animal control when they found
two alligators instead of the suspected probation violator they were after...
apnews.myway.com/ ... 21:57:06
LOS ANGELES... Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Tuesday
signed one of the nation's toughest laws on pet sterilization, requiring most
dogs and cats to be spayed or neutered by the time they are 4 months old...
The photo of a Muslim-garbed Barack Obama that appeared
on the Internet likely won't have any negative impact on him - but could damage
Hillary Rodham Clinton, experts said yesterday... newsday.com/ ... 21:41:50Hillary Rodham Clinton often invokes her "35 years of
experience making change" on the campaign trail, recounting her work in the
1970s on behalf of battered and neglected children and impoverished legal-aid
clients. But there is a little-known episode Clinton doesn't mention in her
standard campaign speech in which those two principles collided. In 1975, a
27-year-old Hillary Rodham, acting as a court-appointed attorney, attacked the
credibility of a 12-year-old girl in mounting an aggressive defense for an
indigent client accused of rape in Arkansas - using her child development
background to help the defendant. The case offers a glimpse into the way
Clinton deals with crisis. Her approach, then and now, was to immerse herself
in even unpleasant tasks with a will to win, an attitude captured in one of her
favorite aphorisms: "Bloom where you're planted..." Marine Lance Cpl.
Drew W. Weaver, 20, of St. Charles, Mo., died Feb. 21 while conducting
combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 3rd Light
Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary
Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif. defenselink.mil/ ... 14:24:32Army Spc.
Keisha M. Morgan, 25, of Washington, D.C., died Feb. 22 in
Baghdad, Iraq, of a non-combat related cause. She was assigned to the Division
Special Troops Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. The
circumstances are under investigation. 
Republican John McCain quickly denounced the comments of
a radio talk show host who while warming up a campaign crowd referred
repeatedly to Barack Hussein Obama and called the Democrat a "hack,
Chicago-style" politician... blogs.abcnews.com/ ...
10:23:18[Regarding the NYT story on McCain] Huckabee said, "...In fact,
if anything it's helped John McCain and I'm kind of hoping the New York Times
will take me on and run a nasty front page story -- may be the best thing that
could happen to me, certainly was to him..." washingtontimes.com/ ...
10:21:55Members of Washington's military and defense establishment
are expressing trepidation about Sen. Barack Obama... But his backers,
including a former Air Force chief of staff, say the rookie senator believes in
a strong military, and with it, a larger Army and Marine Corps... thesmokinggun.com/ ...
10:14:37Pennsylvania man allegedly stabbed his brother-in-law in the
stomach after the pair quarreled about their respective support of Democratic
presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton... blogs.abcnews.com/ ...
10:10:57During a Monday interview with ABC's Dallas affiliate,
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., did not flatly deny the DrudgeReport's charge
that her campaign forwarded a photo of rival Barack Obama in traditional
African dress. She then turned the tables [one of
her favorite evasive tactics] on her Democratic rival and accused him of
using the controversy to distract the public's attention from deficiencies in
his platform and experience... "I know nothing about it,"
Clinton told ABC affiliate WFAA. "This is in the public domain. But let's just
stop and ask yourself: 'Why are you -- why is anybody concerned about
this?'..." [Because of what it says about CLINTONS!] news.bbc.co.uk/ ... 10:09:44A photo of US
presidential candidate Barack Obama wearing Somali clothing is causing a storm
after it got released to the Drudge Report website... These are the normal
clothes that nomadic people wear... The head turban is especially used by
elderly people as a suggestion of respect. It is something that has no meaning
whatsoever in Somalia culture... There is no religious significance to it
whatsoever... 
HARRISBURG, Pa... Gorton's Inc. recalled about 1,000 cases
of frozen fish in 10 states on Friday after confirming that
items a Pennsylvania customer reported finding in her food were pills...
described... as beige and aspirin-size. "It's kind of frightening to not
only find something in your mouth, a foreign object.... But then basically my
heart stopped when my daughter said, 'I have one in my mouth, too,' and pulled
it out..." 
Bats stay aloft by employing
an aerodynamic trick previously thought unique to insects, researchers said on
Thursday... a tiny cyclone of air over each wing called a leading edge vortex
provided as much as 40 percent of the lift required to keep the animals in the
air. "It wasn't known that vertebrates can do it too..." 
The fossil of a 15 meter (50 ft) long "sea monster" found
in Arctic Norway was the biggest of its kind known to science with dagger-like
teeth in a 
Elephant culling will be permitted
for the first time in SA since 1994 to control growing herds and to halt
environmental damage. The government estimates the elephant population of the
Kruger National Park, SA's largest conservation area, is increasing 7% a year,
and might reach 20000 by 2012 and 30000 by 2019. In neighbouring Botswana, the
elephant population has now reached about 106000 from 34000 in 1983, according
to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species... 
Google announced today that
it plans to join five other international companies in building an additional
undersea cable between the US and Japan. The need for the cable itself is
unsurprising, given that trans-Pacific bandwidth needs grew by 63.7 percent
between 2002 and 2007, but the fact that Google is joining the consortium of
Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet, and SingTel is
unusual. Google is insisting, however, that this new move does not signal a
change in focus for the company... 
AZUSA,
Calif... parked his pickup... leaving his 80-pound Boxer named Max in the
passenger seat. When he came out, the truck and Max were gone... found the
pickup across the street in a fast-food parking lot but had no idea how it got
there... Max...