Mythical or merely Elusive?
Giant squid caught on video by Japanese scientists

Fri Dec 22, 3:40 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - Its mass of reddish tentacles flailing, a giant squid fought a losing battle to evade capture in a video unveiled by Japanese scientists on Friday.

Images of the squid -- a relatively small female about 3.5 meters (11 ft 6 in) long and weighing 50 kg (110 lb) -- were the ultimate prize for zoologists at the National Science Museum, who have been pursuing one of the ocean's most mysterious creatures for years.

"Nobody has ever seen a live giant squid except fishermen," team leader Tsunemi Kubodera of the museum's zoology department said in an interview on Friday. "We believe these are the first ever moving pictures of a giant squid."

Little was known until recently about the creature thought to have inspired the myth of the "kraken," a tentacled monster that was blamed by sailors for sinking ships off Norway in the 18th century.

Unconfirmed reports say giant squid can grow up to 20 meters long, but according to scientists they are unlikely to pose a threat to ships because they spend their lives hundreds of meters under the sea.

The Japanese research team tracked giant squid by following their biggest predators -- sperm whales -- as they gathered to feed near the Ogasawara islands, 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo between September and December.

They succeeded in taking the first still photographs of a living giant squid in 2005, observing that it moved around in the water more actively than previously thought, and captured food by entangling prey in its powerful tentacles.

The latest specimen, whose formalin-preserved carcass was displayed at a news conference at the museum in Tokyo, was caught on a baited hook laid 650 meters (2,150 ft) under the sea off the Ogasawara islands, on December 4, the scientists said.

A squid about 55 cm (21.65 inches) in length had been attracted by the bait and the giant squid was hooked when it tried to eat the smaller squid, the scientists said.

...the Freedom Bush says Islam wants to take away...
A look at euthanasia, assisted death

By The Associated Press Thu Dec 21, 2:32 PM ET

A look at legislation covering euthanasia and assisted suicide in the industrialized world:

ITALY — Euthanasia is illegal in the heavily Roman Catholic nation. Assisted suicide can carry a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

NETHERLANDS — Euthanasia was legalized in 2001, but the practice was common for at least a decade before that. Under the law, patients must be terminally ill, in unbearable pain and two doctors must agree there is no prospect for recovery.

BELGIUM — Legalized euthanasia under similar conditions as the Netherlands in 2002.

SWITZERLAND — Allows passive assistance to terminally ill people who have expressed a wish to die.

BRITAIN — Passed a law in 2004 allowing living wills or documents that set out what medical treatment patients want if they become seriously ill and lose the capacity to make a decision. In May, the House of Lords rejected legislation that would have allowed doctors to prescribe lethal drug doses to terminally ill patients.

FRANCE — Enables the terminally ill or those with no hope of recovery to refuse treatment in favor of death. Doctors are allowed to administer painkillers, even if their secondary effects include shortening patients' lives. But the law stops short of allowing euthanasia.

SPAIN — Euthanasia is illegal in Spain and people who help someone else die can be punished with at least six months in prison. But Spain's Socialist government wants to legalize it as part of a wave of liberal reforms that have largely transformed this traditionally Roman Catholic country.

UNITED STATES — U.S. law generally permits patients to ask that medical treatment be withheld or withdrawn, even if it raises their risk of dying. Voters in Oregon went further and approved the first physician-assisted suicide law in the U.S. in 1994, but it is now under legal challenge.

AUSTRALIA — Australia's Northern Territory province legalized mercy killing in 1996 and pro-euthanasia physician Dr. Philip Nitschke helped four people die before federal lawmakers overturned the provincial legislation.

OTHER — The U.N. Human Rights Committee criticized Dutch legalization in 2001. The Council of Europe — Europe's top human rights body — rejected euthanasia as a legitimate means to end life in April 2005.