From the Whatnot Shelf...
Report: Thousands plotting U.K. attacks

Sat Feb 24, 11:43 PM ET

LONDON - The threat of homegrown terrorists attacking Britain is greater now than any time since the Sept. 11 attacks, a British Sunday newspaper reported, citing a leaked intelligence document.

More than 2,000 British-based Islamic terrorists are believed to be plotting attacks, according to a government threat assessment prepared this month that The Sunday Telegraph said it had seen.

"The scale of al-Qaida's ambitions toward attacking the U.K. and the number of U.K. extremists prepared to participate in attacks are even greater than we previously judged," the newspaper quoted the document as saying.

It said the document was being circulated between the Home Office, defense ministry, MI5 intelligence agency and Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Branch.

The Home Office declined to comment on the report, but said in a statement that security arrangements are under constant review.

"As (MI5 Director-General) Eliza Manningham-Buller has stated publicly, the threat of terrorism in the U.K. is very real and includes the intent to kill people and damage our economy," the statement said.

Manningham-Buller said in November that 1,600 people were suspected of involvement in terrorist plots against British targets.

Four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters in July 2005 transit attacks in London and security officials say they have foiled at least six other plots. Officials expect the number of plots to increase this year, newspaper said.

The Bush Administration is out of control and is rogue...!
U.S. developing contingency plan to bomb Iran: report

Sat Feb 24, 7:52 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Despite the Bush administration's insistence it has no plans to go to war with
Iran, a
Pentagon panel has been created to plan a bombing attack that could be implemented within 24 hours of getting the go-ahead from
President George W. Bush, The New Yorker magazine reported in its latest issue.

The special planning group was established within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in recent months, according to an unidentified former U.S. intelligence official cited in the article by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in the March 4 issue.

The panel initially focused on destroying Iran's nuclear facilities and on regime change but has more recently been directed to identify targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in
Iraq, according to an Air Force adviser and a Pentagon consultant, who were not identified.

The consultant and a former senior intelligence official both said that U.S. military and special-operations teams had crossed the border from Iraq into Iran in pursuit of Iranian operatives, according to the article.

In response to the report, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said: "The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran. To suggest anything to the contrary is simply wrong, misleading and mischievous.

"The United States has been very clear with respect to its concerns regarding specific Iranian government activities. The president has repeatedly stated publicly that this country is going to work with allies in the region to address those concerns through diplomatic efforts," Whitman said.

Pentagon officials say they maintain contingency plans for literally dozens of potential conflicts around the world and that all plans are subject to regular and ongoing review.

The article, citing unnamed current and former U.S. officials, also said the Bush administration received intelligence from
Israel that Iran had developed an intercontinental missile capable of delivering several small warheads that could reach Europe. It added the validity of that intelligence was still being debated.

The article also included an interview conducted in December with Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who said that while he had no interest in initiating another war with Israel, he was anticipating and preparing for another Israeli attack sometime this year.

Israel launched a cross-border offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon last July.

Nasrallah also said he was open to talks with Washington if such discussions "can be useful and influential in determining American policy in the region," but they would be waste of time if the purpose was to impose policy.

Wow, there's enough here to fuel a Clancy/Ford novel/screen play...blockbuster film!
Ed: Absolutely no one there has said anything at all about a frozen Turkey being thrown into an engine!

Cheney plane leaves Singapore after minor repairs

By Caren Bohan 11 minutes ago

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Vice President
Dick Cheney, who visited Asia-Pacific allies Japan and Australia last week, left Singapore on Sunday afternoon after his plane underwent minor repairs and refueled.

"This was the pre-planned, scheduled fuel stop," said Cheney's spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride. "We were not diverted," she added, following a comment by Australia's Prime Minister John Howard that Cheney's plane had been diverted to Singapore because of a problem.

McBride said there had been an issue with the electricity on the plane. Because of that, "a call was placed back to Sydney with the status," she said, adding the electrical problem did not cut off Cheney's ability to communicate with the rest of the world.

The plane, which left Sydney's international airport at about 9 a.m. on Sunday (5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) Saturday), arrived at Singapore's Paya Lebar air base at about 2 p.m. Singapore time (0600 GMT), and took off again nearly two hours later.

Cheney did not get off the plane in Singapore.

"The small mechanical problem has been fixed," a U.S. embassy spokeswoman in Singapore said.

The problem had posed no safety issues and the aircraft was fine, the White House said earlier.

Cheney had been visiting Australia as part of a trip to thank Washington's
Iraq war allies Japan and Australia.

Concern about the flight first arose after Cheney's plane had stopped en route to the runway. A mobile stairway was sent out to the plane but a door in the plane opened and an unidentified figure appeared in the hatchway and waved the stairway off, a Reuters photographer said.

The door was then closed and the plane proceeded to the runway and took off.

McBride said the incident was "absolutely unrelated" to the electrical issue, adding the plane stopped because a passenger had alerted officials an item of luggage had been left in a vehicle. It was decided the item should be sent on another plane.

Cheney arrived in Sydney late on Thursday. Anti-war protesters who accuse him of being one of the main architects of the Iraq war scuffled briefly with police on Thursday and Friday.

A total of 11 people were arrested but his visit was otherwise uneventful.

(Additional reporting by Will Burgess and Paul Tait in Sydney; and Koh Gui Qing in Singapore)

...you damned dirty Humans!
Jaguar kills zookeeper in Denver

By Keith Coffman 32 minutes ago

DENVER (Reuters)- A male jaguar killed a zookeeper at the Denver Zoo on Saturday and employees put the animal down, police said.

"I can confirm that a female worker was killed and we're still conducting an investigation," Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson said.

According to a statement posted on the zoo's Web site (www.denverzoo.org), the 6-year-old jaguar attacked the unidentified worker inside its enclosure late Saturday morning. Armed employees entered the enclosure to retrieve the injured woman when the cat threatened them.

"The jaguar approached staff trying to assist the zookeeper and it was shot and killed," the statement said.

The mauled worker was transported to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead, Jackson said. Her identity and age were not released.

The zoo was closed after the incident, but the public was never in danger, zoo officials said.

The 140-pound jaguar, named Jorge, came to the Denver Zoo from the Santa Cruz Zoo in Bolivia in March 2005 after he was orphaned in the wild. This month, the zoo announced it had obtained a 16-month-old female jaguar to breed with Jorge.

I don't seek to validate Christianity, why should I seek to validate Mormonism! It's always about control and material success!
Pressure on Romney to firmly address Mormon faith

By Jason Szep 23 minutes ago

BOSTON (Reuters) - As he seeks to become the first Mormon U.S. president, Republican Mitt Romney faces a dilemma in courting conservative Christians who often dismiss his religion as a cult but now could decide his political fate.

Should he address his religion head-on in a speech, as John F. Kennedy did in 1960 to Texas Baptists while campaigning to become the first Roman Catholic U.S. president?

Or should he resist debate over a religion that evangelicals, who are key to winning the Republican primaries, often view with suspicion?

"It's a delicate balance, but I don't think the strategy of ignoring this is going to work," said Boston University professor Julian Zelizer. "At the moment he seems not to accept it as a legitimate issue and hopes that it goes away."

The Harvard-educated former Massachusetts governor has cast himself as a more conservative alternative to favorites John McCain (news, bio, voting record), an Arizona senator, and Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor.

That pitch is complicated by his inconsistency on social issues such as gay rights and abortion rights, which he once supported but now opposes, and misconceptions about Mormonism and its history of racism and polygamy.

A heckler attacked Romney's faith recently in Florida, a powerful state in the nominating process. "Sir, you are a pretender. You do not know the Lord," the man said.

Romney, a former bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, replied: "One of the great things about this great land is that we have people of different faiths and different persuasions.

"And I'm convinced that the nation does need ... to have people of different faiths but we need to have a person of faith lead the country."

'RELIGIOUS VIEWS'

Damon Linker, a former professor at the Mormon-sponsored Brigham Young University in Utah and author of "Theocons: Secular America Under Siege," said Romney's response in Florida is exactly why he needs to address the issue.

"The religious right wants a candidate's religious views to be at the center of their identity and political agenda. If you are going to do that, then the candidate's religious views have to be open for scrutiny," he said.

The Salt Lake City, Utah-based church is one of the world's fastest-growing and affluent religions.

It bans alcohol, caffeine and tobacco, maintains that no one goes to hell, the dead can be baptized and God speaks through living apostles and prophets such as the church's current president, Gordon Hinckley.

"What would it mean to have a Mormon as president who would believe that in an office building in downtown Salt Lake City there is a man who is the living mouthpiece of God on earth who speaks with the authority of God?" Linker asked.

Romney, 59, has called polygamy "bizarre" and does not drink, smoke or swear. He is married to his high-school sweetheart, Ann -- which sits better with conservative Christians than Giuliani's two failed marriages and McCain's divorce.

Romney is the fifth Mormon to seek the White House. His father, former Michigan governor George Romney, ran in 1968 and the church's founder, Joseph Smith, was shot to death by a mob during his 1844 presidential campaign.

But not since Kennedy has a candidate's religion been such an issue. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 35 percent of respondents said they would be "less likely" to vote for a candidate who is Mormon.

Kennedy made a point of easing concerns about his deference to a foreign Catholic prelate, and offered to resign if he was ever forced "to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest."

Richard Land, a top official in Southern Baptist Convention in Tennessee, said Romney would be wise to follow suit.

"I don't think the Mormonism issue is a deal-breaker, certainly not for most evangelicals," he said. "But I do think he needs to address the issue." Romney's wife, too, has urged a Kennedy-esque speech. "I'm actually anxious for that to happen," she told ABC News.

A Romney spokesman said no such speech was scheduled.

Daily improvements to defenses is SOP. Always!
Britain lobbying to be U.S. base site

Ed: Daily improvements to defenses is SOP. The phony in General's stars more fond of his pension and reputation in Lebanon screwed it up back in the eighties, (maybe under Republican orders to do so with the intent to piss-off the public in order to pass funding for expensive space based defense projects...!)

By ROBERT BARR, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 23, 3:24 PM ET

LONDON - Prime Minister
Tony Blair is lobbying the United States to consider locating part of its anti-missile system in Britain, his office said Friday.

The United States has also announced discussions with Poland and the Czech Republic about building parts of the missile defense infrastructure in those countries.

"We have certainly been engaged in conversations with the U.S. about this," said a spokesman for Blair, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The objective of these conversations was to make sure that the U.K. is kept in consideration to be one of the locations for the system should the U.S. press ahead with the system.

"It is purely about being part of the conversation. These discussions are at a very early stage," the spokesman said.

A Russian general has warned that Poland and the Czech Republic risk being targeted if they host U.S. missile defense bases, though the United States has insisted the system does not threaten Russia.

U.S. Army refiles charges against war objector, cockroaches are unstopable unless you've got a very bright light!
U.S. Army refiles charges against war objector

Sat Feb 24, 12:51 AM ET

SEATTLE (Reuters) - The U.S. government refiled charges on Friday against an Army officer who refused to fight in
Iraq after his first court martial ended in a mistrial.

The Army charged First Lt. Ehren Watada with one count of missing movements and four counts of conduct unbecoming an officer. Watada, 28, faces a dishonorable discharge and up to six years in a military prison if convicted on all counts.

Earlier this month, a military judge declared a mistrial in the first known court martial of a U.S. Army officer for publicly refusing to serve in Iraq. The mistrial was based on a ruling that Watada had unknowingly signed a document that amounted to a confession of guilt.

At the time, Watada's lawyer said a retrial would constitute double jeopardy, which forbids a defendant from being tried twice for the same crime, and would seek to have a second case thrown out. There is no date set for a retrial.

The suit was refiled at Fort Lewis Army base south of Seattle.

Watada has admitted to not boarding a plane headed to Iraq with the rest of his unit and making public statements criticizing the war as illegal and accusing
President George W. Bush's administration of deceiving the American people to enter into a war of aggression.

The defense made the argument that since the war is illegal, the order to deploy to Iraq is also illegal and following it would make Watada party to war crimes.

Cheney said on Saturday that the United States and its allies must not allow Iran to become a nuclear power.
Cheney warns of Iran's nuclear ambition

By Caren Bohan 2 hours, 27 minutes ago

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Vice President
Dick Cheney said on Saturday that the United States and its allies must not allow
Iran to become a nuclear power and raised concerns about Tehran's actions and "inflammatory" rhetoric.

The stern comments from Cheney, who is known for his hawkish views, followed Tehran's refusal to heed a U.N. deadline to halt uranium enrichment and a vow by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stand up to the rest of the world and not show weakness by acceding to the West's demands.

"They have made some fairly inflammatory statements," Cheney said of Iran at a joint Sydney news conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard. "They appear to be pursuing the development of nuclear weapons."

"We are deeply concerned and have made it very clear we're deeply concerned about Iran's activities," he said.

Iran insists that it is not trying to acquire nuclear weapons and its enrichment activities are for peaceful purposes.

In addition to Iran, the two leaders touched on issues ranging from the
Iraq war to China and Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks.

Howard pressed his insistence on a speedy trial for Hicks.

The prime minister also offered warnings about Iran, saying that a sudden withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq would only bolster Iran's clout and influence in the Middle East.

"I can't think of a country whose influence and potential clout would be more enhanced in that part of the world than Iran's would be," if the United States and its allies were to be forced to exit Iraq, Howard said.

"That would be a nightmare scenario," he added.

Cheney said he was concerned about Iran's "fairly aggressive" role in the Middle East, not just its decision to ignore the U.N. deadline.

"ALL OPTIONS"

He said "all options are on the table" on Iran. The Bush administration has long maintained that it is focused on diplomacy but tacitly acknowledges that the military option has not been ruled out.

Still, the administration's tough comments on Iran have been met with concern by some in the U.S. Congress and have even rattled financial markets.

Cheney said that a peaceful resolution to the nuclear standoff with Iran was "still our preference."

The Weekend Australian newspaper reported on Saturday that Cheney had endorsed U.S. Republican Senator John McCain (news, bio, voting record)'s view that the only thing worse than a military confrontation with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran.

Cheney, who stopped in Australia after a visit to Tokyo, had harsh words about China in a speech on Thursday, citing concerns about its rapid military build-up.

HOWARD'S SOFTER TONE

Howard took a decidedly softer tone on China, saying Australia takes a "realistic" view of Beijing's government but also values its close ties with the country.

Anti-Iraq war protesters have scuffled with police during Cheney's visit. The war has become a growing problem for Howard's conservative government, which has slumped in opinion polls ahead of elections due in the second half of 2007.

Cheney underscored that he had no intention of trying to press Howard for a bigger troop contribution in Iraq because such decisions were up to Australia.

He said that Hicks was "near the head of the queue" to be tried and that every effort was being made to move the legal process forward. But he said the Bush administration's hands were tied to some extent because it could not interfere with the U.S. military commission that is to try Hicks.

"We're not allowed to call over and say when are you going to be through, or what are you going to decide?" Cheney said. "But I do expect in the not too distant future that piece of the process will get resolved."

After wrapping up their talks, Cheney and Howard, who have been friends for years, headed off to go boating in the harbor. Cheney is to leave Australia on Sunday.

(Additional reporting by Paul Tait in SYDNEY)

It's becoming a rhetorical question; which is more FREE and Democratic, Canada, or Jordan?
Jordan's King says peace hopes dimming

Fri Feb 23, 4:09 PM ET

JERUSALEM - Jordan's King Abdullah II said in remarks broadcast Friday that prospects for Mideast peace were dwindling, and the latest window of opportunity might be the last.

"We find ourselves at this very important crossroads ... that I do feel really is the last opportunity for peace for all of us," Abdullah told
Israel's Channel 2 TV, in an excerpt from an interview to be broadcast in full on Saturday.

"I think that the opportunities that we have are diminishing, the frequency of conflict is rising rapidly in the Middle East," the king said.

With renewed international interest in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict following Israel's war last year against Hezbollah guerrillas, "this is the golden opportunity that is in front of all of us," Abdullah said.

Ending Israeli-Palestinian hostilities would, in turn, lead "to a greater stability between Israelis and Arabs," he added.

Earlier this week, Abdullah urged the U.S. to keep trying to broker a final Israeli-Palestinian accord. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Friday that his faction will not budge from its commitment to Israel's destruction. Hamas' political leader Khaled Mashaal blamed the U.S. for the failure of the international community to lift the crippling financial embargo on the Palestinians.

The future of peace efforts has been called into question by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' recent power-sharing pact with Hamas. Western powers, led by the U.S. and backed by Israel, have said they won't lift international sanctions against the Palestinians unless the new unity government explicitly recognizes Israel, disarms and recognizes existing Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.

The outline of the new government's platform only mentions "respect" for existing peace pacts.

Hey, why not wait till everyone involved is really, really dead!?
FBI may reopen cold cases

By CHRIS TALBOTT, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 57 minutes ago

JACKSON, Miss. - The
FBI is considering reopening dozens of cold cases involving slayings suspected of being racially motivated in the South during the 1950s and '60s.

An announcement could come as early as Tuesday, according to a law enforcement official who spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the plans have not yet been finalized.

In addition to the FBI's own investigations, the Southern Poverty Law Center submitted its own list last week of 74 potential unsolved slayings that involved white-on-black violence.

Thirty-two of the deaths happened in Mississippi. The others were in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Kentucky and New York.

Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, said each case was researched in the late 1980s when the group was putting together a civil rights memorial. But it is unclear if each could be considered a civil rights case, he said.

"The truth is we don't know," said Potok, whose group investigates hate crimes. "In each case there was some evidence to suggest that these were racial murders, but it absolutely was not proven. Had we been able to nail them down, their names would've been literally chiseled into the civil rights memorial that sits outside our building here."

U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton in Jackson reviewed the list of Mississippi killings for the Associated Press on Friday and said based on the limited amount of information available that none would qualify for federal prosecution under civil rights statutes. But he said many could still be prosecuted on a local or state level as murders.

The deaths outlined by the center happened in a variety of ways, from police-involved shootings to trysts with white women broken up by gunfire.

In most cases, the statute of limitations under federal civil rights laws will have run out, Lampton said. In others, charges could not be brought because the accused already have faced charges and been cleared by a jury.

Last month, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the bureau was aggressively seeking to solve cold civil rights cases, vowing to "pursue justice to the end, and we will, no matter how long it takes, until every living suspect is called to answer for their crimes."

Most recently federal prosecutors brought kidnapping and conspiracy charges against James Ford Seale, 71, who allegedly participated in the 1964 kidnappings and murders of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee in southwest Mississippi.

Seale was arrested Jan. 24 after the U.S. Justice Department reopened its investigation and learned that he was still alive. He has pleaded not guilty and is due for trial in April. The case qualified for federal prosecution because the captors allegedly took Moore and Dee across the state line into Louisiana while they were still alive.

In 1994, Mississippi won the conviction of Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 sniper killing of NAACP leader Medgar Evers.

In Alabama, Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted in 2002 of killing four black girls in the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963. In 2001, Thomas Blanton was convicted.

Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman, was convicted last June of manslaughter in the killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964.

___

Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

The high art of fashioning spears to kill Bush Babies, too easily translates into farming, storing grain, and standing armys...!
DeGeneres brings gentler tone to Oscars as host

By Steve Gorman Thu Feb 22, 8:10 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After two years of ceremonies emceed by anti-establishment provocateurs, the
Oscars on Sunday turn to a kinder, gentler comic and TV talk show host with a flair for putting those around her at ease.

Ellen DeGeneres, who made broadcast history 10 years ago as the first openly gay lead character on U.S. prime-time television, is headed for one of Hollywood's most prestigious assignments as only the second woman to be solo host of the
Academy Awards.

She follows in the footsteps of
Whoopi Goldberg, who broke the Oscar-hosting gender barrier with emcee turns in 1994, 1996, 1999 and 2002.

But in terms of style, the easy-going DeGeneres, host of the weekday talk show "Ellen," could not be more different from Goldberg or her two immediate Oscar predecessors,
Jon Stewart and
Chris Rock, all of whom are known for a more edgy, irreverent brand of humor.

"It's the same thing I do when I do my show," DeGeneres, 49, told TV Guide magazine recently. "It's really just setting that tone, and for me, being funny without being condescending or mean-spirited."

And in keeping with her trademark preference for slacks and suits over dresses, DeGeneres plans to appear in a variety of tuxedos designed by the leading names in fashion.

DeGeneres already demonstrated a knack for striking that difficult balance between satire and sanctimony as host of the twice-delayed Emmy Awards in November 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

SETTING THE RIGHT TONE

She famously opened that show joking that terrorists "can't take away our creativity, our striving for excellence, our joy. Only network executives can do that." She went on to say she was an ideal host because: "What would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?"

This year's Oscar telecast producer, Laura Ziskin, called DeGeneres a "brilliant host" who can "keep the evening moving and play the night and play the room, which is critical."

Her choice also seemed to mark an end to Oscar producers' preoccupation with picking hosts -- such as Rock and Stewart -- thought to be especially appealing to younger TV viewers who have increasingly shied away from the Oscars.

Rock's performance two years ago struck many as too testy. He irked some academy members with a monologue in which he told the assembled movie elite that "there's only four real stars" and the rest were "just popular people." Stewart also drew mixed reviews last year, while the show's U.S. TV audience fell to a three-year low, 38.8 million viewers.

This year, Ziskin is reaching out to the under-50 crowd by featuring a greater number of young presenters, including Jessica Biel, Jack Black, Kirsten Dunst, Anne Hathaway, Tobey Maguire and the new James Bond, Daniel Craig.

She also hopes to make the Oscars more compelling by urging winners to avoid one of the show's great pitfalls -- acceptance speeches that sound like laundry lists of thank-yous.

To that end, Ziskin has asked prospective winners to use their 45 seconds on stage "to entertain, or to enlighten or move us." She encourages them to save their check-lists of gratitude for a new backstage feature, the "Thank-You-Cam," one of many new Oscar tie-ins this year to the Internet.

Another new feature, Ziskin said, will be a four-minute film prepared by documentary maker Errol Morris that pays tribute to this year's Oscar contenders with a montage featuring 140 of the 177 nominees.

"It's all about the nominees and winners, the recipients of the Oscars," Ziskin Said. "They make or break the show."

Behold, The Planet of The APES!
Hunting chimps may change view of human evolution

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Thu Feb 22, 12:50 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chimpanzees have been seen using spears to hunt bush babies, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that demonstrates a whole new level of tool use and planning by our closest living relatives.


Perhaps even more intriguing, it was only the females who fashioned and used the wooden spears, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of Iowa State University reported.

Bertolani saw an adolescent female chimp use a spear to stab a bush baby as it slept in a tree hollow, pull it out and eat it.

Pruetz and Bertolani, now at Cambridge University in Britain, had been watching the Fongoli community of savanna-dwelling chimpanzees in southeastern Senegal.

The chimps apparently had to invent new ways to gather food because they live in an unusual area for their species, the researchers report in the journal Current Biology.

"This is just an innovative way of having to make up for a pretty harsh environment," Pruetz said in a telephone interview. The chimps must come down from trees to gather food and rest in dry caves during the hot season.

"It is similar to what we say about early hominids that lived maybe 6 million years ago and were basically the precursors to humans."

Chimpanzees are genetically the closest living relatives to human beings, sharing more than 98 percent of our DNA. Scientists believe the precursors to chimps and humans split off from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago.

Chimps are known to use tools to crack open nuts and fish for termites. Some birds use tools, as do other animals such as gorillas, orangutans and even naked mole rats.

But the sophisticated use of a tool to hunt with had never been seen.

Pruetz thought it was a fluke when Bertolani saw the adolescent female hunt and kill the bush baby, a tiny nocturnal primate.

But then she saw almost the same thing. "I saw the behavior over the course of 19 days almost daily," she said.

PLANNING AND FORESIGHT

The chimps choose a branch, strip it of leaves and twigs, trim it down to a stable size and then chew the ends to a point. Then they use it to stab into holes where bush babies might be sleeping.

It is not a highly successful method of hunting. They only ever saw one chimpanzee succeed in getting a bush baby once. The apes mostly eat fruit, bark and legumes.

Part of the problem is this group of chimps is shy of humans, and the females, who seem to do most of this type of hunting, are especially wary. "I am willing to bet the females do it even more than we have seen," she said.

Pruetz noted that male chimps never used the spears. She believes the males use their greater strength and size to grab food and kill prey more easily, so the females must come up with other methods.

"That to me was just as intriguing if not even more so," Pruetz said.

The spear-hunting occurred when the group was foraging together, again unchimplike behavior that might produce more competition between males and females, she said.

Maybe females invented weapons for hunting, Pruetz said.

"The observation that individuals hunting with tools include females and immature chimpanzees suggests that we should rethink traditional explanations for the evolution of such behavior in our own lineage," she concluded in her paper.

"The multiple steps taken by Fongoli chimpanzees in making tools to dispatch mammalian prey involve the kind of foresight and intellectual complexity that most likely typified early human relatives."

Clovis points out...! Humans likely arrived in the "New World" as early as 25,000 yrs ago!
Experts doubt Clovis people were first in Americas

By Will Dunham Thu Feb 22, 6:42 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Clovis people, known for their distinctive spear points, likely were not the first humans in the Americas, according to research placing their presence as more recent than previously believed.

Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers writing in the journal Science on Thursday said the Clovis people, hunters of large Ice Age animals like mammoths and mastodons, dated from about 13,100 to 12,900 years ago.

That would make the Clovis culture, known from artifacts discovered at various sites including the town of Clovis, New Mexico, both younger and shorter-lived than previously thought. Previous estimates had dated the culture to about 13,600 years ago.

These people long had been seen as the first humans in the New World, but the new dates suggest their culture thrived at about the same time or after others also in the Americas.

Michael Waters, director of Texas A&M University's Center for the Study of the First Americans, called the research the final nail in the coffin of the so-called "Clovis first" theory of human origins in the New World.

Waters said he thinks the first people probably arrived in the Americas between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago.

"We've got to stop thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a singular event," Waters said in an interview.

"And we have to start now thinking about the peopling of the Americas as a process, with people coming over here, probably arriving at different times, maybe taking different routes and coming from different places in northeast Asia."

Waters and co-author Thomas Stafford, a radiocarbon dating expert, tested samples from various Clovis archeological sites to try to get a more accurate accounting of their age. Technological advances enabled them to more precisely pinpoint dates for some Clovis sites excavated in North America.

The theory has been that the Clovis people first migrated out of northeast Asia across the Bering land bridge from Siberia into Alaska and traveled through a ice-free corridor into North America, populating that continent while their descendants journeyed into South America.

Asked who were the first people in the Americas if not the Clovis, Waters answered, "That's a good question."

"I think that's what we've got to work toward -- a new model for the peopling of the Americas, and I think we need to create a coherent model that's based on genetic data, geological evidence as well as archeological data."

Rona answered questions about the bondage scene in graphic detail, casually complaining that she was bitten up by mosquitoes.
Brooklyn jury given graphic S&M lesson

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 11 minutes ago

NEW YORK - The graphic color photo, flashed on a large video-screen stationed next to the jury, tested the decorum of a federal courtroom. It showed a nude woman named Rona tethered to a tree trunk in the wilderness. From the witness stand, Rona answered questions about the bondage scene in graphic detail, casually complaining that she was bitten up by mosquitoes.

The testimony came during a trial in Brooklyn that has given jurors lessons on the lifestyle of a man dubbed an "S&M Svengali" by the tabloids, the inner-workings of a sadomasochism Web site and the federal government's crackdown on obscenity.

The jury began deliberating Thursday.

In recent years, federal authorities have stepped up prosecutions of purveyors of hardcore adult pornography to "protect citizens from unwanted exposure to obscene material," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said.

One pending case in Pittsburgh — involving videos of simulated rape and murder — was initially thrown out before being reinstated on appeal by the
Department of Justice.

Under the Bush administration, at least 52 people or businesses have been convicted of violating federal obscenity statutes, and more than a dozen indictments are pending, federal officials said. By comparison, there were four such prosecutions during the eight years of the Clinton administration, they said.

In the Brooklyn case, Rona and the prosecution's star witness, named Jodi, gave conflicting accounts of an alleged campaign of sadism by Glenn Marcus, 53, operator of a Web site devoted to BDSM — shorthand for bondage, domination and sadomasochism. A judge allowed both women to testify using only their first names.

Marcus included Jodi and other women in thousands of photos posted on his Web site — a practice that prompted the government to bring obscenity charges along with sex trafficking and a forced labor count.

The most serious charge — forced labor — by statute carries a potential life sentence, although such a punishment is unlikely under federal sentencing guidelines.

Jodi told the jury that after meeting Marcus over the Internet in 1998, she agreed to become one of his "slaves." Over two years, he systematically degraded her by shaving her head, branding the initial "G" on her buttocks and carving "Slave" on her stomach during liaisons in homes in Maryland, Washington, D.C., New York City and on Long Island.

When the 39-year-old Jodi failed to properly perform tasks for the defendant's Web site in 2001, he punished her by putting a ball in her mouth, closing it shut with surgical needles and hanging her on a wall, she said. Other times, he tied her down and mutilated her genitals with a smoldering cigarette as she screamed out in pain, she said.

"I felt like I was literally in hell," she said. "I felt like I was on fire and I couldn't put it out."

Rona, 51, a longtime friend called as a defense witness, said that while living with Marcus and Jodi, the accuser was a willing participant in their sex games. She called the defendant harmless.

"I love being around Glenn," she said, even as prosecutors displayed photos of her breasts punctured with dozens of pins. "He's a lot of fun."

Jodi testified she built up enough courage to leave Marcus in late 2001, but also conceded she continued to have contact with him, even going camping. She decided to go to the
FBI when he refused to take her photos off the Internet.

By law, it didn't matter that the accuser wasn't always under lock and key, prosecutor Pam Chen said during closing arguments Thursday. "She was terrified. She was made captive by the fear."

Chen told the Brooklyn jury it must agree that Marcus' Web site was "patently offensive" to convict on the obscenity count, and argued the material was "so misogynist and so violent, it's offensive."

The defense has countered by arguing that Marcus and Jodi had a "contract" to engage in a master-slave relationship that, while potentially offensive to the general public, was consensual and even pleasurable to the participants.

"Cases like this test the very capacity of this society we live in for tolerance," defense lawyer Maurice Sercarz said in his closing argument.

Defense experts testified that the BDSM scene follows rules that purposely blur the line between pleasure and pain, but demand mutual consent. One said it draws from a "vast array of people," including judges; another said that Marcus' Web site had "serious scientific value" as a tool to study sexual behavior.

But Chen portrayed the defendant as a sadist who violated both the standards of a civilized society and of the S&M community.

"Glenn Marcus made his own rules," she said. "He thought he was God."

If the awards committee has the wit, they will enhance Gore's selfless mission!
Gore thought to be among Nobel nominees

By DOUG MELLGREN, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 22, 5:37 PM ET

OSLO, Norway - Former vice president and environmental advocate
Al Gore is believed to be among 181 nominees for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

In releasing the final count Thursday, awards committee secretary Geir Lundestad would only give a total number — 135 individuals and 46 organizations — without listing any names, in keeping with the prize rules.

The five-member awards committee keeps its list of candidates secret for 50 years, and refuses to indicate who might be under consideration. However, those making nominations sometimes announce them.

This year, those include Gore, for campaigning to draw attention to the threat of global warming, Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved the lives of Jewish children during World War II, and American TV host
Oprah Winfrey.

Other announced nominees include Canadian Intuit environmentalist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Bolivian President Evo Morales and U.N.
AIDS envoy to Africa Stephen Lewis.

Those with nomination rights include former peace laureates, the awards committee and its staff, members of national governments and legislatures, selected university professors and others.

The winner is usually announced in October. The prize always is presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of its creator, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel.

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On the Net:

http://www.nobel.no