Broadcaster to Pay $2M in Bomb Scare Feb 5, 2007 10:47 am 742 Views update to blog : Boston Devices a Cartoon Publicity Ploy Jan 31 Monday, February 5, 2007 BOSTON - Turner Broadcasting Systems and a marketing company have agreed to pay $2 million compensation and apologize for their advertising campaign that caused a widespread terrorism scare, the attorney general said Monday. The agreement with several state and local agencies resolves any potential civil or criminal claims against Turner and Interference Inc., said Attorney General Martha Coakley. Authorities feared bombs had been planted when they found more than three dozen blinking electronic signs with a boxy cartoon character giving an obscene hand gesture Wednesday in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville. The signs, part of a publicity campaign for Cartoon Network's "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," also appeared in nine other big U.S. cities in recent weeks, but created little interest. But in Boston, bomb squads responded to reports of the devices in a subway station, on bridges and elsewhere. As part of the settlement, $1 million will be used to reimburse the agencies and $1 million will be used to fund homeland security and other programs. Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc., and Interference Inc. also will issue a public statement accepting full responsibility and apologizing for the incident. "Last week's events caused a major disruption in the greater Boston area on many levels - crippling public transportation, causing serious traffic problems, negatively affecting local businesses and perhaps most significantly, costing Boston and surrounding communities thousands of dollars," Coakley said. "We are fortunate that no one was injured," Coakley said. "We hope that this painful lesson will not be lived or learned again either by the communities involved or ... Turner Broadcasting and Interference." Turner issued a statement again taking responsibility for the "unconventional marketing tactic" and apologizing for hardships it caused for residents. "We understand now that in today's post-Sept. 11 environment, it was reasonable and appropriate for citizens and law enforcement officials to take any perceived threat posed by our light boards very seriously and to respond as they did," the statement said. The company said it was reviewing its policies concerning local marketing efforts and strategies to ensure that they are not disruptive or perceived as threatening. Authorities say two men were paid to hang the signs around the city. Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, have pleaded not guilty to placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct. Coakley said prosecutors were in discussions with the men's attorneys to resolve the charges before a trial. Coakley said she did not know how the two companies would divide responsibility for the payment, which was being wired to the attorney general Monday. MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskas and MBTA Police Chief Joseph Carter said the money would be put to good use. "We will develop a list of meaningful and effective homeland security and customer safety programs that will have an enduring effect on our customers," Carter said. 0 Comments

Russians, Chinese Look for Amur Leopards Feb 1, 2007 4:16 pm 910 Views Thursday, February 1, 2007 MOSCOW - Russian and Chinese conservationists began searching Thursday for signs of the last remaining Amur leopards in Russia's Far East and adjacent Chinese border regions, as part of a triennial census of the nearly extinct cats. The leopards are one of the most endangered species on Earth, with only around 30 remaining in the wilderness of the Russian Pacific's Primorye region and across the border in China's northeastern provinces, the World Wide Fund for Nature said in a statement. The animals and their habitat face encroachment from development, poachers, logging and other threats, said Dmitry Pikunov, an ecologist with the Russian Academy of Science. "The condition and quality of its ecosystem in specific places is changing quickly and unfortunately for these predators not for the best," he said in the statement. "It remains to be said that places where large predators like the leopard and the tiger can have normal lives practically are gone," he said. Trackers, hunters and animal biologists will spend two weeks across some 1,930 square miles of snowy taiga forests seeking out tracks to determine how many leopards remain, their gender and their size, the organization said. The cross-border territory is also home to the endangered Siberian tigers, also known as the Amur, Manchurian or Ussuri tiger. Slightly more than 400 tigers are believed to survive in the wild, victims also of encroaching human settlements as well poachers who want hides and bones for use in traditional Chinese medicine. 0 Comments

Boston Devices a Cartoon Publicity Ploy Jan 31, 2007 4:56 pm 911 Views Wednesday, January 31, 2007 BOSTON - More than 10 blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. Most if not all of the devices depict a character giving the finger. Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless. "It's a hoax - and it's not funny," said Gov. Deval Patrick, who said he'll speak to the state's attorney general "about what recourse we may have." Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball. "The packages in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger," Turner said in a statement, issued a few hours after reports of the first devices came in. It said the devices have been in place for two to three weeks in 10 cities: Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia. There were no reports about the devices Wednesday afternoon from police in the other nine cities. "We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger," the company said. The marketing company responsible for the campaign, Interference Inc., had no immediate comment. A woman who answered the phone at the New York-based firm's offices on Wednesday afternoon said the firm's CEO was out of town and would not be able to comment until Thursday. Mayor Thomas Menino said he'll seek to punish those responsible, and indicated that the penalty could be two to five years in prison per count. After Turner made its announcement, Menino said he was "prepared to take any and all legal action" against the company and its affiliated "for any and all expenses incurred during the response to today's incidents." "That would include any criminal or civil action," Menino spokeswoman Meaghan Maher later clarified. Boston Police would not comment on any potential charges. Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke praised Boston authorities for sharing their knowledge quickly with Washington officials and the public. "Hoaxes are a tremendous burden on local law enforcement and counter-terrorism resources and there's absolutely no place for them in a post-9/11 world," Knocke said. Authorities said some of the objects looked like circuit boards or had wires hanging from them. The first device was found at a subway and bus station underneath Interstate 93, forcing the shutdown of the station and the highway. Later, police said four calls, all around 1 p.m., reported devices at the Boston University Bridge and the Longfellow Bridge, both of which span the Charles River, at a Boston street corner and at the Tufts-New England Medical Center. The package near the Boston University bridge was found attached to a structure beneath the span, authorities said. Subway service across the Longfellow Bridge between Boston and Cambridge was briefly suspended, and Storrow Drive was closed as well. A similar device was found Wednesday evening just north of Fenway Park, police spokesman Eddy Chrispin said. Wanda Higgins, a 47-year-old Weymouth resident and a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, heard about the threat as she watched television news coverage while preparing to leave work at 4 p.m. "I saw the bomb squad guys carrying a paper bag with their bare hands," Higgins said. "I knew it couldn't be too serious." Messages seeking additional comment from the Atlanta-based Cartoon Network were left with several publicists. "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" is a cartoon with a cultish following that airs as part of the Adult Swim late-night block of programs for adults on the Cartoon Network. A feature length film based on the show is slated for release March 23. The cartoon also includes two trouble-making, 1980s-graphic-like characters called "mooninites," named Ignignokt and Err - who were pictured on the suspicious devices. They are known for making the obscene hand gesture depicted on the devices. --------------- don't like ATHF anyway. there is nothing Aqua or Teen about them, Hunger seems to fit. Force??? hmmmm anyway...i personally think it is a stupid show and don't watch it 0 Comments

Dog Reunites With Family After 6 Years Jan 29, 2007 8:56 am 940 Views Sunday, January 28, 2007 ST. LOUIS - Cujo was a frisky 7-year-old when he sneaked out of his owners' south St. Louis yard in July 2000. Now, thinner and grayer and with a tale that would be fascinating if only he could tell it, the golden retriever is back with the Barczewski family. "It's a miracle," Noreen Barczewski, 41, said at Friday's reunion. "We found him!" Six years and a side trip to Columbia can do a lot to a dog, but it was unmistakably Cujo. There was the heart-shaped patch of white on his forehead, the white fur on his toes, his manner of greeting people by rubbing against them cat-style. Cujo's homecoming was orchestrated by Dirk's Fund, a golden retriever rescue group that has found homes for more than 900 dogs in the past decade. After slipping away from home, Cujo somehow ended up 120 miles in Columbia in the home of an elderly woman. When the woman entered a nursing home, the dog was sent to the Central Missouri Humane Society in Columbia. Bob Tillay, president of Dirk's Fund, spotted the dog - by then renamed Willy - on an adoption Web site and arranged to have him brought to St. Louis. "Sweet old man! He knows how to sit and shake," the Web site cooed. The dog's ears were so infected he couldn't hear. His coat was so matted he had to be shaved. And Dirk's Fund paid to have some cysts removed. The group eventually took Cujo/Willy to a nursing home in Clayton, to serve as a pet for residents. But things didn't work out - the dog needed a yard where he could run off the leash - and his picture went up on the Dirk's Fund Web site. A week ago, Noreen Barczewski's brother-in-law, Michael Barczewski, went to the Web site on a fluke. He'd been looking for a dog to adopt and saw the picture of the old dog with the white heart mark and white feet. Michael and his wife, Gail, had been the original breeders of Cujo. He recognized the dog immediately, and the reunion followed within days. Now 13, Cujo had never been forgotten by the his original family - especially Kayla, who was just 4 when the dog disappeared. Kayla insisted on hanging the retriever's red felt Christmas stocking each year, confident he'd someday come home. "I had something in my heart," the fourth-grader said Friday, patting her pet's soft golden coat, "and I knew he wasn't gone." --- 0 Comments

Japan marine park captures rare shark on film Jan 24, 2007 5:29 pm 1011 Views Japan marine park captures rare shark on film ‘Living fossil’ species has changed little since prehistoric times Jan 24, 2007 TOKYO - A species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is 2,000 feet or more under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week. The Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, was alerted by a fisherman at a nearby port on Sunday that he had spotted an odd-looking eel-like creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. Marine park staff caught the 5-foot long creature, which they identified as a female frilled shark, sometimes referred to as a “living fossil” because it is a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times. The shark appeared to be in poor condition when park staff moved it to a seawater pool where they filmed it swimming and opening its jaws. “We believe moving pictures of a live specimen are extremely rare,” said an official at the park. “They live between 600 and 1,000 meters under the water, which is deeper than humans can go.” “We think it may have come close to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters,” the official said. The shark died a few hours after being caught. Frilled sharks, which feed on other sharks and sea creatures, are sometimes caught in the nets of trawlers but are rarely seen alive. 0 Comments

Calf With 2 Faces Wins Over Dairyman Jan 23, 2007 7:00 pm 1016 Views Kirk Heldreth, of Heldreth Dairy Farm, watches as Star, his two-faced calf takes a break from feeding on Saturday, Jan. 6, 2007, in Rural Retreat, Va. Tuesday, January 23, 2007 RURAL RETREAT, Va. - Star, a calf born with two faces, is getting star treatment from dairyman Kirk Heldreth. Despite her malformed mouth, Star has been feeding from a bottle and is winning over Heldreth, who didn't expect her to live long after her Dec. 27 birth. He had considered donating the calf to Virginia Tech for scientific purposes, or even selling her for show. "We'd like to keep the calf for a while and see how she does," he said. Heldreth said he and his family have grown too attached to her to let her become a display piece. Star had been drawing the curious to Heldreth's southwest Virginia farm. He still sees about 40 to 50 visitors daily. "She amazes us every day," he told the Bristol Herald-Courier. Star feeds twice a day, normally drinking about two bottles of milk at each sitting. She often is cradled during feeding. "We've spoiled her," he said. While otherwise normal, Star has one upper jaw and two lower jaws. Heldreth believed initially she would have to be tube-fed. He's not sure whether she will be able to eat feed like a normal heifer. "The unique thing about (Star) is she's got the will to survive more than any calf I've ever seen," Heldreth said. --- 0 Comments

Love and Chili Dogs Jan 23, 2007 4:41 pm 1013 Views Love is weird. It just sort of sneaks up on you when you least expect it. Sort of like a chili dog in the elevator. 0 Comments

Pa. Residents See Wayward Wallaby Jan 23, 2007 4:38 pm 932 Views Tuesday, January 23, 2007 FLEETWOOD, Pa. - Where's the wallaby? That's what officials at the Berks County Humane Society are wondering after residents began seeing a foreign creature hopping around town. Wallabies, which look very similar to kangaroos, are native to Australia and Papua New Guinea. It's unclear how one ended up about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The animal might have been bought on the Internet as a pet, said humane society officer Dylan Heckart. The agency received its first report of a wallaby sighting on Monday from a man who had seen the animal in his backyard over the weekend, Heckart said. Humane society officials have since laid traps baited with food in areas where the creature has been seen, said Heckart. Members of the public are being advised to keep their distance if they spot the animal. "They're violent when confined or restrained," Heckart said Tuesday, noting wallabies' powerful kicking legs. "They can definitely injure a human being badly." The Lehigh Valley Zoo, about 20 miles away in Schnecksville, said it was not missing a wallaby. 0 Comments

Dinosaur May Have Resembled the Biplane Jan 23, 2007 4:36 pm 925 Views Tuesday, January 23, 2007 WASHINGTON - When the Wright Brothers first took to the sky in a biplane, they were using a design nature may have tried 125 million years earlier. A new study of one of the earliest feathered dinosaurs suggests it may have had upper and lower sets of wings, much like the biplanes of early aviation. Today, the biplane is widely considered an old-fashioned rarity. And the design is no longer seen in birds, though it's not clear if it was a step on the way to modern birds or a dead end, tested by nature and discarded. The intriguing possibility of a biplane dinosaur - Microraptor gui - is suggested by Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University in this week's online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Microraptor was described by Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2003 as having aerodynamic feathers on both its arms and legs. Xu suggested at the time that it glided, extending its legs backward so its wings were arranged one behind the other, like a dragonfly. But that would be aerodynamically inefficient for a feathered creature, Chatterjee concluded, noting that the feathers on the legs would not face forward. Instead, he suggested, the legs of the two-pound creature could have been held below the body in flight, creating two staggered wing sections, the upper one slightly ahead of the lower one. One other flying dinosaur, Pedopenna, also had feathers on its legs, Chatterjee said, and modern raptors such as falcons have short feathers on their upper legs which reduce air resistance as they fly. "Aircraft designers have mimicked many of nature's flight 'inventions,' usually inadvertently," Chatterjee wrote. "Now, it seems likely that Microraptor invented the biplane 125 million years before the Wright 1903 Flyer." Xu, who said a variety of reconstructions have been suggested since the original one, called Chatterjee's proposal "likely," but added that "we really need to work painstakingly to check all details and have an accurate reconstruction, and then we can compare different models in computer or even in wind tunnel, which we are planning to do." "Microraptor is a critical species in understanding the origin of flight," added Xu, who was not associated with Chatterjee's research team. Matthew Carrano, curator of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said the question focuses on what the legs can do, and it's a difficult problem because the fossils are flat and require interpretation as to what they would have looked like in three dimensions. Carrano, who also was not part of Chatterjee's research team, said this creature was probably a side branch rather than a stage evolution had to pass through on the way to today's birds. "It's difficult to see how this animal does anything well, it seems so ungainly," Carrano said. "It forces us to think creatively because it's so far off the beaten path." There are often such experiments that fall by the wayside, he said. "The important thing is, because we've now got all these feathered dinosaurs to look at, it has kind of opened the gates a bit to speculating about how flight evolved," Carrano said. Chatterjee's research was funded by Texas Tech University. --- 0 Comments

Intersex Sunfish Found in Potomac Basin Jan 23, 2007 4:35 pm 905 Views Tuesday, January 23, 2007 SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. - Scientists studying intersex fish in the Potomac River basin have found the abnormality for the first time in redbreast sunfish, the third species affected by the mysterious phenomenon, a federal fish pathologist said Tuesday. Intersex fish possess both male and female characteristics. For example, some male fish have been found with immature eggs in their testes. The phenomenon was previously documented in smallmouth and largemouth bass in the Potomac River and some of its tributaries in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Vicki Blazer of the U.S. Geological Survey said she verified the abnormality in sunfish last week while preparing for her talk Tuesday at the start of a three-day conference on fish kills in the six-state Chesapeake Bay watershed. The conference was sponsored by the Annapolis-based Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "We do see it in some of the redbreast sunfish, although I have no idea what the incidence will be," Blazer said. The incidence of intersex in male smallmouth bass has been as high as 100 percent in some sample areas studied by Blazer and her colleagues. Largemouth bass have had a lesser incidence of intersex, Blazer said. Blazer said that whatever is causing the abnormality, which was first detected in the watershed in 2003, may also be behind a number of large-scale fish kills across the region since 2002. In one such event in 2005, 80 percent of the smallmouth bass and redbreast sunfish in the South Fork of the Shenandoah River developed lesions and died. A similar kill occurred in 2004 on the river's North Fork. The state of Virginia has formed a Shenandoah River Fish Kill Task Force to investigate the kills. Blazer said intersex and fish kills may be related because many of the killed fish appear to have had suppressed immune systems. There is increasing evidence that immune cells and disease resistance are affected by contaminants including chemical compounds that stimulate estrogen production, Blazer said. Another factor in intersex development could be increased aquatic levels of natural and synthetic hormones, such as those in birth-control pills, which often aren't removed by wastewater treatment plants, Blazer said. Poultry manure, which is used as fertilizer in agricultural fields, is also high in steroids identical to human female and male hormones, although no cause-and-effect evidence linking poultry manure to intersex fish exists, researchers said. "My guess is, is it's a mixture of things, but that's still what we have to figure out," Blazer said. Charles Pouksih, environmental program manager for the Maryland Department of the Environment, said excessive nutrients from human waste and fertilizers are largely to blame for fish kills in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. "We're operating in the dark, but maybe not as much in the dark as we were 10 years ago," he said. The Chesapeake Bay watershed spans nearly 65,000 square miles in Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. --- 0 Comments

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