Turtle Thursday: In the news 08/18/2011

Unique pig-nosed turtle is over-harvested in New Guinea

More here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14013362

And away we go!

At this moment I'm on a flight out of NYC. I have stuff scheduled to post in my absence, but I may pop in and post new items here and there depending on where I am and if there's internet access.

Be well!

See y'all soon!

This was supposed to post last Friday at 5:15.
Fucking blogger.

18. Teen Survives 30 Minutes Buried Alive in Sand

Teen Survives 30 Minutes Buried Alive in Sand: A California teen survived for 30 minutes after his sand tunnel collapsed earlier this week, with rescuers frantically digging to try to find him. Matt Mina (17) was digging a 6ft trench on Newport Beach when the sand collapsed on him, leaving him trapped underground.

He apparently thought he was going to die and drifted in and out of consciousness as he struggled for air. Meanwhile, rescuers were searching for him, digging through the sand to try to find him. He was pulled out unconscious but has since made a full recovery. But he has told the media that he’s unlikely to be building any more sand tunnels in the near future.

Miraculous: Matt Mina is lucky to be alive after the half hour ordeal

via

Car exhaust fumes kill 'Chinese couple'

Car exhaust fumes

Beijing, A man and his girlfriend died after they kept their car engine running in the garage in a Shanghai suburb.

The pair drove into the garage of the man’s parents villa in suburban Songjiang district.

When the man’s mother opened the garage door in the evening she found them lying there, Shanghai Daily reported.

Officials said the man and his girlfriend had locked the door of the garage from inside after driving in. They had left the engine and air-conditioner running and that released exhaust fumes in the enclosed space.(IANS)

Young girl can't stop laughing after brain surgery

An operation to remove a brain tumour of a seven-year-old girl in Britain has left her chuckling non-stop.

Doctors had warned surgery could leave Emma Stephens feeling upset or angry – but instead it turned her into Little Miss Giggles, Metro.co.uk reported.

Her mother Vana believes the constant mirth helped her family pull through the hard times. ‘We would visit Enna and try to put on a brave face but inside we were just crushed,’ said the 40-year-old police force worker.

‘But once Enna started giggling, we found ourselves doing the same, it was so infectious.

‘And it was just a great way of releasing our emotions.’

Enna, from New Marske, Cleveland, had suffered dizzy spells, blurriness and sickness before a visit to the opticians in June revealed a malignant growth behind her eye.

The operation caused a side-effect called the pseudobulbar effect, in which patients who have undergone brain tumour surgery often suffer involuntary emotions such as giggling or crying caused by disruptions to nerves.

Enna, a keen ballet dancer, now faces 16 months of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, although doctors say there is an 80 per cent chance the tumour will not return.

Mrs Stephens added: ‘We were told by doctors that most patients who have had a brain tumour removed often feel depressed, or can even be angry. But Enna would giggle all the time. It was so lovely to hear after everything she had been through.’source

Aliens: UFO Shoots Across Texas Sky

Visitors A bright white light dropped out of the sky live on breakfast TV in Fort Worth, Texas

If aliens are real then it appears they are becoming savvier at getting our attention. Early risers in Texas got a surprise when a UFO shot through the sky live on breakfast TV yesterday. Sharp eyed viewers spotted the white light flash across the screen as local station KXAS showed a traffic camera looking across Fort Worth at 5:40am. In the top right of the video a bright light drops out of the sky and disappears.

A slow-motion replay of the footage appears to show a faint light veering off at an angle to the right of the picture. Station managers have called in UFO investigators to review the footage. Viewers speculated that it could be a shooting star or possibly an insect reflecting light from the television tower where the camera is mounted. But others said they had seen the bright light with their own eyes.

'I was sitting outside my neighbors house and saw the flash of light in the sky go over the trees. Bill my neighbor saw it too,' a viewer wrote on the station's website.

'This looks more like a meteor that has reached the Earth's atmosphere but due to the severe stress of gravity at hyper speeds has been redirected,' wrote another.
source: Dailymail 

Check Out The Video Clip of UFO Shoots Across Texas Sky live on breakfast TV

Norway Killer Could be Held in Luxury Prison

Norway Killer Could be Held in Luxury Prison: Anders Behring Breivik could be jailed in one of the world's most progressive prisons, where inmates enjoys cells equipped with flat screen televisions, minifridges and designer-style furniture. Halden Fengsel prison was opened last by King Harald V and is home to some of Norway's most hardened criminals, including murderers and rapists. The jail is spread over 75 acres of woodland just outside Oslo and facilities include a sound studio, jogging trails and a two-bedroom house separate from the main facility where convicts can stay with their families during overnight visits. Guards move around the prison unarmed and often play sports.

Source: telegraph

Australia Has Some of World's Most Expensive Parking

                                                                                                                                                                                                   Reuters Monopoly promotions staff administer free parking tickets during Monopolys 75th anniversary celebration on XXX on August 25, 2010 in Sydney, Australia. In celebration of the anniversary, Monopolys distributors in Australia provided free parking on Sydney streets associated with the board game, Oxford, Regent, Park Streets and Railway Square and Mr. Monopoly handed real and Monopoly notes out to passers-by. Global celebrations included London, Atlantic City, Mexico and Singapore.

Australia Has Some of World's Most Expensive Parking: Sydney and Melbourne have some of the most expensive parking rates in the world, according to research released Tuesday, as both cities try to encourage people to leave their cars at home.

The Colliers International Parking Rate Survey has Oslo as the priciest place to park at $US89.04 a day, followed by Copenhagen at US$73.11, then Melbourne on US$69.53 and Sydney at US$67.42. The Indonesian capital Jakarta has the cheapest daily parking of the 156 cities surveyed at just 92 cents.

Colliers national director of research Nerida Conisbee said council and government levies had pushed up costs in major Australian cities’ central business districts (CBDs). “In Sydney and Melbourne’s CBDs councils are actively discouraging people driving into the city,” she said, adding that the strong Australian dollar had also increased the relative cost of parking.

Earlier this month, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s biennial cost of living survey showed Sydney and Melbourne are now the sixth and seventh most expensive cities on the planet, respectively.

It attributed the rising cost of living to the soaring Aussie dollar, which this year passed parity with the greenback and was trading Tuesday at above 108 US cents, having spiked from around 50 US cents a decade ago.

Source: AFP
via: link

A 120-million-year-old fossil of a pregnant lizard has been found in China

A 120-million-year-old fossil of a pregnant lizard has been found in China: BBC reported Thursday. The fossil is a complete 30 cm lizard with over a dozen embryos in its body.

Researchers from University College London, who studied the fossil, say it was just days from giving birth when it died and was buried during the Cretaceous period. The findings were published in the journal Naturwissenschaften. The fossil is interesting to scientists because it is a reptile that produced live young rather than laying eggs.

Only 20 percent of living lizards and snakes produce live young, and this shows it is an ancient, if unusual, trait. “I didn’t think much of the fossil when I first saw it,” BBC quoted Susan Evans, joint lead author of the paper, as saying.

But when her colleague, Yuan Wang, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, examined the fossil he spotted the tiny remains of at least 15 almost fully developed embryos inside it, it said. The fossil is so well preserved that the minuscule teeth of the developing young are visible on very close inspection.

Scientists thought that, in extinct reptiles, live birth was restricted to aquatic species, such as marine ichthyosaurs. These creatures would have been able to move through water with relative ease, even when heavily pregnant. The fossilized mother lizard, found in northeastern China, has been identified as a specimen of Yabeinosaurus, a large, slow-growing and relatively primitive lizard. (IANS) link.1, Link2

Guatemalan woman finds A Sinkhole under the Bed

Guatemalan woman finds A Sinkhole under the Bed: A Guatemalan woman had no idea that her house was sitting right on top of a sinkhole. When Inocenta Hernandez heard a loud explosion, her first instinct was that it came from outside her house.

She subsequently run out to check what it was but when she realized that the explosion came from inside, she was shocked to the core to find that it was right under her bed. Hernandez narrated that she returned to her room and found a huge hole at the place where her bed once stood.

Hernandez was grateful because at the time of the incident, her grandchildren were playing near where the bed stood. The size of the sinkhole is 3 feet wide and about 40 feet deep. Hernandez had no idea that she had a gaping hole right under her bed but Guatemala has a high rate of sinkhole incidents.

Sinkhole is caused by a natural phenomenon which is often caused by rain storms. The size depends largely on the size of depression underneath. In May of 2010, a huge crater was opened in Guatemala City when a massive sinkhole swallowed up houses and an intersection. Miraculously, no one was killed in the incident.

via: link 1, link 2

Naked Man Challenges Pamplona Bull - And Loses

Flying high: The streaker was tossed up into the air by a young calf during the suelta de vaquillas

Naked Man Challenges Pamplona Bull - And Loses: He might have been high on adrenaline and low on sleep - but it was no excuse for this naked bull-runner who was detained by police shortly after being thrown into the air by a young calf. He joined thousands of thrill-seekers to run with the bulls on a crowded fourth day at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona yesterday. Ten people were injured and no one was gored.

But the now infamous streaker, who was tossed up into the air by a young calf in the bullring after the running, was arrested for causing a 'public disturbance'. Several runners tripped, fell and were trampled as crowds raced alongside the massive bulls of the famous Miura breeding estate, founded in 1849. The Sunday run is usually the biggest of the eight that take place annually and is particularly favoured by aficionados because it traditionally features Miuras, renowned as Spain’s largest fighting bulls.

Navarra Hospital reported in a statement that 10 people received treatment for minor injuries including arm and head trauma. Nine of them - all Spaniards of ages ranging from 19 to 41 years old - were kept in for observation. The naked bull-runner suffered minor bruising to his face. Two days ago a 24 year-old Australian tourist was gored in the thigh by a bull, opening an artery, and is in a serious condition in hospital.

Pamplona experts at state television TVE said around 3,500 people had run with the bulls on Sunday. One runner slipped and fell in front of the bunched herd and was trampled near the beginning, a second one tripped close to the halfway point and was seen to be hit by several flying hooves, and a small group jostled each other and hit the cobblestones as the bulls neared the bullring. The run covers 928 yards (850 meters) from an enclosure just outside Pamplona’s medieval stone wall, where the pedigree animals spend the night, to the downtown bullring where fights known as 'corridas' take place each afternoon of the festival in honor of the city’s patron saint.

Sunday’s run was quick at 2 minutes, 29 seconds and would have finished even sooner but for one straggler that looked around and charged at several herders in the ring before being guided into a corral. The largest Miura was a black specimen called Macareno that weighed 695 kilograms (1,532 pounds) while the lightest tipped the scales at a mere 540 kilograms (1,190 pounds), the games and spectacles branch of Navarre regional police said in a statement.

Despite the animals’ size and musclebound appearance, experts admire Miuras for their explosive acceleration, stamina and grace, characteristics that inspired legendary Italian car maker the late Ferruccio Lamborghini to name one of his iconic sports cars after the breed.

Source: Dailymail

Is This The Man' Who Killed Bin Laden?

CIA mastermind finally identified... by his tie

Is THIS The Man Who Killed Bin Laden?

The CIA operative who was responsible for tracking down and ultimately killing Osama Bin laden may have had his cover blown because of his distinguishing yellow tie. The man, known as 'John', is a career CIA analyst whose job for nearly a decade was hunting down the Al Qaeda chief.

His full name is a closely-guarded secret, but now an internet 'spy-hunter' believes he may have identified him from a set of White House photographs including the now-famous picture of senior officials watching Navy SEALs storming bin Laden's hideout.

Last week the CIA told reporters from the AP news agency that John had been in the room at the time but was just out of frame.

Spyhunter John Young studied the photo and noticed a tall man with a yellow, patterned tie standing just outside the frame. He then checked it against other photos taken at around the same time and found one of the man wearing the yellow tie in full view.

The AP story states that 'two days after bin Laden's death', John accompanied CIA chief Leon Panetta to Capitol Hill to testify before the Senate intelligence committee about the operation. Young then dug out a photo of Panetta leaving that briefing on May 3, and clealry visible in the background is the man in the yellow tie.

Nearly all the officials involved in hunting bin-laden have insisted on anonymity because for their own safety they did not want their names linked to the Bin Laden operation.

CIA analyst John was the first to put in writing last summer that they might have a legitimate lead on finding Bin Laden. He oversaw the collection of clues that led the agency to a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

His was among the most confident voices telling President Obama that Bin Laden was probably behind those walls. The CIA have said they will not permit him to speak to reporters.

The Associated Press agreed to the CIA's request not to publish his full name and withhold certain biographical details so that he would not become a target for retribution.

They were told: 'Call him John, his middle name.'

His ability to spot the importance of seemingly insignificant details, to weave disparate strands of information into a meaningful story, gave him a particular knack for hunting terrorists.

John McLaughlin, who as CIA deputy director was briefed regularly by John in the mornings after the 2001 attacks, said: 'He could always give you the broader implications of all these details we were amassing.'

One former boss confessed that he didn't know exactly what John's position was. 'I knew he was the guy in the room I always listened to,' the official said.

source: Kompas. dailymail

What's Inside the Suitcase? Riddle of the Day (4 Photos)

Maria del Mar Arjona from Mexico was visiting her boyfriend in a jail. He was serving a 20-year sentence for a 2007 conviction for illegal weapons possession. The 19-year-old girl brought a large suitcase full of clothes for her boyfriend. When she was leaving the jail guards noticed that she was acting nervously as she dragged a black, wheeled suitcase to the exit. When they unpacked the suitcase, the found her boyfriend squashed inside.

(Source)

Weapons of a mexican drug cartels

These are weapons that have been confiscated from the Mexican drug cartels. Nearly all of the weapons that the drug cartels obtain come from the US since weapons are illegal in Mexico. Check more pictures after jump...