Year of the Tiger: Amur Tigers Will Go to Kazakhstan

Tigers from Russia's far east will be relocated to Central Asia under a plan to reintroduce them to a part of Kazakhstan where they went extinct in the early seventies. Studies have shown that Amur tigers are genetically identical to those of the Caspian region, making the relocation biologically neutral. Kazakhstan's President Karim Masimov made his interest in a reintroduction known to the WWF now that poaching and habitat loss are being addressed by his government. The Central Asia or Turin tiger is a cultural icon of Kazakhstan. The area targeted for relocation is around Lake Balkhash near the delta of the Ill River.

'Toontime: Nothing Grabs Them Like a Fairy Tale

[credit: Patrick Chappatte, International Herald Tribune]

The British royals are past masters at PR; they have to be since they rule by sufferance only and their family relations are somewhat dysfunctional. It really is unfortunate the British public is so enthralled of royal extravaganzas because they cost the ordinary bloke a fortune. The security provisions for the wedding alone could cost the taxpayer as much as $33 million. All of the elitist hoopla comes a time when the Tories are imposing £81 billion in spending cuts on the country.

Rhino Poaching Out of Control

The rhino poaching in South Africa's Kruger National Park has gotten so intense the national parks service has called on the army to help stop illegal ivory hunters.  Over 300 rhinos were killed in South Africa last year.  The death toll is the highest ever and three times the 2009 figure.  Kruger lost 146 rhinos in 2010.  The South African Defense Force is deployed along the Park's Zimbabwe and Mozambique border.  The national defense minister said South Africa has "declared war with poachers in all of our parks".

A Real Bombshell from Cairo

While the 24/7 propaganda and distraction organs of the US corporate media babble about the President's belatedly produced birth certificate, the new and improved Egyptian government brokered a peace deal in secret between Hamas and Fatah that may lead to elections in what will one day be the state of Palestine. The development leaves the US on the outside looking in and its client state Israel wrong footed in the seemingly endless negotiation of a comprehensive settlement of the decades old Arab-Israeli conflict. The two Arab political parties fought a bloody battle for control of the Ghaza ghetto four years ago, but the agreement, if successful, would allow the Palestinians to present a united front in negotiations with the Jewish state. Israel's hardline prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is reportedly angered by the potential agreement since the Israeli and US governments consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization. He previously was able to play the Arab factions off each other and security obsessed western governments. Israel President Simon Perez judged the accord between the two parties "an obstacle to eventual peace with Israel" and a "grave error that will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state." But the departure of Egypt's Mubarak, who towed the US-Israeli line on Hamas, allowed the Egyptian government to play a more constructive, neutral role of mediation. The major unrest in Syria also affected the negotiations since Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal lives there under the protection of Syrian President Assad. The deal could collapse over details of power sharing, however. Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007, while Fatah controls the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority. Previous reconciliation efforts have failed at the last minute.
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Japan To Raise Exposure Levels for Children

Related: On the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl explosion and meltdown of Unit 4, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said, "the duty of the state is to tell the truth to its people" acknowledging that the former Soviet government did not do that during the deadly disaster and its aftermath. He also called for new international rules to be drafted to insure the safety of nuclear plants worldwide. The world community has pledged $780 million to build a new containment structure to replace a temporary sarcophagus that has begun to leak radiation. Russia donated $65.38 million to the effort. The United States has donated $240 million and recently pledged an additional $123 million to clean up the area. Tens of thousand of Ukranians had to be evacuated, including the town of Prypyat with a population of 50,000, never to return to the zone of national sacrifice which extends to a radius of 30kms from the reactor site. Ukraine abandoned nuclear weapons and gave up its stockpile of of highly enriched uranium, becoming a leader in nuclear safety. The US has responded by helping the country to construct a facility for nuclear medicine and research. Japan has called on Russian experience to aid its disposal of high level nuclear waste from the destroyed Fukushima power station.

{25.4.11}The Japanese government has made a decision to raise the permissible level of radiation exposure for children, who are more susceptible to radiation damage than adults, to 2 rems/year, primarily because their schools in Fukushima Prefecture are already experiencing high levels of fallout contamination. Seventy-five percent of schools monitored are reporting readings above the level for a "radiation controlled area". The 2 rem standard is twenty times the allowable U.S. exposure for the public. The government also converted the evacuation zone around the doomed plant to an exclusion zone as expected last week. People entering the zone without authorization can be fined up to $1200 or jailed for 30 days. Former residents of the area will be allowed a single two hour visit to gather their possessions and leave their former homes.

At the ruined Fukushima-daiichi plant, the reactor buildings have been structurally compromised by fire and temblors. Experts are worried that the tons of water being dumped into the buildings to cool the cores and fuel assemblies are putting an unbearable strain on the buildings. TEPCo has little choice but to continue to dump cooling water to prevent further melting and overheating. Damage to the reactor cores and fuel rods is said to be "enormous". Under these conditions, a molten slag can form at the bottom of a reactor vessel which damages seals and eventually burns its way through the steel vessel and containment walls, thus the derivation of the infamous "China Syndrome". High level fallout has so far prevented the installation of any closed loop cooling system. Meanwhile the irradiated cooling water is flowing into the surrounding environment, contaminating the sea and groundwater.

Chart of the Week: The Plutocrats Get Richer

All the serious noise in Washington about this nation's exploding public debt burden conveniently ignores the fact that both sides of the ledger are contributing to the problem. It is not just more government spending on entitlements, but less revenue from the rich. For US Person taxing the rich is simply a question of fundamental social equity, while the Obamatron has to think about the proposition because they are the ones who will fund his billion dollar reelection campaign. These two charts from Thinkprogress.org encapsulate the federal income tax unfairness:

The tax rate for the richest 400 Americans has been cut in half in twelve years.  150 of those 400 pay an effective rate of less than 15% using aggressive tax sheltering techniques and the Bush tax reductions for the rich. While their taxes have dropped, their income has gone ballistic:

Any legitimate budget debate has to include tax equity if middle and working class entitlements are to be cut. Otherwise, its just corporatist posturing:

[credit: Mr. Fish, Harper's Weekly]

Weekend Edition: More Dead Than Meets the Eye

credit: Lori DeAngelis, Arnica Bay, AL

More: Government handling of dolphin deaths are preventing a full scientific investigation of the cause complains Moby Solangi, director of the Marine Mammal Studies Institute in Mississippi. The Institute is not able to conduct necropsies on dolphins because the US Justice Department is apparently using the evidence collected from dolphin necropsies in its criminal case investigation of British Petroleum. According to NOAA there have been 153 dolphin deaths this year, 65 of which were stillborn or aborted calves. Another scientist in Mississippi said "political ramifications" are interfering in a scientific investigation of the cause of a officially declared spike in dolphin mortality in the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA confirmed that two dolphins stranded at low tide in Lousiana were returned to deep water by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife. Researchers say stranded dolphins should be rescued and examined before being returned to the water. Since mid-March about 120 dead sea turtles have also been found. The cause of those deaths has yet to be announced, but a New York Times video suggests the turtles drowned due to entanglement in fishing gear. The Gulf of Mexico is far from being a healthy body of water regardless of propaganda to the contrary or efforts to cover up the true extent of the damage done by a reckless international oil company putting profit above safety.

Update:{4.4.11}One year since the largest unintended oil spill in history, perpetrator British Petroleum has been given approval of its request to resume operations in the Gulf of Mexico on ten existing wells according to The Independent.  However Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has denied any such deal with BP.  The government did issue a deepwater permit to Royal Dutch Shell Oil last month.

{2.4.11} Dolphins are under great environmental stress in the Gulf of Mexico, as witnessed by the extraordinary number of dead calves washing ashore in Mississippi and Alabama. However, wildlife experts believe the actual death count may be much worse. In an article posted at Conservation Letters, the journal of the Conservation Biology Society, the number of dead cetaceans recovered through November, 2010 is 101. That is a relatively low number given the size of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The authors think, based on a statistical analysis of records of carcass detections, survival rates, and stranding, only 2% of cetacean deaths produce a carcass to be recovered. The authors conclude the actual number of dead dolphins and other marine mammals that are protected under federal law, could be 50 times the reported amount. The federal government is conducting necropsies of dolphin infants found dead. They are treating the information obtained from the examinations, much to the disgust of marine biologists, as if it were a criminal forensic investigation. The secrecy is not engendering trust, already at a low point, of the government's handling of the aftermath. Apparently, based on news reports, the Justice Department is considering a criminal manslaughter case against the corporations, British Petroleum and Transocean*, most responsible for the deaths of 11 platform workers. Federal attorneys should not overlook the deaths of hundreds of sentient sea dwellers when it comes to assessing liability for a massive crime against nature.

*Transocean executives received bonuses this year.  The CEO awarded himself $4.3 million in cash, stocks and options, and lauded his company's "best year in safety performance in the company's history"  This is what passes for accountability in the corporate world.  Transocean leased the Deepwater Horizon platform to BP and maintains it has no liability for the disaster.