Scatology in Advertising V

The Dangers of Barbie

Official sees "destructive" Barbie influence

Mon Apr 28, 11:53 AM

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Imports of Barbie dolls and other Western toys will have destructive cultural and social consequences in Iran, the Islamic Republic's top prosecutor was quoted as saying on Monday.

Iran's conservative clerical establishment often rails against the perceived dangers of U.S.-inspired culture and consumerism, branding it "Westoxication."

But young Iranians are often keen consumers of such music, films and other goods from the West. Iconic toy brands can be bought in children's shops in the capital Tehran and elsewhere.

"The appearance of personalities such as Barbie, Batman, Spiderman and Harry Potter and ... computer games and movies are all a danger warning to the officials in the cultural arena," said Prosecutor General Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi in a letter to Vice President Parviz Davoudi published in the Mardom Salari daily.

Najafabadi, a high-ranking cleric, said Iran was the world's third biggest importer of toys and suggested this posed a threat to the "personality and identity" of the new generation.

"The unrestrained entry of this sort of imported toys ... will bring destructive cultural and social consequences in their wake," he wrote.

He added many toys were smuggled into Iran and accused importers of concentrating on profits at the expense of cultural values.

Iran and the United States have not had diplomatic ties since shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution when the U.S.-backed shah was toppled.

The two old foes are now embroiled in a deepening standoff over nuclear work the West fears is aimed at making bombs but which Tehran says is aimed at generating peaceful electricity.

(Reporting by Hashem Kalantari; Writing by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Randy Fabi)

Basement

Austrian had seven children by daughter locked in cellar: police

Sun Apr 27, 3:46 PM

VIENNA (AFP) - Austrian police on Sunday arrested a 73-year-old man accused of locking up his daughter in his cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children with her.

A prosecution spokesman said Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, had accused her father, Josef, of "massive crimes". DNA tests are being conducted on the woman and six surviving children.

It is the third time in recent years that Austria has been stunned by tales of children locked away by parents or adults they know.

According to police, Elisabeth Fritzl told investigators her father put her to sleep with an anaesthetic on August 28, 1984, handcuffing her in a locked basement.

Officially, she was declared a missing person, with Interpol opening an investigation.

A letter was sent to her parents asking that they stop searching for her and local authorities concluded she had been seized by a religious sect.

She told police that she spent years imprisoned in an underground chamber beneath the family home near the eastern town of Amstetten.

Elisabeth Fritzl told detectives she was "regularly abused" by her father and their incestuous relationship produced seven children.

All the children appear to have been born in grim captivity but investigators said one child, a twin, died shortly after birth. Police said the body was subsequently burned.

Three boys and three girls, now aged between five and 20, survived. Josef Fritzl legally adopted two boys and one girl.

Josef Fritzl is said to have told his wife, Rosemarie, and local authorities that three babies had been left by Elisabeth on their doorstep, in different years.

Each delivery was accompanied by a letter purportedly signed by Elisabeth Fritzl saying she could not support the child because she already had others to care for.

The trio went to school as normal, seemingly unaware that their mother and three other siblings (a girl of 19, and boys at 18 and five) were trapped underground.

According to ORF national television, the mother and five children are now in hospital. All are being treated by a team of psychologists. Reports said the mother was physically frail and badly disturbed by her ordeal.

Authorities were worried about the health of the mother and three of her children.

Yet neither neighbours nor social services appear to have had the slightest inkling. "They had a swimming pool in the garden, we would hear them laughing the three of them," said one neighbour.

Another backed up the story of the babies on the doorstep, adding: "(Rosemarie) always looked after the kids so well, taking them to school. We said 'it's incredible what she manages to do at her age'."

Police said the case only came to light after one of the girls, 19-year-old Kerstin, was admitted to hospital in a critical condition in mid-April.

Doctors stepped up efforts to find the mother, looking for background medical information, and Josef Fritzl brought his secret offspring into the family home.

He is said to have told his wife they suddenly re-appeared. Elisabeth Fritzl told investigators her mother knew nothing about the sexual abuse she had endured since the age of 11, some seven years before she was locked away.

Authorities found Elisabeth Fritzl and the three underground children on Saturday evening.

In a cell himself since Saturday night, Josef relented and gave police the security access codes to the basement on Sunday night.

Police found several rooms 170 centimetres (5.5 feet) high equipped with water and a television.

Josef Fritzl had been refusing to answer questions put by detectives, although Gerhard Sedlacek, a prosecution spokesman, said Elisabeth's accusations of kidnapping and incest are "credible".

Austria's most notable prior case was that of Natascha Kampusch, locked up by a man in the basement of a house for eight years before she escaped.

Kampusch was 10 when Wolfgang Priklopil abducted her on her way to school in 1998. The 44-year-old kidnapper killed himself hours after she fled, throwing himself under a train.

Three young girls were also locked up for seven years by their mentally ill mother near Linz.

Calming Ecstasy

Israel tests Ecstasy on war trauma victims: report

Fri Apr 25, 8:15 AM

JERUSALEM (AFP) - An Israeli medical team has started tests using the drug Ecstasy as a treatment for conflict-linked post-traumatic disorders, the Maariv daily reported on Friday.

Doctors at the Beer-Yakov psychiatric hospital south of Tel Aviv are testing the response of Israeli post-traumatic disorder patients to MDMA, the active ingredient in the drug.

Rakefet Rodriguez, Sergio Marchiveski and Marina Kaufchicz, who are leading the experimental programme, are convinced that psychotheraphy is crucial in curing patients and that Ecstasy can help them to recover.

The doctors believe the drug has both calming and stimulating effects that can help patients not only overcome trauma but also dominate it, Maariv said.

Almost 500 reserve troops suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder following the 34-day war that pitted Israeli troops against Lebanon's Hezbollah Shiite militia in July and August 2006, the paper said.

Ecstasy, which is illegal in most countries, is one of the world's most commonly used narcotics.

The New Punks

Polygamist clothing has roots in 19th century and 1950s

By HILLARY RHODES, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 52 minutes ago

For a society accustomed to the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, the images of the women from the polygamist compound in Texas are almost shocking in their understatement: Ankle-length dresses, makeup-less faces, hauntingly uniform hair.

And while no one would accuse the women of making a fashion statement, the pioneer-style outfits are a rare example of how in an age of overexposure, modesty, too, can give pause.

The puff-sleeved, pastel dresses worn by the women in the sect are a combination of original 19th-century wear and 1950s clothing that was adopted when the church took a conservative turn, according to Janet Bennion, an anthropologist who studies polygamist women.

The dresses are meant to show modesty and conformity: They go down to the ankles and wrists, and are often worn over garments or pants, making sure every possibly provocative inch of skin is covered.

John Llewellyn, a polygamy expert and retired Salt Lake County sheriff's lieutenant, says the women cover themselves "so that they're unattractive to the outside world or other men."

The appearance of unity through uniform dress, however, can belie the jealousy that often arises when the women — who might all look alike to an outsider — find themselves in competition with one another over the affections of the same man, Llewellyn says.

The clothing is also stitched with special markings "to protect the body and to remind you of you commitment," Bennion says. She declined to go into detail about the stitchings because she said it would be an infraction against the fundamentalist Mormon community to talk about their sacred symbols.

Pastel colors evoke femininity and don't come across as bold or strong, says Bennion, a professor at Lyndon State College in Vermont.

Then there's the question of the elaborate hairdos.

The women never cut their hair because they believe they will use it to wash Christ's feet during the Second Coming, Bennion says. A Biblical quote says a woman's hair should be her crowning glory.

The bangs are grown out and rolled (but usually not using a curling iron, because that would be too modern). There are sausage curls on the sides and often braids down the back.

The exact history of the hairstyle is unclear, but it is reminiscent of the Gibson Girl image of the 1800s. It's a pre-World War II look, exaggerated with the pompadour, Llewellyn says. Chloe Sevigny's character in the HBO show "Big Love," about modern polygamist Mormons, has mastered the 'do.

Celebrity stylist and salon owner Ted Gibson thinks it gives off a "homely" impression.

"It says 'I don't really care very much. I really don't have time to worry about the way that I look, because I have 20 children,'" Gibson said. "He's going from wife to wife to wife, so why should I look any better than the other ones?"

Still, it's not outlandish to imagine the prairie look influencing today's styles, given that trends can come from unexpected places, and Sevigny is known as a style-setter. You can already find blouses with high necks and ruffles in stores, and puffed shoulders on short and long-sleeved shirts.

Prairie skirts are in fashion this season, while dusty pastels and neutrals are being introduced to offset trendy bold colors and patterns.

Long hair is also on its way back in, preparing to replace the currently fashionable bobs, Gibson says. Buns never go completely out of style, according to Gibson — he often gives celebrities a half-up-half-down 'do, essentially what we're seeing in the photographs coming out of Texas.

But for the most part, the looks that arise from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are likely to stay there.

On her blog, the fashion editor of glam.com wondered if the spotlight on the Texas raid would make otherwise innocuous pastels unsavory, given their dubious association with polygamists.

"Unexpected perversion? Right-wing fads?" Susan Cernek wrote. "Sounds like a good Halloween costume ... or Marc Jacobs Spring '09."

Allison Berlin, founder of Style Made Simple, doesn't expect Mormon-inspired fashion to go mainstream.

"Women don't actually want to look like that," she says. "I can see the Brooklyn hipsters rocking a French braid, but not in a serious way. Maybe ironically."

Penis Panic

Penis theft panic hits city..

2 hours, 19 minutes ago

By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel)

Current Trends in American Pederasty

Is that Miley Cyrus flashing her bra on the Internet, or a look-alike?

Mon Apr 21, 7:19 PM

By The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Is that Miley Cyrus flashing some skin?

Less-than-wholesome photos of a girl bearing a close resemblance to the 15-year-old superstar are making the rounds on the Internet. One photo shows the Cyrus look-alike tugging at her white tank top to reveal a green bra. In another shot, she flaunts her bare midriff while draped over a young male, who rests his hand on her hip.

Another shot shows her cuddling up to the same guy.

This isn't the first time risque photos of someone resembling Cyrus have circulated online.

In recent months, shots have surfaced of a girl posing in her underwear and bikini.

Cyrus, star of the TV show "Hannah Montana" and role model for countless young girls, is one of the biggest - and most G-rated - acts in the country.

Cyrus's "Best of Both Worlds" tour sold out arenas, and her successful 3-D concert film collected $31.3 million in its opening weekend in February.

The upcoming "Hannah Montana" movie will be filmed in Tennessee and Los Angeles, beginning early next month. The movie is scheduled for release May 1, 2009.

The actress-singer's publicists Jill Fritzo and Meghan Prophet didn't return messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. An assistant to Cyrus' manager, Jason Morey, referred the AP to Prophet.

Children's Crusade

Scatology in Advertising IV

Scatology in Advertising III

The Decline of Privacy

Is divorce by YouTube the new frontier in family law? One spouse tries it out
By Jocelyn Noveck, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK - We're the YouTube Generation, living in the YouTube Era, in a YouTube World. And now we apparently have a YouTube Divorce.

Some prominent New York divorce lawyers couldn't think of another case where a spouse - in this instance, the wife of a major Broadway theatre operator - had taken to YouTube to spill the secrets of a marriage in an apparent effort to gain leverage and humiliate the other side.

"This is absolutely a new step, and I think it's scary," said Bonnie Rabin, a divorce lawyer who has handled high-profile cases. "People used to worry about getting on Page Six (the gossip page of the New York Post). But this? It brings the concept of humiliation to a whole new level."

In a tearful and furious YouTube video with close to 150,000 hits to date, former actress and playwright ("Bonkers") Tricia Walsh-Smith lashes out against her husband, Philip Smith, president of the Shubert Organization, the largest theatre owner on Broadway.

She goes through their wedding album on camera, describing family members as "bad" or "evil" or "nasty," and talks about how her husband is allegedly trying to evict her from their luxury apartment. She also makes embarrassing claims regarding their intimate life, and then calls his office on camera to repeat those claims to a stunned assistant.

Famed divorce attorney Raoul Felder, called for comment on the video, termed the whole thing "funny, but there's also sadness. This is a victim who is holding her head up. I think she comes off well."

Then again, Felder allowed that he is now representing Walsh-Smith - though he wasn't when she made the YouTube video.

As for Smith, his office said he had no comment and his lawyers said they didn't, either - "other than that we're kind of appalled."

"I don't think it's the kind of thing people should be doing, and it's the kind of thing judges frown upon," said Norman Sheresky, a partner in the matrimonial law firm Sheresky Aronson Mayesfsky & Sloan, which Walsh-Smith mentions in her video.

Asked if he had ever seen a spouse use YouTube to fire a salvo in a divorce battle, Sherefsky replied, "Jamais de la vie." (Translation: Never.)

Felder explained that his client was "acting out of passion." He also called the prenuptial agreement she'd signed with her husband, who is a quarter-century older than her, "stupid."

So why did his client sign? "Why do women sign these things? Love is blind, and sometimes it is deaf and dumb, too," Felder said. The video, he added, was the act of a powerless person, and "revolutions are made by powerless people."

Does that mean divorce-by-YouTube is a true revolution? Rabin, the matrimonial lawyer, sure hopes not.

For one thing, she said, this could come back to haunt Walsh-Smith. "Judges make decisions partly on (a person's) judgment," she said. "She could hurt herself with this." Not to mention the threat of a defamation case from the other side.

More broadly, she asks, where does it end? "Over the last few years we've had to deal with e-mails getting into the press, e-mails that nobody thought would end up as Exhibit A. But throwing your secrets onto YouTube for the whole world to see - and comment on! That brings it to a whole new level."

Or, in Felder's words: "There's no such thing as a private life anymore."

and

Hospital in hot water over YouTube video of rectal surgery

Thu Apr 17, 3:45 AM

MANILA (AFP) - Staff at a Philippine government hospital are under investigation after a former patient threatened a lawsuit over a YouTube video clip of his rectal surgery, officials said Thursday.

The clip showed hospital staff, including nurses and surgeons, laughing and cheering as a blue canister was removed from the male patient's rectum during the January 3 operation at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Centre in the central city of Cebu.

Staff present during the procedure could be suspended or have their licences revoked if found culpable, hospital authorities said.

"There will be sanctions for sure," hospital spokesman Emmanuel Gines told GMA television in an interview, adding that the in-house inquiry would be completed shortly.

The unnamed patient told the station that he and his family suffered humiliation and ridicule when he was identified as the patient of the clip posted to the popular video sharing website YouTube and being passed around by cellphone users.

Gines said it appeared that a larger than usual number of people were in the operating room at the time and many of them taped the surgical procedure using their cellphones or other video recording devices.

A portion of the video aired by GMA showed medical staff giggling while filming the procedure with their mobile phones. It was not clear who posted the video to YouTube, and it has since been removed from the site.

Gines said the government hospital would review its operating procedures and possibly ban the use of cellphones and similar electronic devices during surgeries.

When contacted by AFP, hospital staff said Gines could not come to the phone to discuss the case.

Battling the Next Generation of Underground Men

Smile and dress modestly, civil servants told

Mon Apr 14, 12:43 PM

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia's civil servants must get over their grumpiness, answer queries with a smile and stop wearing shorts to work, according to a new code of conduct that came into force this month.

The code says civil servants "must act professionally and kindly," "provide true and timely information" and "respect citizens' personality and dignity." They must keep citizens' business confidential and behave with dignity in public.

Although it does not set a dress code, it rules out "disproportionately short skirts, tops with revealing decolletage or narrow straps, short or see-through blouses and short pants."

Serbia has some 250,000 civil servants, a bloated number from when it was the centre of much larger socialist Yugoslavia.

Despite the modest salary, they are coveted posts because of the short hours, job security and lingering sense of power. But for ordinary Serbs, the civil service represents a culture of grumpy, unhelpful and long-winded bureaucracy.

(Reporting by Ljilja Cvekic, Editing by Ellie Tzortzi)

Terminating Marriage

Court terminates 8-year-old girl's marriage

Tue Apr 15, 1:21 PM

SANAA (Reuters) - A Yemeni court ordered the marriage of an eight-year-old girl terminated on Tuesday because she had not reached puberty.

The court also ordered the child's family to pay about $250 in compensation to the 30-year-old ex-husband.

The girl's lawyer and human rights activist Shatha Nasser said the minor had filed a suit in April asking for divorce and told the court that her husband had been physically abusing her and forcing her to have "sex with him after hitting her."

One of the people attending the trial volunteered to pay the compensation, the lawyer said, but did not explain the reason why the court ordered the compensation.

The ruling terminated the marriage instead of granting a divorce to prevent the husband from seeking to reinstate the marriage, according to the lawyer.

Many minor girls in Arab countries that observe tribal traditions are married to older husbands but not before puberty. Such marriages are also driven by poverty in countries like Yemen, one of the poorest countries outside Africa.

(Reporting by Mohamed Sudam; writing by Inal Ersan)

Vanishing Tourist Organs

Organs removed from dead British girl: India police

Tue Apr 15, 8:22 AM

By Bappa Majumdar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Organs from the body of murdered British teenager Scarlett Keeling were removed for tests and will be destroyed soon, Indian police said on Tuesday, two days after her mother said someone had mysteriously taken them in Goa.

A fresh autopsy in Britain this month showed that Keeling's uterus, pancreas, both kidneys and spleen were missing, which her mother and Indian lawyer suggested could be foul play.

Police say a bartender raped and drugged Keeling and left her to die in shallow sea water on a deserted beach on February 18, and Goa police have arrested two people. But her mother accuses authorities of a cover-up.

Authorities in Goa said on Tuesday the organs were safe in a laboratory there and would be destroyed after medical tests.

"The organs were taken out for medical examination and there is no question of anything going wrong," J.P. Singh, Goa's chief secretary, told Reuters.

Police officer Bose Jorge said the organs would be destroyed after all the tests were completed. "There is no question of sending them back now," he said.

But the lawyer of Fiona MacKeown, mother of the dead teenager, criticized the police.

"Her mother was completely in the dark about the missing organs and would like the body to be complete when Keeling is eventually buried," said Vikram Varma.

MacKeown now wants to know why whole organs were removed and not parts taken for chemical analysis.

Experts in India said privately that the family's permission should have been sought.

"The police should have taken permission, which they normally don't and in many cases the examined parts are never put back into the body and they end up in laboratory jars for experiments," a top forensic science expert said, speaking on conditions of anonymity.

Keeling's case is also the latest to highlight the safety of tourists in India.

Tourism officials met this year to discuss attacks on tourists after some police officers said 10-12 deaths passed off as drowning since last year looked suspicious.

(Editing by Alistair Scrutton)

Journalists Ruin Death

Vicar offers stress relief in grave

Fri Mar 28, 11:05 AM

BERLIN (Reuters) - A vicar in Germany who had the novel idea of helping parishioners escape the stresses and strains of daily life by letting them lie in an open grave was upset when intrusive journalists spoiled the atmosphere.

"I meant it as a meditative exercise," pastor Thorsten Nolting told Reuters. "I wanted people to think about what weighs on them down in the darkness and gather the energy to resist it."

Nolting, from the western German city of Duesseldorf, said his plan went "horribly wrong" when journalists' persistent questioning as parishioners were "laid to rest" earlier this week ruined the serenity of the occasion.

"It wasn't silent, as it should have been. They ruined it. (They) would not go away, even when I asked them," he said.

Extraverts who could cope with the incessant questioning were happy to climb down into the two meter long hole, and then rave about their "resurrection," Nolting said.

But a local newspaper said one man was still shaking, 20 minutes after his seven-minute spell in the dank grave ended.

(Reporting by Carolyn Palmer, editing by Tim Pearce)

The Power of Puppetry

Hamas TV puppet "kills" Bush for helping Israel

Tue Apr 1, 4:40 AM

GAZA (Reuters) - Brandishing "the sword of Islam," a Palestinian boy stabbed President George W. Bush to death in a new puppet show for children aired by Hamas-owned television in the Gaza Strip.

"You are a criminal, Bush, a despicable man. You made me an orphan. You deprived me of everything," said the hand-held puppet, representing a child and accusing the U.S. president of killing his family in Iraq and in Gaza in collusion with Israel.

The program was broadcast on Hamas's al-Aqsa television, which has used puppets and cartoon characters in the past to illustrate the Islamist movement's battle against Israel and opposition to U.S. support for the Jewish state.

No one was available at the station to comment on the show.

"I must take my revenge with the sword of Islam," the puppet-child said, stabbing the Bush puppet several times in the chest and ignoring pleas of "I repent, just don't kill me" -- and an invitation to a toy-filled White House.

"I killed him," the puppet said, accusing Bush of being "impure" and vowing the White House would be turned into a mosque.

Last year, al-Aqsa television aired a program starring a Mickey Mouse clone, Farfur, who urged children to fight Israel in the name of Islam. Farfur was killed off, on-air, by an actor posing as an Israeli security agent.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is shunned by the United States over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.

The group has accused the United States of backing Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip, attacks against militants that have at times caused civilian casualties.

(Writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Editing by Sami Aboudi)

Barbourula kalimantanensis

Frog without lungs discovered in remote part of Indonesia

Thu Apr 10, 7:00 AM

By Michael Casey, The Associated Press

BANGKOK, Thailand - A frog has been found in a remote part of Indonesia that has no lungs and breathes through its skin, a discovery that researchers said Thursday could provide insight into what drives evolution in certain species.

The aquatic frog Barbourula kalimantanensis was found in a remote part of Indonesia's Kalimantan province on Borneo island during an expedition in August 2007, said David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore. Bickford was part of the trip and co-authored a paper on the find that appeared in this week's edition of the peer-reviewed journal Current Biology.

Bickford said the species is the first frog known to science without lungs and joins a short list of amphibians with this unusual trait, including a few species of salamanders and a wormlike creature known as a caecilian.

"These are about the most ancient and bizarre frogs you can get on the planet," Bickford said of the brown amphibian with bulging eyes and a tendency to flatten itself as it glides across the water.

"They are like a squished version of Jabba the Hutt," he said, referring to the character from Star Wars. "They are flat and have eyes that float above the water. They have skin flaps coming off their arms and legs."

Bickford's Indonesian colleague, Djoko Iskandar, first came across the frog 30 years ago and has been searching for it ever since. He didn't know the frog was lungless until they cut eight of the specimens open in the lab.

Graeme Gillespie, director of conservation and science at Zoos Victoria in Australia, called the frog "evolutionarily unique." He said the eight specimens examined in the lab showed the lunglessness was consistent with the species and not "a freak of nature." Gillespie was not a member of the expedition or the research team.

Bickford surmised that the frog had evolved to adapt to its difficult surroundings, in which it has to navigate cold, rapidly moving streams that are rich in oxygen.

"It's an extreme adaptation that was probably brought about by these fast-moving streams," Bickford said, adding that it probably needed to reduce its buoyancy in order to keep from being swept down the mountainous rivers.

He said the frog could help scientists understand the environmental factors that contribute to "extreme evolutionary change" since its closest relative in the Philippines and other frogs have lungs.

Bickford and Gillespie said the frog's discovery adds urgency to the need to protect its river habitat, which in recent years has become polluted due to widespread illegal logging and gold mining. Once-pristine waters are now brown and clogged with silt, they said.

"The gold mining is completely illegal and small scale. But when there are thousands of them on the river, it really has a huge impact," Bickford said. "Pretty soon the frogs will run out of the river."

God is fed through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other

Indian baby born with two faces doing well, say parents

Sun Apr 6, 1:49 PM

NOIDA, India (AFP) - The parents of an Indian infant girl born with two faces say that she is eating and breathing normally despite having two pairs of eyes and lips and two noses.

The baby, who is yet to be named, was born to factory worker Vinod Kumar and his wife Sushma three weeks ago in northern India and has been drawing a stream of curious observers and others who consider her a deity in this deeply religious Hindu-majority country.

"I had never seen something like this in my life so naturally I was a little scared when I first saw her," her father said at the weekend at the family's mud-and-brick house in Noida town, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) northeast of New Delhi.

The girl has found easy acceptance in Kumar's large, extended family, who say they have no plans to consult doctors to check if the girl can receive treatment or corrective surgery.

"The doctor said everything is normal when she was born. So where's the need to get medical help?" said the child's father.

"She's fed through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other. We use whichever mouth is free to feed her," the 24-year-old Kumar told AFP, adding she is eating and breathing normally.

Doctors said it was an extremely rare case, with the girl having two skulls joined together, and that separating them was out of the question.

"Since the heads are fused, separating them is not possible," paediatrician D.K Gupta of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences told the Hindustan Times newspaper on the weekend.

But doctors said the girl should be examined thoroughly to study the possibility of complications.

"Clearly the child is in no immediate danger but it has to be checked whether the oral and nasal cavity and other passages" are functioning properly, paediatrician Gupta said.

The case comes just months after Indian doctors performed a rare, marathon surgery to remove the extra limbs of a girl born with four arms and legs.

Two-year-old Lakshmi Tatma's case captivated the nation last year as domestic and international media focused on her complicated surgery performed in southern Bangalore city in November.

This year, Lakshmi started taking her first steps with the help of a baby walker, delighting her parents and doctors.

Lakshmi, named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, was born fused to the pelvis of a twin that had stopped developing in her mother's womb -- a condition that occurs once in 50,000 conjoined twin births.

Kumar said he had heard about Lakshmi, but did not want to change anything about his daughter's features.

"Whatever God has given me is acceptable. What can we do about it?" he said, lifting the baby to take her away after allowing a brief glimpse of her as neighbours crowded around her cot.

"This child is very special to us," the baby's grandfather chimed in, gazing lovingly at the infant.

The Pornology of Finance

Researchers find link between sex and financial gambles in young men's brains

Fri Apr 4, 7:27 PM

By Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A new brain-scan study may help explain what's going on in the minds of financial titans when they take risky monetary gambles.

Surprise! - it's sex.

University researchers report that when young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler.

The arousing pictures lit up the same part of the brain that lights up when financial risks are taken.

The study is the work of a Northwestern University finance professor and a Stanford University psychologist.

Their research appears in the current edition of the peer-reviewed journal NeuroReport.

"You have a need in an evolutionary sense for both money and women. They trigger the same brain area," said Camelia Kuhnen, the Northwestern professor.

The study only involved 15 heterosexual young men at Stanford University. It focused on the sex and money hub, the V-shaped nucleus accumbens, which sits near the base of the brain and plays a central role in what you experience as pleasure.

When that hub was activated by the erotic images, the men were far more likely to bet high on a random chance game that would earn them either a dollar or a dime. Each man made more than 50 gambles under brain scans.

Stanford psychologist Brian Knutson, a lead author of the study, says it's all about the power of emotion and arousal and our financial decisions. The trigger doesn't have to be sex - it could be chocolate or a winning lottery ticket.

"It didn't matter if the sexy woman didn't tell you anything about the odds of winning a roulette game," Knutson said. "What really matters is that the sexy woman is having an emotional impact. That bleeds over into your financial decisions."

Kuhnen said the same link could hold true for women, but they didn't test it because it is more difficult to find an erotic image that would appeal to many different heterosexual women compared to heterosexual men.

The link between sex and greed goes back hundreds of thousands of years, to men's evolutionary role as provider or resource gatherer to attract women, said Kevin McCabe, professor of economics, law and neuroscience at George Mason University, who wasn't part of the study.

"Risk-taking is a natural way of increasing your relative success, but, of course, there's a downside to it, what we're seeing right now in the economy," McCabe said.

The results of the study jibe with the real life on the trading floor, said Phil Flynn, a former Chicago commodities floor trader and current analyst at Alaron Trading Corp.

"I'm not shocked that it may be part of the deal," Flynn said Friday. "When you talk about all the euphemisms for trading (on the floor), they can be used for sex as well."

("Massaging the market" and "hardcore" were about the cleanest that he and his colleagues could come up with.)

The study conforms with recent research that indicates men shown a pornographic movie were more likely to make riskier sexual decisions. Another suggests straight men think less about their financial future after being shown pictures of pretty women.

One still-to-be-published study at Harvard University found a link between higher testosterone levels and financial risk-taking.

But the study conducted at Stanford, funded by the National Institutes of Health, went deeper, using functional magnetic resonance imaging machines. It's part of a new but growing field called neuroeconomics that attempts to take the hard-wired science of brain biology and mix it with the softer sciences of psychology and economics to figure out why we make the financial decisions we do.

An earlier study by the same team found that the brain's reward area lit up at about the same time as risky decision-making.

The erotic pictures experiment was designed to find which was the cause and which was the effect. The answer: Lighting up the reward area, in this case with soft-core pictures, caused the risk-taking, Kuhnen said.

"The more activation there you have, the more prone you are to taking more risk," Kuhnen said. "It could be a feedback loop."

The flip side was that the photos of snakes and spiders activated the portion of the brain often associated with pain, fear and anger. And those people were more likely to bet low.

This all makes sense to Harvard economist Terry Burnham, author of the book "Mean Genes." Burnham said it could be all summed up in a famous line from the movie "Scarface."

"In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women."

-

On the Net:

Stanford's Symbiotic Project on Affective Neuroscience:

http://psychology.stanford.edu/(tilde)span/

Religious Intolerance and Sexual Repression in America

Busloads of women, children taken from Texas polygamist compound

1 hour, 48 minutes ago

By Michelle Roberts, The Associated Press

ELDORADO, Texas - Authorities who removed 219 women and children from a polygamist compound were struggling Sunday to determine whether they had the 16-year-old girl whose report of an underage marriage led them to raid the sprawling rural property.

Many people at the compound, built by followers of jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, are related to one another and share similar names.

Investigators said in some cases they were giving different names at different times.

Investigators on Sunday bused them out of Eldorado, northwest of San Antonio, as other law enforcement agents continued to search for more children and evidence at the compound, the former site of an exotic game ranch.

State troopers armed with a search warrant raided the compound on Friday to look for evidence of a marriage between the girl, who allegedly had a baby at 15, and a 50-year-old man.

Under Texas law, girls younger than 16 cannot marry, even with parental approval.

The women and children were taken out of the compound Friday and Saturday and had been staying in a local church and civic centre.

By midday Sunday, dozens of women and children, mostly girls, were seen boarding buses on their way to San Angelo, a larger nearby town. The women wore long pastel dresses and many carried bedding; several had infants.

Officers entered the temple on the grounds late Saturday, but by Sunday they still had not located the 16-year-old whose initial report of abuse led to the raid.

"There were some tense moments last night, but everything has remained calm and peaceful and they are continuing their search," said Allison Palmer, a prosecutor from a nearby county who is handling the case.

Marleigh Meisner, a spokeswoman for Child Protective Services, said investigators are trying to determine whether the girl who called authorities last week was among those removed from the compound.

Meisner said the adults are co-operating with investigators and she didn't believe any had been forced to leave the compound.

Investigators also were looking for the man the girl allegedly married, Dale Barlow. Palmer said other law enforcement agencies "know where (Barlow) is and have talked to him, but our investigators have not."

Barlow's probation officer told The Salt Lake Tribune that he was in Arizona.

"He said the authorities had called him (in Colorado City, Ariz.) and some girl had accused him of assaulting her and he didn't even know who she was," said Bill Loader, a probation officer in Arizona.

Palmer said Texas authorities have been in contact with those in Arizona but have not yet talked to Barlow. No arrests have been made.

Barlow was sentenced to jail last year after pleading no contest to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. He was ordered to register as a sex offender for three years while he is on probation.

The search warrant instructed officers to look for marriage records or other evidence linking her to the man and the baby. The warrant authorized the seizure of computer drives, CDs, DVDs or photos.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, headed by Jeffs after his father's death in 2002, broke away from the Mormon church after the latter disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.

The compound sits down a narrow paved road and behind a hill that shields it almost entirely from view in town. Only the white temple can be seen on the horizon. Authorities kept onlookers several kilometres away from the compound.

A caravan of K-9 unit vehicles were seen headed down the road to the compound on Sunday morning. Palmer said she couldn't say whether authorities had entered all of the compound's many buildings but called it "a detailed search."

Jeffs is jailed in Kingman, Ariz.

He's awaiting trial for four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives.

In November, he was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who wed her cousin in an arranged marriage in 2001.

Apparently Random Acts of Violence

Students hurt as gang attacks Australian school: police

Mon Apr 7, 6:24 AM

SYDNEY (AFP) - Five teenage boys armed with machetes and baseball bats invaded a Sydney high school Monday, smashing classrooms and injuring 18 students and a teacher, police said.

Merrylands High School in Sydney's west went into "lockdown" with pupils barricaded in their classrooms as the intruders assaulted students and shattered windows before police arrived and arrested them.

One girl was admitted to hospital with cuts to her face from flying glass and a teacher was taken to hospital with bruising to the back of his head after trying to restrain one of the attackers, an ambulance service spokesman said.

"We've assessed 18 school-aged children ... all having minor injuries, some lacerations, some bruising and they're obviously quite anxious about what has happened," the spokesman said.

Some students hid under tables and in cupboards while their teachers barricaded the doors as the youths rampaged through the school.

"They were carrying baseball bats and two had machetes. I thought I was going to die," said Grade 12 student Emma McQuillan.

"Teachers just told us to get down. Students were just crying and screaming," she told the Daily Telegraph.

Anxious parents gathered outside the school as news of the attack spread, later escorting their children home as they were allowed out.

Police were still trying to establish the motive for the attack in the blue-collar neighbourhood, as an education department spokesman said the five boys were not students at the school.

"The information to us is they were coming here ... seeking someone," Detective Inspector Jim Stewart told Macquarie Radio.

Asked whether the attack could have been motivated by revenge, he said that was possible.

"We're a bit confounded as to the reasons why," he said.

Police said five youths, aged between 14 and 16, entered the school through the main gate at around 9:00 am and confronted an assembly in an outdoor quadrangle.

They then ran through the corridors of two school buildings, smashing windows and showering students with glass.

When police confronted the youths, they dropped their weapons and did not resist arrest. The education department said the rampage lasted just six minutes.

Stewart said he was stunned by the brazenness of the incident.

"It beggars belief they would attempt this kind of activity against innocent students," he said.

New South Wales police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said police were continually working with the security branch of the education department to ensure the state's schools remained safe.

"We have seen over the past year or two an increase in the number of Internet-based alerts, for instance, that we've had where people have been contemplating violence," Scipione said.

The Love That Dare Not Speak its Name

Australian father has child with his daughter: report

Mon Apr 7, 6:11 AM

SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian woman who had a child with her father pleaded for acceptance of their illicit love as the couple appeared on national television with their baby girl after being convicted of incest.

Jenny Deaves was 31 when she was reunited with her father John Deaves, who separated from her mother three decades before. Shortly afterwards, she had considered embarking on a sexual relationship with him, she told the Nine Network.

"John and I are in this relationship as consenting adults," she told the "60 Minutes" programme on Sunday night.

"We are just asking for a little bit of respect and understanding."

The couple's nine-month-old daughter, Celeste, to whom John Deaves is both father and grandfather, was also shown on the programme and appeared to be in sound health.

She is a third child, but also a half-sister, for Jenny Deaves, now 39, who has two other children from another relationship.

Jenny Deaves said not long after meeting her father, she began to see him as a man first and a father second.

"I was looking at him, sort of going, oh, he's not too bad," she said.

"Like you might look at a man across the bar at a nightclub."

John Deaves, who is 61, said he knew it was illegal to have sex with his child but emotions soon overcame him.

"Emotions take over, as people no doubt realise, there are times during your life where emotions do rule the heart, it rules the head," he said.

"I knew it was illegal, of course I knew it was illegal but you know, so what."

The South Australian couple, who bear a striking resemblance to each other, were both placed on three-year good behaviour bonds on March 20 after being convicted of two counts of incest each, a spokeswoman for the South Australian Courts Administration Authority said.

The bonds disallow any further sexual activity between the pair.

Sentencing remarks published on the court's website reveal that the couple had another child in 2001 but the infant died after only a few days due to a congenital heart disease.

District Court judge Steven Millsteed said the case was not typical because although father and daughter, the pair were "virtually strangers" when their relationship commenced.

"This is not a case where a father has violated his daughter and used his position of authority to take advantage of her powerlessness," he said.

Last month, a German man who has fathered four children with his mentally retarded sister lost a court bid to have his country's incest law scrapped on the basis that they were consenting adults.

In that case, he had already served two years in prison and has refused to end the relationship, risking further jail time.

Witchdoctors Crackdown on Albinos

Witchdoctor killings condemned

Thu Apr 3, 11:20 AM

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete has condemned witchdoctors who kill albinos and harvest their body parts in the hope it will bring prosperity.

He said 19 albinos had been murdered since March 2007, and another two were missing presumed dead in the east African country.

"Sometimes, word spreads around that body parts of people with certain physical attributes like bald people or albinos contribute greatly to attaining quick prosperity," Kikwete said in a monthly state of the nation speech late on Wednesday.

"These killings are shameful and distressing to our society," he added.

Albinos are often accused in Tanzania of being witches themselves.

There are an estimated 270,000 people who suffer from the condition which stops them producing pigment in their skin, hair and eyes in the country of 39 million.

Kikwete blamed charlatan witchdoctors, many masquerading as traditional healers, for extracting body parts such as genitals, tongues and breasts.

"Many of the witchcraft killings happen because of a false belief that by using other peoples' body parts they can succeed in business or in activities like mining or fishing," Kikwete said.

Most killings took place in the Victoria region and were committed by gangs for hire, he said.

(Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Giles Elgood)

(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http:/africa.reuters.com/)

Repressing Castration

Cosmetic castration banned

Wed Apr 2, 9:48 AM

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand's health chiefs barred hospitals and clinics on Wednesday from castrating would-be "ladyboys" amid growing concern about the operation being seen as a cheap and quick alternative to a full sex-change.

In a letter to 16,000 private health units, the Public Health Ministry said doctors performing the operation outside formal sex-change therapy -- which requires rigorous physical and mental evaluation of the patient -- faced up to six months in jail.

However, senior health official Tara Chinakarn admitted that policing the temporary ban might be difficult as cosmetic removal of the testicles was such a quick operation and easy to conduct in secret.

"It's hard to track them down as it takes only 15-20 minutes to have the surgery," Tara told Reuters.

Thailand is home to a large number of "ladyboys," or "katoey" in Thai, a term that covers anything from a transvestite to a man who has undergone a full sex change.

The tolerance shown towards the "third sex," as it is often referred to, has led to the country becoming a world leader in sex-change surgery.

However, at the lower end of the market, clinics have responded to demand from teenage boys to look more like girls by posting Internet advertisements offering castration for as little as 4,000 baht ($125).

(Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Michael Battye and Valerie Lee)

"monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life"

British researchers create human-animal hybrid embryo amid political row

Tue Apr 1, 11:36 PM

LONDON (AFP) - For the first time in Britain, researchers at Newcastle University said Tuesday they had created human-animal hybrid embryos, amid a political row over a disputed embryo research bill in parliament.

According to the northern English university, the research, which was first presented at a lecture in Tel Aviv on March 25, has yet to be published or verified, with a spokesman for the university telling AFP that the institution "wouldn't claim it to be final at all."

The revelation comes with British MPs engaged in a fierce battle over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which allows the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for medical research.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown's governing Labour Party conceded in March that its party lawmakers with moral or ethical objections would be allowed to vote against parts of the proposed legislation when it comes before parliament this year.

The embryos were created by injecting DNA taken from human skin cells into eggs derived from cow ovaries with almost all their genetic material stripped away, and lasted for three days in a laboratory.

The Newcastle University spokesman said that the research would likely be published in "months rather than weeks".

At present, researchers wanting to create such embryos have to apply for a license from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which currently regulates the practice in Britain, and hybrid embryos have to be destroyed after 14 days.

The government says that the scientific advantages of allowing the creation of hybrid embryos for research purposes could help millions of people to recover from illness or disease.

Religious leaders, however, have argued against the bill, with the leader of Catholics in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, using his Easter Sunday sermon to brand the bill a "monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life" which will allow experiments of "Frankenstein proportion".

Today's Revolutionaries

Georgia police say 3rd-graders plotted to attack teacher with knife

Tue Apr 1, 7:25 PM

By Russ Bynum, The Associated Press

WAYCROSS, Ga. - A group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward, police said Tuesday.

The plot involving as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, Waycross police Chief Tony Tanner said.

School officials alerted police Friday after a pupil tipped off a teacher that a girl had brought a weapon to school. Tanner said the students apparently planned to knock the teacher unconscious with a crystal paperweight, bind her with the handcuffs and tape and then stab her with the knife.

"We did not hear anybody say they intended to kill her, but could they have accidentally killed her? Absolutely," Tanner said. "We feel like if they weren't interrupted, there would have been an attempt. Would they have been successful? We don't know."

The children, ages eight to 10, were apparently mad at the teacher because she had scolded one of them for standing on a chair, Tanner said.

Two of the students were arrested on juvenile charges Tuesday and a third arrest was expected. District Attorney Rick Currie said other students told investigators they didn't take the plot seriously or insisted they had decided not to participate.

"Some of the kids said, 'We thought they were just kidding,"' Currie said. "Another child was supposed to bring a toy pistol, and he told a detective he didn't bring it because he thought he would get in trouble."

Currie said the children are too young to be charged as adults, and probably too young to be sentenced to a youth detention centre.

Police seized a steak knife with a broken handle, steel handcuffs, duct tape, electrical and transparent tape, ribbons and the paperweight from the students, Tanner said.

Currie said he decided to seek juvenile charges against two girls, ages nine and 10, who brought the knife and paperweight and an eight-year-old boy who brought tape. He said all three students faced charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, and both girls were being charged with bringing weapons to school.

Nine children have been given discipline up to and including long-term suspension, said Theresa Martin, spokeswoman for the Ware County school system. She would not be more specific but said none of the children had been back to school since the case came to light.

The purported target is a veteran educator who teaches third-grade students with learning disabilities, including attention deficit disorder, delayed development and hyperactivity, friends and parents said.

The scheme involved a division of roles, Tanner said. One child's job was to cover windows so no one could see outside, he said. Another was supposed to clean up after the attack.

"We're not sure at this point in the investigation how many of the students actually knew the intent was to hurt the teacher," Tanner said.

He said the teacher told detectives the children involved weren't known as troublemakers.

"You can't dismiss it," Tanner said. "But because they are kids, they may have thought this was like a cartoon - we do whatever and then she stands up and she's OK. That's a hard call."

The parents of the students have co-operated with investigators, who aren't allowed to question the children without their parents' or guardians' consent, he said. Authorities have withheld the children's names.

Martin told The Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville, Fla., that administrators would follow school system policy and state law in disciplining the students.

"From what I understand, they were considered pretty good kids," Martin said. "But we have to take this seriously, whether they were serious or not about carrying this through, and that's what we did."

Four mothers of other third-grade students at Center Elementary called for the immediate expulsion of the suspected plotters.

Stacy Carter and Deana Hiott both cited school system policy stating that any student who brings "anything reasonably considered to be a weapon" is to be expelled for at least the remainder of the school year.

"We don't want our children around them," Carter told the Times-Union. "The one with the knife could have stabbed my child or someone else's child at lunch or out on the playground."

"This is an isolated incident, an aberration. ... We have good kids," Center Principal Angie Coleman told the newspaper.