Clipmarks | jetcloud's clips

Black bear attacked man-in-boat

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:36:54 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "...another fisherman showed up with a gaff and joined in the fight. The bear kept hold of its victim by his shoulder.

Two other men showed up armed with a knife and ball- peen hammer. "This bear was getting hit between the eyes with the hammer and it didn't flinch," Miller said.

Another man then arrived with a fishing knife and began stabbing the bear in the neck.

"He didn't let go until he was dead," Miller said."

Clip Source: www.canada.com

A Saltspring Island man attacked by a bear in his boat was "protein", says the man who led the fight that killed the bear.

"The bear wanted him, he was going to eat him," Bruce Miller, 40, said yesterday. "The bear needed protein and this guy was it."

Miller was aboard his boat moored to a Port Renfrew jetty at 5 p.m. Tuesday when he spotted the bear run up an adjacent jetty and jump into 52-year-old Blain Pharis's boat.

The bear ignored the coho salmon that Pharis threw toward him and instead jumped at the man. After hearing Pharis scream, Miller picked up his metre-long spiked gaff -- used to pull fish out of the water -- and dashed toward the victim.

"He was pinned on the floor, the bear had a good hold of him and was biting and shaking him," Miller said. "I figured he was dead in seconds."

Miller heaved his gaff and sunk its five-inch spike into the bear's neck. "It went right in and the bear still wouldn't let go."

Miller

kept sinking the gaff into the bear's neck until

Tags: black bear, attacked, man-in-boat

Stop the arrests of Journalists

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:20:23 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: Sign the letter.

Clip Source: digg.com

Stop the Arrests of Journalists. Sign the Letter.

secure.freepress.net — Police in St. Paul arrested several journalists yesterday, including Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and an AP photographer as they were covering protests of the Republican National Convention. And earlier this weekend, police raided a meeting of the video journalists' group I-Witness.

Favorite? Horhay1234 7 hr 29 min ago

414 diggs
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Tags: journalists, arrested, st. paul police

Bus narrowly escapes Sea to Sky rock slide

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:11:00 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "Police are searching through the rock-slide scene on the highway that connects Vancouver to Whistler with dogs to make sure no one is trapped.

"There are police dogs on the site, but there is no way of knowing if there is anybody trapped there," Squamish RCMP Cpl. Dave Ritchie said.

"We're monitoring for any people reported overdue," he said. "We've done coast guard and air patrols at the edge of the debris and the water. We're hopeful there isn't anybody trapped in there.""

Clip Source: www.cbc.ca

The rockslide happened just north of Porteau Cove on Highway 99. (Google Maps)

The collapse of the Porteau Cove bluff dumped an estimated 16,000 cubic metres of rock on Highway 99. (CBC)

The slide occurred just north of the Porteau Cove campsite between Furry Creek and Lions Bay. (CBC)

The bus was hammered by falling rock and narrowly escaped being crushed, according to a passenger. (Submitted by Luis Araujo)

Bus shakes, driver keeps going

A bus with a driver and passenger on board narrowly escaped being crushed by a massive rockfall that crashed onto the Sea to Sky Highway between Vancouver and Whistler just before midnight Tuesday night.

Road crews in the area told CBC News they expected the highway would be closed for at least two days because blasting would likely be required to clear the massive rocks, some the size of trucks and small houses.

VIDEO: Raw aerial footage of rock slide site (Runs 3:39)

Clip Source: www.nationalpost.com

Global News video of the rockslide

Tags: rockfall, rock-slide, sea to sky highway, vancouver, whistler

Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:54:47 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: 'The latest images, taken by Envisat's radar, say fractures have now opened up in this bridge and adjacent areas of the plate are disintegrating, creating large icebergs.
The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts northward from the white continent towards South America -- has had one of the highest rates of warming anywhere in the world in recent decades.

But this latest stage of the breakup occurred during the Southern Hemisphere's winter, when atmospheric temperatures are at their lowest.

One idea is that warmer water from the Southern Ocean is reaching the underside of the ice shelf and thinning it rapidly from underneath.

"Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years," researcher David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said.

"Current events are showing that we were being too conservati

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming

Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.

"Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said.

Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles), or about the size of Northern Ireland, before it began to retreat in the 1990s.

Since then several large areas have broken away, and two big breakoffs this year left only a narrow ice bridge about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) wide to connect the shelf to Charcot and nearby Latady Island.

Scientists are puzzled and concerned by the event, ESA added.

Tags: antarctica, ice shelf, breaking up, winter!, omg

An Exploding Asteroid

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:55:23 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud

Clip Source: www.astrobio.net

A new study shows that a comet or asteroid may have exploded over Canada and caused the Earth's climate to change at the end of the last Ice Age some 12,900 years ago.

During the period known as the Younger Dryas, large mammals like wooly mammoths became extinct.
Credit: USGS

Many scientists hypothesize that mass extinctions our planet’s history may well have been due to comet and asteroid impacts.
Credit: NASA ARC

Samples of diamonds, gold and silver that have been found in the region have been conclusively sourced through X-ray diffractometry in the lab of UC Professor of Geology Warren Huff back to the diamond fields region of Canada.

The only plausible scenario available now for explaining their presence this far south is the kind of cataclysmic explosive event described by West’s theory. "We believe this is the strongest evidence yet indicating a comet impact in that time period," says Tankersley.

Protect Our Food

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:48:38 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "These "pharma crops" have been grown outdoors in 35 states. They threaten to mix with food crops and contaminate our food supply, with serious implications for public health, farmers, and food producers."

Clip Source: www.ucsusa.org

Biotechnology has given us a wide range of new drugs. Using genetically engineered microbes, fungi, and animal cells grown in huge vats, the biopharmaceutical industry has brought more than 250 new medicines to market.

Some companies have experimented with a different approach-engineering food crops such as corn, rice, and safflower to produce drug compounds. These "pharma crops" have been grown outdoors in 35 states. They threaten to mix with food crops and contaminate our food supply, with serious implications for public health, farmers, and food producers. The Union of Concerned Scientists has urged the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protect our food by banning outdoor drug-producing food crops.

(click here for full size slideshow)

Tags: biotechnology, genetically engineered microbes, fungi, and animal cells, contaminate food supply

Glacier Bay Park's Gravity Shifts As Ice Melts

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:48:35 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud

Clip Source: www.npr.org

When it comes to the upward movement of the Earth's crust, the residents of tiny Gustavus, Alaska, are experts.

"Isostatic rebound is the term for it," explains Morgan DeBoer, taking a break from his sawmill. "You know, land rebounding, coming up, springing up out of the water at an inch and a half a year."

DeBoer has good reason to be up on the jargon. Over the past decades, isostatic rebound has more than doubled the size of his family's seafront property, as the rising Earth's crust lifts new real estate out of the water.

The family even went to court — the case went all the way up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — to defend their right to the new land.

"You wouldn't think it would be much," says DeBoer, "but when it's flat land to begin with, any change is significant. We gain probably an acre or so every year." With all this new acreage, the DeBoers have built themselves a nine-hole golf course.

Where Ice Disappears, Earth Rises

Slideshow: Living on Glacier Bay

Martin Kaste/NPR

Tags: isostatic rebound, gustavus, alaska

Arctic seabed afire with lava-spewing volcanoes

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:32:08 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud

Clip Source: www.canada.com

The Arctic seabed is as explosive geologically as it is politically judging by the "fountains" of gas and molten lava that have been blasting out of underwater volcanoes near the North Pole.

"Explosive volatile discharge has clearly been a widespread, and ongoing, process," according to an international team that sent unmanned probes to the strange fiery world beneath the Arctic ice.

They returned with images and data showing that red-hot magma has been rising from deep inside the earth and blown the tops off dozens of submarine volcanoes, four kilometres below the ice. "Jets or fountains of material were probably blasted one, maybe even two, kilometres up into the water," says geophysicist Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who led the expedition.

The team explored the volcanoes last summer as the Russians were planting a flag on the nearby sea floor triggering an international flap over ownership of the seabed.

Tags: arctic, volcanoes

Cree remove blockade - drivers blast through

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 05:47:30 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: The blockade was to remain until Monday to mark National Aboriginal Day, as other aboriginals marked the day with marches and celebrations, but was taken down on Saturday.

The band had notified oil and gas companies operating in the area of its intentions, and many of them agreed to stay off the road until the blockade ended, Anderson said.

Most oil workers had been extremely understanding, he said. Residents and other drivers had been allowed to pass through. "

Clip Source: www.cbc.ca

The Kelly Lake Cree Nation took down a highway blockade near the Alberta-B.C. border Saturday because of a close call with angry and dangerous drivers, band spokesman Clayton Anderson said.

Anderson said he was walking toward a vehicle at the blockade on Highway 52, about 180 kilometres southeast of Chetwynd, in northeastern B.C., when "this guy just steps on the gas and practically runs me over."

He was nicked, Anderson said, and then "these two big rigs and a pickup sped through here and literally just about running over my people."

The protesters were stopping oil and gas service trucks to express concerns about the volume of exploration work in the area, Anderson said Friday.

"We've talked about it to death and something's got to be done about it," he said, such as upgrading the narrow road or building a bypass around the community.

External Links

Kelly Lake Cree Nation

Tags: kelly lake cree nation, blockade alberta-b.c. border, canada

drunk driver jailed 20 years

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:57:36 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "The collision occurred on Jan. 20, 2006, the day Yellowknee had just been released from jail. He had been drinking all day and, by 5 p.m., he was staggering around the Sawridge Truck Stop in Slave Lake, a bottle of Silk Tassel Rye tucked into his jacket, trying to hitch a ride up to Wabasca.

Slave Lake is about 250 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

Minutes later, he was behind the wheel of a stolen white pickup truck, speeding out of Slave Lake on the highway with the police in pursuit, lights on, sirens blaring. He fishtailed, hit the shoulder, shot over the yellow line and slammed head-on into a black car.

He killed everyone inside. Misty Chalifoux, 28, died instantly, as did two of her daughters - nine-year-old Trista Chalifoux and 13-year-old Michelle Lisk. Six-year-old daughter Larissa was airlifted to hospital. She died the next day.

Yellowknee's blood alcohol level was .22 that night, nearly triple the legal limit of .08."

Clip Source: www.canada.com

SLAVE LAKE, Alta. - In a precedent-setting decision Thursday, an Alberta judge sentenced a drunk driver who killed four people to more than 20 years in prison, and moved to block people convicted of similar crimes from serving their sentences in the community.

Provincial court Judge Ernie Walter declared Raymond Yellowknee a long-term offender and sentenced him to 20 years and six months behind bars for drinking, driving and crashing head-on into an oncoming car. The crash killed a young mother and her three little girls.

The sentence is believed to be the longest yet handed down for drunk driving causing death in Canada.

Walter also said for the first time that drunk driving causing death is a "serious personal injury offence" in Alberta, an unprecedented legal label that adds deadly drunk drivers to the category of convicts who cannot apply to serve their sentences in the community under house arrest.

Tags: drunk driver, 20 years in prison, slave lake, alberta, canada

Rapid permafrost thaw expected

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:09:32 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "Climate warming is degrading permafrost, and roads, runways and building foundations in many parts of the North have been buckling and cracking as the top layer of the ground thaws. The increasingly mushy ground also has created "drunken forests," where trees now lean at strange angles.

At least 30 per cent of all the carbon stored in soils worldwide is found in the North -- and scientists worry rising temperatures will release carbon dioxide and methane, both potent greenhouse gases, now locked in the permafrost.

"To me, probably the biggest uncertainty is whether methane emissions are going to go up, and if they are, by how much," says Lawrence.

Last summer, the Arctic sea ice shrank to more than 30 per cent below average, setting a modern-day record. Temperatures over land in the western Arctic also were unusually warm, reaching more than 2 C above the 1978-2006 average and raising questions about whether the ice retreat was tied to the warming temperatures over land."

Clip Source: www.canada.com

researchers warn

Melting could happen much more quickly than previously thought, putting towns and roads at risk, study says

Permafrost, which covers close to half of Canada and threatens to release vast stores of carbon into the atmosphere, could undergo a much more rapid thaw than previously thought, according to an American study.

The rate of climate warming over northern Canada, Alaska, and Russia could more than triple if Arctic ice continues to retreat rapidly, says the report, which highlights the vulnerability of permafrost and the roadways, communities and ecosystems now sitting on the frozen ground.

"We are expecting the Arctic to warm faster than the rest of the world, and this suggests that in relatively short, 5-10 year periods that rate of warming can really go up," says David Lawrence, lead author of the study conducted at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Tags: permafrost, arctic, climate warming, canada, drunken forests

Male circumcision is a weapon in the sperm wars

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:03:19 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: In some forms of mutilation, the handicap to sperm competition is obvious. There is subincision, for example, where cuts are made to the base of the penis. This causes sperm to be ejaculated from the base rather than the end, and is performed in several Aboriginal Australian societies, says Wilson.

In some African and Micronesian cultures, young men have one of their testicles crushed.

Male genital mutilation makes it less likely that a male will manage to father a child with another man's wife, Wilson says.
Home advantage

Circumcision is one of the less painful forms of mutilation, but it is also less effective at reducing sperm competition. Wilson suggests, however, that the lack of a foreskin could make insertion or ejaculation slower, meaning brief, illicit sex is less likely to come to fruition and lead to a pregnancy.

Younger men, he says, willingly submit to having their reproductive ability reduced because they benefit socially from the older men, by forming allian

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Circumcision and other forms of male genital mutilation have always been a puzzle. The ritual mutilations can leave the man vulnerable to infection and even death. So why do some societies insist on such a risky ritual for their men?

There may be an evolutionary explanation, according to Christopher Wilson, of Cornell University in New York, US. It could function to reduce a young man's potential to father a child with an older man's wife, he says.

Sperm competition theory predicts that males will evolve ways to ensure that their sperm, and not another male's, fertilises a female's eggs. Genital mutilation, in this view, is just another way to win the sperm war.

In some forms of mutilation, the handicap to sperm competition is obvious. There is subincision, for example, where cuts are made to the base of the penis. This causes sperm to be ejaculated from the base rather than the end, and is performed in several Aboriginal Australian societies, says Wilson.

Tags: circumcision, genital mutilation

Canada first in the world to pass climate act

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:16:30 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud

Clip Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

TORONTO: The Canadian House of Commons has become the first parliament in the world to pass a climate act, which commits the country to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

The House passed the Climate Change Accountability Bill on Wednesday. It was moved by the leader of the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) Jack Layton.

The two other opposition parties - the Liberal party and the Bloc Quebecois - supported the bill.

"This is a world first," Layton said in a statement later.

"Our legislation sets tough but achievable targets that will ensure Canada does its share to avoid the dangerous two-degree increase in average global temperature that scientists warn us about," he said.

The bill sets an interim target of 25 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 and requires progress reports from the government every five years.

Tags: climate change, canada, new democratic party (ndp), jack layton

WTKR weather: Clear skies ahead

Fri, 30 May 2008 08:17:27 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud

Clip Source: www.dailypress.com

Meteorologists rely on all kinds of equipment to forecast the weather, from radar and satellites to billion-dollar super computers.

But on days like today, a DC-9 flying overhead can give you a pretty good forecast. Just watch the jet contrails!

We're expecting clear, blue skies today. Chances are the contrails will fade very quickly. That means the upper atmosphere is pretty dry and there aren't any storm systems trying to move our way.

But by tomorrow afternoon, those contrails should start to stick around longer and even thicken up a bit. That means some humid air is pushing in to the region and we can expect some storms this weekend. We'll see how our contrail forecasting holds up.

With those blue skies today, expect high temperatures in the lower 70s.

Expect clear skies tonight with low temperatures in the low-to-mid 50s.

Warmer weather returns tomorrow. Expect plenty of sunshine with high temperatures in the low-to-mid 80s on Friday.

Current weather

Tags: contrails, weather, clouds, climate change

Michael J. Fox granted honorary law degree

Fri, 23 May 2008 06:30:10 GMT

clipped by: jetcloud
clipper's remarks: "I wish you no greater satisfaction in life than to feel the same way today as you graduate and for many years to come."

Clip Source: www.cbc.ca

Actor Michael J. fox says it is "cool" to receive an honorary doctor of laws degree from UBC. (CBC)

Actor Michael J. Fox received an honorary doctor of laws degree on Thursday from the University of British Columbia.

"[This degree] is to recognize his outstanding contributions both as an entertainer and as an advocate. I ask you to confer the degree of doctor of laws on our hometown hero Michael J. Fox," said the university's vice-president academic, David Farrar.

He said the biggest role of Fox's life has been that of an advocate.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research has raised $120 million.

The Burnaby native was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991. He soon became an advocate for research on the disease that impairs motor skills and speech.

Although the actor did not speak for long, he had some words of inspiration for the newly minted batch of graduates.

VIDEO: Michael J. Fox accepts his honorary law degree at UBC (Runs 3:37)

Tags: michael j. fox, honorary law degree, video