President Obama began his first term with a dramatic change of course for the CIA, issuing orders on his second day in office to close the agency’s secret prisons and ban harsh interrogation techniques.
As Obama approaches a second term with an unexpected opening for CIA director, agency officials are watching to see whether the president’s pick signals even a modest adjustment in the main counterterrorism program he kept: the use of armed drones to kill suspected extremists.
LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron is keeping an open mind about the regulation of the press, his office insisted Saturday, after a newspaper report claimed he would reject full-blown state regulation.
British newspapers are nervously awaiting the publication on Thursday of the first results from an extensive judge-led inquiry into press standards which could result in tougher regulation of the industry.
The Mail on Sunday reported that Cameron would beef up the current system of self-regulation and replace the Press Complaints Commission, which is staffed by newspaper editors.
The newspaper said Cameron would stop short of tougher measures, but would hold out the threat that a statutory system could be brought in later if the behaviour of the press fails to improve.
But Downing Street played down any suggestion that Cameron had already made up his mind on the Leveson report -- named after the judge who is leading the inquiry -- which is supposed to remain secret until Thursday.
Cameron and a handful of senior government figures will see it on Wednesday to allow them to prepare their response.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "The Prime Minister is open-minded about Lord Justice Leveson's report and will read it in full before he makes any decision about what to do."
Victims of press intrusion are calling for the introduction of an independent regulator, with the backing of the law, while editors have warned that statutory regulation would limit press freedom and hamper investigative reporting.
Cameron set up the inquiry in July last year in response to revelations that the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World hired a private investigator to hack the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler after she disappeared in 2002.
-AFP/ac
Displaced on July 24, when her home in Sapkata village was burned down, the middle-aged woman and her children joined the human tide of more than 4.8 lakh refugees swept into hundreds of relief camps across three districts of western Assam - the largest displacement seen in the country in recent times.
Today, the number of people in relief camps has come down to 36,000-odd people. The emptying of the camps has led the outside world believe the worst is over. Even the government has showcased this as evidence of successful rehabilitation, downplaying the more revealing statistic - only 5,252 families have been given financial assistance by way of the official rehabilitation grant. Counting 10 members in each family, the number of beneficiaries comes to just 52,520 people, a fraction of those affected by the violence.
To start with, only those whose houses were burned or damaged have been considered eligible for rehab assistance - a cheque of Rs 20,700, three bundles with 7 tin sheets each, four tarpaulin sheets, eight poles of bamboo, and a month of food rations. It is bad enough that the grant is barely enough to rebuild homes and lives, say people. Worse, many who lost homes have had to go without it, since they do not own land, an additional eligibility criteria insisted by the Bodoland Territorial Council in the first round of rehabilitation. But what is the worst of all, they point out, several thousands who left the relief camps, keen to get back in time for the harvest season, haven't made it back and find themselves stranded in between.
Zohra is one of them. After nearly three months in Kathalguri relief camp, when she trekked back to her village in late October, she found her neighbours had propped up tents in a clearing outside the village. Their quarter of the village was not safe, they cautioned her, since it faced Bodo settlements. Better to live huddled with other Muslims. Soon, a hundred tents had sprung up in the clearing, a makeshift camp of sorts. In Horiyapet village, the makeshift settlement is even larger: a thousand tents scattered in the open, their blue and black plastic sheets glinting in the afternoon sun, sheltering people from as many as six villages.
Unlike the government relief camp they left behind, where supplies of food and medicines trickled in regularly, drinking water tanks were chlorinated, latrines were fumigated, and NGO's unloaded bundles of clothes every now and then, in the makeshift camps, the people have been left to fend for themselves. "We were given 10 days of ration but that's over," says Sobor Ali, who lives in Sapkata makeshift camp. "We are trying to make do by selling bamboo and wood, but that barely brings in any money."
District officials say they know of a large number of such makeshift camps in Gossaigaon division, the worst hit part of Kokrajhar district. They say they occasionally send food, but are wary of stepping up relief supplies to those who have returned home without going through the official process of rehabilitation, lest they be seen as aiding illegal immigrants. "We are trying to address the problem," is all that Jayant Narlikar, the deputy commissioner of Kokrajhar, is willing to say.
Meanwhile, as she wraps the pallu of her saree tighter around her shoulders, Zohra can sense the worst is not over -- with winter setting in, and no warm clothes available.
Orbiting at the frozen edges of our solar system, the mysterious dwarf planet Makemake is finally coming out of the shadows as astronomers get their best view yet of Pluto's little sibling.
Discovered in 2005, Makemake—pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh after a Polynesian creation god—is one of five Pluto-like objects that prompted a redefining of the term "planet" and the creation of a new group of dwarf planets in 2006. (Related: "Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule.")
Just like the slightly larger Pluto, this icy world circles our sun beyond Neptune. Researchers expected Makemake to also have a global atmosphere—but new evidence reveals that isn't the case.
Staring at a Star
An international team of astronomers was able for the first time to probe Makemake's physical characteristics using the European Southern Observatory's three most powerful telescopes in Chile. The researchers observed the change in light given off by a distant star as the dwarf planet passed in front of it. (Learn how scientists found Makemake.)
"These events are extremely difficult to predict and observe, but they are the only means of obtaining accurate knowledge of important properties of dwarf planets," said Jose Luis Ortiz, lead author of this new study and an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, in Spain.
It's like trying to study a coin from a distance of 30 miles (48 kilometers) or more, Ortiz added.
Ortiz and his team knew Makemake didn't have an atmosphere when light from the background star abruptly dimmed and brightened as the chilly world drifted across its face.
"The light went off very abruptly from all the sites we observed the event so this means this world cannot have a substantial and global atmosphere like that of its sibling Pluto," Ortiz said.
If Makemake had an atmosphere, light from the star would gradually decrease and increase as the dwarf planet passed in front.
Coming Into Focus
The team's new observations add much more detail to our view of Makemake—not only limiting the possibility of an atmosphere but also determining the planet's size and surface more accurately.
"We think Makemake is a sphere flattened slightly at both poles and mostly covered with very white ices—mainly of methane," said Ortiz.
"But there are also indications for some organic material at least at some places; this material is usually very red and we think in a small percentage of the surface, the terrain is quite dark," he added.
Why Makemake lacks a global atmosphere remains a big mystery, but Ortiz does have a theory. Pluto is covered in nitrogen ice. When the sun heats this volatile material, it turns straight into a gas, creating Pluto's atmosphere.
Makemake lacks nitrogen ice on its surface, so there is nothing for the sun to heat into a gas to provide an atmosphere.
The dwarf planet has less mass, and a weaker gravitational field, than Pluto, said Ortiz. This means that over eons of time, Makemake may not have been able to hang on to its nitrogen.
Methane ice will also transform into a gas when heated. But since the dwarf planet is nearly at its furthest distance from the sun, Ortiz believes that Makemake's surface methane is still frozen. (Learn about orbital planes.)
And even if the methane were to transform into a gas, any resulting atmosphere would cover, at most, only ten percent of the planet, said Ortiz.
The new results are detailed today in the journal Nature.
Nov 24, 2012 3:35pm
(Image Credit: Associated Press)
Superstorm Sandy delivered a one-two punch on small businesses, creating millions of dollars in damage and in turn, delivering a debilitating blow to their revenue.
But on Small Business Saturday, when shoppers are encouraged to support local businesses, those mom-and-pop stores are hoping for a rebound.
Donna Scofield and her family have sold toys at their Manhattan shop, called Stationery & Toy World, for the past 25 years. Although the store is located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where the storm did little damage, $500,000 of Scofield’s inventory, which she kept in her home and three Staten Island warehouses, was destroyed.
“Some days are easier than others,” she told ABC New York station WABC-TV last week. “We’re taking each day at a time.”
PHOTOS: Superstorm Sandy’s Wide Swath of Destruction
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that more than $45 million in loans, grants and financial assistance would be made available to businesses like Scofield’s that were hurt by the storm.
“Getting New York City small businesses back on their feet is key to helping our economy recover from Sandy,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “The capital provided through this program will help businesses purchase supplies, make repairs, and get back up and running.”
Small Business Saturday, which is going on its third year, is being celebrated nationwide.
Andrea Evans, the owner of Pink Boutique in Phoenix, said stores like hers don’t stand a chance with shoppers on Black Friday.
“Everyone’s up so early, and they’re going more for, you know, appliances and TVs and stuff like that, and I think by the time noon hits, they’re done,” she told ABC News Radio.
Over the past two decades, small and new businesses have created two out of every three net new jobs in the United States, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
It is estimated that half of all working Americans either own a small business or are employed by one.
Politicians tasked with negotiating a deal next month to avoid the “fiscal cliff” can be thankful that their talks are taking place immediately after a clarifying national election that laid out exactly how the public wants Washington to deal with debt and deficits.
Or not.
SINGAPORE: A bronze medal-finish from the 1986 Asian Games remains the most recent international result of note for the Singapore men's water polo team.
But that may soon be bettered.
This is because the Republic are on course to reach the semi-finals at the 9th Asian Swimming Championships in Dubai after skipper Eugene Teo's (picture) hat-trick propelled them to a shock 8-7 win over Asian powerhouse Uzbekistan on Wednesday (Thursday morning, Singapore time).
On Thursday night, they lost 23-2 to world No 6 China, who had beaten Uzbekistan 28-6 in an earlier Group A match. Nonetheless, Singapore are expected to reach the quarter-finals as group runners-up to China, where they are likely to face Thailand from Group B.
Despite the defeat, team manager Samuel Wong described their win over Uzbekistan as a long-awaited "breakthrough" for the 24-time SEA Games champions - they have won the title every time since 1965 - who have often been criticised for failing to replicate their regional dominance at the continental level.
"We've always done well at the SEA Games, but have been nowhere in Asia for a long time," he said. "But this has proved we can dream big. Hopefully, this would also help increase interest in the sport in Singapore."
Singapore Sports Council Chief Executive Officer Lim Teck Yin, a member of Singapore's 1986 Asiad side, added: "It's an exciting result. Some of the players are as young as 17, and to achieve this speaks a lot about the maturity of their game."
Coached by Lee Sai Meng, Singapore had also drawn 8-8 with Saudi Arabia and beaten Sri Lanka 24-4.
"We started the tournament slowly ... (but) the team, especially goalkeeper Byron Quek, was excellent and once the Uzbeks realised they weren't getting much luck against us, their confidence dropped and ours rose," said Wong.
To prepare for the meet, the squad played in the China National League earlier this year, and also went on a training stint in Guangzhou.
A Singapore Sports Institute sports science team are also in Dubai to provide support.
However, Lim has called the team not to be carried away with their results at the Asian Championships - not when the SEA Games will be held in Myanmar.
He said: "People may say the SEA Games isn't important anymore, but we'll be under pressure to keep our run going. Hopefully this will be the impetus to build belief that if they keep working hard, they can achieve a lot."
- TODAY
"India continues to make efforts to build peaceful and stable relations with Pakistan," said Ahmed, a day after India hanged Ajmal Kasab, one of the perpetrators of Mumbai attacks. "This includes promotion of sporting ties. However, terrorism against India emanating from Pakistan and territory under its control remains a core concern for us," he added.
Government has given clearance to BCCI for Pakistan cricket team's tour to India to participate in three One Day Internationals (ODIs) and two T20 matches from December 25 to January 6. The matches will be played in Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata.
"As per available information, two alleged conspirators of Mumbai terror attack, as revealed by David Coleman Headley, visited New Delhi in 2005 on the pretext of watching India-Pakistan cricket match," said Ahmed.
According to the minister, the government has conveyed to the Pakistan leadership, including at the highest levels that Islamabad must abide by its commitment that it will not allow its territory and territory under its control to be used for aiding and abetting of terrorist activities against India and for providing sanctuaries to such terrorist groups. "It has also been conveyed to Pakistan that an expeditious and successful conclusion of the investigation and trial relating to those involved in the Mumbai attacks would be a major confidence building measure and would help bridge the trust deficit," he added.
Orbiting at the frozen edges of our solar system, the mysterious dwarf planet Makemake is finally coming out of the shadows as astronomers get their best view yet of Pluto's little sibling.
Discovered in 2005, Makemake—pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh after a Polynesian creation god—is one of five Pluto-like objects that prompted a redefining of the term "planet" and the creation of a new group of dwarf planets in 2006. (Related: "Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule.")
Just like the slightly larger Pluto, this icy world circles our sun beyond Neptune. Researchers expected Makemake to also have a global atmosphere—but new evidence reveals that isn't the case.
Staring at a Star
An international team of astronomers was able for the first time to probe Makemake's physical characteristics using the European Southern Observatory's three most powerful telescopes in Chile. The researchers observed the change in light given off by a distant star as the dwarf planet passed in front of it. (Learn how scientists found Makemake.)
"These events are extremely difficult to predict and observe, but they are the only means of obtaining accurate knowledge of important properties of dwarf planets," said Jose Luis Ortiz, lead author of this new study and an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, in Spain.
It's like trying to study a coin from a distance of 30 miles (48 kilometers) or more, Ortiz added.
Ortiz and his team knew Makemake didn't have an atmosphere when light from the background star abruptly dimmed and brightened as the chilly world drifted across its face.
"The light went off very abruptly from all the sites we observed the event so this means this world cannot have a substantial and global atmosphere like that of its sibling Pluto," Ortiz said.
If Makemake had an atmosphere, light from the star would gradually decrease and increase as the dwarf planet passed in front.
Coming Into Focus
The team's new observations add much more detail to our view of Makemake—not only limiting the possibility of an atmosphere but also determining the planet's size and surface more accurately.
"We think Makemake is a sphere flattened slightly at both poles and mostly covered with very white ices—mainly of methane," said Ortiz.
"But there are also indications for some organic material at least at some places; this material is usually very red and we think in a small percentage of the surface, the terrain is quite dark," he added.
Why Makemake lacks a global atmosphere remains a big mystery, but Ortiz does have a theory. Pluto is covered in nitrogen ice. When the sun heats this volatile material, it turns straight into a gas, creating Pluto's atmosphere.
Makemake lacks nitrogen ice on its surface, so there is nothing for the sun to heat into a gas to provide an atmosphere.
The dwarf planet has less mass, and a weaker gravitational field, than Pluto, said Ortiz. This means that over eons of time, Makemake may not have been able to hang on to its nitrogen.
Methane ice will also transform into a gas when heated. But since the dwarf planet is nearly at its furthest distance from the sun, Ortiz believes that Makemake's surface methane is still frozen. (Learn about orbital planes.)
And even if the methane were to transform into a gas, any resulting atmosphere would cover, at most, only ten percent of the planet, said Ortiz.
The new results are detailed today in the journal Nature.
At least two people died and more than 80 were injured after a 100-plus car pileup in Texas today, according the Department of Public Safety.
A man and a woman died from their injuries, ABC News affiliate KBMT-TV reported. Their names were not immediately available.
The DPS said it won't know the exact number of cars involved in the pileup until officials finish untangling the wrecks.
At least five people who were taken to the hospital are in critical condition, KBMT reported.
The accident happened in Jefferson County shortly after 8 a.m. Thanksgiving morning on Interstate 10 between Taylor Bayou and Hampshire Road.
Fog blinded drivers, with investigators saying most couldn't see a foot in front of them at the time of the crash.
"The cause of the accident was a heavy fog bank rolled into this area this morning, which caused nobody to be able to see and caused one accident that triggered another accident and then a chain reaction," said Deputy Rod Carroll of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department.
"Even as the deputies were pulling up we still had a continuous chain of accidents," Carroll said.
An 18-wheeler tanker truck began leaking after the chain-reaction accident, KBMT reported.
The eastbound side of the freeway was closed for hours and remained closed into the afternoon, DPS told ABC News. The westbound lanes opened shortly after noon.
Ariane Tschumi has spent more than a year in government as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF), taking on challenging assignments at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) designed to develop her leadership skills and give her a window into how government operates.
She has worked alongside health-care experts designing model programs intended to better health care and lower costs, and with attorneys in the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), who are trying to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in the health-care system.
ISTANBUL: Galatasaray ended Manchester United's perfect start to this season's Champions League with a 1-0 victory in Group H in Istanbul on Tuesday.
Burak Yilmaz scored the only goal of the game at the Turk Telekom Arena when he headed in a corner in the 54th minute to take the hosts to the brink of qualification for the knockout stages
But with United already through to the second phase, this match allowed manager Alex Ferguson to give several younger players some valuable European experience in front of some of the continent's most passionate fans.
"The possession was good and the attacking play was good," Ferguson told Sky Sports. "We had one or two good opportunities in both halves.
"They had a few strikes from outside the box and our goalkeeper did well. Otherwise we coped well."
United stars such as England striker Wayne Rooney, top scorer Robin van Persie, Rio Ferdinand, Patrice Evra, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs, the only survivor from the 1993 'Welcome to Hell' trip to Istanbul, stayed in Manchester.
By contrast, Tuesday saw Nick Powell, at 18 years and 242 days, become the second youngest Englishman to feature for United in the Champions League.
The fact that record is held by Kieran Richardson should warn Powell that Tuesday's appearance is no guarantee of Old Trafford stardom.
Meanwhile, Phil Jones made his first United appearance of the season and Powell his first start.
A first half of few chances saw United keeper Anders Lindegaard make just the one save, turning away a curling Hamit Altintop shot.
But the match livened up considerably after the interval with former Liverpool player Albert Riera testing Lindegaard from long range before the Dane did well to tip Felipe Melo's header over the bar.
But the ensuing corner saw Filmaz find space on the edge of the six-yard box before steering in a header.
The margin of defeat could have been worse for United, with Altintop's powerful long-range shot rattling the crossbar.
Ferguson tried to conjure an equaliser by introducing Ashley Young, Federico Macheda and Joshua King off the bench but it made no difference to the result.
- AFP/fa
The 11-member team will travel on bicycles from Siliguri in north Bengal to Dehradun in Uttarakhand, covering the distance in 40 days. They will hold meetings along the way to spread the word on why India needs to track its natural resources such as water, air, soil, forests etc.
"Only a stable ecology can lead to a stable economy. Just as the government releases GDP figures, it should also come out with an annual GEP, which would be a tabulation of how each of our natural resources was spent in that year," said Anil P Joshi, who is leading the yatra. The group, consisting of activists aged 19 to 72, would be travelling through Patna, Varanasi, Allahabad, Kanpur, Mathura and Delhi, interacting with people to popularize the demand for GEP. "Our mission is to create mass awareness about the need to formulate an ecological growth measure so people know about the health of India's environment," said Joshi, a Padma Shri-awardee who runs a Dehra Dun-based NGO, Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization.
GEP is somewhat similar to the concept of a 'green GDP' — gross domestic product after being adjusted for environmental costs of economic activity — which the Union environment ministry hopes to roll out by 2015.
The team would cross 55 districts and more than a 1,000 villages to reach the Himalayas. "Our other motto is save the Himalayas. For ages, this mountain range has been providing life to 65% of Indians. Today, Himalayan ecology is threatened and we wish to raise awareness about what this means for people living in the plains," Joshi said.
Before the big dinner, debunk the myths—for starters, the first "real" U.S. Thanksgiving wasn't until the 1800s—and get to the roots of Thanksgiving 2012.
Thanksgiving Dinner: Recipe for Food Coma?
Key to any Thanksgiving Day menu are a fat turkey and cranberry sauce.
An estimated 254 million turkeys will be raised for slaughter in the U.S. during 2012, up 2 percent from 2011's total, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Last year's birds were worth about five billion dollars.
About 46 million turkeys ended up on U.S. dinner tables last Thanksgiving—or about 736 million pounds (334 million kilograms) of turkey meat, according to estimates from the National Turkey Federation.
Minnesota is the United States' top turkey-producing state, followed by North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Virginia, and Indiana.
These "big six" states produce two of every three U.S.-raised birds, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
U.S. farmers will also produce 768 million pounds (348 million kilograms) of cranberries in 2012, which, like turkeys, are native to the Americas. The top producers are Wisconsin and Massachusetts.
The U.S. will also grow 2.7 billion pounds (1.22 billion kilograms) of sweet potatoes—many in North Carolina, Mississippi, California, and Louisiana—and will produce more than 1.1 billion pounds (499 million kilograms) of pumpkins.
Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, and Ohio grow the most U.S. pumpkins.
But if you overeat at Thanksgiving dinner, there's a price to be paid for all this plenty: the Thanksgiving "food coma." The post-meal fatigue may be real, but the condition is giving turkeys a bad rap.
Contrary to myth, the amount of the organic amino acid tryptophan in most turkeys isn't responsible for drowsiness.
Instead, scientists blame booze, the sheer caloric size of an average feast, or just plain-old relaxing after stressful work schedules. (Take a Thanksgiving quiz.)
What Was on the First Thanksgiving Menu?
Little is known about the first Thanksgiving dinner in Plimoth (also spelled Plymouth) Colony in October 1621, attended by some 50 English colonists and about 90 Wampanoag American Indian men in what is now Massachusetts.
We do know that the Wampanoag killed five deer for the feast, and that the colonists shot wild fowl—which may have been geese, ducks, or turkey. Some form, or forms, of Indian corn were also served.
But Jennifer Monac, spokesperson for the living-history museum Plimoth Plantation, said the feasters likely supplemented their venison and birds with fish, lobster, clams, nuts, and wheat flour, as well as vegetables, such as pumpkins, squashes, carrots, and peas.
"They ate seasonally," Monac said in 2009, "and this was the time of the year when they were really feasting. There were lots of vegetables around, because the harvest had been brought in."
Much of what we consider traditional Thanksgiving fare was unknown at the first Thanksgiving. Potatoes and sweet potatoes hadn't yet become staples of the English diet, for example. And cranberry sauce requires sugar—an expensive delicacy in the 1600s. Likewise, pumpkin pie went missing due to a lack of crust ingredients.
If you want to eat like a Pilgrim yourself, try some of the Plimoth Plantation's recipes, including stewed pompion (pumpkin) or traditional Wampanoag succotash. (See "Sixteen Indian Innovations: From Popcorn to Parkas.")
First Thanksgiving Not a True Thanksgiving?
Long before the first Thanksgiving, American Indian peoples, Europeans, and other cultures around the world had often celebrated the harvest season with feasts to offer thanks to higher powers for their sustenance and survival.
In 1541 Spaniard Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and his troops celebrated a "Thanksgiving" while searching for New World gold in what is now the Texas Panhandle.
Later such feasts were held by French Huguenot colonists in present-day Jacksonville, Florida (1564), by English colonists and Abnaki Indians at Maine's Kennebec River (1607), and in Jamestown, Virginia (1610), when the arrival of a food-laden ship ended a brutal famine. (Related: "Four Hundred-Year-Old Seeds, Spear Change Perceptions of Jamestown Colony.")
But it's the 1621 Plimoth Thanksgiving that's linked to the birth of our modern holiday. To tell the truth, though, the first "real" Thanksgiving happened two centuries later.
Everything we know about the three-day Plimoth gathering comes from a description in a letter wrote by Edward Winslow, leader of the Plimoth Colony, in 1621, Monac said. The letter had been lost for 200 years and was rediscovered in the 1800s, she added.
In 1841 Boston publisher Alexander Young printed Winslow's brief account of the feast and added his own twist, dubbing the 1621 feast the "First Thanksgiving."
In Winslow's "short letter, it was clear that [the 1621 feast] was not something that was supposed to be repeated again and again. It wasn't even a Thanksgiving, which in the 17th century was a day of fasting. It was a harvest celebration," Monac said.
But after its mid-1800s appearance, Young's designation caught on—to say the least.
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving Day a national holiday in 1863. He was probably swayed in part by magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale—the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb"—who had suggested Thanksgiving become a holiday, historians say.
In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt established the current date for observance, the fourth Thursday of November.
Thanksgiving Turkey-in-Waiting
Each year at least two lucky turkeys avoid the dinner table, thanks to a presidential pardon—a longstanding Washington tradition of uncertain origin.
Since 1947, during the Truman Administration, the National Turkey Federation has presented two live turkeys—and a ready-to-eat turkey—to the President, federation spokesperson Sherrie Rosenblatt said in 2009.
"There are two birds," Rosenblatt explained, "the presidential turkey and the vice presidential turkey, which is an alternate, in case the presidential turkey is unable to perform its duties."
Those duties pretty much boil down to not biting the President during the photo opportunity with the press. In 2008 the vice presidential bird, "Pumpkin," stepped in for the appearance with President Bush after the presidential bird, "Pecan," had fallen ill the night before.
The lucky birds once shared a similar happy fate as Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks—a trip to Disneyland's Big Thunder Ranch in California, where they lived out their natural lives.
Since 2010, however, the birds have followed in the footsteps of the first President and taken up residence at George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens.
After the holiday season, however, the two 40-pound (18-kilogram) toms won't be on public display. These fat, farm-fed birds aren't historically accurate, unlike the wild birds that still roam the Virginia estate.
Talking Turkey
Pilgrims had been familiar with turkeys before they landed in the Americas. That's because early European explorers of the New World had returned to Europe with turkeys in tow after encountering them at Native American settlements. Native Americans had domesticated the birds centuries before European contact.
A century later Ben Franklin famously made known his preference that the turkey, rather than the bald eagle, should be the official U.S. bird.
But Franklin might have been shocked when, by the 1930s, hunting had so decimated North American wild turkey populations that their numbers had dwindled to the tens of thousands, from a peak of at least tens of millions.
Today, thanks to reintroduction efforts and hunting regulations, wild turkeys are back. (Related: "Birder's Journal: Giving Thanks for Wild Turkey Sightings.")
Some seven million wild turkeys are thriving across the U.S., and many of them have adapted easily to the suburbs—their speed presumably an asset on ever encroaching roads.
Wild turkeys can run some 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 kilometers) an hour and fly in bursts at 55 miles (89 kilometers) an hour. Domesticated turkeys can't fly at all.
On Thanksgiving, Pass the Pigskin
For many U.S. citizens, Thanksgiving without football is as unthinkable as the Fourth of July without fireworks.
NBC Radio broadcast the first national Thanksgiving Day game in 1934, when the Detroit Lions hosted the Chicago Bears.
Except for a respite during World War II, the Lions have played—usually badly—every Thanksgiving Day since. For the 2012 game, the 73rd, they take on the Houston Texans.
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
For a festive few, even turkey takes a backseat to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, originally called the Macy's Christmas parade, because it kicked off the shopping season.
The tradition began in 1924, when employees recruited animals from the Central Park Zoo to march on Thanksgiving Day.
Helium-filled balloons made their debut in the parade in 1927 and, in the early years, were released above the city skyline with the promise of rewards for their finders.
The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, first televised nationally in 1947, now draws some 44 million viewers—not counting the 3 million people who actually line the 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) Manhattan route.
Thanksgiving weekend also boasts the retail version of the Super Bowl—Black Friday, when massive sales and early opening times attract frugal shoppers.
A National Retail Federation survey projects that up to 147 million Americans will either brave the crowds to shop on 2012's Black Friday weekend or take advantage of online shopping sales, a slight dip from last year's 152 million shoppers.
Planes, Trains, and (Lots of) Automobiles
It may seem like everyone in the U.S. is on the road on Thanksgiving Day, keeping you from your turkey and stuffing.
That's not exactly true, but 43.6 million of about 314 million U.S. citizens will drive more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home for the 2012 holiday, according to the American Automobile Association. That's a small 300,000-person increase from last year.
An additional 3.14 million travelers will fly to their holiday destination and 1.3 million others will use buses, trains, or other modes of travel. These modestly rising Thanksgiving travel numbers continue to rebound slowly from a steep 25 percent drop precipitated by the onset of the 2008 recession.
Thanksgiving North of the Border
Cross-border travelers can celebrate Thanksgiving twice, because Canada celebrates its own Thanksgiving Day the second Monday in October.
As in the U.S., the event is sometimes linked to a historic feast with which it has no real ties—in this case explorer Martin Frobisher's 1578 ceremony, which gave thanks for his safe arrival in what is now New Brunswick.
Canada's Thanksgiving, established in 1879, was inspired by the U.S. holiday. Dates of observance have fluctuated—sometimes coinciding with the U.S. Thanksgiving or the Canadian veteran-appreciation holiday, Remembrance Day—and at least once Canada's Thanksgiving occurred as late as December.
But Canada's colder climate eventually led to the 1957 decision that formalized the October date.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would seek to "de-escalate the situation in Gaza" today during a closed-door meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.
Clinton, who flew to Israel today, appeared with Netanyahu ahead of their 4 p.m. ET meeting to discuss a possible ceasefire to the fighting between Israel and Islamic militants in Gaza.
The meeting came amid statements from Hamas earlier today that a ceasefire would soon be announced.
Netanyahu said he would prefer to use "diplomatic means" to find a solution to the fighting, but that Israel would take "whatever actions necessary" to defend its people.
"One of the things that we are doing is trying to resist and counter a terrorist barrage which is aimed directly at our civilians," Netanyahu said. "No country can tolerate a wanton attack on its civilians."
Clinton relayed a message from President Obama, reinforcing America's commitment to Isarael's security and calling for an end to the rockets coming from "terrorist orgnaizations in Gaza."
The Israel-Gaza Conflict in Pictures
"American's commitment to Israel's security is rock solid and unwavering. That is why we believe it is essential to de-escalate the situation in Gaza," Clinton said.
Clinton also said that she would reiterate her message to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi during a meeting on Wednesday.
Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv/Getty Images
"President Obama has emphasized the same points in his multiple conversations with president Morsi of Egypt and we appreciate President Morsi's personal leadership and Egypt's efforts thus far," she said. "As a regional leader and neighbor, Egypt has the opportunity and responsibility to continue playing a crucial and constructive role in this process. I will carry this message to Cairo tomorrow."
Clinton expressed her condolences for the Palestinian and Israeli civilians who have been killed in the violent outbreak.
The rocket fire between Israel and Hamas, which began six days ago, has claimed 126 Palestinian lives and three Israeli lives. A ceasefire, if reached, would bring a halt to the worst violence between Gaza and Israel in four years.
Israeli officials told ABC News earlier today that a final deal had not been brokered between Israel and Hamas, and that if a pact were reached, it would not be announced until after midnight local time, or 5 p.m. ET.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told ABC News the news would be announced at a press conference in Cairo where Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has been trying to broker an end to the fighting.
An Islamic Jihad website also reported that the ceasefire would go into effect tonight.
Clinton will also meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas about the fighting.
In the meantime, however, Abu Zuhri called on all militant groups to continue firing rockets on Israel "in retaliation for the Israeli massacres."
Israeli missiles also continued to explode in Gaza while sirens sounded in Israel, signalling incoming rocket fire from Gaza.
Hamas said three Palestinian journalists were killed by an Israeli missile today and Israel said one of its soldiers was killed in by a Palestinian rocket today.
Gazans streamed out of northern neighborhoods during the afternoon after the Israel Defense Forces dropped leaflets telling residents to evacuate before dark. Scared Palestinians poured into Gaza City, cars and trucks piled high with belongings, many heading to schools for shelter.
There have been 126 Palestinian deaths in six days of fighting, just under half were civilians. Three Israelis were killed last Thursday when a rocket slammed into their apartment.
ABC News' Matt Gutman contributed to this report
WASHINGTON: Rating agency Moody's warned Monday that Italy's banks face worsening conditions over the coming year with asset quality declining, low profitability, and poor access to markets for funds.
With their capital levels low and vulnerable and Italy's economy still expected to contract through next year, Moody's said, the outlook for Italian banks "remains negative" and at risk of further deterioration.
"Many of these negative rating drivers have intensified during the course of 2012, and... this trend is likely to persist," Moody's said.
"The ongoing recession is the key driver of asset-quality deterioration, which has particularly affected corporate borrowers."
Moody's did not set any time frame for rating reviews for the banks.
But it also pointed to the challenges of Italian banks in seeking market funding given the strains on the eurozone region as a whole.
"Market access remains highly confidence-sensitive," it warned, pointing out that Italian banks are the second-largest borrowers from the European Central Bank.
- AFP/fa
According to Zoroastrian beliefs, the best way to dispose of a body is to let it remain in the open at the Tower of Silence and be consumed by scavenging birds. With the vulture population dwindling in Vadodara, many in this community are preferring cremation as the final rite for their loved ones.
The first woman photo-journalist of the country, Homai Vyarawalla, too had left unambiguous instructions with her lawyer about her desire to be cremated. The Modi family, which owns the popular confectionaries store and restaurant in the city, had cremated their matriarch, Roshan Modi, after she wished for the same, last year. The oldest cremation that the community members recall is that of Dr Rustom Cama, father of Boman Cama, who now heads the Vadodara Parsi panchayat, in the 1980s.
It is individual choice. The Parsi panchayat has never formally discussed the topic. The families are free to take a decision, said Jal Patel, the immediate past president of the panchayat. Some families have opted for cremation in the past, although the majority still prefer the Tower of Silence, he added.
The community welcomes this liberal approach. Everyone realizes that the decision to cremate does not mean moving away from our tradition, itas a very practical solution to a raging problem, explained Modi.
An unusual high-tech oil-drilling rig that's been at work off the coast of Cuba departed last week, headed for either Africa or Brazil. With it went the island nation's best hope, at least in the short term, for reaping a share of the energy treasure beneath the sea that separates it from its longtime ideological foe.
For many Floridians, especially in the Cuban-American community, it was welcome news this month that Cuba had drilled its third unsuccessful well this year and was suspending deepwater oil exploration. (Related Pictures: "Four Offshore Drilling Frontiers") While some feared an oil spill in the Straits of Florida, some 70 miles (113 kilometers) from the U.S. coast, others were concerned that drilling success would extend the reviled reign of the Castros, long-time dictator Fidel and his brother and hand-picked successor, Raúl.
"The regime's latest efforts to bolster their tyrannical rule through oil revenues was unsuccessful," said U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a written statement.
But Cuba's disappointing foray into deepwater doesn't end its quest for energy. The nation produces domestically only about half the oil it consumes. As with every aspect of its economy, its choices for making up the shortfall are sorely limited by the 50-year-old United States trade embargo.
At what could be a time of transition for Cuba, experts agree that the failure of deepwater exploration increases the Castro regime's dependence on the leftist government of Venezuela, which has been meeting fully half of Cuba's oil needs with steeply subsidized fuel. (Related: "Cuba's New Now") And it means Cuba will continue to seek out a wellspring of energy independence without U.S. technology, greatly increasing both the challenges, and the risks.
Rigged for the Job
There's perhaps no better symbol of the complexity of Cuba's energy chase than the Scarabeo 9, the $750 million rig that spent much of this year plumbing the depths of the Straits of Florida and Gulf of Mexico. It is the only deepwater platform in the world that can drill in Cuban waters without running afoul of U.S. sanctions. It was no easy feat to outfit the rig with fewer than 10 percent U.S. parts, given the dominance of U.S. technology in the ultra-deepwater industry. By some reports, only the Scarabeo 9's blowout preventer was made in the United States.
Owned by the Italian firm Saipem, built in China, and outfitted in Singapore, Scarabeo 9 was shipped to Cuba's coast at great cost. "They had to drag a rig from the other side of the world," said Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a University of Nebraska professor and expert on Cuba's oil industry. "It made the wells incredibly expensive to drill."
Leasing the semisubmersible platform at an estimated cost of $500,000 a day, three separate companies from three separate nations took their turns at drilling for Cuba. In May, Spanish company Repsol sank a well that turned out to be nonviable. Over the summer, Malaysia's Petronas took its turn, with equally disappointing results. Last up was state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA); on November 2, Granma, the Cuban national Communist Party daily newspaper, reported that effort also was unsuccessful.
It's not unusual to hit dry holes in drilling, but the approach in offshore Cuba was shaped by uniquely political circumstances. Benjamin-Alvarado points out that some of the areas drilled did turn up oil. But rather than shift nearby to find productive—if not hugely lucrative—sites, each new company dragged the rig to an entirely different area off Cuba. It's as if the companies were only going for the "big home runs" to justify the cost of drilling, he said. "The embargo had a profound impact on Cuba's efforts to find oil."
Given its prospects, it's doubtful that Cuba will give up its hunt for oil. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the waters north and west of Cuba contain 4.6 billion barrels of oil. State-owned Cubapetroleo says undiscovered offshore reserves all around the island may be more than 20 billion barrels, which would be double the reserves of Mexico.
But last week, Scarabeo 9 headed away from Cuban shores for new deepwater prospects elsewhere. That leaves Cuba without a platform that can drill in the ultradeepwater that is thought to hold the bulk of its stores. "This rig is the only shovel they have to dig for it," said Jorge Piñon, a former president of Amoco Oil Latin America (now part of BP) and an expert on Cuba's energy sector who is now a research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin.
Many in the Cuban-American community, like Ros-Lehtinen—the daughter of an anti-Castro author and businessman, who emigrated from Cuba with her family as a child—hailed the development. She said it was important to keep up pressure on Cuba, noting that another foreign oil crew is heading for the island; Russian state-owned Zarubezhneft is expected to begin drilling this month in a shallow offshore field. She is sponsoring a bill that would further tighten the U.S. embargo to punish companies helping in Cuba's petroleum exploration. "An oil-rich Castro regime is not in our interests," she said.
Environmental, Political Risks
But an energy-poor Cuba also has its risks. One of the chief concerns has been over the danger of an accident as Cuba pursues its search for oil, so close to Florida's coastline, at times in the brisk currents of the straits, and without U.S. industry expertise on safety. The worries led to a remarkable series of meetings among environmentalists, Cuban officials, and even U.S government officials over several years. Conferences organized by groups like the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and its counterparts in Cuba have taken place in the Bahamas, Mexico City, and elsewhere. The meetings included other countries in the region to diminish political backlash, though observers say the primary goal was to bring together U.S. and Cuban officials.
EDF led a delegation last year to Cuba, where it has worked for more than a decade with Cuban scientists on shared environmental concerns. The visitors included former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator William Reilly, who co-chaired the national commission that investigated BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and spill of nearly 5 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. (Related Quiz: "How Much Do You Know About the Gulf Oil Spill?") They discussed Cuba's exploration plans and shared information on the risks.
"We've found world-class science in all our interactions with the Cubans," said Douglas Rader, EDF's chief oceans scientist. He said, however, that the embargo has left Cubans with insufficient resources and inexperience with high-tech gear.
Although the United States and Cuba have no formal diplomatic relations, sources say government officials have made low-profile efforts to prepare for a potential problem. But the two nations still lack an agreement on how to manage response to a drilling disaster, said Robert Muse, a Washington attorney and expert on licensing under the embargo. That lessens the chance of a coordinated response of the sort that was crucial to containing damage from the Deepwater Horizon spill, he said.
"There's a need to get over yesterday's politics," said Rader. "It's time to make sure we're all in a position to respond to the next event, wherever it is."
In addition to the environmental risks of Cuba going it alone, there are the political risks. Piñon, at the University of Texas, said success in deepwater could have helped Cuba spring free of Venezuela's influence as the time nears for the Castro brothers to give up power. Raúl Castro, who took over in 2008 for ailing brother Fidel, now 86, is himself 81 years old. At a potentially crucial time of transition, the influence of Venezuela's outspoken leftist president Hugo Chávez could thwart moves by Cuba away from its state-dominated economy or toward warmer relations with the United States, said Piñon.
Chávez's reelection to a six-year term last month keeps the Venezuelan oil flowing to Cuba for the foreseeable future. But it was clear in Havana that the nation's energy lifeline hung for a time on the outcome of this year's Venezuelan election. (Chávez's opponent, Henrique Capriles Radonski, complained the deal with Cuba was sapping Venezuela's economy, sending oil worth more than $4 billion a year to the island, while Venezuela was receiving only $800 million per year in medical and social services in return.)
So Cuba is determined to continue exploring. Its latest partner, Russia's Zarubezhneft, is expected to begin drilling this month in perhaps 1,000 feet of water, about 200 miles east of Havana. Piñon said the shallow water holds less promise for a major find. But that doesn't mean Cuba will give up trying.
"This is a book with many chapters," Piñon said. "And we're just done with the first chapter." (Related: "U.S. to Overtake Saudi Arabia, Russia As Top Energy Producer")
This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.
New York detectives are searching for four potential witnesses to the killing of a Brooklyn shop owner, the latest in a trio of murders in which all three victims were of Middle Eastern descent and all appear to have been shot by the same .22 caliber gun.
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said today that the department will ask the FBI for a profiler to help identify who might have killed these three people.
Rahmatollah Vahidipour, an Iranian Jew, was killed inside the She She boutique in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn on Friday night, sustaining three gunshot wounds to the head and torso. The 78-year-old's body was dragged to the back of the store and covered with merchandise, WABC reported.
Police said that shell casings from the gun match the casings found at two other murder this summer.
In addition, the killings were within a five mile radius of each other, each occurred at a small shop that lacked security cameras and each victim was over 50, police said. It was also not clear whether the victims were robbed.
Vahidipour's body was discovered in his boutique at 7:11 p.m. The four people caught on video in the vicinity of the area between 6 p.m. and 6: 52 p.m. on Friday are not considered suspects in the crime, police said.
"Detectives want to question them about what they may have observed because of the time of day and their proximity to the homicide scene," Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said in a statement.
Police said that two of the potential witnesses, a man and a woman, were captured on video Friday evening running one after the other south on Flatbush Avenue, a half block south of the crime scene. The woman can be seen taking off her green jacket, which police said was later recovered in a nearby garbage can.
Police indicated they have a strong interest in talking to a white male seen carrying a duffle bag in one of several photos and a video they released.
Ballistic tests performed by the NYPD show that the gun used in Friday's homicide was also used in two recent south Brooklyn shooting deaths this summer.
Clothing store owner Mohamed Gebeli, an Egyptian Muslim, was killed inside Valentino Fashion in Bay Ridge on July 6. Gebeli was shot in the neck and was found with several pieces of clothing on top of him. Police said $383 in receipts was missing, but $1,500 was found inside a cabinet.
On Aug. 2, Isaac Kadare, a Jew who was of Egyptian descent, was found dead at the Amazing 99 Cents Deal store that he owned in Bensonhurst. Kadare had been shot in the temple and had three stab wounds to the neck. His face was covered with an aluminum tray and bleach had been splashed on his pants. It wasn't clear if anything had been taken from Kadare's store.
Police said they are not sure if the homicides were racially motivated.
State Sen. Eric Adams, a former New York City police officer, suggested Sunday that the string of homicides could be the work of a serial killer.
"We don't want the city to be engulfed in fear based on the actions of a potential serial killer who appears to be targeting men of Middle Eastern descent," Adams said. "This person must be apprehended."
Police said that no evidence has yet been recovered to indicate bias crime in Vahidipour's murder. Still, personnel from the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force were added Sunday to a group of detectives investigating the three homicides "for their expertise."
Former FBI agent and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett said the common thread between the three homicides could be that as shop owners working alone, they were all vulnerable.
"The question clearly is motive. It's going to be robbery, hate, or revenge," Garrett said. "If the motive is robbery, a lot of violent robbers shoot the people they rob. If this is a hate crime, he went in there to do what he did, to kill the owner and have enough time to get away. If that's the case, I think it's reasonable to think all three of these guys were profiled previously."
Rewards of $22,000 in each of the homicides are being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the crimes.
Rick Nolan defeated Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) this month by nine points, and with the full support of his wife, Mary, the 68-year-old Democrat is returning to Washington after being gone for 32 years.
“I think she was tired of me getting up in the morning at 5 and watching ‘Morning Joe’ and getting upset,” Nolan said. “She wanted me to go talk about it to somebody else. She said, ‘It’s your passion, Rick, go get ’em.’ ”
SYDNEY: Australian football clubs are queuing up to bring former England captain David Beckham to the country's A-League in January, despite the 37-year-old denying a deal is in the offing.
Perth Glory has "put its hat in the ring" and is readying a bid, wealthy owner Tony Sage told Monday's The Australian.
"Signing David Beckham would be up there... the number one thing other than my decision to buy Glory," said mining magnate Sage.
"It's a huge commitment, but something I would love to pull off."
Beckham's management team on Friday played down talk of any move Down Under after Football Federation Australia said that the star player wanted to join an A-League club.
But FFA chief executive David Gallop insisted a deal could still be struck for a 10-match guest stint by the LA Galaxy midfielder.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Melbourne Heart and Adelaide United were also in the race along with an unnamed side that has already made a secret bid.
"Beckham would be a massive thing for tourism," said United chairman Greg Griffin.
"We've just put forward our position to the people we understand are representing him and we would like to take it further," Griffith told the Herald.
The FFA pointed out that earlier this year Italian World Cup winner Alessandro Del Piero's management tried to fight off speculation before he finally joined Sydney FC.
Beckham remains one of the biggest names in football and his presence in the A-League alongside Del Piero and ex-England striker Emile Heskey would help ratchet up the competition's image.
In another coup, the federation was expected to unveil a A$160 million four-year television deal later Monday, doubling previous broadcast rights.
- AFP/fa
Two years ago, the government decided on 80:20 ratio for cadre and deputation recruitment in the country's premier anti-drug agency. Sources, however, said the rule was not thought out well and in its present form, will deprive a majority of officers of any seniority for close to two decades leading to serious dip in motivation.
The agency has now asked the government to change the ratio to 50:50 so that prolonged or complete deprivation of seniority is avoided.
According to sources, till two years ago, the NCB used to have all officers — from intelligence officers to DG — on deputation. These were mostly drawn from police forces or revenue services for a period of three years. However, to ensure better functioning of the agency so that officers develop long-time information networks and thus be more effective, government ruled that the NCB would have 80% of its strength through direct recruitment and only 20% of officers would come from outside on deputation.
Though well-meaning, the plan is beset with several hurdles and is turning out to be counter-productive, sources said. There are 300 posts for intelligence officers. According to the rule, 240 of these come from direct recruitment. However, there are only 50 posts at the senior level (of superintendents and assistant directors) that these men can be promoted to, in future.
"Given this scenario, not only will it take an inordinately long time for an intelligence officer to reach the level of superintendent, there will be several who will perhaps retire without being promoted. Nobody who knows he is perhaps never going to be promoted will work with full motivation," said a senior NCB official.
Sources said the move is already having an impact on the motivation of men as the agency has not been able to fulfill its objectives of busting drug cartels. "The problem is the agency is stopping at seizures from couriers. There is little uncovering of nationwide rackets. So there are statistics to show good work but little impact on the illicit drug business. The agency is not able to reach either the drug pusher, nor the receiver," said an official from the security establishment.
The tide may be turning for the rare subspecies of giant tortoise thought to have gone extinct when its last known member, the beloved Lonesome George, died in June.
A new study by Yale University researchers reveals that DNA from George's ancestors lives on—and that more of his kind may still be alive in a remote area of Ecuador's Galápagos Islands.
This isn't the first time Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni has been revived: The massive reptiles were last seen in 1906 and considered extinct until the 1972 discovery of Lonesome George, then around 60 years old, on Pinta Island. The population had been wiped out by human settlers, who overharvested the tortoises for meat and introduced goats and pigs that destroyed the tortoises' habitat and much of the island's vegetation.
Now, in an area known as Volcano Wolf—on the secluded northern tip of Isabela, another Galápagos island—the researchers have identified 17 hybrid descendants of C.n. abingdoni within a population of 1,667 tortoises.
Genetic testing identified three males, nine females, and five juveniles (under the age of 20) with DNA from C.n. abingdoni. The presence of juveniles suggests that purebred specimens may exist on the island too, the researchers said.
"Even the parents of some of the older individuals may still be alive today, given that tortoises live for so long and that we detected high levels of ancestry in a few of these hybrids," Yale evolutionary biologist Danielle Edwards said.
(See pictures of Galápagos animals.)
Galápagos Castaways
How did Lonesome George's relatives end up some 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Pinta Island? Edwards said ocean currents, which would have carried the tortoises to other areas, had nothing to do with it. Instead, she thinks humans likely transported the animals.
Crews on 19th-century whaling and naval vessels hunted accessible islands like Pinta for oil and meat, carrying live tortoises back to their ships.
Tortoises can survive up to 12 months without food or water because of their slow metabolisms, making the creatures a useful source of meat to stave off scurvy on long sea voyages. But during naval conflicts, the giant tortoises—which weighed between 200 and 600 pounds (90 and 270 kilograms) each—were often thrown overboard to lighten the ship's load.
That could also explain why one of the Volcano Wolf tortoises contains DNA from the tortoise species Chelonoidis elephantopus, which is native to another island, as a previous study revealed. That species is also extinct in its native habitat, Floreana Island.
(Related: "No Lovin' for Lonesome George.")
Life After Extinction?
Giant tortoises are essential to the Galápagos Island ecosystem, Edwards said. They scatter soil and seeds, and their eating habits help maintain the population balance of woody vegetation and cacti. Now, scientists have another chance to save C.n. abingdoni and C. elephantopus.
With a grant from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, which also helped fund the current study, the researchers plan to return to Volcano Wolf's rugged countryside to collect hybrid tortoises—and purebreds, if the team can find them—and begin a captive-breeding program. (National Geographic News is part of the Society.)
If all goes well, both C.n. abingdoni and C. elephantopus may someday be restored to their wild homes in the Galápagos. (Learn more about the effort to revive the Floreana Galápagos tortoises.)
"The word 'extinction' signifies the point of no return," senior research scientist Adalgisa Caccone wrote in the team's grant proposal. "Yet new technology can sometimes provide hope in challenging the irrevocable nature of this concept."
More: "Galápagos Expedition Journal: Face to Face With Giant Tortoises" >>
The new Lonesome George study was published by the journal Biological Conservation.
An Israeli missile ripped through a two-story home in a residential area of Gaza City on Sunday, killing at least 11 civilians, including four young children and an 81-year-old woman, in the single deadliest attack of Israel's offensive against Islamic militants.
The bloodshed was likely to raise pressure on Israel to end the fighting, even as it pledged to intensify the offensive by striking the homes of wanted militants. High numbers of civilian casualties in an offensive four years ago led to fierce criticism and condemnation of Israel.
In all, 73 Palestinians, including 37 civilians, have been killed in the five-day onslaught. Three Israeli civilians have also died from Palestinian rocket fire.
President Barack Obama said he was in touch with players across the region in hopes of halting the fighting, while also warning of the risks of Israel expanding its air assault into a ground war.
"We're going to have to see what kind of progress we can make in the next 24, 36, 48 hours," Obama said during a visit in Thailand.
On the ground, there were no signs of any letup in the fighting as Israel announced it was widening the offensive to target the military commanders of the ruling Hamas group.
The Israeli military carried out dozens of airstrikes throughout the day, and naval forces bombarded targets along Gaza's Mediterranean coast. Many of the attacks focused on homes where militant leaders or weapons were believed to be hidden.
Palestinian militants continued to barrage Israel with rockets, firing more than 100 on Sunday, and setting off air raid sirens across the southern part of the country. Some 40 rockets were intercepted by Israel's U.S.-financed "Iron Dome" rocket-defense system, including two that targeted the metropolis of Tel Aviv. At least 10 Israelis were wounded by shrapnel.
Israel's decision to step up its attacks in Gaza marked a new and risky phase of the operation, given the likelihood of civilian casualties in the densely populated territory of 1.6 million Palestinians. Israel launched the offensive Wednesday in what it said was an effort to end months of intensifying rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
In the day's deadliest violence, the Israeli navy fired at a home where it said a top wanted militant was hiding. The missile struck the home of the Daloo family in Gaza City, reducing the structure to rubble.
Frantic rescuers, bolstered by bulldozers, pulled the limp bodies of children from the ruins of the house, including a toddler and a 5-year-old, as survivors and bystanders screamed in grief. Later, the bodies of the children were laid out in the morgue of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital.
Among the 11 dead were four small children and five women, including an 81-year-old, Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.
More than a dozen homes of Hamas commanders or families linked to Hamas were struck on Sunday. Though most were empty — their inhabitants having fled to shelter — at least three had families in them. Al-Kidra said 20 of 27 people killed Sunday were civilians, mostly women and children.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said that "the Israeli people will pay the price" for the killing of civilians.
Israel sought to place the blame on militants, saying they were intentionally operating in places inhabited by civilians. The military has released videos and images of what it says are militants firing rockets from mosques, schools and public buildings.
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