Maui stands as a beacon of hope: Moving closer to beating Monsanto over new GMO Moratorium

An attorney for the SHAKA Movement in Hawaii that has been trying to uphold a democratically voted moratorium on GMOs on the island of Maui reports that residents and activists have won - an intervention in a federal lawsuit that was brought on by Monsanto and Dow trying to push their genetically modified agenda on islanders will not go through. In other words, "proponents of the recently passed GMO Initiative on Maui have been given the green light to intervene in a federal lawsuit challenging the measure."

"Honolulu attorney Michael C. Carroll, who is representing the authors of the Maui GMO initiative tells Maui Now that the group won standing on Monday to intervene in the lawsuit filed by Monsanto which seeks to delay any enforcement of the measure and ultimately to have it declared unenforceable."

The federal lawsuit filed last month against Maui County by Monsanto Co. and a unit of Dow Chemical Co. thankfully flew over judge, Barry Kurren, who has deep ties with Monsanto, Dow, and Big Ag. The judge has recently overturned a democratically voted initiative to limit GMOs on the Big Island of Hawaii. Without an up-swelling of public pressure, he could have done the same in Maui.

Kurren previously ruled that laws instigated by Kauai and Hawaii banning GMOs were not applicable because the state, not the counties, had jurisdiction over the issue. Dow and Monsanto were hoping that Kurren would rule similarly on the recent ban on GMOs passed in Maui.

Likely due to pressure concerning his questionable allegiances, Kurren reassigned the Maui case to Chief Judge Susan Oki Mollway. It is also due to the fact that both the plaintiffs and defendants had agreed earlier to allow a magistrate judge to try the case. Once the SHAKA Movement found out Kurren's ties to biotech, they withdrew their approval for Kurren to preside over the case.

Maui voters clearly voted to ban GMOs on their November 4th ballots. Only a vote by the Maui County Council can lift the ban.

Last month, Judge Kurren ruled that Maui County couldn't implement the law until he considered the lawsuit put forth by Dow and Monsanto.

Maui stands as a beacon of hope for other towns throughout the US who are interested in banning GMOs. We applaud you, SHAKA Movement!

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First mountain lion seen in Kentucky since before the Civil War shot by wildlife officer

© US Fish and Wildlife Service.

A Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife officer killed a mountain lion on a Bourbon County farm on Monday, marking the first confirmed sighting of a mountain lion in Kentucky since before the Civil War, said Mark Marraccini, a spokesman for the agency.

Marraccini said a farmer spotted the cat in a tree and alerted the department. When the officer responded, he found the animal had been trapped in different tree by a barking dog and decided it was best to "dispatch it."

Mountain lions were once native to Kentucky but they were killed off here more than a century ago, Marraccini said.

Mountain lions are the largest cats found in North America and can measure up to eight feet from nose to tail and weigh up to 180 pounds. Also known as cougars, pumas, panthers and catamounts, the cats are considered top-line predators because no other species feed on them.

Marraccini said the wildlife officer shot the cat because it was about 5:30 p.m. and getting dark and he feared that it would slip away in darkness and threaten people in the nearby city of Paris.

"If that cat had left that tree, it would have disappeared into the brush and it was a fairly populated area," said Marraccini, who said it would have taken several hours and dark before a state veterinarian could retrieve the tranquilizer from her safe and get it to the scene had officials taken that route.

"It sounds good but it's pretty impractical," said Marraccini, who said the officer who shot the cat made the right call.

"That's the way the officers deemed to handle it and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be handled that way," he said.

Marraccini said a state veterinarian will conduct a necropsy on the cat Tuesday to determine if it is a wild cat or a former pet that was either released or escaped.

According to the Cougar Network, the cat is mostly confined to the western United States but is advancing east. For years, the Mississippi River has been thought to be a barrier to the mountain lion's eastern expansion. But its clear they have been getting close to Kentucky.

They have colonized in South Dakota, Nebraska and Missouri, said Amy Rodrigues, a staff biologist for the Mountain Lion Foundation, and there have been sightings in recent years in Indiana and even downtown Chicago.

Rodrigues said that mountain lions each need more than 100 square miles to survive and many of the animals being killed as they expand east are young males under the age of two that have been kicked out by their mothers. They often travel east looking for deer, water and female cougars.

But Rodrigues said states that kill the animals when they enter are wrong for doing it and that the animals shouldn't cause fear. "If you're a deer, they're a little dangerous. If you're a human, not so much," she said. "Attacks on people are not that common. There have only been 22 deaths in the last 120 years."

She said people are at greater risk of dying from bee stings and lightning strikes than they are from cougar attacks.

They get a bad rap because "they are large animals with sharp teeth," Rodrigues said.

She added the presence of mountain lions in an ecosystem adds to biological diversity, which she said helps the environment recover from natural disaster and diseases that affect the fauna in a region.

Mark Dowling, a director of the Cougar Network, which advocates for the use of science to understand the animals, said the population was being pushed further and further west until the 1960s when a number of western and midwestern states began to classify them as game animals rather than vermin, and limiting people's right to kill them.

Since then, he said, the cats have been slowly reclaiming their old turf.

Marraccini said there is no official protocol about how to handle more mountain lions if they are found in Kentucky but he doubts that they will be allowed to colonize here like they have in many western states.

"Every one of them is handled on its own," said Marraccini.

Marraccini said that people and legislators probably would be opposed to allowing the cats to stay in the state. "When you have a population essentially that has had generations and generations and generations that have not had top-line predators, you think about it. You going to let your kids wait for the school bus in the dark? ..."

"From a wildlife diversity perspective, it would be a neat thing but from a social aspect, probably not," he said.

Dowling wouldn't take a position on whether the cat should have been killed but said that most states that have had the cats moving through them have just left the cats alone. In fact, he said he can't think of a state wildlife agency that shoots them on sight but he noted that South Dakota will shoot them when they enter a city.

But he said human attacks are few and far between, even in California where there are thousands of the cats, some of them living within large cities like Los Angeles.

"It's very, very rare for them to show any aggression toward humans," he said. "They, in fact, have a fear of people."

Animals like the mountain lion once near extinction or limited in their range are rebounding across the country. The first gray wolf confirmed in Kentucky in generations was shot by a hunter a year and a half ago near Munfordville.

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Supertyphoon shifted 177-ton boulder 150 feet

Supertyphoon Haiyan set a world record when it touched down in the Philippines by moving a 177-ton boulder a distance of about 150 feet.

Max Engel, a geoscientist at the University of Cologne in Germany, and colleagues from his college and the University of the Philippines' Marine Science Institute said they looked at satellite photos from before and after the typhoon's landfall in the Philippines in November 2013 and determined the boulder, weighing more than 25 adult African elephants, had been moved about 150 feet along a beach by the Haiyan's tsunami-like waves.

The researchers, who presented their paper, "" Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco, said the boulder is the largest on record to be shifted by a storm.

Engel and his colleagues said their findings suggest other boulder movements associated with tsunamis may have been caused by superstorms.

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Turkey seeks warrant for CIA asset Fethullah Gulen

© AFP Photo / Zaman Daily

Fethullah Gulen.

A prosecutor has asked a Turkish court to issue an arrest warrant for long-time Erdogan rival Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric, Reuters cited a government official as saying.

However, no court decision has yet been reached.

An earlier report by TRT Haber television, a Turkish state-run channel, stated that the court had already issued the warrant. The broadcaster removed the story from its website without explanation.

This comes in the wake of the last week's media raids, during which over 20 suspected Gulen supporters, including chief editors and media executives, were detained.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accusing the self-exiled preacher of plotting to overthrow the state.

Relations soured between the two after an anti-graft probe launched in 2013, which Erdogan suspects was an attempt by Gulen and his followers to destabilize the government.

Gulen, who heads Hizmet, an influential spiritual and social movement, has denied the allegations. Last week, Erdogan vowed to crush the "evil forces" associated with the movement and its leader.

"We are not just faced with a simple network, but one which is a pawn of evil forces at home and abroad," the president declared last Friday.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu indicated last week that Ankara may ask Interpol for a "red notice" - a document necessary for the extradition and arrest of a suspect located abroad - for Gulen.

"The judiciary will do whatever is necessary in the investigation of Fethullah Gülen. Whether it is a red notice or something else. He will not be treated differently than any other Turkish citizen," Davutoglu said during a press conference, reported.

Earlier this year, Erdogan announced that he would be seeking Gulen's extradition. However, according to international law, an arrest warrant and evidence against the cleric first had to be produced.

Gulen has repeatedly been accused of attempting to form a "parallel state." He was tried and found guilty in 2000, before being acquitted of all charges in 2008.

Before relocating to the US in 1999, the popular cleric was one of Erdogan's top allies. Their relationship began to deteriorate as Erdogan grew paranoid about Gulen's growing influence, facilitated by schools, education centers, and charity organizations in over 160 countries.

Critics have accused Erdogan of building an authoritarian regime and bending the constitution to concentrate an increasing amount of power in the presidency.

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Carnivore Comeback: Bear and wolf populations are thriving in Europe

© Kjell Isaksen

A female brown bear (Ursus arctos) with three yearlings in Gutulia National Park in Hedmark, South East Norway.

Despite having half the land area of the contiguous United States and double the population density, Europe is home to twice as many wolves as the U.S.

A new study finds that Europe's other large carnivores are experiencing a resurgence in their numbers, too - and mostly in nonprotected areas where the animals coexist alongside humans. The success is owed to cross-border cooperation, strong regulations and a public attitude that brings wildlife into the fold with human society, rather than banishing it to the wilderness, according to study leader Guillaume Chapron, a professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences' Grimsö Wildlife Research Station.

In Europe, "we don't have unspoiled, untouched areas," Chapron told Live Science. "But what is interesting is, that does not mean we do not have carnivores. Au contraire; we have many carnivores."

Europe's carnivores bounce back

Chapron and his colleagues pulled together data from all over Europe - excluding Russia, Ukraine and Belarus - on the population numbers of brown bears (), Eurasian lynx (), wolverines () and gray wolves (). Their results, published today (Dec. 18) in the journal , reveal that large carnivores in Europe are doing very well.

With the exception of Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, every European country in the study has a permanent and reproducing population of at least one of the four large carnivores, the researchers reported. The continent is home to 17,000 brown bears in 10 populations spread over 22 countries. There are 9,000 lynx in 11 populations in 23 countries. Wolves are thriving, with more than 12,000 individuals found in 10 populations in 28 countries.

Wolverines can live only in the cold climates of Scandinavia, so Norway, Sweden and Finland are the only countries in the study that host all four of Europe's major large carnivore species. There are two populations of wolverines in Europe, with an estimated total of 1,250 individuals.

Some small populations of carnivores are in decline across Europe, the researchers noted, but none of the large to medium populations are suffering.

Attitudes toward the wild

What makes this success so surprising is that these wolves, bears, lynx and wolverines are surviving largely outside of protected areas.

"Maybe the wolf is your black bear," Chapron said, explaining European attitudes toward the animal. In the United States, he said, wolves are seen as animals that can't coexist with humans, whereas black bears are generally tolerated in residential areas, with locals making accommodations such as bear-proof trash cans.

Chapron acknowledged that there are clashes in Europe between carnivores and people, particularly around livestock farming. Traditional strategies - such as employing livestock-guarding dogs or shepherds, or corralling livestock in pens at night - help ease carnivore attacks on valuable livestock, and compensating farmers for losses can also help mitigate problems, he said.

"There is a need to keep the conflict at a low intensity," Chapron said.

Chapron also credited the Habitats Directive, a set of conservation regulations that protects species and habitat types across national borders, for keeping carnivores from decline and extinction.

"We have found a recipe that works," he said.

Whether a similar recipe could work in the United States depends on public attitudes. However, the European model clearly shows that large carnivores can coexist with people in places Americans tend to find unimaginable, Chapron said. In 2011, a male gray wolf traveled from Oregon to California, becoming the first wolf in the state since 1924. (He later trotted back across the border to Oregon, and fathered pups.)

The appearance of the wolf triggered debate over how to manage the return of wolves in California. That is a matter of public policy, but Chapron pointed out that there is a fast-growing wolf population in Germany and Poland, where roads are as dense as anywhere in the world.

"If people from California decide to have wolves," he said, "then the European model clearly shows that you can have plenty of wolves in California."

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Crows join humans, apes and monkeys in exhibiting advanced rational thinking

© Lomonosov Moscow University.

Study finds crows spontaneously solve higher-order relational-matching tasks.

But a newly published study finds crows also have the brain power to solve higher-order, relational-matching tasks, and they can do so spontaneously. That means crows join humans, apes and monkeys in exhibiting advanced relational thinking, according to the research.

Russian researcher Anna Smirnova studies a crow making the correct selection during a relational matching trial.

"What the crows have done is a phenomenal feat," says Ed Wasserman, a psychology professor at the University of Iowa and corresponding author of the study. "That's the marvel of the results. It's been done before with apes and monkeys, but now we're dealing with a bird; but not just any bird, a bird with a brain as special to birds as the brain of an apes is special to mammals."

"Crows Spontaneously Exhibit Analogical Reasoning," which was published December 18 in , was written by Wasserman and Anna Smirnova, Zoya Zorina and Tanya Obozova, researchers with the Department of Biology at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Moscow, Russia, where the study was conducted.

Wasserman said the Russian researchers have studied bird species for decades and that a main theme of their work is cognition. He credits his counterparts with a thoughtful and well-planned study.

"This was a very artful experiment," Wasserman says. "I was just bowled over by how innovative it was."

The study involved two hooded crows that were at least 2 years old. First, the birds were trained and tested to identify items by color, shape and number of single samples.

Here is how it worked: the birds were placed into a wire mesh cage into which a plastic tray containing three small cups was occasionally inserted. The sample cup in the middle was covered with a small card on which was pictured a color, shape or number of items. The other two cups were also covered with cards -- one that matched the sample and one that did not. During this initial training period, the cup with the matching card contained two mealworms; the crows were rewarded with these food items when they chose the matching card, but they received no food when they chose the other card.

Once the crows has been trained on identity matching-to-sample, the researchers moved to the second phase of the experiment. This time, the birds were assessed with relational matching pairs of items.

These relational matching trials were arranged in such a way that neither test pairs precisely matched the sample pair, thereby eliminating control by physical identity. For example, the crows might have to choose two same-sized circles rather than two different-sized circles when the sample card displayed two same-sized squares.

What surprised the researchers was not only that the crows could correctly perform the relational matches, but that they did so spontaneously--without explicit training.

"That is the crux of the discovery," Wasserman says. "Honestly, if it was only by brute force that the crows showed this learning, then it would have been an impressive result. But this feat was spontaneous."

Still the researchers acknowledge that the crows' relational matching behavior did not come without some background knowledge.

"Indeed, we believe that their earlier IMTS (identity matching-to-sample) training is likely to have enabled them to grasp a broadly applicable concept of sameness that could apply to novel two-item samples and test stimuli involving only relational sameness," the researchers wrote. "Just how that remarkable transfer is accomplished represents an intriguing matter for future study."

Anthony Wright, neurobiology and anatomy professor at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School, says the discovery ranks on par with demonstrations of tool use by some birds, including crows.

"Analogical reasoning, matching relations to relations, has been considered to be among the more so-called 'higher order' abstract reasoning processes," he says. "For decades such reasoning has been thought to be limited to humans and some great apes. The apparent spontaneity of this finding makes it all the more remarkable."

Joel Fagot, director of research at the University of Aix-Marseille in France, agrees the results shatter the notion that "sophisticated forms of cognition can only be found in our 'smart' human species. Accumulated evidence suggests that animals can do more than expected."

Wasserman concedes there will be skeptics and hopes the experiment will be repeated with more crows as well as other species. He suspects researchers will have more such surprises in store for science.

"We have always sold animals short," he says. "That human arrogance still permeates contemporary cognitive science."

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Reindeer populations are on the decline worldwide

Reindeer populations are in trouble around the world, and in China, the iconic animals are on the decline largely because of inbreeding, according to new research.

Some folklorists say Christmas tales of flying reindeer may have originated as a hallucination, with one theory claiming the inspiration for Santa Claus came from shamans who would give out bags of hallucinatory mushrooms in late December in the Siberian and Arctic regions. But, nonflying reindeer are very real and an important part of northern ecosystems.

Reindeer populations currently live in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Alaska, Russia, Mongolia and China, and populations across the board are declining. In the new study, researchers from Renmin University in Beijing focused on the reindeer population in China, which has declined about 28 percent since the 1970s.

Reindeer first migrated to China from Siberia about 2,000 years ago along with the Ewenki tribe, according to the researchers. The Ewenki people are reindeer herders, and they have a similar relationship with reindeer as Native Americans had with buffalo. The Ewenki do not fully domesticate the reindeer, but provide the herd with basics like salt, and use the animals for their meat, hides and milk.

The researchers determined how many reindeer were left in China (about 770) by interviewing the Ewenki herders and looking through old population records. The Ewenki often tie colored ribbons around the reindeer's necks to help differentiate the animals.

The researchers pointed to several reasons reindeer populations are decreasing, but the number one cause they found was inbreeding. Reindeer are split up into small, shrinking groups and have very few mating options. Without more genetic variation, the populations will eventually collapse, the researchers said. Poaching is also a problem, since reindeer antlers can fetch a pretty price. Both male and female reindeer have antlers, so snares set up to catch reindeer do not target a specific sex.

Further, more and more of the reindeer's historic caretakers are opting for different careers. Ewenki herders are usually young men, and many have trouble adjusting to the isolation of the forest-covered mountains where the animals live. As of 2012, there were only 33 reindeer herders left in China. The lack of herders means that reindeer that get lost from the group usually stay lost, and those caught in poaching traps are generally not rescued.

Moving the herds closer to civilization may make more Ewenki people willing to sign up as herders, but when moved closer to cities, reindeer are often hit by cars, kept as pets or slaughtered for tourists.

The Chinese government is starting to address the problem. In 2012, they brought in 29 reindeer to participate in an artificial insemination program designed to work against inbreeding and reverse the loss of genetic variation.

The researchers suggest the Chinese government should also set up natural reserves or parks to preserve the species. In addition, the scientists are urging world leaders to pay more attention to the Association of World Reindeer Herders, which spans several northern countries and represents more than 20 different ethnic groups.

Reindeer are currently listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's threatened species list under the "least concern" category. But the researchers say this classification, which is based on a 2008 survey of the population, needs updating.

Strengthening the declining population could also boost the health of ecosystems and enhance local economies, the researchers said.

The findings were published in the December issue of the

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