Elephants send text messages to rangers

OL PEJETA, Kenya: The text message from the elephant flashed across Richard Lesowapir's screen: Kimani was heading for neighboring farms.

The huge bull elephant had a long history of raiding villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. But this time a mobile phone card inserted in his collar sent rangers a text message.

Lesowapir, an armed guard and a driver arrived in a jeep bristling with spotlights to frighten Kimani back into the Ol Pejeta conservancy.

Kenya is the first country to try elephant texting as a way to protect both a growing human population and the wild animals that now have less room to roam. Elephants are ranked as "near threatened" in the Red List, an index of vulnerable species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The race to save Kimani began two years ago. The Kenya Wildlife Service had already reluctantly shot five elephants from the conservancy who refused to stop crop-raiding, and Kimani was the last of the regular raiders. The Save the Elephants group wanted to see if he could break the habit.

So they placed a mobile phone SIM card in Kimani's collar, then set up a virtual "geofence" using a global positioning system that mirrored the conservatory's boundaries. Whenever Kimani approaches the virtual fence, his collar texts rangers.

They have intercepted Kimani 15 times since the project began. Once almost a nightly raider, he last went near a farmer's field four months ago.

It's a huge relief to the small farmers who rely on their crops for food and cash for school fees. Basila Mwasu, a 31-year-old mother of two, lives a stone's throw from the conservancy fence. She and her neighbors used to drum through the night on pots and pans in front of flaming bonfires to try to frighten the elephants away.

Once an elephant stuck its trunk through a window into a room where her baby daughter was sleeping and the family had stored some corn. She beat it back with a burning stick. Another time, an elephant killed a neighbor who was defending his crop.

"We had to go into town to tell the game (wardens) to chase the elephants away or we're going to kill them all," Mwasu remembered.

Fishing can heal Icelands financial wounds

REYKJAVIK: The debt hurricane that tore across the Atlantic has devastated Iceland's banks, but down in Reykjavik port the fishermen say it is time for the country to turn back to the industry that kept the country alive for centuries.

Some even see fishing providing a lifesaving boost in exports as the country battles bankruptcy and licks the self-inflicted wounds caused by its once marauding banks.

Bjorn Gunnarsson, an agent for the Thorvaldur Jonsson Shipbroker company in Reykjavik, said he had seen no "negative impact" on the fishing industry from the financial crisis which has forced the government to nationalise the country's three biggest banks.

"Actually it will be probably quite the opposite because the exports are paid in euros and then when we convert into kronas, the fishermen will get a lot of money," Gunnarsson said.

Gunnarsson's company is just a stone's throw from the massive Reykjavik market where trawlers leave their fish to be sent out across the globe.

Gunnar Haraldsson, director of the Institute of Economic Studies at the University of Iceland, shares the optimistic outlook for an industry that is 90 percent geared towards exports and needs no state subsidies.

While's Iceland's population of about 320,000 consumes about 44 kilogrammes (98 pounds) of fish a year each, it is difficult to find cod in Reykjavik restaurants because so much is sent abroad.

Fishing and tourism are Iceland's best bet for the future, said Haraldsson.

With the collapse of the financial sector, that once weighed in at nine times the size of the country's gross domestic product, Icelandic media are already making calls for an increase in the country's fishing quota.

Holmjeirs Jonsson, a spokesman for the main association of small fishermen, said activity had not increased because there are strict rules on what fish and how much can be caught.

The catch has generally gone down in recent years. According to the most recent government statistics, in 2006, some 1.32 million tonnes of fish were caught by Icelandic fishermen, down from 1.98 tonnes in 2001 and 2.05 millions tonnes in 1996.

The psychological boost from the return to Iceland's traditional industry may be the most important effect for the workers in Reykjavik port who have seen their prestige overshadowed by the country's bankers and financiers in recent years.

In the 1930s, about a quarter of the working population was in the fishing industry. Now about three percent work as fishermen and another three percent are in the fish processing industry, according to government figures.

The finance industry overtook fishing as an employer in the early 2000s.

"Of course the financial crisis has affected everyone as individuals, but I think it will have a good influence because now Icelandic people realise it's not finance but industry which creates real value," said Gunnarsson, the shipping agent.

He said the fishing industry could provide jobs for people thrown up in the financial storm.

"Icelanders will probably see fishermen with less arrogance because they will offer jobs to thousands of people who lose their jobs," said Gunnarsson.

Hackers using fake YouTube pages to attack computers

SAN FRANCISCO ( 2008-10-10 10:34:14 ) :Computer security specialists warn that hackers are using fake YouTube pages to trick people into opening their machines to diabolical software.

A deceptive YouTube attack evolving as it spreads on the Internet is part of a growing trend of hackers to prowl popular online social networking communities in which people trustingly share web links and mini-programs.

"We are seeing tools like this not just for YouTube, but for MySpace, Facebook, America Online instant messaging ...," Trend Micro software threat research manager Jamz Yaneza told AFP on Thursday.

"All the various social networking sites have been hit with some page or another."

Hackers using the YouTube attack send people links to what are said to be must-see snippets at the Google-owned video-sharing website.

The links, instead, connect to convincingly realistic replicas of YouTube pages and tell people that a software update is needed to view a requested video.

Agreeing to the update lets the hacker install malicious software that could log keystrokes, steal data, or even take over people's computers, according to David Perry of Trend Micro.

Victims are not likely to catch onto the invasion since the hackers' software is able to stealthily link to the real YouTube website and play a promised video.

"This works as your typical drive-by download," Yaneza said of hackers planting malicious software in machines while rerouting online traffic.

"Essentially this can be used as a tool to serve up everything -- botnets, key loggers. Visually, you can't differentiate this from your regular YouTube page, it is done so well."

While some computer users might be able to spy something unusual about the online address, or "URL," of a bogus page, the safest thing to do is not trust links and instead go directly to YouTube for recommended videos.

"The reason they are using YouTube now is that during the elections we are looking at YouTube a lot," Perry said of hackers. "It is using social networking software in an anti-social way -- anti-social networking."

Hackers at a recent gathering of software savants in Las Vegas told AFP that social networks are prime places to take advantage of people's trust.

While people may be wary of links or programs emailed to them by strangers, they eagerly open such offerings from "friends" in social networking communities.

Online evil doers can easily create false social networking profiles and even impersonate people who may be well known or respected. The imposter can then build a network of trusting contacts in online communities.

Estimates are that as much as 40 percent of social networking profiles are fakes, according to figures cited by Cloudmark Inc., a company specializing in protecting Internet messaging systems from spam and hackers.

A poll conducted in the United States in June for Cloudmark concluded that 83 percent of the people using social networking accounts received unwanted "friend" invitations or messages steering them to dubious websites.

"Friends" are granted access to pictures, message boards, contact lists and other personal data stored in social networking profiles.

"Unfortunately, the very qualities that make social networks successful -- the wide variety of communication channels, the openness of the networks and the size of the audience -- are also powerful lures for spammers and hackers," Cloudmark says.

Be wary of taking strangers in as friends at social networking websites and only install trusted applications when customizing profile pages with mini-programs, sometimes called "widgets," according to Cloudmark.

Security specialists say to also limit the amount of personal information revealed to the Internet through profile pages.

"Understanding the risks and knowing how to protect yourself is critical to avoiding scams and other threats" said Cloudmark chief technical officer Jaime de Guerre.

"As spammers, hackers and other online criminals broaden their scope to social networks (people) must be especially vigilant and employ safe practices while engaging in online communities."




Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2008

Global warming sending tropical species uphill: study

WASHINGTON ( 2008-10-10 02:56:35 ) :Global warming is driving tropical plant and animal species to higher altitudes, potentially leaving lowland rainforest with nothing to take their place, ecologists argue in this week's issue of Science.

In a rare study on the impact of global warming in the tropics, University of Connecticut ecologist Robert Colwell and colleagues worked their way up the forested slope of a Costa Rican volcano to collect data on 2,000 types of plants and insects.

"Half of these species have such narrow altitudinal ranges that a 600-meter (2,000 feet) uphill shift would move these species into territory completely new to them," said a summary of their article released Thursday.

Many species would be unable to relocate at all, as most tropical mountainside forests have become "severely fragmented" by human activities.

Tropical lowland forests -- the warmest on Earth -- would meanwhile be challenged by the absence of replacement species. Flora and fauna unable to move uphill could also perish, unless it turns out they they can bear higher temperatures.

"Only further research can estimate the risk," the summary said, "but Colwell's report indicates that the impact of global climate change on some tropical rainforest and mountain species could be significant."

In another article, Science reports this week on a similar uphill trek by squirrels, mice and other small mammals in Yosemite National Park in California, one of the oldest wilderness parks in the United States.

Comparing a landmark 1918 study against fresh data about Yosemite's wildlife numbers, it found that small mammals have moved to higher altitudes, or reduced their ranges, in response to warmer temperatures.

"We didn't set out to study the effects of climate change," said Craig Moritz, a zoologist and integrative biology professor at the University of California at Berkeley who led the study.

"But the most dramatic finding in the Yosemite transect was the upward elevation shift of species," he said. "When we asked ourselves what changed, it hit us between the eyes -- the climate."

While such population movements have not altered Yosemite's biodiversity, Moritz's research team felt that rapid changes to the climate in less than a century could be a problem, a summary of the article said.

While half of the small mammal species at Yosemite have shifted their ranges, the other half has not. That means wildlife communities -- and the way in which species interact -- have changed, the summary explained.

If such change happens too fast, said James Patton, a member of the study, "elements of the (ecosystem) may start to collapse because a keystone element gets pulled out too quickly".

The study used as its starting point a detailed 1918 survey of Sierra Nevada wildlife by a Berkeley professor, when the snow-capped mountain range was under threat from gold mining and overgrazing.




Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2008

Sea levels could rise one metre by 2100: German institute

BERLIN ( 2008-10-10 22:38:56 ) :Sea levels could rise one metre (3.3 feet) by 2100, a leading German research institute said Thursday, much more than even the most pessimistic projection by the UN climate panel.

"We should prepare for a rise of sea levels of one metre this century," said Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), which advises the German government on environmental policy.

The rates that glaciers in the Himalayas and the Greenland ice-sheet have doubled or even tripled in recent years, due partly to the increased greenhouse gas emissions by Chinese power stations, Schellnhuber said.

In February 2007, in the first volume of a landmark report, the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted the oceans would rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres (seven and 23 inches) by 2100.




Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2008

Bollywood legend Amitabh hospitalised

MUMBAI: Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan, who turned 66 Saturday, was taken to hospital after reportedly suffering abdominal pain, an international news agency photographer at the scene said.

The actor, who has superstar status in India, was seen leaving his home in the northern Mumbai suburb of Juhu with his actor son, Abhishek, and daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai, in an ambulance.

Huge crowds that had gathered outside his house to wish him happy birthday anxiously watched him leave, television pictures showed.

Bachchan, wearing a brown-coloured woollen cap and blue ensemble, was spotted lying down inside the vehicle before being supported by Abhishek and another man as he walked into hospital, the photographer said.

A news channel said Bachchan had complained of stomach pain since Friday evening.

Unnamed sources quoted by the Press Trust of India described his admission to hospital as a "routine medical check-up". Hospital officials said x-rays were taken of his stomach and chest, they added.

Bachchan was later transferred to a private hospital where he spent three weeks, including one in intensive care, after undergoing bowel surgery in November 2005.

There was no immediate comment from the hospital when contacted by a French news agency.

With a career spanning four decades in India's movie industry, doctors have warned Bachchan to slow down.

He also suffered a severe stomach injury in 1982 while shooting the film "Coolie".

Bachchan, known as "The Big B" with a distinctive white beard, flowing grey hair and baritone voice, was last seen in his first English-language movie, "The Last Lear" and has been on a world tour with his family.

Indian newspapers marked Bachchan's birthday Saturday with a series of interviews. A MUMBAI-based newspaper commented that he had "never looked better. Or fitter" when they spoke to him two days ago on a film shoot.

"I enjoy being alive, I look for a new struggle, a new experience every day. An artiste has no right to say he is satisifed, that's being defeatist," he was quoted as saying.

Species under threat by climate change

ISLAMABAD: Around 35 percent of the world's birds, 52 percent of amphibians and 71 percent of warm-water reef-building corals are likely to be particularly susceptible to climate change, the first results of an IUCN study has revealed.

The report identified more than 90 biological traits which are believed to make species most susceptible to climate change. It found that 3,438 of the world's 9,856 bird species have at least one out of 11 traits that could make them susceptible to climate change.

Albatross, penguin, petrel and shearwater families are all likely to be susceptible to climate change, while heron and egret families, and osprey, kite, hawk and eagle families are among those least likely to be susceptible to climate change.

"This is the first time that a systematic assessments of species' susceptibility to climate change has been attempted," says Wendy Foden of IUCN's Species Programme.

"Climate change is already happening, but conservation decision makers currently have very little guidance on which species are going to be the worst affected."

The study found 3,217 of the 6,222 amphibians in the world are likely to be susceptible to climate change. Three salamander families could be particularly susceptible, while 80-100 percent of Seychelles frogs and Indian Burrowing Frogs, Australian ground frogs, horned toads and glass frog families were assessed as susceptible.

Specialized habitat requirements, such as species with water-dependant larvae, and those unable to disperse due to barriers such as large water bodies or human-transformed habitats are most at risk.

The report found that 566 of 799 warm-water reef-building coral species are likely to be susceptible to the impacts of climate change. The Acroporidae family, including staghorn corals, had particularly high numbers of susceptible species, while the Fungiidae family, including mushroom corals, and the Mussidae family, including some brain corals, possess relatively few.

Coral species qualified due to their sensitivity to increases in temperature, sedimentation and physical damage from storms and cyclones. Poor dispersal ability and colonization potential were used as further important indicators.

According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 32 percent of amphibians are threatened with extinction. Of these, 75 percent are susceptible to climate change. For birds, the overall percentage of those threatened with extinction is lower – 12 percent.

However, 80 percent of those are susceptible to climate change.

"There is a large overlap between threatened and climate change susceptible amphibian and bird species," says Jean-Christophe Vi Deputy Head of IUCN Species Programme.

"Climate change may cause a sharp rise in the risk and rate of extinction of currently threatened species."

"But we also want to highlight species which are currently not threatened but are likely to become so as climate change impacts intensify. By doing this we hope to promote preemptive and more effective conservation action," Christophe said.