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What would happen if a world-renowned scientist and evolutionary ecologist told hundreds of his colleagues that 90 percent of the human race needed to be wiped out by exposure to ebola or some other deadly virus? Apparently, according to a scientist who claims to have witnessed such a remarkable event one month ago, the fiend would get a standing ovation and an award. Forrest Mims III That's the story being told by Forrest Mims III, a member of the Texas Academy of Science, chairman of its environmental science section and editor of the Citizen Scientist. The speech Mims heard...

Last week the death knell was perhaps definitively sounded for a long European Jewish tradition and a thriving agricultural sector in Israel. Goose slaughterhouses and processing facilities in Binyamina and Petah Tikva told 200 workers they would be jobless by Pessah, as goose farmers too, brought their activities to a close, the Goose Farmers Association announced. "As of today [Wednesday] we're stopping," said goose farmer Yaakov Yosef, of Moshav Beit Yosef, who ran a farm with his two brothers and their families producing 60,000 geese annually. A government decision - which was finalized on February 22 when the High Court...

(01-13) 17:55 PST Auburn, Calif. (AP) -- Three people were arrested Friday on suspicion that they plotted to blow up U.S. Forest Service property along with cell phone towers and power generators, the FBI said. Zachary O. Jenson, 20, of Monroe, Wash., Lauren Weiner, 20, of Philadelphia, and Eric Taylor McDavid, 28, of Foresthill, Calif., were arrested Friday morning, said Karen Ernst of the FBI. Federal authorities believe all three are members of the Earth Liberation Front, a shadowy collection of environmental activists that has claimed responsibility for dozens of acts of destruction in the past few years. Matt Mathes,...

The grisly circumstances surrounding the death of a 22-year-old man in northern Saskatchewan are likely to influence the debate over wolf policy in Wisconsin. Wisconsin's Wolf Policy 425 to 455: Number of wolves estimated to be in Wisconsin during the 2004-'05 winter - up from 373 to 410 wolves for the previous winter On Nov. 8, student Kenton Joel Carnegie was walking alone near a remote camp owned by a mining exploration company when it is believed that he was killed by wolves. Though an investigation is continuing, some wolves in the area had been attracted to a garbage dump...

PHOENIX (AP) -- An Arizona bookstore owner charged in the firebombing of a government wildlife lab in Washington committed suicide in his jail cell Thursday, officials said. William C. Rodgers, 40, of Prescott, Ariz., suffocated after placing a plastic bag over his head while in a one-person cell in Flagstaff, the Coconino County medical examiner said. Rodgers was one of six people arrested earlier this month in connection with ecoterror attacks in Oregon and Washington in recent years. He was accused of setting fire to the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services facility in Olympia, Wash., in 1998....

INVESTIGATION: Officials are investigating whether a Canadian man was killed by wolves that he may have been feeding. Scientists and wildlife officials are investigating what appears to be the first documented case of healthy wolves killing a human in North America. The attack took place in November at Points North Landing near Wollaston Lake, Saskatchewan. The body of 22-year-old Kenton Joel Carnegie was found Nov. 8. Officials say the Oshawa, Ontario, man appeared to have been attacked by four wolves that had been eating garbage in the area for some time and likely had lost their fear of people. There's...

Each year around Thanksgiving, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals makes the evening news with some new campaign to get people to stop eating turkey. This year PETA wants me to believe that if I enjoy my annual serving of turkey at Thanksgiving, then I'm probably going to get the Asian bird flu. In order to make sure I'm aware of the threat, PETA members will "lie naked in flower-decorated coffins outside the Department of Agriculture" — just in case I walk by. As an alternative, PETA says I should ingest something called "tofurkey."Although I'll pass on the tofurkey,...

MADISON, Wis. -- An animal rights activist from the Seattle suburb of Mercer Island, Washington -- who dodged federal authorities for years after he freed thousands of mink from Midwestern fur farms -- was sentenced to two years in prison today. A federal judge in Madison, Wisconsin, also ordered 28-year-old Peter Daniel Young to pay nearly 255-thousand dollars in restitution to the mink farmers. Young pleaded guilty in September to two counts of animal enterprise terrorism in a deal with prosecutors. Investigators say Young and an accomplice trespassed, cut fences and released caged mink from farms in Wisconsin, South Dakota...

Eco-Logic / Powerhouse Commentary... Feds cooperate with U.N. programs to steal private property By Jennifer Foster June 1, 2005 I am reaching out for help for a lady who has become a very good friend of mine. She lives in the 1933 Ivanpah General Store, located in the East Mojave Desert. Her home happens to lie in the middle of the Mojave National Preserve, which is under management by National Park Service (NPS). NPS's crimes against the environment and human rights out there would be unbelievable - if my husband and I had not witnessed these crimes for ourselves. Connie...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - New Jersey is using an anti-terrorism law for the first time to try six animal rights activists charged with harassing and vandalizing a company that made use of animals to test its drugs. Prosecutors say the activists, who will stand trial next week, used threats, intimidation and cyber attacks against employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British company with operations in East Millstone, New Jersey, with the intention of driving it out of business. The six, members of a group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), are charged under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, amended in 2002...

Group claiming it organized Auburn and Lincoln attacks contacts other publications Construction workers found five firebombs at the Park Hill office complex on Auburn Folsom Road last week. A letter allegedly from the Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility. Photo by Ben Furtado/Auburn Journal Two more letters have been received by Auburn Journal sister publications claiming to be from the Earth Liberation Front. The eco-terrorist group declared responsibility for recent firebomb plantings in Auburn and Lincoln.

In campaigning for animal rights, some activists have lost respect for humanity, writes Miranda Devine. A sensitive child will always refrain from stepping on ants. Some will burst into tears at the thought of killing one of God's smallest creatures. Kindness to ants is to be encouraged. But not to a ridiculous extent. Sooner or later the child will come to realise one of life's many sad lessons: that if you want to walk around, it is impossible to avoid killing the odd ant. Not so for the increasingly pushy ranks of animal liberationists who seem locked in a childish...

List Spotlights Dubious Achievements and Irresponsible Claims Made by Health and Environmental Scientists WASHINGTON, D.C., (Dec. 1) -- JunkScience.com today announced its list of the Top Ten Most Embarrassing Moments in Health and Environmental Science for 2004. The list spotlights individuals and organizations that -- through exaggerated claims, bad judgment, and/or hidden agendas -- have most egregiously undermined public confidence in the scientific community’s capacity to conduct sound and unbiased research. JunkScience.com has exposed and debunked flawed research and unfounded scientific claims since 1996. “Many researchers and organizations sensationalize scientific claims to grab media attention,” says JunkScience.com publisher Steven Milloy,...

AMSTERDAM - A hospital in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives. The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives - a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates. In August, the main...

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - Two men have been arrested for dumping dirt in a national forest. The Kootenai County Sheriff's Department said the men, who have not been publicly identified, were arrested at a garage in Coeur d'Alene where the dirt had been removed and the base apparently prepared for paving. Deputy Robert Gomez said the U.S. Forest Service confirmed that it was illegal to dump anything, including dirt, on the federal land. Gomez said he asked the two men about dumping dirt in the national forest "and they went off on a tirade about Mother Earth." The deputy quoted...

Climate change is 'a myth', sea levels are not rising and Britain's chief scientist is 'an embarrassment' for believing catastrophe is inevitable. These are the controversial views of a new London-based think-tank that will publish a report tomorrow attacking the apocalyptic view that man-made greenhouse gases will destroy the planet. The International Policy Network will publish its long-awaited study, claiming that the science warning of an environmental disaster caused by climate change is 'fatally flawed'. It will state that previous predictions of changes in sea level of a metre over the next 100 years were overestimates. Instead, the report will...

PETER Singer, once a Greens candidate and now our most famous philosopher, has changed his mind on killing babies. Good news, you might think, since this author of Animal Liberation used to say parents had a right to kill imperfect children in their first month of life. But in fact he's now told World magazine it would be ethically fine to kill even one-year-olds with disabilities. Or even to breed babies for spare parts. And Singer, now a professor at Princeton, continues his spiral into the moral abyss, by adding "there's no moral problem" with someone having sex with the...

The Malthusian Trap by Benjamin Marks [Posted November 23, 2004] The principle that there is a perpetual tendency in the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is usually attributed to Malthus. But he was really just the popularizer of a belief that was (and is) fairly widespread. William Hazlitt, a mighty adversary of Malthus, does not think he was the first to write about it, either. In fact, plagiarism is hinted at. See Hazlitt's excellent essay on this topic here. The great Australian philosopher, David Stove, in the same vein as Hazlitt, thinks: There are anticipations...

A minor incident at the Balakovskaya nuclear power plant created widespread panic in Saratov and nearby regions, with people clearing iodine off drugstore shelves and several being rushed to the hospital with symptoms of iodine poisoning. Reactor No. 2 at the Balakovskaya nuclear power plant, located outside the city of Balakov in the Saratov region, some 900 km southeast of Moscow, shut down on Thursday [4 Nov 2004] after a pipe burst, but, there was no radiation leak, the Federal Nuclear Power Agency said in a statement on Friday [12 Nov 2004]. However, the incident, which was 1st reported on...