Free Republic

ARCATA, Calif. - Federal scientists are planning to shoot a small number of barred owls they say are crowding out the threatened spotted owl in northern California - an experiment that could lead to killing thousands of the larger owls on the West Coast. Scientists said the "removal" experiment would be the best way to quickly determine whether barred owls are pushing spotted owls toward extinction. If successful, officials would then consider expanding the program. "This experiment is a small step," said Brian Woodbridge, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Yreka, Calif. The final plan...

Could affect option to import, replenish stock of Ariz. birds. The pygmy owl population dropped sharply during the past five years in northern Sonora, a new study has concluded. The findings could spell trouble for U.S. government plans to possibly import northern Mexican birds to enhance Arizona's small cactus ferruginous pygmy owl population, said two University of Arizona researchers who wrote the study. The study doesn't play directly into legal issues that have the Arizona owl's endangered status in limbo, they said. But its results make it important to protect the Arizona and Sonoran populations, said the researchers at UA's...

Long-lost near-Earth asteroid spotted 17:35 16 October 03 NewScientist.com news service A large and potentially hazardous asteroid that went missing for almost 66 years ago was re-discovered by astronomers on Wednesday morning. The good news is that its next fly-by, on 4 November, will miss the Earth by a relatively comfortable seven million kilometres. Asteroid 1937 UB, later dubbed Hermes, set a record for closest recorded approach to the Earth on 30 October 1937. The record lasted for 50 years. Hermes is one to two kilometres in diameter and would cause global devastation if it hit the planet. So, given...

NEW YORK (Talon News) -- Ousted President Saddam Hussein is paying a bounty for killing U.S. troops according to the leader of an Iraqi exile group on Tuesday. Eyewitnesses have spotted Saddam Hussein hiding out just north of Baghdad on several occasions. He has been seen near Diyala, around the Tigris River, near his hometown of Tikrit and in the Dulaimi areas. Saddam is suspected to have $1.3 billion in cash in his possession that was taken from the Central Bank on March 18. Saddam Hussein is undoubtedly seeking revenge for the war the United States perpetrated against his regime...

LONDON (Reuters) - Forget the tigers, the elephants and the dancing bears. Cirque du Soleil will never travel the world with performing animals. "We don't agree with the way the animals are dressed to do their tricks. We prefer to give jobs to human beings," said Pierre Parisien from the renowned Quebec troupe that has inspired a circus renaissance around the globe. "They are animals, not performers. They should be in the jungle," the artistic director of the troupe's "Saltimbanco" show told Reuters after its London opening this week. "We do not agree with the way they are trained...

Sunday, 4 August, 2002, 16:13 GMT 17:13 UKTaleban chief 'spotted on the run' Mullah Omar's precise whereabouts are still unknown Taleban leader Mullah Omar is regularly spotted on the run, eight months after his fundamentalist Islamic regime was toppled by US-backed forces, a senior Afghan official has said. President Hamid Karzai's brother Ahmad Wali told Reuters news agency the rarely-photographed one-eyed cleric has been seen across a wide swathe of southern and central Afghanistan. "He is travelling by motorcycle or by foot," said Ahmad Wali - the president's special representative for the south. Mullah Omar fled Kandahar before it fell...