BAGHDAD ? Iraq's parliament speaker warned Monday that human rights violations are putting the country's fragile democracy at risk, the latest pronouncement in a rapidly developing sectarian spat that threatens to destabilize the country after U.S. troops pulled out.
The televised comments by Osama al-Nujaifi, one of the country's top Sunni officials, are the latest salvo in a growing political crisis sparked when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government issued an arrest warrant for the country's top Sunni politician last month.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, controls the ministries that oversee Iraq's police and military. Some of Iraq's minority Sunnis, who fear being marginalized, accuse the prime minister of using the security forces to try to consolidate power.
"The armed forces should not be a tool to repress people and the armed forces should not interfere in political matters," al-Nujaifi said.
"Human rights will not become a reality in a situation where the political process is snarled. ... Losing these rights will destroy democracy," he added.
The parliament speaker, a member of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, al-Maliki's main political rivals, spoke a day before parliament was scheduled to hold its first session of the new year.
Iraqiya suspended its participation in parliament last month to protest al-Maliki's control of key posts, particularly those overseeing security forces.
U.S. troops completed their pullout from Iraq two weeks ago after a nine-year war.
Also Monday, a group that tracks casualties in Iraq said the number of civilians killed in the country's violence increased slightly in 2011.
In its annual report posted online, Iraq Body Count recorded 4,063 civilians killed last year, up from 4,045 in 2010.
On Sunday evening, a convoy carrying Finance Minister Rafia al-Issawi was struck by a roadside bomb in Ishaki area, 70 kilometers north of Baghdad, according to Zayed Majid, an adviser to the minister. He said the minister was not hurt, and two bodyguards were wounded.
The head of the provincial health directorate where the blast occurred, Dr. Raed Ibrahim, confirmed the account.
___
Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.
50 million year old cricket and katydid fossils hint at the origins of insect hearingPublic release date: 2-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Robin Ann Smith 919-668-4544 National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)
Durham, NC How did insects get their hearing? A new study of 50 million year-old cricket and katydid fossils sporting some of the best preserved fossil insect ears described to date help trace the evolution of the insect ear, says a new study by researchers working at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.
Insects hear with help from unusual ears, said co-author Roy Plotnick of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Grasshoppers have ears on their abdomens. Lacewings have ears on their wings. The ears of the tachinid fly are tucked under the chin. "Insects have ears on pretty much every part of their body except on their head proper," Plotnick explained.
Insects have evolved ears at least 17 times in different lineages. Plotnick and co-author Dena Smith of the University of Colorado, Boulder are trying to figure out when different insects got their ears, and whether predators may have played a role.
Modern insects use their ears to tune in to each other's chirps, trills and peeps. Think of the chorus of crickets, or the love songs of cicadas. But many species can also pick up sounds beyond the range of human hearing, such as the high-pitched sonar of night-hunting bats. Crickets, moths and other flying insects have ultrasound-sensitive hearing and can hear bats coming, diving or swerving in midflight to avoid being eaten.
Insects that evolved such supersensitive hearing would have had a crucial survival advantage, scientists say.
"The big evolutionary trigger for the appearance of hearing in many insects is thought to be the appearance of bats," Plotnick said. "Prior to the evolution of bats we would expect to find ears in relatively few insects, but after that we should see ears in more insect groups," he explained.
Did insect ears get an upgrade when bats came to be? Before this study the fossil evidence for insect hearing was too poorly preserved or scantily described to know for sure.
To find out, Plotnick and Smith turned to remarkably well-preserved fossils from a series of lake deposits in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado known as the Green River Formation, where some of the earliest bats are found.
Roughly fifty million years ago, fine-grained sediment covered and buried the animals that lived there and managed to preserve them in exquisite detail. "You can see every tiny feature down to the veins in their wings and the hairs on their legs," said Smith, who has been studying Green River fossils for more than 15 years.
For this study, the researchers examined fossils from a Green River site in Colorado, focusing on crickets and katydids, which have ears on their front legs, just below their knees.
The team scoured more than 500 museum drawers of Green River fossils for crickets and katydids with intact front legs, looking for evidence of ears. "You can just make them out with the naked eye," Plotnick said. "They look like the eye of a needle."
In crickets and katydids living today, the ear is a tiny oval cavity with a thin membrane stretched over it that vibrates in response to sound, much like our own eardrum.
The fossil ears measured half a millimeter in length, and were virtually identical in size, shape, and position to their modern counterparts.
The findings suggest that this group of insects evolved their supersensitive hearing long before bat predators came to be, the researchers say.
"Their bat-detecting abilities may have simply become apparent later," Smith said.
"The next step is to look for ears in other insect groups," she added.
###
The study appears in the January 2012 issue of Journal of Paleontology, and is available online at http://www.psjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1666/11-072.1 .
CITATION: Plotnick, R. and D. Smith (2012). "Exceptionally preserved fossil insect ears from the Eocene Green River Formation of Colorado." Journal of Paleontology 86(1): 19-24.
The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) is a nonprofit science center dedicated to cross-disciplinary research in evolution. NESCent is jointly operated by Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University, with funding from the National Science Foundation. For more information about research and training opportunities at NESCent, visit http://www.nescent.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
50 million year old cricket and katydid fossils hint at the origins of insect hearingPublic release date: 2-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Robin Ann Smith 919-668-4544 National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)
Durham, NC How did insects get their hearing? A new study of 50 million year-old cricket and katydid fossils sporting some of the best preserved fossil insect ears described to date help trace the evolution of the insect ear, says a new study by researchers working at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.
Insects hear with help from unusual ears, said co-author Roy Plotnick of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Grasshoppers have ears on their abdomens. Lacewings have ears on their wings. The ears of the tachinid fly are tucked under the chin. "Insects have ears on pretty much every part of their body except on their head proper," Plotnick explained.
Insects have evolved ears at least 17 times in different lineages. Plotnick and co-author Dena Smith of the University of Colorado, Boulder are trying to figure out when different insects got their ears, and whether predators may have played a role.
Modern insects use their ears to tune in to each other's chirps, trills and peeps. Think of the chorus of crickets, or the love songs of cicadas. But many species can also pick up sounds beyond the range of human hearing, such as the high-pitched sonar of night-hunting bats. Crickets, moths and other flying insects have ultrasound-sensitive hearing and can hear bats coming, diving or swerving in midflight to avoid being eaten.
Insects that evolved such supersensitive hearing would have had a crucial survival advantage, scientists say.
"The big evolutionary trigger for the appearance of hearing in many insects is thought to be the appearance of bats," Plotnick said. "Prior to the evolution of bats we would expect to find ears in relatively few insects, but after that we should see ears in more insect groups," he explained.
Did insect ears get an upgrade when bats came to be? Before this study the fossil evidence for insect hearing was too poorly preserved or scantily described to know for sure.
To find out, Plotnick and Smith turned to remarkably well-preserved fossils from a series of lake deposits in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado known as the Green River Formation, where some of the earliest bats are found.
Roughly fifty million years ago, fine-grained sediment covered and buried the animals that lived there and managed to preserve them in exquisite detail. "You can see every tiny feature down to the veins in their wings and the hairs on their legs," said Smith, who has been studying Green River fossils for more than 15 years.
For this study, the researchers examined fossils from a Green River site in Colorado, focusing on crickets and katydids, which have ears on their front legs, just below their knees.
The team scoured more than 500 museum drawers of Green River fossils for crickets and katydids with intact front legs, looking for evidence of ears. "You can just make them out with the naked eye," Plotnick said. "They look like the eye of a needle."
In crickets and katydids living today, the ear is a tiny oval cavity with a thin membrane stretched over it that vibrates in response to sound, much like our own eardrum.
The fossil ears measured half a millimeter in length, and were virtually identical in size, shape, and position to their modern counterparts.
The findings suggest that this group of insects evolved their supersensitive hearing long before bat predators came to be, the researchers say.
"Their bat-detecting abilities may have simply become apparent later," Smith said.
"The next step is to look for ears in other insect groups," she added.
###
The study appears in the January 2012 issue of Journal of Paleontology, and is available online at http://www.psjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1666/11-072.1 .
CITATION: Plotnick, R. and D. Smith (2012). "Exceptionally preserved fossil insect ears from the Eocene Green River Formation of Colorado." Journal of Paleontology 86(1): 19-24.
The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) is a nonprofit science center dedicated to cross-disciplinary research in evolution. NESCent is jointly operated by Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University, with funding from the National Science Foundation. For more information about research and training opportunities at NESCent, visit http://www.nescent.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Some malcontents in England briefly turned Siri into a deviant, Ricky-Gervais-impersonating insult comic. When asked how many people there are in the world, a demo iPhone in a store told a 12-year-old boy to "Shut the f*ck up, you ugly t***." Lovely. More »
Why does the pope say a couple living together ?married? without an annulment of a previous marriage is ?not excluded from the love of the Church or from the love of Christ?? Christ said they were committing adultery. Mortal sin excludes one from the sacraments because without repentance the soul is dead to the love of God.
Think about what you asked.
Even though we sin, God loves us and desires us to return to the state of grace. God gives us graces also when we are separated from Him in mortal sin so that we may the easier return to His friendship.
Such a couple may be excluded from receiving the sacraments until they get things straightened out. That doesn?t mean they can?t be members of the Church or that God has stopped loving them.
Holy Church continues to hold the door open for sinners, for the Church never desires the permanent exclusion of any person from a fuller participation in the Church?s journey towards God in heaven. Holy Church asks, however, that they be honest and not receive the sacraments if they are impeded for some reason (read = mortal sin, risk of public scandal, etc.).
When YOU commit a mortal sin, do you think God stops loving you? Do you think the Church slams the door of reconciliation in your face?
Ogden ? Nearly everything went according to script for Weber State on Thursday night.
Nearly.
As expected, the Wildcats opened their Big Sky Conference season with a 78-64 victory against visiting Idaho State in the Dee Events Center.
It was the manner of how the Wildcats achieved their 900th Division I victory in 50 seasons that was questionable.
?They?re not a bad team ... they played hard,? said WSU guard Scotty Bamforth, who scored 21 points with 6 assists. ?They played harder than us tonight.
?We came out to win. ... We just need to come ready to play.?
WSU (9-3, 1-0), thanks to a three-point play by guard Damian Lillard, opened a 20-point lead early in the second half.
However, the Wildcats didn?t resemble the team that had blown out Utah by 29. Despite a combined 47 points by Lillard and Bamforth, ISU (2-10, 0-1) dictated play in the second half to remain within hollering distance.
Story continues below
Idaho State, which had a coach resign recently, played as well as it could. Chase Grabau had a monster effort for ISU, scoring 31 points.
The Bengals? press also forced 10 turnovers in the second half.
?We were really inconsistent tonight,? WSU coach Randy Rahe said. ?Our mindset was really loose tonight. It wasn?t locked in like it needs to be. ... It showed in our play.
?We?ll get it solved.?
Not that Rahe or any of his players were apologizing for the victory. And it wasn?t as if the Wildcats were terrible.
Weber State shot 52 percent, including 9-of-16 3-point shots. Sophomore post Byron Fulton missed one shot on the way to 15 points.
But Fulton provided a microcosm of WSU?s night. His spectacular shooting was colored by four turnovers.
Idaho State managed only 39 percent shooting but grabbed 12 offensive rebounds.
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Public release date: 2-Jan-2012
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