The "News" thread.

[Buster's Uncle]

US deploys fighter jets to Poland, Lithuania
AFP
4 hours ago



Mounting evidence of military involvement as ABC News witnesses swearing-in ceremony of a pro-Russia militia unit.



Warsaw (AFP) - The United States is sending a dozen F-16 fighter jets to Poland as a part of a training exercise, amid continuing tensions between Ukraine and Russia, the Polish defence ministry said on Sunday.

Three hundred US service personnel will also be sent to Poland as part of the exercise. The deployment will be completed by Thursday.

Chuck Hagel, the US Secretary of State for Defence, and his Polish counterpart Tomasz Siemoniak agreed the deployment during a phone call, according to a statement from the Polish ministry.



US Secretary of State John Kerry (R) shakes hands with Poland's Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak in front of an F-16 aircraft at the Lask Air Force Base, on November 5, 2013 (AFP Photo/Jason Reed)


"The unit will be composed of 12 F-16 planes and will transport 300 soldiers," defence ministry spokesman Jacek Sonta told AFP.

The fighters had been sent following a request from Poland.

The exercise was originally planned to be smaller but was increased and pushed forward because of the "tense political situation" in Ukraine, added Sonta.

The deployment in Poland comes after Washington announced it was also sending four F-15 planes to Lithuania to strengthen surveillance in the airspace around the Baltic.

According to Lithuania's defence ministry, the deployment was in response to "Russian aggression in Ukraine and increased military activity in Kaliningrad," the Russian exclave which borders Poland and Lithuania.

While, Poland has 48 of its own F-16 fighter jets, the Baltic states do not have sufficient air resources and look to NATO to provide protection for its airspace.

http://news.yahoo.com/us-deploys-fighter-jets-poland-lithuania-200314022.html

[Buster's Uncle]

SO- it turns out it was a land grab after all...   

[gwillybj]

Do Elephants Make Alarm Call That Means ‘Humans!’?
A new study suggests that elephants make a specific rumble in response to the danger of humans that’s distinct from calls warning of bees or other threats.


Elephants flee the sound of local people while emitting the telltale ‘human’ alarm call rumble. Image credit: University of Oxford

African elephants make a specific alarm call in response to the danger of humans, according to a new study of wild elephants in Kenya.

Researchers from Oxford University, Save the Elephants, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom carried out a series of audio experiments in which recordings of the voices of the Samburu, a local tribe from North Kenya, were played to resting elephants. The elephants quickly reacted, becoming more vigilant and running away from the sound whilst emitting a distinctive low rumble.

When the team, having recorded this rumble, played it back to a group of elephants they reacted in a similar way to the sound of the Samburu voices; running away and becoming very vigilant, perhaps searching for the potentially lethal threat of human hunters.

The new research, recently reported in PLOS ONE, builds on previous Oxford University research showing that elephants call ‘bee-ware’ and run away from the sound of angry bees. Whilst the ‘bee’ and ‘human’ rumbling alarm calls might sound similar to our ears there are important differences at low (infrasonic) frequencies that elephants can hear but humans can’t.

‘Elephants appear to be able to manipulate their vocal tract (mouth, tongue, trunk and so on) to shape the sounds of their rumbles to make different alarm calls,’ said Dr Lucy King of Save the Elephants and Oxford University who led the study with Dr Joseph Soltis, a bioacoustics expert from Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and colleagues.

‘We concede the possibility that these alarm calls are simply a by-product of elephants running away, that is, just an emotional response to the threat that other elephants pick up on,’ Lucy tells me. ‘On the other hand, we think it is also possible that the rumble alarms are akin to words in human language, and that elephants voluntarily and purposefully make those alarm calls to warn others about specific threats. Our research results here show that African elephant alarm calls can differentiate between two types of threat and reflect the level of urgency of that threat.’

Elephant ‘human’ alarm call rumble

Significantly, the reaction to the human alarm call included none of the head-shaking behaviour displayed by elephants hearing the bee alarm. When threatened by bees elephants shake their heads in an effort to knock the insects away as well as running — despite their thick hides adult elephants can be stung around their eyes or up their trunks, whilst calves could potentially be killed by a swarm of stinging bees as they have yet to develop a thick protective skin.

Lucy explains: ‘Interestingly, the acoustic analysis done by Joseph Soltis at his Disney laboratory showed that the difference between the ”bee alarm rumble” and the ”human alarm rumble” is the same as a vowel-change in human language, which can change the meaning of words (think of ”boo” and ”bee”). Elephants use similar vowel-like changes in their rumbles to differentiate the type of threat they experience, and so give specific warnings to other elephants who can decipher the sounds.’

This collaborative research on how elephants react to and communicate about honeybees and humans is being used to reduce human-elephant conflict in Kenya. Armed with the knowledge that elephants are afraid of bees, Lucy and Save the Elephants have built scores of ‘beehive fences’ around local farms that protect precious fields from crop-raiding elephants.

‘In this way, local farmers can protect their families and livelihoods without direct conflict with elephants, and they can harvest the honey too for extra income,’ says Lucy. ‘Learning more about how elephants react to threats such as bees and humans will help us design strategies to reduce human-elephant conflict and protect people and elephants.’

Bottom line: According to a new study, African elephants make a specific alarm call in response to the danger of humans.

Via University of Oxford

http://earthsky.org/earth/do-elephants-make-alarm-call-that-means-humans

[Unorthodox]

Now I want to know how they manage the hives, as it would stand to reason any honeybees would become africanized, no?  Not to mention the cape bee problem...

[Buster's Uncle]

I want to see elephant beekeepers.

[Geo]

I want to see African mice hunters...

[JarlWolf]

Наталья Поклонская

To summarize: She is basically saying that current government in Kiev is a result of fascist armed coup, she is talkiing about the brutalization of berkut officers by this illegitimate government and then she is giving a guarantee that both Ukrainian and Crimean law will be observed and there will be justice for the lynchers and insurgents.

And she's right on all 3 accounts- the sharpshooters have been proven to be a third party now.


Also, on a side note the Crimean Attorney General is drop dead gorgeous...   

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't find that credible.  The whole thing stinks to high heaven.

[Buster's Uncle]

[JarlWolf]

I never said the Crimean referendum wasn't influenced by our presence there. I am just stating what she said, and she is right on the accounts of the lynchings and current Ukrainian gov't.

[Buster's Uncle]

Given the big picture situation, I'd have doubts of anything I saw myself.

C'mon man, Putin owns the Russian news.

They've announced they're relocating Tartars again.  Stinks.

[JarlWolf]

I didn't say I trust the news, American or my own. And certainly not European-

I know the situation in Ukraine and I know whats happening there. I have people I know who live there and they tell me the truth of things...

You also need to realize that while United Russia party is corrupt and like a spider- my country isn't any worse then NATO or others. If anything, the EU is the real villain: they forced Yanukovych, scum that he is, a do or die proposal with no aid; Putin offered him 15 billion when Ukraine is 30 billion in debt.

The EU has proven they are selfish with Rwanda, not helping prevent the genocide there when intervention WAS needed, and they proved they are selfish again with Kosovo when intervention was questionable. My country may not be no saint but we aren't total hypocrites that deny our crimes. We know what we do and we have interests in the former Soviet bloc; as much as France did with its former North African holdings.

[Buster's Uncle]

It still stinks.

[JarlWolf]

It still stinks.

It's Ukraine, the EU, and Putin, of course it does 

[Buster's Uncle]

Sure.

Look, I totally gave Putin the benefit of the doubt here, not least to be diplomatic.  I've been let down.  This was a freakin' in-your-face invasion and conquest.  Don't let the propaganda fool you.