According to the BBC:
When faced with danger, the octopus can wrap six of its legs around its head to disguise itself as a fallen coconut shell and escape by walking backwards on the other two legs, scientists have discovered.
Well, I’m impressed.
Update: more here. including a brief video. They can do a clump of algae as well, apparently.
From the BBC:
Hundreds of thousands of people are attending a mass protest in Taiwan against China’s anti-secession law passed earlier this month.
The law allows China, which sees Taiwan as a breakaway province, to use “non-peaceful” means to stop any move by the island towards independence.
Senior politicians urged their followers to join the protest.
The island’s government has been heartened by broad international criticism of China’s new legislation.
Joseph Wu, who heads Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, the body responsible for the island’s dealings with China, says it is an attempt to remind the rest of the world that Taiwan feels it is under threat.
“We also want to show to the Chinese side that we are angry over the Chinese action and we want to let the Chinese side know that the law has dealt a severe blow to the prospect of peaceful negotiations in between Taiwan and China,” Mr Wu said.
d be blown away. The Movement for Democratic Change and its brave leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, would win an overwhelming victory. Mugabe knows that, which is why the elections will be run by the army with members of his own militia — the so-called national youth service — at the polling stations to “assist” voters.
There will be widespread intimidation and brutality. If that does not work, the ballot boxes will be stuffed. Those who count the notes are under Mugabe’s control. They will know what to do. It will be a monstrous perversion of freedom, law, democracy and hope. Yet where are the protests from other African countries?
Mr Mbeki seems to speak for all his fellow sub-Saharan leaders. Their argument appears to be that, as Mugabe helped to free his country, he should now be allowed to wreck it. Thus millions of people are condemned to suffering; a country which should be rich is condemned to poverty.
Could this take off here? (Via ArtsJournal)
The idea for Joke-e-oke is simple. It’s basically karaoke with stand-up comedy material. Many dream of the chance to be a comedian with killer material in front of a laughing crowd. With Joke-e-oke, people are able to live out their comedy fantasy of being their favorite comedian onstage, choosing from a list of stand-up comedy icons to perform. A built in laugh track is added, timed perfectly to accent punch lines.
Hmm. Sounds like a recipe for non-stop abuse from the audience. Now then, “Hello, hello, my dog’s got no nose…..”
Another one bites the dust:
The opposition in Kyrgyzstan says it has taken control of the capital, Bishkek, after overrunning the president’s palace.
Protesters confronted supporters of President Askar Akayev before flooding into government offices.
A prominent Kyrgyz opposition leader, Felix Kulov, made a televised appeal for calm after being freed from jail.
Demonstrations were stepped up after recent parliamentary elections, which the opposition said were rigged.
An unconfirmed report by Interfax news agency said Mr Akayev and his family have left Bishkek by helicopter.
Opposition activists have also seized control of several regional government buildings in key towns in the south of the country.
Background from the BBC:
Many observers believe the Kyrgyz are keen on democracy because personal freedom has been at the heart of their nomadic culture. With Islam not as deeply embedded here as in the rest of Central Asia, the Kyrgyz seem to be closer to the Buddhist Mongols than to Muslim Uzbeks or Tajiks.
Come on now Beeb: everybody’s keen on democracy nowadays.
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Is this, I wonder, (on Stoke Newington Church Street) a Banksy original?
Update: Banksy’s exploits make the Times:
Banksy, the practical joker of British artists, has struck for the first time in New York, planting his works among the masterpieces hanging in four of the city’s most famous museums.
The artist embarrassed museum officials and glee in the art world this month by penetrating security at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History.
Photographs of his exploits were posted on the website of an artists’ group called the Wooster Collective, which also published Banksy’s e-mail exchange with a reporter from The New York Times. “I went for the biggest four museums in New York, I wanted to do the Guggenheim but there weren’t enough paintings in it,” Banksy wrote. “I would have had to appear between two Picassos and I’m not good enough to get away with that.”
hose who attack lives and [women’s] honor and property and to expel them from Iraq – the land of the Caliphs.
“2) In order to redeem the honor of our brothers and the chastity of our sisters and the innocence of our Muslim children, [all of whom] have been ravaged by the Americans and their Shi’ite collaborators in the brigades of treachery [a reference to the Shi’ite Badr Brigades, which is the military wing of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq] and the party of Satan’s mission [a reference to Al-Ja’fari’s Hizb Al-Da’wa party].
“3) In order to make the light of the Caliphate shine once again from Baghdad, the capital of the Caliphate, so that it will spread the light of justice and prosperity around the world, as things used to be in the time of Harun Al-Rashid.
“4) In order to kill those whose character has become impure and who has joined the ranks of the infidels in their fight against the Muslims in Iraq, that is, members of the Iraqi army and the police and spies, who strengthen the Americans and help them to commit crimes and to rape our sisters in the Abu Ghraib prison and other places…”
”.
“We beat them because we are authorised by Allah to do so and that is our duty,” Sheik Ahmed al-Basri said after the attack. “It is we who should deal with such disobedience and not the police.”
Zeyad at Healing Iraq has more.
With “Bells”, the controversial play on Muslim brothels, set to open tomorrow, Maureen Paton takes a look at these “mujra” clubs, and their part in the South Asian sex trade:
Political correctness, paradoxically, meant that until relatively recently the police and other organisations were wary of tackling problematic issues within the close-knit Asian community, effectively leaving it to police itself until the statistics for such horrific crimes as honour killings and forced marriages led to a shift in attitude. “Multicultural thinking has been about non-intervention,” says Siddiqui [Hannana Siddiqui, of West London’s Southall Black Sisters, a campaigning Asian feminist group].
“The problem of Asian women being involved in prostitution is far more hidden than other types of sex industry or trafficking. Maybe it’s because there are fewer or because it’s extremely shameful in most Asian communities, so the women are extra-vigilant in keeping quiet about it because it brings so much dishonour to the family.
“These brothels are very discreet and haven’t got into the sauna business yet, as other prostitution networks have. But it’s rubbish to say that all Muslims have higher sexual morals than white Britons. It’s like any community, any religion — you have people with high moral standards who live by them, but you also have plenty of people who are hypocrites.
“A lot of men are not living by the standards they try to set for women or others in the community; there are a lot of double standards going on. In Bradford, when there were vigilante actions against white prostitutes, the local Asian population was saying: ‘We don’t want these women on our streets.’ But it turned out that some of the Asian men were having sexual relations with the women. This is all down to hypocrisy — and male patriarchy.”
te through Grosvenor Farms Ltd.
All the payments were made during the financial year 2003-04 — the most recent for which figures are available. This cash costs the taxpayer £3 billion and adds some £800 a year to the food bill of a family of four.
From the editorial:
It has long been known that the Common Agricultural Policy is an obscene arrangement by which the European Union inflates the incomes of certain farmers through direct payments or financial support for “environmental improvements” and “rural services”. The overall sum of this grotesque subsidy, currently about £3 billion in Britain and about ten times that figure across the EU, has been in the public realm for decades. What was not appreciated, until now, was how much went to which individuals and institutions.
The figures that we report today are truly shocking. They dispel any lingering sentiment that the CAP might have its faults but that it at least keeps those who till the soil in Emmerdale in business. The real beneficiaries are instead large agribusinesses, companies such as Tate & Lyle and a small collection of extremely wealthy landowners. In crude terms, this is a structure by which Europe’s poor transfer money to Europe’s rich at the expense of both themselves and Africa’s impoverished.