Bounty hunters called, albatrosses given soaring marks

Minister resigns after immigration scandal, free pizza

Canadian Immigration Minister… Minister resigns after immigration scandal, free pizza

Canadian Immigration Minister Judy Sgro, who is already embroiled in a scandal about favors given to a Romanian stripper, resigned last Friday after an Indian pizza shop owner said she had gone back on a promise to help him avoid deportation, in exchange for free pizza.

“It’s obviously with great regret that I accepted Judy Sgro’s resignation, but I understand why she wanted to do it. She wants to have a completely free hand to defend herself against these allegations,” Prime Minister Paul Martin told reporters.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Sgro resigned after pizza shop owner Harjit Singh filed an affidavit in a Federal Court, accusing her of offering to help him stay in Canada in return for pizza deliveries and assistance with her election campaign.

Sgro issued a statement condemning what she described as “outrageous fabrications” and promising that she would fight “vigorously, with every measure at my disposal.”

Singh said in his affidavit that he had approached Sgro to ask for help.

“She assured me that if I helped out in her election campaign, she would get me immigration in Canada,” he said. “Judy said she wanted me to deliver pizza, garlic bread, etc., to her campaign office … I did this. She also said that she needed 15 to 16 people to help work in her campaign. I organized this for her as well.”

Colombia’s call to arms

Colombia last week made a bizarre move in its 40-year battle with leftist militants who reside in the country’s vast expanses of jungles and mountains, reported Reuters.

“It would be great if all the bounty hunters in the world came to capture those bandits. The money’s there for them, and the rewards are good,” Vice President Francisco Santos told reporters.

The Colombian government has placed rewards of as much as about $2 million on the heads of outlaw guerillas, including Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda, a veteran commander of the 17,000 fighters of the Marxist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Santos’ call to arms came after Colombian officials said they recently paid an unspecified reward to an anonymous informant who assisted in capturing Rodrigo Granda, a rebel described by government authorities as FARC’s “foreign minister.”

The seizure resulted in another diplomatic headache with neighboring Venezuela, which claims Granda was snatched from the streets of the capital city, Caracas. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, who was held by the CIA for a number of days during a failed coup d’etat in 2002, has been suspected by the Colombian government of sympathies for the FARC.

Colombian officials insist they found Granda within their borders.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe can attribute his 70 percent approval rating to the government’s military campaign against the FARC — a conflict that kills thousands annually. Organization members keep safe in hideouts throughout the country’s extensive jungles and mountain region.

Scientists hail new research, albatrosses keep flying

In the magazine Science, the researchers of the British Antarctic Survey reported for the first time conclusive evidence that albatrosses regularly circumnavigate the globe. For a round-the-world trip, the huge birds can take as few as 46 days.

At the birds’ breeding colonies in South Georgia, an island in the South Atlantic Ocean toward the tip of Argentina, John Croxall and colleagues tagged 47 young gray-headed albatrosses with instruments that log daylight levels. When 35 returned 18 months later, the team downloaded data from 22 of the instruments and read the pattern of daylight lengths: the tale of the birds’ journeys.

The travel log showed that a few hung around the Southern Ocean, while others journeyed to habitats in the Indian Ocean. Twelve birds flew east, all the way around the world. Three flew around the globe twice. Typical journeys involved flights of as much as 600 miles in day. The fastest time for a complete circumnavigation was 46 days.

There are 21 different kinds of albatross, and 19 of those kinds are threatened with extinction. An estimated 300,000 albatrosses die every year on the baited hooks used by long-line fishermen. The Great Wandering Albatross, which lives for as many as 80 years and grows an incredible 12-foot wingspan, is down to a few thousand remaining birds.

Word lost in wake of tsunami

Back before Christmas 2004, Wall Street analysts foresaw “tsunamis” of bad earnings news, and Japanese restaurants served “tsunami” sushi rolls. The word was commonly used in dozens of different contexts, but is now likely to appear with just one tragic meaning, said the Global Language Monitor group last week.

After the South Asian tsunami that killed at least 162,000 people hit in the hours after Christmas, the word assumed a solely solemn use. It is similar to the way “Ground Zero,” the name for the site of the World Trade Center, had its meaning changed from “starting point” to the center of the Sept. 11, 2001, tragedy, said Paul Payack, head of the language group.

“In the same manner, we envision that the word ‘tsunami’ will be the subject of considerable discretion before being used in anything other than a most serious manner,” Payack said.

Payack said that since the Dec. 26 tsunami, the Japanese word has appeared more than 18.5 million times, and been the subject of 88,000 articles in major media, Reuters reported.

Payack added that thousands of sports teams around the world use tsunami in their names, including many hundreds of swim teams. He said there are also about 10,000 products called tsunami, such as Tsunami Point-to-Point Wireless Bridges, Tsunami Multimedia Speakers and Tsunami Image Processors.

United States condemned for abuse by watchdog

A leading independent watchdog has singled out the United States in its annual report, charging that human rights abuses carried out by the world’s last remaining superpower have provided a rallying cry for militant organizations and enable other regimes to justify their own poor rights records.

The torture and degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and the high-security facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has undermined the credibility of the United States as an opponent of terrorist activity, said the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“The U.S. government is less and less able to push for justice abroad, because it is unwilling to see justice done at home,” said Kenneth Roth, the group’s executive director.

As the Bush administration prepared for inauguration on Thursday, it continued to face criticism in response to the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, the reports of privately run jails and prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, and the sensory-torture techniques that are routinely used in Guantanamo.

“When the United States disregards human rights, it undermines that human rights culture and thus sabotages one of the most important tools for dissuading potential terrorists. Instead, U.S. abuses have provided a new rallying cry for terrorist recruiters, and the pictures from Abu Ghraib have become the recruiting posters for Terrorism, Inc.”

The report also details how America’s disregard for human rights has provided other countries with justification to follow suit. The report notes: Egypt has defended a decision to renew “emergency” laws by specifically referring to U.S. anti-terror legislation. Malaysia justifies detention without trial by invoking the legal procedure of the U.S. military Guantanamo. Russia continues to cite Abu Ghraib to blame abuses carried out in the conflict in Chechnya solely on low-ranking soldiers.

There are few signs the White House will change its approach. The Bush administration has persuaded Congress to overturn the legislation that passed last month by a 96-2 Senate vote, which would have imposed restrictions on extreme interrogation methods, The New York Times reported last week.

Man jogs in the nude, cops zap him with 50,000 volts

For many months, officers in West Memphis, Arkansas, have received reports about a male jogger working out at the dead of night, in the nude.

On Monday last week, police said they thought they got their man. Fate Patterson, 39, of West Memphis, was arrested after he ran past a police car and failed to stop when asked to. Police chased him and took him down with the use of the controversial Taser gun.

The Associated Press reported that Mike Allen, assistant chief of the West Memphis police department, said it did not appear the man was mentally ill.

Allen did not disclose whether there was a reason for the man to be running without his clothes, and did not comment whether it was absolutely necessary to use a 50,000-volt jolt, nearly 25 times that of an electric chair, to subdue a man who otherwise seemed to pose little threat to anyone.

Bob Marley to be dug up, moved to Ethiopia

The widow of reggae musician Bob Marley said last week that she plans to exhume his remains in Jamaica and rebury them in his “spiritual resting place,” Ethiopia.

The reburial is set for an unspecified date, after the month-long celebration of the 60th anniversary of Marley’s birth that is to be held in Ethiopia next month.

The Ethiopian church and government officials have expressed support for the project, said Marley’s wife, Rita.

Rolling Stone reported that Marley, who died of cancer in 1981, would be reburied in Shashemene, 150 miles south of the capital Addis Ababa. Several hundred individuals who follow the Rastafarian religious movement have lived in Shashemene since they were given the land by Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie.

Hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans have embraced Emperor Selassie as their living god. The faith was built around the emperor’s person, and takes its name from the emperor’s birth name, Ras Tafari Mekonen. Followers of the religion preach of oneness with nature, grow their hair into dreadlocks and smoke marijuana as a sacrament.

“Bob’s whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica,” Rita Marley said. “How can you give up a continent for an island? He has a right for his remains to be where he would love them to be. This was his mission. Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place.”