Giant squid filmed for 1st time in deep

TOKYO: A Japanese-led team of scientists has captured on film the world's first live images of a giant squid, journeying to the depths of the ocean in search of the mysterious creature thought to have inspired the myth of the "kraken", a tentacled monster.

The images of the silvery, three-meter (10 feet) long cephalopod, looming out of the darkness nearly 1 km below the surface, were taken last July near the Ogasawara islands, 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo.

Though the beast was small by giant squid standards - the largest ever caught stretched 18 meters long, tentacles and all - filming it secretly in its natural habitat was a key step towards understanding the animal, researchers said.

"Many people have tried to capture an image of a giant squid alive in its natural habitat, whether researchers or film crews. But they all failed," said Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science, who led the team.

"These are the first ever images of a real live giant squid," Kubodera said of the footage, shot by Japanese national broadcaster NHK and the Discovery Channel.

The key to their success, said Kubodera, was a small submersible rigged with lights invisible to both human and cephalopod eyes.

He, a cameraman and the submersible's pilot drifted silently down to 630 meters and released a one-meter-long squid as bait. In all, they descended around 100 times.

"If you try and approach making a load of noise, using a bright white light, then the squid won't come anywhere near you. That was our basic thinking," Kubodera said.

"So we sat there in the pitch black, using a near-infrared light invisible even to the human eye, waiting for the giant squid to approach."

As the squid neared they began to film, following it into the depths to around 900 meters.

"I've seen a lot of giant squid specimens in my time, but mainly those hauled out of the ocean. This was the first time for me to see with my own eyes a giant squid swimming," he said. "It was stunning, I couldn't have dreamt that it would be so beautiful. It was such a wonderful creature."

Until recently, little was known about the creature believed to be the real face of the mythical kraken, a sea-monster blamed by sailors for sinking ships off Norway in the 18th century.

But for Kubodera, the animal held no such terror.

"A giant squid essentially lives a solitary existence, swimming about all alone in the deep sea. It doesn't live in a group," he said. "So when I saw it, well, it looked to me like it was rather lonely." (Reuters)

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Pilot catches thief while flying

GLADES COUNTY: A Florida man flying an airplane over his home caught a thief attempting to steal a trailer from his property on Sunday afternoon.

The victim, pilot David Zehntner, was returning home to Glades County from North Carolina in his personal airplane and decided to fly over his home.

As he flew over, he noticed a silver truck with a white camper in his driveway.

Zehntner flew closer and observed a man looking into the windows of his home. The suspect then attached Zehntner's red trailer to his truck and pull out of his driveway.

The pilot called the Glades County Sheriff's Office as he followed the thief.

"The gentleman had a plane at several points circling him at close altitude and never thought I guess that somebody might be watching me," Zehntner told NBC2. (Monitoring Desk)

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Apocalypse, Star Wars jar in Maya temple

TIKAL, Guatemala: At the centre of the rebel base where Luke Skywalker took off to destroy the Death Star and save his people from the clutches of Darth Vader, Guatemala is preparing for another momentous event: the end of an age for the Maya.

Deep inside the Guatemalan rainforest stand the ruins of the Maya temples that George Lucas used to film the planet Yavin 4 in the movie "Star Wars," from where Skywalker and his sidekick Han Solo launched their attack on the Galactic Empire's giant space station.

This week, at sunrise on Friday, December 21, an era closes in the Maya Long Count calendar, an event that has been likened by different groups to the end of days, the start of a new, more spiritual age or a good reason to hang out at old Maya temples across Mexico and Central America.

"If it is the end of the world, hopefully Luke will come and blow up that Death Star," said Alex Markovitz, a 24-year-old consultant and Star Wars fan from Philadelphia, looking out over the site of Skywalker's rebel base. "I see why they shot here. It doesn't look real. It looks like an alien planet."

Once at the heart of a conquering civilization in its own right, the ancient city of Tikal is now a pilgrimage site for both hard-core Star Wars fans and enthusiasts of Maya culture eager to discover what exactly the modern interpretations of old lore portend.

In the 1960s, a leading U.S. scholar said the end of the Maya's 13th bak'tun - an epoch lasting some 400 years - could signify an "Armageddon," though many people trekking to the old temples believe it could herald something wonderful.

Discovered in 1848 when locals unearthed human skulls whose teeth were studded with jade jewels, Tikal draws tourists from around the globe. Visitors this week said they felt a powerful presence in the blue skies above them.

"The force is strong here," said Jimena Teijeiro, 35, an Argentine-born self-help blogger. "The world as we know it is coming to an end. We are being propelled to a new age of light, synchronicity and simple wonderment with life."

Maya scholars and astronomers have dismissed the idea the world is on the brink of destruction but mystics and spiritual thrill-seekers have flocked to feed off Tikal's energy. Park guards said they had to throw out 13 naked women who were dancing and chanting around a fire pit near the temples last week.

"Something big is going to happen," said the president of Guatemala's Star Wars fan club, entrepreneur Ricardo Alejos. "The Maya were an incredibly precise people. Something big is going to happen and we'll find out what in a few days."

Surrounded by thick jungle home to jaguars, monkeys and toucans, the view of Yavin 4 from the top of Tikal's Temple Four, known as the temple of the double-headed serpent, has changed little since Lucas filmed here in 1977.

CIVIL WAR

Lucas chose Tikal when he saw a poster of the site at a travel agency in England during the production of the original "Episode IV: A New Hope" film, and sent a crew to Guatemala in March 1977 to shoot during its 36-year civil war.

His team hoisted bulky camera gear and heavy lights to the top of the 210-foot-high (65-metre-high) Temple Four with a pulley system and paid a guard with six-packs of beer to protect the equipment with a shotgun for four nights, locals said.

A year after the shoot, the wooden huts where Lucas' film crew camped were burned to the ground by leftist rebels fighting against a right-wing military government.

Extending for 222 square miles (575 square km) through Guatemala's sweltering north, Tikal is one of the largest pre-Colombian Maya sites and known by some as the New York City of Maya ruins because of its high temples that climb toward the heavens.

The peaks of the limestone structures pierce the dense, green canopy of the jungle and howler monkeys wail at sunrise.

Yavin 4 and the rebel base return to the Star Wars plot in the forthcoming Episode VII, announced in October by the Walt Disney Co, in which Skywalker comes back to the planet to build a Jedi Knight academy. However, fans said that Disney will likely film those scenes in a studio rather than return to Tikal.

The shrines, believed to have been used mainly for worship, also appeared in the 1979 James Bond movie "Moonraker" in which 007 was lured through the jungle to the lair of his enemy Hugo Drax.

Local guides are expecting a rush of visitors this week and the Guatemalan government forecasts a record 235,000 foreign tourists for December. Hotels in Tikal are fully booked.

"There are passionate groups that come," said tour guide Gamaliel Jimenez. "One group told me 'If you don't take us to where they filmed Star Wars, we aren't going to hire you.'"

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Mysticism, Internet fuel Mayan 'myth'

CHICHEN ITZA, Mexico: A few words by an American scholar, a crumbling Mexican monument and the love of a good yarn were all it took to spawn the belief that the world could end this week.

December 21 marks the end of an age in a 5,125 year-old Maya calendar, an event that is variously interpreted as the end of days, the start of a new era or just a good excuse for a party.

Thousands of New Age mystics, spiritual adventurers and canny businessmen are converging on ancient ruins in southern Mexico and Guatemala to find out what will happen.

"No one knows what it will look like on the other side," said Michael DiMartino, 46, a long-haired American who is organizing one of the biggest December 21 celebrations at the Maya temple site of Chichen Itza on the Yucatan peninsula.

It is not the world but "the way we perceive it" that will end, said DiMartino, who pledged his event at ground zero for 2012 acolytes will be a "distilling down of various perspectives into a unified intention for positive transformation, evolution and co-creation of a new way of being."

A mash-up of academic speculation and existential angst seasoned with elements from several world religions, the 2012 phenomenon has been fueled by Hollywood movies and computer games, and relentlessly disseminated by Internet doom-mongers.

Mass hysteria in a Russian prison, a Chinese man building survival pods for doomsday and UFO lovers seeking refuge with aliens in a French mountain village are just some of the reports that have sprung up in the final countdown to December 21.

Robert Bast, a New Zealander living in Melbourne who wrote a book called "Survive 2012" on how to cope with the possible catastrophe, believes the Maya may have sent out a warning.

"The most likely thing for me is a solar storm, but that's not going to kill you straight away. It's more of a long term disaster," said Bast, 47, noting a flu pandemic could also strike the planet. "I feel the world isn't as safe as we think it is. The last couple of generations have had it very cozy."

When dawn breaks on Friday, according to the Maya Long Count calendar, it marks the end of the 13th bak'tun - an epoch lasting some 400 years - and the beginning of the 14th.

This fact would probably have languished in academic obscurity had not a young Maya expert named Michael Coe written in the 1960s that to the ancient Mesoamerican culture the date could herald an "Armageddon" to cleanse humanity.

Since then, the cult of 2012 has snowballed.

Among the sun-bleached pyramids, shaded mangroves and deep cenotes of the Maya heartland, there are hopes December 21 will bring a spiritual re-birth.

Nobody seems quite sure what to expect on Friday, but it has not stopped people getting their hopes up.

"This is the Arab Spring of the spiritual movement," said Geoffrey Ocean Dreyer, a 52-year-old U.S. musician wearing a sombrero and mardi gras beads. "We're going to create world peace. We're going to Jerusalem and we're going to rebuild Solomon's temple."

ANXIETY ATTACKS

The words of Coe, a highly respected Maya scholar, were published in 1966 at the height of the Cold War, stirring fears in a world haunted by the prospect of nuclear holocaust.

Coe could not be reached for comment for this article, but friends and academics who know him insist he never meant to inspire a vision of apocalypse when he committed them to paper.

Stephen Houston, a Maya expert at Brown University in Rhode Island and student of Coe's, said too much has been read into the end of the 13th bak'tun, which was little more than a "dull mathematical declaration" used to bracket dates.

"I see it all as an expression of present day anxiety and not much more than that," Houston said.

Few remaining inscriptions refer to the event, and the best known one is part of a monument recovered from a Maya site in Tabasco state called Tortuguero - much of which was torn down in the 1960s to make way for the construction of a cement factory.

Still, the mix of religion, ancient inscriptions and media-driven speculation about impending doom remains potent.

"I got an email the other day from a mother who was contemplating taking her own life, because she didn't know what was really going to happen, she didn't want her children to live through this ordeal," said David Stuart, a Maya expert at the University of Texas. "We can dismiss it as a kooky idea, which it is, but they're still ideas and they still have power."

U.S. space agency NASA has sought to allay fears of impending catastrophe, noting that "our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012."

Nothing has given the 2012 theories more oxygen in the run-up to the big day than the Internet, noted John Hoopes, a Maya anthropologist at the University of Kansas.

"Computers come straight out of the same people who were smoking pot and protesting at Berkeley and Stanford," he said, referring to U.S. student movements in the 1960s.

"This Maya calendar stuff has been part of hacktivism lore for 40 years, since the beginning, and with every significant change in computer technology, it's gotten another boost."

Many of those gathering in Chichen Itza praised the Internet as a discussion forum and organizing tool for New Age events.

"We don't need leaders now we have the Internet," said Muggy Burton, 66, who had traveled to Mexico from Canada with her 15-year-old, blue-haired granddaughter, Talis Hardy.

The two, who communicate with each other by whistling, plan to live in Mexico for six months, according to Burton, who is going to homeschool Hardy. "It's the end of the world for her, and the beginning of a new one," she added.

MAYA SKEPTICS

Mexico's federal government is not officially marking the phenomenon, but the country's tourism agency has launched a "Mundo Maya 2012" website with a countdown to December 21.

Up to 200,000 people are expected to descend on Chichen Itza alone for the night of December 20.

Among modern descendants of the Maya, the idea it could all come to an end on Friday generally raises a wry smile - but they are happy to play along if it makes money.

"It's a psychic epidemic," said Miguel Coral, 56, a cigar salesman in Merida, a colonial town and capital of Yucatan state. "It's all about business, but that's fine. It helps our country. I think it's excellent we've exported this idea."

Nearby, workers built a pyramid of spray-painted polystyrene blocks for the opening of the town's Maya festival.

"If people who believe in this joke want to come, let them," said Jose May, a Merida tourism official of Maya descent. "Nobody here believes that. Those people were sold an idea."

Hazy rumors have helped feed the sense of anticipation.

A few hours' drive south of Merida in the remote Maya town of Xul, which means "the end," media reports began circulating as early as 2008 that a group of Italians were readying themselves for impending doom by building apocalypse-proof bunkers.

Today, the settlement dubbed the "end of the world resort" is open for business as "Eco Spa Las Aguilas."

"There's no truth in it," said deputy manager Andrea Podesta, 45, referring to speculation it was a cult.

"Some people came here, took some hidden photos, and published some very unpleasant articles about us," he added, noting the glistening new spa was booked up well into 2013.

Inside, a group of elderly Italians, mostly dressed in white, were watching the path of an asteroid on a giant screen. A black-and-white image of Christ's face hung from the wall and a large stone statue of a robed woman greeted visitors.

Whatever lies in store for the planet, even Maya academics who have fought to play down the hype surrounding the passing of another 24 hours feel there could still be some surprises.

"I think there may be some mischief on December 21 because the whole world is watching," said Hoopes in Kansas, citing rumors hacktivist group Anonymous was planning a stunt. "It's a very fertile opportunity for a tremendous prank."

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It's OK to crank up music: Florida SC

TALLAHASSEE: Motorist Richard Catalano's five-year quest to crank up Justin Timberlake tunes on his way to work won the blessing of the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday.

In a unanimous ruling, the state's highest court affirmed a pair of lower-court opinions that a 2007 state law prohibiting loud music while driving violated the US Constitution's First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of expression.

Catalano received a $73 ticket in 2007 for violating the newly enacted law that prohibited motorists from playing music that is "plainly audible" 25 feet away. Motorists traveling by hospitals, schools and churches were subjected to even stricter standards.

Catalano, a Clearwater lawyer, challenged the law as subjective, arguing that determining whether music was too loud was in the ears of the beholder.

Further, the law provides listeners with fewer protections than drivers of vehicles emitting political or commercial speech, who have more explicit protections under the US Constitution.

Calling the law overly broad, Justice Jorge Labarga wrote that noncommercial speech was also protected. Though rejecting the notion that the law was too vague, Labarga said the state showed no compelling interest in muzzling audiophiles who also prefer to feel their favorite music.

"The right to play music, including amplified music, in public fora is protected under the First Amendment," Labarga wrote.

A message left with Catalano was not immediately returned Thursday.

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Once-in-a-lifetime 12/12/12

Monitoring Desk
NEW YORK: From India to Las Vegas, superstitious lovebirds and numbers geeks are revelling in a once-in-a-lifetime Wednesday event: the date 12/12/12.

Sure, it might be just another set of numbers for some. But unlike the past 11 years, this will be the last such triple date for almost a century — until January 1, 2101.That means one last chance for couples to get hitched on such an easy-to-remember wedding date.

Those tying the knot at the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel have 40 different 12/12/12 wedding packages to choose from. Six of those options include an Elvis impersonator. Others include pirate, gangster and gothic themes.

“Besides a traditional wedding, the most popular is Elvis in a pink Caddy, where Elvis drives the couple down the aisle in a pink Cadillac,” general manager Brian Mills, who doubles as an Elvis impersonator, was quoted as saying by CNN.

From midnight to midnight, more than 100 couples will walk or ride down the aisle at Viva Las Vegas. That’s more than 10 times the number of couples who get hitched on a typical Wednesday in December, Mills said.

“The charismatic and fun-loving couple that gets married on a 12 day is lucky and balanced, but seeking constant goals to achieve,” the chapel’s website explains. “The ‘go-getting’ 1 and the ‘sensitive’ 2 make this a very balanced number.

“1 is the vibration of ‘new beginnings’ and starting things afresh. The 2 vibration is about seeking ‘balance’ and that’s certainly something that many will struggle with — balancing the bank balance, balancing the food and beverage intake, balancing the emotions ... balancing in every way.”

For professional numerologists, 12/12/12 isn’t just a cool repetition of digits or a lucky day for lovers. It’s a fantastic day to start a new business venture or make a significant purchase, Indian numerologist Swetta Jumaani said.

According to numerology, “12” is considered a “three” number because the digits add up to three. And three is a very good number because it corresponds with the largest planet, Jupiter, in addition to wealth. (In case you’re wondering, the No. 1 planet is the sun, and the No. 2 planet is the moon.)

“If you’re in a business of trading money, or the buying and selling of anything, tomorrow (Wednesday) is a good day to make investments,” Jumaani said Tuesday. “If you want to buy something — property, if you want to buy gold — it’d be a good day.” But Wednesday is a terrible day to wear black, she said.

“Black is a very inauspicious colour. Something bad always happens,” Jumaani said. Halfway across the world in Alabama, Kiam Moriya will turn 12 on 12/12/12 — at exactly 12:12 pm., AL.com reported.

“It’s like one minute out of a whole lifetime,” Kiam told the news site. “You know, it’s all 12s.”Wednesday also marks a milestone for the Vatican, where Pope Benedict will send his first official tweet to the world.

It’s unclear whether the pope chose 12/12/12 for the digits or for some other reason. But more than 600,000 followers are eagerly waiting to see what guidance @Pontifex will offer in 140 characters or less.

Despite the weddings, superstitions and inaugural papal tweet, underwhelmed Twitter users griped about all the brouhaha.“ Ladies and gentlemen, it’s 12.12.12 and...... Nothing happened,” Aazief Khalid of Malaysia tweeted Wednesday.And nothing like it will happen again for almost 100 years.

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Is December 21 end of the world?

CANCUN: Gonzalo Alvarez, who had just arrived in Cancun for two weeks of revelry linked to a major milestone in the Mayan calendar, seemed reasonably cheerful for a man about to swallowed up by the Apocalypse.

"We came to party and to get ready for the beginning of a new era," said the 39-year old architect, as he gathered his luggage from a baggage carousel at Cancun's airport.

Alvarez had traveled to Mexico from Florida to witness firsthand the beginning of a new Mayan era on December 21, 2012, which will be marked with celebrations throughout southern Mexico and Central America.

Mexico is one of five countries preparing to observe the date, which marks the end of a more than 5,000-year era, according to the Mayan "Long Count" calendar, which began in 3114 BC.

For many people in this region, December 21 will be a date for celebration.

The start of the new Mayan calendar also is big business in this region, with tourism offices in no fewer than five countries aggressively promoting the date.

Millions of tourists are expected to flood into the region for celebrations that will include fireworks, concerts and other spectacles held at more than three dozen archaeological sites.

In addition to Mexico, celebrations will be held in Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras, and at least two heads of state -- President Otto Perez of Guatemala and President Porfirio Lobo of Honduras -- have confirmed that they will take part in festivities in their respective countries.

But while some prepare for the end of the Mayan calendar, others fear with trepidation the date will usher in the end of the world.

Some New Age spiritualists are convinced of a December 21 "doomsday" foretold by Mayan hieroglyphs -- at least according to some interpretations.

The prophesy they refer to is found in an ancient Mayan monument in Tortuguero, Mexico, and is believed to have been left by a Mayan ruler.

The Mayan leader, fresh from defeat on the battlefield, declared that the military setback was but one event in a larger cycle of time that would end in 2012.

Many scholars say the prophesy was misinterpreted, however, and was not meant to suggest the end of all time, but simply the end of the old Mayan calendar and the beginning of a new one.

Indigenous experts scoff at the faulty and sensational misreadings of the Mayan calendars.

"The Mayans had a cyclical concept of time, not one that ever focused on the end of the world," Mexican archaeologist Jose Romero told AFP.

Romero based his conclusions on his studies of the carved stone known as the Tortuguero Monument, which now is broken into six pieces divided between Mexico and the United States, including one piece which is housed in a museum in New York.

Nevertheless, the current doomsday panic has spread far beyond Meso-America.

The trend has been fueled in part by movies like "2012" by Roland Emmerich and books like the novel "The Mayan Testament" by Steve Alten that have cashed in on the fad.

Romero blames Hollywood for a rather fantastical interpretation of the hieroglyphs "without much knowledge of the facts" of Mayan history and culture.

Meanwhile, the belief that the world will end on December 21 has traveled to the far reaches of the globe.

In the Russian city of Tomsk, for example, a company is selling an "Apocalypse kit" that includes food and medicine with a bottle of vodka -- or tequila if the customer prefers.

In the French Pyrenees, authorities have temporarily closed access to a mountain in the southwest of the country to avoid throngs of people fleeing from apocalypse.

Indigenous leaders in Mexico, critical of the way the date is being commercialized, have convened a Mayan Peoples Council to focus more on the cultural significance of the new era.

"Like native cultures throughout the world, we want to maintain our cultural identity and preserve our ways of speaking, thinking and seeing the cosmos," said Mary Coba, a tribal council representative.

"Above all, we want to realize the possibility that, wherever we live, we are respected, and live free of discrimination, violence and poverty."

She said native people have prepared dignified observances for the new Mayan era, and that ceremonies marking the date would be simple but profound.

"There are no real requirements," she said. "We just ask that people arrive before five in the morning wearing white clothing and carrying a white candle." (AFP)

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Father kills son in accidental shooting

WASHINGTON: An American man getting into his truck while holding a gun accidentally shot and killed his seven-year-old son Saturday, police said.

The tragedy occurred in East Lackawannock Township, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

The father was identified as Joseph Loughrey, 44, and his son, who was shot in the chest, was named Craig, according to a statement from the Pennsylvania State Police.

The father and son were getting back into their truck after visiting a gun store called Twigs Reloading Den.

Loughrey told police he had emptied the magazine of his handgun but did not realize there was still a bullet in the chamber, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported.

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Smartphones to light up Sydney show

 
SYDNEY: Sydney's world-famous New Year's Eve fireworks will go interactive with a smartphone-powered light show, officials announced Thursday, with ambassador Kylie Minogue calling on the city to embrace.

The light show, described by City of Sydney officials as a "world-first", will run through an app on iPhone and Android smartphones that will illuminate the screens with colour at scheduled intervals leading up to midnight.

The city is hoping to attract more than one million people to the harbour foreshore to witness the fireworks, and organisers want the crowds to hold their phones aloft to form a synchronised wave of colour.

"In a city of great diversity we come together at New Year's Eve to embrace the future and celebrate all that we are and the potential that tomorrow holds," Minogue, the event's creative ambassador, said in a video message for Thursday's official launch.

Minogue said the theme for the 2012 celebrations, Embrace, was about "acceptance, tolerance, fun and above all love".

"This year I want everyone to embrace during the 9pm family fireworks and the midnight fireworks," she said.

"Whether it's embracing new ideas, change and opportunities, or just giving a big hug to your family and friends, it's something everyone can get involved in."

App users will also be able to submit a word to be projected onto the pylons of the Harbour Bridge, which is typically the centrepiece of an evening's pyrotechnics.

The Sydney fireworks kick off global New Year's celebrations and are seen by billions of people worldwide. (AFP)

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White Santa Claus, Black Pete, & racism

BRUSSELS/AMSTERDAM: The Netherlands and Belgium are two countries that pride themselves on progressive laws and open societies, but critics say they are stuck in the dark ages when it comes to depictions of Santa Claus and his helpers.

Saint Nicholas, or "Sinterklaas" in Dutch, brings presents to children on December 5 in the Netherlands and on December 6 in Belgium, and is always accompanied by at least one assistant dressed in 17th century costume who has a blackened face.

The tradition has been difficult for Dutch and Belgian people to explain abroad, where "Zwarte Piet" (Black Pete) is viewed with either outrage or ridicule.

Dutch pub "De Hems" in London opts for blue face paint instead. Sinterklaas celebrations in western Canada organized by the Dutch community were called off last year and former Dutch colony Suriname has said Zwarte Piet is not welcome this year because of concerns over racism.

For most Dutch and Belgians Zwarte Piet is an innocuous fairytale character who assists the popular Sinterklaas and hands out candy to children, but some there too argue he is a harmful stereotype best done away with.

"It was about six years ago when my mum came home from work and phoned me," performance artist Quinsy Gario, who was born on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao, told Reuters.

"On the phone I could hear her trembling. She was upset, livid, and said someone at work had called her Zwarte Piet."

In 2011, Gario decided to protest against the tradition by standing with a "Zwarte Piet is racism" T-shirt in a crowd watching a Sinterklaas parade in the Dutch town of Dordrecht. His subsequent arrest made headlines in Dutch media.

Film by a bystander showed three police officers pinning him to the ground and kneeing him in the back. Gario also said he had pepper spray sprayed in his eyes.

"I spent six and a half hours in a jail cell for freedom of expression," he said.

BUSINESS EMBRACE

Nevertheless, Zwarte Piet remains popular in 2012, and his traditional arrival by boat with Sinterklaas a few weeks ahead of the actual celebration was witnessed by thousands of starry-eyed children in Brussels and Amsterdam.

Sinterklaas, the presents he brings, as well as the traditional food and candy sold around this time are also good business for companies such as toy stores and supermarkets.

"Families with children are a very important customer group of ours. How would you explain to your children that Zwarte Piet is no longer allowed?," said Chief Operating Officer Sander van der Laan of Albert Heijn, the Netherlands' largest supermarket.

Dutch anti-discrimination organisation RADAR said that it would talk to retail organizations in the coming months about how to make Zwarte Piet less racist.

"We believe that you have to go to Piet, not Zwarte Piet, to leave the celebration intact but get rid of the stereotypes," said Margriet Maris, a lawyer at RADAR.

Formal complaints are still quite rare. Belgium's centre of equal opportunities said that of more than 4,000 complaints it received a year only one or two were related to Zwarte Piet.

RADAR said it had received about 25 related complaints this year, still only a fraction of the 1,000 it dealt with overall.

The tradition of St Nicholas exists in other European countries, including Austria and Germany. But he is only accompanied by black helpers in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Celebrations were depicted on paintings of 17th century Dutch artists Jan Steen and Richard Brakenburg, but Zwarte Piet only made his first appearance in a mid-19th century illustrated book by Dutch teacher Jan Schenkman.

Entitled "St Nicholas and his servant," it showed a short, dark-faced man dressed in a Moorish costume a few steps behind an imposing white man with a white beard and bishop's outfit.

"There's a theory that says that important people had a black servant, it was a status symbol. Sinterklaas was an important man, so he needed one too," said John Helsloot a researcher at the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam.

"Somebody who dresses up as Zwarte Piet is not a racist but it is a fact that he's part of a tradition which gives a stereotypical, racist image of black people," he said.

Pressure on Zwarte Piet seems to be increasing in 2012 and even well-known conservative blog "Geen Stijl" (No Style) has written that it's time for Sinterklaas to find a new helper.

"It's 2012, people," wrote GeenStijl in a post that attracted much attention. "We're better than Zwarte Piet." (Reuters)

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More than 100 graves robbed in Benin

COTONOU: Tomb raiders have dug up more than 100 graves at a cemetery in Benin since Saturday for what authorities suspect is a black-market trade in human organs and skulls for voodoo ritual fetishes.

The incident is the most serious case of grave-robbing in the West African state, the world capital of voodoo where most of the country's 9 million residents practice a benign form of the official religion.

Authorities in Dangbo, a village 10 km (6 miles) from the capital Porto-Novo, began an investigation after a mason working at the cemetery said he spotted several masked men digging up the graves, from which organs and skulls were removed.

"The desecration of graves is about money in this region," said Joseph Afaton, director of the cemetery. "It is for sacrifices, or for bewitching."

Body parts of humans and rare animals are prized by some people in central Africa for their supposed supernatural powers, and are used in occult ceremonies. Traffickers often obtain human remains from grave robbers, but a recent spate of killings has also been linked to the gruesome trade.

Authorities in Cameroon in September arrested five people suspected of trafficking human body parts after they were discovered at a checkpoint carrying a severed human head. (Reuters)

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WW II pigeon code discovered after 70yrs

LONDON: A World War Two code found strapped to the leg of a dead pigeon stuck in a chimney for the last 70 years may never be broken, a British intelligence agency said on Friday.

The bird was found by a man in Surrey, southern England while he was cleaning out a disused fireplace at his home earlier this month.

The message, a series of 27 groups of five letters each, was inside a red canister attached to the pigeon's leg bone and has stumped code-breakers from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's main electronic intelligence-gathering agency.

"Without access to the relevant codebooks and details of any additional encryption used, it will remain impossible to decrypt," a GCHQ spokesman said.

The message is consistent with the use of code books to translate messages which were then encrypted, according to GCHQ, one of Britain's three intelligence agencies.

However without knowing who the sender, "Sjt W Stot", is or the intended destination, given as "X02", it is extremely difficult to decipher the code, GCHQ said.

Although the code books and encryption systems used should have been destroyed, there is a small chance that one exists somewhere.

A spokesman for GCHQ said it was "disappointing" that the message brought back by a "brave" carrier pigeon cannot be read.

He added: "It is a tribute to the skills of the wartime code-makers that, despite working under severe pressure, they devised a code that was undecipherable both then and now."

The Curator of the Pigeon Museum at Bletchley Park, north of London, Britain's main code-breaking centre during World War Two, is also trying to trace the identity numbers of the pigeon found in the message, according to GCHQ.

Pigeons were used extensively in the war to carry vital information to Britain from mainland Europe. Flying at speeds of up to 80 km per hour, they can travel distances of up to 1,000 km but were vulnerable to hungry hawks and bored soldiers who used to take pot-shots at them as they flew overhead. (Reuters)

 

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Woman charged for "loving" skeleton

STOCKHOLM: A woman in Sweden has been charged with engaging in sexual activities with a human skeleton and could face jail time for disturbing the peace of the dead, a Swedish prosecutor said.


Police found a full human skeleton, skulls and a box containing other human bones by chance after responding to a call saying a shot had been fired from her flat in the city of Gothenburg.

They also discovered CD-ROMs titled "my necrophilia" and "my first experience", and photographs of the woman engaging in various sexual activities with a skeleton, a court document on the prosecutor's website showed.

It said the woman had handled the bones in a "shameful" and "unethical" manner.

"She is interested in the dead," Prosecutor Kristina Ehrenborg-Staffas told Reuters. "She has pictures of morgues, churches and graveyards."

The 37-year-old unemployed woman has also been accused of selling human bones to an artist in Uppsala in eastern Sweden this past summer.

The woman has said she bought the bones, which were around 50 years old or more and from different parts of the world, over the Internet for historical purposes and says that it is not her in the photographs.

Her trial will take place next week and she faces a maximum two years in prison if found guilty. (Reuters)

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Whale worship a way of life for Vietnam

LY SON ISLAND: At a colourful temple next to the turquoise sea off Ly Son Island, weather-beaten Vietnamese fishermen offer up their prayers to an unusual god -- "Ca Ong" or Mr Whale.

Before setting sail on a month-long voyage, Nguyen Hoang Loi makes a pilgrimage to the ornately decorated Tan Temple, which houses the remains of two sacred giant whales.

"Praying to the whale will help us if we encounter trouble at sea," the 45-year-old said as he and his crew prepared to depart from Ly Son, an island of 21,500 people off the coast of central Vietnam.

Up and down Vietnam's 3,200 kilometres (2,000 miles) of coastline, fishing communities worship giant whales, which they view as their guardian angels -- a religious phenomenon of a type that experts say is unique to the country.

"If fishermen encounter a sudden storm when fishing and don't know where to shelter, then they pray to Mr Whale to help," Ly Son Island's whale priest Tran Ngo Xuong told.

"The whale will appear beside their boat, helping them through the dangerous moments," said Xuong, a 79-year-old retired fisherman who now acts as a custodian at Tan Temple.

After an elaborate prayer ceremony to appease the whale spirits, Xuong unseals two dimly lit rooms behind Tan Temple's ornate altar piece, where the bones of two giant whales are stored.

The whales -- which weighed between 50 and 70 tons when alive and were both more than 20 metres long -- beached in separate incidents on Ly Son's shores over 100 years ago, Xuong said.

The creatures were so big that hundreds of people would normally have struggled to haul them in, but after many prayers and rituals, just a few dozen islanders managed to drag them ashore with the help of a favourable tide, he said.

Beached whales are given traditional Vietnamese funerals -- they are buried for between five and 10 years, and then their bones are excavated and kept above ground.

Whale oil is separated off and stored in huge ceramic containers to be used during ritual cleaning of the whale bones on their death anniversary.

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Indians arrested for Facebook post

MUMBAI: Indian police said Monday they had arrested a woman for criticising on Facebook the total shutdown of Mumbai after the death of politician Bal Thackeray, as well as a friend who "liked" the comment.

The pair were due to appear in court later in the day charged under the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act, said Police Inspector Shrikant Pingle in the town of Palghar north of Mumbai.

"The two women will be produced in a local court later this afternoon. They are being charged for hurting religious sentiments," he told.

They were arrested on Sunday, when a huge funeral procession attended by hundreds of thousands of supporters was held in Mumbai for Thackeray, the divisive founder of the rightwing Shiv Sena party.

News of his death on Saturday afternoon brought the city to a virtual standstill for the weekend, with businesses shutting and taxis going off the roads, amid fears of violence by Thackeray's supporters.

While his followers mourned, others were angered at the hold Shiv Sena exerted over India's financial capital. The 21-year-old arrested for her Facebook post was among many who aired opinions on social networking sites.

"Her comment said people like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a 'bandh' (city shutdown) for that," Police Inspector Uttam Sonawane told the Mumbai Mirror.

Despite widespread concerns, there were no reports of unrest in Mumbai itself on the day of the funeral of Thackeray, one of India's most polarising party leaders who was widely accused of stoking ethnic and religious violence.

India in recent months has shown sensitivity to criticism of its politicians, sparking criticism in turn from freedom of speech campaigners.

In September campaigners were outraged by the arrest in Mumbai on charges of sedition of a cartoonist for his anti-corruption drawings. The charges were later dropped.

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PhotoBot takes pictures on its own

LONDON: PhotoBot is a tiny robotic camera, designed and built by a British digital product designer, which takes pictures on its own.

The PhotoBot is unique from the rest because of its ability to scan a given area, locate people through its ultrasonic sensor, and automatically take pictures of them while instantly displaying the photos on a tiny screen.

"This automation allows people to enjoy an occasion, such as a party, in the knowledge that the occasion is being documented photographically without the need for them to do it themselves," the product designer Tommy Dykes said.

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