Miners to be charged with murder after police kill 34 miners

Two weeks ago, police in South Africa shot dead 34 striking miners at a protest. Now, some of those who remain will be charged with their colleagues' murder.

National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesman Frank Lesenyego said they would all face murder charges - including those who were unarmed or were at the back of the crowd.
"This is under common law, where people are charged with common purpose in a situation where there are suspects with guns or any weapons and they confront or attack the police and a shooting takes place and there are fatalities," he said.

Ann Romney lectures Latinos to "get past some of their biases"

From ABC:

“It really is a message that would resonate well if they could just get past some of their biases that have been there from the Democratic machines that have made us look like we don’t care about this community,” [Mrs.] Romney said. “And that is not true. We very much care about you and your families and the opportunities that are there for you and your families.”

I especially loved this little ending to the ABC article:

She was introduced by her youngest son, Craig. He’s fluent in Spanish and often campaigns for his father in this state and has even starred in Spanish language radio and television ads for the campaign.

Know why Craig speaks Spanish? Because he went on a mormon mission to Chile in an effort to convert those heathen catholics to the one true cult, mormonism. That's why he speaks Spanish. That's how much the Romneys respect Latinos.

The repugican platform: Privatize education with vouchers, push abstinence-only programs

The repugican cabal has revealed their new party platform and in addition to attacking women's rights, the repugican cabal plans to "reform" education.

More

Did you know ...

A repugican coven thinks minority births "not a good thing"

Todd Akin does not think breast milk cures homosexuality, like we reported yesterday. (That was a satirical send up, folks) But he believes a lot of other crazy crap

That 30% of repugicans want someone other than Romney

'It was a dark and stormy night': the winners of the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest

Romney, Ryan and the post-truth age

I used to rent an old boat for the day and explore the Mississippi just north of St. Louis.
Once the rental guy warned me the anchor on the boat wasn't quite right- but said just to call him if I had any trouble. I soon found out for myself when I became stuck near the banks of a forested island. The river was high and fast moving. I couldn't get a signal to call the marina, but finally a call went though. Expecting the owner to come out and help, he instead suggested I dive down and free the anchor - then the call was dropped. Nice.

A sense of calm determination fell over me when I realized I was on my own. I wasn't about to dive to the bottom of that deadly river but using my own strength eventually I freed the anchor.

A similar feeling has fallen over me as I've witnessed the repugican cabal come completely untethered from the truth.

Watching my countrymen gleefully repeat lies without shame, and when called out for the lies, in the case of the Romney campaign, defiantly proclaim: "We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers."

What we're seeing is disturbing and radical. Sure Karl Rove was a master of deception during the shrub years, but his game was manipulating the gullible base. Now the base, once thought of as sheltered church ladies, are as calloused and cynical as a lineup of old hookers. They need no manipulation - they're joyful co-conspirators.

The morally righteous party of "values" has officially and without shame said to hell with truth.

Seasoned journalists and political observers alike are watching this election cycle with jaws agape. Romney, Ryan, and Boehner all keep repeating the lie about Obama removing the work requirement from welfare recipients. Paul Ryan outrageously continues to blame Obama for the 2008 closure of a GM plant, when of course the shrub was still in office.

The hatred of [insert Democratic president here] has convinced repugicans to sell their souls en masse in order to win. It's an amazing and historic spectacle. The problem for them is that the Devil is not known for keeping promises. The problem for the rest of us is how to function in a post-truth environment when occasionally the crazy people are going to win the election.

I've never voted repugican and was unlikely to start, but it was comforting to think that, however extreme, they at least believed in something.  Not any more.

The past six months have revealed how cheap and empty their leaders and institutions are. Serial adulterer Newt "Open Marriage" Gingrich is their "family values" guy. The cults tell their flocks to not worry about the poor and instead focus on repugican politics. Their political discourse has been further monetized.  And, appropriately, the greasy fast food bag has become the celebrated symbol of their moral compass.

Deserved or not, there's often been the perception that the repugicans were the extreme-but-responsible grown-ups in the room. While we're out exploring, they could be counted on to hold down the marina.

This campaign has put that notion finally to rest.

When the anchor gets stuck, they're not going to help, even though they're the ones who got it stuck in the first place.

We're the only adults here. It's up to us, and us alone, to lead.

Bloomberg News all but calls Paul Ryan's speech a total lie

Devastating analysis from Bloomberg News of Paul Ryan's speech the other night.  None of the main points were true.  Not what he said about the stimulus, Medicare, the budget, nothing.

Every time Paul Ryan attacked Obama in his speech, he lied

Paul Ryan gave his keynote address at the repugican convention, and the fact-checkers are finding that some of the only times that Ryan told the truth were when he was NOT attacking President Obama.  When Ryan DID attack Obama, his biggest anti-Obama zingers were all lies.

Don't take my word for it.  The title of the Associated Press article on Ryan's speech is the following:

FACT CHECK: RYAN TAKES FACTUAL SHORTCUTS IN SPEECH

All caps, even.  Factcheck.org concurs.

Next, let's hear from Politifact - note how the truths are about things that aren't attacks, but the lies are from direct attacks against Democrats:

First the innocuous truths....

Now the lies:

ABC on the plant that shut down - it actually shut down in December of 2008, before Obama was sworn in as President.

THE FACTS: The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took office

This one is particularly egregious since the Romney people have been using this example for days and already got fact checked on it - but they didn't care, they still included it as Paul Ryan's top zinger. A total lie.

AP has even more on the GM plant lie.  You see, Obama's eventual auto bailout, that Paul Ryan opposed, saved GM.  So Paul Ryan is criticizing President Obama for something Obama didn't do, and something that Paul Ryan would have done - i.e., let the plant die.

THE FACTS: The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took office and well before he enacted a more robust auto industry bailout that rescued GM and Chrysler and allowed the majority of their plants - though not the Janesville facility - to stay in operation. Ryan himself voted for an auto bailout under the shrub that was designed to help GM, but he was a vocal critic of the one pushed through by Obama that has been widely credited with revitalizing both GM and Chrysler.

ABC on the Medicare lie:

Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee, using the money for deficit reduction. And the cuts do not affect Medicare recipients directly, but rather reduce payments to hospitals, health insurance plans and other service providers.

In addition, Ryan's own plan to remake Medicare would squeeze the program's spending even more than the changes Obama made.

AP agrees:

THE FACTS: Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee

ABC has more, this time on Ryan's lies about the stimulus:

RYAN: "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal."

THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds

AP agrees:

THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds shortly after Congress approved the $800 billion plan

What's more - not only did Ryan try to carve out some of the stimulus for his own constituents, but the notion that the stimulus only went to the political cronies is interesting since one of those political cronies spoke right before Ryan at the convention - the repugican convention speaker received over $200,000 in stimulus monies.

And another from ABC:

RYAN: Obama "created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way and then did exactly nothing."

THE FACTS: It's true that Obama hasn't heeded his commission's recommendations, but Ryan's not the best one to complain. He was a member of the commission and voted against its final report.

Ryan has a long history of criticizing Obama for things he did. Such as Medicare - Ryan's budget includes the same savings from Medicare that he is attacking Obama for.

ThinkProgress catches two more lies in their live blog of the speech:

10:44: Obama hasn’t amassed more debt than all past presidents combined, as Ryan claimed. The New York Times beaks down the math: “The national debt stood at $10.626 trillion on the day that President Obama took office. It now stands slightly above $15 trillion.”

10:42: Ryan just brought up a “downgraded America.” It was his party that held the debt ceiling hostage, causing America’s creditors to lose faith and downgrade the country. In fact, the ratings agency repeatedly blamed repugicans for refusing to raise taxes.

Fact Checkers Didn't Get in the Way of Paul Ryan's Convention Speech

Paul Ryan pledged Wednesday that if he and his running mate Mitt Romney were elected president, they would usher in an ethic of responsibility.

The Wisconsin congressman and repugican vice presidential candidate repeatedly chided President Barack Obama for blaming the jobs and housing crises on his predecessor, saying that his habit of "forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago -– isn’t it about time he assumed responsibility?"

Ryan then noted that Obama, while campaigning for president, promised that a GM plant in Wisconsin would not shut down. "That plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight," Ryan said.

Except Obama didn't promise that. And the plant closed in December 2008 -- while the shrub was pretending to be president.

It was just one of several striking and demonstrably misleading elements of Ryan's much-anticipated acceptance speech. And it comes just days after Romney pollster Neil Newhouse warned, defending the campaign's demonstrably false ads claiming Obama removed work requirements from welfare, "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."

Ryan, for his part, slammed the president for not supporting a deficit commission report without mentioning that he himself had voted against it, helping to kill it.

He also made a cornerstone of his argument the claim that Obama "funneled" $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare. But he didn't mention that his own budget plan relies on those very same savings.

Ryan also put responsibility for Standard & Poor's downgrade of U.S. government debt at Obama's doorstep. But he didn't mention that S&P itself, in explaining its downgrade, referred to the debt ceiling standoff. That process of raising the debt ceiling was only politicized in the last Congress, driven by House repugicans, led in the charge by Paul Ryan.

The credit rater also said it worried that repugicans would never agree to tax increases. “We have changed our assumption on [revenue] because the majority of repugicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues,” S&P wrote.

Jodie Layton, a convention goer from Utah watching the Ryan speech, said she was blown away by the vice presidential candidate. But she said she was surprised to hear that after his speech about taking responsibility, he'd pinned a Bush-era plant closing on Obama.

"It closed in December 2008?" she asked, making sure she heard a HuffPost reporter's question right. After a long pause, she said, "It's happening a lot on both sides. It's to be expected."

Ryan has referenced the GM plant before, and his attack was debunked by the Detroit News, which called it inaccurate. "In fact, Obama made no such promise and the plant halted production in December 2008, when the shrub was squatting in the Oval office," Detroit News reporter David Sherpardson wrote earlier this month. "Obama did speak at the plant in February 2008, and suggested that a government partnership with automakers could keep the plant open, but made no promises as Ryan suggested."

After the speech, CNN's political commentators focused mostly on Ryan's misstatements, demonstrating the degree to which they were evident.

Top Obama adviser David Axelrod jumped on the GM factory claim. "Again, Ryan blames Obama for a GM plant that closed under the shrub. But then, they did say they wouldn't 'let fact checkers get in the way.'"

Ryan, however, appears to have made the calculation that the misleading won't hurt him with voters. He might be right. CNN's David Gergen, while acknowledging some "misstatements" in Ryan's address, suggested that pundits focus elsewhere. "But let's not forget that this was a speech about big ideas," he told his audience.

The repugican platform promotes national security pork for repugican Rep. Mica

Smooth one, repugicans.

Not only are they promoting pork for their own, but they're building it right into the repugican platform.

Even better, it's at the expense of our national security.

The repugican platform includes a plank promoting the pork of influential repugican Congressman John Mica, who's been trying to privatize the TSA for a while now on behalf of a corporate campaign contributor in his district.

Attacking federal workers is nothing new for the repugicans, but they have yet to explain how a privatized TSA workforce will do anything other than shovel money into the campaign coffers of Congressman Mica and his well-to-do corporate constituent.

A lot of Americans are frustrated or fed up with the TSA policies, but none of those policies change if the TSA is privatized. If anything, the problem gets worse because instead of being (somewhat) accountable to the public via our elected representatives, under the repugican plan the TSA will only be accountable to its shareholders and business owners.  And as bad as government can sometimes be, the private sector is usually worse (e.g., you can complain about Medicare problems to your congressman, who do you complain about Blue Cross to?)

Again, how does privatizing help address the problems that annoy Americans about the TSA?  It doesn't.  It simply helps repugican Congressman John Mica get pork for a constituent at the potential expense of our safety.

The platform calls for the privatization of airport security screening, a role now undertaken by the Transportation Security Administration.

The platform characterizes the TSA as a "massive bureaucracy" made up of employees "who seem to be accountable to no one for the way they treat travelers."

The agency, created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has long drawn the ire of lawmakers, both for mismanagement of agency programs as well as the often inconvenient screening process.

A massive bureaucracy that would only answers to a Congressman Mica is not very comforting.  Cong. Mica apparently agrees with Mitt Romney that corporations are people too.  Too bad Mica and Romney don't have the same respect for actual people.

Treat the repugican party platform as one big pork opportunity is no way to treat something as serious as national security.  Then again, when were the repugicans ever serious about national security?  Only one President actual caught Osama bin Laden - actually tried - and that's the Democratic President Barack Obama.

Racist assault against black CNN camerawoman at repugican convention

Via MIJE:

Carroll, who agreed to be named for the first time, said she does not want her situation to be used for political advantage. "This situation could happen to me at the Democratic convention or standing on the street corner. Racism is a global issue," she said by telephone from Tampa.

Unlikely. The repugicans routinely bash the media, portray them as just as commie pinko as they portray the Democrats. She was assaulted the same reason media have been assaulted at other repugican election events - and the same reason that government officials are the target of violence in this country - because repugicans feed the hatred of the media and our government.

Carroll said no one took the names of the attendees who threw peanuts at her Tuesday on the convention floor and told her, "This is what we feed animals." She alerted fellow camera operators, producers and CNN security. The head of the delegation — she was not certain of the state — told her the perpetrators must have been alternates, not delegates.

Nice of the repugican cabal not to take the incident seriously.

But Carroll, 34, said that as an Alabama native, she was not surprised. "This is Florida, and I'm from the Deep South," she said. "You come to places like this, you can count the black people on your hand. They see us doing things they don't think I should do."

Carroll noted of the repugican convention, "There are not that many black women there."

Bingo.

The mormons baptized Obama's deceased mother in June of 2008

From Jake Tapper:

The cult of jesus christ of latter-day saints confirmed Tuesday afternoon that someone improperly, posthumously baptized the late mother of President Obama into the mormon cult.

Last June 4 -- the day after then-Sen. Obama secured enough delegates to win the Democratic presidential nominee -- someone had the president's mother Stanley Ann Dunham, who died in 1995 of cancer, baptized.

On June 11, she received the sacrament.

The White House had no comment.

The baptism and sacrament, which appear on FamilySearch.org, the LDS Church's genealogical site, were first reported by John Aravosis at Americablog.

The mormons, however, did have a comment:

The mormon cult spokeswoman Kim Farah said that "the offering of baptism to our deceased ancestors is a sacred practice to us and it is counter to cult policy for a cult member to submit names for baptism for persons to whom they are not related. The cult is looking into the circumstances of how this happened and does not yet have all the facts. However, this is a serious matter and we are treating it as such."

Yeah, I'm sure no one at mormon headquarters noticed that the woman's husband was named Barack Hussein Obama. She just "happened" to be baptized 13 years after her death, five months before the presidential election. All a big unfortunate coincidence.

Yeah. Um, what to say? That they even have a practice that allows posthumous baptism is disturbing enough. Counter to chult policy? Really? Was it counter to church policy when the mormons kept baptizing Holocaust victims even though they were repeatedly -- for years -- asked to stop. Sounds like lying for the lord.

To be fair, last year, the mormons were way too busy trying to pass the anti-gay Prop. 8 in California to worry about anything as mundane as baptizing the dead mother of the Democratic nominee for president (or anyone else's dead relatives.)

And, any comment from the catholic cult leaders, who cozy up to the mormons to get money for anti-gay efforts, on how they feel about dead catholics being baptized?

This is really sick and very twisted.

The mormons baptize Anne Frank AGAIN, for the ninth time

Now that the Romney campaign is arguing that Mitt Romney's mormonism is a reason to vote for him, let's have an honest discussion about what the mormons believe and do.  And people can decide for themselves if this is a reason to vote for Mitt Romney.

From Andrea Stone at Huffington Post:

Anne Frank, the Jewish girl whose diary and death in a Nazi concentration camp made her a symbol of the Holocaust, was allegedly baptized posthumously Saturday by a member of the cult of jesus christ of latter-day saints, according to whistleblower Helen Radkey, a former member of the cult.

The ritual was conducted in a mormon temple in the Dominican Republic, according to Radkey, a Salt Lake City researcher who investigates such incidents, which violate a 2010 pact between the mormon cult and jewish leaders.

Radkey said she discovered that Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank, who died at Bergen Belsen death camp in 1945 at age 15, was baptized by proxy on Saturday. The mormons have submitted versions of her name at least a dozen times for proxy rites and carried out the ritual at least nine times from 1989 to 1999, according to Radkey.

How intolerant of Anne Frank to keep saying "no."

I wonder how many times Daniel Pearl will have to go through this.

A word from Brigham Young on Adam's "wives" and how sleeping with blacks will get you killed

Now that Mitt Romney has informed us that President Obama's pastoral influences are fair game this election, folks are taking a look at Mitt Romney's religious mentors as well.

And with no further ado, I give you Brigham Young.  (And I checked the quotes on Google, they're real.)

On polygamy:

"Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned," (Journal of Discourses, vol. 3, p. 266). Also, "The only men who become gods, even the Sons of god, are those who enter into polygamy," (Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 269).

Eve was "one" of Adam's "wives," plural:

"Now hear it, O inhabitants of the earth, jew and gentile, saint and sinner! When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is Michael, the Archangel, the Ancient of Days! about whom holy men have written and spoken -- He is our Father, and our god, and the only god with whom we have to do. Every man upon the earth, professing christians or non professing, must hear it, and will know it sooner or later." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, p. 50).

It's Adam and Eve and Eve and Eve and Eve and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

Oh, and this just in: god will kill you on the spot if you have sex with a black person:

"You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind....Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 7, p. 290). "In our first settlement in Missouri, it was said by our enemies that we intended to tamper with the slaves, not that we had any idea of the kind, for such a thing never entered our minds. We knew that the children of Ham were to be the "servant of servants," and no power under heaven could hinder it, so long as the Lord would permit them to welter under the curse and those were known to be our religious views concerning them." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, p. 172). "Shall I tell you the law of god in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of god, is death on the spot. This will always be so." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 110).

I'd like to know what influence mormon racism, which was mainstream during Mitt Romney's life as a young adult, had on his worldview. What did Mitt Romney say when these racist views were being espoused by the Mormon leadership? Did he sit by silently? Is he claiming he didn't attend temple the days that racist views were promulgated?

Mitt Romney thinks that a man's religious influences, and the crazy things said by those influences, are fair game. So be it.

The mormons tipped scale in ban on gay marriage, gave 50% of total Prop 8 budget

The NYT confirms it. The mormons gave half of the total $40m donations that the bigots at Yes on 8 received.

First off, we learn that the mormon involvement in Prop 8 was unusually large, even for them:

“We’ve spoken out on other issues, we’ve spoken out on abortion, we’ve spoken out on those other kinds of things,” said Michael R. Otterson, the managing director of public affairs for the Cult of jesus christ of latter-day saints, as the mormons are formally called, in Salt Lake City. “But we don’t get involved to the degree we did on this.”

The California measure, Proposition 8, was to many Mormons a kind of firewall to be held at all costs.

Then we find out that mormons were 80% to 90% of early volunteers:

Shortly after receiving the invitation from the San Francisco archdiocese, the mormon leadership in Salt Lake City issued a four-paragraph decree to be read to congregations, saying “the formation of families is central to the creator’s plan,” and urging members to become involved with the cause.

“And they sure did,” Mr. Schubert said.

Jeff Flint, another strategist with Protect Marriage, estimated that mormons made up 80 percent to 90 percent of the early volunteers who walked door-to-door in election precincts.

One lead mormon gave $1m:

On Oct. 28, Mr. Ashton, the grandson of the former mormon president David O. McKay, donated $1 million. Mr. Ashton, who made his fortune as co-founder of the WordPerfect Corporation, said he was following his personal beliefs and the direction of the cult....

In the end, Protect Marriage estimates, as much as half of the nearly $40 million raised on behalf of the measure was contributed by Mormons.

And then to finally throw in a slur, the top mormon donor, and son of a former mormon leader, refers to homosexuals as "fruit":

[T]he extent of the protests has taken many mormons by surprise. On Friday, the cult’s leadership took the unusual step of issuing a statement calling for “respect” and “civility” in the aftermath of the vote.

“Attacks on cults and intimidation of people of faith have no place in civil discourse over controversial issues,” the statement said. “People of faith have a democratic right to express their views in the public square without fear of reprisal.”

Mr. Ashton described the protests by same-sex marriage advocates as off-putting. “I think that shows colors,” Mr. Ashton said. “By their fruit, ye shall know them.”

A catholic cult leader says child rape "understandable," blames children

So absolutely disgusting. And sadly typical. They should all be in jail.

Via Andrew Sullivan's blog we hear from Father Benedict Groeschel, the director of the Office for Spiritual Development for the catholic archdiocese of New York:

People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to — a psychopath. But that's not the case. Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer ... It's not so hard to see — a kid looking for a father and didn't have his own — and they won't be planning to get into heavy-duty sex, but almost romantic, embracing, kissing, perhaps sleeping but not having intercourse or anything like that.

It's an understandable thing ... there are the relatively rare cases where a priest is involved in a homosexual way with a minor. I think the statistic I read recently in a secular psychology review was about 2%. Would that be true of other clergy? Would it be true of doctors, lawyers, coaches?

Here's this poor guy — [Penn State football coach Jerry] Sandusky — it went on for years. Interesting: Why didn't anyone say anything? Apparently, a number of kids knew about it and didn't break the ice. Well, you know, until recent years, people did not register in their minds that it was a crime. It was a moral failure, scandalous; but they didn't think of it in terms of legal things.

Most of us don't find child rape "interesting." But then again, most of us don't run the catholic cult.

And they're still making excuses for child rapists, while telling the rest of us how to live.  Newsflash: I don't take moral advice from men who rape, and aid and abet, the rape of small children.

Absolutely disgusting.

Even better: The national catholic register is now apologizing for publishing the accurate comments of the church leader.  They're suggesting he may have lost his mind.  Right, because no Catholic leader has ever tried to blame the victim or excuse the rape of children.

A Three-Headed Snake

Monkey See ...

... Monkey Do

Argentinian police to shoot whale-eating seagulls

Flesh-eating seagulls that attack southern right whales off the coast of Argentina are to be shot by police in patrol boats. The birds have developed a habit of attacking the endangered mammals in one of their prime breeding grounds.
Seagulls off the coast of the Patagonian city of Puerto Madryn have discovered that by pecking at the whales as they come up for air they can create open wounds. Each time the whales then surface gulls swoop down and cut away skin and blubber with their beaks and claws. Aside from the environmental issues, experts also fear it could hit tourist numbers with whale-watching changing from a magical experience to something from a horror movie.

Whales are also changing their behaviour in response to the attacks. Instead of breaching the water and dramatically displaying their tails, they rise just barely enough to breathe through their blow-holes before descending to safety. "It's not just that the gulls are attacking the whales, but that they're feeding from them, and this way of feeding is a habit that is growing and becoming more frequent," said Marcelo Bertellotti of the National Patagonia Centre.

"It really worries us because the damage they're doing to the whales is multiplying, especially to infant whales that are born in these waters." Environmentalists say the plan is misguided, claiming humans are to blame by creating so much rubbish that the gull population has exploded. They say the only way to effectively reduce the seagull population is to deny the birds food by closing open-air tips around the gulf and stopping fishermen and a nearby seafood packing plant from dumping scraps into the water.

Animal News

Firefighters in England rescued a cow after it got stuck in a tree. The cow was described as "reasonably happy" following its ordeal.Tennessee town considers 'no livestock' exemption for Oreo the pet goat

Not wanting to be the people who got Jeff Vlar's goat, city council members in a Tennessee city will consider an exemption for the animal.

Fake coyotes line edge of Michigan beach

A Michigan community that's fed up with geese fouling up a beach is hoping fake coyotes encourage the birds to land elsewhere.

Texas mayor killed in apparent donkey attack 

A South Texas mayor has been found dead after apparently being attacked by a 500-pound donkey on his ranch.

Animal Pictures