Putin faces protest furor in Germany, Netherlands

AMSTERDAM (AP) ? Vladimir Putin faced hundreds of protesters ranging from gay rights activists to a topless feminist group during his visit to Germany and the Netherlands on Monday, but the Russian president appeared unruffled by the furor.

In Hannover, Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized Russia's human rights record at a press conference. Then activists from Ukraine's Femen group bared their torsos and ran at him shouting "Putin dictator!" before they were detained.

Putin shrugged off the protest later with what appeared to be a comment on the women's breasts and a swipe at Dutch protesters angry over Russian lawmakers' approval of a bill that bans gay "propaganda."

"I hadn't had time to have breakfast, so I would have liked it more if they showed some sausage or pork fat, not the beauties they showed," he said at a press conference in Amsterdam. "Thank God, the gays didn't strip naked here."

In Amsterdam, more than a thousand gay rights activists picketed outside his meeting with Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and rainbow flags around the city flew at half-staff.

Protesters booed and whistled at Putin's arrival at the Amsterdam arm of the Hermitage museum and Amnesty International blanketed the area with satirical signs and police tape proclaiming it a "human rights free zone" during Putin's visit.

The Russian bill makes gay public events and the dissemination of information about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to minors punishable by fines of up to $16,000. It still requires final approval by Parliament and would have to be signed by Putin to become law.

Rutte said he had told Putin during their meeting that for the Dutch, gay rights are "inextricably linked with human rights." In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize gay marriage.

Putin deflected the criticism, claiming that gay rights are not abused in Russia.

"These people, like others, have all rights and freedoms," he said.

Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993, but homophobia remains strong and authorities routinely ban gay pride parades.

Russia's treatment of gays "is clearly very hotly debated," said Philip Tijsma, spokesman for the Netherlands' largest gay rights organization. "It's not only among the gay community, straight people are also very angry."

Mayor Eberhard van der Laan snubbed any meetings with Putin, saying he had "other commitments."

Putin's visit to the Netherlands was intended to showcase growing economic ties between the two countries. With $83 billion in bilateral trade last year, the Netherlands outpaced Germany to become Russia's No. 1 trading partner in Europe and its second biggest partner in the world after China.

The leaders Monday announced a deal between Gazprom and Royal Dutch Shell PLC to jointly develop gas fields above the Arctic circle in Siberia ? a plan vehemently opposed by Greenpeace.

Amsterdam deputy mayor Andr?e van Es said the city appreciates the importance of trade and was glad to host Putin, but it was sympathetic to the protesters.

"We see Russia as an important trading partner, but Amsterdam has an identity of what I call hyper-diversity... and we very much want to be able to express that, even to our important trading partners," she said in an interview.

The trip also kicks off a year of cultural exchanges. Putin and the Netherlands' Queen Beatrix opened an exhibition at the Hermitage dedicated to Peter the Great, the Russian czar who founded St. Petersburg and sought to open up closer ties with Europe.

Putin spent the morning with Merkel at an industry fair in Hannover, where she confronted him about Russia's crackdown on nongovernmental organizations.

"A lively civil society can only develop if individual organizations can work without fear and worry," Merkel said at a joint news conference with Putin.

Putin brushed the issue aside by saying his government just wants to know who funds such groups.

Leading Russian NGOs have pledged to boycott a bill that requires them to register as "foreign agents." Putin has responded by ordering wide-ranging checks of up to 2,000 NGOs across the country.

"We aren't trying to put anyone under control, but we want to know how much money, through what channels and for what purpose, is being sent," Putin said.

He said NGOs in Russia had received nearly $1 billion from abroad.

"Maybe this money, which is quite a bit ? a billion ? could have been sent to help Cyprus and then it wouldn't have been necessary to fleece unfortunate depositors," Putin commented, referring to the European Union's complicated bailout for the island nation in which Russian depositors are expected to lose significant funds.

______

Geir Moulson contributed to this report from Berlin.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/putin-faces-protest-furor-germany-netherlands-193537826--finance.html

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Striped like a badger: New genus of bat identified in South Sudan

Apr. 9, 2013 ? Researchers have identified a new genus of bat after discovering a rare specimen in South Sudan.

With wildlife personnel under the South Sudanese Ministry of Wildlife Conservation and Tourism, Bucknell Associate Professor of Biology DeeAnn Reeder and Fauna & Flora International (FFI) Programme Officer Adrian Garside were leading a team conducting field research and pursuing conservation efforts when Reeder spotted the animal in Bangangai Game Reserve.

"My attention was immediately drawn to the bat's strikingly beautiful and distinct pattern of spots and stripes. It was clearly a very extraordinary animal, one that I had never seen before," recalled Reeder. "I knew the second I saw it that it was the find of a lifetime."

After returning to the United States, Reeder determined the bat was the same as one originally captured in nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1939 and named Glauconycteris superba, but she and colleagues did not believe that it fit with other bats in the genus Glauconycteris.

"After careful analysis, it is clear that it doesn't belong in the genus that it's in right now," Reeder said. "Its cranial characters, its wing characters, its size, the ears -- literally everything you look at doesn't fit. It's so unique that we need to create a new genus."

In the paper, "A new genus for a rare African vespertilionid bat: insights from South Sudan" just published by the journal ZooKeys, Reeder, along with co-authors from the Smithsonian Institution and the Islamic University in Uganda, placed this bat into a new genus -- Niumbaha. The word means "rare" or "unusual" in Zande, the language of the Azande people in Western Equatoria State, where the bat was captured. The bat is just the fifth specimen of its kind ever collected, and the first in South Sudan, which gained its independence in 2011.

"To me, this discovery is significant because it highlights the biological importance of South Sudan and hints that this new nation has many natural wonders yet to be discovered. South Sudan is a country with much to offer and much to protect," said Matt Rice, FFI's South Sudan country director. FFI is using its extensive experience of working in conflict and post-conflict countries to assist the South Sudanese government as it re-establishes the country's wildlife conservation sector and is also helping to rehabilitate selected protected areas through training and development of park staff and wildlife service personnel, road and infrastructure development, equipment provision, and supporting research work. || Read more about FFI's conservation efforts in South Sudan here.

The team's research in South Sudan was made possible by a $100,000 grant that Reeder received from the Woodtiger Fund. The private research foundation recently awarded Reeder another $100,000 dollar grant to continue her research this May and to support FFI's conservation programs.

"Our discovery of this new genus of bat is an indicator of how diverse the area is and how much work remains," Reeder added. "Understanding and conserving biodiversity is critical in many ways. Knowing what species are present in an area allows for better management. When species are lost, ecosystem-level changes ensue. I'm convinced this area is one in which we need to continue to work."

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House Dems who promise to vote No to benefit cuts like Chained CPI (Americablog)

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Spring storms

By Ken Y-N ( April 8, 2013 at 23:47) ? Filed under Polls, Security, Society

Macromill Research Inc released an up-to-the-minute survey into spring storms, as Japan has been suffering from them this weekend.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 9th of April 2013 1,000 members of the Macromill monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was exactly 50:50 male and female, and 20.0% in each age band from the twenties to the sixty years old or more group.

For me the storm was a bit of an anti-climax; we had a few hours of horizonal rain, but nothing out of the ordinary compared to when I grew up and we used to have two or three days-work of Atlantic gales to handle. I always feel the same way with typhoons; they can be nasty when they pass straight overhead and you are in a mountainous area or flood plains which amplifies the effect of the rain, but preparations, tying everything in the garden down, always feel like a waste of time.

Research results

Q1: Did you hear, read, etc about the spring storm through news, weather forecasts, etc, and how much danger did you feel? (Sample size=1,000)

Q1SQ1: Were your preparations sufficient? (Sample size=974)

Q1SQ2: What kinds of preparations did you make? (Sample size=974, multiple answer)

Completed outdoor chores ahead of time (to SQ3)	48.5%
Secured items around the house that might blow away (to SQ3)	43.9%
Stocked up with food (to SQ3)	26.3%
Prepared flashlight, radio, etc in case of power cuts (to SQ3)	6.1%
Reinforced windows, doors (to SQ3)	4.0%
Took measures in case of flooding (to SQ3)	0.3%
Other (to SQ3)	3.9%
Didn?t do anything in particular	28.0%

Q1SQ3: Did you change weekend plans because of the spring storm? (Sample size=673)

Q1SQ4: How did you change weekend plans? (Sample size=304, multiple answer)

Didn?t go out, and stayed at home instead	77.6%
Did things close at hand	15.1%
Change from outdoor to indoor leisure activities	2.3%
Changed mode of transport	1.6%
Other	15.5%

Q2: What sources did you use to obtain information about the weekend?s weather? (Sample size=1,000, multiple answer)

Television weather forecasts	78.1%
Internet weather forecast site	60.7%
Television news, information programs	51.0%
Internet news site	19.1%
Newspaper	15.3%
Television data channel	10.4%
Smartphone app (chat app, weather app, etc)	6.4%
Radio	5.8%
Twitter	3.5%
SNS	2.3%
Other	0.9%
Didn?t obtain any information	3.4%

Q3: How much danger do you feel when you hear, read the following terms? (Sample size=1,000)

?	Danger	Some danger	No real danger	No danger at all
Typhoon	24.6%	58.1%	15.9%	1.4%
Bomb cyclone (rapidly-developing extratropical cyclone)	17.3%	55.8%	25.0%	1.9%
Typhoon-strength low-pressure area	9.4%	55.1%	33.1%	2.4%
Violent low-pressure area	14.5%	49.5%	33.0%	3.0%
Spring storm	3.4%	32.3%	55.9%	8.4%

Read more on: macromill research,spring,storm

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WhatJapanThinks/~3/YIO6J9jR68U/

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South Korea backs off statement about possible missile launch from North

By Daniel Arkin and John Newland, NBC News

South Korea's defense ministry on Monday backed away from an official's Sunday statement that North Korea may launch a missile by Wednesday, at which time the North had said it could not guarantee the safety of diplomats in the capital of Pyongyang.

The official?s warning came three days after South Korea?s government said that the North had moved at least one medium-range Musudan missile with ?considerable range? to the nation?s eastern border, possibly to perform a test launch. The?missile has an estimated range of up to 2,490 miles, which would make it capable of striking American bases in Guam.

?We?re thoroughly preparing for this, leaving all possibilities open,? said Kim Jang-Soo, South Korea?s national security chief, adding that the North's likely goal is to wrench concessions from Seoul and Washington.

But on Monday, South Korea's defense ministry said the movement of vehicles and personnel near North Korea's nuclear test site -- picked up on satellite images -- appeared to be normal activity, refuting speculation that the latest actions point to an imminent atomic test, Yonhap news agency reported.

Escalating tensions between the nuclear-armed North and U.S.-aligned South also forced South Korea?s Joint Chiefs of Staff to announce Sunday that the body?s chairman had delayed a visit to Washington, according to The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said that a top commander in South Korea had also put off a trip to Washington and that the Pentagon had postponed an intercontinental ballistic missile test slated for next week.

The test was "long planned and was never associated with North Korea to begin with," a senior defense official official said, but added that "given recent tensions on the Korean Peninsula, it's prudent and wise to take steps that avoid any misperception or chance of manipulation, so the test has been postponed."

The test was planned for next week at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It would have tested the Minuteman 3 ICBM missile, which has a range of about 8,000 miles, although the exact number is classified.

The weekend developments followed the North Korean military?s ominous warning last Thursday that it had been authorized to attack the U.S. using ?smaller, lighter and diversified? nuclear weapons ? the latest in a series of threats of war against the U.S. since the United Nations imposed tough sanctions in response to the North's third nuclear test in February.

?The moment of explosion is approaching fast,? the North Korean military said in a statement from an unidentified spokesperson.

?No one can say a war will break out in Korea or not and whether it will break out today or tomorrow,? the Thursday statement said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last Wednesday that North Korea?s provocations represent ?a real and clear danger and threat? to domestic security and U.S. interests.

?We are doing everything we can ... to defuse that situation on the peninsula,? Hagel said after delivering a speech at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.

North Korea has encouraged foreign ambassadors in the capital of Pyongyang to evacuate the country in order to avoid potential hostilities, according to various diplomatic officials.

But South Korea's Kim Jang-Soo suggested to reporters that the North?s warning to diplomats is likely just an attempt to heighten security fears and extract concessions from South Korea and the U.S.

Top embassies, likewise, have appeared to see the North's message as mere rhetoric, according to The Associated Press.

The roughly two dozen countries with embassies in North Korea had not yet announced whether they would evacuate their staffs, the AP reported.

Washington and Seoul want Pyongyang to resume the six-party nuclear talks that it halted in 2009. China, Russia, and Japan were the other key players in the aborted talks.

NBC News' Courtney Kube and Becky Bratu contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Sun Apr 7, 2013 12:31 PM EDT

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Martini Madness

Is Sophie Dahl's dirty martini too dirty?

Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Borked Up (3) vs. The Martinez (10)
In his 2005 letter to the Wall Street Journal?a brief manifesto he once impishly called, to the palpable discomfort of a C-SPAN host, "crucial to Western Civilization"?Robert Bork teased cocktail writer Eric Felten for his use of the term "original intent": "What counts in mixology is the 'original understanding' of the martini?s essence by those who first consumed it." The progress of the Borked Up ends here, most fittingly, with its defeat by The Martinez, the original martini whose existence he repeatedly failed to acknowledge. As Dwight Garner once put it on Twitter, "Robert Bork claimed the dry martini for conservatism ... #veto."

Plus, Bork drinking buddy Roger Kimball has, at my instigation, informed the world of the time ?Bob was presented with a drink containing two olives?: ?He sent it back. ?If I had wanted a salad,? he told the waiter, ?I would have ordered one.?? Though it was perfectly acceptable for Bork to send the drink back, I must reprimand him for his rudeness to the server?and caution you not to make too many wisecracks in the direction of people who handle your food.

The Martinez advances to the Elite Eight in the Midwest Regional.

M.F.K. Fisher's Gibson (9) vs. Martinez Redux (13)
The Martinez Redux is sweet, and I hope to see her again, but this Gibson, which I first tried with silky Plymouth and two barspoons of thoroughly ambrosial vermouth-based onion brine, is sweet and savory, achieving smooth succulence and earning high honors.

Plus, I echo one passionate opinion recorded at the intern tasting: ?Can?t stop snacking!?

M.F.K. Fisher?s Gibson advances to the Elite Eight in the West Regional.

The FDR (3) vs. The Martini de Luxe (7)
The de Luxe recipe is in some respects delovely, but it yields results too dry for my taste. This is a common dynamic with Embury: His writing and reasoning are very strong?and so are the cocktails, too much so. (For instance, his Sidecar is 8:2:1?eights parts brandy, 2 parts Cointreau, 1 part lemon juice. Man, am I dying for a Sidecar. Three months on the martini beat have left me psyched to get Sidecars back in rotation.)

Plus, Embury's sherry variation is dullsville.

The FDR advances to the Elite Eight in the West Regional.

The Contemporary Standard (2) vs. The BFG (6)
The editrix went for drinks at The Standard, which is one of the few acceptable places to enjoy oneself in the designer hellhole that is the Meatpacking District. She made some notes and sent them to me. I contrived two or three inappropriate Michael Fassbender jokes and, stifling these, present those notes to you.

I had never been to the bar at the Standard Hotel before Tuesday night. I had to ask the concierge for directions to the elevator, which I rode to the 18th floor, unprepared for the panoramic views and the superlatively opulent vibe.

The bar matched my imaginings of the Mad Men era, or the dot-com boom. The men wore suits, the women mini-dresses; I?d put the median age gap between those two groups at 17.5 years. At the table next to ours, a group of trim, handsome businessmen spoke in spirited Russian. In a corner on the north side of the bar, a blues singer with bright red lips and a slinky white dress fronted a small band. The musicians played at a perfect volume?exactly not-too-loud.

First I told my server (who was a dead ringer for Mila Kunis) to bring me a gin martini in whatever style the bartender preferred. It was delicious and came with a perfectly coiled lemon twist.

After I'd finished it, I felt fortified, and I approached the bar to interrogate one of the three bartenders about his methods. He was a tallish white man wearing a white jacket with brass buttons; his brown hair was pulled back in a tight, folded-under ponytail. His face was angular, his eyes dark blue, and his manners very polite.

I asked him the formula for his house martini; he told me it was 2? ounces Bombay Original Dry and ? ounce Dolin vermouth. This he pronounced "DOH-lin," rather than the French "doh-LANH." Perhaps that's normal among Americans; I don't know, not being a vermouth expert. I asked him to make me the same, only with a few dashes of citrus-y bitters?i.e., The Contemporary Standard. He obliged, stirring the ingredients together in a frosted glass, and then painstakingly winding a long, thick lemon twist around his slim forefinger. I inquired about his bitters of choice; he said he used a house blend containing Regan's orange bitters.

I gratefully handed him my debit card and tried to pretend I fit in with the stylish aristocrats seated next to me while he was swiping it. My heart leapt as I caught a glimpse of Terry Gross sitting 10 feet away, but upon further discrete inspection, she was only a Terry Gross lookalike.

My heart sank quickly as I inspected the bill. The Contemporary Standard martini cost $24.78; I tipped $4.22, which I later feared was not enough. I liked the Contemporary Standard even better than the martini without bitters?that smoldering hint of orange accomplished quite a bit. Then again, I was somewhat tipsy and vertiginous by the time I started in on it.

I am glad to see that the editrix quit after two, lest she suffer the experience described in a Roald Dahl story titled ?The Last Act?: "Give her a third martini and within seconds her body would become completely weightless and she would go floating around the room like a wisp of hydrogen gas."

Dahl comes to mind because the Contemporary Standard is matched against The BFG, my name for a dirty-martini recipe written by his granddaughter. It is the dirtiest martini in the bracket, and at this point, I think that makes it too dirty for the bracket. Postulating that a martini made with more olive brine than vermouth is no longer a martini, I send the BFG on its saline way.

Plus, frankly, I put The BFG in here to construct a pretense to try to go drinking with Sophie Dahl, who?s a fun interview. But I never even pulled it together to email her rep. And now I see that there has been what Winchell would call a blessed event: She?s probably nursing anyway. Happily, the swank of the night at The Standard?a Terry Gross lookalike!?satisfies my desire to get some glamour in this series.

The Contemporary Standard advances to the Elite Eight in the South Regional.

The Vesper (2) vs. The Hoffman House (11)
Here we encounter a categorical philosophical problem. The Vesper isn't just another martini variation. It's the world's best-respected martini variation. Being a variation on the martini?not a legitimate martini?is central to its identity, and if it were to advance against the crisp and fragrant and venerable Hoffman House, then this martini tournament would lose all its hard-fought credibility.

The Hoffman House advances to the Elite Eight in the East Regional.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=dd36d1938098e000ee4a26995e259b41

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Widely used filtering material adds arsenic to beers

Apr. 7, 2013 ? The mystery of how arsenic levels in beer sold in Germany could be higher than in the water or other ingredients used to brew the beer has been solved, scientists announced in New Orleans April 7 at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

Mehmet Coelhan, Ph.D., and colleagues said the discovery could be of importance for breweries and other food processors elsewhere that use the same filtering technology implicated in the elevated arsenic levels in some German beers. Coelhan's team at the Technische Universit?t in Munich set out to solve that riddle after testing 140 samples of beers sold in Germany as part of a monitoring program. The monitoring checked levels of heavy metals like arsenic and lead, as well as natural toxins that can contaminate grain used in brewing beer, pesticides and other undesirable substances.

Coelhan explained that the World Health Organization uses 10 micrograms per liter of arsenic in drinking water as a limit. However, some beers contained higher arsenic levels. "When arsenic level in beer is higher than in the water used during brewing, this excess arsenic must come from other sources," Coelhan noted. "That was a mystery to us. As a consequence, we analyzed all materials, including the malt and the hops used during brewing for the presence of arsenic."

They concluded that the arsenic was released into the beer from a filtering material called kieselguhr, or diatomaceous earth, used to remove yeast, hops and other particles and give the beer a crystal clear appearance. Diatomaceous earth consists of fossilized remains of diatoms, a type of hard-shelled algae that lived millions of years ago. It finds wide use in filtering beer, wine and is an ingredient in other products.

"We concluded that kieselguhr may be a significant source of arsenic contamination in beer," Coelhan said. "This conclusion was supported by analysis of kieselguhr samples. These tests revealed that some kieselguhr samples release arsenic. The resulting arsenic levels were only slightly elevated, and it is not likely that people would get sick from drinking beers made with this filtration method because of the arsenic. The arsenic is still at low levels -- the risk of alcohol poisoning is a far more realistic concern, as stated in previous studies on the topic."

Coelhan pointed out that beers produced in at least six other countries had higher arsenic amounts than German beers, according to a report published four years ago. He said that breweries, wineries and other food processors that use kieselguhr should be aware that the substance can release arsenic. Substitutes for kieselguhr are available, he noted, and simple measures like washing kieselguhr with water can remove the arsenic before use.

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