Prosecutor opens with Zimmerman's obscenity

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) ? A prosecutor began opening statements in George Zimmerman's trial with obscene words the neighborhood watch volunteer whispered under his breath while following 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Prosecutor John Guy's first words to jurors Monday were the "f-word" followed by "punks." He was quoting from a call Zimmerman made to a police dispatcher as he followed Martin through the gated community where he lived.

Guy then recounted how Zimmerman followed Martin, a confrontation ensued and Martin was fatally shot in the chest.

Zimmerman is pleading not guilty to second-degree murder, claiming self-defense.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/prosecutor-opens-zimmermans-obscenity-135419217.html

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At Chernobyl, Radioactive Danger Lurks in the Trees

For 26 years, forests around Chernobyl have been absorbing radioactive elements but a fire would send them skyward again ? a concern as summers grow longer, hotter and drier

By Jane Braxton Little and The Daily Climate

Chernobyl reactor Nos. 5 and 6 were under construction at the time of the No. 4 explosion and remain frozen in time. But forests in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have been absorbing radioactive elements since the 1986 accident, and scientists fear a wildfire could trigger another release. Image: Flickr/Matt Shalvatis

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CHERNOBYL, Ukraine ? Most days Nikolay Ossienko patrols the forests surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, clearing brush and dead trees from the grid of fuel breaks that crisscross the 1,000-square-mile area. But on hot July afternoons, when black thunderheads loom on the horizon, he climbs a rusty ladder 75 feet up a rickety fire tower. When he spots smoke, he radios the six other towers to pinpoint the location, then trucks off to the blaze.

"Our number one job is to save the forest from fire," said Ossienko, a burly, blue-eyed Ukrainian whose warm smile winks with a missing tooth.

It?s a job with international consequences. For almost three decades the forests around the shuttered nuclear power plant have been absorbing contamination left from the 1986 reactor explosion. Now climate change and lack of management present a troubling predicament: If these forests burn, strontium 90, cesium 137, plutonium 238 and other radioactive elements would be released, according to an analysis of the human health impacts of wildfire in Chernobyl's exclusion zone conducted by scientists in Germany, Scotland, Ukraine and the United States.

This contamination would be carried aloft in the smoke as inhalable aerosols, that 2011 study concluded.

And instead of being emitted by a single reactor, the radioactive contamination would come from trees that cover some 660 square miles around the plant, said Sergiy Zibtsev, a Ukrainian forestry professor who has been studying these irradiated forests for 20 years.

"There's really no question," he added. "If Chernobyl forests burn, contaminants would migrate outside the immediate area. We know that."

Overcrowded pines
Combined with changes in climate, these overcrowded pines are a prescription for wildfire. In their assessment of the potential risks of a worst-case fire, Zibtsev and the team of international scientists concluded that much of the Chernobyl forest is "in high danger of burning."

Zibtsev has been worrying about catastrophic wildfire in Chernobyl since witnessing runaway wildland fires in the western United States while on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2005. He has watched the threat get worse each passing year. Rainfall in the region is decreasing and seasonal droughts are lasting longer, changes Zibtsev attributes to climate change. Scientists say these patterns of drier and longer summers are contributing to forest drying and increased insect attacks.

The predominantly pine forests themselves are part of the problem. After the explosion ? the worst nuclear accident in human history ? the area surrounding the power plant was evacuated, the fields and forests abandoned. To keep the contamination from moving beyond the area known as the "zone of alienation," the Ukraine government forbade all commercial activity. For forests, this meant a halt to logging, thinning and removing dead trees. While most of Ukraine boasts woodlands that are carefully manicured, the Chernobyl forests have grown into unmanaged thickets with dense brush below and lifeless canopies above.

The risk of fire in these forests has concerned scientists since 1992, a drought year when more than 65 square miles of forests burned. They know that these ecosystems are trapping radionuclides and slowly redistributing them in soil and vegetation, a process called "self-repair." In some places the contamination level is the same as it was in 1986, most of it in the top 10 centimeters of the soil. Absorbing cesium, plutonium and strontium helps contain radionuclides within the exclusion zone, but it dramatically heightens the alarm over wildfire.

Two-acre test fire
A 2002 test fire offers insight on the scope of the radioactive risk. Set to assess plume and radionuclide behavior, the two-acre ground fire near the failed power plant released up to five percent of the cesium and strontium in the biomass. A high-intensity crown fire would release much higher amounts than burning needles and leaf litter, said Vasyl Yoschenko, who set the fire and heads the radioecological monitoring laboratory at the Ukrainian Institute of Agricultural Radiology. Other studies predict that the fine particles emitted from a forest fire could be transported hundreds of miles away.

Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=at-chernobyl-radioactive-danger-lurks-in-the-trees

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Deadly piglet virus spreads to nearly 200 U.S. farm sites

By P.J. Huffstutter

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A swine virus deadly to young pigs, and never before seen in North America, has spiked to 199 sites in 13 states - nearly double the number of farms and other locations from earlier this month.

Iowa, the largest U.S. hog producer, has the most sites testing positive for Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus: 102 sites, as of June 10. The state raises on average 30 million hogs each year, according to the Iowa Pork Producers Association.

PEDV, most often fatal to very young pigs, causes diarrhea, vomiting and dehydration. It also sickens older hogs, though their survival rate tends to be high.

The total number of pig deaths from the outbreak since the first cases were confirmed May 17 is not known.

Researchers at veterinarian diagnostic labs, who are testing samples as part of a broad investigation into the outbreak, have seen a substantial increase in positive cases since early June, when data on the PEDV outbreak showed it at some 103 sites nationwide.

The data was compiled and released last week by Iowa State University, University of Minnesota, Kansas State University and South Dakota State University.

The virus does not pose a health risk to humans or other animals and the meat from PEDV-infected pigs is safe for people to eat, according to federal officials and livestock economists.

But the virus, which is spreading rapidly across the United States, is proving harder to control than previously believed. In addition to Iowa, Oklahoma has 38 positive sites, Minnesota has 19 and Indiana has 10, according to the data.

PEDV has also been diagnosed in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Dakota.

Swine veterinarians, investigators with the U.S. Agriculture Department and others are trying to determine how the virus is spreading from farm to farm and state to state. Currently the focus is on the nation's livestock transportation system.

PEDV is spread most commonly by pigs ingesting contaminated feces. Investigators are studying physical transmission, such as truck trailers marred with contaminated feces, or a person wearing dirty boots or with dirty nails.

While the virus has not tended to kill older pigs, mortality among very young pigs infected in U.S. farms is commonly 50 percent, and can be as high at 100 percent, say veterinarians and scientists who are studying the outbreak.

The strain of the PEDV virus that is making its way across the nation's hog farms and slaughterhouses is 99.4 percent similar in genetic structure to the PEDV that hit China's herds last year, according to the U.S. researchers.

After PEDV was first diagnosed in China in 2010, it overran southern China and killed more than 1 million piglets, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal.

No direct connection has been found between the U.S. outbreak and previously identified outbreaks in Asia and Europe, say scientists and researchers.

(Reporting by P.J. Huffstutter. Additional reporter by Theopolis Waters.; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/deadly-piglet-virus-spreads-nearly-200-u-farm-215056693.html

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Palestinian PM submits resignation after 2 weeks

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) ? The new Palestinian prime minister submitted his resignation to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday, after two weeks on the job, because of a conflict over authority.

It was unclear if Rami Hamdallah, a former university dean, would step down or was using the threat of resignation to obtain more powers from Abbas.

Hamdallah's move signaled disarray in the Palestinian Authority, the self-rule government in parts of the West Bank, and is potentially embarrassing for Abbas.

Abbas received the resignation and will consider it, said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an adviser to the president.

The prime minister heads the Palestinian Authority which handles day-to-day affairs of Palestinians.

Abbas is in charge overall and deals with diplomacy, particularly efforts to restart negotiations with Israel on the terms of a Palestinian state. Those talks broke down in 2008, but U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has been trying to restart them.

Hamdallah took office June 6 after unexpectedly being plucked by Abbas from a career in academia to replace internationally known Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who resigned in April. Abbas gave Hamdallah two deputies, one for political and one for economic affairs, apparently to make up for his lack of political experience.

Hamdallah's office said Thursday that he submitted his resignation to Abbas because of a "conflict over authority," but did not elaborate.

Abbas had frequently clashed with Fayyad, a political independent who served for six years and was respected by the West as a pragmatist. Leading figures of Abbas' Fatah movement clamored for Fayyad to be replaced, arguing that the prime minister should be close to Fatah. Hamdallah's appointment was seen as a bid by Abbas to consolidate power.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/palestinian-pm-submits-resignation-2-weeks-140603944.html

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