The Tasmanian devil, the real critter and not the cartoon character from the Looney Tunes universe, has been designated an endangered species by the Australian government. The demise of the devils is due (how’s that for alliteration) to a communicable form of cancer that leads to facial tumours that impair the animal’s ability to eat, thus causing starvation. Over 60% of the Tasmianian devil population has been wiped out.

Syria as returned 701 artifacts to Iraq’s National Museum. The artifacts, were seized from looters and others who stole or came into possession of the artifacts from the Museum after the fall of Saddam’s rule. As good news as this is, there still are over 7,000 other pieces missing.

via arts journal

IHT reports about the growing conflict that many 2008 Summer Olympic athletes have between their personal social conscious and the desire to compete and win at the games. Note, though, that this is not just about the recent Tibet action, but also over China influence in Darfur.

Whether speaking to a group of young softball players or plying her teammates with literature, Jessica Mendoza, a 27-year-old outfielder on the United States Olympic softball team, does not hesitate to speak her mind about the killings in Darfur.

But Mendoza stops short of publicly condemning China, which has close ties to the government of Sudan, because she says it is impolite to criticize her Olympic hosts and because one of her sponsors, Nike, has a major marketing presence in China.

With growing protests in Tibet and pressure mounting on Olympic sponsors to denounce China for its policy on Darfur, socially conscious athletes said they were struggling to figure out how to honor their beliefs while also respecting the purpose of the Olympic Games — the celebration of athletic excellence.

The complexity of this comes not only from internal views, but external pressures such as a country’s own Olympic body or perhaps even an athlete’s sponsor:

Rule 51 of the Olympic charter, the constitution of the Olympic movement, forbids athletes from participating in a “demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda” at Olympic sites. When the International Olympic Committee identifies a possible violation of Rule 51, it asks the Olympic Committee of the athlete’s country to investigate. Depending on the outcome, Olympians can be disqualified or sent home.

The question of whether Olympic athletes will have the right to express political views in Beijing erupted in February, after news that Britain and New Zealand were planning to require that athletes sign contracts barring them from speaking about politically sensitive issues. Both countries quickly reversed course.

The Indian government is spending serious money to help protect the country’s endangered tigers.

The Indian government plans to spend more than $13 million establishing a special ranger force to protect the country’s endangered tigers, following pressure from international conservationists to save the wild cats.
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The funding proposed Friday by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram follows the announcement just weeks ago of a $153 million program to create new tiger reserves, underscoring renewed efforts by India’s government to protect the big cats.

New estimates suggest India’s wild tiger population has dropped from nearly 3,600 five years ago to about 1,411, the government-run Tiger Project said last month.

source: associated press

Yet more crime related news from the art world: the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, Germany has discovered that the its prize Monet painting, “The Seine at Port Villez” is really a fake.

“Our restoration department examined some 70 paintings with X-rays, with infrared technology and paint tests to deconstruct and explain the painters’ techniques for an exhibition starting in two weeks,” Stefan Swertz told AFP.

“There were several things that made us take a closer look at ‘The Seine at Port Villez’ and we have absolutely no doubt that it was not painted by Monet,” he said.

One of the things that unmasked the fake Monet was the fact that the painter’s name was not signed just once but later retraced to be darker.

The International Herald Tribune reports that the U.S. will blow up the disabled spy satellite that would have fallen to Earth. This is despite the fact that the U.S. had earlier protested similar actions by China.

The operation will be carried out from a navy ship that will fire a missile modified for the task at the 2,200 kilogram satellite, which will resemble hitting a ballistic missile warhead as it begins to re-enter the atmosphere.

The ramifications of the operation are diplomatic as well as military and scientific, in part because the United States criticized China last year when Beijing used a defunct weather satellite as a target in a test of an antisatellite system.

After their test, the Chinese said that they had no intention of getting involved in a “space race” and that their test had not been designed to intimidate. Under the Bush administration, the United States has asserted its need to protect its interests in space.

President George W. Bush ordered the military to try to destroy the satellite because “there was a possibility of death or injury to human beings beyond that associated with the fall of satellites and other space objects normally, if we can use that word,” said a deputy national security adviser, James Jeffrey.

SCTV fans will no doubt hope that the satellite gets blown up real good.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting ‘Hannibal’, which disappeared after its Brazilian owner’s art collection was seized after being found guilty of money laundering, has been found in a New York City warehouse.

Its last known owner was Edemar Cid Ferreira, the former owner of Banco Santos and one of Brazil’s largest art collectors. The bank went bankrupt in September 2005, leaving behind debts of over $1 billion.

Ferreira was convicted in Brazil on charges including money laundering and bank fraud. He was ordered to begin serving a 21-year sentence in December 2006, but was released while his appeal winds through the courts.

A Brazilian court ordered the seizure of $20 million to $30 million worth of art, saying Ferreira and his relatives and associates had bought the works with proceeds of illegal schemes, according to U.S. prosecutors.

The Globe and Mail reports that recent Vancouver resident Jack Worthington believes he is the illegitimate son of JFK and is asking the Kennedy clan to provide DNA evidence to prove his claim. Follow the link to see a picture of Jack. There is a bit of a resemblance there.

It appears that Japan’s Crown Princess Massako is being criticized in the media for eating out at some more lavish restaurants while she is on hiatus from her official duties.

Japan’s troubled Crown Princess has been eating like royalty in recent months — and getting pilloried in the tabloid press for violating the image of imperial austerity by living the high life in public.

The sightings, documented in paparazzi-style photos in Japan’s freewheeling news magazines, have compounded the impression the Harvard-educated Crown Princess — who regularly skips official events because of an unspecified nervous disorder — is taking her palace obligations too lightly.

“If she is well enough to regularly go out for fancy dinners, I wonder why she can’t resume her official duties,” said Sachiko Tomobe, a Tokyo florist. “A nice dinner outside the palace is fine if it makes her feel better, but not too often.”

The 44-year-old Crown Princess Masako, a former diplomat who married into the Imperial Family in 1993, has opted out of most Imperial functions for the past four years because of what is widely believed to be depression.

She skipped a rice-cake making ceremony attended by the Emperor and Empress on Dec. 28, but then joined Crown Prince Naruhito and their pet dogs’ veterinarian and his family that evening for a lengthy French dinner.

Crown Princess Masako’s lavish — and publicly funded — meals have attracted attention as the economy is showing signs of faltering, and many Japanese, including Emperor Akihito himself, say they are concerned about the widening gap between rich and poor.

From the National Post:

Shaun Greenhalgh, an Englishman whose furtive career has been unfolding in courtrooms, newspapers and museums for the last three months, may well be the most versatile art forger in history.

In 2002, Dad dropped in to the Bolton Museum to ask whether anyone would like to see a 20-inch-high Egyptian sculpture, which his great-grandfather had purchased in 1892 from the contents auction at the home of the 4th Earl of Egremont. It was translucent alabaster, and in photos it’s pretty.

Dad suggested it might represent a daughter of Nefertiti. He guessed it could be worth £500 ($996). He brought along the catalogue of the auction, which his great-grandfather had fortunately kept. In truth, Shaun had found the catalogue. He used the descriptive details in its yellowing pages to make the sculpture.

Experts pronounced it authentic and Bolton Council paid £439,767 to buy it for the Bolton Museum. It wasn’t local money, of course; it came from a national fund supported by lotteries. The museum people were quite chuffed. They thought the piece possibly worth twice that much. One museum employee called Dad “a nice old man who had no idea of the significance of what he owned.” The sculpture remained on exhibit until one fateful day in February, 2006.

After many successful years, and scores of sales, the Greenhalghs were caught out by that old devil hubris. Shaun, deeply impressed by his own talent, forgot that serious chicanery requires careful attention to detail. He sent the British Museum what was apparently an ancient Assyrian stone relief showing a soldier and horses with cuneiform writing. It looked great until someone noticed a minor spelling mistake in the writing and someone else said that the harness on the horses was from the wrong period.

A 20-year-old ethnic Russian man is the first person to be convicted for taking part in a “cyber war” against Estonia.

Dmitri Galushkevich was fined 17,500 kroons (£830) for an attack which blocked the website of the Reform Party of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip.

The assault, between 25 April and 4 May 2007, was one of a series by hackers on Estonian institutions and businesses.

At the time, Estonia accused the Russian government of orchestrating the attacks. Moscow denied any involvement.

Read more from the BBC.

The Detroit News reports that the city of Detroit has enlisted over 60,000 volunteers to patrol the city’s streets to report fires and deter arson tonight (Devil’s Night) and Halloween. Pop over to this Wikipedia entry on Devil’s Night to learn about the Detroit’s night of crime.

The Associated Press (via the Globe and Mail) reports that there was a deadly mishap explosion at the development grounds for the crafts that will be used by Virgin Galactic for its space tourism offering. The explosion happened in the Mojave Desert back in July. I do not know about you, but I only heard about this yesterday.

…three technicians died and three others were critically injured while performing a routine cold-flow test of nitrous oxide that did not involve a rocket firing. The company, which has done the test numerous times before without a problem, uses the chemical as an oxidizer in its spaceship’s hybrid rocket motor.
…
Virgin Galactic did privately contact its prized customers known as founders, who have paid the full $200,000 to be among the first to experience four minutes of weightlessness.

Stephen Attenborough, Virgin Galactic’s astronaut liaison, reassured the founders in an e-mail that the accident’s impact on the first commercial spaceflights — expected in late 2009 or 2010 — will be “minimal” and that it was “business as usual.”

In an attempt to mend its repudation, and perhaps ways, China has executed the former head of its food and drug agency.

Zheng Xiaoyu’s execution was confirmed by State Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Yan Jianyang at a news conference held to highlight efforts to improve China’s track record on food and drug safety.

Such cases “have brought shame to our administration and revealed serious problems. We need to seriously reflect on what lessons we can draw from such cases,” Yan said about Zheng and a separate case involving Cao Wenzhuang, the administration’s former pharmaceutical registration department director.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is taking steps to cancel a large number of timber contracts in order to protect the world’s second biggest tropical rain forest.

Congo issued a five-year moratorium on new logging contracts in 2002 in an effort to stem rampant deforestation aggravated by the conflict. That measure went largely unheeded and companies continued to sign new deals.

Around three million hectares (7.4 million acres) of illegal concessions have already been cancelled by Congo’s new government, which took office this year after historic post-war elections in 2006.

Friends of the Environment, an environmental organization, have launched a lawsuit against the Canadian government for breaching the Kyoto Accord, a global treaty to which Canada is a signatory.

Rocky Swift, in an exclusive for Bloomberg, reports that North Korea has reopened its doors to American tourism, with state sanctioned tours now up and running. Read on to get a review of such a tour.

After a perfunctory presentation of flowers to the giant, bronze statue of Kim Il-sung in central Pyongyang, we checked into the Sosan Hotel, a 30-story faux-brick building surrounded by sports fields on the city’s edge. The hotel, with its immense chandeliers and dark hallways, is a microcosm of the nation.

After I complained about the absence of hot water, one of our North Korean handlers shot back that I was experiencing a result of the crippling energy shortage caused by U.S. sanctions. Heady stuff, considering I just wanted a hot shower.

The tour itself followed a well-worn path of tourist destinations, in a comfortable, Japanese-made bus. First was the heavily guarded border with South Korea at Panmunjom, where soldiers on both sides stare at each other across an unfenced concrete strip. The North Korean tale is rather similar to the South’s, which I’d heard on a tour from the other side a few years ago: The other side started it, and they’ll invade again given half a chance.

From Fortune:

On April 26, when the shareholders of French food giant Danone congregate in Paris for their annual meeting, they will have a unique proposal to consider: setting up a mutual fund to channel investment into Danone’s nonprofit social ventures in developing countries.

Unlike Danone’s regular business units - which produce yogurt, water, and cookies - the ones receiving investments through the proposed new fund, to be called “danone.communities,” will aim for “maximization of social objectives and not that of profit,” according to the proposed resolution.

Danone initially hopes to raise $135 million and promises it will return a guaranteed rate comparable to a money-market account - about 3% to 4% annually, says Emmanuel Faber, Danone’s president of Asia-Pacific operations and the brains behind the project. The company’s management says it is confident the measure will pass. The fund is to be managed separately by bank Crédit Agricole, and be open to the French public as well as institutional investors.

Kudos to Danone.

Russian President (controller?) Vladamir Putin has been promoting two candidates as his successor. News comes that he may give Russian voters a choice in the next election.

Putin, 54, has pledged not to change the constitution to allow him to run next year, while saying he wants to retain influence. Engineering a presidential election run-off would allow him to dismiss Western and opposition critics who accuse him of rolling back post-Soviet democratic freedoms.

via Bloomberg

Autoblog reports that GM will be unveiling the Chevrolet Trax mini-car at the New York auto show.

Designed at GM’s Incheon, South Korea design center, the Trax will be joined onstage by two other minicar concepts, and the public will be able to vote for their favorite one online at http://www.vote4chevrolet.com. That little marketing exercise will help the General gauge US market interest in the mini/city car segment as well as get reaction to the individual models they’re debuting in the Big Apple. The Trax stows a 1.0L gasoline engine under it’s stubby hood, and we’re looking forward to getting up close and personal with the car next week.