Close in on "Yeti" ...[ 2479 ]

Scientists close in on Yeti 

Artists impression ,Bigfoot

The Sun., By VINCE SOODIN

Published: Today

SCIENTISTS could be putting a Bigfoot in their mouths by claiming that the Abominable Snowman is alive and well.

Experts at an international Yeti conference in Russia this week insisted they are only months away from proving the beast really exists.
Igor Burtsev, head of The International Center Of Hominology, said at the meeting in Tashtagol: "We are on the brink of finding the Yeti at long last."
The Sun was there to listen to the deadly serious Burtsev claiming at least 30 hulking creatures roam the Kemerovo region where the conference was being held.
He said the Yeti — also known as Bigfoot and Sasquatch — is the missing link between Neanderthal man and modern human beings.
"We have good evidence of Yeti in our region," said Burtsev. "And now we have convincing details from experts elsewhere in Russia and in the US and Canada.

Hair's proof ... 7cm long 'Yeti hair'

east2west News

"The description of the habits of the Abominable Snowman are similar from all over the world."
Russian authorities are so keen to find Bigfoot, they have offered one million roubles (£20,000) for information leading to its discovery.
Adding to the bank of "evidence" presented at the conference was 70-year-old Canadian Yeti-hunter John Bindernagel, who reckons he has seen the creature for himself.
He said: "We now know a lot of anatomical details from people's accounts. The neck is very short and very thick, the eyes deeply set, the chin is rounded, the ears are usually covered with hair, the arms are long. The foot looks human-like but is broader. Some people say they can distinguish the males from the more slender females."

Azasskaya cave ... where hair was found

east2west News

Bindernagel claims his sighting took place in Ohio in 2007, when a 6ft-tall creature ventured close to a resident's home. Footage of this beast is to be released soon.

Mission ... map

He said: "The people in the house have seen it quite often. They made some films that will be screened later this year."
Yeti specialists from Russia, the US, Canada, Sweden and Estonia also gathered at the seminar to DNA-test a 7cm hair clump found last week in the region's Azasskaya cave during a four-day Yeti hunt.
But locals claim the sample is a hoax to encourage more tourists to the far-flung region.
Also revealed is a photo of a "footprint" but the markings are too vague to be conclusive.
Moscow architect Anatoly Fokin, 55, gave up his occupation nine years ago to hunt for the Yeti. Since then he has collected details of sightings in Russia's Kirov region. In one 2007 case, hunters killed a bear and left the scene to get a truck to take it away.
He said: "When they returned 40 minutes later, the bear had vanished. There were signs of dragging. They got their dogs to follow the scent but they came to a tree and stopped in their tracks, whimpering in fear.

Evidence? ... a Yeti 'construction'

east2west News

"They all saw a giant hairy figure standing near the tree where the dead bear was lying, torn at the shoulder, blood flowing from a gaping wound where this creature had gouged a huge slice of raw meat."
Villagers also recounted how a "Leshiy" — or forest man in Russian — used brute strength to skin a dead elk it stole from hunters.
Liliya Zenkova, 47, a local government official, told how on a camping trip with her husband and friend in a remote area in Siberia she fell asleep on her car's back seat, with the windows open.
"At 5am I felt my right hand being caressed," she said. "I knew it couldn't be my husband — it was so gentle with such soft hair.

'Nest' ... found in woods

east2west News

"I looked outside and saw this creature moving slowly away. Almost two metres tall, grey hair. His head looked like it was sunk into his shoulders. I knew he wasn't human, he had on no clothes.
"My husband told me not to tell anyone because they would think I was mad. But now stories have started to appear about the Yeti, I want to explain what happened."
It isn't all in Russia, either.
US expert Jeff Meldrum, associate professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, claims to have seen more than 200 Yeti footprints and heard their calls — "high-pitched tones that travel some distance".

Team ... Meldrum, Burtsev, Zelenkova and Bindernagel

"The most recent footprints were about a year ago in Wyoming," he told the conference."There were home owners with unusual foot marks — very large, 16in long — all around their house. The Yetis must have come in from the forest."
Leading the conference, Dr Burtsev says his "primary goal" is to establish contact with the Yeti — but this may lead to problems.
He said: "We need to think about how to integrate the Yeti into society. Should they be treated as normal citizens? Should they be treated like animals? No, because they are more intelligent. There's a lot to think about here."
Despite the claims, without the promised proof of a living, breathing Sasquatch, so far it's all just a lot of big talk.

'Yeti exists'...[2478]

Siberian region 'confirms Yeti exists'

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Monday, October 10, 2011

MOSCOW - Agence France-Presse

The alleged footprint of the yeti. REUTERS Photo.

A Russian region in Siberia on Monday confidently proclaimed that its mountains are home to yetis after finding "indisputable proof" of the existence of the hairy beasts in an expedition.
 The local administration of the Kemerovo region in the south of Siberia said in a statement on its website that footprints and possibly even hair samples belonging to the yeti were found on the research trip to its remote mountains.
 "During the expedition to the Azasskaya cave, conference participants gathered indisputable proof that the Shoria mountains are inhabited by the 'Snow Man'," the Kemerovo region administration said in a press-release.
 The expedition was organised after Kemerovo's governor invited researchers from the United States, Canada, and several other countries to share their research and stories of encounters with the creature at a conference.
 "They found his footprints, his supposed bed, and various markers with which the yeti marks his territory," the statement said. The collected "artifacts" will be analysed in a special laboratory, it said.
 Yetis, or Abominable Snowmen, are hairy ape-like creatures of popular myth, that are generally held to inhabit the Himalayas.
 But some believe Russia also holds a population of yetis, which it calls Snow Men, in remote areas of Siberia.
 Kemerovo region's Shoria is a sparsely populated territory in Western Siberia that has historically been a territory of coal and metal mining. The region, the administrative center of Kuznetsk coal basin, has pursued the elusive Yeti for several years as it tries to develop tourism into its mostly industrial economy.
 Considering the latest findings, the region may "create a special research center to study the Yeti" in the regional university and "create a journal" dedicated to the science of the Yeti, the administration's statement said

New Zealand : stranded container ship...[ 2477 ]

Stricken container ship could sink of Bay of Plenty

• From: AFP
• The Australian.,,October 09, 2011 12:18AM

• I

Cargo ship Rena which has run aground and is leaking oil off the coast of Tauranga Picture: Doug Sherring/Herald On Sunday Source: Supplied

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THE New Zealand navy has been called in today to help clean up an oil slick in the pristine Bay of Plenty.

A stranded container ship is threatening to break apart on an offshore reef.
The navy had deployed four ships to assist efforts to contain pollution from the 47,000 tonne container ship Rena, which hit a reef off the North Island town of Tauranga earlier this week, Maritime New Zealand (MNZ) said.
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It said 300 defence personnel were on standby while a further 200 people, including specialists from Australia, Britain, Holland and Singapore, were part of the team hoping to contain the five-kilometre (three mile) oil slick.
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The toxic discharge has already killed a number of seabirds, while five Little Blue Penguins and two shags were being treated after being found coated with oil on the Bay of Plenty's beaches and islands, MNZ said.

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The government has warned the accident could become the country's worst maritime pollution disaster in decades if the Rena sinks on the reef.
The massive bay at the top of the North Island is regarded as one of New Zealand's environmental jewels. It contains two marine reserves and is home to whales, dolphins, seals and penguins.
The reef which the Rena struck is 22 kilometres offshore and MNZ said that while the oil slick had not yet reached the coast, computer modelling showed this was possible in coming days.
MNZ on-site controller Rob Service said a monitoring flight today showed oil appeared to have stopped leaking from the stricken vessel and much of the slick had been reduced to a “sheen” of thinly-spread oil.
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Some new oil was spotted later in the day but this appeared to have dispersed.
But the problem of dealing with the 1,700 tonnes of heavy fuel oil on board the ship remains. A worst-case scenario would see the 21-year-old vessel, which is already badly damaged, sink on the reef, spewing the oil into the sea.
With the weather forecast to deteriorate next week, Service said removing the oil from the stricken vessel was the top priority.
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He said caps were being placed on the ship's fuel tanks to try to prevent the oil leeching out even if it sank.
Service said criticism that the fuel transfer was taking too long was uninformed.
“This is not like removing fuel from a dinghy,” he said.
“It's not even like removing fuel from a 30-metre (100-foot) fishing vessel. We're talking about an extensively damaged 236 metre-cargo vessel - this is a challenging and complex operation.”
He said a state-of-the-art tanker normally used to refuel visiting cruise liners was steaming to Tauranga from Auckland to help salvage the Rena.
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The salvage operation is complex because the vessel is in the unique situation of having one end stuck hard on the reef while the other half of the ship was floating, officials said.
MNZ's salvage adviser Captain Jon Walker said an international team was working on a salvage plan.
“I've worked with these people, they are the best,” Captain Walker said, as he admitted that the operation would be difficult because the ship is listing at an 11-degree angle and the decks are covered in containers.
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With no cranes on the ship, specialist heavy lifting equipment will also have to be brought to the vessel to remove the cargo.
As teams of naval architects are working around the clock to assess the strength of the ship, salvors are looking at how to safely refloat the vessel once the oil is removed and the ship lightened of some of its containers.
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Officials hope the salvage team can start pumping oil on Sunday, but this depends on the damage to the ship and the prevailing weather conditions.
The weather is expected to remain fine tomorrow but winds are expected to build, making the salvage difficult, from early next week.
Prime Minister John Key will visit the accident site tomorrow
.

AFP

Titanium ore in the Moon..[ 2476 ]

Titanium treasure found on Moon

• by: From correspondents in Paris
• From: AFP
• The Australian.,,October 08, 2011 6:50AM

A NEW map of the Moon has revealed an abundance of titanium ore that is up to 10 times richer than on Earth, a finding that could one day lead to a lunar mining colony, astronomers say.

The discovery was made thanks to a camera aboard the US Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which swept the surface of the Moon, scrutinising it in seven different light wavelengths.

Mark Robinson of Arizona State University, who presented the research overnight at a conference in Nantes, western France with Brett Denevi of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, sifted through the data for telltale jumps in the ratio of ultra-violet to visible light.

They established this signature thanks to rock samples brought back to Earth by Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972 and images of the area around the mission's landing site by the Hubble space telescope.

"Looking up at the Moon, its surface appears painted with shades of grey, at least to the human eye," explained Robinson.

"But with the right instruments, the Moon can appear colourful.

"The maria [lunar plains] appear reddish in some places and blue in others.

"Although subtle, these colour variations tell us important things about the chemistry and evolution of the lunar surface. They indicate the titanium and iron abundance, as well as the maturity of a lunar soil."

Titanium is as strong as steel but nearly half as light, which makes it a highly desired -- and also very expensive -- metal.

On Earth, titanium is found, at the very most, in around one per cent of similar types of ore. But the new map found abundances in the lunar maria that range from about one per cent to 10 per cent, the conference organisers said in a press release. In the lunar highlands, abundance was around one per cent.

The meeting gathers, for the first time, members of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences.

The find offers a double potential bounty, they said.

"Lunar titanium is mostly found in the mineral ilmenite, a compound containing iron, titanium and oxygen," they said.

"Future miners living and working on the Moon could break down ilmenite to liberate these elements.

"In addition, Apollo data shows that titanium-rich minerals are more efficient at retaining particles from the solar wind, such as helium and hydrogen. These gases would also provide a vital resource for future human inhabitants of lunar colonies."

Moody's downgrades UK banks ...[ 2475 ]

Moody's cuts credit ratings on UK banks RBS and Lloyds

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LONDON | Fri Oct 7, 2011 7:43am EDT
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(Reuters) - Credit rating agency Moody's downgraded Britain's part-nationalized banks Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland on Friday, although Britain's finance minister said UK banks were well-placed to cope with a European debt crisis.
The cuts to RBS and Lloyds formed part of a broader downgrade of 12 British financial companies by Moody's, which had already been flagged by the agency earlier in the year.
Moody's cut RBS by two notches to A2 from Aa3, and downgraded Lloyds TSB by one notch to A1 from Aa3. It also cut its ratings on Santander UK, the Co-Operative Bank, Nationwide Building Society and seven other smaller British building societies.
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Moody's did not change its rating on Barclays and HSBC, which along with RBS and Lloyds represent the "Big Four" group of lenders that dominate British banking.
"Moody's believes that the government is likely to continue to provide some level of support to systemically important financial institutions, which continue to incorporate up to three notches of uplift," it said in a statement.
"However, it is more likely now to allow smaller institutions to fail if they become financially troubled. The downgrades do not reflect a deterioration in the financial strength of the banking system or that of the government," it added.
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RBS shares were down 1.8 percent in early morning trade, while Lloyds fell by 2.6 percent. The shares of both banks have consistently traded well below the level at which the British taxpayer originally acquired their RBS and Lloyds stakes following the 2008 bailouts of the companies.
"The downgrades have been well flagged, reflecting removal of government support through guaranteed liquidity schemes and low probability of future tax-payer bail-outs," Oriel Securities said in a research note.
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OSBORNE SEEKS TO REASSURE

Europe's sovereign debt crisis, sparked by Greece's economic woes, has led to concerns that many banks will need further injections of capital.
Earlier this week, France and Belgium intervened to prop up European bank Dexia, whose financial strength had been eroded by the sovereign debt turmoil.
However, British finance minister George Osborne said Britain's banks remained well-capitalized and in better shape than many of their European rivals, who face bigger losses on writedowns to their holdings of Greek government debt.
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In an interview with BBC radio, Osborne also said that the Bank of England's decision to pump more money into the economy and the government's deficit reduction plans would help shield Britain from the euro zone debt crisis.
Osborne said: "People ask me 'how are you going to avoid Britain and the British taxpayer bailing out banks in the future?'
"This government is taking steps to do that, and therefore credit rating agencies and others will say 'well, actually these banks have got to show that they can pay their way in the world'.
"And I am confident that British banks are well capitalized, they are liquid, they aren't experiencing the kind of problems that some of the banks in the euro zone are experiencing at the moment."
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Lloyds said the Moody's downgrade would only have a "minimal" impact on its funding costs, while RBS reiterated that it remained strongly capitalized and had strengthened its credit profile.
Britain ended up with an 83 percent stake in RBS and a 40 percent holding in rival Lloyds after rescuing both banks during the 2008 credit crisis with taxpayer bailouts.
However, the British taxpayer is currently sitting on losses of billions of pounds on their RBS and Lloyds stakes.
RBS was trading at 23.76 pence, more than 50 percent below the average 49.9 pence price at which the taxpayer acquired its stake in the lender, while Lloyds was at 35.58 pence -- again a fraction of the 63 pence price at which Britain got its stake in the bank.
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(Additional reporting by Avril Ormsby and Tim Castle; Editing by Erica Billingham and Mike Nesbit)