Luciole Press Blog

Photo: Terra Nova Bay in the Antarctic, South Korea's choice for the their second research base on the continent

kluciole — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:04:00 GMT

Terra Nova Bay in the Antarctic, South Korea's choice for the their second research base on the continent

HERE

Slightly older article -- Fashion's latest fixation: 3D

kluciole — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:59:00 GMT

Tue Feb 23, 1:44 PM ET

A model wears an outfit by designers Burberry Prorsum for their Autumn/Winter 2010 collection at London Fashion Week, in London, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010.

(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Fashion's latest fixation: 3D

Fri Feb 26, 11:49 am ET

This story is brought to you courtesy of ArtInfo.com

Burberry has become the premiere brand to break through fashion week's fourth wall this season by staging the world's first-ever global 3D fashion show. (To note, the British fashion brand wasn't the only one to engage with the technology conceived more than half-a-century ago: Los Angeles tailored menswear label Native Son's New York Fashion Week presentation included a multi-dimensional video that required 3D glasses for viewing.)

Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey's (since heralded) show took place Tuesday in London and was simultaneously aired in five major fashion capitals around the globe. A smattering of editors and fashion cognoscenti were invited to the exclusive screenings with the requirement that they don the same wayfarer-esque black rims millions of theater goers slipped on to watch any number of 3D films this past year. Soon after, a parade of digitally projected models in thigh-high crocodile boots and sumptuous leather aviator jackets walked past. And, rest assured, they won't be the last.

On Thursday news surfaced that Fendi, an Italian fashion house overseen by the inimitable Karl Lagerfeld, was shooting its Paris presentation in 3D for potential use in its storefronts, as well as for special events. But, while all signs point to fashion going to the third dimension, just how much longevity can such a novelty maintain in a notoriously fickle industry? Like anything new in a world where movements are branded and capitalized on faster than you can say "next please," the push for 3D is likely to experience a shelf-life exponentially shorter than its past comebacks in popular culture.

There's a strong potential that the next few seasons of fashion shows will feature newly famous fashion bloggers and editors toting 3D glasses in their designer bags alongside their iPad. But, as Google Wave has learned the hard way, the question with new technology remains: is it making our lives better, easier, more convenient? In this case, not really. Like that one accessory Coco Chanel famously recommended women take off before leaving the house, 3D may be just one more thing we don't need.

So, in all likelihood, expect that fashion's 3D fixation will go the way of recently resurrected (and shortly thereafter laid to rest) styles like acid wash and harem pants. In ten years we'll all look back and laugh at how funny we looked, decked out in our best designer duds, watching the latest sartorial creations parade before us in goofy glasses when we could have just as easily watched it live (thanks to the new, more practical norm of live-streaming shows on the web) from the comfort of one's own home.

Lucky to be alive: The bunny torched in his hutch by drunk woman during family argument

kluciole — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:53:00 GMT

Best of recovery to you, little guy... thanks to those who take care of animals, especially those who have been cruelly abused.

~ Karen

Charred: Bunny the rabbit is a sorry sight after his owner's sister set light to his hutch during a family row

Lucky to be alive: The bunny torched in his hutch by drunk woman during family argument
17th March 2010

Cowering in fear, his fur scorched, this is a traumatised rabbit just minutes after a heartless yob set him alight. He was left badly burned and blistered when Katey Barber torched his hutch after drinking seven cans of lager. The 22-year-old had been burning clothes belonging to her mother's partner in the garden before turning her attention to the rabbit. She prodded the terrified animal with a stick before throwing a burning piece of paper into its hutch and shutting the door. When friends and family tried to intervene Barber swore at them and locked them inside the house.

Katey Barber set fire to her sister's rabbit hutch, leaving poor Bunny charred and blistered

Barber was then seen laughing and said: 'Look, the rabbit's running around on fire,' before eventually pouring water on the animal to put out the flames. Vets who examined the rabbit, named Bunny, said he could be permanently scarred by the attack, which happened last September. He may need to have part of one ear amputated and has been left terrified of any human contact. Stockport magistrates heard the attack happened while Barber was staying at her mother's home in Cheadle Heath, Stockport. Her mother and her boyfriend were away on holiday with Barber's sister, Rachel, the rabbit's owner. Dominic Geelan, prosecuting, said two children were asleep upstairs when the attack began. After burning her mother's partner'sclothes 'in a round drum, pouring turps on them and setting them alight', Barber set the hutch on fire, Mr Geelan said. When others tried to stop her they were 'met with expletives', he added. Barber, of Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester, admitted causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal when she appeared in court last Friday. She could be jailed for up to six months, or face up to a £20,000 fine, when she is sentenced on Tuesday.

Article: HERE

NASA finds cute shrimp beneath ice in Antarctica

kluciole — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:48:00 GMT

A NASA image shows a 3in Lyssianasid, a shrimp-like creature, at a depth of 600 feet beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet

Image: HERE

NASA finds shrimp dinner on ice beneath Antarctica

By Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer
Mon Mar 15, 4:05 pm ET

WASHINGTON – In a surprising discovery about where higher life can thrive, scientists for the first time found a shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet.

Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.

That's why a NASA team was surprised when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then parked itself on the camera's cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they believe came from a foot-long jellyfish.

"We were operating on the presumption that nothing's there," said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will be presenting the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting Wednesday. "It was a shrimp you'd enjoy having on your plate."

"We were just gaga over it," he said of the 3-inch-long, orange critter starring in their two-minute video. Technically, it's not a shrimp. It's a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is distantly related to shrimp.

The video is likely to inspire experts to rethink what they know about life in harsh environments. And it has scientists musing that if shrimp-like creatures can frolic below 600 feet of Antarctic ice in subfreezing dark water, what about other hostile places? What about Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter?

"They are looking at the equivalent of a drop of water in a swimming pool that you would expect nothing to be living in and they found not one animal but two," said biologist Stacy Kim of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California, who joined the NASA team later. "We have no idea what's going on down there."

Microbiologist Cynan Ellis-Evans of the British Antarctic Survey called the finding intriguing.

"This is a first for the sub-glacial environment with that level of sophistication," Ellis-Evans said. He said there have been findings somewhat similar, showing complex life in retreating ice shelves, but nothing quite directly under the ice like this.

Ellis-Evans said it's possible the creatures swam in from far away and don't live there permanently.

But Kim, who is a co-author of the study, doubts it. The site in West Antarctica is at least 12 miles from open seas. Bindschadler drilled an 8-inch-wide hole and was looking at a tiny amount of water. That means it's unlikely that that two critters swam from great distances and were captured randomly in that small of an area, she said.

Yet scientists were puzzled at what the food source would be for these critters. While some microbes can make their own food out of chemicals in the ocean, complex life like the amphipod can't, Kim said.

So how do they survive? That's the key question, Kim said.

"It's pretty amazing when you find a huge puzzle like that on a planet where we thought we know everything," Kim said.

___

On the Web:

NASA research in Antarctica: http://pigiceshelf.nasa.gov/

Article: HERE

Smaller version:

Mon Mar 15, 9:31 AM ET

This video frame grab image provided by NASA, taken in Dec. 2009, shows a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is related to a shrimp, where a NASA team lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet and a curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then even parked itself on the cable attached to the camera. In a surprising discovery that shakes the idea of where higher life can thrive, scientists for the first time found a shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet.

(AP Photo/NASA)

Book makes new claims about Anne Frank; Bergen Belsen survivor Berthe Meijer says Frank distracted younger children from horrors of Nazi concentration camp by telling them fairy tales

kluciole — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:28:00 GMT

Wed Mar 17, 9:45 AM ET

Berthe Meijer is seen during an interview with the Associated Press at her home in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Friday, March 12, 2010. Meijer, now 71, a former 7-year-old inmate of Bergen Belsen offers a rare glimpse of Anne in the final weeks of her life in the German camp, struggling to keep up her own spirits even as she tried to lift the morale of the smaller children. Meijer's memoir, being published in Dutch later this month, is the first to mention Anne's talent for spinning tales even in the despair of the camp. The memoir deals with Meijer's acquaintance with Anne Frank in only a few pages, but she said she titled it 'Life After Anne Frank' because it continues the tale of Holocaust victims where the famous diary leaves off.

(AP Photo/Evert Elzinga)

Book makes new claims about Anne Frank

By Toby Sterling, Associated Press Writer
Wed Mar 17, 4:24 pm ET

AMSTERDAM – A Holocaust survivor claims in a new book that Anne Frank distracted younger children from the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by telling them fairy tales — an account disputed by at least one Frank authority and a childhood friend of the diarist.

The story by Berthe Meijer, now 71, of being a 6-year-old inmate of Bergen Belsen crafts a touching portrait of Anne in the final weeks of her life in the German camp, struggling to keep up her own spirits even as she tried to lift the morale of the smaller children.

That Anne had a gift for storytelling was evident from the diary she kept during two years in hiding with her family in Amsterdam. The scattered pages were collected and published after the war in what became the most widely read book to emerge from the Holocaust.

But Meijer's memoir, being published in Dutch later this month, is the first to mention Anne's talent for spinning tales even in the despair of the camp.

The memoir deals with Meijer's acquaintance with Anne Frank in only a few pages, but she said she titled it "Life After Anne Frank" because it continues the tale of Holocaust victims where the famous diary leaves off.

"The dividing line is where the diary of Anne Frank ends. Because then you fall into a big black hole," Meijer told The Associated Press at her Amsterdam home.

Annemarie Bekker, a spokeswoman for the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam said Berthe Meijer has previously been interviewed by museum historians and she had no reason to doubt Meijer's testimony.

"It could very well be true," Bekker said. "We can't confirm it or deny it."

But Hannah Pick-Goslar, a childhood friend of Anne Frank who also met her in Bergen Belsen, said she doubted Meijer's recollection was accurate.

"In that condition, you almost died," she said in a telephone call from her home in Jerusalem. "You had no strength to tell stories."

Dutch filmmaker Willy Lindwer, who made an Emmy Award-winning documentary about Anne Frank, said he interviewed Meijer for the film and found her story unconvincing.

"Berthe ... had not more than a very vague recollection of this concentration camp," he said in an emailed message to The Associated Press. "She recalled the image of an older girl who told stories to younger children. It may have been Anne Frank, but also maybe not. Very vague."

A spokeswoman for Meijer's publisher, De Bezige Bij, said it had not vetted facts in the book itself. "It's possible that other witnesses will have differing memory of events in the book," said Suzanne Holtzer. But she said the publisher considered Meijer to be "an absolute authority."

Anne's final diary entry was on Aug. 1, 1944, three days before she and her family were arrested. She and her older sister Margot died in March 1945 in a typhus epidemic that swept through Bergen Belsen, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Anne was 15.

The stories Anne told were "fairy tales in which nasty things happened, and that was of course very much related to the war," Meijer said.

"But as a kid you get lifted out of the everyday nastiness. That's something I remember. You're listening to someone telling something that has nothing to do with what's happening around you — so it's a bit of escape."

In addition to her diary, Frank wrote several essays and fragments of fiction while in hiding, including stories about a fairy and a gnome, though they are usually considered only of historical interest. They have been published as "Tales From the Secret Annex."

The stories she told in the camp were "about princes and elves and those kind of figures," Meijer said. Despite having unhappy twists, the tales were "quite a bit less terrible than what we saw around us. So you thought: they didn't have it so bad. As a child, you think very primitively about that kind of thing."

Around 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands before the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Of those, 107,000 were deported to Germany and only 5,200 survived.

The Meijers and the Franks were acquaintances before the war: members of both families had fled Germany during the rise of Hitler's regime and found a place in the tightly-knit Jewish community in Amsterdam. The Meijers lived on the same street where Anne attended a Montessori elementary school.

The Franks went into hiding in a secret apartment above a canal-side warehouse where Otto Frank, Anne's father, had his business.

The Meijers hid in their own home, boarding up the windows and hanging a sign on the door that read "contagious disease" to discourage visitors. They were caught in early 1944 and deported from the Netherlands that March. Both of Berthe's parents died at Bergen Belsen in January 1945.

Dr. Alan Hilfer, director of psychology at Maimonides Medical Center in New York, said it's plausible that Meijer would have recognized Frank and stored the memory all these years if she knew her before the war and if she met her again at the camp.

A child of six or seven can "form memories reasonably well and hold on to them, though not in the same way as an adult," he said.

Records obtained by The Associated Press from Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial authority, show that Berthe was an inmate of Bergen Belsen for 13 months until it was liberated in April 1945.

Meijer acknowledged that her recollections of the Frank sisters were fleeting.

She said there were many reasons she had waited until now to tell her story — not least that she was busy growing up, having a career and raising a family. She said a dedication ceremony at Bergen Belsen in 2006 made her realize how few Dutch survivors are still alive, and that there is little record of the impact the camp had on their later lives.

In addition, she suppressed her memories for years, and the horror of the camps have always been a difficult or taboo subject: at the orphanage where Meijer grew up, in polite company afterward, and even among her fellow survivors.

Still, "you remember a lot at age 7," she said. Meijer turned 7 in April 1945.

"You had to take off your clothes because there were lice in them that spread typhus. And you were wrapped in those blankets. And you sat somewhere in a corner half-frozen."

She said Margot had asked Anne to tell stories to cheer up the children, and that it was difficult for Anne to summon the enthusiasm.

The last time she saw Anne was in the camp infirmary, but they were both sick and "too weak and sad to even be pleasant to each other," she wrote.

In some ways, Meijer grew up to be the person Anne had hoped to be, a journalist, a columnist and an author, albeit of a popular Dutch cookbook.

In her diary Anne wrote in April 1944: "I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. But, and that is the great question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?"

Although Meijer associated with leading Dutch writers and artists, she said she suffered lifelong symptoms of post-traumatic stress, with overwhelming memories and emotions surfacing unexpectedly.

To this day she has a paralyzing fear of crowds and public transportation.

In her book, she wonders about her choices in marrying first a gifted, but alcoholic architect and later one of the Netherlands' most famed journalists — not coincidentally, another Bergen Belsen survivor.

She says she can laugh "through the tears" about having become a culinary expert years after fantasizing endlessly about food while starving at the camp.

She describes how the simple act of cleaning sauce from a pan with her finger can trigger the ambiguously pleasant memory of being allowed to lick one of the camp's enormous cooking vats.

And she proudly shows off a concealed crawl space behind an opening in her cellar where she could hide if need be.

In history books, "the war ends when we were liberated. No. Not for a lot of people," she says.

"Not for the lives of the people who survived those camps or went into hiding or had traumatic experiences because of that war. Those things, they don't go away."

___

Associated Press writer Hillel Italie and investigative researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report.

Article: HERE

Photo: Dolphins swim past a boat, on same day University of Newcastle researchers claimed tourists do them harm

kluciole — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:25:00 GMT

Dolphins swim past a boat on the day the University of Newcastle researchers claimed tourists do them harm

HERE

Photo: a white stork stands in its nest in Bad Freienwalde, eastern Germany

kluciole — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:24:00 GMT

A white stork stands in its nest in Bad Freienwalde, eastern Germany. More than a quarter of Germany's 4,000 stork pairs live in Germany's state of Brandenburg.

HERE

Picasso's "Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto," once center of dispute, for sale

kluciole — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:19:00 GMT

image: HERE

Picasso portrait, once center of dispute, for sale

9 mins ago

LONDON – Christie's auction house says it will sell a celebrated Pablo Picasso portrait that was the subject of a dispute about its Nazi-era ownership.

"Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto" is expected to fetch between 30 million pounds and 40 million pounds ($45 million and $60 million) in London on June 23.

The 1903 portrait, from Picasso's Blue Period, is being sold by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's charitable foundation. Proceeds will go to its work promoting the arts.

The painting was withdrawn from sale in New York in 2006 after the heir of a Berlin banker who owned it in the 1930s claimed his ancestor was forced to sell it under Nazi intimidation.

U.S. courts threw out the lawsuit. Christie's said the issue had been resolved "by agreement."

Article: HERE

Women and girls (as young as 2 years old) are often rape victims in Haiti quake aftermath

kluciole — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:13:00 GMT

Tue Mar 16, 2:53 PM ET

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In this photo taken March 14, 2010, women wait to receive medical attention for them and their children outside the women's clinic run by the Jenkins-Penn Haiti Relief Operation, at the makeshift camp for earthquake survivors in the Petionville Golf Club in Port-au-Prince. Women, girls and children as young as 2 years old, already traumatized by the loss of homes and loved ones in Haiti's earthquake, now are falling victim to rapists in sprawling and unmanageable tent cities that have become home to hundreds of thousands of people.

(AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

Tue Mar 16, 2:53 PM ET

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In this photo taken March 16, 2010, a girl is held by her mother while women wait in line to receive medical attention in Port-au-Prince. Women, girls and children as young as 2 years old, already traumatized by the loss of homes and loved ones in Haiti's earthquake, now are falling victim to rapists in sprawling and unmanageable tent cities that have become home to hundreds of thousands of people.

(AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Women, girls rape victims in Haiti quake aftermath

By Michelle Faul, Associated Press Writer
Tue Mar 16, 8:43 pm ET

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – When the young woman needed to use the toilet, she went out into the darkened tent camp and was attacked by three men.

"They grabbed me, put their hands over my mouth and then the three of them took turns," the slender 21-year-old said, wriggling with discomfort as she nursed her baby girl, born three days before Haiti's devastating quake.

"I am so ashamed. We're scared people will find out and shun us," said the woman, who suffers from abdominal pain and itching, likely from an infection contracted during the attack.

Women and children as young as 2, already traumatized by the loss of homes and loved ones in the Jan. 12 catastrophe, are now falling victim to rapists in the sprawling tent cities that have become home to hundreds of thousands of people.

With no lighting and no security, they are menacing places after sunset. Sexual assaults are daily occurrences in the biggest camps, aid workers say — and most attacks go unreported because of the shame, social stigma and fear of reprisals from attackers.

Rape was a big problem in Haiti even before the earthquake and frequently was used as a political weapon in times of upheaval. Both times the first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was ousted, his enemies assassinated his male supporters and raped their wives and daughters.

But the quake that killed an estimated 200,000 people has made women and girls ever more vulnerable. They have lost their homes and are forced to sleep in flimsy tents or tarp-covered lean-tos. They've lost male protection with the deaths of husbands, brothers and sons. And they are living in close quarters with strangers.

The 21-year-old said her family has received no food aid because the Haitian men handing out coupons for food distribution demand sexual favors.

Sex-for-food is not uncommon in the camps, said a report issued Tuesday by the Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development in Haiti. "In particular, young girls have to negotiate sexually in order to get shelter from the rains and access to food aid."

At the camp on Monday where the young mother was gang-raped, a woman in shorts tried to bathe discreetly. Stripped to her waist, she faced her blue tarp tent, her back to the rows of other shelters.

Nearby, a teenage girl squatted behind a pile of garbage, trying to avoid the stench and clouds of flies around tarp-covered latrines that provide the only privacy, but also are places where women are attacked.

In this camp, some 47,000 people live crowded into what used to be a sports ground in a neighborhood that always has been dangerous. Residents include a dozen escaped prisoners, among them a man accused of a notorious murder, according to Fritznel Pierre, a human rights advocate who lives at the camp.

"But nobody says anything because they're scared, scared of the criminals and scared of the police," he said.

Pierre has documented three other gang rapes in the camp, including of a 17-year-old who says she was a virgin before six men attacked her and raped her repeatedly.

"I really worry about the teenager because she has no one to look out for her. She says she sees her attackers but is afraid to report them because she would then have to leave the camp and she has nowhere to go," Pierre said.

Investigators for Human Rights Watch reported the first three gang rapes to U.N. officials. Then, two weeks later, on Feb. 27, the 21-year-old mother was gang-raped.

Only a week later did U.N. police officers begin patrolling.

"For me it seems completely bizarre that for this one camp that everyone knows is unsafe, it's taken them three weeks to get a patrol going," said Liesl Gerntholtz, executive director of the agency's women's rights division. "It's unrealistic to expect patrols in camps all the time, but I think they can identify hotspots and provide security to those spots."

Pierre complained that the U.N. patrols are ineffective. "They only drive their cars down the one road that covers only a small portion of the camp. They never get out of their cars," he said.

In the hilltop suburb of Petionville, where plush mansions look out over slums on hillsides and in ravines, a 7-year-old rape victim was being treated Monday in the hospital of a tent camp set up on a golf course. Another child, a 2-year-old, had been raped in the same camp two weeks earlier.

The toddler is taking antibiotics for a gonorrhea infection of the mouth, according to Alison Thompson, who is the volunteer medical coordinator for a Haitian relief group created by Sean Penn. She helped treat both children.

"Women aren't being protected," Thompson said. "So when the lights go down is when the rapes increase, and it's happening daily in all the camps in Port-au-Prince."

Besides sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, victims face possible HIV infection. Haiti has the highest infection rate for the virus that causes AIDS in the Western hemisphere, with one in 50 people infected.

Among the many rape victims is an 18-year-old girl who lost her parents, grandmother, a sister and three cousins to the quake. She was roaming the streets distraught when a man approached her, promising her his wife would look after her, she said.

The middle-aged man took her to a house, then left and came back with two men. The three raped her repeatedly until she managed to escape.

The teen is among dozens of rape victims who have sought help from KOFAVIV, a group of Haitian women who survived political rapes in 2004. Their offices were destroyed in the quake and they now operate from a tent.

They brought the victims to American volunteer lawyers who came to Port-au-Prince a week ago to identify Haitians who may qualify for humanitarian parole to live in the United States.

"I've been here five days and have spoken to 30 (rape) survivors including a dozen under 18. Their stories are horrific. I would be catatonic," said San Francisco lawyer Jayne Fleming.

Few rapes are reported because women often face humiliating scrutiny from police officers who suggest they invited the attacks and even nurses who contend young girls were "too hot" in their dress style, according to Delva Marie Eramithe, a KOFAVIV leader.

Her own 18-year-old daughter was saved from an attacker who dragged the girl into a dark alley between tents at the downtown camp sprawling across Champs de Mars plaza. The assailant did not see the teen's three sisters, who had been walking behind her, and all four of them managed to beat him and run him off.

Soon after, he returned to their tent with three other men and a gun, Eramithe said.

While a male neighbor argued with the men, Eramithe and her daughters went to a nearby police station to report the attempted rape.

"We told them the man who attacked her was right there at our tent, just two blocks away," Eramithe said. "But one policeman said they had received reports of nothing but raping, thefts and domestic beatings all day and there's nothing they can do. The other police officer said the only person who can do anything is President (Rene) Preval."

When she insisted, they gave her the license plate of a police van patrolling the camp perimeter. Eventually she found the patrol car but that officer "told us to go and get the attacker and bring him to them."

Police spokesman Gary Desrosiers said only 24 rapes have been reported to Haitian authorities this year. Several suspects were detained, but many escaped when prisons collapsed in the quake, he said.

Police Chief Mario Andresol blamed the attacks on the more than 7,000 prisoners who escaped. "Bandits are taking advantage to harass and rape women and young girls under the tents," he told reporters two weeks after the quake.

"We are aware of problem ... but it's not a priority," Information Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said last month.

Haitian police officers with stations minutes from some of the largest camps do not patrol — a fact that spokesman Desrosiers blames on the loss of dozens of officers killed in the quake, as well as scores who remain missing and more than 250 who were injured.

Still, that leaves some 9,600 Haitian police officers and 2,000 U.N. police officers.

The first signs of action came when U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived Sunday, and a contingent of female U.N. and Haitian police officers set up a tent at the camp.

Ban promised the camps will be "safe and secure."

He praised the security offered by Haitian and U.N. police and told the women officers: "We must protect these women and girls. ... If they are sexually abused and attacked and raped, that is totally unacceptable and intolerable, and we must stop it."

On Monday, a man with a bullhorn was at the camp during a food distribution, saying "We don't want men raping women, do we?"

No, the women waiting in line yelled back.

Still, the fear was palpable among the most vulnerable. The 18-year-old orphaned rape victim was nervous about the time, even though it was only mid-afternoon.

"I have to find somewhere to sleep, near some people who might help me if there's trouble," she said.

"It scares me, the way the men look at me, and they know I'm all alone."

___

Associated Press Television News reporter Pierre Richard Luxama contributed to this report.

Article: HERE

Tue Mar 16, 2:53 PM ET

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In this photo taken March 12, 2010, a 21-year-old woman who doesn't want to be identified speaks with The Associated Press in Port-au-Prince. Women, girls and children as young as 2 years old, already traumatized by the loss of homes and loved ones in Haiti's earthquake, now are falling victim to rapists in sprawling and unmanageable tent cities that have become home to hundreds of thousands of people. 'They grabbed me, put their hands over my mouth and then the three of them took turns', said the woman who was raped by three men while she went to use the toilet into the darkness of a makeshift tent camp.

(AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

Smithsonian opens $21M human evolution hall

kluciole — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:07:00 GMT

Smithsonian site here: http://www.si.edu/

Smithsonian opens $21M human evolution hall

By Brett Zongker, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 2 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is opening a new permanent exhibit exploring human evolution over 6 million years.

The nearly $21 million Hall of Human Origins opens Wednesday. It will include more than 285 fossils and artifacts, including the only Neanderthal skeleton in the United States.

Curator Rick Potts says the exhibit tracks major milestones of human development, including when we started walking upright and speaking. He says the science can be compatible with religious perspectives.

Most of the funding came from billionaire David H. Koch (COKE), executive vice president of Kansas-based energy company Koch Industries Inc.

The museum attracted 7.4 million visitors last year, making it the most popular U.S. museum.

Article: HERE

Photo: a large star forming nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia within the Milky Way Galaxy

kluciole — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:33:00 GMT

A large star forming nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia within the Milky Way Galaxy. The image was captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer

HERE

Culture clash: European art provokes Muslims

kluciole — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:20:00 GMT

Wed Mar 10, 11:40 AM ET

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Swedish artist Lars Vilks talks during an interview with the Associated Press in Stockholm, Sweden, Wednesday March 10 2010. The Swedish artist who angered Muslims by drawing the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog says he believes the suspects arrested in Ireland and the U.S. in an alleged plot to kill him were not professionals .

(AP photo/Scanpix, Bertil Ericson)

Culture clash: European art provokes Muslims

By Michael Weissenstein, Associated Press Writer
2 hrs 9 mins ago

LONDON – With the West locked in conflicts across the Muslim world, why would anyone throw fuel on the fire?

A small group of Europeans have been doing just that — provoking death plots and at least one murder by turning out art that derides the Prophet Muhammad and the Quran in the name of Western values.

Behind the scenes is something bigger: a rising European unease with a rapidly growing Muslim minority, and the spreading sense that the continent has become a front in a clash of civilizations.

Recent events — including surprising electoral success by an anti-Islamic Dutch party, moves to ban veils in France and minarets in Switzerland, and arrests in Ireland and the U.S. this week in an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist — are signs of the rising tensions.

Swedish artist Lars Vilks says he was defending freedom of speech when he produced a crude black-and-white drawing of Muhammad with a dog's body in 2007. Authorities say that set him in the crosshairs of an assassination plot by extremists including Colleen LaRose, a 46-year-old Muslim convert from Pennsylvania who dubbed herself "Jihad Jane."

Vilks said in a recent interview with The Associated Press that he wasn't interested in offending Muslims as an end in itself, but wanted to show that he could make provocative art about any topic he chose. "There is nothing so holy you can't offend it," he said.

The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten also said it was defending free speech in 2005 when it printed 12 cartoons of Muhammad, one in a bomb-shaped turban, setting off protests and the torching of Western embassies in several Muslim countries. And bottle-blond Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders said he was promoting European values by producing Fitna, a 15-minute film that lays images of the Sept. 11 attacks alongside verses from the Quran. The film was shown in Britain's House of Lords this month.

The cases are extreme, but millions of moderate Europeans also are re-examining the meaning of the liberal values widely cherished across the continent. How, many are asking, should a liberal society respectfully deal with immigrants who often espouse illiberal values? Should the immigrants adopt the values of their adoptive land — or, to the contrary, should society change to accommodate the newcomers who now form part of it?

France, home to at least five million of the estimated 14 million Muslims in Western Europe, launched a parliament-run dialogue on what to do about full-face veils last year. It ended with a parliamentary panel recommending a ban on the veils in buses, trains, hospitals, post offices and public sector facilities. In December, a large majority of Swiss voters backed a ballot initiative banning the building of any new minarets.

The measures sparked some peaceful protests. But the most incendiary provocations have come from the Dutch and their Nordic neighbors, nations with long histories of homogeneity, tradition of provocative artwork and less experience with large-scale immigration than former colonial titans like Britain and France.

Jan Hjarpe, a professor emeritus of Islamic studies at Lund University in southern Sweden, near Vilks' home, said the deliberate provocations were helpful to Islamic extremists, who have been hunting for targets that would win them popularity in the Muslim world.

"It has had almost no effect on the Muslim community in Sweden, who regard it as not very interesting," he said. "These threats against him have to do with extremist groups that want something to react to."

Denmark's Prophet Muhammad cartoons emerged from a discussion in 2005 about whether Islam was being treated with special sensitivity among Danish artists for fear of reprisals from extremists. Jyllands-Posten said the project was a way to challenge self-censorship and show that Muslims, too, must be ready to put up with mockery in a society based on democracy and free speech.

Denmark has an estimated 200,000 Muslims — about 4 percent of the population — while the numbers in Sweden are believed to be somewhat higher.

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry. Danish Muslims took the cartoons as an affront, viewing them as symbolic of a backlash against Muslim immigrants in Denmark, manifested by the rise of a nationalist party and sometimes harsh anti-Muslim rhetoric in the Danish press.

An ax-wielding Somali man with suspected al-Qaida links has been jailed since January on preliminary charges of terrorism and attempted murder after breaking into the home of Kurt Westergaard, the 74-year-old Danish artist whose Muhammad-with-bomb-turban cartoon outraged the Muslim world three years ago. The Somali man had won an asylum case and received a residency permit to stay in Denmark, officials said.

Outrage, threats and violence over depictions of Muhammad are nothing new: Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding in England for a decade because the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a 1989 fatwa, or religious edict, ordering Muslims to kill him because his book, "The Satanic Verses," insulted Islam.

Rushdie has survived, but in 2004, filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was slain on an Amsterdam street by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent incensed by his film "Submission," a fictional study of abused Muslim women. It featured scenes of near-naked women with Quranic texts appearing on their flesh.

Van Gogh was repeatedly shot, and his throat was cut. A letter pinned to his chest with a knife threatened the life of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of radical Islam who helped write the film.

The death accelerated the swelling of anti-Islamic populism in the once-tolerant Netherlands, where Muslims now make up some 5 percent of the 16 million population.

In the 1980s and into the 90s, large numbers of immigrants — mainly Turks and Moroccans encouraged to move to the country as cheap labor — barely integrated into mainstream society and instead stuck together in low-rent inner-city neighborhoods.

In light of the tragic record of the Dutch toward the Jewish population during the Nazi occupation, when some 70 percent were deported and killed, it was considered impolitic to show resentment against another ethnic group. But that didn't mean the resentment wasn't there. It was only in 2002 when the populist politician Pim Fortuyn began speaking openly against immigration and the threat to the Dutch identity that people felt free to voice their anger. Fortuyn's popularity soared, and the party he founded was hugely popular even after Fortuyn himself was assassinated (by an animal rights activist).

Successive governments clamped down on immigration and forced new arrivals to learn about the Dutch language and culture in an attempt to integrate them into mainstream society.

Wilders is derided by his enemies as a neo-fascist but has been able to turn his provocations into political success: his Freedom Party winning in the town of Almere and coming in second in The Hague this month the only two races it ran out of 394 cities and towns that elected local councils.

If the outcome is any indication of the parliamentary vote in June, Wilders could emerge as a king-maker on the national stage with no combination of parties is likely to be able to form a working majority in the next parliament.

One widely praised new book, journalist Christopher Caldwell's "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe" has prompted ongoing discussion of whether Islam can ever truly be integrated into European society. Some see cause for optimism, however faint.

"I wonder whether the liberal order is really quite so weak and inept, whether the story is quite over just yet," Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum wrote in one review.

___

Associated Press Writers Karl Ritter in Stockholm and Art Max and Mike Corder in Amsterdam contributed to this report.

Article: HERE

Photo: the STEREO spacecraft captured this strong coronal mass ejection from the Sun

kluciole — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:12:00 GMT

The STEREO spacecraft captured this strong coronal mass ejection from the Sun on February 28, 2010. Credit: ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)

HERE

Life-Enabling Molecules Spotted in Orion Nebula

kluciole — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:51:00 GMT

image: HERE

Life-Enabling Molecules Spotted in Orion Nebula

SPACE.com Staff
SPACE.com
Fri Mar 12, 6:47 am ET

The chemical fingerprints of potentially life-building molecules have been detected in the Orion nebula by Europe's Herschel Space Observatory.

The Orion nebula is a nearby stellar nursery, brimming with gas, dust and infant stars. It is known to be one of the most prolific chemical factories in space, although the full extent of its chemistry and the pathways for molecule formation are not well understood.

Researchers have used one of Herschel's instruments, which looks at the cosmos in the far infrared wavelengths of light, to provide more insight into how organic molecules form in space.

By sifting through the pattern of spikes in Orion nebula's light signature, or spectrum, astronomers have identified a few common molecules that are precursors to life-enabling molecules, including water, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, methanol, dimethyl ether, hydrogen cyanide, sulfur oxide and sulfur dioxide. Each spike in the spectrum corresponds to a particular molecule.

"This HIFI spectrum, and the many more to come, will provide a virtual treasure trove of information regarding the overall chemical inventory and on how organics form in a region of active star formation. It harbors the promise of a deep understanding of the chemistry of space once we have the full spectral surveys available," said Edwin Bergin of the University of Michigan and the principal investigator of the HEXOS Key Program on Herschel.

Because of Herschel's unique infrared observing abilities, this new spectrum is already an improvement on previous one's taken of the Orion nebula.

"We obtained this spectrum in a few hours and it already beats any other spectrum, at any other wavelength, ever taken of Orion," said Frank Helmich, Herschel HIFI principal investigator of SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

Built by the European Space Agency, Herschel launched in May 2009 on a mission to scan the universe in the far-infrared range of the spectrum. The observatory is expected to last until 2012 and has the largest single mirror ever built for a space telescope.

Original Story: Life-Enabling Molecules Spotted in Orion Nebula

Article: HERE

Photo: a giant sculpture of a stockinged leg at The Magnificent Innovations for Women exhibition in Budapest

kluciole — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:42:00 GMT

A spectator walks by a giant sculpture of a stockinged leg at The Magnificent Innovations for Women exhibition in Budapest

HERE

Ultraviolet rays shine new light on masterpieces by 14th century artist Giotto di Bondone, considered one of the founders of the Italian Renaissance

kluciole — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:27:00 GMT

The original Giotto painting (left) and the same artwork under ultra-violet rays, exposing greater details, in the Peruzzi Chapel at the Santa Croce Church in Florence

How ultraviolet rays are shining new light on masterpieces by founder of Italian Renaissance

09th March 2010

Restoration experts have used ultra violet rays to shed new light on masterpieces by one of the Western World's greatest painters.

The technique was used on works by the 14th century artist Giotto di Bondone, considered by critics to be one of the founders of the Italian Renaissance. It unveiled rich original details of Giotto's paintings in the Peruzzi Chapel in Florence's Santa Croce church that have been hidden for centuries. 'We have uncovered a secret Giotto,' said Isabella Lapi Ballerini, head of Florence's Opificio delle Pietre Dure, one of the world's most prestigious art restoration laboratories. Last year, more than a dozen restorers and researchers began an ambitious project of 'non-invasive diagnostics' to ascertain the condition of the 12-metre-high chapel, which Giotto painted in about 1320. The aim of the study, partly funded by a grant from the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles, was to gather information on the 1,830 square feet chapel to use as a road map and "hospital chart" for a future restoration. During the project, which lasted four months, restorers working on three stories of steel scaffolding noted that while viewing the paintings under ultra-violet light, they were able see amazing details not visible to the naked eye.

The original Giotto is pale in comparison to how it would have looked like more than 600 years ago. But bltra violet light has brought out some of the extraordinary details

WHO WAS GIOTTO?

Giotto di Bondone was an outstanding painter, sculptor, and architect,who dealt mostly with religious subjects. He was born in a village near Florence in about 1266. His artistic talents were discovered by Cimabue, a well-known Florentine painter.

His earliest known works is a series of frescoes (paintings on still-wet plaster) on the life of St Francis in the church at Assisi. One story about Giotto tells how he sent Pope Boniface VIII a perfect circle painted with a single brushstroke when asked for samples of his work. The Pope was apparently very impressed.

Giotto married and had six children. He counted the King Robert of Naples as a good friend and was a rich man. In 1334, the city of Florence honoured Giotto with the title of Magnus Magister (Great Master) and appointed him city architect and superintendent of public works. He died in 1337.

'It was something really astonishing,' said Cecilia Frosinini, co-ordinator of the project that studied the scenes in the lives of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. 'We knew we could get some very interesting results from our scientific diagnostics but when we looked under ultra-violet light, all of a sudden all these very faint paintings that were ruined by old restorations took on a new life.'

Giotto's paintings in the lance-shaped chapel are believed to have had a major influence on Michelangelo, who was born nearly 140 years after Giotto died and who painted the Sistine Chapel in the early 1500s. Today's restorers are seeing the details Michelangelo saw when he admired the paintings by Giotto, considered one of the artists who sowed the seeds for the Italian Renaissance.

'The scenes are again three dimensional ... we were able to see all the chiaroscuro effects,' she said. 'There were bodies under the garments ... they became three dimensional, you could see the folds of the garments, the expressions of the faces.' In the scene where God is accepting John the Evangelist into heaven, the wrinkles in John's forehead, the threads of his beard, the whites of his eyes and God's welcoming gaze appear like fleeting but powerful visions. The Peruzzi Chapel was immortalised in E.M. Forster's 'Room with a View,' in the scene where the young Lucy Honeychurch is shown the Giottos by George Emerson, her future husband. Commissioned by the noble Peruzzi family, it was whitewashed in the early 1700s to make way for a new chapel design.

But when restorers removed the white paint in 1840 they used the techniques of their times, including harsh solvents and steel wool pads that blunted and homogenised the paintings, leaving them looking traumatised.

A restorer uses an ultra-violet light to expose greater details on a Giotto painting. However, the light can not be used long-term as it could destroy the artwork

Giotto painted the Peruzzi Chapel towards the end of his life in 1313

The 19th century "restorers" painted the parts of the Giottos that had been damaged, adding their own brushstrokes to highlight what was no longer visible from the ground. In 1958, a restoration removed what the 19th century restorers added, leaving what remained of the original Giottos and what visitors to the church see today with their naked eyes. Even though they are often referred to as frescoes, the Peruzzi scenes were actually painted 'a secco,' or on dry plaster, unlike his famous frescos in the Bardi Chapel, which is also in Santa Croce, or his works in St Francis in Assisi. He painted the Peruzzi Chapel towards the end of his life and some experts believe he was striving for a different effect than he achieved with the fresco technique, in which the painting is done while the plaster is still wet. 'It allowed him to obtain something more rich in terms of colours, of decorations, but over time, dry painting is very fragile,' Ms Frossini said.

The Giotto paintings were commissioned for the Peruzzi Chapel in the Santa Croce Church in Florence

Unfortunately, the lush details will remain fleeting forever. They are only visible when they are bathed in ultra-violet light and subjecting them to such constant bombardment would be not only impractical but harmful. 'I hope we can find enough funds to have a complete ultra-violet mapping of the whole chapel in order to build some kind of virtual software to share all that we have discovered with the general public,' Ms Frossini said.

Article: HERE

Catastrophic event in early Universe could explain why galaxies like our Milky Way stop growing

kluciole — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:20:00 GMT

An artist's representation showing outflow from a supermassive black hole inside the middle of a galaxy. Scientists believe debris from such a black hole or winds from dying stars caused a huge surge of energy that scattered star-forming gasses

Catastrophic event in early Universe could explain why galaxies like our Milky Way stop growing
10th March 2010

A 'catastrophic event' halted the birth of new stars in an infant galaxy 10 billion years ago, scientists revealed today. They believe this may explain why early giant galaxies similar to our own Milky Way didn't just keep on expanding after they had formed. The team from Durham University, observed the massive galaxy, called SMM J1237+6203, as it would have appeared just three billion years after the Big Bang when the Universe was a quarter of its present age. According to their findings the galaxy exploded in a series of blasts trillions of times more powerful than any caused by an atomic bomb. The blasts happened every second for millions of years, the scientists said. The explosions scattered the gas needed to form new stars by helping it escape the gravitational pull of the galaxy, effectively regulating its development. They believe the huge surge of energy was caused by either the outflow of debris from the galaxy's black hole or from powerful winds generated by dying stars called supernovae. The research, funded by the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Observations of the galaxy, in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, were carried out using the Gemini Observatory here on Earth. The Durham-led team hopes the finding could increase understanding about the formation and development of galaxies. Lead author Dr Dave Alexander from Durham University, said: 'We are looking into the past and seeing a catastrophic event that essentially switched off star formation and halted the growth of a typical massive galaxy in the local Universe. 'Effectively the galaxy is regulating its growth by preventing new stars from being born. Theorists had predicted that huge outflows of energy were behind this activity, but it's only now that we have seen it in action. 'We believe that similar huge outflows are likely to have stopped the growth of other galaxies in the early Universe by blowing away the materials needed for star formation.' The Durham-led team now plans to study other massive star-forming galaxies in the early Universe to see if they display similar characteristics.

Article: HERE

In paying for sex changes, Cuba breaks from past

kluciole — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:13:00 GMT

Wed Mar 10, 5:46 AM ET

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In this March 5, 2010 photo, Yiliam Gonzalez, second from right, and her mother Janeth Anchia, left, visit with neighbors in Havana. Gonzalez is one of eight transsexuals to undergo a sex change under Cuba's universal health care system.

(AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

Wed Mar 10, 5:44 AM ET

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In this March 5, 2010 photo, Yiliam Gonzalez has her hair done by a stylist in Havana. Gonzalez is one of eight transsexuals to undergo a sex change under Cuba's universal health care system.

(AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

In paying for sex changes, Cuba breaks from past

By Will Weissert, Associated Press Writer
Wed Mar 10, 12:52 pm EST

HAVANA – Looking in the mirror used to make Yiliam Gonzalez sick to her stomach.

"I would see myself, and my body didn't match who I was," said the 28-year-old wedding pianist, who went by William before receiving a sex change under Cuba's universal health care system.

Gonzalez is living proof of a small but remarkable transformation for the rugged revolution of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and a band of ever-macho, bearded rebels, who long punished gays and transsexuals — but now are paying for sex changes.

Standing six feet (183 centimeters) tall, with shoulder-length blond hair, heavy makeup and an ID card still bearing a man's name, Gonzalez underwent the procedure in 2008. She was one of eight Cubans to do so through a program begun in 1988 — then suspended for two decades, after many complained the communist government had better ways to spend its scarce resources.

The operations have begun anew under President Raul Castro's daughter Mariela, Cuba's top gay-rights activist, and 22 more transsexuals are waiting to have it performed.

Mariela Castro says the government is moving cautiously, doing only a few per year.

"There has been a lot of resistance because homophobia remains strong in our culture," she said at a recent conference on sexuality.

In the 1960s, Cuba was ferociously anti-gay, firing homosexuals from state jobs, imprisoning them or sending them to work camps. Many fled into exile. Transsexuals, though not gay, were considered the same.

While gay jokes remain as common as shots of strong espresso in Cuba, government media campaigns now discourage homophobia. Hundreds of gay Cubans marched down Havana's spiffy "La Rampa" boulevard last spring, just a year after authorities had forbidden a gay-pride parade.

"I'd like to think that discrimination against homosexuals is a problem that is being overcome," former President Fidel Castro said during a series of interviews with French journalist Ignacio Ramonet between 2003 and 2005. "Old prejudices and narrow-mindedness will increasingly be things of the past."

Mariela Castro has seen to it that the state formally recognizes transsexuals. A state-trained kindergarten teacher with a degree in sexuality, she runs the National Sexual Education Center. It spent years lobbying communist officials, who finally agreed to lift bans on sex changes in 2008 — though the resolution was never made public to avoid unwanted attention.

"These processes of negotiation are sometimes done very quietly," Mariela Castro said, "so as not to stir up ghosts."

She now says that financial concerns in the past were simply used to hide prejudices.

That's not unusual, said Denise Leclair, executive director of the Washington-based International Foundation for Gender Education.

"In many countries people complain bitterly. It's primarily driven by religious beliefs," Leclair said.

Religious objections weren't a problem in Cuba, which was officially atheist for decades. Instead, many Cubans claimed their country was too poor to pay for the procedure, writing letters to the editor in the Communist Party newspaper Granma after the first successful Cuban surgery was announced in 1988.

Leclair said a male-to-female change can cost $10,000 to $25,000 in the U.S., or up to four times higher than that, depending on all the procedures performed. About a dozen American doctors do between 1,000 and 2,000 such operations a year, she said.

Canada, Britain, France and Brazil offer government-financed sex changes, among other countries.

San Francisco began paying for sex changes for city and county employees in 2001, and Fort Worth, Texas, is considered following suit. Some large employers, including IBM and the University of California, negotiated contracts with their private insurers to cover the procedure known medically as "sexual reassignment surgery," and other insurance companies have begun covering at least part of the treatments.

Still, Leclair said most of the largest U.S. insurers don't cover the surgery.

Cuba won't say how much its sex change costs, but doctors earn state salaries worth an average of about $20 per month.

Cuban doctors received training from visiting Belgians on how to do the surgeries, and doctors from both countries were present during the procedures.

Despite a global recession that has hit Cuba especially hard, prompting Raul Castro to announce unspecified cuts in health-care spending, his daughter says the state can't afford not to perform the surgeries.

Gonzalez said opponents "don't know what a person who is transsexual suffers. It's a prison you can't get out of."

Gonzalez knew she was different almost from birth. By 4, she was already so partial to girl's clothing and toys that her parents put her in therapy. The government formally designated her transsexual in 2000. Six years later, Mariela Castro won approval to restart the procedures, and Gonzalez was among the first recipients.

Gonzalez refused to say the exact date of the operation or how she was chosen. Her procedure took eight hours.

Leclair said 40 percent of transsexuals become suicidal. But Gonzalez says her boyfriend of seven years kept her from getting depressed.

"He always saw the woman in me and accepted me how I was," she said, "but we couldn't have sex in a complete way until now."

Gonzalez can't get married, however, as she is still waiting for permission to change the name on her government ID card. Until then, she also cannot work in another wedding venue, though she would like to, or go back to school because her name no longer fits the woman she has become.

It's a problem that Cuban Olivia Lam knows all too well. She was born Alfonso Manuel but has been waiting for sex-change surgery for two years.

While her name has not been changed, authorities allowed her to take a new picture for her ID card — one where she is dressed as a woman.

"The picture is me, even if the name is not," said Lam, a gregarious 43-year-old who waves her arms when she talks, making her ever-present hoop earrings dance on her earlobes.

Both women say they think the delay in getting ID cards is because of the slow Cuban bureaucracy and not any kind of government resistance.

Lam, who works as a hairdresser out of her two-room apartment, first began cross-dressing at 21. Though she has been formally classified as transsexual since 2008, she has no way of knowing when — or if — approval for sex-change surgery will come.

And though the government now accepts her, Lam acknowledged that getting her own family to has not been easy.

"I don't think any parent wants their son to be different," she said, "but they understand that you're not like this because you want to be."

Article: HERE

Wed Mar 10, 5:45 AM ET

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In this March 5, 2010 photo, Yiliam Gonzalez plays the piano at a neighbors home in Havana. Gonzalez, a 28-year-old wedding pianist, is one of eight transsexuals to undergo a sex change under Cuba's universal health care system.

(AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

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\In this March 5, 2010 photo, Yiliam Gonzalez, left, speaks with her mother Janeth Anchia as they clean dishes in a friend's home in Havana. Gonzalez is one of eight transsexuals to undergo a sex change under Cuba's universal health care system.

(AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

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(AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

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In this March 4, 2010 photo, Yiliam Gonzalez attends a ceremony at the Russian Orthodox cathedral in Havana. Gonzalez is one of eight Cubans to undergo a government sex change as part a program that began in 1998 provided by Cuba's universal health care system.

(AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

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In this March 8, 2010 photo, Yiliam Gonzalez shows her ID showing her former name William, in Havana. Yiliam is currently waiting for permission to legally change her name to Yiliam. Gonzalez is one of eight Cubans to undergo a government sex change as part a program that began in 1998 provided by Cuba's universal health care system.

(AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

Female WWII aviators honored with gold medal

kluciole — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:07:00 GMT

Wed Mar 10, 3:14 PM ET

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Marion Stegman Hodgson of Ft. Worth Texas, is seen in the front row on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 10, 2010, before a ceremony where former members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, the first women in to fly America's military aircraft, were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

(AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke)

Female WWII aviators honored with gold medal

By Kimberly Hefling, Associated Press Writer
35 mins ago

WASHINGTON – They flew planes during World War II but weren't considered real military pilots. No flags were draped over their coffins when they died on duty. And when their service ended, they had to pay their own bus fare home.

These aviators — all women — got long-overdue recognition on Wednesday. They received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor given by Congress, in a ceremony on Capitol Hill.

About 200 women who served as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, were on hand to receive the award. Now mostly in their late 80s and early 90s, some came in wheelchairs, many sported dark blue uniforms, and one, June Bent of Westboro, Mass., clutched a framed photograph of a comrade who had died.

As a military band played "The Star-Spangled Banner," one of the women who had been sitting in a wheelchair stood up and saluted through the entire song as a relative gently supported her back.

"Women Airforce Service Pilots, we are all your daughters; you taught us how to fly," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. She said the pilots went unrecognized for too long, even though their service blazed a trail for other women in the U.S. military.

In accepting the award, WASP pilot Deanie Parrish, 88, of Waco, Texas, said the women had volunteered without expectation of thanks. Their mission was to fly noncombat missions to free up male pilots to fly overseas.

"We did it because our country needed us," Parrish said.

WASP Ty Hughes Killen, 85, of Lancaster, Calif., put it more simply: "We're a bunch of tough old ladies," she said in an interview.

Thirty-eight WASPS were killed in service in World War II. But they were long considered civilians, not members of the military, and thus were not entitled to the pay and benefits given to men.

They were only afforded veteran status in 1977 after a long fight. It's estimated that about 300 of the more than 1,000 WASPs are still alive.

A day earlier, the women participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Memorial with the knowledge that it may be one of the last times so many of them could gather. Killen said it was the "gals who are watching from upstairs" she's been thinking of.

"I really don't care for publicity but what I really do care about is the 900 or more that are already dead and gone and have not had the cognizance and recognition that I feel they should have for their families," Killen said.

Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., along with Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and Susan Davis, D-Calif., led the push in Congress to get the women recognized.

Hutchison noted at the ceremony that when the unit was disbanded in 1944, many of the women had to pay from their own bus fare home from an airfield in Sweetwater, Texas. When some died on duty, it was fellow female aviators who helped pay their funeral expenses, she said.

The Congressional Gold Medal was awarded in 2000 to the Navajo Code Talkers and in 2006 to the Tuskegee Airmen.

Despite the danger and obstacles they faced, the women in interviews fondly recalled the camaraderie they shared.

"It was fun coming into a strange airport and having the mechanics say, 'Where's the pilot?'" said Dorothy Eppstein, 92, of Kalamazoo, Mich.

Article: HERE