The cow on the tree

RIO GRANDE DO SUL state – At the São Lourenço do Sul city, friday, March, 11 (2011) – the prefect, José Daniel Raupp Martins, declared municipal public calamity after a storm that caused a devastating flood. The force of waters dragged crops and herds. Eight people died and two thousand were made homeless. Among the animals that were lost, only the cow saved itself despite having been in an awkward position: on top of a tree much far from the farm that was her home.

SOURCE: Chuva arrasa cidade e deixa vaca em árvore.
IN Marco Eusebio Blog, published in 03/11/2011
[http://www.marcoeusebio.com.br/]

The Brazil's flying rivers

AMAZON – Flying rivers are invisible courses of water, chains of vapor that pass above us, without anyone realizing it. These celestial rivers are formed by the waters that evaporate of the Amazon basin. The amount of water in vapor state that runs by these flying rivers is of the same order of magnitude or more than flow of the Amazon River (200 thousand cubic meters per second).

SOURCE: Rios voadores: estudando a umidade do ar ao sabor do vento.
IN Correio do Estado published in 03/10/2011
[http://www.correiodoestado.com.br/noticias/rios-voadores-estudando-a-umidade-do-ar-ao-sabor-do-vento_102239/]

Peru - Fossil shrimp from the Cretaceous period was found there 3 thousands and 700 meters altitute

A fossil shrimp of Cretaceous, this, found in Lebanon, similar to discovered at Peru.

PERU - In the northeastern region of Peruvian Amazon, Maranhão river basin, scientists found fossilized remains of a shrimp that belongs to Cretaceous geological period. It means that the specimen lived there is 85 million of years. In the city of Chiclayo, the director of the Paleontological Museum Honning Meyer, the paleontologist Klaus Honning, commented: It is a remarkable find because the muscles of the fossil are still intact. It is a very rare specimen, measuring 12 cm and gifted with four paws.

In January this year (2011), the age of this fossil and others was confirmed by the Institute of Prehistory of Germany. The location of the find can appears strange for a marine animal: 3 thousands and 700 meters above sea level. But it is not a suprise for the scientists. In the same region were also found fossilized remains of a squid that belongs to the same period.

Honning explains that in the place, in ancient Ages, a kind of salt lagoon was formed in there. Thus, these animals have evolved in the conditions of an ecosystem more or least isolated. The study of the shrimp of Cretaceous shrimp helps to better understand the evolutionary process of species that inhabited the seas of a geography that no more exist.

SOURCE: Peru: Descoberto camarão fossilizado do Cretáceo a 3 mil e 700 metros de altitute.
IN Google Notícias/AFP - published in 02/09/2011.
[http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gE9lu6CM0b7ozDGnCRi-jOGVEI1g?docId=CNG.a41cc318d94314c7fd9a40c07dc147a8.6a1].

Advance of the sea swallows beaches in Ceará

WHERE: Brazil. Advance of the sea changes the Brazilian coast.

SOURCE: Youtube/TV Globo-Fantástico (audio in portuguese)

Ceará state, BRAZIL - On the coast of Ceará urban areas are disappearing, buildings, houses, streets are swallowed by the accelerated advance of the sea. At least one city has declared a state of emergency right now.

The power of destruction of the water is changing the landscape quickly. Residents are being displaced. In the city of Icapuí ten houses had to be demolished before they were felled by the sea.

Researchers reported that the advance reaches ten meters per year in some beaches cearences. The containment work that began to be made to try to stop the sea advance has been swallowed too, even before to be concluded. Scientists blame global warming for the phenomenon.

Other headlines shows that the phenomenon is occurring in others places of the country. Headlines like these:

Mar advances on homes in Florianopolis (Santa Catarina state, southern Brazil)
Mar advances in Cabo Frio (Rio de Janeiro state, southeastern Brazil)
Sea progresses and destroys wall of condo on Icaraí (Rio de Janeiro state, Sudeten region of Brazil)

SOURCE: CE: avanço acelerado do mar preocupa moradores e causa prejuízos.
IN Jornal Floripa published in 01/29/2011
[http://www.jornalfloripa.com.br/brasil/ver_info_jornalfloripa.asp?NewsID=10004].

Brazil - Thousands of dead fish in the Pantanal

WHERE: Mato Grosso do Sul state, Midwest region of Brazil. Photo: Rhobson T. Lima/O Pantaneiro

MATO GROSSO DO SUL/AMAZON Region – At Aquidauana, pantanal region of the Mato Grosso do Sul state, shoals of painteds, pacus, golden fishes, cacharas - and even stingrays, are floating dead in Rio Negro, one of the largest in the Amazon River basin.

The estimated Environmental Policy is of that several tons of fishes died, adding that the authorities and experts, they still do not have the scale of the ecological disaster.

Biologist of the State Institute of the Environment, Roberto Gill Machado, noted the phenomenon, considered of great proportion, after flying over the region of sub-basin of Rio Negro. 

At this place fishing is banned. The area is considered one of the nurseries of fish breeding of the Pantanal.

According to the technicians of the Institute the symptoms that occur in this case are the same symptoms of other instances of the genre. 

The fishes are dying putting their heads out of water trying to obtain air, due to lack of oxygen in the water. This deficiency is due to the large volume of ash produced by burned, which is carried by runoff along riverbeds of the wetland.

However, the idea of blaming the ashes of forest burn has no rationale. The residents of the region, they don't believe in this theory. 

More probaly the poisoning of water by gases would be generated by decomposing organic matter, a process that, in fact, removes oxygen from water. All very natural to some extent. 

What is not natural in the region is the volume of fish that died from deadly agent. It seems that something is rotten at the Gaia realm. Maybe, who knows... are us!

SOURCE: Milhares de peixes morrem no Pantanal.

IN Estadão/SP – published in 01/31/2011.

[http://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/vidae,milhares-de-peixes-morrem-no-pantanal,673546,0.htm].

👀 Law of Haiti admits and criminalizes the creation of zombies

HAITI - Haitians are 50% Catholic and 100% Voodoo priests - says a military member of Brazilian peace forces, that are working in the capital Port-au-Prince since 2004. 

The mysticism of the inhabitants of the western part of the island of Hispaniola, the Caribbean, is considered taboo by most of the western world and has little relationship with rag dolls targeted needles.

Haitian Voodoo has its root in Africa. The practices are widespread in the Caribbean nation, whose deep misery gives to gives the nation the worst Human Development Index (HDI) of the Americas.

Brazilian soldiers who are part of MINUSTAH (United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti), they remember of to have found in the street, at the beginning of the mission, pieces of human bodies, with chest cutted and eyes gouged out. Believe they were victims of voodoo priests, the "bokors", who practice black magic

The brazilian militaries still remember themselves having collected the testimony of an Italian priest who was kidnapped together a novice nun by practitioners of voodoo. The nun was raped repeatedly, including with sticks and wooden stacks, in a supposed religious ritual. 

The victims managed to escape when another bandits group attacked the firsts and was this episode that created the chance of escape

Apart from the rituals of death and purification, the voodoo includes the mystical transformation of humans into "zombies". This is one of the biggest fears for the secular society. 

The haitians believe that a zombie is created from the sorcery of the wizard, who would make himself a controler of his victim, able to manipulate the will the person's soul. 

For scholars of practice Vodouisants are, however, the alleged lethargy of zombies may be resulted from the application of tetrodotoxin, a neurotoxin found in puffer fish species.

Article 246 of the Haitian Penal Code makes clear reference to the poisoning made with the aim to produce a "lethargic" state in a person, the main characteristic of those Haitian zombies.

"Are classified as poisoning all attacks on a person's life, the effect of substances that can lead to death sooner or later, independent of the epoch when that these substances had been applied or administered, and whatever the consequences of this procedure".

If most of the practitioners of the Haitian voodoo practiced mixed with other religions such as Catholicism, after 2010 earthquake, when at least 220 000 people lost their lives and, mainly, with the worsening of the cholera outbreak at the end of last year, sorcerers of voodoo passed to be hostilized by the population. 

At Port au Prince the reaction against voodoo practioners can be something violent.

In houses whose roofs have a sort of scarecrow with red rags, at least 40 priests were murdered, says Brazil's ambassador to Haiti, Igor Kipman. Part of the population attributed to them the responsibility for the deaths of more than 3300 people that were victims from cholera.

SOURCE

BORGES, Larissa. Na polêmica do vodu, lei haitiana proibiria criação de "zumbis".

IN Terra Notícias - published in 01/21/2011

[http://noticias.terra.com.br/mundo/noticias/0,,OI4903622-EI8140,00-Na+polemica+do+vodu+lei+haitiana+proibiria+criacao+de+zumbis.html