A whale stuns two sailors seconds before it crash-lands on their boat. (Whitehotpix/ZUMApress.com/NewsCom)

This amazing photo was taken by a tourist seconds before the whale landed on the boat, thrashing about and damaging its steel mast and cabin. The huge mammal then returned to the ocean. The sailors weren’t hurt, but it was still a frightening surprise.

“It really was quite incredible but very scary,” said Werner. “We thought the whale was going to go under the boat and come up on the other side. We thought it would see us. But instead it sprang out of the sea.”

The whale left blubber and skin on the boat. According to a marine scientist, the whale was probably badly bruised but did not seriously injure itself.

Why exactly do whales breach, or flip themselves, out of the water? Scientists have differing theories. They think whales might do this simply for fun, or it could have a purpose, such as cleaning barnacles and other sea debris from the skin. No matter what the reason, whales rarely land on boats when they breach, which is a good thing for sailors and these extraordinary sea creatures.

reposted from www.scholastic.com. Click the picture to view the original post.

Reposted from “For the Next 7 Generations” blog…originally posted at Survival.org “The Movement for Tribal Peoples” 25 January 2010

Following the film ‘Avatar’’s win at the Golden Globes, tribal people have claimed that the film tells the real story of their lives today.

A Penan man from Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Borneo, told Survival, ‘The Penan people cannot live without the rainforest. The forest looks after us, and we look after it. We understand the plants and the animals because we have lived here for many, many years, since the time of our ancestors.

‘The Na’vi people in ‘Avatar’ cry because their forest is destroyed. It’s the same with the Penan. Logging companies are chopping down our big trees and polluting our rivers, and the animals we hunt are dying.’

Kalahari Bushman Jumanda Gakelebone said, ‘We the Bushmen are the first inhabitants in southern Africa. We are being denied rights to our land and appeal to the world to help us. ‘Avatar’ makes me happy as it shows the world about what it is to be a Bushman, and what our land is to us. Land and Bushmen are the same.’

Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, known as the Dalai Lama of the Rainforest, said, ‘My Yanomami people have always lived in peace with the forest. Our ancestors taught us to understand our land and animals. We have used this knowledge carefully, for our existence depends on it. My Yanomami land was invaded by miners. A fifth of our people died from diseases we had never known.’

Director James Cameron received his Golden Globes awards for ‘Avatar’ last week, and revealed one of the central ideas of the film.

‘Avatar asks us to see that everything is connected,’ he said in his acceptance speech, ‘All human beings to each other, and us to the earth.

Cameron was inspired by the Maori language of New Zealand when devising the language spoken by the Na’vi.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry says, ‘Just as the Na’vi describe the forest of Pandora as ‘their everything’, for most tribal peoples, life and land have always been deeply connected.

‘The fundamental story of Avatar – if you take away the multi-coloured lemurs, the long-trunked horses and warring androids – is being played out time and time again, on our planet.

‘Like the Na’vi of ‘Avatar’, the world’s last-remaining tribal peoples – from the Amazon to Siberia – are also at risk of extinction, as their lands are appropriated by powerful forces for profit-making reasons such as colonization, logging and mining.’

‘One of the best ways of protecting the our world’s natural heritage is surprisingly simple; it is to secure the land rights of tribal peoples.’

Stephen Brown
Grand Rapids, Michigan (ENI). A global Protestant body representing 80 million Christians has issued an apology for the role played by churches in perpetrating abuse against Native Americans, First Nations and other indigenous peoples.

“We … repent of our history littered with ways in which we have betrayed Gospel values of justice, fairness, and love for our neighbour … by the confiscation of land, and mass killings,” delegates at the founding meeting of the World Communion of Reformed Churches said in a 26 June statement.

The 18-28 June gathering in Grand Rapids, in the state of Michigan, took place on the traditional territory of Native American peoples, delegates noted.

In their statement, they said they hoped that through “genuine repentance” they would have courage to repair broken relationships and begin new paths of reconciliation. They also said they were repenting for manifesting, “cultural, economic and theological arrogance”, and the way their church structures had “perpetrated abuse”.

The Rev. Bill Thomas, a delegate from the United Church of Canada, noted however, “This has to be the beginning of a process that may be generations in coming to fruition.”

Several events throughout the 18-28 June meeting stressed the role of Native Americans, indigenous and First Nation peoples.

A centrepiece was a keynote address by Native American Richard Twiss. He said churches had been “willing partners” in the oppression of Native Americans and that Christianity and Christian mission had been used to reinforce cultural assimilation.

The Grand Rapids meeting marked the merger of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council, two bodies that had an overlapping membership.

Organizers of the gathering, called a uniting general council, said similar global Reformed gatherings had always tried, “to respond to unfinished issues of justice,” in the places where the meetings have taken place.

“Certainly the issue of justice, reconciliation, making right the relationship between Native Americans, First Nations people and those of us who are basically immigrants to this society remains a critical issue,” the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, a member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), and the outgoing president of WARC, told ENInews.

A key moment came on the first day of the meeting, when Native American representatives were presented with a U.S. marine sword that had been fashioned into a ploughshare.

Reformed leaders said this was to represent a text from the Old Testament of the Bible (Micah 4:3) that looks to a time when, nations shall “beat their swords into ploughshares, and … nation shall not lift up sword against nation”.

In response, Mike Peters, a minister and member of the Odawa people, presented the Reformed leaders with a replica of the medal given in 1850 to family members of the chief of his nation who signed a peace treaty with the United States.

“It was just spontaneous,” Peters told ENInews. “When I saw the sword, the spirit spoke to me and said I needed to give them the peace medal as a sign that I trust them.”

Kirkpatrick described the gift as, “the most deeply moving moment in this uniting general council”. He acknowledged, however, that not all Native American and First Nations peoples who were approached “were of one mind” about taking part in the meeting.

“There is obviously among many North American people a sense of betrayal by the Christian church, [and] by white society, and a sense they have often been invited for celebratory, symbolic actions without substantive change,” he said.

Delegates in their statement also apologised for presenting forms of worship, music and biblical interpretation as the only “legitimate liturgical expressions”, and teaching theology and church history in ways that disregarded the contributions of Native Americans and other indigenous communities.

Reformed Christians trace their heritage back to the 16th-century Reformation led by Jean Calvin, John Knox and others, as well as to earlier movements that sought to reform the Roman Catholic Church.

The WCRC groups some 230 Congregational, Presbyterian, Reformed, United and Uniting churches in 108 countries.

ENI featured articles are taken from the full ENI Daily News Service. Subscribe online to the Daily News Service and receive around 1000 full-text articles a year. Unless otherwise stated, ENI featured articles may be re-printed, re-posted, re-produced or placed on Web sites if ENI is noted as the source and there is a link to the ENI Web site www.eni.ch

© 1994 – 2010 Ecumenical News International.

HELENA, Mont. — Caught in the Senate filibuster of a bill to extend
unemployment payments is a $3.4 billion government settlement with
hundreds of thousands of American Indians over claims that the Interior
Department mismanaged their land trust accounts.

Congress must
authorize the Obama administration to enter into the class-action
settlement 14 years in the making with between 300,000 and 500,000
Indians who have land held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The
House gave its approval in May. But the settlement authorization is
tucked into the Democrats’ jobs-agenda legislation that fell three votes
short of breaking a Republican filibuster in the Senate on Thursday,
and now the future of the hard-fought agreement is in doubt.

The
Blackfeet Indian woman who filed the lawsuit in 1996 said to come this
far only to be stymied by what appears to be an unrelated partisan fight
is frustrating.

“It’s a feeling like you’re walking on a cloud
and you don’t know when you’re going to fall. I had such anticipation
that the Senate was going to do the right thing,” Elouise Cobell of
Browning said Friday. “I think the cloud fell last night. I realized
just how vulnerable you are when you have to have your life determined
by politicians.”

The Senate’s action — or lack of it — leaves the
Indian plaintiffs and the Obama administration with little choice but to
wait and see if the Democratic leadership can rally support for another
push for a vote on the bill after the July 4 holiday.

“The
administration is very committed to passing this legislation and will
continue to work with congressional leadership to pass it,” Interior
Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said Friday.

The Interior
Department leases out the land it holds in trust for individual Indians
and is supposed to pay them the revenue generated into their Individual
Indian Money trust accounts, or IIMs.

Cobell and the other
plaintiffs claim the Bureau of Indian Affairs have mismanaged those IIM
accounts for more than a century, shortchanging the owners of the land
several billion dollars. After more than 3,600 court filings and 80
court decisions, the two sides finally reached a settlement in December.

Under
the proposed agreement, $1.4 billion would go to individual Indian
account holders. Some $2 billion would be used by the government to buy
up fractionated Indian lands from individual owners willing to sell, and
then turn those lands over to tribes. Another $60 million would be used
for a scholarship fund for young Indians.

Lawsuit participants
would receive at least $1,500, and many would receive considerably more.

The
plaintiffs asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to dismiss a pending
appeal on the lawsuit, believing that appeal was moot because the Senate
was about to authorize the settlement, plaintiffs spokesman Bill
McAllister said.

“We couldn’t go via the Supreme Court and
Congress at the same time. We opted to go for Congress because we were
told that our provision was likely to be approved. It still offers the
promise of a quicker resolution of the lawsuit,” McAllister said Friday.

If
Congress doesn’t approve the settlement, the plaintiffs can bring the
issues back to the Supreme Court after a final judgment is entered in
the case, he said.

Even if the Senate approves the settlement, it
must do so without any changes or it may be considered void, both sides
say, and that includes an amendment by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., who
has proposed a $50 million cap on lawyer’s fees.

Barrasso also has
suggested limiting any incentive awards to the lawsuit’s named
plaintiffs to unreimbursed expenses and setting aside $50 million of the
settlement money for certain lawsuit participants who receive
“insufficient or unfair” amounts under the settlement’s payment formula,
among other changes.

On Friday, Barrasso said he would still like
to see the Senate accept his amendment and finalize the settlement, but
suggested it may have to be separated from the larger bill that failed
Thursday.

That bill would have provided $16 billion in new aid to
states and included dozens of tax breaks sought by business lobbyists
and tax increases on domestically produced oil and on investment fund
managers.

Cobell said the money in the settlement belongs to the
Indians and should not fall victim to a dispute over something else
altogether.

“We’re just a tiny, tiny piece of it. I don’t really
know what’s going to happen next,” Cobell said. “We’re not going to give
up, that’s for sure.”

Copyright © 2010 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Amateur astronomer John Chumack of Yellow Springs, Ohio, caught the comet passing by galaxy NGC 891 just before sunrise on June 8th. “I used a 5.5 inch telescope and a Canon Rebel Xsi digital camera to take this 15 minute exposure,” he says. “It also looked great through binoculars.”

Comet McNaught can be found low in the northeastern sky before dawn gliding through the constellation Perseus. It is brightening as it approaches Earth for a 1.13 AU close encounter on June 15th and 16th. Currently, the comet is at the threshold of naked eye visibility (6th magnitude) and could become as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper (2nd magnitude) before the end of the month. Because this is the comet’s first visit to the inner solar system, predictions of future brightness are necessarily uncertain; amateur astronomers should be alert for the unexpected. [ephemeris] [3D orbit] [Sky & Telescope: sky map, full story]

more images: from Dr Paolo Candy of Ci.A.O. Cimini Astronomical Observatory, Italy; from Michael Jäger of Stixendorf, Austria; from Anthony Ayiomamitis of Athens, Greece; from Primoz Cigler of Bohor, Slovenia; from Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK; from Feys Filip at the Public Observatory “Sasteria” in Crete; from Monika Landy-Gyebnar of Veszprem, Hungary; from Petr Horalek of Ustupky, Czech republic;

Michael Jäger of Stixendorf, Austria, took the picture on June 6th using an 8-inch telescope. The comet’s green atmosphere is larger than the planet Jupiter, while the long willowy ion tail stretches more than a million kilometers through space. These dimensions make the comet a fine target for backyard telescopes.

Comet McNaught can be found low in the northeastern sky before dawn gliding through the constellation Perseus. It is brightening as it approaches Earth for a 1.13 AU close encounter on June 15th and 16th. Currently, the comet is at the threshold of naked eye visibility (5th to 6th magnitude) and could become as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper (2nd magnitude) before the end of the month. Because this is the comet’s first visit to the inner solar system, predictions of future brightness are necessarily uncertain; amateur astronomers should be alert for the unexpected. [ephemeris] [3D orbit] [Sky & Telescope: sky map, full story]

more images: from John Chumack of Yellow Springs, Ohio; from Primoz Cigler of Bohor, Slovenia; from Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK; from Feys Filip at the Public Observatory “Sasteria” in Crete; from Monika Landy-Gyebnar of Veszprem, Hungary; from Petr Horalek of Ustupky, Czech republic;

I can hardly find the words to describe the feelings that her book provoked in me. Following her amazing path from Lebanon, where Jean moved from Australia in the eighties to work with disabled refugee children, through Cairo and then to the Gaza strip, filled me with a mixture of joy, for realizing what marvellous human beings exist, and pain at reading all the injustice and suffering Jean witnessed when choosing to stand besides the children she was helping. When the war broke out in Lebanon in 1982 Jean decided to stay and risked her own life to bring what comfort and help she could. It was in Lebanon that Jean met three children whose destinies were to get strongly interlaced with hers – Hamoudi, Dalal and Badr, three disabled Palestinian refugees, orphans and “children of PRCS”, would become her family, and follow her – amidst logistical difficulties and bureaucratic nightmares – in Egypt, where Jean worked for twelve years, and then to Palestine.

When I finished her inspirational and touching book, I only had one wish: to meet this woman in person, to meet her children and see with my own eyes the incredible achievements of her work and how her commitment and never faltering motivation has contributed to improve the lives of hundreds of disabled children and their families. Unfortunately the current situation prevents me from going to the Gaza Strip, and Jean does not want to go outside of it for fear of seeing her re-entry denied – a situation she has gone through too many times and that fills her, her children and the people who work with her with a fully understandable amount of stress.

I reached Jean on Skype some days ago, and I was delighted to have a long conversation with her and to exchange a few words with her children. I hope you will enjoy reading her words and I passionately invite you to buy and read her book. Thank you Jean for your time, for being such a source of inspiration, and simply for being with the neediest.

Claudiaexpat
Jerusalem
May 2010

Read this article in Italian

We are lucky you have electricity tonight!

Indeed we are. Often electricity goes off at around six at night and we manage with candles. If we have electricity in the evening, it means that it was cut during the morning and afternoon.  But then we have the drones of the zanana (Israeli pilotless plains).  They really scramble the TV picture and sound – so if there is electricity and the opportunity to watch TV, at least some of the time can be lost. We also sometimes have war planes overhead, though it’s not clear to me for what – maybe to bomb the tunnels???

Actually I do not really know the reason for the problem with electricity.  Some say that the power plant that the Israelis bombed has been repaired but the problem relates to the shortage of fuel which then needs to be rationed. Whatever the reason, the frequent and lengthy power cuts cause many problems and inconvenience. Many people have generators, but they are noisy, and smelly.

Jean with Badr and Dalal in a recent family picture

Since we are at it, how is the general situation in the Gaza Strip, how do people live?

One always keeps hoping, but everything goes in circle and does not seem to be getting anywhere. We had a recent visit from a humanitarian worker who came to evaluate a project, and she told me she felt an incredible feeling of no future, a feeling of tightness in the people. There are many shortages in supplies but there are also many items that are brought through the tunnels. Some of the restrictions placed on goods coming through normally make very little sense. Papers, pens and other items for the children’s camps last summer were not permitted to enter as the Israeli authorities stated they were ‘not essential items’.  Some of the shortages in the health sector can create dangerous situations for people.  Travel out of the Gaza Strip, including travel to the West Bank (which is just another part of the country Palestine) depends on receiving a permit from the Israeli authorities. It seems more requests are denied than those approved which places great restriction on the movement of the people. Some travel is possible through the southern border into Egypt, but this border seems to be closed more often than open, and again there are restrictions.  Of course travel out to Egypt does not solve the problem of going to the West Bank. And things have actually changed recently. Whereas before the network of friends was always alert and as soon as something went on you could count on immediate spreading of news, I now have the feeling that people are indifferent – they hear an explosion and they don’t react: one more explosion, so what? People are losing hope. They can’t get out; they are confined, both in this land and in a situation that seems to have no future.

Hamoudi with Yasser Arafat

Talking about going out, how is the situation for you? I know from your book that since moving to the Gaza strip your mobility has been a source of constant stress. Has anything changed recently, or are you still on a tourist visa, despite your having worked in the area for more than ten years?

Nothing has changed. The International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) has been trying to obtain a different kind of visa for me, but it is constantly denied, and the reason given for this is that I work for a local organization, not an international one. I do not want to leave the strip unless I have explicit guarantee of being able to get back.  In fact, since 2007 I have not been able to get a permit to leave the Gaza Strip except for one very special occasion of the International Congress of the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in November 2009 and which involved months of negotiations to obtain the permit and guarantee re-entry. A couple of months later I applied for a permit to go across to Ramallah for a meeting of PRCS and was denied a permit. It does not make any sense, but is just one of the strange ‘normal’ situations that the people in Gaza have to deal with .

Tell us about your work, about the centre, how is everything going? Do you manage to keep up the work amidst all the difficulties?

Children at the Open Studio

My work covers a range of responsibilities as I am a Consultant in Rehabilitation and Training and Dean of the PRCS College of Ability Development.  Based in Khan Younis, in the past I used also to travel frequently to the West Bank to follow the work of the Rehabilitation Centres there.  The work at the PRCS Centre in Khan Younis is going well in spite of the many difficulties faced. The Rehabilitation Centre is working with over 600 clients.

Within the Rehabilitation Centre there are about 200 children attending the Special Education School, the majority of these children being deaf – others are slow learners or have a physical disability.  These children follow the Ministry of Education curriculum and next year, for the first time in the Gaza Strip children who are deaf will be sitting for the Tawajhi, university entrance examination.  The College has a four-year degree program in Special Education and Rehabilitation and an active continuing education department, which conducts courses for PRCS employees and the community in general.

Other activities of the centre include an after school children’s club for the neighbourhood children that has a daily attendance of 50 to 100 children and up to 200 during school holidays. The focal point to the activities of the club is the Open Studio which has at base the concepts of expression and creativity opportunities for children, offering a range of art, craft, story telling, puppetry, drama and linking with the other activities, including music, debka dance, library, computer and sports. The Open Studio was introduced by an organization from The Netherlands – HOPE Foundation, Holland – in 1996 and they have continued to be involved in the ongoing developments.

We also have a Sports Department, where I am not directly involved except for my efforts to try to have ongoing programs for women.

Then we have other activities now and then, like what we did for Mother’s Day:  the main theatre of the centre was packed with 800 people, between mothers and children, there was a beautiful concert and a puppet show. The atmosphere was full of a lot of creativity and motivation, and this is what really keeps you going.

Tell us about your book…

This was a proposal from an Australian publisher who was concerned about Palestinians and wanted a local writer not directly involved in politics to write about the situation. The idea behind the book is to raise consciousness about what is happening here. It took me a bit longer than a year to write it, and at some points the writing was difficult. For instance, even then there were electricity cuts to deal with, and then when I went to Jordan to renew my visa I was not allowed to come back for four months. I had not brought my laptop with me, since I thought to be back home in a few days. I had left a flash with the backup of my work with Dalal (Jean’s daughter, ed.) who was able to send the drafts to me via email and I somehow managed to continue writing at an Internet cafè.

You have been through a lot since you started your life in the Middle East. What are the hardest moments and the happiest ones you have memory of?

It’s hard to say. Some situations during the war in Lebanon were really tough, and I can say that also leaving the children to renew my visa was always stressful, since I never knew whether I was going back. Actually every time I got back was a very happy moment. But certainly when Dalal and Hamoudi arrived in Cairo to join me from Lebanon was one of the happiest.

I also have a fond memory of a trip the children made to Finland in 1988 within the frame of an intercultural programme, and I went to accompany them. It was just amazing that this was possible, to be out in such a nice context when only recently the children had been in impossible situations and did not have any official documents.  Another happy moment was when Dalal was awarded a Ford Foundation Scholarship to go to study for a Master’s Degree at Edinburgh University. (Dalal is Jean’s daughter and she is blind, ed.).

Beirut, early 1981, Jean had just met Dalal and Hamoudi

How are your children doing, by the way? Is Dalal still working as an interpreter?

She is Head of the Continuing Education Programme Department at the PRCS College, she also does some teaching and some interpreting from time to time. She maintains contact with the Ford Foundation Alumni and at a recent video-conference with the West Bank group during a visit by an official of the Foundation she was responsible for the instantaneous translation for the Gaza group. Badr is a messenger and general assistant in the College with general tasks. As you know,  Hamoudi passed away in September 2008.  He always had a chronic chest problem  which eventually could not be managed.  Given the severity of his disability, we were so very privileged to have had him with us for so many years.  Needless to say, we miss him lots.

Dalal	Badr

While we talk it seems like negotiations talks will start again in a few days. Are you optimistic? How do you see the future?

I have seen too much going on but nothing has ever changed for the better. What can I say? Everything and nothing is possible…

Jean Calder
Khan Younis, Palestine
May 2010