160Want local news?Sign up for the Localist and stay informed Something went wrong. Please try again.subscribeCongratulations! You’re all set! CHERRY HILL, N.J. (AP) – He railed against the United States, helped scout out military installations for attack, offered to introduce his comrades to an arms dealer, and gave them a list of weapons he could procure, including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. These were not the actions of a terrorist, but of a paid FBI informant who helped bring down an alleged plot by six Muslim men to massacre U.S. soldiers at New Jersey’s Fort Dix. And those actions have raised questions of whether the government crossed the line and pushed the six men down a path they would not have otherwise followed. It is an argument – entrapment – that has been made in other terrorism cases, and one that has failed miserably in this post-Sept. 11 era. One defense attorney on the case, Troy Archie, said no decision has been made on whether to argue entrapment, but based on the FBI’s own account, “the guys sort of led them on.” Rocco Cipparone, a lawyer for another one of the defendants, said he will take a hard look at “the role of paid informants and how aggressive they were in potentially prodding or moving things along.” The Fort Dix Six were arrested earlier this week after a 15-month FBI investigation that relied heavily on two paid informants who secretly recorded meetings and telephone conversations in which the suspects talked of killing “in the name of Allah.” U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie defended the government’s handling of the case. He and the FBI portrayed the defendants as Muslim fanatics who were nearly ready to strike. They were arrested Monday night during what the FBI said was an attempt to buy AK-47 machine guns, M-16s and other weapons. Former FBI agent Kevin Barrows said prosecutors appeared to have done things right. “They corroborated with surveillance, and they had a gun buy set up,” Barrows said. “That further solidified the case, as opposed to it just being a tape of somebody saying, ‘Yeah, I want to buy guns.’ They worked this for a long time and the evidence seems really, really solid.” Prosecutors portrayed the six men _ Serdar Tatar, 23; Agron Abdullahu, 24; Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22; Dritan “Anthony” or “Tony” Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; and Eljvir “Elvis” Duka, 23 _ as driven by hatred of America, a description disputed by relatives and acquaintances. “I never in my wildest dreams imagined what they’ve been accused of,” said Ismail Badat, trustee of the Islamic Center of South Jersey in Palmyra, where the Duka brothers worshipped. The same documents that prosecutors used to build a case against the suspects also depict them as somewhat disorganized, lackluster plotters. And clumsy and amateurish, too: The FBI learned of the alleged plot when the men went to a Circuit City store and asked a clerk to transfer a jihad training video of themselves onto a DVD. Also, they mistakenly thought an AK-47 costs $500, instead of $1,500 to $3,000. Also, one of the men, Tatar, called a Philadelphia police officer in November, saying that he had been approached by someone who was pressuring him to obtain a map of Fort Dix, and that he feared the incident was terrorist-related, according to court documents. “It could be a defense, that he felt he was being pressured to do things and actually called law enforcement to report it,” Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer and Muslim community leader in New Jersey who is not involved in the case. Entrapment occurs when law enforcement officials entice others into committing a crime they otherwise would not have committed. Under the law, people cannot be convicted if they were entrapped. But there is no entrapment if a person is willing to break the law and law officers offer to help. “If the source talks them into committing a crime, that is entrapment,” said retired FBI agent Craig Dotlo, a 32-year veteran. But “if they are predisposed to commit a crime, and you give them the opportunity, that’s fine.” Among other things, even before the informant presented the list of weapons he said he could get, Dritan Duka unwittingly asked an undercover federal agent he had seen at a firing range about where he might buy an AK-47 or M-16, according to the FBI. Archie, the defense attorney, conceded it is difficult to win an entrapment defense. “Basically, if they are just constantly pushing someone to go in a particular direction,” he said. “It’s just got to be obvious, obvious entrapment for it to fly.” Attorney Henry Klingeman unsuccessfully argued that government agents had entrapped London merchant Hemant Lakhani, convicted in New Jersey in 2005. Lakhani was caught in a sting trying to arrange the sale of at least 50 shoulder-fired missiles for shooting down American airliners. He is serving a 47-year prison sentence. “In the post-9/11 era, the entrapment defense is basically useless,” Klingeman said. “For a defendant, merely saying he wishes he could do harm to America, the jury has heard enough.” Entrapment also failed as a defense in the case of Shahwar Matin Siraj, who was convicted in New York City of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in 2003. Authorities had recruited an Egyptian man as an informant. Siraj’s lawyer, Martin R. Stolar, argued at trial that Siraj had no interest in violence until the informant showed him photos of prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib and told him it was his duty as a Muslim to retaliate. Siraj was found guiity and sentenced to 30 years. “The government often overreaches in its zeal to give itself a pat on the back,” Stolar said. “In my case, my position was that they created the crime in order to solve the crime so that they could then claim a victory in the war on terror.” Vincent Henry, director of the Homeland Security Management Institute at Long Island University and a 21-year veteran of the New York Police Department, said he is convinced that the Fort Dix defendants really were capable of pulling off such an attack. “I’m sure they were,” he said. “The arrests were made as they were on their way to purchase the weapons, or at least some of the weapons. They had seemed to plan it out very, very well.” Associated Press writers Wayne Parry in Trenton, Jeff Gold and David Porter in Newark, Chris Newmarker in Palmyra and Deborah Yao in Philadelphia contributed to this story. read more

“We’ve done three successful years but what has happened is because of that, we could not do other projects that required cash contributions from donations,” explains volunteer board member Sue Popesku.She says the council isn’t scrapping Sand Sensations B.C. for good and is already considering hosting the event again in 2017.“If a group or individuals come forward to do the Sand Sensation, certainly the Arts Council has the equipment, and the Arts Council is ready to share that information without a doubt,” says Popesku.- Advertisement -Popesku adds, “At this point, the financial support would be very difficult to gather for July.”Sand Sensation B.C. has been held for the past three years at Peace Island Park in Taylor. Local sand from the banks of the Peace River provides a mix of sand and clay – allowing the sculptures to last through the winter and into the spring.The council instead plans to focus their efforts this year on other events such as a third Artwalk, the ‘Take Flight’ street banners, and Mother’s Day pottery sales.Advertisement The Fort St. John Community Arts Council is open to the public and meets the third Wednesday of every month at 12:00 p.m. in the Artspost – located on 10320 94 Avenue. read more

“We have a good team and so far we have played three games, I am impressed with what I have seen. We are only working to ensure we play as a unit because most of these players have not played together before,” Ssimbwa told Capital Sport.Sofapaka head coach Sam Ssimbwa signaling his players in their KPL match against Nakumatt FC. PHOTO/Raymond MakhayaOf his 13 new recruits, he has brought in three from his native Uganda; defender Rodgers Aloro from the saints as well as forwards Umar Kassumba (SC Villa) and Feni Ali (URA).In total, the June mini-transfer window has seen 15 foreigners come in, 10 from Uganda, two each from Tanzania and Burundi and one from Rwanda.Apart from Sofapaka, Kakamega Homeboyz and Muhoroni Youth are the other clubs which were busy with new signings. Muhoroni, under new coach Gilbert Selebwa have brought in 11 new players, most of them from the lower leagues while Homeboyz have brought in eight.At Homeboyz, head coach Mike Mururi has re-united with his former player at Chemelil Jonathan Mwaniki while the club has also snapped up former Kenyan international Collins Kisuya from Sofapaka and forward John Avire on loan from Bandari.Bandari have also signed eight new players and among the highlights, the Dockers have brought in Field Cosmas from Tanzanian side African Lyon and Ivan Kiweewa from Saints FC in Uganda.Zico Gor Mahia coach.PHOTO/GoalThe club has also snapped up Gor Mahia defender Bernard Odhiambo who will be on a year-long loan spell in search of play time having suffered with limited action on the pitch since joining from Nakuru All Stars two years ago.AFC Leopards, a side traditionally known for their hiring and firing prowess have gone for six new faces. Burundian Alex Kitenge joins on a six month loan deal from his Atletico Olympic in Bujumbura while they have also signed Keziron Kizito, a midfielder from Vipers SC in Uganda.Their arch rivals Gor Mahia have been quiet, just as they have always been in the mini-window, bringing only two players from Nzoia Sugar. Defender Joachim Ochieng and Boniface Omondi will now don the green and white of K’Ogalo.Other notable transfers sees former AFC Leopards and Western Stima defender Jackson Saleh join Nakumatt FC while there have been loan extensions for forward Clinton Kisiavuki from FC Talanta and Jack Bruno from AFC Leopards.Despite losing three of their key first team players in midfielder Hillary Echesa, right back Willis Ouma (Sofapaka) and Victor Majjid (AFC Leopards), Chemelil has not sprung into panic mode and have brought in four new players. Benjamin Chaka re-unites with his former coach Juma Abdallah after signing from KCB while journeyman Moses Arita joins the side from Western Stima.0Shares0000(Visited 1 times, 1 visits today) 0Shares0000Sofapaka captain Hillary Echesa (no.10) complaining to referee alongside other new signings Wesley Onguso (no.5) and Bernard Mang’oli. PHOTO/Raymond MakhayaNAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 1 – Sofapaka FC, the 2009 Kenyan Premier League champions were the busiest in the just closed June transfer window, bringing in a whooping 13 new players as head coach Sam Ssimbwa moulds the side to challenge for their second ever league title.Ssimbwa believes he has raked in players he knows will play an influential role in the title campaign and has warned opponents they should be wary of his side. read more

He was a yard from the goal line and all Wolfsburg midfielder Junior Malanda had to do was guide the ball into Manuel Neuer’s unguarded net.However, it was trickier than it looked and Malanda put it wide. Wolfsburg weren’t going to have a better chance of equalising and reigning Bundesliga champions Bayern eventually won 2-1.And when the final whistle sounded, Malanda buried his head in his hands.It reminded us of another terrible miss we saw last season. Playing for Roma against Catania, former Arsenal forward Gervinho missed an open goal, though he did score in the 4-0 win.

12 12 Victor Lindelof and Chris Smalling – 6 Marouane Fellaini – 7 12 Arguably his best performance in a United shirt since his move in January. Still gives the ball away, but his perseverance and sheer determination means he will eventually create something. Glorious cross for the opener. Say what you want about the Belgium international, he is extremely good at what he does. Won the first ball in the air and then tidied up on the ground to allow the more technically gifted players around him to thrive. Criminally underrated. Manchester United responded to their critics in emphatic fashion with a highly efficient 2-0 win at Burnley.A brace from Romelu Lukaku in the first half ultimately secured all three points for the Red Devils, who finished the game with 10 men. The giant striker looked like a £75million man at Turf Moor. Power, pace and clinical finishing in one package. Bullied Ben Mee and James Tarkowski for fun, could and should have got his hat-trick 12 12 As efficient and reliable as ever, the Ecuador international rampaged down the wing where possible to selflessly allow Lingard to come inside and cause havoc One of the most selfless players on the team, Lingard’s movement off the ball takes defenders away and creates so much space for others to operate in. Most of the time, he does not even receive it, but is still so willing. Luke Shaw – 8 Jesse Lingard – 7 12 Alexis Sanchez – 8 Paul Pogba – 7 12 Barely tested all game, the Spain No.1 showed why he is the best in the world with a save late on after almost 90 minutes of inactivity Solid, if not spectacular once again, the Serb did what was asked of him with ease. Will come up against far stiffer tests in training. Romelu Lukaku – 9 Would have been much higher but for an awful penalty miss late on. Bossed the midfield and looked absolutely unplayable in the centre of the park, much more like the player we saw at the World Cup in Russia earlier this summer. Should have allowed Lukaku to take the penalty for his hat-trick, putting others before himself is what a captain does. Celebrated his England return with a fantastic performance down the left hand side. Absolutely brilliant display from the former Southampton man, who looked dangerous going forward and solid at the back.Something Gareth Southgate desperately needed during the World Cup. After coming on as a substitute for the impressive Alexis Sanchez, Marcus Rashford was shown a straight red for headbutting Phil Bardsley.Although the contact appeared minimal, replays showed the England international was extremely forceful in butting his head against the former United defender.The result moves the Red Devils into the top half, behind Arsenal only on goal difference.So how did they fare against Burnley at Turf Moor? Scroll down to see the Manchester United player ratings.David De Gea – 6 One step forward and two steps back for United’s new No.10. Scared the life out of the ageing Phil Bardsley with his blistering pace, but fell for the oldest trick in the book and got suckered in to reacting to an old-fashioned clump. Mourinho will be seething, his progress seems to be stalling on a weekly basis. United won 2-0 thanks to a brace in the first half from Romelu Lukaku 12 12 After being horrifically exposed last time out against Spurs, the centre-half pairing of Lindelof and Smalling will have been relieved to have come up against such a timid Burnley attack. Both still look very uncomfortable in possession. 12 12 12 (SUB) Marcus Rashford – 4 Nemanja Matic – 6 (SUBS) Ander Herrera and Eric Bailly – N/ANeither given enough time to make any contribution. Antonio Valencia – 7 read more

One of Donegal’s most senior and highly-respected Gardai has retired.Inspector Sylvie Henry left the force this week after a long and distinguished career.Inspector Henry, who lives in Letterkenny, was a member of the force for more than 30 years. He was based in Letterkenny for many years where he was a leading member of the Drugs Unit.However for the past number of years he has been based in the Glenties District Division.Tributes have been flowing in for the well-known Garda.  LEADING DONEGAL GARDA RETIRES AFTER DISTINGUISHED CAREER was last modified: December 30th, 2011 by StephenShare this:Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window) Tags:GardaGarda Inspector Sylvie Henryletterkenny read more

Uganda’s goalkeeper Benjamin Ochan saves a cross yesterday against Zambia. Courtesy photo.CHAN 2018Zambia 3-1 UgandaState de MarrakechMarrakech, MorrocoUganda lost out to Zambia 3-1 in their opening group game of the 2018 CHAN championship.The Cranes who are trying to get past the group stages for the first time in their history were out scored by the South African nation in arguably the most entertaining match of the tournament so far.The Cranes started brightly with Allan Kyambadde firing directly at Zambia goalkeeper after wounderful peace of play on the left by Vipers’ Milton Karisa inside five minutes.Zambia sent instant signals that they would not be easily out done as striker Lazarous Kambole pounced on a Timothy Awanyi poor peace of defending only to deflect his goal bound shot of the trailing leg of the culprit.Karisa who had turned into a menace for the Zambian defence made a few interesting runs and crosses but could non of the later could get the desired end product.Against the run of play, Zambia took advantage of Uganda’s sloppiness in possession as they broke quickly following Nicholas Wadada’s indecisivenes in the middle of the pitch as winger Ernest Mbewe crossed for Kambole to slot in through the legs of the on rashing goalkeeper Benjamin Ochan to make it 1-0 in the 38th minute.Two minutes later, the ever so bright Milton Karisa broke down the left and crossed for Derrick Nsibambi who scored a beautiful bycical kick to level matters.The eventful first half had one more goal action moment when Zambian captain Zeyo Tembo missed a free header after connected brilliantly with a cross with Uganda goalie Ochan stranded in no man’s land.The opening minutes of the second half failed to live up to the standards set in the first until Zambia’s Augustine Mulenga made it 2-1 in the 62nd minute.Cranes tried to reply instantly but after a good over lapping run by left back Isaac Muleme who drove in a low cross but no one connected and the ball went begging across the mouth of the goal.Uganda conceded a third in the 71st minute when goalkeeper Benjamin Ochan failed to deal with a routine free-kick from 35 yards by Zambian defender Fakson Kakumbu which deflected of Tadeo Lwanga and the KCCA custodian helped it over his own goal line.Zambia seemed to be content with what they had and allowed Uganda to come at them but Timothy Awanyi and substitute Nelson Ssenkatuka could not convert the only two half chances that the Cranes created later on.Defeat for the Cranes means that they are bottom of group B with zero points as Zambia climb top equal on points with Namibia who had earlier shocke Ivory Coast.Uganda’s next game will be against Namibia on the 18th before they take on Ivory Coast in the last group game four days later.Other CHAN results and upcoming fixtures.Morocco 4-0 Mauritania Guinea 1-2 SudanIvory Coast 0-1 Namibia.Today.Libya vs Equatorial GuineaNigeria vs RwandaCranes team that started against Zambia.1. Benjamin Ochan(Gk)2. Nicholas Wadada3. Isaac Muleme4. Timothy Awanyi5. Bernard Muwanga(c)6. Tadeo Lwanga7. Ibrahim Saddam Juma 8. Allan Kyambadde9. Derrick Nsibambi10. Muzamir Mutyaba11. Milton Karisa.Comments read more

Didier Drogba had Chelsea’s best opening as they threatened during a lively first half at Old Trafford, but they also needed Thibaut Courtois to produce two good stops.Courtois was called into action in the 22nd minute, saving with his legs to deny Robin van Persie after the Manchester United striker had been set up by Adnan Januzaj’s fine pass.The impressive Blues keeper was also able to gather Angel Di Maria’s looping header soon afterwards.At the other end, the visitors felt they should have been awarded a penalty when Branislav Ivanovic was wrestled to the ground by Chris Smalling.Drogba was then teed up by Oscar’s cut-back but keeper David de Gea was down quickly to save the Ivorian’s shot.And the dangerous Januzaj fired just over the bar three minutes before the break.Chelsea striker Diego Costa was deemed unfit to play after illness and an ongoing hamstring problem.So with Loic Remy also sidelined, Drogba started up front.Man Utd: De Gea, Rafael, Smalling, Rojo, Shaw, Blind, Fellaini, Mata, Januzaj, Van Persie, Di Maria.Subs: Lindegaard, Blackett, Fletcher, Carrick, Herrera, A Pereira, Wilson.Chelsea: Courtois; Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Filipe Luis; Matic, Fabregas; Willian, Oscar, Hazard; Drogba.Subs: Cech, Zouma, Ake, Mikel, Baker, Salah, Schurrle.Follow West London Sport on TwitterFind us on Facebook read more

(Visited 61 times, 1 visits today)FacebookTwitterPinterestSave分享0 One Colorado storm in 2013 caused hundreds or thousands of years’ worth of mountain erosion. This is causing a rethink on the power of catastrophic events.A big storm hit Colorado in September 2013. Scott, Suzanne and Robert Anderson of the University of Colorado went looking for geological changes that resulted to the Front Range of the Rockies. In the journal Geology, they report 1100 landslides and debris flows in a “historically sedate landscape.”Comparing our results against published long-term erosion rates, we find that these mass movements evacuated the equivalent of hundreds to thousands of years of hillslope weathering products. We conclude that (1) rare debris flows perform the majority of sediment transport and channel erosion within steep channels along the eastern edge of the Front Range, potentially explaining discrepancies between modern sediment yields and long-term erosion rates in such settings, and (2) the high spatial density of debris flows along the corridors bounding steep canyons suggests that the landscape switches to debris-flow dominance as knickpoints pass headward along the canyons.As dramatic as this one storm was, its impact on geological thinking may be more monumental. Recounting centuries-old debates about the rate of geological change, Scott McCoy of the University of Nevada in Reno comments on the paper in the same issue of Geology:How do surface processes shape the landscapes in which we live? Is it the every-day flow of rivers that gently, yet persistently, erodes and transports sediment from highlands to ocean basins, dissecting the land surface into networks of ridges and valleys? Or is it cataclysmic events of incredible magnitude that, despite their infrequency, conspire to shape Earth’s surface? These questions highlight the debate over the relative importance of extreme events in sculpting Earth’s surface, and are as old as the science of geology. Although geologists have gathered data and proposed theories supporting both Hutton’s (1795) and Lyell’s (1830) uniformitarianism and Cuvier’s (1818) catastrophism for over 200 years, the paper by Anderson et al. (2015, p. 391 in this issue of Geology) shows that the debate is still active and that, even with new tools, we have much to learn about the degree to which observations of modern sediment transport processes quantify the full range of formative geomorphic events.If infrequent storms like the one in 2013 dominate the mass movements in geology, then “historic records of sediment flux that have not captured an extreme event might grossly underestimate the actual long-term sediment flux.” We must keep in mind that formal historical records only go back a little more than a century in America. Before the west was settled, and geological pioneers like John Wesley Powell came after the Civil War to study the canyons of the Colorado Plateau, there would have been only Indian legends and word-of-mouth records by scattered populations of settlers. Events of this magnitude in Colorado could have been completely unobserved by settlers in Arizona or Oregon, and vice versa. The problem continues to this day; McCoy says that the Andersons used tools and models that didn’t exist just 20 years ago.McCoy realizes that the consequences of underestimating actual erosion rates are huge:Misunderstanding such a discrepancy between modern and long-term erosion rates can lead to inaccuracies in: predicting the life span of reservoirs; determining the impact of changing land use; setting attainable water-quality standards; and mitigating sediment-related hazards, such as rapid mass movements like landslides or debris flows, and extreme river channel aggradation. At longer time scales, accurate portrayal of the magnitudes and spatial-temporal patterns of sediment fluxes is critical for understanding how landscapes evolve, how sediment fluxes might change with a changing climate, and what flux of sediment and nutrients is required to maintain healthy ecosystems.Nothing can replace actually being present to measure what happens in an extreme event. Based on their empirical observations Anderson et al. conclude that debris flows account for the majority of geomorphic work along steep mountain slopes. But “there is no agreed-upon mechanistic framework to describe the controls of bedrock incision by debris flows,” McCoy says, “unlike rivers, which in turn raises questions about the accuracy of predictions regarding the pace and spatial pattern of steep land evolution from models that do not consider the effects of episodic debris flows.”McCoy ends on an optimistic note, basically saying that geologists’ models and tools are getting better.  It’s clear, though, that he was surprised himself: “The intriguing result is that, in a single event, debris flows transported hundreds to thousands of years worth of accumulated hillslope material into the main stem rivers.”Update 5/20/15:  With the lessons of 2013 fresh in memory, a press release from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Studies warns that Colorado’s biggest storms can happen any time.  Average rates of precipitation are unreliable, the article says, because “they’re based on observations of events that don’t happen frequently and because the observations themselves are limited, especially in remote areas.”This is another case of how scientists can go astray by assuming the unknown. How many decades—indeed, centuries—have the experts and their textbooks been teaching “inaccuracies” about the pace of geomorphic change? “We have much to learn,” McCoy says. Well, most textbooks and TV documentaries don’t say that. They teach slow-and-gradual evolution of the earth as fact. Remember, it was Charlie Lyell’s gradualism that inspired Charlie Darwin to dream about the long, slow accumulation of gradual change in life as well as geology.It doesn’t take long ages to produce rapid change, if the cause is sufficiently energetic. Now, this one storm just two years ago has been shown to produce hundreds or thousands of years’ worth of geological change. Scratch that; how do they even know those estimates? Nobody was watching the Colorado Front Range thousands of years ago. For all they know, this one storm did millions of years’ worth of change. After all, when you’re dealing with unobserved fantasies, numbers don’t really matter, as long as they support the time Charlie D. needs. And did you notice that the climate change alarmists rely on models that have used bad data about geomorphic change rates? e.g., models inform “how sediment fluxes might change with a changing climate….”One would hope that this embarrassing discovery would give the secular geologists a little humility, so that they might take alternatives more seriously. After all, PhD creation geologists have been demonstrating evidence for catastrophism for years. Dr. Steven Austin compiled a database of published papers documenting rapid, massive changes. Dr. Andrew Snelling’s two-volume work Earth’s Catastrophic Past describes many documented events, as well as massive formations that could not have formed gradually. (This is a new work in the heritage of The Genesis Flood by Morris and Whitcomb in 1962 that launched the modern creation movement.)  The peer reviewed Quarterly of the Creation Research Society, published continually for 50 years now, regularly publishes accounts of geological phenomena that demonstrate catastrophic change. One would hope, but don’t hold your breath. The gradualists will just look at this Anderson paper and say, “Well, that’s interesting” and continue on comfortably inside their falsified paradigm. Gradualism works. It works in the imaginations of uniformitarian moyboys unconstrained by empirical data, dogmatically committed to an old earth. read more

When you see exceptional preservation like this, is it credible to assume these animals lived as long ago as Darwinians claim they did?Evolutionists have a scheme that is “set in stone” literally and figuratively. Here are fossils emerging from rock layers that evolutionists insist have been undisturbed for tens or even hundreds of millions of years, despite moving continents, natural disasters and changing climates. A lot can happen in so much time. Can time really rescue the incredible?The Marine MotherFirst live birth evidence in dinosaur relative (BBC News). Check out the artwork in Paul Rincon‘s article. Have you ever seen a neck that long? The neck is twice as long as the body! Bones of this Dinocephalosaurus, an “Archosauromorpha” (meaning, ‘ruling lizard shape’) have another secret: a baby fossilized inside the mother’s womb. Think about that. Mrs. Ruling-Lizard-Shape had to be buried fast. Even without the baby, the body would have decayed before something this large and thick could wait for sediments to gradually pile up over it. Instead of pondering the speed of burial, the scientists and reporters are focused on how this sheds light on evolution. One said, “It’s great to see such an important step forward in our understanding of the evolution of a major group coming from a chance fossil find in a Chinese field.”But they weren’t expecting live birth in this group. A press release from the University of Birmingham announces, “Fossil discovery rewrites understanding of reproductive evolution.” The paper in Nature Communications appeals to ‘convergent evolution’ to explain this (see 2/09/17), claiming that (1) live birth evolved many times, and (2) it evolved 50 million years earlier than expected in this group.Live birth has evolved many times independently in vertebrates, such as mammals and diverse groups of lizards and snakes. However, live birth is unknown in the major clade Archosauromorpha, a group that first evolved some 260 million years ago and is represented today by birds and crocodilians. Here we report the discovery of a pregnant long-necked marine reptile (Dinocephalosaurus) from the Middle Triassic (∼245 million years ago) of southwest China showing live birth in archosauromorphs. Our discovery pushes back evidence of reproductive biology in the clade by roughly 50 million years, and shows that there is no fundamental reason that archosauromorphs could not achieve live birth. Our phylogenetic models indicate that Dinocephalosaurus determined the sex of their offspring by sex chromosomes rather than by environmental temperature like crocodilians. Our results provide crucial evidence for genotypic sex determination facilitating land-water transitions in amniotes.On The Conversation, Stephan Lautenschlager (U of Birmingham) says that live birth (viviparity) has evolved over 100 times independently in all different types of groups (the paper says 115 times). But since later Ruling-Lizard-Shapes laid eggs, this creates questions for evolution that he can only answer by confabulation:The results of this study also raise several questions. Viviparity has evolved independently and numerous times in all major types of vertebrate, with mammals probably the most prominent and successful example. Although giving birth is physically and energetically taxing for the parent, it has clear advantages for the offspring, which receives extra nutrients and protection, and develops without being affected by environmental conditions.Yet archosauromorphs evolved away from this reproductive strategy to become the egg-laying dinosaurs, and eventually crocodiles and birds that we know. Why was this? We will now have to hope that future fossil finds might reveal another piece to the evolutionary puzzle.Lautenschlager mentions two other observations that point to rapid burial: “Remains of a partially digested fish were also found further up and between the ribs of the adult,” and also, “the mother animal was preserved in exactly this position” (the so-called “dinosaur death pose” with “with the neck and tail arched back“). This pose is typical of drowning. Interesting. How did a marine reptile that lives in water drown? The paper says this is not an exception: “in all other known adult specimens of Dinocephalosaurus, the neck curves towards the dorsal side.” Mrs. Ruling-Lizard-Shape sat there in the sediments a long time. This spectacular fossil is “one of many astonishingly well-preserved specimens from Luoping Biota sites in south-western China,” the press release says.Pterosaur pTalesA beautifully-detailed fossil of a pterosaur’s snout lined with teeth indicates to Live Science that this species “ate like a flamingo,” as a filter-feeder of sorts, skimming the water to catch small prey. This adds to the diversity of pterosaur dietary habits, the paper in Royal Society Open Science says: “filter-feeding, fish-eating, carnivory and scavenging, herbivory including frugivory, mollusc shell-crushing (durophagy) and omnivory” (jargon for “eats everything”). Live Science mentions that “Pterosaurs initially appeared about 215 million years ago” but fails to mention there are no known pterosaur ancestors. This one had the wingspan of a great horned owl, about one meter.A much bigger pterosaur was reported by New Scientist. This one was like a “flying T. rex” that probably snacked on dinosaurs the size of a small horse and, with its large throat, probably swallowed them whole. Be glad they aren’t flying around the school playground these days. Despite the large size of some Cretaceous pterosaurs, as big as giraffes with a 12-foot wingspan, scientists believe they could leap into the air to start flying. Incidentally, pterosaur just means ‘winged lizard.’ How would it sound if scientists used the English names?Cambrian SoftiesHyoliths were extinct small shelly fossils abundant in Cambrian strata. The remains of 1,500 hyoliths in the Burgess Shale, 254 of which show details of their soft tissue, are described by Nature. The exquisite detail in the fossils helps resolve their membership in Lophophrata (animals characterized by a lophophore, a circular ring of tentacles around a mouth). Two aspects of these fossils pose problems for Darwinism: the exceptional preservation and the Cambrian explosion of disparate body styles early in the fossil record.Exceptionally preserved soft tissues include an extendable, gullwing-shaped, tentacle-bearing organ surrounding a central mouth, which we interpret as a lophophore, and a U-shaped digestive tract ending in a dorsolateral anus. Together with opposing bilateral sclerites and a deep ventral visceral cavity, these features indicate an affinity with the lophophorates (brachiopods, phoronids and tommotiids), substantially increasing the morphological disparity of this prominent group.Mollusk MysteryGoing back to 478 million Darwin Years, Live Science points to a “spiky slug” as the ancestor of mollusks, apparently solving a “long-held mollusk mystery.” Awesome; the ancestry of mollusks has been revealed, the University of Bristol claims. Mollusks comprise a very diverse group of animals that live both on land and in the water, everything from snails to octopuses. All have a ‘radula’ in common, “a kind of toothed-tongue which is used to rake up or rasp food.” Live Science calls it a “conveyor belt of rasping teeth” in the pharynx. This slug-like animal from Morocco with a fingernail-like shell over its head has been promoted to Darwin-saving status. Because it has a radula, the scientists are considering it “not dissimilar” to what might have been the ancestor of mollusks. What should surprise them even more, though is the preservation. The fossil shows a multitude of tiny spines covering its body as well as clear details of the radula. When colored, as shown in the photo, you can almost see the animal rise out of the rock.Stephen Meyer wrote a whole book about Darwin’s Doubt, explaining how the explosion of new body plans in the Cambrian argues against Darwinism and provides prima facie evidence for intelligent design. Evolutionists, of course, reject that idea out of hand. Here’s how the discoverer of Calvapilosa kroegeri deals with the problem: “The molluscs are amongst the earliest animals identifiable in the fossil record, however determining what their ancestor looked like is difficult since many of the groups appear within a small window of time, making the sequence of evolutionary events difficult to piece together.” Uh, right. The phylogenetic chart in Nature, as usual, only shows the tips of the branches on the tree of mollusks, not the nodes. Here’s the last triumphal sentence: “This body plan gave rise to the remarkable morphological diversity characteristic of the molluscan classes—a disparity that has confounded previous attempts to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the group.”Trilobite TrailsTrilobites laid eggs! That’s exciting on two fronts: it’s the first evidence of their reproductive mode, and it shows how soft details can be preserved in fossils. There’s no excuse any longer that the Cambrian animals were preserved only because hard parts finally evolved, assuming their soft-bodied ancestors could not have fossilized. Nature mentions trilobite eggs found in upstate New York in rocks they claim are 450 million years old. The eggs are spheres only 200 millionths of a meter in diameter lying next to beautifully-preserved trilobites. Soft parts clearly could fossilize.On the other side of the world, there’s more amazing trilobite news. Science Daily says:Fossils found in Morocco from the long-extinct group of sea creatures called trilobites, including rarely seen soft-body parts, may be previously unseen animals that left distinctive fossil ‘footprints’ around the ancient supercontinent Gondwana….Trilobite appendages are soft, with an outer branch which is a gill, and an inner branch used for walking and feeding. The preservation of their soft-body is extremely rare, restricted to only a couple of dozen cases, because their external ‘skin’ and internal anatomy was normally lost through scavenging and decay soon after death, or overprinted by the mineralised exoskeleton.National Geographic was stunned, too:In a rare find, scientists have examined guts, legs, and gills from an animal that was preserved for nearly 500 million years. The ancient soft parts are offering new insights into the behavior of trilobites, the insect-like creatures that ruled Earth’s early seas for hundreds of millions of years.Paleontologists have identified more than 20,000 species of trilobite, but little is known about exactly how the animals moved around or what and how they ate. That’s because the soft tissues of the undercarriage are usually long gone by the time the harder exoskeletons mineralize into the distinctive alien-looking fossils.According to evolutionists, the whole continent of Gondwana broke up and started moving around not long before these animals lived, and yet their eggs and footprints are visible today “nearly 500 million years” later. (Read about “Darwin Years” in the Darwin Dictionary.)As stated in yesterday’s commentary, Tom Bethell made an important point about fossils in his book Darwin’s House of Cards (Discovery Institute Press, 2017). That point is this: it’s impossible to tell ancestry from fossils. He quotes Gareth Nelson, Colin Patterson, Norman Platnick and Richard Lewontin in agreement. With living organisms, you can watch one animal giving birth to another. That’s not possible with fossils. They are just isolated data points in a vast unseen landscape, like portions of auto parts scattered over the globe. Nothing about them tells what order they belong in or where they came from. Nelson describes what happens when a new fossil is discovered. Say it’s a “50-million-year-old -beetle,” he said. “It looks like it belongs to a certain family, but there may be 30,000 species in the family. What do you do? Go through all 30,000? No, you just give it an appropriate-sounding name, Eocoleoptera [“dawn beetle”], say. If it is one that has been in existence for 50 million years, somebody else will have to find that out, because you don’t have enough time. You’re out digging in the rocks, not poking through beetle collections in museums” (page 147). Apply what you just heard him say to the stories above: what is Calvapilosa kroegeri? Do evolutionists know it’s an ancestor of mollusks? Do they even know it doesn’t exist somewhere today? Do they know where it came from or what it turned into? Of course not. They give it a name, and stick it into their chosen narrative.Here’s another logical conundrum to chew on. Earlier in chapter 12, Bethell examines a common but little-noticed fallacy of planting ancestors on nothing. Certain categories used in taxonomy and systematics describe not what they are, but what they are not. For instance, what is an invertebrate? It’s a “not-vertebrate.” But if you look at the category of “not vertebrates,” it includes everything without a backbone! A pencil is an invertebrate, and so is a tomato. If you qualify invertebrates as animals, then still you have a vast array of organisms that qualify as invertebrates, whose differences far exceed their commonality of being devoid of backbones. Neal Gillespie called these ‘voids’ and described them as things that have the function of knowledge but convey none. Even Aristotle had said, “there can be no specific forms of what is non-existent, of Featherless, for instance, or of Footless, as there are of Feathered or Footed” (p. 146). This realization influenced Colin Patterson profoundly, turning him to realize that evolution was a form of anti-knowledge. Listen to what he says and watch the light bulbs go on:In systematics, there are pieces of evolutionary knowledge that all our heads are stuffed with, from the most general—statements like “eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes,” or “vertebrates evolved from invertebrates,” down to lower-level statements like “man evolved from apes.” I imagine that by now you all appreciate that such statements exactly fit Gillespies’s description—’voids that have the function of knowledge, but convey none.’” (page 144).It’s like saying ‘nucleus evolved from not-nucleus’ or ‘backbone evolved from not-backbone’ or ‘man evolved from not-man’ simply because of the categories we arbitrarily choose to put things into (e.g., Hominidae are non-human primates, or apes—’not human’ by definition).  Such exercises are vacuous; they are ‘disguised truisms,’ Bethell points out. Nature provides no such guidance. As for invertebrates, “At the end of the day, we still have no idea how to identify the species that the first vertebrate evolved from,” he says. “We are told that it was not a vertebrate—that it was an invertebrate—but we knew that already.” Think about this long enough to realize that most of evolutionary phylogeny (attempts to organize animals into ancestral trees) is a form of anti-knowledge. Bethell goes on to quote leading paleontologists like Patterson pointing out that in phylogenetic charts, all the data is at the tips of the branches. Nobody knows or sees what likes at the nodes (the branching points). This is but one flimsy card Bethell talks about in Darwin’s House of Cards.You may be pleased to hear that Bethell referred to Creation-Evolution Headlines in his book. In his chapter on convergence (ch. 11), he pointed to our article about insect hearing that mirrors auditory systems in vertebrates (11/27/12), and footnoted it on page 269. He may have also adopted our commentary calling convergence a form of ‘Abracadabra.’ This indicates that influential people use our site as a resource. Please help spread the word about the large database of source-documented information you can find in these pages.(Visited 134 times, 1 visits today)FacebookTwitterPinterestSave分享0 read more