Buoy 10 sportfishing opens with decent catches; should heat up in ...

ASTORIA -- Not many boats ventured onto the lower Columbia River estuary Thursday for the opening of the popular Buoy 10 salmon season.

It's early, after all, and the Pacific Ocean outside the river's mouth has plenty of salmon still stuffing themselves before wandering inshore and upriver in the next few weeks.

Still, dozens who trolled the entrance to Youngs Bay found willing biters. Many were the highly prized, fat-laden, select-area bright chinook, released from pens to return as commercial prizes.

They're missing left ventral fins, if you're wondering how to tell.

That's important, because this is also the first year of significant returns from another type of hatchery-raised chinook, the tule, also now being released in the bay. They have almost no fat, are nearly ready to spawn when they hit freshwater and are barely marketable. But the hatchery releases were moved away from Big Creek, a small local tributary, to reduce straying onto wild tule chinook spawning beds.

This is likely the last season anglers will get this kind of shot at the select area brights. Legislation recently signed into law by Gov. John Kitzhaber will create a no-sportfishing buffer off Youngs Bay by the 2014 fishing season. The intent is to reduce angler interception of the far more valuable fish in partial exchange for shifting commercial gill-nets off the mainstem Columbia.

BUOY 10 Caution! Don't forget the new barbless-hook rules apply to the Buoy 10 fishery as well as the rest of the Columbia and lower Willamette rivers.

Law enforcement boats spent most of the morning Thursday checking the fleet of anglers outside the bay.

Regulations also allow only one chinook per day inside the estuary (but two-salmon/steelhead overall) and no jacks west of Tongue Point. Coho, but not chinook, must be missing an adipose fin.

Duck/goose seasons set: Duck seasons will look just about like last year, but goose hunters are getting some significant expansions this fall.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission set fall bird seasons Friday at their monthly meeting in Eugene.

For the first time since restrictive goose regulations began in northwest Oregon, hunters on Sauvie Island's public hunting area will be allowed to take snow geese on certain hunt days. All northwest goose zone permit rules will be in effect and a northwest zone permit will be required. Snow goose hunting will close if a single dusky Canada goose is shot. Officers will watch closely for anyone accidentally shooting a swan.

There will be no more "dark goose" designation. Instead there will be seasons for Canada geese and white-fronted geese, which will get their own category and bag limit (six per day in most areas).

The September goose daily limit has been increased to five in eastern Oregon and the white goose limit in Malheur County will double to 20 per day.

The major changes to duck hunting are a reduction in scaup, with a shorter season (starts Nov. 2 in zone 1) and bag limit (three daily), and an increase in canvasback bag limits to two per day instead of one.

All other duck hunting will mirror last fall.

The Oregon bird-hunting synopsis will be published sometime in the next few weeks and available at all outlets.

Sturgeon retention in 2014: The commission also set 2014 angling regulations Friday.

Highlights include the statewide shift to catch and release fishing only for sturgeon...EXCEPT: Beginning next year, sturgeon can be kept in the Willamette River above (south of) Willamette Falls. Limit is one per day, two per season, between 38 and 54 inches fork length. There are pockets of sturgeon up there, mostly holdovers from years past when baby sturgeon were planted. ?

The commission also approved extension of the no-fishing sanctuary on the Willamette all the way down to the railroad bridge between Milwaukie and Lake Oswego. That means no sturgeon fishing at all, even catch and release, from May 1 to Aug. 31.

Halibut hearings: Anglers are asked to attend public meetings beginning next week to voice their opinions about 2014 halibut fishing seasons and 2015-16 groundfish seasons.

Meetings all begin at 7 p.m. and are set for: Tuesday, Tillamook office of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; Wednesday, Holiday Inn Express, Newport; Monday, Aug. 12, Best Western Beachfront Inn, Brookings; Tuesday, Aug. 13, North Bend Public Library.

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/bill_monroe/index.ssf/2013/08/post_86.html

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Bizarre crystals reveal underground magma 'highway'

The deadly 1963-1965 eruption of Iraz? contained lava that pushed through the earth's 20-mile thick crust in about a year, reveal crystals from deep below the Earth's surface. Conventional wisdom says magma needs hundreds or thousands of years to make the trip.

By Liz Fuller-Wright,?Correspondent / August 1, 2013

A lake occupies one of the summit craters of Iraz?, one of Costa Rica's most active volcanoes. Iraz? rises to 11260 feet (3432 m) near the capital city of San Jos? and is the country's highest volcano. This crater lake, seen in 1996 from the southern crater rim, has been the source of many historical eruptions.

Jos? Enrique Valverde Sanabria / Eduardo Malavassi / OVSICORI-UNA

Enlarge

Not all volcanoes are created equal. Sometimes magma screams upward ? in the kimberlite tubes that bring diamonds to the surface, magma flies upward at over 800 miles per hour ? but that's very unusual, and limited to small volcanoes. Most magma, especially in big volcanoes, is slow and steady ? more tortoise than hare. Right?

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Not necessarily, says Philipp Ruprecht, a volcanologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. "We like to call it the highway from hell," said his co-author Terry Plank, a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty, in a press release.

In an article published in today's Nature, Drs. Ruprecht and Plank describe fast-moving magmas not just in tiny volcanoes or kimberlite tubes, where it might be expected, but in a huge, long-lived volcano in Costa Rica.

"That's the interesting story, really, that such a fast transport mechanism exists even in these long-lasting, large stratovolcanic systems that are thought to operate on much longer time scales," says Ruprecht.

They examined Iraz?, a massive volcano in Costa Rica. Reaching over 11,000 feet tall and spreading across 200 square miles, Iraz? is the tallest volcano in Costa Rica, and one of the most active. It has erupted two dozen times in the past 300 years, most famously emerging from a 23-year dormant period to shower ash over President John F. Kennedy's visit to Costa Rica in March 1963.

"Typically, magma moves upward, usually by cracking the rocks above it and creating a space for the magma to go into," explains Ruprecht, "taking steady steps toward the magma chamber. In this study, it was a much more rapid ascent."

In other words, sometimes it skips the long trip up the stairs in favor of the express elevator to the penthouse.

This could have important implications for volcano prediction, which is still more art than science. If magma is rising through the crust less than a year before the eruption, that means that tracking the movement could help scientists warn of an imminent eruption.

Unfortunately, the earthquakes caused by magma tend to be very small, only magnitude 1 or 2, and very, very deep ? miles below the surface. The global earthquake system is better at catching big, shallow earthquakes, around magnitude 3 or higher, says Ruprecht. It's a princess-and-the-pea problem: tiny, deep earthquakes can only be felt by very, very sensitive equipment located on the flanks of the volcano itself.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/Uo2_t6CW6lE/Bizarre-crystals-reveal-underground-magma-highway

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Canada draws up directive on beacons in 787 fire investigation (reuters)

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Zimbabwe's MDC considers protests against Mugabe landslide

By Ed Cropley

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said on Friday it could take to the streets to challenge President Robert Mugabe's victory in an election it rejects as a farce and which faces skepticism from the West.

No results of the presidential vote on July 31 have been announced. But Mugabe's ZANU-PF has already claimed a resounding win and interim tallies of the parliamentary count suggest a massive victory for the 89-year-old, Africa's oldest president, who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.

While the African Union's monitoring mission chief has called Wednesday's peaceful polls generally "free and fair" - Western observers were kept out by Harare - domestic monitors have described them as "seriously compromised" by registration flaws that may have disenfranchised up to a million people.

Observers from the Southern African Development Community, a regional grouping, described the elections as "free and peaceful" and called on MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai to accept the result.

Tsvangirai, who faces political annihilation in his third attempt to oust Mugabe at the ballot box, has already denounced the election as a "huge farce" marked by polling day irregularities and intimidation by ZANU-PF.

Western rejection of the regional African verdict on the Zimbabwean election could stir tensions with the continent, while acceptance of Mugabe's victory will be slammed in countries where he is derided as a ruthless despot responsible for rights abuses and trashing the economy.

The mood on the streets of the capital Harare was subdued on Friday as the MDC's top leadership met at its headquarters to chart their next move, with everything from a legal challenge to street protests on the table.

"Demonstrations and mass action are options," party spokesman Douglas Mwonzora said.

"DAYLIGHT ROBBERY"

Some disappointed voters expressed disbelief at the election outcome. "This is daylight robbery, but I think the MDC should have realized that, without violence, ZANU-PF would still do something to cheat," said McDonald Sibanda, a 34-year old insurance salesman.

"I'm disgusted by all this."

An MDC protest campaign against the results could elicit a fierce response from security forces and pro-Mugabe militias, who were accused of killing 200 MDC supporters after Mugabe lost the first round of the last election in 2008.

"We didn't expect this to happen," one senior MDC official who lost his seat told Reuters. "We're gutted."

Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler Britain, a sharp critic of Mugabe in the past, said it was concerned that Zimbabwe had not enacted important electoral reforms before the vote and by reports that large numbers of voters had been turned away.

The U.S. government, which maintains sanctions in place against Mugabe, said "a peaceful and orderly election day does not by itself guarantee a free and fair outcome".

"Now the critical test is whether voting tabulation is conducted in a credible and transparent manner, and whether the outcome truly reflects the will of the people of Zimbabwe," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in Washington.

Europe and the United States now face the awkward decision of what to do with the sanctions they have in place against Mugabe and his inner circle.

WHAT WILL WEST DO?

The Western skepticism contrasted with the assessment made by the AU election observer team leader, former Nigerian military leader and civilian president Olusegun Obasanjo, who while acknowledging "minor incidents" surrounding the July 31 poll said they were not enough to affect the overall result.

Obasanjo, whose own re-election in Nigeria in 2003 was marked by violence and widespread fraud allegations, broadly declared Zimbabwe's elections 'free and fair' on Wednesday within half an hour of the polls closing. He repeated that line after a meeting with Mugabe on Thursday.

Tsvangirai has emphatically called the election "not credible" and appealed to the AU to investigate.

But Obasanjo declined to comment on his assertion, calling him "an interested party".

The AU verdict, echoed by President Jacob Zuma of Zimbabwe's powerful neighbor South Africa, suggest the MDC's appeals for external pressure on Mugabe may be falling on deaf ears

Zuma, main guarantor of the unity government in Zimbabwe brokered after the 2008 unrest, focused on the orderly conduct of the poll. He ignored Mugabe's refusal to heed calls from the MDC and international observers to reform bias in the state media and security forces, conditions specifically stipulated in the unity administration deal.

"Something good has happened in Zimbabwe. The elections were so peaceful," he told the SABC state broadcaster.

But a Mugabe victory would pose problems for the West.

"This leaves the EU and U.S. in an extremely difficult situation," said Piers Pigou, director of the southern Africa project of International Crisis Group in Johannesburg.

The European Union, which relaxed some sanctions early this year after a new constitution was approved in a referendum, said it was too early to assess the election's fairness.

Given the sanctions, the view from the West is key to the future of Zimbabwe's economy, which is still struggling with the aftermath of a decade-long slump and hyperinflation that ended in 2009 when the worthless Zimbabwe dollar was scrapped.

(Additional reporting by Stella Mapenzauswa and Cris Chinaka in Harare, Jon Herskovitz and Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburg; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Giles Elgood)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/zimbabwes-mdc-considers-protests-against-mugabe-landslide-111310644.html

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Remembering Mahmoud: Iran?s Ahmadinejad Rides Into a Nuclear Sunset

Shortly after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office as Iran?s president eight memorable years ago, a walk-up window appeared in the face of a building just off a leafy square in eastern Tehran. ?President?s Public Relations Office,? the sign read but the window functioned more as a kind of post office. Five days a week, from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. the clerk stationed there accepted letters from ordinary Iranians who traveled for hours, sometimes days, to deposit their requests to the first Iranian president who bore a resemblance to themselves.

This is not as scary as it might sound. Iranian political culture had been the playground of Persia?s elites for more than a millennium, and for all the egalitarian slogans of the 1979 Revolution, remained so in the Islamic Republic; a chapter title in one of the better books about modern Iran was telling: ?The Mullah Wore Beautiful Shoes.? So was the shorthand for a businessman with connections: ?the son of a cleric.? In that context, it becomes easier to grasp the profound early populist appeal of the banty pol who leaves office on Saturday.

Ahmadinejad lived in the modest townhouse he grew up in, right around the corner from the walk-up window. He wore a zippered jacket to work. Everything about him ? including the taunts of moneyed North Tehran swells that he needed a bath ? suggested that this was a man who understood the concerns of workaday citizens, who were nonetheless gratified when he asked them to write down their specific needs and bring them by in person.

Seven out of ten, according to the man in the window, asked for money.

Mind you this was back when Iran was still flush, years before the sanctions on oil sales and international banking transactions crippled the economy and sent the rial reeling. But even when it was still awash in petrodollars, the Islamic Republic had been a fiscal basket case, a command economy (80 percent of which is directly controlled by the state) dependent on petroleum sales for the hard currency it then used to import gasoline. Every Iranian knew that Turkey, the next door neighbor with the same number of people and a fraction of the natural blessings, had become an economic titan during the 30 years Iran ran in place. What Iran led the world in, according to UN figures, was opium addiction. ?When Tehran wanted to raise the quality of life, it began providing hot lunches to civil servants, who dutifully wrapped up the plates of rice and carried them home to the family as dinner.

Nuclear power, Israel? all the preoccupations that formed the West?s views on Ahmadinejad barely registered as controversies inside Iran. By the time the new president put out his call for epistle, he had already called the Holocaust a myth and been quoted saying Israel should be ?wiped off the map.? He might not have actually uttered the phrase ? it?s entirely possible it was a mis-translation of a less vivid saying (that Israel will disappear amid ?the the sands of time?) ? but the point is he never denied the quote, so pleased was he by the uproar that surrounded him like a force field. He was comfortable standing at the center of controversy, smiling his smug smile.

So it was that Ahmadinejad returned Iran to the role many Americans, at least, found familiar and even comfortable: Arch-villain. After his 2005 election, there was a flurry of reports that Iran?s new president had been among the students who took over the US embassy in 1979, precipitating the hostage crisis that still defines the relationship three decades later. The reports were not true, but the newcomer?s abrupt arrival on the international scene ? out of nowhere ? was embraced as helpful and clarifying by those not entirely sure what to make of his predecessor, the librarian Mohammed Khatami, a reformist president who spoke not of the Great Satan but of a ?dialogue between civilizations.?? Where?s the fun in that?

Politically, Ahmadinejad truly was a product of the fringe. I first saw him at Friday prayers on the campus of Tehran University, campaigning in the center of a small cluster of the Basij, a nationalist irregular militia, and other regime loyalists who show up there each week. He had been mayor of Tehran for two years yet registered so feebly in the presidential electoral reckoning that a week before election day the leading reformist daily did not even include him in its candidate roundup. But he was catching fire below the radar, his campaign posters done in austere black and white, and prime time campaign video a truly moving portrait of a man who savored contact with common people.

?I saw him on television,? a shopkeeper named Jafar Shalde told me later, in a Caspian Sea town called Shaft. ?I just looked at him and saw he was just like us. So I told everybody I knew ? for example, my kids ? I told them to vote for him.?

He didn?t travel very well, though. When Ahmadinejad came to New York each autumn for the UN General Assembly, US journalists lined up to engage him in interviews. Most came away befuddled, unable to square his supremely confident manner with a frame of reference so far from their own reality. Iranians know that regime hard-liners talk mostly to each other, reinforcing their own peculiar world view, which outsiders can take or leave. But as Iran?s nuclear program became one of the world?s major preoccupations, his insistence on his own reality aggravated the situation.

It was always true that, as president, Ahmadinejad had almost no power over the nuclear program, which remains under the direct control of? Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the unelected cleric who holds ultimate power in Iran. But Ahmadinejad was entirely appropriate as its ?spokesman. His was the face of Iran?s lurch to the right. The jackboot suppression of the Green Movement four years ago was carried out in his behalf, to assure the re-election of a candidate ? a veteran of both the Basij and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, a man of the people who visited a different province every second week, always setting out oversized boxes to collect all those letters (200,000 poured in at the poorest province of them all) ? Khamenei must have thought almost too good to be true.

Turns out he was. In his second term, Ahmadinejad broke with the Leader, challenging the dominance of conservative clerics while building a cadre of his own. The infighting went on for years, and if it was at times entertaining ? at one point involving allegations of sorcery ? it was because it was playing out on the far-right fringe of the political spectrum where Iranian politics had been allowed to drift.

By then, the US-led sanctions were in place, and with its banking system frozen Iran was bartering tea from India in exchange for oil. The economy that Ahmadinejad had promised to make responsive to working women and men ? ?to put oil money on the sofre ? or dining cloth ? was a shambles. And guess who got the blame? The June election was won in a single round by the candidate who most emphasized the need to end Iran?s isolation, and on Saturday, Ahmadinejad will attend the inauguration of Hassan Rouhani, a man who is everything the departing incumbent is not: a cleric, worldly, educated abroad, fluent in English, and long a fixture of Iran?s ruling elite.

Rouhani tweets: ?Talking impudently against the enemy is not the solution.? ?And: ?The country is now encountered with a 42% inflation as well as unemployment. #Rouhani? Who has time for a letter any more?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/remembering-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-rides-nuclear-sunset-163856056.html

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Cat Attacks Birds On TV Every Single Time (VIDEO)

Look, we say this a lot, but this time we mean it. This is our new favorite cat. See, the key here is consistency. When the opening notes of this television show's theme song play, you can count on this cat to stop whatever it might be doing ? sleeping, hanging out in the cat tree ? and attack these birds each...

and...

every...

damn...

time.

And that, dear friends, is the definition of being dedicated to your craft.

Via Tastefully Offensive

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/03/cat-attacks-birds-on-tv-every-time_n_3701238.html

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Mediacom Upgrades Broadband Service in 22 MN Counties ...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]GRAND RAPIDS, MN ? July 31, 2013 ? Mediacom Communications announced today it has given a speed boost to 73 communities in rural Minnesota where the company now provides download speeds of 105 ... The higher-speed Internet service, Ultra 105, uses the technology known as DOCSIS 3.0 to provide Internet users with download speeds of up to 105 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 10 Mbps. Mediacom officials describe recent network improvements as ...

Source: http://blandinonbroadband.org/2013/08/01/mediacom-upgrades-broadband-service-in-22-mn-counties/

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