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The judges’ panel for the King Abdul Aziz Contest for Beautiful Camels (Muzayin Al-Ibl) for the Hijri year 1433 (2011-2012) identified three she-camels as the top animals in the pre-final round of the Sufr (yellow) category at the Umm Riqaiba ground on Friday. Chairman of the Allegiance Committee Prince Mishaal, who is also the chairman of the Supreme Committee for Muzayin Al-Ibl, will announce the final winner at the concluding function in January. Prince Abdullah bin Saad bin Jalawi is the chairman of the judges’ panel. Contests in the other categories will continue on Saturday. The contests are held for...

Over 13,000 camels to join beauty pageantry More than 13,000 camels from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Gulf Arab countries will be herded inside a massive well-built enclosure in the Kingdom for the region’s largest camel beauty contest, starting on Sunday. Organisers said 13,678 male and female Arabian camels will take part in the event, which will attract 280 camel owners from Saudi Arabia, 22 from Kuwait, 17 from Qatar and five from the UAE. The contest will be held in North Saudi Arabia and will last 31 days, during which three winners will be picked by a committee...

As Eid-ul-Azha, a festival observed by sacrificing animals by Muslims, draws near, Kashmir sees exotic animals to be part of sacrificial animals' list this year. Topping the list are camels and Rs 2-lakh Afghan breed goats. These exotic animals will be part of more than two lakh sheep and goats to be sacrificed on the occasion in Srinagar alone. In the outskirts of Srinagar, Parimpora mandi, where grocery imports from outside the state come is abuzz with hundreds of sheep up for sale. But the eye catcher among the flock are tall camels, a desert animal barely known to Kashmiri...

Rescuers racing against time to save a camel from drowning failed to lift the massive animal out as it slipped off the ropes and disappeared down into the water pit to the disappointment and grief of the crowd. The thrilling rescue attempt was caught on video in Saudi Arabia and it showed the camel was just a step to life before it plunged back to death. The 54-second film, carried by Saudi newspapers, showed rescuers using a bulldozer and thick ropes to lift the female camel out of the water pit after it had apparently stepped on the open hole...

Nanobodies produced by camels have unique properties, which can be used in future drug development. New research published in the Journal of Controlled Release confirms that nanobodies can help scientists in the fight against cancer. University of Copenhagen

> The Guardian describes the benefits of going out and shooting a camel. “Australia’s population of wild camels, the Financial Times reveals, may soon be shot in order to earn carbon credits under the country’s forthcoming emissions trading scheme. Each one of the creatures is estimated to produce a tonne of carbon dioxide a year – about the same as a 7,000km flight – not to mention the environmental havoc they cause in a fragile desert landscape more suited to amiable marsupials.” Alternatives have been considered, such as feeding the camels birth-control tablets, but there are doubts whether this would...

Kill a camel, earn cash for cutting greenhouse gases: That offer may be coming soon in Australia, where vast numbers of the nonnative, methane-belching animals have been trampling the Outback for more than a century. The government has proposed that killing camels be officially registered as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Australia has the world's largest population of wild camels _ an estimated 1.2 million _ and considers them to be a growing environmental problem. The proposal, released for public comment this week, would allow sharpshooters to earn so-called carbon credits for slaughtering camels. Industrial polluters around the...

* Over one million feral camels live in arid and semi-arid regions of the Australian outback. * The camels demolish air conditioners, fences and toilet systems and foul critical watering holes. * A new program aims to track the camels by allowing people to report sightings using Google maps. The single-humped dromedary camels were brought mainly from India in the second half of the 19th century to work in the scrubby, red-earthed arid parts of the Australian outback, transporting people and as pack animals. Once trains, roads and machinery made them obsolete as workers, the camels were let loose, creating...

You never know what might happen when you're reporting on a farm. WWBT reporter Tara Morgan learned that lesson the hard way. While working on a story in Hanover County, VA, a camel started eating her hair. For a moment, it seemed like the camel had a good grip on the reporter. But with some help from her photographer, it didn't take long for Morgan to free herself. Both Morgan and her photographer got a good laugh, and no one was injured.

URGENT: Gunfire heard in Cairo's Tahrir Square as supporters of President Mubarak and anti-government demonstrators clash hours after the embattled leader defiantly said he would serve out his term in office.

Dh35 million at stake in the world's biggest camel beauty contestNearly 20,000 camels from the UAE and other Gulf Arab countries have converged on Abu Dhabi’s western region for one of the world’s biggest camel beauty contests involving prizes worth nearly Dh35 million ($9.5 million). The camels have been brought from various parts of the UAE as well as neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and other Gulf nations for the week-long beauty competition in the western town of Dhafra. The contest, which started on Thursday, will stretch until next Friday and officials described it as one of the largest camel...

Massive hump-backed animal falls on people in pewsA Christmas show camel got a little too close for comfort for audience members at a West Palm Beach Baptist church Thursday night, after it did a belly flop onto a row of pews during a rehearsal. The incident happened at the First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach and was filmed and posted to YouTube, thankfully. The video shows the massive hump-backed mammal being escorted down the aisle before it tumples over a few rows of pews an onto helpless spectators. Liz Reilly, an audience member who saw the whole thing...

Thieves stormed a farm in Saudi Arabia and stole five camels that have won beauty contests and are worth over SR15 million. But they were seized by police later, a local newspaper reported on Thursday. The unknown thieves sneaked into the farm in the central province of Quarayya under the cover of night and used ropes to pull the camels out of the farm gate towards a waiting van, Sharq Arabic language daily said. “The camels are worth more than SR15 million as they have won some camel beauty contests in Saudi Arabia,” the paper said. “The thieves took the...

Hundreds of camels from the UAE and other Gulf nations will line up next month to show their good looks in the latest beauty contest involving the massive desert animal to be held by the country, local newspapers reported on Saturday. The Abu Dhabi Culture and Heritage Society will organize the December 16-25 pageantry in the Western region, the reports said. Authorities have started to conduct tests on all participating camels from the UAE and those coming from nearby Gulf states to ensure they are free of diseases. “Test will continue on all camels round the clock before and during...

By Andrew Woodman Andrew.Woodman@Krnmedia.Co.Uk ANIMAL-rights protesters have targeted a new shop in Broadstairs that will sell exotic meats including camel, crocodile and zebra. A small banner-bearing group confronted Wild Sun owners Manfred and Ahrlene Fuss outside their shop on Saturday morning. Two police officers were sent to watch the protest, which passed off peacefully. The demonstration came just days after the shop featured in the Thanet Times. The shop's owners import meat such as kangaroo, crocodile, camel, zebra and ostrich from as far afield as Australia and Africa and is due to open its doors to the public tomorrow (Wednesday)....

Australia's fledgling camel industry has received a government grant to capitalize on growing international demand for the animals' meat and milk. The animals were brought to the country by early settlers but their numbers have soared since they were released into the wild, and some Australians consider them pests. More than a million camels roam Australia's vast interior. These hardy animals are among the country's most destructive feral pests and marksmen have begun the task of culling hundreds of thousands of them. Meat companies, however, say a more productive way to reduce camel numbers is to export them as a...

Ralph and Wynona Passow bought their first camels a decade ago to rid their farm of weeds. The camel herd has grown to more than 30.Lanky legs and neck sprawled too far forward, then too far backward. That black, furry newborn was going to stand and nurse somehow, Passow decided. The mother camel blinked long, dreamy eyelashes and watched carefully as Passow coaxed the big baby to the mother's side. "The females are lovely," Ralph Passow said, watching his wife try to turn the baby toward the patient mother. "But the male camels will kill you." About 30 minutes earlier,...

One hump or two? Feisty camels might have a bad rap, but their milk is low in fat, and full of vitamin C and iron. The next thing to hit Wholefoods?At the tail end of breastfeeding week, we thought we’d draw attention to another kind of milk widely touted in the Middle East to be the magical elixir of health. A staple of their diet, along with dates, camel milk has long provided Bedouins with the proteins, carbohydrates, and vitamins necessary to survive a desert-dwelling existence. And unlike cow’s milk, which creates allergies in many consumers, camel milk is blessedly...

6/4/2010 - RAF MILDENHALL, England (AFNS) -- When my 3-year-old asked me why I was going to the desert in 2004, I said, "Daddy has to go feed the camels," and that was enough to sustain his curiosity. My 7- and 8-year-olds didn't buy it. Despite their doubt and his bewilderment, I went forth and tried my best to help by supporting ground and air operations in Iraq in an expeditionary maintenance squadron. This was my first deployment, and though it seemed difficult at the time, it was perhaps the easiest mission I'll ever endure. After a mere 100 days...

DUBAI (Reuters) – Ten golden-colored camels adorned with sparkling ornaments line up for the finale of a beauty contest in one of the UAE's northern emirates, awaiting the selection of two proud winners. Gulf Arabs from across the region gather in a large sandy plot in Ajman to sit in for a four-hour competition, which will see the selection of the best out of 150 camels every day. The three-day spectacle should end with the top two finalists bagging luxury cars, while a remaining eight win cash.

Australian authorities plan to corral about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and gun them down after they overran a small Outback town in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies. The Northern Territory government announced its plan Wednesday for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving daily for weeks because of drought conditions in the region. "The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding, wild camels," local government minister Rob Knight said in Alice Springs, 310 miles (500 kilometers) northeast of Docker. "This is a very critical situation...

An Oz Outback community is battling to regain control of its town from a 6,000-strong feral camel invasion, which has seen the thirsty dromedaries cause "chaos" in their search for water. According to the Times, the drought-hit beasts have descended on the Northern Territory's Docker River en masse, "trampling through homes, breaking water tanks and even damaging the emergency airstrip".

Wild dromedary camels, brought to Australia in the mid-19th century to help explore and develop the outback, were left to breed and survive on their own. Now they number a million in the wild and have become pests, officials say. Camels are not usually associated with Australia, but Australia is home to the largest herd of feral camels in the world. About 12,000 dromedary camels were brought to Australia in the mid-19th century to carry people and supplies during the exploration and development of the Interior but after the advent of the automobile, they were abandoned and left to fend...

Australia has begun drawing up plans to cull hundreds of thousands of wild camels amid concerns that marauding herds are tearing up the environment and depleting valuable supplies of water. One-humped dromedaries were imported into Australia after 1840 to help colonial settlers conquer the arid continent’s inhospitable interior. A century later, the robust pack animals were no longer needed, superseded by trucks and trains. While some were slaughtered, many others were released into the desert where they have thrived. Apart from wild dogs, Australia’s camels have had little to fear until now. Deploying marksmen in helicopters is part of an...

SYDNEY -- Thousands of camels in Australia's remote Outback could be killed by marksmen in helicopters under a government proposal aimed at cutting down the population of the havoc-wreaking creatures. First introduced into Australia in the 1840s to help explorers travel through the Australian desert, there are now about 1 million camels roaming the country, with the population doubling every nine years. They compete with sheep and cattle for food, trample vegetation and invade remote settlements in search of water, scaring residents as they tear apart bathrooms and rip up water pipes. Last month, the federal government set aside 19...

Thousands of camels will be shot from helicopters and turned into burgers in a bid to halt their trail of havoc across Australia. Marksmen plan to gun the animals down amid concern the thirsty dromedaries are barging into people's homes and ripping up their bathrooms looking for water. Government officials plan to wipe out 650,000 of the feral population in the remote Outback area of the country. The creatures were first introduced to Australia in the 1840s to help explorers travel through the Australian desert. There are now about one million camels roaming the country. They compete with sheep and...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — It may have seemed like a mirage: Two camels nibbling on a pine tree along a street in this desert metropolis on the Texas border. Police tried lassoing the animals, which lunged at the officers with snapping teeth as onlookers chuckled. But in the end, officials say all it took was some juicy green leaves on a branch held by the caretaker to lure the camels back into captivity.

He has a host of relatives in exotic locations from Hawaii to Kenya, and during his run for the American presidency he discovered that he had an aunt living in Boston. Now Barack Obama is being claimed by not one but as many as 8,000 Beduin tribesmen in northern Israel. Although the spokesman for the lost tribe of Obama has yet to reveal the documentary evidence that he says he possesses to support his claim, people are flocking from across the region to pay their respects to the “Beduin Obama”, whose social standing has gone through the roof. “We knew...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) -- Hundreds of camels have died in Saudi Arabia this week from a mystery ailment. Cars stop on a Riyadh highway to make way for a caravan of camels. The animals are big business in Saudi Arabia. The Agriculture Ministry has said 232 camels died in the space of four days in the Dawasir Valley, 250 miles south of Riyadh. King Abdullah has promised compensation for owners, who say the real number of deaths is far higher. Agriculture ministry officials have denied an infectious disease caused the deaths and blamed them on animal feed supplied by...

RIYADH (Reuters) - Hundreds of camels have died in Saudi Arabia this week from a mystery ailment. The Agriculture Ministry has said 232 camels died in the space of four days in the Dawasir Valley, 400 km (250 miles) south of Riyadh. King Abdullah has promised compensation for owners, who say the real number of deaths is far higher. Agriculture ministry officials have denied an infectious disease caused the deaths and blamed them on animal feed supplied by food storage authorities.

archaeologists say could be the biggest fossil find in Pinellas County in nearly a century... The jaw and tooth weigh 65 pounds and are about a yard long. Sarti-Sweeney took the bones home and, after some online research with her older brother, determined the football-sized rock was actually the tooth of a long-extinct mammoth. Paleontology and archaeology experts have confirmed the find, and recent digging at the site has turned up teeth and bones from a second mammoth, giant sloths, camels, turtles with shells up to 6-feet-long, saber-toothed cats and giant armadillos the size of Volkswagen Beetles. Scientists believe the...

RIYADH, 28 August 2006 — You might have seen films or flipped through comic strips about the adventures of Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan could communicate with animals but not with humans after having lived with apes and other denizens of the forest. Muhammad Iqbal, an Indian expatriate, too could not communicate with humans after tending camels for 13 years in the desert of Al-Summan in the Thumama district near Riyadh. Then, following a chance encounter with his own compatriot, he slowly regained his voice and his memory. He then realized, “I have only milk to...

CUERO — The bellows and growls of camels on the move are again echoing across Texas, thanks to history buffs who are retracing the path of cloven footprints left 150 years ago. On May 20, six camels left the Port of Indianola, where in 1856 the first of about 100 of the animals imported by the Army arrived. The six were bound for Camp Verde, site of a frontier-era camel base. Along the way, Doug Baum and other handlers are holding show-and-tell sessions at civic clubs, school campuses and even at the Alamo on the great "camel experiment." "I think...

While it might seem strange scientists would think to develop dipsticks to measure caffeine, how they're making them is even weirder. How about three llamas and two camels. The animals, both called camelids by scientists, are among the few whose immune systems produce antibodies that are not destroyed by hot coffee. We did not look into who figured that out or why. Anyway, the researchers injected proteins linked to caffeine into the five beasts to elicit an immune response. The animals produced antibodies in their blood that were reactive to caffeine. Then in the lab, these antibodies were found to...

Iranian police seized 18 kilograms of opium after cutting open the stomachs of six camels, which are being increasingly used to carry narcotics from Afghanistan, media reported Tuesday. Iran is one of the world's key narcotics thoroughfares, carrying opiates from Afghanistan to Europe. It boasts 25 percent of opium seizures worldwide. The official IRNA news agency said police in the central city of Nain slaughtered the camels which they found in the back of a truck pulled over at a checkpoint. The bellies of four animals yielded drugs and the truck driver was arrested. Networks of forts and ramparts across...

Saddam planned to deploy 'camels of mass destruction' By James Langton (Filed: 26/03/2006) Saddam Hussein planned to use "camels of mass destruction" as weapons to defend Iraq, loading them with bombs and directing them towards invading forces. The animals were part of a plan to arm and equip foreign insurgents drawn up by the dictator shortly before the American-led invasion three years ago, reveals a 37-page report, captured after the fall of Baghdad and just released by the Pentagon. It is part of a cache of thousands of documents that the United States Department of Defence says it does not...

The municipality of Løten, in the southeastern county of Hedmark, has failed to win financial support from the Directorate of Immigration (UDI), TV 2 reports. Løten is home to many refugees from African nations and the local initiative to start a camel farm was viewed as a way to have a positive effect on the lives of new residents. Many of the refugees have lived as nomads and for them the camels are domesticated animals and a source of milk, meat, hide and wool. But the UDI has refused to earmark funds for the creative project, and the Løten camel...

DUBAI, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Muslims have decried as hypocrites Western dailies which have cited free speech as the reason for printing disrespectful cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, saying the same newspapers take pains to avoid lampooning Jews. The caricatures, first published in a Danish daily in September and then reprinted across Europe, have unleashed fury among Muslims who view any portrayal of their Prophet as blasphemous, let alone one showing him as a terrorist. What is really insulting, some Muslim clerics and politicians say, is that Europeans do not think twice about denigrating Islam but view ridicule of Judaism...

KUWAIT today held the first regional camel race using robots as riders after child jockeys were banned from the lucrative sport following criticism by human rights groups. Teams from the six Gulf Arab states participated in the race held on the dusty tracks of a racing club outside the capital Kuwait City. "We hope this sport, which is part of our cultural heritage, will be spared from suspicion,"said Kuwait's Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah who opened the five-day championship. The remote-operated robots are shaped like small boys. Rights groups said thousands of boys, some as young as four, worked...

African hopes ride on Norway camels By Lars Bevanger BBC News, Oslo Camels have no problem surviving Norway's cold winters A small community in wintry Norway wants to help a group of East African refugees back to work by importing a flock of camels. The local refugee council says it will allow refugees with nomadic background to use their camel-farming skills while also securing an alternative income for local agriculture. But how do camels adapt to Arctic conditions in the far north of Europe? Igor, a five year-old Bactrian camel, is living proof his particular breed of camel has no...

A local refugee council in a small Norwegian township faces plenty of humps over its novel plan to create jobs and help clients by importing camels. The township of Løten is otherwise best known for its historic production of the strong Norwegian drink known as akevitt. Now its refugee council (Flyktningtjenesten) wants to launch production of camel milk, a project it thinks will benefit refugees from African countries who miss the milk and need jobs. Environmental groups and Norway's food inspection agency are skeptical, to say the least. Environmentalists suggest Norwegian officials need to take better care of the animals...

Iraq's interior minister lashed out yesterday at a Saudi minister who voiced worries about growing Iranian influence and Shi'ite power, saying Iraq would not be lectured by "some Bedouin riding a camel." Ethnic tensions within Iraq's governing coalition also heightened, with the nation's Kurdish president called on the Shi'ite prime minister to step down. Prince Faisal, foreign minister of Sunni Saudi Arabia, had expressed concern about growing Shi'ite influence in Iraq during a visit to Washington last month. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a member of the Shi'ite Islamist Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, fired back during a...

ABU DHABI -- A camel was sold for $185,000 at an auction in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where camel racing is hugely popular, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. Mohammed Bin Taloub "chose carefully" among the camels on offer at the auction in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi on Tuesday before stumping up 680,000 dirhams, said Gulf News, published in nearby Dubai. The sister of the prized male camel fetched just some $8,000 "because she was only his half-sister. They had the same mother but different fathers. The father of the male camel was much stronger," according to one...

Sorry if this is a repost. Elephants and lions unleashed on North America? 18:00 17 August 2005 NewScientist.com news service Kurt Kleiner Elephants, lions, cheetahs and camels could one day roam the western US under a proposal to recreate North American landscapes as they existed more than 13,000 years ago, when humans first encountered them. The plan, proposed in a commentary in Nature and co-authored by 13 ecologists and conservation biologists, would help enrich a North American ecosystem that was left almost devoid of large mammals at the end of the Pleistocene period. It would also help preserve wildlife that...

ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Remote-controlled robot jockeys made their debut as camel riders in the United Arab Emirates Monday, competing in a trial race after the Gulf Arab state tightened a ban on child jockeys. Robots weighing up to 15 kg (33 lb) were dressed in the clothes of human jockeys during the race held in the capital Abu Dhabi, which officials described as "successful," the WAM news agency reported.

The emirate of Abu Dhabi is expected to hold a camel auction during the September 12 to 16 International Hunting and Equestrian exhibition, organizers said on Wednesday. The event will feature the auction of 135 female Arabian camels, produced by artificial insemination at Abu Dhabi's Suwaihan Camel Reproduction Center. Camel crossbreeding is a widespread practice in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has a unique hybrid species from a male camel and a female llama produced at the Dubai Camel Reproduction Center. Gulf residents are passionate about camel races, a long-standing traditional activity and a popular national sport. In January...

That's what U.S. authorities wondered as they expelled two security guards at the Iranian mission to the United Nations last weekend, after the mission was warned repeatedly against permitting its employees to videotape the Statue of Liberty, the subway, bridges and other New York landmarks.<snip> ...Hassan Abassi, head of the Revolutionary Guards' Center for Doctrinaire Affairs of National Security Outside Iran's Borders: "We will map 29 sensitive sites in the United States and give the information to all international terror organizations," ...Mr. Abassi, about compiling a target list of "29 sensitive sites." And also: "We have a strategy drawn up...

JEDDAH, 14 May 2004 — A beauty contest for camels was held recently in Hayaniya village, 190 km north of Baqaa in the Hail region, attracting more than 5,000 people from the Kingdom. Some 2,500 camels were entered in the rare contest to win the Prince Sultan ibn Muhammad Cup. Competitions were held for four types of camels with 100 camels (25 in each category) declared winners. Cash prizes worth SR600,000 were distributed by Jedaie ibn Awad Laghaisem on behalf of Prince Sultan at the end of the event. The contest was held over three days, turning Hayaniya village into...

JEDDAH, 14 May 2004 — A beauty contest for camels was held recently in Hayaniya village, 190 km north of Baqaa in the Hail region, attracting more than 5,000 people from the Kingdom. Some 2,500 camels were entered in the rare contest to win the Prince Sultan ibn Muhammad Cup. Competitions were held for four types of camels with 100 camels (25 in each category) declared winners. Cash prizes worth SR600,000 were distributed by Jedaie ibn Awad Laghaisem on behalf of Prince Sultan at the end of the event. The contest was held over three days, turning Hayaniya village into...