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MIAMI, - Officials and workers at Florida's Everglades National Park said vultures have been ripping rubber parts from vehicles parked in the area. Linda Hyde, who works at the Anhinga Trail gift shop in the park, said the vultures have been picking windshield wipers, door seals, sunroof seals and other parts made from rubber and vinyl from vehicles at the park, The Miami Herald reported Tuesday. She said the park's attempts at keeping the vultures away from the cars, including effigies and hanging the carcasses of dead vultures, have not dissuaded the birds from pecking on cars. Dave Hallac, chief...

At Everglades National Park, managers struggle to control vultures' appetites for the rubber and plastic on visitors' vehicles.Behind her counter in the gift shop at Anhinga Trail, the first and most popular tourist stop in Everglades National Park, Linda Hyde keeps a secret weapon against forbidding creatures that spent much of the winter lurking in the parking lot and preying on random visitors and staffers. Not pythons, gators, panthers or even infamously blood-thirsty mosquitoes. Vultures. Some of the big black birds, known primarily for dining on the dead and decaying, also have developed an appetite for something unusual: car parts....

HARTFORD — State labor leaders and union-endorsed legislators came out with “guns blazing” Thursday. Though the announced purpose of the press conference in the Legislative Office Building was an unveiling of Connecticut AFL-CIO’s 2010 legislative agenda, the target was often the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. State AFL-CIO President John Olsen, Secretary-Treasurer Lori Pelletier, and state Sen. Edith Prague, D-Norwich, (and 10 other towns) took aim at the 10,000-member business organization. Olsen said CBIA ads about jobs and cutting taxes were “simplistic. A small-minded approach like theirs is a major mistake. Instead, we should be looking at how we can...

RIDGEWAY, Va. - The birds are watching Nancy Cox, waiting on her lawn and slowly chewing their way inside her Ridgeway home. After a flock of almost 200 black vultures moved to Ridgeway this fall, Cox has had a steady stream of 30-35 large, hostile, hungry visitors each day. "I can't even sit down to eat at the table," she said. "The vultures watch me through the window and fly into the doors trying to get into the house." Cox has the only home in her neighborhood with rubber roofing. But she may not have it much longer. The vultures...

WASHINGTON, April 1, 2009 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has approved a policy change that, under strictly delineated conditions, allows media filming of dignified transfer operations of fallen servicemembers’ remains at Dover Air Force Base, Del. The new policy is slated to be implemented April 6, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters today. If immediate family members consent to media coverage, Whitman said, reporters would be provided the basic information on the servicemember and the expected time of arrival of the flight bearing the remains. “The core of the policy,” Whitman said, “is built around the desires of...

Spanish vultures are hungry, even starving — and the regional government in Madrid plans to do something about it. EU laws aimed at halting the spread of mad cow disease require the countryside to be kept clear of dead livestock even if they died of natural causes. But Juan Carlos Atienza of the Spanish Ornithological Organization says the lack of animal corpses since the law was introduced in Spain in 2002 has hit certain vultures very hard. Esperanza Aguirre, president of Madrid's regional government, said Monday the capital aims to ease the vultures' hunger by allowing some dead animals to...

Coverage of Steve Jobs' health issues has not been journalism's finest hour What is it about Steve Jobs that makes otherwise sensible journalists completely lose their marbles? This week’s coverage of Steve Jobs’ health woes has hit some surprising new lows in journalistic IQ. The latest example is a story on Newser.com by media reporter Michael Wolff, headlined Apple Dies. Its premise: “the logical answer to what happens at Apple without Jobs is that it dies. What you have, demonstrably, is a company without any managerial wherewithal beyond Jobs.” What is demonstrable is that Michael Wolff doesn’t know what he’s...

The other day I heard my mother call downstairs to my father, “Honey, there are a bunch of roosters out in the front yard.” Lest you think we live on a farm or out in rural America, let me set you straight. We live in suburban America where houses are stamped next to each other every hundred feet or so. We don’t get many roosters walking in our neighborhood, and if we did they would be cited for jaywalking. So it was no surprise that curiosity got the best of my father as he ran up the stairs to check...

AP photographer Rahmatullah Naikzad was a witness to a Taliban murder. The two women were alleged to have been prostitutes who served Western clientèle. Two unidentified Afghan Women chat with each other a few minutes before they were executed by Taliban in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, on late Saturday, July 12, 2008. (AP Photo/Rahmatullah Naikzad) [original here] Local people watch two Afghan women shot and killed by Taliban in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, on Sunday, July 13, 2008. (AP Photo/Rahmatullah Naikzad) (original here) This page from the AP seems to suggest that Rahmatullah Naikzad also took a snuff video of the two...

COLLEGE STATION — Maybe if they were pretty, the ubiquitous buzzards that soar over Texas and elsewhere before landing to dine on some carcass wouldn't be viewed with such repugnance or considered a nuisance. "Unquestionably, they're as ugly as sin," says Ian Tizard, a Texas A&M University professor of immunology and director of the school's Schubot Exotic Bird Center. The birds range over much of the United States, and their March return to Hinckley, Ohio, for instance, is welcomed annually as a sure sign of spring. But their proliferation as pests is making them unwelcome from high-rises in Florida to...

A nice-sounding bill called the "Global Poverty Act," sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations. Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not endorsed either Senator Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. But on Thursday, February 14, he is trying to rush Obama's...

NEWBERRY COUNTY, SC (WIS) - "They're very rude," Alexis tells WIS News 10. "They stink," says Sonny. They've been called a lot of names by a lot of people, especially by the Harmons. "I would have to say they're ugly as anything," says Alexis. But one thing you won't find these two calling them, is nice. "They're big, mean, and black," says Alexis. We call them vultures, a name "Sonny" Harmon has grown to hate. "They've become a nuisance." They've started invading her yard "200 at a time," she says. "It's like something you'd see in a Stephen King movie,"...

When a French pensioner died of a brain haemorrhage during a walk in the Pyrenees this summer, vultures started circling low over the body. “His three friends were really frightened,” said a local resident. “They were convinced the vultures were going to attack. They shouted and waved their arms and, in the end, they managed to scare the birds away. But they were in a complete panic.” There have been reports from across the French Pyrenees this year of a radical change in the way the region’s vultures behave. A programme to incinerate animal carcasses in Spain has deprived “les...

HOPKINTON, R.I. - The house is for sale well below its assessed value, has four bedrooms and sits on more than a half acre of land. It's also got lots of vultures, and that's made it a tough sell. The trees around the Hopkinton house are a year-round nesting ground for turkey and black vultures. The previous owners blamed the birds for polluting their well, scaring their children and causing various illnesses. But real estate agent Patrick Murray said he's optimistic it could make a good home for the right buyer. It's listed at $189,900, below the assessed value of...

Today's Roll Call has a very disturbing quote from a Democrat operative in Wyoming on Monday’s passing of Senator Craig Thomas. [...] It is disgusting to think that Democrats see Senator Craig's death as a political opportunity for the Democrats, but sadly this seems to be just another reflection of how they view the entire world.

Park City, Jan 27: Last year`s big road-trip tale at the Sundance Film Festival was greeted with guffaws. This year`s has met with sobs. Both "Little Miss Sunshine" from last year and the current Sundance entry "Grace Is Gone" are highway heartbreakers, "Sunshine" showing a family that comes together through hilarious adversity, "Grace" depicting a family shattered by the cruelest of tragedies. Starring John Cusack, "Grace" tells the story of a stern, loving but emotionally distant father who learns his wife, an Army sergeant, has been killed in Iraq. Unable to tell his two young daughters, he takes them on...

LAFAYETTE - The display of crosses across from the Lafayette BART station is now more visible at night. Organizers added a neon sign with the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. The new electric-powered neon sign sits on the lower portion of the large white sign that carries a running count of fallen troops in black numbers. There has been some discussion over whether the neon sign is "tacky" and fits the memorial, said organizer Jeff Heaton. But organizers decided to install it in light of President Bush's stated intention to send more troops to Iraq. Heaton said he...

U.S. fatalities in war equal those from Sept. 11 - Military deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan reach 2,973 WASHINGTON - Now the death toll is 9/11 times two. U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now match those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America’s history, the trigger for what came next. Add casualties from chasing terrorists elsewhere in the world, and the total has passed the Sept. 11 figure. The latest milestone for a country at war comes without commemoration. It also may well come without the precision of knowing who is the 2,973rd man or woman of arms...

SEATTLE (AP) — The Association of Trial Lawyers of America voted during its convention this week to change its name to the American Association for Justice. Spokeswoman Chris Mather said there was overwhelming support for the change, and that the new name "reflects whose side we're on in the fight for justice." The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, a critic of the trial lawyers group, called it "an astounding admission of the unpopularity of trial lawyers in America." The 60-year-old association has 65,000 members.

Ad Showing Troop Coffins Causes Clash of the Parties By ANNE E. KORNBLUT, The New York Times WASHINGTON, July 13 — In an echo of the last election cycle, political operatives are at odds over a Democratic advertisement featuring coffins coming home from war. The advertisement, a short film posted on the Web site of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is being attacked by Republicans as tasteless and disrespectful of American troops in Iraq. In 2004, President Bush’s campaign released an advertisement showing a flag-draped body being removed from the site of the World Trade Center after the terrorist attack...