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Sydney (AFP) – American R&B singer Chris Brown has cancelled a planned tour to Australia and New Zealand, his promoter said Wednesday, after officials indicated he would be denied a visa over his conviction for assaulting pop star Rihanna.

Australia suggested in September it would block Brown’s entry due to his criminal record, disrupting plans to bring his “One Hell of a Nite” tour Down Under.

Brown’s 2009 conviction for assaulting his then-partner pop star Rihanna also meant he could be refused entry to New Zealand, where he was to perform in Auckland.

“Chris Brown’s December 2015 tour in both Australia and New Zealand will not take place,” Ticketek Australia said in a statement from Brown’s promoter on its Facebook page.

It gave no reason why shows in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane were cancelled.

But it said: “Mr Brown and the promoters both remain positive that the tour will take place in the near future.

“Mr Brown wishes to express his deepest gratitude to the fans for their support and looks forward to a successful tour in the near future,” it added.

It is not known whether Australia’s immigration department ultimately denied Brown a visa, and a spokesman saying it could not comment on the case “for reasons of privacy”.

After the prospect of his Australia ban was first raised, Brown said he would use the tour to raise awareness about domestic violence.

“My life mistakes should be a wake up call for everyone,” he tweeted. “Showing the world that mistakes don’t define you.”

Brown’s clean image crumbled in June 2009 after he pleaded guilty to assaulting Rihanna in a car in February of that year.

The Grammy award-winning performer was sentenced to five years’ probation — now lifted — a year-long anti-domestic violence programme and 180 days of community labour.

Brown has visited Australia twice since 2009 but newly appointed Minister for Women Michaelia Cash had suggested he may be banned this time amid heightened awareness about family violence.

While his case for a New Zealand concert found unlikely support from some Maori women’s advocates, support for the singer was not unanimous, with family and victims groups opposing his visit.

New Zealand lawmaker Judith Collins said in September the singer was not welcome. 

“We’ve got enough wife-beaters in this country, he should just bugger off,” she said.

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Naypyidaw (Myanmar) (AFP) – Myanmar’s democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi began talks with the nation’s army-backed president on the handover of power Wednesday nearly a month after her opposition party cleaned up at the polls.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won nearly 80 percent of contested seats in a November 8 election which appears poised to end the military’s decades-long domination of the country.

But the opposition remains wary of a military establishment that has duped them before.

The new NLD lawmakers are not due to take their parliamentary seats until at least the end of January, making for a nervous few months of transition.

The NLD won a similar scale landslide in 1990 polls, only to see the military annul the result and dig in for another two decades. 

Suu Kyi, who is blocked from the presidency by the army-written constitution, appealed after her win for “national reconciliation” talks with President Thein Sein and the powerful army chief.

Those talks began on Wednesday in the remote capital Naypyidaw.

“The President and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi are meeting now,” Zaw Htay from the President’s Office told AFP.

‘Daw’ is a term of respect in Myanmar.

Suu Kyi is set to meet army chief Min Aung Hlaing in a separate meeting later on Wednesday.

Both the president and army chief were swift to congratulate Suu Kyi on her election win and have pledged to handover power in an orderly fashion.

The army has gradually relaxed its stranglehold on the country with reforms that began in 2011 under Thein Sein’s semi-civilian government. 

The reforms culminated in the November election which passed off successfully and saw the army-backed ruling party trounced at the polls.

Despite the humiliation of defeat, the military retains major influence.

It has 25 percent of all parliamentary seats guaranteed under the constitution as well as key security and bureaucratic posts.

Suu Kyi has vowed to rule from “above the president”, indicating she will appoint a proxy to the role to circumvent the charter block on her political rise.

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REYHANLI, Turkey (AP) — Before a crowd of men on a street in the Syrian city of Palmyra, the masked Islamic State group judge read out the sentence against the two men convicted of homosexuality: They would be thrown to their deaths from the roof of the nearby Wael Hotel.

He asked one of the men if he was satisfied with the sentence. Death, the judge told him, would help cleanse him of his sin.

“I’d prefer it if you shoot me in the head,” 32-year-old Hawas Mallah replied helplessly. The second man, 21-year-old Mohammed Salameh, pleaded for a chance to repent, promising never to have sex with a man again, according to a witness among the onlookers that sunny July morning who gave The Associated Press a rare first-hand account.

“Take them and throw them off,” the judge ordered. Other masked extremists tied the men’s hands behind their backs and blindfolded them. They led them to the roof of the four-story hotel, according to the witness, who spoke in the Turkish city of Reyhanli on condition he be identified only by his first name, Omar, for fear of reprisals.

Notorious for their gruesome methods of killing, the Islamic State group reserves one of its most brutal for suspected homosexuals. Videos it has released show masked militants dangling men over the precipices of buildings by their legs to drop them head-first or tossing them over the edge. At least 36 men in Syria and Iraq have been killed by IS militants on charges of sodomy, according to the New York-based OutRight Action International, though its Middle East and North Africa coordinator, Hossein Alizadeh, said it was not possible to confirm the sexual orientation of the victims.

The fear of a horrific death among gay men under Islamic State rule is further compounded by their isolation in a deeply conservative society that largely shuns them.

Many Muslims consider homosexuality to be sinful. Gay men are haunted constantly by the possibility that someone, perhaps even a relative, will betray them to the militants — whether to curry favor with IS or simply out of hatred for their sexual orientation. Islamic State group fighters sometimes torture suspected homosexuals to reveal their friends’ names and search their laptops and mobile phones. Even among IS opponents, gays find little sympathy. Some in the public who might be shocked by other IS atrocities say killings of gays is justified. Syrian rebel factions have killed or abused gays as well.

A 26-year-old Syrian gay man told the AP that even two years after fleeing to Turkey, he wakes up shaken by nightmares that he is about to be hurled from a building. The man spoke on condition that he be identified as Daniel Halaby, the name he now uses in his activism tracking IS atrocities, and that the city in Turkey where he lives not be named for his own safety.

Halaby says a childhood friend who became radicalized and joined IS betrayed him to the militants in 2013, forcing him to flee his home city of Aleppo.

“He knew everything about me, such as being secular and gay. … I am sure he is the one who gave my name to Daesh,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

At that time, in mid-2013, IS had just started to spread from neighboring Iraq into Syria. It didn’t yet hold the large stretches of territory across both countries that it would capture the next year. Instead, its fighters pushed into rebel-held areas in Syria and tried to dominate other rebels, often clashing with them for control and imposing the group’s strict law wherever they could.

In September 2013, IS fighters besieged the Aleppo neighborhood where Halaby lived with his family, trying to wrest it from the rebel Free Syrian Army. The two sides negotiated over an end to the siege and, during the talks, IS gave the rebels a list of people they demanded be handed over to them. Halaby said he learned his name was on that list.

He quickly escaped to Turkey.

There, his bedroom is decorated with a flag of the Syrian opposition and a rainbow banner that covers an entire wall. His parents, who remain in Aleppo, refuse to talk to him because of his sexual orientation. When he watches videos of gays being killed, he said, “What breaks my heart most is that I feel helpless.”

Life for gays in Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, was always hidden, Halaby said. When the secular-led peaceful protests erupted against President Bashar Assad in 2011, he said he quickly joined, sure they would lead to a democratic government “that will respect everyone no matter their religion, ethnicity, sect or sexuality.”

“We were very naive,” he said. “What happened was exactly the opposite.”

Subhi Nahas, a 28-year-old gay Syrian who now lives in San Francisco, said he fled because he feared his own father might turn him in to al-Qaida’s affiliate, the Nusra Front, which also has targeted homosexuals.

When his father learned he was gay, Nahas said he called him a shame to the family and beat him. Around the same time, in late 2013, Nusra fighters launched a crackdown on suspected gays in Nahas’ hometown of Maaret al-Numan, detaining 25 men and announcing through mosque loudspeakers that they would cleanse the town of homosexuals.

“With the problems between me and my father, I did not rule out that he might (hand me over),” he told the AP.

So he fled, first to Lebanon, then Turkey. But in Turkey, he said, he began getting death threats from a former school friend who joined the Islamic State group. Fearful that he wouldn’t be safe even in Turkey, he legally resettled to the United States in June.

In August, Nahas and a gay Iraqi man spoke about the suffering of homosexuals in their countries at the first-ever U.N. Security Council session spotlighting violence and discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.

The stigma surrounding homosexuality makes it difficult to document IS killings and identify victims, rights groups say. Families and friends refuse to talk about victims. Gays under IS rule are terrified to speak, and most who flee abroad go into hiding.

The Islamic State group’s announcements are the main source of information, but the group often does not name the victims, perhaps in deference to their families, who could lash out in anger at having their names publicly linked to homosexuals.

“Such a barbaric show of murder leaves LGBT individuals in constant state of fear and would deprive them of a normal life that any human being is entitled to,” Alizadeh said.

Widespread public hostility leaves the community even more vulnerable.

“They are violating God’s laws and doing something that is forbidden in Islam, so this is a legitimate punishment,” said Hajji Mohammed, a resident of the IS-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul. There the group has thrown men suspected of being gay off the Insurance Building, a landmark about 10 stories high.

By employing the grisly method, the Islamic State group aims to show radicals that it is unflinchingly carrying out the most extreme strains in Islam — a sort of “ideological purity” the group boasts distinguishes it even from other militants. The punishment “will protect the Muslims from treading the same rotten course that the West has chosen to pursue,” IS proclaimed in its online English-language magazine Dabiq.

The Quran tells the story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom — and sodomy in Arabic is known as “liwat,” based on Lot’s name.

Men having sex with each other should be punished, the Quran says, but it doesn’t say how — and it adds that they should be left alone if they repent. The death penalty instead comes from the Hadith, or accounts of the sayings of the prophet Muhammad. The accounts differ on the method of killing, and some accounts give lesser penalties in some circumstances.

The Islamic State group bases its punishment on one account in which Muhammad reportedly says gays “should be thrown from tremendous height then stoned.”

Before IS, the method was rarely used, though other militants have targeted homosexuals for death. During their rule in Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban had their own method: The victim would be put in a pit and a stone wall would be toppled on top of them.

Most moderate Muslim clerics ignore the death penalty provisions, even as they fiercely denounce homosexuality. Across the Arab world, homosexuals have been arrested and sentenced to prison on charges linked to “debauchery” — and sometimes lashed in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Omar, the man who watched the killings in Palmyra, said he remains shaken.

It began when IS militants blared on loudspeakers for men to gather. Then a black van pulled up outside the Wael Hotel, and Mallah and Salamah were brought out.

The first to be thrown off was Mallah. He was tied to a chair so he couldn’t resist, then pushed over the side.

He landed on his back, broken but still moving. A fighter shot him in the head.

Next was Salameh. He landed on his head and died immediately. Still, fighters stoned his body, Omar said.

The bodies were then hung up in Palmyra’s Freedom Square for two days, each with a placard on his chest: “He received the punishment for practicing the crime of Lot’s people.”

____

Associated Press writer Vivian Salama contributed to this report from Baghdad.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Talk about birth announcements: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife say they’ll devote nearly all their wealth — roughly $45 billion — to solving the world’s problems in celebration of their new baby daughter, Max.

Zuckerberg’s wife, Priscilla Chan, gave birth to a 7-pound, 8-ounce daughter last week. But the couple didn’t put out the news until Tuesday, when Zuckerberg posted it on Facebook, of course.

In the same post, Zuckerberg said he and Chan will, over time, commit 99 percent of their Facebook stockholdings to such causes as fighting disease, improving education and “building strong communities.” The couple had previously pledged to give away at least half their assets during their lifetime, but hadn’t provided specifics.

They are forming a new organization, called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, that will pursue those goals through a combination of charitable donations, private investment and promotion of government-policy reform.

“Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today,” the 31-year-old social media mogul and his wife wrote in a letter to their daughter, which they also posted on Facebook.

The announcement stunned the charity world. “It’s incredibly impressive and an enormous commitment that really eclipses anything that we’ve seen in terms of size,” said Phil Buchanan, president of the nonprofit Center for Effective Philanthropy.

By comparison, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of just over $41 billion, which includes wealth donated by the Microsoft founder and his friend, the businessman Warren Buffett.

The new initiative will be organized as a limited liability company, however, rather than as a nonprofit foundation. “They want the most flexibility and they are going to use a wide variety of activities to achieve their mission,” Rachael Horwitz, a Facebook spokeswoman, said via email. “So in that way this is not a foundation nor is it entirely charitable.”

The notion of investing money in companies that tackle social issues isn’t new, but it has gained more currency among a younger generation of philanthropists, particularly in the tech world.

Zuckerberg has also shown a previous interest in influencing public policy. He led other prominent Silicon Valley figures in forming a group, FWD.us, that lobbied and gave donations to congressional candidates in an unsuccessful effort to promote immigration reforms. Depending on how much of the new effort is devoted to lobbying, it could raise new questions about the influence of money in today’s politics, some experts said.

In the letter to their daughter, Zuckerberg and Chan described their goals as “advancing human potential and promoting equality.” They added: “We must make long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years. The greatest challenges require very long time horizons and cannot be solved by short term thinking.”

While Zuckerberg promised to release more details in the future, he said the couple will transfer most of their wealth to the initiative “during our lives.” The couple will be in charge of the initiative, although Zuckerberg won’t be quitting his day job.

“I have a full time job running Facebook,” he told The Associated Press in an interview last month, during which he discussed the couple’s approach to philanthropy. Of his job at the social network, he added, “I’m going to be doing this for long time.”

The Facebook co-founder is one of the world’s wealthiest men. He and Chan, a 30-year-old pediatrician, have previously donated $100 million to public schools in Newark, New Jersey, and pledged $120 million to schools in poor communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. They’ve also given $75 million to the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where Chan did her medical training.

In a statement, Facebook said the couple’s plan to transfer their shares over time won’t affect his status as controlling shareholder of the company. The company said Zuckerberg has committed to dispose of no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock every year for the next three years.

Zuckerberg and Chan had announced on Facebook last July that they were expecting a daughter, after Chan had three previous miscarriages. Horwitz said the baby was born early last week, but declined to say which day.

“Mom and baby are both healthy and doing well,” Horwitz added. Zuckerberg has said he plans to take two months of paternity leave.

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NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — Nearly a month after her party’s crushing election win, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi held closed-door talks with Myanmar’s outgoing president Wednesday to discuss what both hope will be a “smooth” transition of power.

Because it took so long for the two to meet, there were some concerns the still powerful military would not easily accept the results.

Suu Kyi was expected to meet with Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief, later Wednesday.

The Southeast Asian nation started moving from a half-century of dictatorship toward democracy in 2011, when military rulers inexplicably agreed to hand over power to a nominally civilian government headed by President Thein Sein, a general turned “reformist.”

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy easily won the Nov. 8 vote, securing enough seats in both the lower and upper parliament to form a government. Though a clause in the 2008 military-drafted constitution bars her from the presidency, she has vowed to rule by proxy.

Presidential spokesman Ye Htut told reporters the meeting at Thein Sein’s residence in the sprawling capital, Naypyitaw, lasted about 45 minutes.

“The main point was to talk about a smooth transition and transfer of power to the newly elected government,” he said, “and to discuss mutual cooperation in the future.”

Another goal, he said, was simply to “ease people’s concerns.”

Despite the NLD’s landslide victory, most analysts agree, it would be almost impossible to govern without the support of the military establishment. By law, the military still controls a quarter of the seats in parliament, giving it veto power over all constitutional amendments. It also has a grip on all key security portfolios.

Ye Htut told reporters the meeting between Suu Kyi and Thein Sein was amicable.

The president congratulated “The Lady,” as she is popularly known, for leading her party to victory. And Suu Kyi said she was thankful that the elections were free and fair, as promised.

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MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Two-time Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank may be a veteran at her chosen craft, but she admits she’s still a newbie art collector.

Swank attended a kick-off party Tuesday night for Art Basel Miami Beach, the prestigious extension of the annual contemporary art fair in Basel, Switzerland. The actress said she loves collecting everything from photographs to sculptures and doesn’t gravitate to a particular medium or period, but instead chooses the pieces that speak to her.

“I think that art either makes you learn something new about yourself or makes you relate to something in yourself or is simply entertaining and that’s the beauty of it,” said Swank, who wore a short black, lace dress. “I love how it makes the world bigger and how it expands my whole idea of life.”

Swank, who is returning from the longest break of her career after caring for her father for the past 18 months following a lung transplant, was one of about three dozen people at an intimate dinner party at the Delano hotel. The event was hosted by former Ocean Drive publisher Jason Binn for his current magazine DuJour.

Sylvester Stallone, an avid painter, fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger and Ivana Trump also attended the dinner before hitting up an elegant poolside bash. Hilary hugged Binn and gave a short, emotional speech at the dinner, crediting him with giving her one of her first magazine covers before she was famous.

The chic magazine has a knack for spotting up-and-comers. Binn also gave Kim Kardashian her first cover.

Famed photographer Bruce Weber and Oscar-winner Adrien Brody both made late appearances at the party, which was rather tame compared to most Art Basel bashes.

Miley Cyrus infamously performed last year at a nearby hotel wearing only nipple pasties and smoked pot onstage.

Art Basel officially opens Thursday, but many independent fairs and events will open days earlier, and the glitterati are already in town ready to toast them.

Brody is showing a collection of paintings this year, “Hot Dogs, Hamburgers and Handguns,” focusing on violence in society and the desire for instant gratification.

It’s “a meditation on the fact that violent imagery is as commonplace as fast-food in our society,” said the actor, who grew up in a creative home. His mother is a photographer, and his father is a painter.

Brody, who wore a black leather jacket and his hair casually pulled back in a ponytail, said he’s less encumbered when he’s painting than when he’s acting.

“I’m elated, I feel renewed and my spirited is reinvigorated, and I get to express so much that I feel is relevant … and also perhaps have a voice in creating a discussion.”

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Asian stock markets were uneven Wednesday after weakness in U.S. economic data was tempered by an upbeat Australian growth report.

KEEPING SCORE: Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.2 percent to 19,969.02 and South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.4 percent to 2,016.41. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged down 0.1 percent to 5,259.90. The Shanghai Composite Index added 0.4 percent to 3,468.32 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.3 percent to 22,441.55. Markets in Southeast Asia were mixed.

MIXED DATA: U.S. factory activity dropped last month to the lowest level since June 2009, the Institute for Supply Management said, as a strong dollar and low oil prices cut new orders and hurt production. But in Asia, other economic data encouraged investors. Australia reported a better-than-expected growth rate for the third quarter. Its economy expanded 2.5 percent during the three-month period from over a year earlier.

ANALYST’S TAKE: “Despite the strong performance of U.S. equities, Asian markets got off to a rocky start,” Angus Nicholson, a market analyst at IG, said in a report. He said the weak U.S. factory data “threw some questions up around the inevitability of the December Fed rate hike” but Australia’s growth numbers helped markets reduce their losses.

US RATES: Investors are keyed into Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen’s speech set for Wednesday, as well as the November jobs report, scheduled to be released on Friday, which comes shortly before the Fed’s two-day policy meeting. Unless the November employment figures are extraordinarily weak, investors believe the Fed will raise interest rates from a record low this month for the first time since the financial crisis.

EUROPE STIMULUS: Investors expect the European Central Bank will expand its stimulus program when policymakers meet on Thursday, either by extending its bond-buying program beyond the current end date of September 2016 or by increasing the purchase amount. Investors are also expecting an interest rate cut. ECB head Mario Draghi signaled that action is coming this week as the bank seeks to support growth and push inflation higher.

WALL STREET: U.S. stocks closed higher on the first day of December, helped by financial stocks. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 168.43 points, or 1 percent, to 17,888.35. The Standard & Poor’s 500 rose 22.22 points, or 1.1 percent, to 2,102.63 and the Nasdaq composite rose 47.64 points, or 0.9 percent, to 5,156.31.

ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude was down 27 cents to $41.58 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract closed up 20 cents at $41.85 a barrel on Tuesday. Brent crude, which is used to price oil internationally, lost 20 cents to $44.24 a barrel in London.

CURRENCIES: The U.S. dollar strengthened to 123.06 yen from its previous close of 122.90 yen. The euro slipped to $1.0613 from $1.0629.

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Chris Brown has canceled plans for a Down Under tour after Australian authorities earlier warned the troubled R&B singer that they were likely to refuse him a visa because of his criminal conviction for assaulting pop star Rihanna.

Ticketing agency Ticketek on Wednesday posted a statement from Brown’s promoters saying the planned December tour of Australia and New Zealand had been canceled and those who had bought tickets would get refunds.

Citing privacy concerns, Australia’s immigration department declined to say whether they had refused Brown a visa. But in September the department issued Brown a “notice of intention to consider refusal” which required him to explain why he should be allowed into the country.

New Zealand immigration authorities say Brown withdrew his visa application before they ruled on it.

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Puerto López (Ecuador) (AFP) – The sight of thousands of whales surfacing, jumping and playing off the coast of South America as they migrate toward their breeding grounds is one of nature’s most majestic displays.

But global warming is killing off their food and changing their age-old migratory routes.

To the tourists watching a humpback whale frolic with her newborn calf in the tropical waters off Ecuador’s coast near Puerto Lopez, the sight of enormous fins surfacing, tails flipping and blowholes spouting is breathtaking.

The same scenes can be found up and down the South American coast, from Puerto Piramides in Argentina to Cabo Blanco in Peru and Bahia Malaga in Colombia.

But to marine biologists, these huge mammals are not as carefree and healthy as they appear.

They are skinny, covered in parasites and exhausted from the increasingly long journeys they are making to reproduce.

“You can see their bones. They’re sick. They have parasites. We never used to see that,” said Ecuadorian marine biologist Cristina Castro as she scanned the horizon for more humpback whales, the species she has studied for the past 18 years.

These whales swim thousands of kilometers (miles) each year from Antarctica to the waters around the equator to have their young, which measure three to 4.5 meters (10 to 15 feet) at birth and can weigh up to one tonne.

But as ocean temperatures rise, whales are migrating earlier and traveling farther.

Warmer waters are killing off the supply of krill, the small crustaceans that are whales’ main food source in their Arctic feeding grounds. The whales eat several tonnes a day to fatten up for their journeys.

Rising temperatures also trick the whales’ biological clocks into thinking it is time to migrate.

“They are changing their migration cycles. They used to arrive here in July. Now we see them in May,” said Castro.

Whales are also continuing north beyond the equator, as far as Costa Rica — a behavior never seen before, she told AFP.

– Reproduction under threat –

The International Whaling Commission estimates there were 8,000 to 10,000 humpback whales this year in the Pacific breeding grounds, which stretch from Peru to Costa Rica.

Roger Payne, the American scientist who brought humpback whales’ songs to world attention in the 1970s, said whales are also threatened by the acidification of the oceans caused by rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the water.

Forty-five years of research off Argentina have shown that this and other effects of climate change are killing off whales’ food, he said.

“The females will give birth only when the conditions to feed their young are favorable,” Payne told AFP.

“Nothing is nearly as important as the threat that we get from that effect.”

When there are less krill in Antarctica, birth rates drop at the equator, and calves tend to have a worse survival rate.

“Everything is linked,” said Payne’s Argentine colleague Mariano Sironi, a specialist in southern right whales.

In the latest alarming news, researchers said Tuesday at least 337 dead whales have been found washed up in a remote inlet in Patagonia in southern Chile — one of the largest die-offs on record.

“It was an apocalyptic sight,” said Vreni Haussermann, one of the scientists who made the discovery on a flyover in June.

It is not known what killed the whales, or if the event was linked to climate change.

– El Nino –

The cyclical warming of the central Pacific — the El Nino phenomenon — is making matters worse and is a harbinger of the dangers to come, researchers said.

El Nino has already caused havoc in the Galapagos Islands off Ecuador, a biodiverse paradise where the weather pattern is blamed for the disappearance of 90 percent of marine iguanas, 50 percent of southern sea lions, 75 percent of penguins and nearly all Galapagos fur seals under three years old.

“Unfortunately we expect the effects of global climate change to largely reflect those of El Nino,” the Galapagos National Park warned recently.

The park has a massive marine reserve that draws humpback whales, orca, pilot whales, Bryde’s whales and blue whales.

– Save that feces!  –

Researchers are particularly concerned about blue whales, the world’s largest animals, which “show no signs of population increase,” said Barbara Galletti, head of the Whale Conservation Center in Chile.

Whales of all species are also under threat from other human activity, such as collisions with ships and disorientation caused by noise at sea that interferes with their communications.

However, an international moratorium has protected them from hunting since 1986.

They have meanwhile become major tourist attractions in many countries along their route.

Their survival is fundamental for the health of the world’s oceans.

Whale feces contain large amounts of iron that feed the growth of microscopic algae that are essential to the marine food chain.

“That is the feature which keeps the rest of the ocean alive,” said Payne.

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Los Angeles (AFP) – The Philadelphia 76ers’ historic and agonizing losing streak finally ended as Kobe Bryant suffered more defeat with the Los Angeles Lakers in his first road match since announcing his plans to retire. 

One more defeat for the Sixers on Tuesday — 0-18 heading into the game — would have given them sole possession of the record for the worst start to a season in NBA history. 

They had already set a record for the longest losing streak in the history of the NBA, with 28 defeats stretching over last season and the current campaign. 

But a 23-point haul from forward Robert Covington laid the foundation for a deserved 103-91 Sixers victory as Bryant and the Lakers tumbled to 2-15, the worst record in the Western Conference. 

Jerami Grant and Nerlens Noel added 14 points apiece while rookie Jahlil Okafor was one of three Philadelphia players to finish with 12 points. 

“I’m pleased for the city,” Sixers coach Brett Brown said. “We don’t want the streak continuing. …. Obviously, this is a relief on many levels.”

Bryant meanwhile was the top scorer for the Lakers, producing 20 points, two assists and five rebounds. 

Bryant’s haul also featured four three-pointers. But the 37-year-old’s effort was in vain, and his final numbers were just 7-for-26 from the floor.

“God knows I can’t sustain that level of energy for 48 minutes like I used to,” Bryant said.

On Sunday, Bryant triggered an outpouring of tributes after confirming that his glittering 20-year career in the NBA would end at the end of this season.

– Kobe emotional –

But it promises to be a long goodbye for the veteran superstar in every sense, with the Lakers inexperienced roster a pale imitation of the five NBA championship-winning teams Bryant played on during the previous decade. 

Yet none of that mattered in Philadelphia. The home fans gave him a standing ovation as he took to the court for the warm-up and again when his name was introduced.

Bryant’s coach from school basketball was also on hand to present a framed jersey from his prep years.

“I’m not the most emotional person,” Bryant said. “I try not to be. But that got to me.”

Elsewhere Tuesday, the Washington Wizards stunned LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers with a 97-85 upset in Ohio.

John Wall led the way with 35 points, 10 assists and four rebounds as the Wizards improved to 7-8, easing pressure on beleaguered coach Randy Wittman. 

It was the Cavs’ first home defeat of the season following a 9-0 start to the campaign at the Quicken Loans Arena.

James scored 24 points and grabbed 13 rebounds for Cleveland but committed nine turnovers, part of an overall tally of 19, just short of their season-high 21 set in a double-overtime loss. 

“They beat us from beginning to end,” James said. “They beat us in every facet of the game, right from the beginning. Their pace, their speed, their ability to get the ball up the floor really caused us problems tonight.”

Wittman’s position had been called into question after a dismal start to the season for the Wizards, who reached the second round of the playoffs last year. 

The hero for Wittman was Wall, who became the first Wizards player to bag a 30-point game this season. 

At one point the Wizards surged 22 points clear in the third quarter before Cavaliers guard Matthew Dellavedova scored 10 points in the third to reduce the deficit.

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from Business Insider http://ift.tt/1Io6AJX