18 killed in northeast Nigeria market attack

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) — A deputy governor in Nigeria says 18 people were killed in an attack on a local market there.

Borno state deputy Gov. Zanna Mustapha said Tuesday he received the information from a local village chief in the village of Damboa. Mustapha said local chief Abba Ahmed said the attack happened late Monday.

Residents and the deputy governor said the violence started after the local market banned a group of hunters from selling "bush meat" from slaughtered monkeys and other creatures. Local Muslims decline to eat it because of their religious convictions.

Security officials on Monday had said no one was killed in the attack. Damboa, in a rural part of the state, is difficult to reach.

The region is under attack by a radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram.

Start of something big? Russia pulls a hundred citizens from Syria.

Though the Kremlin said the move was 'absolutely not an evacuation,' some wonder if it preludes the withdrawal of the tens of thousands of Russians living in war-torn Syria.

Free Syrian Army fighters hold their weapons during heavy clashes with government forces in Aleppo, Syria, Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013. The revolt against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011with peaceful protests but morphed into a civil war that has killed more than 60,000 people, according to a recent United Nations recent estimate. (AP Photo/Andoni Lubaki)

Russia began a small-scale evacuation of about 100 of its citizens from Syria Tuesday, in what experts warn could at any moment develop into a huge air-and-sealift of the up-to-40,000 Russians and their dependents believed to be in the war-torn country.

Russian media reported that officials from the Russian Embassy in Beirut safely escorted three busloads of Russians, mainly women and children, out of Syria on Tuesday. Two planes sent to Lebanon by Russia's Ministry of Emergency Services will airlift about 100 people to Moscow, reports say.

The evacuation is being characterized as a limited operation aimed at bringing out a few people who have requested it. Without offering any further explanation, Russian official sources say the numbers of Russian citizens requesting repatriation has actually fallen, from about 1,000 last October to less than 100 in December.

RECOMMENDED: Do you know anything about Russia? A quiz.

But under the guise of ongoing war games in the eastern Mediterranean, the Russian Navy has, since last summer, maintained a squadron of warships. That squadron includes several huge amphibious assault vessels capable of carrying thousands of people, within a few hours sailing time of the Russian Naval supply facility in Tartus, Syria.

Earlier this month the fleets were rotated, and another squadron with at least five big troop transports was sent out to the region.

"This is absolutely not an evacuation; simply two flights from the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry will bring to Moscow everyone who wishes to go," the independent Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed official in the Russian Embassy in Damascus as saying of Tuesday's airlift.

"First of all, these are the people whose homes have been destroyed and who live in 'conflict hotbeds.' About a hundred people," an embassy source told Interfax on Tuesday.

LOOKING FOR SIGNS

The move is being closely read by Western experts for signs that Moscow's long-standing position of support for Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad might be wavering, or that the Russian government anticipates his imminent downfall.

Experts say that, until we see those big transport ships moving in toward Tartus, we shouldn't assume any change in Russia's stance.

"The Russian authorities have already evacuated part of their diplomatic staff. Moscow is getting ready for a possible worsening of the situation and is taking preventive steps," says Vladimir Sotnikov, expert with the Center for International Security at the official Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow.

Experts say Russia has already closed its consulate in Syria's embattled main commercial center, Aleppo, and most Russian companies working in the country have long since withdrawn their own personnel.

"I don't see any change in the Russian position; Moscow has maintained the same stance for the past year and a half.... Assad still has some time, his army is still beating off opposition attacks, although the country is in full scale civil war," Mr. Sotnikov adds.

WHO IS LEFT?

It's not known exactly how many Russians there are in Syria, but according to the Russian weekly Argumenti i Fakhti, the number is probably at least 40,000.

According to the paper, they include some of the tens of thousands of Syrian students who have studied in Russia since close relations between the two countries began in 1970, who have acquired Russian passports. Thousands of those students have married Russian women over the years and brought them to Syria; no one has an estimate for the number of children, who would also be eligible for evacuation.

Some members of Syria's Christian minority, which enjoys close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, may also be Russian passport holders, experts say.

While most big countries, including China, have already pulled their citizens out of Syria, Russia has been slow to take action, some experts say.

"Even in the foreign ministry they do not know how many Russians are now in Syria," says Vladimir Sazhin, an analyst with the official Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow.

"Many of them are not registered with the Russian Embassy. Along with their children and other family members we may be looking at several tens of thousands," he says.

"We are seeing only the first stage of evacuation today, and it is happening very late. It is a sign that Russia is losing confidence in the situation being resolved any time in the near future.... But we had to start taking people out of that slaughterhouse much sooner," Mr. Sazhin adds.

Taliban responds to Prince Harry: ‘It’s not a game—it’s very, very real’

By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News | The Lookout – 7 hrs ago

Prince Harry at Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan in 2012 (John Stillwell/AP)

Taliban leaders have fired back at Prince Harry over the royal's comments that piloting a helicopter in Afghanistan—where he says he killed insurgents during his recent tour of duty—is like playing a video game.

Harry, who co-piloted an Apache helicopter during his 20-week tour, made the comparison in an interview broadcast by the BBC Monday night.

“It’s a joy for me because I’m one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox," the 28-year-old said. "So with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful."

The Taliban did not appreciate the comparison.

“This statement is not even worth condemning. It is worse than that,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, told London's Telegraph. “To describe the war in Afghanistan as a game demeans anyone—especially a prince, who is supposed to be made of better things.”

Mujahid continued: “It shows the lack of understanding, of knowledge. It shows they are unfamiliar with the situation and shows why they are losing. ... It’s not a game. It’s very, very real."

In comments published in the Daily Mirror on Monday, Harry confirmed that he killed Taliban insurgents during his deployment.

“Yeah, so lots of people have," Harry said. "The squadron’s been out here. Everyone’s fired a certain amount."

The prince, known as Captain Wales and nicknamed "Ugly," said he fired on the Taliban during an attack on Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan last fall. “Take a life to save a life," he said. "That’s what we revolve around, I suppose."

A few days before the insurgent attack on Camp Bastion, Mujahid had told Reuters: "We are using all our strength to get rid of him, either by killing or kidnapping."

Sharifullah Kamawal, a member of the Afghan parliament, told the Telegraph that Harry's latest comments could disrupt relations between soldiers and locals there.

“This makes the withdrawal process much faster, because for now half of the people say the foreign forces must stay for longer," Kamawal said. "But if they say these kind of things, then more people will want them to go home."

Andes Glaciers Vanishing Rapidly, Study Finds

The ice-capped peaks of the Cordillera Blanca mountain range in Peru, seen in 2007.

The glaciers of the Andes Mountains have retreated at an unprecedented rate in the past three decades, with more ice lost than at any other time in the last 400 years.

That's according to a new review of research that combines on-the-ground observations with aerial and satellite photos, historical records and dates from cores of ice extracted from the glaciers. The retreat is worse in the Andes than the average glacier loss around the world, the researchers report today (Jan. 22) in the journal The Cryosphere.

"Tropical Andes glaciers have lost on average between 30 to 50 percent (depending on the mountain ranges) of their surface since the late 70s," study researcher Antoine Rabatel, a scientist at the Laboratory for Glaciology and Environmental Geophysics in Grenoble, France, wrote in an email to LiveScience.

Sensitive glaciers

The Andes Mountains of South America are home to 99 percent of tropical glaciers ­— permanent rivers of ice at high enough elevations not to be affected by the types of balmy temperatures usually associated with the tropics. But these glaciers are particularly sensitive to climate change, because there is little seasonality in temperatures in the tropics, Rabatel said.

"Glaciers of the tropical Andes react strongly and more rapidly than other glaciers on Earth to any changes in climate conditions," he said. [Ice World: Gallery of Awe-Inspiring Glaciers]

To piece together the story of the glaciers over the past centuries, Rabatel and his colleagues drew on disparate strands of data. Historical records from early settlements reveal glacier boundaries, as does ice core data taken by drilling down into the annual layers of ice that make up glaciers. Even the lichens (symbiotic organsism made of fungus and an algae or bacteria) that survive on the rocky debris, or moraine, that forms around a glacier have a story to tell. Researchers can date these lichens to determine how long ago the rocks were exposed and free of ice.

Aerial photographs dating back to the 1950s and satellite imagery from as far back as the 1970s also tracks the glaciers' movements. Finally, direct, ground-based observations have been in place at many glaciers since the 1990s.

Retreat of the glaciers

All together, the data tell a story of ice loss. The Andean glaciers reached their maximum extents in the Little Ice Age, a cool period that lasted from about the 16th to 19th centuries. In the outer tropics of Peru and Bolivia, the glaciers hit their maximums in the 1600s, the researchers found. The highest Andean glaciers maxed out in the 1730s or so, while lower-elevation glaciers reached their peaks around the 1830s.

Since then, the glaciers have gradually withdrawn, with one period of accelerated melt in the late 1800s and a second, much larger, accelerated melt period in the past three decades. Since the 1970s, the glaciers have followed a pattern of periods of accelerated melt with two to three years in between of slower retreat and occasional advance (or growth). But while there have been scattered good years for the glaciers in which more new ice formed than was lost, the overall average has been permanently negative over the past 50 years, the researchers wrote.

The average loss of 30 percent to 50 percent varies widely from glacier to glacier, Rabatel said. Some small glaciers have completely disappeared, such as the Chacaltaya glacier of Bolivia, which was once the world's highest ski resort, but which vanished in 2009.

Lower-altitude glaciers below about 17,700 feet (5400 meters) above sea level are melting twice as fast as those at higher elevations. These low glaciers, which make up the majority of Andes glaciers, are expected to vanish within years or decades, Rabatel said.

Precipitation in the region has not changed, the researchers found, but temperatures have risen nearly 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit (0.1 degrees Celsius) per decade over the last 70 years. That means it's likely atmospheric heat rather than lack of snow is driving the glacier retreat.

The looming loss of the glaciers is a major problem for the people living in arid regions west of the Andes, Rabatel said.

"The supply of water from high-altitude glacierized mountain chains is important for agricultural and domestic consumption, as well as for hydropower," he wrote.

Filmmaker Sir David Attenborough Calls Humans a Plague

This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012.

Sir David Attenborough, the famed British naturalist and television presenter, has some harsh words for humanity.

"We are a plague on the Earth," Attenborough told the Radio Times, as reported by the Telegraph. "It's coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so."

Attenborough went on to say that both climate change and "sheer space" were looming problems for humanity.

"Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now," he said.

Sir David is not the only naturalist who has warned of population growth outstripping resources. Paul Ehrlich, the president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University and author of "The Population Bomb" (Sierra Club-Ballantine, 1968) has long used language similar to Attenborough's. And in 2011, an analysis of species loss suggested that humans are beginning to cause a mass extinction on the order of the one that killed the dinosaurs.

When asked about Attenborough's comments on humanity as its own scourge, Ehrlich told LiveScience he "completely agree[d], as does every other scientist who understands the situation." [Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth]

Even so, that doesn't mean forceful measures must be taken. "Government propaganda, taxes, giving every sexually active human being access to modern contraception and backup abortion, and, especially, giving women absolutely equal rights and opportunities with men might very well get the global population shrinkage required if a collapse is to be avoided," Ehrlich said.

In fact, providing free, reliable birth control to women could prevent between 41 percent and 71 percent of abortions in the United States, according to a study detailed in the Oct. 4, 2012, issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Other scientists also agreed to some extent with the heart of Attenborough's message.

"It's clear that increasing population growth makes some of our biggest environmental challenges harder to solve, not easier," said from Jerry Karnas, population campaign director for the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Ariz.

Karnas added, however, "What's needed is not population control but a real emphasis on reproductive rights, women's empowerment, universal access to birth control and education, so more freedom for folks to make better, more informed family planning choices."

And population numbers would matter less for the planet's health if clean renewable energy were widely adopted as well as planning laws, he told LiveScience during an interview.

Attenborough is famous for his "Life on Earth" series of wildlife documentaries, among other nature programming. In 2009, he became a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a group that advocates voluntary population limitation. At the time, he released a statement saying, "I've seen wildlife under mounting human pressure all over the world and it's not just from human economy or technology — behind every threat is the frightening explosion in human numbers."

Earth's population reached 7 billion people on or around Oct. 31, 2011, according to United Nations estimates.