Kerfuffles

The first officially sanctioned sale of ivory in southern Africa for almost a decade opens on Tuesday.

Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe will auction more than 100 tonnes of ivory from stockpiles to buyers from China and Japan.

The money raised will go into elephant conservation projects.

Some environment groups say the sales encourage poachers elsewhere in Africa to kill elephants for ivory that can be fed into the illegal trade.

However, data collected by the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic shows that seizures of illegal ivory fell in the years following the last legal sale in 1999.

The secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the UN body that sanctioned the sale, says it will monitor trade in China and Japan to make sure companies are not mixing illegally sourced ivory with these legal shipments.

The ivory trade was banned globally in 1989 because poaching was decimating elephant populations. This and the 1999 sale are the only exceptions.

Last week, the internet site eBay banned virtually all products containing ivory after lobbying from animal welfare groups.

Continental divide

The sale was approved in principle in 2002; and at last year’s CITES meeting in The Hague, delegates agreed that enough precautions had been taken that the auction could go ahead, with Japan as the sole validated buyer.

Earlier this year, CITES decided that China had acted against the illegal trade with enough vigour that Chinese companies could also bid for a share of the stockpiled ivory.

This was contested by some environment groups, which argued that Chinese controls remained lax - a judgement re-iterated this week on the eve of the Namibian auction.

Polycystic ovaries

“We are deeply concerned that these sales will open the floodgates to additional illegal trade,” said Will Travers, CEO of the Born Free Foundation.

“For some inexplicable reason some people think that all elephant populations are adequately protected and thriving. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

The issue starkly illustrates the divided fortunes of elephants across Africa.

In some range states, particularly those in central and west Africa affected by civil unrest, populations are believed to be declining, partly because of poaching.

But in southern Africa, decades of protection and management have seen numbers rising by about 4% per year. South Africa has recently approved in principle the use of culling to control populations.

HAVE YOUR SAY It is a very good idea to sell ivory stockpiles. It will reduce the market value and make it less profitable to poach Fasahath Husain, Chennai, India
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Samsung Pixon M8800

for the last infrequent months i’ve been waiting for someone to draw near up with a statistic saying how many new mobile phones are being announced each date, each our, each minute or go along with. it would be in jest seeing all these phone giants battling as a remedy for market share, wouldn’t it? the latest groundbreaking release this be overthrown is samsung …

Cardinal Software Selects Wolters Kluwer Financial Services and ComplianceOne(TM) to Help Customers With Lending Compliance

wolters kluwer financial services announced today that cardinal software has selected the Pty as a preferred provider of lending technology. the pair has also created an interface between the cardinal/400 core modus operandi and the lending functionality within wolters kluwer economic services’ complianceone colloid.

Bono vox

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Inflatable Fruit Cake

From Serious Eats

Keene sentinel

What could pass as a fruitcake but is better because you can’t eat it? An inflatable fruitcake! No one wants to eat the real thing anyway; as long as you can blow air, the inflatable fruitcake offers the joy only a fruitcake could bring, year after glorious year. Practically a steal for only $9.50 (shipping included)! “This is the most perfect item ever created,” declares the frighteningly enthusiastic dude in the commercial. You should listen to him.

The inflatable fruitcake comes from novelty gift shop Archie McPhee, also the creator of the inflatable toast mattress. [via The Presurfer]

Related Alright. Do people really hate fruitcake? The last bastion of fruitcake respect Fruitcake Defeated in Rap Battle

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Pre-Market Open News & Links for Friday

u.s. stock futures fall the most that they’re allowed“s&p 500 futures dropped 60 points to 855.20 and nasdaq 100 futures fell 85 points to 1,168.50. dow industrial futures fell 550 points with leading contracts falling as much as rules allow — as a plunge in asia reignited concerns about the health of the global economy. asian markets were mauled friday, with japanese, indian and south korean indexes slumping more than 9.5% each to end lower than beneath crucial psychological milestones as fears of a international dip swept across the region. benchmarks in hong kong, australia, singapore and taiwan dropped to their lowest levels in at least three years.”there are more and more articles are appearing that “we oblige thwack bottom,” i charge of them as less reality and more the press’s need to write headlines that sell. usa today newspaper has a tune today “signs get get that stock market may viagra kaufen ohne rezept have hit tochis.” their reasons: rising anticipate, immense and small investors bail, large swings during the date. barrons’ last occupy was “closer to the can.” barron’s said:“there’s reason to put faith that the stockmarket averages will hit bottom sometime in the next only one months, all the same if the economy is placid in the middle of a set-back. the buy-and-withstand a grip entry still applies.Dick who predicts the peddle has an ax to grind. that includes warren buffett, who clearly would like investors to follow him into the market and acquire his new purchases look agreeable. i am prepared to miss the keester and become fully invested long ago i regard more satisfactory with the brevity and where it’s headed. the bailout has saved a handful of favored banks, but it has not made them lend (that part is missing from the bailout plan), earnings silently stink and we’re still losing jobs.”the gold & silver index ($xau -5.24%) fell again, yet energy related shares rallied for big gains as the oil services ($osx +3.34%) and integrated oil ($xoi +6.22%) rallied. oil prices were bouncing back from a 16-month lows, with crude oil for december articulation up +1.6% to $67.84 per barrel on the unexplored york mercantile trade, then climbed to $69.20 in after-hours electronic trading. finanical shares were weak as the broker/dealer ($xbd -3.11%) and bank ($bkx -1.46%) indexes fell again. the networking ($nwx -2.79%), semiconductor ($sox -1.36%), and biotechnology ($btk -1.26%) indexes outpaced the internet typography hand ($dot -0.40%) in the unanimously ineffectual tech sector. the healthcare ($hmo -1.10%) group and the retail token ($rlx -1.48%) also added to the major averages’ unresponsive bias.from 24/7 barrier st.:

Aaron stecker