Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting the wonderful Paddy Hart, a Dublin-born, Australian ex-whaler. "What is going on?", you may well ask. "Is Greenpeace now consorting with whalers?". Note that I said "ex-whaler" - Paddy was in Tokyo, Japan to support Junichi and Toru - the Tokyo Two, to ask Prime Minister Aso to quite whaling, and to reassure Japan's whalers that there is life after whaling. Naturally, if you put two Irishmen together, you'll never get us to shut up, so I spent a few days hearing of Paddy's adventures over the years (and I told a few shaggy dog yarns myself). As well as being a great storyteller, Paddy was the skipper and harpoonist of a whaling vessel in Albany, Western Australia, in the 1970s until public opinion and economic rationale closed down the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company - the last whaling operation in the English-speaking world.

"Stake outs, testimony from informers, hidden cameras and tailing trucks full of stolen goods - it reads like a Hollywood movie, but it was an every day experience for Greenpeace activists in Japan, who have spent four months cracking open a major conspiracy of corruption at the heart of Japan's government-backed, sham scientific whaling operation."

"[Yesterday] we displayed a cardboard box filled with the best cuts of whale meat, smuggled ashore by the crew of the Japanese whaling factory ship, Nisshin Maru, for illegal trade and personal gain, at the Japanese taxpayer's expense. The box, along with videotaped testimony and other evidence, suggest widespread embezzlement of whale meat has been occuring for decades under the noses of the public officials who run the whaling programme, and are allowing it to happen."

Worried looking penguin. Get high quality version: Lonely Adelie Penguin - Pygoscelis adeliae , originally uploaded by blather.

An Antarctic fur seal has been observed trying to have sex with a king penguin. The South African-based scientists who witnessed the incident say it is the most unusual case of mammal mating behaviour yet known.

'BUCHAREST, Romania -- Romanian media say a man was rearing a lion in his back garden until neighbors decided they had heard enough roaring and called police. Rompres state news agency said police found a caged 3-year-old lioness, as well as two deer, a stag and two peacocks roaming the garden of the man's home in the southern village of Pietrosita.'

It is taken from a distance, so it is impossible to be certain, but the woman who took the picture saw this animal up close in her garden and she knows it wasn't a dog," said [Garda/Police] Supt Vincent O'Brien. He confirmed that Gardai had met with the local ISPCA inspector and the county's wildlife officer as concerns began to grow about the animal.

"We have got dropping samples and they've been sent away for analysis, so we're not exactly sure what kind of animal we're dealing with. However, the sightings report that it was a large, black, cat-type animal such as a cougar, that moved extremely fast across the fields, and was noticed crawling on its belly," he said.

"So here we are, just outside Japanese territorial waters. It looks like the Japanese whaling fleet does not want to leave the port of Shimonoseki just yet. At least not as long as the Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is in Washington having meetings with President George W. Bush. There is an obvious risk of political embarrassment, especially when dealing with countries like the USA, which supports whale conservation."

"Greenpeace and the Japanese Fisheries Agency have been locked in conflict over whaling for a long time, and sometimes the game of figuring out your opponent's moves can look an awful lot like the old Mad Magazine comic, Spy vs. Spy."

"Here's an interesting one: a rumour from a well-placed source that the Japanese Fisheries Agency has decided to quietly abandon plans to hunt 50 threatened humpbacks as part of their psuedo-research whaling efforts this year."

"Now at this stage all we have is an unconfirmed rumour. And we don't know whether this was a decision taken over fears that selling the whalemeat from the "scientific" hunt might be a violation of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, or if there were concerns about public outrage over the killing of the sea's most charismatic of whales, or -- who knows -- they've been convinced by the case we're making for non-lethal research via the Great Whale Trail."

"Danish police have appealed for public help to track down a kangaroo that escaped from its owner's home in Copenhagen. Two of the fleet-footed native Australian marsupials escaped from their owner's residence in the Copenhagen neighbourhood of Amager on Monday. One found its own way home today but the second remains on the loose, police said. advertisement 'Passersby saw it and its owner, Jan Passer, is on his way to try to persuade it to return home,' a police officer said. 'He is very nice, according to his owner, and easy to cajole with just a carrot,' he added."

Important developments have unfolded in Japan since we wrote earlier this month about the threatened dugongs and plans to expand a U.S. military base on Okinawa's coast. The large marine mammals and their habitat on the north-east coast of Okinawa Island can be saved, but our window of opportunity to act is closing fast.

Shinzo Abe's recent resignation as Prime Minister of Japan, and the discovery of precious colony of blue corals in the airbase construction site have improved our odds of success.

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the proposed airbase site is open for public comment throughout September. After that time, the authorities will tell us "you've had your chance".

Can you send a message to the Japanese government right now, or forward this message to your friends by email and on facebook, myspace and hi5 to join our call to save the dugongs and stop the airbase. (There's heaps of background information you can blog about too!)

Dugongs living on the coast of Japan's Okinawa island are threatened by the proposed expansion of a U.S. military base there. Construction of the airbase would destroy local coral reefs, the habitat of the dugong, and thousands of other creatures, including three species of threatened turtle.

Shane Cooke, a 33-year-old bricklayer, was arraigned in Belfast High Court on charges of assaulting his girlfriend, Coleen McGleenon, and fatally torturing her royal python Aug. 4.

McGleenon's lawyers said he headbutted her twice and picked up her pet, put it in his mouth, and threw its severed head at her. "Your snake tasted lovely," he was quoted as saying.

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal. The goat's owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders. They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

"Irish dolphins could have their own brogue: scientists"

"The future of the whales will be decided in Anchorage, Alaska, in a couple of weeks time. We need you to make your voice heard once again. The key governments in the debate need to hear from you that you demand that the International Whaling Commission works to protect whales." Continue here »

In a former life, I was a chemist, and I worked with some pretty nasty stuff, ranging from nuclear waste to organic reactions involving cyanide. That's why the references to the canal's contaminants worry me. If you do a little digging on the internet, you'll find out why:

A cruise up the murky Gowanus Canal is a journey into the heart of darkest Brooklyn. These sell-out excursions focus not on romance, fine dining or savoring the Manhattan skyline. Instead, throngs lining the boat railings observe rust-belt factories along the waterway, forming a forbidden jungle. One shocked passenger described the scene as "post-apocalyptic." Rusting bridges span overhead. Junkyard dogs snarl and bark from littered banks. Only the presence of dead rats and trash break the colorful sheen of oil on water that prompted the local sobriquet, "Lavender Lake."

"Gardai were called in yesterday to try to trace a missing kangaroo in the West. The brown two-year-old kangaroo escaped from a field in Co Roscommon on Sunday evening and has not been seen since, to its owner's distress. The animal was being cared for as a pet in a field at Crennane, between Ballaghaderreen and Loughglynn. However, he escaped on Sunday evening and there have been no reports of any sightings since then."

'An expedition to document the last remaining Chinese river dolphins has returned after a six week survey which covered the entire known range of the baiji or Yangtze River dolphin. A team of international scientists using both visual and acoustic monitoring techniques made a full sweep of the area but failed to record one sighting, leading experts to believe that this species is now extinct. WDCS is devastated by the loss of the baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, the first recorded extinction of a cetacean species to be caused by human activity. The baiji represents a loss not just of a species but a whole family of animals which were endemic to the Yangtze River and evolved separately to other whales and dolphins for over 20 million years. The baiji was described as a ‘living fossil’, remaining as it had, unchanged for at least 3 million years since it first left the sea to swim into the Yangtze River. '

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has noted the following as threats to the species: a period of hunting by humans during the Great Leap Forward, entanglement in fishing gear, the illegal practice of electric fishing, collisions with boats and ships, habitat loss, and pollution. During the Great Leap Forward, when traditional veneration of the Baiji was denounced, it was hunted for its flesh and skin, and it quickly became scarce. As China developed economically, pressure on the river dolphin grew significantly. Industrial and residential waste flowed into the Yangtze. The riverbed was dredged and reinforced with concrete in many locations. Ship traffic multiplied, the size of the boats grew, and fishermen employed wider and more lethal nets. Noise pollution made the nearly blind animal prone to collisions with propellers. Stocks of the dolphin's prey had declined drastically in recent decades as well, with some fish populations declining to one thousandth of their pre-industrial levels.

'Kevin Pugh, 20, of Cedar Bluff, has been fined $279 for tossing a pig over the counter at the Holiday Inn Express in West Point on Nov. 12. Pugh pleaded guilty Tuesday in city court to a charge of disturbing the peace. McCaskill said there have been four late-night incidents involving animal-tossing at West Point businesses. Twice a pig was tossed and two of the incidents involved possums. All four of the disturbances took place between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., McCaskill said. Pugh is accused in a second animal-throwing incident at a Hardee's restaurant. He has pleaded innocent to disturbing the peace in that case and will appear in city court on Dec. 19.'

"An aggressive shark normally found in the Pacific or off the warm waters of Africa at this time of year has been caught in the nets of a Kerry fishing vessel off Fastnet Rock. The sevengill, or cow shark, was brought up on Tuesday morning in the nets of the HollyB, owned by John O'Donnell of Cloghane, and it was presented to a rare fish expert attached to the Mara Beo aquarium in An Daingean. The fish, a female, was already dead and is now on its way to the Museum of Natural History."

'First, Warren says, be mindful and rule out the conventional. "A simple explanation is usually the correct one," Warren said. In other words, don't assume you saw Fido's ghost when it could have been a shadow of another object or a hallucination. A pet ghost could be luminous or even appear as it did in life. "You don't necessarily know when you see an animal if it's a ghost or not," Warren said. "It's much easier to identify a loved one who's passed and come back." Second, help Fido want to come home. "Don't forget them because they're gone," said Jungles, who owns three cats. "Keep their toys and blankets around. They (ghosts) will go where they're happiest." Warren agrees. "Recreate an environment conducive to the pet's life," he said. "Use your imagination and treat it like it's alive." Third, create conditions ideal for ghost hunting...'

The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is investigating reports that a dog was sacrificed in the Co Wicklow village of Enniskerry.

The disturbing act is understood to have happened about two weeks ago at Knocksink woods.

The ISPCA says it has received confirmation that a dog was killed and bled dry on a purpose-built altar made from stones taken from the river and cemented together.

It says it considers the killing to be "a most serious incident" and is horrified that nobody contacted the authorities earlier.