Pictures: Inside the World's Most Powerful Laser

Photograph courtesy Damien Jemison, LLNL

Looking like a portal to a science fiction movie, preamplifiers line a corridor at the U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF).

Preamplifiers work by increasing the energy of laser beams—up to ten billion times—before these beams reach the facility's target chamber.

The project's lasers are tackling "one of physics' grand challenges"—igniting hydrogen fusion fuel in the laboratory, according to the NIF website. Nuclear fusion—the merging of the nuclei of two atoms of, say, hydrogen—can result in a tremendous amount of excess energy. Nuclear fission, by contrast, involves the splitting of atoms.

This July, California-based NIF made history by combining 192 laser beams into a record-breaking laser shot that packed over 500 trillion watts of peak power-a thousand times more power than the entire United States uses at any given instant.

"This was a quantum leap for laser technology around the world," NIF director Ed Moses said in September. But some critics of the $5 billion project wonder why the laser has yet to ignite a fusion chain reaction after three-and-a-half years in operation. Supporters counter that such groundbreaking science simply can't be rushed.

(Related: "Fusion Power a Step Closer After Giant Laser Blast.")

—Brian Handwerk

Published November 29, 2012

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Man Arrested in Fla. Girl's 1993 Disappearance

Police have arrested a 42-year-old man and charged him with murder in the case of a Florida girl who vanished almost 20 years ago.

Andrea Gail Parsons, 10, of Port Salerno, Fla., was last seen on July 11, 1993, shortly after 6 p.m. She had just purchased candy and soda at a grocery store when she waved to a local couple as they drove by on an area street and honked, police said.

Today, Martin County Sheriff's Department officials arrested Chester Duane Price, 42, who recently lived in Haleyville, Ala., and charged him with first-degree murder and kidnapping of a child under the age of 13, after he was indicted by a grand jury.

Price was acquainted with Andrea at the time of her disappearance, and also knew another man police once eyed as a potential suspect, officials told ABC News affiliate WPBF in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Handout/Martin County Sheriff's Office

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"The investigation has concluded that Price abducted and killed Andrea Gail Parsons," read a sheriff's department news release. "Tragically, at this time, her body has not been recovered."

The sheriff's department declined to specify what evidence led to Price's arrest for the crime after 19 years or to provide details to ABCNews.com beyond the prepared news release.

Reached by phone, a sheriff's department spokeswoman said she did not know whether Price was yet represented by a lawyer.

Price was being held at the Martin County Jail without bond and was scheduled to make his first court appearance via video link at 10:30 a.m. Friday.

In its news release, the sheriff's department cited Price's "extensive criminal history with arrests dating back to 1991" that included arrests for cocaine possession, assault, sale of controlled substance, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and violation of domestic violence injunction.

"The resolve to find Andrea and get answers surrounding the circumstances of her disappearance has never wavered as detectives and others assigned have dedicated their careers to piecing this puzzle together," Martin County Sheriff Robert L. Crowder said in a prepared statement. "In 2011, I assigned a team of detectives, several 'fresh sets of eyes,' to begin another review of the high-volume of evidence that had been previously collected in this case."

A flyer dating from the time of Andrea's disappearance, and redistributed by the sheriff's office after the arrest, described her as 4-foot-11 with hazel eyes and brown hair. She was last seen wearing blue jean shorts, a dark shirt and clear plastic sandals, according to the flyer.

The sheriff's department became involved in the case after Andrea's mother, Linda Parsons, returned home from work around 10 p.m. on July 11, 1993, to find her daughter missing and called police, according to the initial sheriff's report.

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The Democratic claim that Obama’s health-care cuts top Simpson-Bowles

(Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

“The president's budget actually contains more health-care savings than the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission does.”

— Rep. Chris van Hollen (D-Md.), on CNN, Nov. 27, 2012

 “He's got more health-care cuts than Simpson-Bowles proposed.”

— Van Hollen, on Fox News, Nov. 27

As lawmakers continue to tussle over solutions to the looming “fiscal cliff,” Democrats have tried to make the case that the Obama administration has been serious about a “balanced” approach that includes not just tax increases on the wealthy but also spending cuts.

 A typical example is Rep. Chris van Hollen, who served on the deficit reduction “super committee” and is the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee.  In consecutive interviews on morning television shows this week, he claimed that the Obama 2013 budget actually had more health-care cuts than the Simpson-Bowles Commission,

 Simpson-Bowles, or more accurately the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, is of course considered by many in Washington as the model for a bipartisan approach — even though the commission actually failed to endorse the final report. Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wy.) and former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, were the co-chairs of the 18-member commission.

 We take no position on whether implementing Simpson-Bowles would be good or bad, but clearly van Hollen is suggesting that Obama has been even bolder than the Simpson-Bowles approach. Does this claim pass the math test?

The Facts

 When we first queried van Hollen’s staff, they claimed that van Hollen’s statement was accurate because Obama’s fiscal budget for 2013 proposed about $364 billion in health care savings over the next ten years while the Bowles-Simpson Commission proposed $341 billion in health care cuts.

But the first rule of comparing budgets is to make sure you are actually measuring apples against apples. The Simpson-Bowles report, which was released in Dec. 2010, proposed a budget plan for the years 2012 to 2020. The Obama budget, released last year, proposed a budget for 2013 to 2022.

 Notice anything? The Simpson-Bowles budget is a nine-year plan, while the Obama proposal is a 10-year plan. That means the numbers need to be adjusted before any comparison can be made. (Some analysts, in fact, argue that Simpson-Bowles is actually an eight-year plan, because only a tiny amount of savings is realized in the first year, but for simplicity we will keep it at nine years.)

 Moreover, when you dig into the details of the Simpson-Bowles proposal (see Figure 17), it is clear that the overall health-care figure is deflated by $76 billion because of a proposal to repeal the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program (CLASS Act).

The Obama administration has abandoned the CLASS Act, so the gross health-care cuts in Simpson-Bowles total $417 billion over nine years. That means the Simpson-Bowles health-care cuts are bigger even before any adjustments are made in the budget window.

Van Hollen’s staff then suggested we needed to exclude $73 billion in proposals that affected military retirees, federal employees and tort reform, and only look at cuts involving Health and Human Services programs. But that only gets Obama slightly ahead — before adjusting the budget windows.

(We should also note that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office gave a somewhat lower estimate for Obama health-care savings than the White House, so we are being generous in using White House figures.)

 How should we adjust the budget window? The easiest thing to do would be to lop off the 10th year of the Obama budget. The White House budget documents (see table S-9) show his health-care proposals would save $71 billion in 2022, so that brings the nine-year total to $291 billion.  

In other words, apples to apples, the original Simpson-Bowles budget is 43 percent bigger than Obama’s cuts. Simpson-Bowles is also higher if you only focus on HHS programs.

Obama health-care savings, 9 years: $291 billion

Simpson-Bowles health-care savings, 9 years: $417 billion

 Simpson-Bowles HHS savings, 9 years: $349 billion

 In 2011, Simpson-Bowles released updated figures to produce a 10-year budget. (This reestimate was not as specific so we cannot easily focus just on the HHS programs.) Here’s how those numbers stack up:

Obama health-care savings, 10 years: $364 billion

Simpson-Bowles health-care savings, 10 years: $487 billion

 Moreover, the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities earlier this year calculated what the health-care savings would be if the Simpson-Bowles budget were extended to the same 2013-2022 time frame as the Obama budget. The conclusion:  $480 billion.

Richard Kogan, the CBPP who did the report, said a gross health-care figure for Bowles-Simpson (minus the CLASS Act) would have been about $565 billion, but he said he had little faith in the quality of individual estimates over time, so the distinctions between gross and net savings had less meaning.

“It is clear that over 10 years, the administration’s total is smaller than the Bowles-Simpson total,” Kogan said.

 The Committee for a Responsible Budget also did its own analysis and concluded the appropriate 10-year comparison was this:

Obama health-care savings, 10 years: $300 billion

Simpson-Bowles health-care savings, 10 years: $475 billion.

Anyway, you get the picture. Simpson-Bowles is much higher than the Obama figure when the budget windows are lined up correctly.

 The disparity gets even larger if you compare single budget years, because much of the Obama savings are pushed far into the future. The Simpson-Bowles plan aims for “primary balance” (budget balance excluding interest costs) in 2015. Here are the health-care cuts in that year:

Obama health-care savings, 2015: $20 billion

Simpson-Bowles health-care savings, 2015: $46 billion

Simpson-Bowles HHS health savings, 2015: $38 billion

 Now let’s look at 2018, when the Obama budget claims to reach “primary balance”:

Obama health-care savings, 2018: $39 billion

Simpson-Bowles health-care savings, 2018: $61 billion

Simpson-Bowles HHS health savings: $51 billion

 After presenting this data to van Hollen’s staff, we received a call from the lawmaker. He explained that he had heard Gene Sperling, the director of the White House National Economic Council, make this comparison. “I was not trying to play games with the budget window,” van Hollen said. “I originally got this from Gene Sperling, and the way he said it was the same way I said it.”

Van Hollen argued that the White House proposals are significant because the health-care cuts were more or less equal with Simpson-Bowles at the end of the first decade — and then really kicked in during the second decade. “The president’s policies do not phase in until late in the 10-year budget window,” he said, noting some key provisions are aimed at new Medicare beneficiaries, not current beneficiaries.

Indeed, Sperling has written that Obama has “proposed larger long-term health savings ... than Bowles-Simpson.” (Our emphasis on “long-term.”)

Given that Congress can always step in and change things, we’re not sure it is good practice to be claiming savings more than 10 years down the road. Health-care provider cuts mandated in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 are routinely deferred by Congress.

When The Fact Checker first started writing about the federal budget more than two decades ago, in fact, the budget window never extended more than five years. Then, for better or worse, 10-year budgets became the norm during the Clinton administration. Still, one could argue that permanent changes in health-care programs are different than discretionary spending, and thus a long-term outlook is informative.

“While that may well be true — and looks sensible, and uses the same approach to extrapolating  figures that we used in our analysis of [Simpson-Bowles] — we nevertheless cannot be sure that the administration figures surpass [Simpson-Bowles] after 2023,” Kogan said. “It merely seems extremely likely.”

 But in any case, this is not the argument van Hollen made on the television shows. He did not say “long-term” but instead referred the the “president’s budget” — which is only for 10years.

The Pinocchio Test

We always appreciate it when a lawmaker gets on the phone and defends his math. Some might saying dropping a phrase such “long-term” is a relatively minor offense but as the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, van Hollen has a special responsibility to get his numbers right and speak with precision.

No matter how you add it up, Obama’s proposed health-care cuts in his budget are smaller than the ideas proposed in the Simpson-Bowles plan--at least in the first ten years. It is misleading to suggest otherwise.

If van Hollen wants to make a case for savings in the second decade, he should be more specific in interviews.

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MediaCorp launches its first fashion portal

SINGAPORE: Singapore's leading media company MediaCorp has launched its first fashion portal.

styleXstyle features the latest news on Singapore and international fashion and beauty trends, celebrity blogs and spotlights on emerging designers in the region.

Members can connect with the fashion industry and fellow style-savvy members by sharing images and blog posts.

They can also upload their outfits for the day to build profiles and gain a following.

- CNA/de

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Mend your ways or lose power, Markandey Katju tells Mamata Banerjee

KOLKATA: Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju has described West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee as "intolerant and whimsical" and warned her that she would lose power if she did not change.

In a letter to her, Katju demanded she apologise to all who were victimised by her adminisration, and sought action against policemen who arrested Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra and farmer Shiladitya Chowdhury. Mahapatra was arrested for circulating a cartoon of the chief minister, and Chowdhury for questioning her policies.

The former Supreme Court justice also said that former joint commissioner of police Damayanti Sen be restored to her earlier office, from which she was removed after she cracked a Park Street rape case in February.

"We all make mistakes but a gentleman is one who realises his mistake and apologises," Katju wrote.

The PCI chairman asked Banerjee to follow the example of her Maharashtra counterpart Prithviraj Chavan who suspended police officers responsible for the arrest of the Mumbai girl who posted on Facebook her objection to the shutdown of Mumbai on the death of Bal Thackeray.

"I request you to act against the policemen who ordered and implemented the arrest of Mahapatra and Chowdhury, you should immediately withdraw the cases against them and apologise to them," Katju wrote.

The former Supreme Court justice accused Banerjee of victimising Damayanti Sen, who, he said, was an upright police officer.

"You should apologise to her. You should also apologise to Tanya Bharadwaj whom you insulted on CNN-IBN show."

Bharadwaj, a young student, drew the ire of the chief minister for questioning her on a TV show.

Katju said Banerjee's ministers and bureaucrats "are afraid to speak out their minds fearlessly before you, and are terrorised by your unpredictable and whimsical behaviour".

Stating that her ways were "very unhealthy", he said Banerjee "will not be able to remain chief minister for long" unless she changed her ways and became more tolerant.

"It is still not too late if you listen to my advice and change your ways. I had praised you at one time. But of late you seem to have become increasingly intolerant and whimsical," Katju said in his letter.

Banerjee said she has not yet received any letter from Katju.

"I don't want to comment," she responded, when mediapersons asked her about the letter at the state secretariat Writers' Buildings.

Pressed further, Banerjee pointed to a particular journalist and said: "Your channel and some others criticise us every day. So what? You do whatever you like, and the government will do its work. So long I know my government is not doing anything inhuman, I am not bothered. And I know my government is very humane."

Earlier, addressing an official function, the chief minister said she was unruffled by the "negative publicity" carried out by "vested interests".

"I know some people are criticising and demeaning us. They are doing this because they have some vested interests. Let them do, we don't care. 'Raja chale bazaar to kutta bhonke hazaar' (the king walks to market, though a thousand dogs bark)," Banerjee said.

The opposition Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the Congress came out in Katju's support and slammed Banerjee for her "dictatorial ways".

"She says she is king and will not mend her ways no matter how much people criticise her. Being the opposition, we are bound to oppose. But now even her partymen, leaders and wellwishers are raising their voices against her. There is nothing more to say," CPI-M heavyweight and Leader of Opposition in the state assembly Surjya Kanta Mishra said.

"The government is not only intolerant but is gradually acquiring dictatorial attributes. Why should ministers have to display her portrait in their chambers? She believes in the personality cult and when such a thing permeates a party, it starts moving in a dictatorial trajectory," Congress leader and junior railways minister Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said.

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Caterpillar Fungus Has Anti-Inflammatory Properties

In the Tibetan mountains, a fungus attaches itself to a moth larva burrowed in the soil. It infects and slowly consumes its host from within, taking over its brain and making the young caterpillar move to a position from which the fungus can grow and spore again.

Sounds like something out of science fiction, right? But for ailing Chinese consumers and nomadic Tibetan harvesters, the parasite called cordyceps means hope—and big money. Chinese markets sell the "golden worm," or "Tibetan mushroom"—thought to cure ailments from cancer to asthma to erectile dysfunction—for up to $50,000 (U.S.) per pound. Patients, following traditional medicinal practices, brew the fungal-infected caterpillar in tea or chew it raw.

Now the folk medicine is getting scientific backing. A new study published in the journal RNA finds that cordycepin, a chemical derived from the caterpillar fungus, has anti-inflammatory properties.

"Inflammation is normally a beneficial response to a wound or infection, but in diseases like asthma it happens too fast and to too high of an extent," said study co-author Cornelia H. de Moor of the University of Nottingham. "When cordycepin is present, it inhibits that response strongly."

And it does so in a way not previously seen: at the mRNA stage, where it inhibits polyadenylation. That means it stops swelling at the genetic cellular level—a novel anti-inflammatory approach that could lead to new drugs for cancer, asthma, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and cardiovascular-disease patients who don't respond well to current medications.

From Worm to Pill

But such new drugs may be a long way off. The science of parasitic fungi is still in its early stages, and no medicine currently available utilizes cordycepin as an anti-inflammatory. The only way a patient could gain its benefits would by consuming wild-harvested mushrooms.

De Moor cautions against this practice. "I can't recommend taking wild-harvested medications," she says. "Each sample could have a completely different dose, and there are mushrooms where [taking] a single bite will kill you."

Today 96 percent of the world's caterpillar-fungus harvest comes from the high Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan range. Fungi from this region are of the subspecies Ophiocordyceps sinensis, locally known as yartsa gunbu ("summer grass, winter worm"). While highly valued in Chinese traditional medicine, these fungi have relatively low levels of cordycepin. What's more, they grow only at elevations of 10,000 to 16,500 feet and cannot be farmed. All of which makes yartsa gunbu costly for Chinese consumers: A single fungal-infected caterpillar can fetch $30.

Brave New Worm

Luckily for researchers, and for potential consumers, another rare species of caterpillar fungus, Cordyceps militaris, is capable of being farmed—and even cultivated to yield much higher levels of cordycepin.

De Moor says that's not likely to discourage Tibetan harvesters, many of whom make a year's salary in just weeks by finding and selling yartsa gunbu. Scientific proof of cordycepin's efficacy will only increase demand for the fungus, which could prove dangerous. "With cultivation we have a level of quality control that's missing in the wild," says de Moor.

"There is definitely some truth somewhere in certain herbal medicinal traditions, if you look hard enough," says de Moor. "But ancient healers probably wouldn't notice a 10 percent mortality rate resulting from herbal remedies. In the scientific world, that's completely unacceptable." If you want to be safe, she adds, "wait for the medicine."

Ancient Chinese medical traditions—which also use ground tiger bones as a cure for insomnia, elephant ivory for religious icons, and rhinoceros horns to dispel fevers—are controversial but popular. Such remedies remain in demand regardless of scientific advancement—and endangered animals continue to be killed in order to meet that demand. While pills using cordycepin from farmed fungus might someday replace yartsa gunbu harvesting, tigers, elephants, and rhinos are disappearing much quicker than worms.

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Two Winners in Record Powerball Jackpot

Winning tickets for the record Powerball jackpot worth more than $587 million were purchased in Arizona and Missouri.

Missouri Lottery official Susan Goedde confirmed to ABC News this morning that one of the winning tickets was purchased in the state, but they would not announce which town until later this morning.

Arizona lottery officials said they had no information on that state's winner or winners but would announce where it was sold during a news conference later in the day.

The winning numbers for the jackpot were 5, 23, 16, 22 and 29. The Powerball was 6.

The jackpot swelled to $587.5 million, according to Lottery official Sue Dooley. The two winners will split the jackpot each getting $293.75 million. The cash payout is $192.5 million each.

An additional 8,924,123 players won smaller prizes, according to Powerball's website.

"There were 58 winners of $1 million and there were eight winners of $2 million. So a total of $74 million," said Chuck Strutt, Director of the Multi-State Lottery Association.

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

This is the 27th win for Missouri, ranking it second in the nation for lottery winners after Indiana, which has 38 wins. Arizona has had 10 Powerball jackpot wins in its history.

Players bought tickets at the rate of 131,000 every minute up until an hour before the deadline of 11 p.m. ET, according to lottery officials.

The jackpot had already rolled over 16 consecutive times without a winner. That fact, plus the doubling in price of a Powerball ticket, accounted for the unprecedented richness of the pot.

"Back in January, we moved Powerball from being a $1 game to $2," said Mary Neubauer, a spokeswoman at the game's headquarters in Iowa. "We thought at the time that this would mean bigger and faster-growing jackpots."

That proved true. The total, she said, began taking "huge jumps -- another $100 million since Saturday." It then jumped another $50 million.

The biggest Powerball pot on record until now -- $365 million -- was won in 2006 by eight Lincoln, Neb., co-workers.
As the latest pot swelled, lottery officials said they began getting phone calls from all around the world.

"When it gets this big," said Neubauer, "we get inquiries from Canada and Europe from people wanting to know if they can buy a ticket. They ask if they can FedEx us the money."

The answer she has to give them, she said, is: "Sorry, no. You have to buy a ticket in a member state from a licensed retail location."

About 80 percent of players don't choose their own Powerball number, opting instead for a computer-generated one.
Asked if there's anything a player can do to improve his or her odds of winning, Neubauer said there isn't -- apart from buying a ticket, of course.

Lottery officials put the odds of winning this Powerball pot at one in 175 million, meaning you'd have been 25 times more likely to win an Academy Award.

Skip Garibaldi, a professor of mathematics at Emory University in Atlanta, provided additional perspective: You are three times more likely to die from a falling coconut, he said; seven times more likely to die from fireworks, "and way more likely to die from flesh-eating bacteria" (115 fatalities a year) than you are to win the Powerball lottery.

Segueing, then, from death to life, Garibaldi noted that even the best physicians, equipped with the most up-to-date equipment, can't predict the timing of a child's birth with much accuracy.

"But let's suppose," he said, "that your doctor managed to predict the day, the hour, the minute and the second your baby would be born."

The doctor's uncanny prediction would be "at least 100 times" more likely than your winning.

Even though he knows the odds all too well, Garibaldi said he usually plays the lottery.

When it gets this big, I'll buy a couple of tickets," he said. "It's kind of exciting. You get this feeling of anticipation. You get to think about the fantasy."

So, did he buy two tickets this time?

"I couldn't," he told ABC News. "I'm in California" -- one of eight states that doesn't offer Powerball.

In case you were wondering, this Saturday's Powerball jackpot is starting at $40 million.

ABC News Radio contributed to this report.

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Olam shares fall despite rebuttal of Muddy Waters' report

SINGAPORE: Olam International's shares continued to slide Wednesday despite its rebuttal of a research firm's warning that the Singapore farm commodities giant could collapse like US energy trader Enron.

"Olam faces no risk of insolvency. We have proactively planned for an appropriate capital structure and raised the requisite equity and debt to meet our investment plans," it said in a posting to the Singapore Exchange.

"We have sufficient liquidity to pursue our current business as well as future investment plans," it said, adding that its accounting practices, also called into question, fully adhere to Singapore's standards."

The statement was issued following a temporary trading halt sought by Olam after Muddy Waters, a US-based firm founded by influential short-seller Carson Block, released a scathing 133-page report on Tuesday.

Olam shares dropped further on Wednesday despite its vehement 45-page response, closing at S$1.50, down 3.85 per cent. The fall is on top of the stock's 6.0 per cent decline on Tuesday.

Last week, media reports said the company would consider buying back shares if prices continued to fall because of Muddy Waters' allegations.

The Muddy Waters report was released despite a libel suit launched by Olam in Singapore's High Court following Block's remarks at a London business conference last week that Olam was in danger of collapse.

Olam said Wednesday that the report was aimed at creating investor panic and enabling "Carson Block and his associates to benefit from their short positions in Olam securities -- a strategy of shouting fire in a crowded room".

In its report, Muddy Waters said Olam faced a "significant risk" of default and likened it to Enron, which failed in 2001 amid government probes into its accounting practices -- one of the biggest scandals in US corporate history.

Olam, which reported sales revenues of S$17.1 billion in its 2012 financial year, accused Muddy Waters on Wednesday of taking facts out of context and described its conclusions as "without merit".

Justin Harper, an analyst with IG Markets Singapore, said in the tiff so far between Olam and Muddy Waters "the biggest winner is Muddy Waters which has achieved huge amounts of coverage for its attack on Olam as Carson Block looks to raise his profile as the scourge of Asian corporations".

But he added that "while he could have raised some valid points of concern to ponder, the finger-pointing comes across as driven by self-promotion rather than genuine concern for Olam shareholders."

Olam, which started out 23 years ago in Nigeria, sources products including cocoa, coffee, cashew, sesame and rice from 65 countries and supplies them to more than 11,600 customers.

Singapore's state investment firm Temasek Holdings is one of Olam's biggest shareholders, owning a 16 per cent stake as of March 31.

According a media report, Olam CEO Sunny Verghese said Temasek has stood by Olam "by staying invested as it battles short-seller Muddy Waters".

- AFP/jc

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Gujral 'very critical', doctor says

GURGAON: The condition of former Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral remains "very critical", a doctor said on Wednesday.

"His condition is the same as yesterday -- very critical," K.L. Sehgal, a doctor from the Medicity Medanta Hospital here, told IANS.

On Tuesday, Gujral fell unconscious and his urine output was blocked.

Gujral, 93, was admitted to Medicity with a lung infection Nov 19, and is still on the ventilator support.

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Pictures: Falcon Massacre Uncovered in India

Photograph courtesy Conservation India

A young boy can sell bundles of fresh Amur falcons (pictured) for less than five dollars. Still, when multiplied by the thousands of falcons hunters can catch in a day, the practice can be a considerable financial boon to these groups.

Since discovering the extent of Amur hunting in Nagaland this fall, Conservation India has taken the issue to the local Indian authorities.

"They have taken it very well. They've not been defensive," Sreenivasan said.

"You're not dealing with national property, you're dealing with international property, which helped us put pressure on [them]." (Related: "Asia's Wildlife Trade.")

According to Conservation India, the same day the group filed their report with the government, a fresh order banning Amur hunting was issued. Local officials also began meeting with village leaders, seizing traps and confiscating birds. The national government has also requested an end to the hunting.

Much remains to be done, but because the hunt is so regional, Sreenivasan hopes it can eventually be contained and stamped out. Authorities there, he said, are planning a more thorough investigation next year, with officials observing, patrolling, and enforcing the law.

"This is part of India where there is some amount of acceptance on traditional bush hunting," he added. "But at some point, you draw the line."

(Related: "Bush-Meat Ban Would Devastate Africa's Animals, Poor?")

Published November 27, 2012

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