From The Associated Press

CONCEPCION, Chile – Heroism and banditry mingled on Chile’s shattered streets Sunday as rescuers braved aftershocks digging for survivors and the government sent soldiers and ordered a nighttime curfew to quell looting. The death toll climbed to 708 in one of the biggest earthquakes in centuries.

In the hard-hit city of Concepcion, firefighters pulling survivors from a toppled apartment block were forced to pause because of tear gas fired to stop looters, who were wheeling off everything from microwave ovens to canned milk at a damaged supermarket across the street.

Efforts to determine the full scope of destruction were undermined by an endless string of terrifying aftershocks that continued to turn buildings into rubble. Officials said 500,000 houses were destroyed or badly damaged, and President Michele Bachelet said “a growing number” of people were listed as missing.

“We are facing a catastrophe of such unthinkable magnitude that it will require a giant effort” to recover, Bachelet said after meeting for six hours with ministers and generals in La Moneda Palace, itself chipped and cracked.

She signed a decree giving the military control over security in the province of Concepcion, where looters were pillaging supermarkets, gas stations, pharmacies and banks. Men and women hurried away with plastic containers of chicken, beef and sausages.

Virtually every market and supermarket had been looted — and no food or drinking water could be found. Many people in Concepcion expressed anger at the authorities for not stopping the looting or bringing in supplies. Electricity and water services were out of service.

“We are overwhelmed,” a police officer told The Associated Press.

Bachelet said a curfew was being imposed from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and only security forces and other emergency personnel would be allowed on the streets. Police vehicles drove around announcing the curfew over loudspeakers.

As nightfall neared, hundreds of people put up tents and huddled around wood fires in parks and the grassy medians of avenues, too fearful to return to their homes amid continuing strong aftershocks.

Bachelet, who leaves office on March 11, said the country would accept some of the offers of aid that have poured in from around the world.

She said Chile needs field hospitals and temporary bridges, water purification plants and damage assessment experts — as well as rescuers to help relieve workers who have been laboring frantically since the magnitude-8.8 quake struck before dawn Saturday.

To strip away any need for looting, Bachelet announced that essentials on the shelves of major supermarkets would be given away for free, under the supervision of authorities. Soldiers and police will also distribute food and water, she said.

Although houses, bridges and highways were damaged in Santiago, the national capital, a few flights managed to land at the airport and subway service resumed.

More chaotic was the region to the south, where the shaking was the strongest and where the quake generated waves that lashed coastal settlements, leaving behind sticks, scraps of metal and masonry houses ripped in two.

In the village of Lloca, a beachside carnival was caught in the tsunami. A carousel was twisted on its side and a ferris wheel rose above the muddy wreckage.

In Concepcion, the largest city in the disaster zone, a new, 15-story apartment building toppled onto its side. Many of those who lived on the side that wound up facing the sky could clamber out; those on the other were trapped. An estimated 60 people remained trapped in the 70-unit apartment building.

Police officer Jorge Guerra took names of the missing from a stream of tearful relatives and friends. He urged them to be optimistic because about two dozen people had been rescued.

“There are people alive. There are several people who are going to be rescued,” he said — though the next people pulled from the wreckage were dead.

Concepcion’s main hospital was operating, though patients in an older half of the building were moved into hallways as a precaution.

Rescuers worked carefully for fear of aftershocks. Ninety jolts of magnitude 5 or greater shuddered across the region in the first 24 hours after the quake, including one nearly as large as the earthquake that devastated Haiti on Jan. 12.

Firefighters in Concepcion were about to lower a rescuer deep into the rubble when the scent of tear gas fired at looters across the street forced them to interrupt their efforts.

“It’s sad, but because of the situation you have to confront the robberies and at the same time continue the search,” Guerra said.

The sound of chain saws, power drills and sledgehammers breaking through concrete competed with the whoosh of a water cannon fired at looters and the shouts of crowds that found new ways into a four-story supermarket each time police retreated.

One woman ran off with a shopping cart piled high with slabs of unwrapped meat and cheese. A shirtless man carried a mattress on his head. Some of the looters pitched rocks at police armored vehicles outside the Lider market, which is majority-owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Across the Bio Bio River in the city of San Pedro, looters cleared out a shopping mall. A video store was set ablaze, two automatic teller machines were broken open, a bank was robbed and a supermarket emptied, its floor littered with mashed plums, scattered dog food and smashed liquor bottles.

“It was a mob. They looted everything,” said police Sgt. Rene Gutierrez, 46, who had his men guarding the now-empty mall. “Now we’re only here to protect the building — what’s left of the building.”

He said police had been slow to reach the looted mall because one bridge over the river was collapsed and the other so damaged they had to move cautiously.

Ingenious looters even used long tubes of bamboo and plastic to siphon gasoline from underground tanks at a closed gasoline station. Others rummaged through the station’s restaurant.

Thieves attacked a flour mill in Concepcion — some toting away bags on their shoulders, others using bicycles or cars. One man packed a school bus with sacks of flour.

Many defended the scavenging — of food if not television sets — as a necessity because officials had not brought food or water. Even Concepcion’s mayor, Jacqueline van Rysselberghe, complained that no food aid was reaching the city. She said the federal government should send troops to help halt the looting.

In Talca, where old adobe buildings in the town center were flattened, many spent the night outside, huddled beneath blankets on lawn chairs, sleeping on a mattress hauled from a damaged home or sheltering in camping tents.

State television showed scenes of devastation in coastal towns and more still on Robinson Crusoe Island, where it said the tsunami drove almost 2 miles (3 kilometers) into the town of San Juan Bautista. Officials said at least five people were killed there and more were missing.

The surge of water raced across the Pacific, setting off alarm sirens and evacuations from Hawaii to Japan, but it did little damage.

From The Associated Press

NEW YORK – About 15,000 African slaves and their descendants were once unceremoniously buried under what is today Manhattan — and forgotten.

On Saturday, a new visitor center opened near the rediscovered cemetery from the 17th and 18th centuries to celebrate the ethnic Africans who had toiled, many unpaid, to help make New York the nation’s commercial capital.

“It’s shocking — the number of people today who are still unaware that this history exists in New York,” said Tara Morrison, superintendent of the African Burial Ground National Memorial.

It’s located a short walk from Wall Street, where African slaves once were traded.

Some of their remains were exhumed after 1991 and reburied on a third of an acre surrounded by high-rises amid bustling lower Manhattan.

The visitor center on Broadway opened Saturday afternoon after a ceremony that included remarks by Howard Dodson, director of Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

“People say the South was evil, keeping slaves, and that the good people of the North were opposed to it,” Dodson said. “The truth is, New York was just as involved; this city’s economy was tied to slavery, and New York merchants financed the South’s cotton trade.”

The street-level center offers interactive exhibits showing that the African labor force was crucial to the prosperity of Dutch-colonized New Amsterdam in the 1600s, and later New York, governed by the English until the American Revolution. In 1776, there were about 25,000 people living in New York, about one-fifth of them slaves.

The slaves had come off ships from Africa and the Caribbean, landing in Perth Amboy, N.J., a busy duty-free port for the importation of slaves — men and women practicing Christian, Muslim and traditional African faiths.

They worked on docks and made roads or did farm and domestic work. The skilled artisans and craftsmen were associated with shipping, construction and various trades.

Some remained enslaved, while others gained some degree of freedom and could raise their families, though none had the full rights of the colonists.

But all were among those building a new nation.

When these early New Yorkers died, they were wrapped in shrouds and buried on more than 6 acres of land beyond the then official northern boundary of the city, at today’s Chambers Street in lower Manhattan. Only non-Africans could be buried in the city proper.

After the 1741 slave insurrection, 18 slaves were hanged and 13 burned at the stake on vague charges of arson and conspiracy.

At the entrance to the visitor center is a burial scene with life-size figures, “to remind people that they are visiting a sacred site,” Morrison said.

The forgotten burial place was rediscovered in 1991, when construction began on the foundation of a federal office building. The remains of about 400 men, women and children were found 20 feet underground.

Photos of individual graves, with skeletal remains, fill a wall of the new center.

Each is numbered, with descriptions of what people suffered while alive, based on scientific analysis.

“The bones show that they were overworked and malnourished, and some show signs of trauma,” said Michael Blakey, a physical anthropologist and the scientific director of the African Burial Ground Project.

Slaves were raped, lynched and beaten at various times, according to historic accounts.

Even slave children were used as labor, some separated from their families and sold to the New York colonists.

The government building was redesigned to accommodate the memorial, and in 1993 the Burial Ground became a National Historic Landmark.

President George W. Bush signed a proclamation in 2006 designating it a National Monument as the “most important historic urban archaeological project undertaken in the United States.” A memorial was dedicated the following year.

Opening to the public Saturday afternoon, the 6,700-square-foot space has four exhibit areas, a theater and a gift shop.

The African Burial Ground is part of the National Park Service, and there’s no entrance fee.

It took almost two decades to officially preserve the site, after an emotionally charged battle pitting scholars, activists and officials against those arguing that business in the densely built-up neighborhood would be disrupted during excavation.

The rest of the original cemetery under existing buildings remains untouched.

The visitor center also will examine the preservation efforts, said Morrison, adding that they reflect “the importance of citizens taking action.”

She said she’s seen adults at the Burial Ground who looked “very angry, because they’re learning this history for the first time. Now they’ll know when they walk down Broadway: This is our complex, collective heritage.”

New York abolished slavery in 1827.

From The Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. – Employees wept and audience members grew silent Saturday at SeaWorld as the theme park’s popular killer whale show resumed with a photo montage memorial for a trainer who was killed by one of the orcas in front of horrified spectators three days ago.

The show had been shut down since veteran trainer Dawn Brancheau, 40, died Wednesday after rubbing a 22-foot, 12,000-pound orca named Tilikum. The animal grabbed her ponytail and pulled her into the water in front of about 20 spectators. The medical examiner says she likely died of traumatic injuries and drowning.

More than 2,000 people packed the park’s stadium Saturday for the first show since Brancheau’s death.

The audience seemed thrilled, applauding and cheering as the whales zipped around their tank and splashed spectators during the show — with the theme of “believe,” about a young boy who sees an orca and dreams of one day becoming a whale trainer. It was a fitting tribute to Brancheau, whose family said she always wanted work with the giant whales.

At one point during the show, a young girl was brought on stage and given a whale tail necklace.

“I just wanted to be here for this show. It’s so special,” said Russell Thomphsen, 65, who said he is a season-ticket holder for SeaWorld. “This touches so many lives.”

Spectators packed the enormous outdoor amphitheater despite chilly, rainy weather, with the orca pool registering at 52 degrees. The whale trainers received a standing ovation as they approached the platform before the show, part of the multimillion-dollar enterprise centered around “Shamu” — the stage name given to all the performing orcas.

Several SeaWorld employees wept as the photo montage set to music was shown.

“It was very moving,” said Molly Geislinger, 33, who came from Minneapolis with her husband and 21-month-old child.

However, she noticed a difference in how the trainers acted.

“They looked like they were being very careful,” she said. “They looked very cautious today.”

Indeed, the trainers weren’t allowed in the water, meaning the whales’ handlers did not surf on top of the marine mammals or fly into the air. Instead, the trainers — wearing orca-like black-and-white wetsuits — directed the whales from outside the huge tank’s acrylic walls. They coached the creatures to splash the front-and-center rows a few times, much to the delight of onlookers.

SeaWorld officials have said trainers won’t swim with the orcas until they finish reviewing what happened to Brancheau.

Jeff Steward, who came to the show with his wife, called the memorial “a very emotional start.”

He said they enjoyed the show, adding: “It’s a tragedy, but these things happen when you’re dealing with wild animals.”

SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment President Jim Atchison said Friday that Tilikum will remain an “active, contributing member of the team,” in part because the killer whale show is big business at SeaWorld. The company owns more killer whales than anyone else in the world and builds the orca image into its multimillion-dollar brand. Tilikum did not perform Saturday.

The timing of the killer whales’ return to performances reflects just what the sleek black-and-white mammals mean to SeaWorld, which the private equity firm The Blackstone Group bought last fall for around $2.7 billion from Anheuser-Busch InBev in a deal that included two Busch Gardens theme parks and several other attractions.

No animal is more valuable to the Orlando operation than Tilikum, the largest orca in captivity. Captured nearly 30 years ago off Iceland, Tilikum has grown into the alpha male of captive killer whales, his value as a stud impossible to pin down. He now has been involved in the deaths of two trainers and requires a special set of handling rules, which Atchison wouldn’t specify.

There are two other SeaWorld parks — one in San Antonio, and one in San Diego.

The San Diego park faced similar scrutiny over its whale show in 2006, when a trainer was bit and held underwater several times by a 7,000-pound killer whale, Kasatka, during a show. He escaped with a broken foot and was hospitalized for three days.

Inspectors from the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health issued a report on that accident saying that “swimming with captive orcas is inherently dangerous and if someone hasn’t been killed already it is only a matter of time … ”

The report’s findings were disputed by Sea World officials. The state agency apologized and said its investigation required expertise that it does not have. It promised to “thoroughly review” its own account of the attack.

John Galloway, of Palm Coast, Fla., said he didn’t want to see the killer whale shows end because of the Orlando tragedy.

“I think they know what they’re doing,” he said of the trainers. “Me, myself, I wouldn’t be down there doing that.”

From The Associated Press

HONOLULU, Hawaii – A tsunami triggered by the Chilean earthquake sent a surge of water ashore in Hawaii, California and islands in the South Pacific on Saturday as the waves continued onto Alaska and parts of Asia.

There were no immediate reports of widespread damage, injuries or deaths in the U.S. or in the Pacific islands, but a tsunami that swamped a village on an island off Chile killed at least five people and left 11 missing.

In Hawaii, water began pulling away from shore off Hilo Bay on the Big Island just before noon, exposing reefs and sending dark streaks of muddy, sandy water offshore. Waves later washed over Coconut Island, a small park off Hilo’s coast.

The tsunami was causing a series of surges that were about 20 minutes apart, and the waves arrived later and smaller than originally predicted. The highest wave at Hilo measured 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) high, while Maui saw some as high as 2 meters (6.5 feet).

Scientists cautioned the waves would continue into the afternoon.

“We dodged a bullet,” said Gerard Fryer, a geophysist for the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. He said there was the possibility that the tsunami would gain strength again as it heads to Japan.

There were no immediate reports of widespread damage around the Pacific Rim just tidal surges that reached up to about seven feet in some island chains. Waves hit California, but barely registered amid stormy weather. No injuries or major property damage were reported.

Nearly 50 countries and island chains remained under tsunami warnings, from Antartica to Russia’s far northeast.

The tsunami raced across the Pacific Ocean at the speed of a jetliner after the quake hit Chile hours earlier. Unlike other tsunamis in recent years in which residents had little warning, emergency officials had ample time to get people out of the potential disaster area.

Sirens blared in Hawaii to alert residents to the potential waves. Emergency officials used buses to ferry people in tourist-heavy Waikiki away from the shore. Authorities even flew overhead in Cessna blaring warnings to people to get out of the potential danger zone

In Tonga, where nine people died in a Sept. 29 tsunami, police evacuated tens of thousands of people from the coast. In Samoa, where 183 people died in the same tsunami, authorities used radio, television and mobile phone text messages to alert residents of the waves.

Island chains closer to the epicenter in Chile appeared to have sustained more damage than ones farther away.

On the island of Robinson Crusoe, a huge tsunami wave flooded the village of San Juan Batista, killing at least five people and leaving 11 missing, said Guillermo de la Masa, head of the government emergency bureau for the Valparaiso region.

He said the huge waves also damaged several government buildings on the island.

In French Polynesia, tsunami waves rushed ashore, damaging parts of the coast and tossing around boats. The biggest waves were in Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, where they reached more than 13 feet (4 meters).

In Hawaii, boats and people near the coast were evacuated. The normally bustling beaches were empty. Hilo International Airport, located along the coast, was closed. Residents lined up at supermarkets to stock up on food and batteries. Cars lined up at several gas stations.

The Navy was moving more than a half dozen vessels to try to avoid damage from the tsunami. A frigate, three destroyers and two smaller vessels were being sent out of Pearl Harbor and a cruiser out of Naval Base San Diego, the Navy said.

The ships will be safer out at sea than if they were tied to piers where they could be banged around by the waves, the Navy said.

A tsunami wave can travel at up to 600 mph, said Jenifer Rhoades, tsunami program manager at the National Weather Service.

Some Pacific nations in the warning area were heavily damaged by a tsunami last year.

The Sept. 29 tsunami, spawned by a magnitude-8.3 earthquake, killed 34 people in American Samoa along with the deaths in Samoa and Tonga. Scientists later said that wave was 46 feet (14 meters) high.

The tsunami warning center said the waves reached the islands so quickly residents had only about 10 minutes to respond to its alert.

During the devastating December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, there was little to no warning and much confusion about the impending waves. The tsunami eradicated entire coastal communities the morning after Christmas, killing 230,000 people.

In Hilo, officials cordoned off the first three blocks next to the beach. A few people watched the still ocean as a whale swam off the coast, but streets were mostly empty as tsunami sirens blared. Gas stations had long lines, some 10 cars deep.

A grocery store was filled with people buying everything from instant noodles to beer. Shelves with water were mostly empty.

Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle declared a state of emergency. She said leprosy patients from the Kalaupapa settlement on Molokai have been moved to higher ground before the waves arrived.

Past South American earthquakes have had deadly effects across the Pacific.

A tsunami after a magnitude-9.5 quake that struck Chile in 1960, the largest earthquake ever recorded, killed about 140 people in Japan, 61 in Hawaii and 32 in the Philippines. It was about 3.3 to 13 feet (one to four meters) in height, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK quoted earthquake experts as saying the tsunami would likely be tens of centimeters (inches) high and reach Japan in about 22 hours. A tsunami of 28 centimeters (11 inches) was recorded after a magnitude-8.4 earthquake near Chile in 2001.

Seismologist Fumihiko Imamura, of Japan’s Tohoku University, told NHK that residents near ocean shores should not underestimate the power of a tsunami even though they may be generated by quakes on the other side of the ocean.

“There is the possibility that it could reach Japan without losing its strength,” he said.

From the Associated Press by Tanalee Smith

ADELAIDE, Australia – Anti-whaling activists on Friday cut short what they called their “most successful” Antarctic campaign against Japanese whalers, citing an engine problem on one of their ships.

There are two weeks left in the three-month whaling season, during which Japan sends its six-vessel whaling fleet into Antarctic waters as part of a research program, an allowed exception to the International Whaling Commission’s 1986 ban on commercial whaling.

Paul Watson, founder of the U.S.-based Sea Shepherd group that confronts the whalers each year, said in a statement Thursday that he had ordered the Bob Barker vessel to stop pursuing the Japanese and set a course for Tasmania. He said the vessel had a fuel valve problem that could cause an engine breakdown.

Watson said his group had had its best season ever, adding that the Japanese had not been able to kill a whale for three weeks thanks to Sea Shepherd’s efforts. The protest vessels had closely tailed the Japanese fleet of harpoon and factory vessels, which generally travel together, since late January.

“We’ve hurt the Japanese whaling fleet more this year than any year before,” Watson said. “This has been our most successful campaign in the six-year history of our interventions in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. We have done the best job possible with the resources available to us, and I am confident that we have prevented the slaughter of hundreds of whales.”

He said the Sea Shepherd’s effort this season “spells financial disaster for Japan’s whaling fleet.”

There was no immediate reaction from Japan.

Japan hunts hundreds of mostly whales in the Antarctic annually, with a maximum quota of 935 minke and 50 finback whales. Whale meat not used for study is sold for consumption in Japan, which critics say is the real reason for the hunts.

During each whaling season, in the southern hemisphere summer, Sea Shepherd activists try to block the whalers from firing harpoons and dangling ropes in the water to try to snarl their ships’ propellers. They also hurl packets of stinking rancid butter at their rivals. The whalers have responded by firing water cannons and sonar devices meant to disorient the activists. Collisions have occurred occasionally.

Earlier this month, activist Peter Bethune of New Zealand jumped aboard one of the Japanese ships with the stated goal of making a citizen’s arrest of the ship’s captain, while handing over a $3 million bill for the destruction of his protest ship last month. He is being held on the ship as it returns to Japan, where he may face charges of intrusion.

Watson said the Sea Shepherd will be arranging a legal defense for Bethune.

From The Associated Press

LONDON – British politicians were among those caught up Friday in the latest Twitter-based scam which hijacks users’ accounts to send out sexually explicit messages to friends and followers.

The micro-blogging Web site has been hit by a wave of so-called “phishing scams,” which lure users to a bogus Web site where they’re enticed to part with their passwords. The compromised accounts are then used to distribute rogue messages to other users.

Those tracking the Twitter account of Ed Miliband, the British energy minister, were surprised by a message carrying an unusually direct reference to the politician’s sex life.

“Oh dear it seems like I’ve fallen victim to twitter’s latest ‘phishing’ scam,” Miliband said in a message posted shortly afterward.

He wasn’t alone.

On Thursday, House of Commons leader Harriet Harman told lawmakers her account had sent a bogus message to opposition lawmaker Alan Duncan.

She didn’t say exactly what the content of the message was, but she left British lawmakers wondering when she told them: “I wouldn’t ever send a tweet like that.”

Other prominent politicians and journalists were among those who received the rogue messages.

Even tech-savvy Twitter users have been hit.

Intel UK, the British arm of the chip maker, apologized to its followers Thursday after saying its account had been hacked.

So too was the account of prominent tech blogger Cory Doctorow, who blamed the small screen on his phone for falling 

LONDON – British politicians were among those caught up Friday in the latest Twitter-based scam which hijacks users’ accounts to send out sexually explicit messages to friends and followers.

The micro-blogging Web site has been hit by a wave of so-called “phishing scams,” which lure users to a bogus Web site where they’re enticed to part with their passwords. The compromised accounts are then used to distribute rogue messages to other users.

Those tracking the Twitter account of Ed Miliband, the British energy minister, were surprised by a message carrying an unusually direct reference to the politician’s sex life.

“Oh dear it seems like I’ve fallen victim to twitter’s latest ‘phishing’ scam,” Miliband said in a message posted shortly afterward.

He wasn’t alone.

On Thursday, House of Commons leader Harriet Harman told lawmakers her account had sent a bogus message to opposition lawmaker Alan Duncan.

She didn’t say exactly what the content of the message was, but she left British lawmakers wondering when she told them: “I wouldn’t ever send a tweet like that.”

Other prominent politicians and journalists were among those who received the rogue messages.

Even tech-savvy Twitter users have been hit.

Intel UK, the British arm of the chip maker, apologized to its followers Thursday after saying its account had been hacked.

So too was the account of prominent tech blogger Cory Doctorow, who blamed the small screen on his phone for falling

New Haven, CT (February 19, 2010) Cafe Nine and Connecticut’s #1 college radio station WNHU 88.7 FM are teaming up for a day of music on March 7, 2010. The all day benefit show will raise funds for WNHU during their annual Phone-A-Thon taking place this February 27 through March 7. The lineup will feature Reggae Royalty Don Minott & His All Stars, The Zambonis, and rockabilly/psychobilly band Soul Reapin’ 3. The event will also feature raffles, merchandise, and giveaways. All proceeds from the show will be donated to WNHU. Admission $5. 2pm-6pm

To participate in the WNHU Phone-A-Thon listen LIVE at 88.7 FM or stream online through http://www.wnhu.net this February 27 through March 7.

For more information about Cafe Nine and the March 7 show visit http://cafenine.com/

Cafe Nine. 250 State Street. New Haven, CT. 06511. (203)-789-8281

From the associated press

SALT LAKE CITY – Fossils of a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur have been found in slabs of Utah sandstone that were so hard that explosives had to be used to free some of the remains, scientists said Tuesday. The bones found at Dinosaur National Monument belonged to a type of sauropod — long-necked plant-eaters that were said to be the largest animal ever to roam land.

The discovery included two complete skulls from other types of sauropods — an extremely rare find, scientists said.

The fossils offer fresh insight into lives of dinosaurs some 105 million years ago, including the evolution of sauropod teeth, which reveal eating habits and other information, said Dan Chure, a paleontologist at the monument that straddles the Utah-Colorado border.

“You can hardly overstate the significance of these fossils,” he said.

Of the 120 or so known species of sauropods, complete skulls have been found for just eight. That’s mostly because their skulls were made of thin, fragile bones bound by soft tissue that were easily destroyed after death.

“This is absolutely No. 1 in terms of projects I’ve had the opportunity to work on,” said Brooks Britt, a Brigham Young University paleontologist who co-authored a study on the fossils along with University of Michigan researchers .

The new species is called Abydosaurus mcintoshi. Researchers say it’s part of the larger brachiosaurus family, hulking four-legged vegetarians that include sauropods.

The findings are being published this week in the peer-reviewed science journal Naturwissenschaften.

The bones came from a quarry known as DNM 16. It was discovered in 1977, but intensive excavations didn’t get started until the late 1990s.

The skulls were found in 2005. Tantalized researchers, though, were stymied by rocks around the bones that were so hard that workers were unable to break through, even with use of a jackhammers and concrete saws.

Last year, a blasting crew from Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado spent three days at the quarry detonating handset explosives that loosened the rock but didn’t damage the bones. That allowed scientists to pluck out other fossils, including leg bones, shoulder blades and other parts.

Paleontologists believe they have the remains of at least four dinosaurs at the site. All appear to be juveniles and were likely around 25 feet long, Britt said.

“We don’t know how much bigger they could get,” Britt said.

The skulls — including one that’s complete and intact and another that’s complete but in pieces — offer new clues about how sauropods ate their food.

“They didn’t chew it. They just grabbed it and swallowed it,” Britt said.

Early sauropods had wide teeth. Later versions had narrow, pencil-like teeth. The abydosaurus teeth are in-between, which will help scientists trace how their eating techniques and diet evolved.

“Abydosaurus is the right dinosaur at the right time to answer some of these questions,” University of Michigan researcher John Whitlock said in a statement.

The find may offer the most complete view yet of certain sauropods roaming North America from the Lower Cretaceous period spanning roughly 145 million to 99 million years ago, said Jim Kirkland, Utah’s state paleontologist, who was not involved in the discovery announced Tuesday.

From the Associated Press.

Republican congressional candidate Stephen Fincher, a farmer and gospel singer from Frog Jump, Tenn., campaigns at the National Guard Armory in Ripley, Tenn., Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010. Ask national Republicans to name a model 2010 congressional candidate, and they're likely to mention Stephen Fincher. (AP Photo/Lance Murphey)

NEW YORK – Ask national Republicans to name a model 2010 congressional candidate, and they’re likely to mention Stephen Fincher. A 37-year-old farmer and gospel singer from Frog Jump, Tenn., Fincher has raised more than $675,000 in his bid to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. John Tanner.

His nontraditional background suits the GOP just fine.

“He’d never run for office before, never been to Washington, D.C., before,” marveled California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who met Fincher on a recruiting trip for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “He said, ‘Listen, Mr. Kevin,’ he said he couldn’t look his children in the eye and say he watched this country change and didn’t do something about it.”

That a political novice like Fincher could become a top GOP contender to win a historically Democratic district speaks volumes about the unpredictable political environment that has come to define the 2010 midterm elections.

Voters are angry. President Barack Obama’s job approval ratings have sunk, particularly among the independents who helped put him in office. The Democratic and Republican parties are both unpopular. Independent voters are growing in stature and anti-tax tea party activists have become a potent political force.

The fractious atmosphere has sent both parties scrambling to find challengers and open seat candidates who fit the national mood, while they also try to protect incumbents from being steamrolled by it.

“Arguably, both political parties need to earn back voters’ trust,” said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for theNational Republican Senatorial Committee. “Republicans lost it and we need to gain it back.”

It’s not a slam dunk for Republicans, who long to retake control of both the House and Senate amid voter unrest.

They must contend with a party identity tarnished during George W. Bush’s presidency and the pressures of tea party activists who believe the GOP has become too moderate. Tea party-backed candidates are running in dozens of Republican primaries across the country, setting up potentially messy and expensive intraparty battles.

And at least nine former GOP House members are running to recapture seats they held during Bush’s presidency. Current and former members of Congress also are the GOP’s nominees or front-runners for the nomination in six Senate contests so far.

That doesn’t help the GOP make an argument it’s the party of change. Newcomers like Fincher and little-known state legislators like Scott Brown do. Republicans scored a huge victory last month when Brown — with help from independents, tea party activists and the GOP establishment — took the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat away from Democrats in Massachusetts.

“There seems to be a spirit among the kind of challengers who’ve said, ‘I don’t really know a lot about politics, but I know what my community is all about,’” said Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican who heads his party’s campaign operation for House seats.

Brown’s candidacy was well-suited to the anxious political environment. He focused on a narrow, fiscally conservative message while casting himself as an independent thinker untethered to partisan demands. While he was a featured speaker before conservative activists last week, he also voted with Democrats this week to end a Republican-led filibuster of a jobs bill backed by Obama.

Like Brown, Fincher isn’t quick to identify himself as a Republican. He calls himself a conservative on his campaign Web site, adding, “My roots run deep in Tennessee, not politics.”

Democrats also are advising their candidates to stress their political independence and avoid becoming caricatured as captives of Washington.

Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who chairs the House Democrats’ campaign operation, points to his party’s 5-0 record in House special elections last year as proof that his party can still win with the right candidates and message.

That record will be tested again this spring, with special elections to fill three House seats, all held by Democrats:

_The Pennsylvania seat of the late Rep. John Murtha.

_The Florida seat of former Rep. Robert Wexler, who resigned last month to run a Middle East think tank.

_The Hawaii seat of Rep. Neil Abercrombie, who’s said he will resign Sunday to run for governor.

Van Hollen said incumbents facing re-election battles are being urged to “vote in an independent-minded way — sometimes with the majority, and sometimes not. Sometimes with Obama, and sometimes not.”

Of the former GOP lawmakers running to reclaim seats, Van Hollen said, “Voters don’t believe that turning the keys back to the guys who drove over the ditch in the first place is a good alternative.”

Republican Steve Chabot, running for his old seat in a Cincinnati-area district he lost in 2008 to Democrat Steve Driehaus, is working hard not to fall into that trap.

Despite his seven terms in the House, Chabot believes he can still position himself as the independent outsider in the race and frame Driehaus as being too deferential to Democratic leaders in Congress.

“Rather than do what’s right for the people here, he’s followed Nancy Pelosi’s lead on virtually everything,” Chabot said of Driehaus.

Republicans consider Driehaus’ seat one of their best targets, but Chabot said he’s raising most of the money for his race in and around his district.

“I’ve always felt you’re very much on your own when you are running,” Chabot said. “If the party is able to help, we appreciate that, but we are not depending on it.”

WEST HAVEN, Conn. – The University of New Haven Department of Athletics is pleased to announce a brand new website, www.NewHavenChargers.com! The new website launches today and is the new official website of Charger Athletics.

The website is an exciting new way to showcase UNH student-athletes and coaches accomplishments on the field of play, in the classroom and in the community. With features like photo galleries, text message alerts, e-newletters and videos, the website has been developed over the last six months.

Log on and take a look around the site. Navigation is made easy by a dropdown menu on the top of every page and sidebars on each sport page. Click on the video player on the right side of the site to see the latest Charger video, or try the Hall of Fame button on the bottom to register for the 2010 Hall of Fame induction Ceremony.

The previous website (www.newhaven.edu/athletics) will now default to an error message which will redirect all users to the new page.

Make sure to vote on the first Charger poll located in the lower right of every page!