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 SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian fashion and farming figures Tuesday hit back at animal rights activists’ claims that wool production was cruel to sheep, saying bans on wool exports were misguided and hurting farmers.

The US-based group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has campaigned for years against mulesing — the Australian practice of cutting a slice of flesh from a sheep’s rump to prevent the animal dying of flystrike.

PETA’s efforts have seen major fashion companies such as Adidas, Hugo Boss, Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria’s Secret shun the Australian product and some foreign retailers refuse to sell clothing made with wool from Down Under.

Sydney’s Daily Telegraph tabloid has launched a campaign to counteract PETA’s claims, telling the group to back off from farmers who are already struggling against the worst drought in a century.

Fashion designer Jayson Brunson said the PETA campaign was misguided because the industry had already agreed to ban mulesing by 2010 and the boycotts were bringing unnecessary pain to farmers.

"The farmers have been going through enough hell with the drought, which has been going on forever, without having to cop all of this kind of flak," he told AFP.

"Everybody wants mulesing phased out, nobody wants to hurt the sheep," Brunson said.

"But it’s a renewable, sustainable, biodegradable fibre which is one of the best things in the world. You don’t kill the animals. It’s not like fur. It’s not even like leather. It’s very humane."

Brunson said fashion designers and farmers were sympathetic towards PETA but that mulesing was so far the only way to prevent the sheep from dying from "a very horrible death."

Some 11.5 percent of Australian wool growers have already ceased mulesing, which prevents flies from embedding in wool near the sheep’s backside and laying maggots which eventually eat the animal’s flesh.

But Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said if the painful practice was ceased immediately, there would be an immediate rise in the number of sheep dying from flystrike.

"A boycott is a punishing blow for our farmers who have done nothing wrong — in the middle of our country’s toughest drought," he told the Daily Telegraph.

Chairman of the Australian Wool and Sheep Industry Taskforce Don Hamblin said farmers were suffering from the PETA-led boycotts, almost four years after the industry decided to stamp out the practice.

"With four years of almost non-stop drought, and high fodder prices for feeding lifestock, some of our producers question their long-term future in the industry," Hamblin told AFP.

The industry, which says farmers must carry out mulesings because the dense wool of merino sheep combined with abundant flies and hot weather makes sheep here uniquely vulnerable to flystrike, is developing other options to mulesing.

Among them are genetic modifications to breed sheep with greater resistance to flystrike; drug use, and placing a tight clip on the animal’s rump so that the flesh is cut off from blood supply and eventually dies and falls off.

PETA has described the industry response as inadequate and argues that clipping is as painful a mutilation as mulesing.

"International clothing retailers won’t accept this bait-and-switch tactic and will demand that their wool come from lambs who haven’t been mulesed using either shears or clips," PETA president Ingrid E. Newkirk said in a letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in March.

Australia is a major global wool producer, with the industry worth about 2.09 billion dollars (1.98 billion US) annually.

 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States has called for a review of international law to regulate the killing of whales for scientific research in an apparent bid to plug a loophole exploited by Japan, which is accused of slaughtering the creatures.

The change, which could include a protocol on scientific whaling, has however drawn criticism from conservation groups which say it would legitimize a fundamentally illegal activity.

The International Whaling Commission (IWC), which is in charge of conservation of the mammals, has imposed the moratorium on commercial whaling since 1986 but environmentalists argue that Japan has been exploiting a legal loophole allowing whaling for scientific research.

Japan kills about 1,000 whales a year under its scientific program and then sells the meat.

"In order to prohibit scientific whaling through legal means, a change to the ICRW (the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling) would be necessary," said William Hogarth, the US Commissioner to the IWC, which is scheduled to hold annual talks in Santiago, Chile from June 23-27.

Alternatively, Hogarth said "relevant countries would need to enter into a separate binding international side agreement with regard to scientific whaling."

The ICRW was signed in 1946 as a direct result of decades of overharvesting of the great whale species of the world. Its primary purpose is the conservation and management of the gentle creatures.

Hogarth did not elaborate on the US proposal in his speech at a congressional hearing ahead of the talks of the 79-member IWC, which is split between pro- and anti-commercial whaling countries.

But Patrick Ramage, the global whale program director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), said concerns had reportedly been expressed by other anti-whaling nations at the IWC that the United States might settle for a sort of code of conduct for scientific whale hunting.

"In our judgment, we would say that is putting lipstick on a pig," he told AFP. "That is trying to brand legitimacy to a fundamentally illegal and inappropriate activity and should be immediately rejected by any country serious about conserving whales in the 21st century."

"We have heard discussion at the previous IWC meeting of US support for a protocol on scientific whaling and that in our judgement will be bowing to unreasonable demands from countries still killing whales," said Ramage, who also testified at the one-day hearing.

A provision in the ICRW allows member countries unilaterally to grant special permits to "kill, take, and treat" whales for the purpose of scientific research.

Although Iceland, Japan and Norway have used this provision at different times since the commercial whaling moratorium took effect in 1986, Japan is currently the only member country conducting lethal scientific research.

The United States, Australia, New Zealand and Britain, among leaders of the conservation lobby, question the necessity of the lethal research and object to the commercial sale of the meat derived from such activity.

There is also reportedly an effort to persuade Japan to either withdraw from or reduce its scientific whaling in the North and South Pacific in return for some sort of compromise.

Possible compromises include getting Japan to agree to hunt only in its own coastal waters, an extension of whale sanctuaries or a management regime that confines whaling to some places when deemed scientifically sustainable.

"From our perspective, a compromise or negotiated solution is exactly the wrong direction to move in at this stage," Ramage said.

"Japan, Norway and Iceland — the only three countries that want to continue whaling — should be encouraged and gently led to embrace the emerging reality of the 21st century, which is we can make more money watching these whales than from killing them," he said.

 

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The U.S. space shuttle Discovery backed away from the International Space Station on Wednesday, leaving behind a Japanese research laboratory, a new crewmember and high hopes for the outpost’s completion by 2010.

Pilot Ken Ham pulsed Discovery’s steering jets to slip away from the station’s Harmony docking port at 7:42 a.m. EDT(1142 GMT) as the two space ships sailed 210 miles above the south Pacific Ocean east of Australia.

The shuttle arrived at the station on June 2 to deliver Japan’s primary contribution to the $100 billion complex, the 37-foot-long (11-metre-long) Kibo laboratory.

"We hope we left them a better, more capable station than when we arrived," Discovery commander Mark Kelly radioed to flight controllers as the shuttle prepared for undocking.

From aboard the station, Greg Chamitoff, who replaced returning flight engineer Garrett Reisman, replied, "It was amazing how much got done here. We wish you guys a terrific flight back and awesome landing."

Discovery is due to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday after completing the third of five shuttle missions NASA has planned for this year.

NASA’s next flight is scheduled for October when shuttle Atlantis lifts off for a final servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA has 10 missions remaining before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010 and work begins on a new ship that can travel to the moon as well as the space station.

FIXING THE STATION

In addition to delivering Kibo, the Discovery crew brought parts to fix the station’s sole toilet, the first bagels in space and supplies for station commander Sergei Volkov, flight engineer Oleg Kononenko and Chamitoff.

Chamitoff’s family owns a bagel shop in Montreal and he brought the bagels as a treat for his crewmates.

During a final round of interviews on Tuesday before taking fellow Jew Reisman’s place on the space station, Chamitoff said, "This is a handover between one Jewish astronaut and another so we’re pretty excited about that."

Shuttle astronauts Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan conducted three spacewalks during the mission to install and outfit Kibo, inspect joints that rotate the station’s solar power wings and recharge its cooling system.

One of the solar wing joints has been contaminated with metal shavings and will need to be cleaned up before it will be used full time to track the sun for power.

Fossum found a thin coat of debris on the other joint and collected samples for engineers to analyze back on Earth.

NASA wants to get the station in tip-top shape before the shuttle program comes to an end. Russian Soyuz capsules will be used to ferry crewmembers to and from the outpost and a variety of vehicles from Russia, Europe and eventually Japan will haul cargo.

No other ships besides the shuttle, however, can return equipment and heavy payloads to Earth.

The Discovery crew has one main job left before it is cleared for landing — an inspection of the ship’s wings and nose cap to make sure there was no damage from debris impacts during its May 31 launch.

Typically the inspection, which has become a routine part of all flights since the shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into the atmosphere in 2003, is conducted the day after liftoff.

But the Kibo lab was too large for Discovery to also carry in its payload bay the 50-foot-long (15-metre-long) sensor-laden boom used for the inspection. During the first spacewalk, the astronauts retrieved a boom left behind for Discovery by the crew of the last shuttle mission.

 

 CEDAR FALLS, Iowa - A sandbagged levee was preventing a swollen river from spilling over its banks and flooding a northeastern Iowa city, but officials on Wednesday asked for additional volunteers to help shore it up as more rain loomed.

The Cedar River had been expected to top the levee during the night, deluging downtown Cedar Falls, a city of 35,000 people some 130 miles northwest of Des Moines. But city spokeswoman Susan Staudt said early Wednesday that the sandbags appeared to be holding.

Flood stage at Cedar Falls is 88 feet, and by about 5 a.m. the river stood at 101.8 feet, down slightly from earlier in the night. The previous record was 99.2 feet in 1999.

Thousands of volunteers who showed up Tuesday to help with the sandbagging effort "saved this city, but we are still at a critical point," Staudt said.

She said more volunteers were needed to help reinforce the sandbag wall, which rises several feet above the levee. Volunteers patrolling the sandbag wall during the night reinforced spots where water was seeping through, she said.

Thunderstorms arrived in western Iowa during the morning as a band of storms rippled across the northern Plains, and the National Weather Service issue a severe thunderstorm watch for northwest Iowa and parts of Minnesota and South Dakota.

"If we get more rain (the river) can rise again," Staudt said. "The levee and the ground is saturated and we want to make sure it doesn’t give way."

Rising rivers wiped out a railroad bridge elsewhere in Iowa on Tuesday, closed part of a Wisconsin freeway and forced residents along the Mississippi River to prepare for what could be the worst flooding in 15 years.

In Cedar Falls, Donita Krueger was among those helping fill sandbags Tuesday.

"If this breaks, the whole downtown will be flooded," she said. "Everything goes on down here. It would be a big hit to the community."

White, yellow and orange sandbags lined downtown, which was evacuated Tuesday. Tarps and plastic were taped to windows and doors. Mary Dooley of the American Red Cross said more than 70 people stayed in a shelter overnight.

In nearby Waterloo, fast-moving water swept away a railroad bridge used to transport tractors from a John Deere factory to Cedar Rapids. It also led the city to shut its downtown and close five bridges.

To the south, municipal officials in Palo urged residents to evacuate as water was expected to rise as much as 2 feet higher than in 1993, when devastating flooding covered wide areas of Iowa and adjoining states.

Flooding threatened water treatment plants in several towns, Lt. Gov. Patty Judge said. Mason City’s plant was knocked out of service Sunday when the Winnebago River broke through a levee, while officials in Des Moines hoped that releasing water from the Saylorville Reservoir would protect the capital city and its water treatment plant.

In Wisconsin, fixing the broken and nearly empty Lake Delton, where water carved a new channel as it rushed through a huge gap in an embankment, was only one of the challenges facing engineers and contractors on Wednesday.

The rising Rock River near Johnson Creek threatened a bridge and shut down westbound lanes of Interstate 94, which links Milwaukee and Madison.

State and local officials were monitoring various dams where high water from days of storms threatened to make them give way.

But while the new storms moving across the Midwest on Wednesday threatened to drop an extra inch or two of rain on Wisconsin on Thursday, weather service meteorologist Bill Borghoff said a dry spell could be coming.

"As we head into next week, it looks pretty dry for the most part," he said.

In Elnora, Ind., about 100 miles southwest of Indianapolis, berms of white sandbags and concrete barriers held back the White River. Most residents left after voluntary evacuation orders came late Monday, two days after the area got up to 10 inches of rain.

Downriver from Elnora, a levee failed early Wednesday near the town of Capehart, and Daviess County authorities urged residents to evacuate.

"We’ve got about a 40-yard swath of levee that’s gone," said Indiana state Rep. Dave Crooks, speaking for the county’s Emergency Management Agency. "We’ve got rapidly rising water in that whole bottom area. If you’ve got a home there, it’s pretty serious."

Authorities also ordered as many as 300 residents north of nearby Maysville to evacuate late Tuesday after water topped a levee.

Along the Mississippi River, the National Weather Service on Tuesday predicted crests of 10 feet above flood stage and higher over the next two weeks. Most of the towns are protected by levees, but outlying areas could be flooded.

"This is major flooding," weather service hydrologist Karl Sieczynski said of the Mississippi. He urged people in unprotected flood plain areas to seek higher ground.

Elsewhere, thunderstorms brought relief to parts of the East Coast that had been baking in a heat wave for four days. Temperatures in the upper 90s on Tuesday stretched from Georgia all the way to northern New England, where the weather service reported an afternoon high of 99 at Portsmouth, N.H.

The storms also knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses. About 93,000 customers in New Jersey, 110,000 in southeastern Pennsylvania, 75,000 in upstate New York and 20,000 in Connecticut remained without electricity early Wednesday, and some 152,000 customers were still blacked out in Michigan from a series of storms that began Friday.

Philadelphia officials blamed two deaths on the heat and the upstate New York storms were blamed for one death.

 

HOUSTON - Space shuttle Discovery pulled away from the international space station on Wednesday and began its journey home, ending a nine-day visit highlighted by the installation of a new Japanese lab.

The shuttle and its crew of seven, including a Japanese astronaut, are due back on Earth on Saturday.

"We wish them the best with their expedition and we hope we left them a better, more capable space station than when we arrived. Sayonara," shuttle commander Mark Kelly told the space station crew before leaving.

"We wish you guys a terrific flight back, an awesome landing and look forward to seeing you on the ground," responded Gregory Chamitoff, the station’s newest crew member.

After the shuttle undocked from the space station, pilot Ken Ham backed Discovery away from the orbiting outpost and guided it around the orbiting complex so the crew could take pictures. After that, the shuttle fired its engines and started its trip back to Earth.

"Discovery departing after a successful mission to the international space station, leaving behind great memories and new hope, Kibo, for the future," Chamitoff said, ringing a bell that heralded the shuttle’s final departure, a tradition borrowed from the Navy.

Besides delivering the new lab, named Kibo, Japanese for hope, the shuttle also dropped off Chamitoff. He traded places with astronaut Garrett Reisman, who lived aboard the orbiting outpost for three months. Chamitoff will stay on the station for six months.

The hatches between the shuttle and station were closed Tuesday in preparation for the departure. Before the doors were shut, the seven Discovery members and the three-man station crew held a brief ceremony in which they shook hands and hugged goodbye.

"It’s really sad to see you guys go for me. But I’m looking forward to the adventure ahead," said Chamitoff, 45, an aeronautics researcher.

Reisman, 40, a mechanical engineer, lightened the moment with a bit of humor.

"I managed not to break anything really expensive," he said. "I’m leaving now with the station in good hands and with a tremendous feeling of satisfaction."

Discovery’s crew delivered and installed the new lab to the space station.

The 37-foot lab, about the size of a bus, is the biggest room at the space station. Kibo also has a storage closet and a 33-foot robotic arm.

The $1 billion lab’s third and final section — a "porch" for exterior experiments — and a second, smaller robotic arm will be delivered next year.

Discovery also delivered a new pump that fixed the space station’s malfunctioning toilet. The problem — confined to the urine side of the commode — had forced the orbiting outpost’s crew to flush manually with extra water several times a day.

Before returning home, Discovery’s astronauts will pull out the laser-tipped inspection boom that they retrieved from the space station after it was left by another shuttle in March, and survey their ship’s wings and nose cap.

The laser survey normally is conducted the day after liftoff, but Discovery didn’t have room for the inspection boom because of the giant Kibo lab that filled its payload bay.

The inspection, which will look for any damage from debris generated during the May 31 launch or from micrometeorites in orbit, is one of the safety measures put in place by NASA after the 2003 Columbia accident. Columbia was destroyed during re-entry as a result of a gashed wing.

Flight director Matt Abbott said photography and data collected so far on the shuttle’s thermal protective shield indicate the ship is in good shape.

"We haven’t seen anything that gives us any indication of concern at this point," Abbott said.

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