Friday, October 30, 2009 LONDON: Sharks abandon their young pups as soon as they're born. But far from being cold-hearted mothers, scientists have shown for the first time that they provide their pups with super-sized livers to live off while they learn to hunt.Researchers from Bangor University made the finding after trawling through shark data records from KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa spanning over 30 years. 'We found this really just by chance. We plotted liver mass against body mass and there was a massive peak in the really young sharks. There was an obvious pattern of the liver being used up,' says Nigel Hussey, who led the research. The huge livers, which make up around 20 per cent of the pups' body mass, are packed with fats and probably keep them going in the first months of their lives, say the researchers. Once the sharks are fully grown and get better at hunting, the livers make up just six per cent of their body mass.Until now, researchers hadn't looked in detail at how shark mothers invest in their young.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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