Heathrow's new boss face baggage chaos on first day in job

LONDON (Reuters) - London's Heathrow Airport is working to reunite thousands of bags with their owners after computer failures at its flagship terminal, plunging its new chief executive straight into firefighting mode.

The baggage system went down at Terminal 5, home to British Airways, last Thursday. The intermittent problems continued until Sunday, the airport said, resulting in bags needing to be sorted manually and producing a huge backlog.

Heathrow is the world's third busiest airport, serving 191,200 passengers per day.

"We are on top of the situation," Chief Executive John Holland-Kaye told BBC Radio, speaking on his first day in the top job. "We are working very hard, doing our best to get our bags back to passengers. There are a few thousand that we are going to get on their way today," he said.

The baggage problem brought back memories of the disastrous opening of Terminal 5 in 2008 when hundreds of flights were cancelled and thousands of bags were lost.

Terminal 2, a 2.5 billion pound project which was re-opened last week by Queen Elizabeth, has also suffered minor problems with its IT systems.

Two airlines - Thai Airways and Turkish Airlines -said they had delayed their move from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2 after the airport started testing the whole baggage system to find faults.

The problems at Heathrow underline the challenges facing Holland-Kaye, who is having to manage a hub operating at close to full capacity.

He is in the process of lobbying for permission to build a third runway at the airport, which is co-owned by Spanish infrastructure company Ferrovial and other partners, which Holland-Kaye says is needed to stay ahead of rivals like Paris Charles De Gaulle, Amsterdam Schiphol and Frankfurt.

A commission set up by the British government to advise on airport expansion in the south east of England is due to report in 2015, with a third runway at Heathrow singled out as one option.

In order to fund the extension, Holland-Kaye told the Financial Times he wanted to increase landing charges at Heathrow by up to 20 percent, from 20 pounds per passenger to 24 pounds, to secure a return on the 17 billion pounds investment that would be needed for a new runway.

(Reporting by Paul Sandle Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)

Heathrow AirportBritish Airways

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First Home Buyer Checklist

First Home Buyer Checklist

Buying a home for the first time can be one of the most exciting times in your life – it can also be one of the most complicated too! However, if you’re prepared for it, buying a home doesn’t have to be a nightmare and it leaves you with more time to be excited about the future.

First home buyers are blessed with a range of government benefits designed to help people break into the property market. Read on for more information about purchasing your first home.

First Home Buyers Grant

Introduced in July 2000, the First Home Owner Grant (FHOG) is an initiative developed by the Federal Government to encourage first home buyers to enter the property market. In New South Wales the FHOG launched at $ 7,000; however, this has been increased to $ 14,000 for an existing home and $ 21,000 if building a new home. The increased grant is only valid between October 14 2008 and June 30 2009, after which it will return to $ 7,000.

Am I eligible for the First Home Owner Grant?

Eligibility is based on a number of points. You must meet the following requirements in order to apply for a FHOG:

- You must be buying the property as a person, not a company. – Be at least 18 years of age. – At least one applicant (you or your spouse) must be an Australian Citizen or Permanent Resident. – At least one applicant must occupy the residence for at least six months of the first 12 months after purchase. – You or your spouse must not have previously received a First Home Owner Grant. – You or your spouse must not have previously owned a residential property.

The application process is fairly simple and just requires the applicant to fill out a First Home Owner Grant application form.

Stamp Duty

One of the many costs involved in purchasing a house is stamp duty.

Fortunately for first home buyers in New South Wales, stamp duty is exempt for purchases of up to $ 500,000 and significantly reduced for purchases between $ 500,000 and $ 600,000.

Legal and Conveyancing Fees

Purchasing a home also involves a number of legal or conveyancing fees. Most people will hire a lawyer or conveyancer to handle the paperwork and costs can vary depending on the complexity of the purchase. These fees typically won’t blow your whole budget, but it’s good to have some money set aside just in case.

Pre-Purchase Property Inspections

An absolute essential when buying a property is a pre-purchase property inspection. This will ensure that the house or flat you’re purchasing is in good condition. A building report will highlight whether or not your potential home is suffering from things such as timber rot, dampness or pipe leakage, pest infestation, termite damage and much more.

Why should I organise a property inspection?

There are a number of benefits associated with these types of benefits, including:

- Peace of mind that the property is in good condition. – Provides you with leverage if there is a fault in the building, i.e. room to negotiate the price down. – If purchasing a flat, apartment or anything within a strata-run block, a strata report will indicate any problems with management or any upcoming renovations and developments. This is useful information as strata fees usually increase with new developments. – Will ensure that your new residence is free of termites, rats, mice and any other nasty pests.

Basically, a pre-purchase property inspection could end up saving you from a bad purchase or allow you to negotiate a much lower price for the property. It also means that you’ll know what to fix as soon as you move in!

This article was provided by Gavin Childs Property Inspections.

First Home Buyer Checklist

Pets First USC University Dog Cheerleader Outfit, Small

Description

Pet cheerleader outfit with NCAA school logo in size small, for a dog measuring 8" to 12" from the nape of the neck to the base of the tail.

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Features

• 100-Percent Cotton screen printed team cheerleader outfit


• Two-color pleated skirt with Velcro closure front


• Machine wash delicate cold water line dry do not iron

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Details & Price

This product was manufactured by Pets First.

Brand: Pets First
UPC: 023508117728
List Price: $21.99.
New Price: $21.23 Only 28 left
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(Read Reviews)

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Pets First USC University Dog Cheerleader Outfit, Small

First cases of flesh-eating drug Krokodil surface in US

Krokodil, a flesh-eating drug which first surfaced in Russia more than a decade ago, has reportedly been found in the United States.

Similar to morphine or heroin, krokodil is made by mixing codeine with substances like gasoline, paint thinner, oil or alcohol. That mixture is then injected into a vein, potentially causing an addict's skin to turn greenish, scaly and eventually rot away.

Dr. Frank LoVecchio, co-medical director at Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center in Arizona, told CBS5 that the first two cases of people using the drug have been reported in the state. He declined to comment on the patients' conditions.

"As far as I know, these are the first cases in the United States that are reported," LoVecchio said, adding that the cases are believed to be linked. "So we're extremely frightened."

Users of krokodil — or desomorphine — had previously only been found in large numbers in Russia, where 65 million doses of the opiate were seized during the first three months of 2011, Russia's Federal Drug Control Service told Time.

"This is really frightening," Dr. Aaron Skolnik, a toxicologist at Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center told MyFoxPhoenix.com. "This is something we hoped would never make it to the U.S. because it's so detrimental to the people who use it."

To produce the potentially deadly drug, which has a comparable effect to heroin but is much cheaper to make, users mix codeine with gasoline, paint thinner, iodine, hydrochloric acid and red phosphorous. Codeine, a controlled substance in the United States used to treat mild to moderate pain, is widely available over the counter in Russia.

In 2010, up to a million people, according to various estimates, were injecting the resulting substance into their veins in Russia, thus far the only country worldwide to see it grow into an epidemic, Time reports.

The drug's sinister moniker — also known as crocodile — refers to the greenish and scaly appearance of a user's skin at the site of injection as blood vessels rupture and cause surrounding tissues to die. According to reports, the drug first appeared in Siberia and parts of Russia around 2002, but has spread throughout the country in recent years.

Officials at the Washington-based National Institute on Drug Abuse told FoxNews.com in 2011 that they had not heard of the drug prior to an inquiry by FoxNews.com.

Dr. Ellen Marmur, chief of dermatological and cosmetic surgery at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, told FoxNews.com in 2011 she had never seen any cases involving krokodil, but said it reminded her of "skin popping," or when intravenous drug users inject a substance directly into their skin due to damaged veins.

"This looks to me a lot like skin popping, what drug users used to do back in the day with heroin and other drugs," Marmur said. "It just kills the skin, that's what you're seeing, big dead pieces of skin."

Those large pieces of dead skin are referred to as eschars, Marmur said, leaving the user prone to infection, amputation and other complications.

Marmur said at the time that she was concerned the drug could eventually make its way into the United States.

"It's horrible," she continued. "These people are the ultimate in self-destructive drug addiction. Once you're an addict at this level, any rational thinking doesn't apply."

Dr. Lewis Nelson, a medical toxicologist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York, also said in 2011 that he doubted krokodil would reach the United States due to the availability of other cheap, powerful drugs such as black tar heroin and Oxycontin.

"It's not going to become a club drug, I can guarantee you that," he said.

Click for more from MyFoxPhoenix.com.

FoxNews.com's Joshua Rhett Miller contributed to this report.

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Modest start for Switzerland's first drive-in 'sex boxes'

By Alice Baghdjian

ZURICH (Reuters) - Greeted by a press pack rather than prostitutes, the first customer to roll up to Switzerland's sex drive-in on opening night took one lap of the facility before making a hasty exit.

The second car, a family vehicle driven by a man in sunglasses under cloudy evening skies, broke down and needed jump starting in front of a host of photographers, sniggering into their cameras.

Zurich authorities had said they expected a modest start to the country's first so-called "sex boxes", a row of drive-in wooden garages on a looping track where clients in cars can visit prostitutes, shielded from prying eyes and security cameras.

With an estimated annual turnover of around 3.5 billion Swiss francs ($3.79 billion), prostitution has been legal in Switzerland since 1942, with sex workers in Zurich required to have a special permit, health insurance and pay tax.

The number of prostitutes in the Alpine nation has risen sharply over the last decade, due to the decriminalization of procuring and passive solicitation of sex alongside agreements between Switzerland and the European Union on free movement of people.

The sex boxes, which echo similar drive-in systems in the Netherlands and Germany, are being touted as a way to get large numbers of prostitutes and their clients off Switzerland's otherwise pristine streets.

BOXES AND CAMPER VANS

Complete with panic buttons in each shed, showers, a laundry room and on-site health workers, supporters say the system offers relative security to sex workers and privacy to their clients, while reducing the disturbance to locals.

"The existing strips were simply too strained," said Ursula Kocher at Zurich's welfare department.

"The conditions for the women were completely unhygienic and dangerous, they had to work in woods or secluded car parks," Kocher said, standing in front of the boxes.

Only four prostitutes were on site at the start of the evening, but Kocher said she was sure more women would come to the compound, where they would have access to contraceptives, counseling and sexual health checks.

Between 7 p.m. and 5 a.m., men can cruise along the track and choose a prostitute from wooden shelters before parking in one of the nine drive-in boxes.

Though clients must arrive alone in a car, they also have the option of parking and visiting two smaller boxes or one of four camper vans on foot.

Prostitutes at the facility declined to talk to journalists or allow them to take their pictures.

LEGAL PROSTITUTION

Some critics have voiced concern that the novel fascination with the sex boxes, which have cost taxpayers more than 2 million francs to construct, is a distraction from more serious issues about exploitation and human trafficking.

"It would be more revealing to ask: what sort of men buy sexual services of young women on the street?" said Andrea Gisler, president of Zurich's Frauenzentrale women's group, adding the boxes only relocated red light activities to the outskirts of the city.

"The prostitutes and their protection has never come into it," Gisler said.

The conditions for sex workers may be better in countries where prostitution is legal, but a global study showed this year that they also report higher influxes of human trafficking.

One author of the study, Eric Neumayer at the London School of Economics, said the new system in Zurich could aid monitoring of human trafficking.

"If it's a very controlled environment, it should be easier to do checks on where the women come from, if they are there against their will," Neumayer said.

(Reporting by Alice Baghdjian, editing by Paul Casciato)

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World gets its first look at Australia Zoo's newborn Sumatran tiger cubs

Two Sumatran tiger cubs were born last Thursday at the Australian Zoo and now you can watch them, and their mother Kaitlyn live on a 24/7 webcam.

The feed is being provided by The Pet Collective, which delayed implementing the camera immediately to ensure that the tiger cubs were healthy.

In truth, most of what you’ll be seeing on the live cam is the still-unnamed cubs sleeping. But for cat lovers, that’s part of the inherent charm.

“While we’re typically focused on pets and pet lovers, when the Australia Zoo came to us with this opportunity, we knew it was something we just had to provide to our viewers,” Tom Maynard, channel head of The Pet Collective, said in a statement provided to Yahoo! News. “This is really an extraordinary opportunity both for us and for our audience.”

And the real scoop here for tiger fans is that viewers get a glimpse at the rare tigers before they are put on display for the public to see in person. Fewer than 500 Sumatran tigers are known to exist in the world and the successful breeding of the cubs is part of a larger effort to help protect the species. The large tigers can grow up to nine feet long and weigh from between 220 and 400 pounds

“Kaitlyn will spend the next few weeks making sure her cubs are well fed with the nutrition they need, while the cubs will bond with her before they go on public display,” Australia Zoo’s tiger keeper Giles Clark said in a statement provided to Yahoo! News. “This means The Pet Collective is offering the world a very first look, well before most people have ever seen young tigers.”

You can watch the live tiger cam below:

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Boa constrictor devours howler monkey in a first

A boa constrictor eating an adult female Purús red howler monkey. Usually boa constrictors have been known to eat smaller animals.Erika Patrícia Quintino / American Journal of Primatology, via Paul Garber

If a snake eats a monkey in the forest and no one sees it, does it make a difference? New evidence suggests that it does.

For the first time, scientists have witnessed a boa constrictor attacking and eating a howler monkey. The finding, and boa-eating-monkey video, is noteworthy since reports of primates being eaten by predators are relatively rare, according to the study, published this month in the journal Primates.

"This may cause us to rethink how vulnerable [these] primates are to predation," said Paul Garber, a primatologist at the University of Illinois, who wasn't involved in the study.

Vulnerable to predators
Predation does happen to primates and monkeys, particularly by snakes, large raptors and big cats but it has not been witnessed very often, Garber told LiveScience. That's due in part to the fact that primates live in groups, wherein each member looks out for threats, providing "coordinated predator detection," he said. Primates also generally have good vision that enables them to spot would-be attackers. It's also possible that the presence of scientists watching primates helps drive predators away, he added. [Gallery: Monkey Mug Shots]

But sometimes the group's defenses are not enough. In this incident, which occurred in the western Brazilian Amazon, an adult female Purs red howler monkey (Alouatta puruensis) was seen climbing away from its group of five other monkeys, trailed by another adult female in the rain forest canopy. Without warning, a hidden boa struck at the monkey, wrapping the primate in the muscular coils of its body and crushing it.

The attack was typical of boa constrictors, which crouch and wait for prey. The snakes have been known to lurk in one place without moving for more than a month, according to the study. Typically boas eat smaller prey, such as rodents and small birds. Most adult female howler monkeys weigh about 13 pounds (6 kilograms), according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

In this case, the howler likely didn't see the snake, said study lead author Jlio Csar Bicca-Marques, a researcher at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul. The study suggests that "snakes may play a stronger role as predators of New World monkeys than previously thought," he told LiveScience. [Video of Boa Eating Monkey]

A meal, headfirst 
After the snake struck, the victim's companion approached the snake and hit it a handful of times. But the snake showed no reaction, and the other monkey soon withdrew, watching the macabre affair. Seventy-six minutes later, after strangling the monkey to death, the snake ate the howler headfirst.

"According to observations on predation attempts on howler monkeys made by other researchers, howlers often don't do anything to defend the victim," Bicca-Marques said.

It's possible that the monkey might not have been eaten if it had stayed closer to the group. "Being a solitary monkey is definitely not a good thing," Garber said.

Other recent studies have found heretofore-unknown examples of primate predation. A study earlier this year, for example, found evidence of a leopard eating a chimpanzee.

The present study was conducted by Bicca-Marques and his student Erika Patricia Quintino. One of the photographs of a boa eating a howler monkey adorned the cover of the American Journal of Primatology, of which Garber is the executive editor.

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First documented video evidence of apes swimming is released

Because of their history of traveling through the trees, researchers say that apes do not have the instinct to swim in the water. But a series of new videos show that what they lack in instinct, the primates more than make up for in learned ability.

Researchers in South Africa and Switzerland documented the swimming efforts of a chimpanzee named Cooper, who not only swims but dives into the deep end of a swimming pool and swims 6.6 feet to the bottom.

“We were extremely surprised when the chimp Cooper dived repeatedly into a swimming pool in Missouri and seemed to feel very comfortable," said School of Anatomical Sciences at Wits University researcher Renato Bender.

“This issue is becoming more and more the focus of research. There is still much to explore,” Bender said.

Even more interesting, the researchers discovered that Cooper employs a breaststroke style, as opposed to the dog paddle technique used by other mammals who are not accustomed to maneuvering in the water.

A second video was filmed at a private zoo in South Carolina, where an orangutan named Suryia can be seen using its long arms and legs to paddle across a pool.

Nicole Bender, a researcher with the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Bern, said that like humans, the apes in the videos actually learned to use the breaststroke, moving beyond their evolutionary instinct to simply dog paddle.

“We did find other well-documented cases of swimming and diving apes, but Cooper and Suryia are the only ones we were able to film,” she said. “We still do not know when the ancestors of humans began to swim and dive regularly.”

A largely unaccepted theory known as the aquatic ape hypothesis, posits that early prehumans actually evolved from an existence where they mixed their time spent in and out of water.

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Tennessee musician becomes first to paddleboard to U.S. from Cuba

By Michael Haskins

KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) - A Tennessee musician on Friday became the first paddleboarder to cross the Florida Straits between Cuba and the United States, making the 110 mile journey in 28 hours as his father watched from a support boat.

Ben Friberg, 35, arrived in Key West dehydrated and exhausted but otherwise in good shape.

Before leaving Cuba on Thursday, Friberg said he was "doing this to promote peace and understanding between Cuba and the United States and to promote a healthy lifestyle."

The guitarist and band leader from Chattanooga stood on his 14-foot-long board for most of the trip, sitting only for quick snacks. The crew of the support boat that accompanied him on the journey included a medic and a navigator.

Friberg was decked out with a long-billed cap for protection from the sun, close-fitting long sleeve shirt, open fingered gloves and shorts cut off below the knee. Special socks shielded his feet.

Last year, Friberg broke the record for the longest distance stand-up paddleboard journey in 24 hours, traveling 238 miles on Canada's Yukon River.

Friberg is believed to be the first person to cross the entire Straits on a paddleboard.

At least two Cubans have made the trip by surfboard. In 1992, Cuban-born doctor Ernesto Barral completed the journey on a wind surfing board in 19 hours, navigating by the stars at night.

In 2011, Miami lifeguard Cynthia Aguilar made the crossing by paddleboard from 14 miles off Cuba's coast. She was unable to set off from dry land because she did not have a Cuban government visa. Unlike Friberg, Aguilar completed the crossing on her knees, using her hands to paddle.

Several swimmers have attempted the journey but only Australian Susan Maroney has succeeded, making the crossing in 1997 with the help of a shark cage.

(Writing by David Adams; Additional reporting by Tom Brown and Marc Frank; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

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After 74 years and 3,000 letters, pen pals meet for first time

written more than 3,000 letters to each other over more than 70 years, but Audrey Sims and her friend Norma Frati had never met in person. Until now.

The pair were first in touch in 1940, when they were assigned to write each other a letter as part of a pen pal project in school. They continued to correspond, but Sims, 83, who lives in Australia, and Frati, 87, who lives in Texas, never got around to getting together.

I think we've got parallel families. We're both married and divorced and married again, and it’s sort of almost the same,” Sims said in an interview with Texas affiliate KHOU.

The pair, who share a mutual love of flowers, said they planned to visit some gardens during Sims’ stay. And the two women say that once Sims heads back to Australia, their written correspondence will resume.

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Alaska city experiences first sunset in months

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — For the first time since May, the sun has set in what is billed as the northernmost city in the United States.

According to the National Weather Service, the first sunset in Barrow, Alaska, since May 10 occurred at 1:57 a.m. Friday. The sun rose again at 3:12 a.m.

Barrow has continuous daylight for so long because of its location, hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle, and the tilt of the earth's axis of rotation.

The town of about 4,500 people will gradually lose sunlight each day until November. After that, the sun won't rise again until January — again, because of the rotational tilt.

The first sunset in months was a nonevent for some residents like Bob Green, an area resident since 1978 who didn't stay up to watch it the sunset.

"I've seen enough of them," he said. "I'm just glad that it's happening. I've had enough sun. I much prefer the winter."

Green, reached at work at Pepe's North of the Border restaurant, said Barrow seems to run better "when it's frozen."

There are no bugs or mud to deal with during the winter months, he said. Also, it's easy to make light in the winter but hard to get rid of that "big light bulb" that is the sun in summer.

While some people might find it strange to live somewhere with extended periods of sunlight or darkness, Patuk Glenn, museum curator at the Inupiat Heritage Center, said residents have grown accustomed to the seasons.

"Most of us, anyway, don't really suffer from that seasonal affective thing," she said, adding: "It's just part of life."

Things like successful spring and fall subsistence whale hunts are cause for excitement in Barrow, she said. There's no real fuss about the first sunset in months.

Like Green, she didn't stay up to see it.

"You know, I'm sleeping at that time," she said, noting she has a job to get to in the morning.

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TV goes to the dogs with first channel for canines

By Patricia Reaney

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lonely, bored dogs left at home all day while their owners are at work could soon be getting some digital company - a TV channel with programming just for pooches.

DOGTV, a 24/7 channel designed specifically for man's best friend, will air nationally next month on the U.S. satellite operator DirecTV, with hopes of attracting dogs in some of the 46 million U.S. households that have at least one.

"It is the first and only television channel that is dedicated to our four-legged friends and not to their parents," Gilad Neumann, the chief executive of the Tel Aviv-based company, said in an interview.

The channel won't be showing the canine equivalent of "Modern Family," "Mad Men" or "Downton Abbey" but will feature programs with music, visuals, animation and the occasional human that are designed to relax, stimulate and ease the loneliness of home-alone pets.

"It's more than just entertainment for dogs. We are creating more of an environment," Neumann said of the channel that costs $4.99 a month. "They are bored and many suffer from separation anxiety. What we are trying to do is to give dogs something to focus on in the background."

Unlike children and adults who can watch TV for hours at a time, Neumann said dogs view the medium differently and will be attracted to it once in awhile when they see something that interests them.

"We have no intention of generating a new generation of couch potatoes out of our dogs," he added.

While not taking any official position, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) said any relaxation and stimulation for pets is good. But it doubted that all dogs will take to it.

"It could work for some dogs and it might not interest others," a spokesman for the AVMA said.

David Frei, director of communications at the Westminster Kennel Club and a co-host of its annual dog show, thinks if it can help relieve separation anxiety for pets and their owners then DOGTV is a good thing.

"I get pictures every year from viewers at home (of the dog show) of their dogs watching television, or standing up on their hind legs when they see a dog. It's kind of cute," he said.

Neumann said the programs were developed with input from Professor Nicholas Dodman, a veterinary behaviorist and director of clinical sciences at Tufts University in Massachusetts, British dog trainer Victoria Stilwell and animal rights activist and trainer Warren Eckstein, and tested on focus groups.

The images are meant to be compatible with a dog's vision, and sounds include a range of frequencies tailored to their sense of hearing.

"We've seen that dogs are interested in certain colors, certain animations," he explained, adding that DOGTV is not meant to replace quality time with owners.

The company, which is in talks and planning to launch the channel in other countries, is also contemplating a TV channel for cats.

"They are not as social as dogs so suffer less from being alone," Neumann said.

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Cynthia Osterman)

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Ex-Microsoft manager plans to create first U.S. marijuana brand

By Jonathan Kaminsky

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A former Microsoft executive plans to create the first U.S. national marijuana brand, with cannabis he hopes to eventually import legally from Mexico, and said he was kicking off his business by acquiring medical pot dispensaries in three U.S. states.

Jamen Shively, a former Microsoft corporate strategy manager, said he envisions his Seattle-based enterprise becoming the leader in both recreational and medical cannabis - much like Starbucks is the dominant name in coffee, he said.

Shively, 45, whose six years at Microsoft ended in 2009, said he was soliciting investors for $10 million in start-up money.

The use, sale and possession of marijuana remains illegal in the United States under federal law. Two U.S. states have, however, legalized recreational marijuana use and are among 18 states that allow it for medical use.

"It's a giant market in search of a brand," Shively said of the marijuana industry. "We would be happy if we get 40 percent of it worldwide."

A 2005 United Nations report estimated the global marijuana trade to be valued at $142 billion. http://www.unodc.org/pdf/WDR_2005/volume_1_web.pdf

Washington state and Colorado became the first two U.S. states to legalize recreational marijuana when voters approved legalization in November.

Shively laid out his plans, along with his vision for a future in which marijuana will be imported from Mexico, at a Thursday news conference in downtown Seattle.

Joining him was former Mexican President Vicente Fox, a longtime Shively acquaintance who has been an advocate of decriminalizing marijuana. Fox said he was there to show his support for Shively's company but has no financial stake in it.

"What a difference it makes to have Jamen here sitting at my side instead of Chapo Guzman," said Fox, referring to the fact he would rather see Shively selling marijuana legally than the Mexican drug kingpin selling it illegally. "This is the story that has begun to be written here."

Shively told Reuters he hoped Fox would serve an advisory role in his enterprise, dubbed Diego Pellicer after Shively's hemp-producing great grandfather.

The sale of cannabis or marijuana remains illegal in much of the world although countries mainly in Europe and the Americas have decriminalized the possession of small quantities of it. A larger number of countries have decriminalized or legalized cannabis for medical use.

SKEPTICISM

Shively acknowledges that his business plans conflict with U.S. federal law and are complicated by regulations in both Washington state and Colorado. He said he is interested in buying dispensaries that comply with local and state rules and are less likely to attract the scrutiny of authorities.

"If they want to come talk to me, I'll be delighted to meet with them," he said of federal officials. "I'll tell them everything that we're doing and show them all our books."

Washington state's marijuana consultant, Mark Kleiman, said he was skeptical of Shively's plans, and feared that the businessman is seeking to profit off others' addiction.

"It's very hard for me to understand why anybody seriously interested in being in the marijuana business, which after all is against the federal law, would so publicly announce his conspiracy to break that law," said Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Emily Langlie, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle, referred questions to the Department of Justice headquarters. Department officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Washington state Representative Reuven Carlyle, a Seattle Democrat, sees promise in Shively's initiative. Any industry emerging from the shadows will inevitably undergo consolidation - and thereby simplify the task of regulators, he said.

"The fact that an entrepreneur is publicly pushing the envelope around a branding and value-based pricing opportunity, I would say that's in the water in Seattle," said Carlyle, chairman of the House Finance Committee. "That's in our DNA ... We could have predicted that as much as the rain."

Shively said he has already acquired the rights to the Northwest Patient Resource Center, a medical marijuana operation that includes two Seattle store fronts. He added that he was close to acquiring another dispensary in Colorado, as well as two more each in Washington state and California, with the owners given the option to retain a stake in their businesses.

"We've created the first risk-mitigated vehicles for investing directly in this business opportunity," he said.

Shively said he ultimately plans to create separate medical and recreational-use marijuana brands. Shively said he also plans to launch a study of the effectiveness of concentrated cannabis oil in the treatment of cancer and other illnesses.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Andrew Hay)

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Fossil remains may contain the world’s first bird specimen

The Aurornis xui on this fossil might be history's first bird. (Thierry Hubin, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural …

A fossil largely forgotten inside a Chinese museum might actually contain the world’s first bird.

Nature magazine reports that the Aurornis xui specimen was technically discovered by a Chinese farmer several years ago. But it had remained unidentified until paleontologist Pascal Godefroit stumbled across the fossil last year in the museum at the Fossil and Geology Park in Yizhou.

“In my opinion, it's a bird,” Godefroit, who is at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, told Nature. “But these sorts of hypotheses are very controversial. We’re at the origins of a group. The differences between birds and [nonavian] dinosaurs are very thin.”

Godefroit and his team of researchers have written a paper on the Aurornis xui that was published in the latest issue of Nature, where it is described as the "most primitive" bird specimen yet discovered.

So, why is there a debate on whether the specimen should be considered the world’s first bird?

First of all, the Aurornis xui, aka Aurora, most likely didn’t actually fly. Instead, it’s believed its four wings were used to help it glide through forests during the late Jurassic period about 150 million to 160 million years ago.

Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles in California, told Nature that he believes the Archaeopteryx is still the first known “bird” in history, describing Aurora as “something that’s very close to the origin of birds, but it’s not a bird.”

In addition, Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum of London said for now it’s impractical to distinguish which of the two species were in fact birds.

"There's such a gradation in features between them that it's very difficult to tell them apart,” Barrett told Science News. Aurornis xui "is certainly an older member of the bird lineage than Archaeopteryx, and it's fair to call it a very primitive bird. But what you call a bird comes down to what you call a bird, and a lot of definitions depend on Archaeopteryx."

Nonetheless, Godefroit said the Aurora has hip bones that strongly resemble modern birds. And because the feather fossils are not well preserved, researchers cannot say for certain that the 3-foot-long Aurora was a glider rather than a full-fledged flier.

Its length puts it at about the same size as other modern-day pheasants. However, the Aurora is described as having razor-sharp teeth, claws and a long tail that make it sound far more formidable than your average bird.

In April 2012, the remains of a giant feathered dinosaur were discovered in China, marking it as the oldest known feathered dinosaur in history. It was estimated to have lived about 10 million years after Aurora.

In addition, Godefroit says Archaeopteryx is more closely related to nonavian dinosaurs, meaning that birds would have needed to experience two separate forms of evolution to become the flying creatures they are today.

Interestingly, the answer to the debate might lie in the same museum where Aurora was discovered. Godefroit says hundreds of unclassified fossils remain there and at other nearby institutions.

“The biodiversity of these small, birdlike dinosaurs was incredible,” he said.

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