A British angler – with a dozen helpers – has landed what could be the biggest freshwater fish ever caught with a rod and line, it emerged today.

The giant freshwater stingray, weighing as much as 350kg (772lbs, or about 55 stone), was the size of a garden shed and so cumbersome that Ian Welch had to enlist the aid of 12 other people to get it out of the water.

Welch, a professional fisherman, biologist and columnist for the magazine Angler’s Mail, was visiting Thailand to help with a stingray tagging programme when he landed the monster in the Maeklong river. The 45-year-old said he was nearly pulled over the side of the boat when the specimen took his bait.

He said: “It dragged me across the boat and would have pulled me in had my colleague not grabbed my trousers – it was like the whole earth had just moved. I knew it was going to a big one.

“It buried itself on the bottom and the main fight was trying to get it off the floor. I tried with every ounce of power but it just would not budge. After half an hour my arms began shaking and after an hour my legs went. Another 30 minutes went by and then I put a glove on and physically pulled the line with gritted teeth and somehow I found the reserves to shift the fish.”

Once the stingray was off the bottom, Welch, who weighs a relatively modest 73kg, managed to lift it to the surface relatively easily.

“As soon as we saw it there was just silence because everyone was just in awe of this thing,” he said. “That line from the film Jaws came to mind about needing a bigger boat because we had to get it to the shore to tag it.”

The group managed to put a large net under the fish and towed it to the bank. Welch, from Aldershot, Hampshire, said: “It took 13 people to lift it into a large paddling pool we had set up in order to tag it and take DNA samples.

“I was absolutely exhausted afterwards and did very little for the rest of the day and just had a cold beer. As a life-long angler and a biologist it is great that my two passions have come together and culminated in something I could only have dreamed of.”

The female stingray was about 2 metres (7ft) long and the same width, and its tail measured about 3 metres (10ft). From its measurements it was calculated that it weighed at least 265kg, and possibly up to 350kg.

Its venomous barb had to be wrapped in cloth while it was out of the water. Once it was tagged the fish was released back into the river. Welch said he swam out with the fish and kissed it goodbye.

Angler’s Mail has billed Welch’s specimen as probably the largest freshwater fish fully authenticated as caught by rod and line.

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Originally posted 2009-03-02 12:55:24.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The first U.S. death from swine flu has been confirmed — a 23-month-old child in Texas — amid increasing global anxiety over a health menace that authorities around the world are struggling to contain.

The flu death was confirmed Wednesday by Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an interview with CNN, he gave no other details about the child.

Germany, which confirmed three cases Wednesday, is the latest country affected.

The world has no vaccine to prevent infection but U.S. health officials aim to have a key ingredient for one ready in early May, the big step that vaccine manufacturers are awaiting. But even if the World Health Organization ordered up emergency vaccine supplies — and that decision hasn’t been made yet — it would take at least two more months to produce the initial shots needed for human safety testing.

“We’re working together at 100 miles an hour to get material that will be useful,” Dr. Jesse Goodman, who oversees the Food and Drug Administration’s swine flu work, told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, health authorities are preparing for the worst. “I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection,” said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.S. is shipping to states not only enough anti-flu medication for 11 million people, but also masks, hospital supplies and flu test kits. President Barack Obama asked Congress for $1.5 billion in emergency funds to help build more drug stockpiles and monitor future cases, as well as help international efforts to avoid a full-fledged pandemic.

“It’s a very serious possibility, but it is still too early to say that this is inevitable,” the WHO’s flu chief, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, told a telephone news conference.

Cuba and Argentina banned flights to Mexico, where swine flu is suspected of killing more than 150 people and sickening well over 2,000. In a bit of good news, Mexico’s health secretary, Jose Cordova, late Tuesday called the death toll there “more or less stable.”

Mexico City, one of the world’s largest cities, has taken drastic steps to curb the virus’ spread, starting with shutting down schools and on Tuesday expanding closures to gyms and swimming pools and even telling restaurants to limit service to takeout. People who venture out tend to wear masks in hopes of protection.

The number of confirmed swine flu cases in the United States rose to 66 in six states, with 45 in New York, 11 in California, six in Texas, two in Kansas and one each in Indiana and Ohio, but cities and states suspected more. In New York, the city’s health commissioner said “many hundreds” of schoolchildren were ill at a school where some students had confirmed cases.

New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Britain, Canada and now Germany have also reported cases.

The WHO argues against closing borders to stem the spread, and the U.S. — although checking arriving travelers for the ill who may need care — agrees it’s too late for that tactic.

“Sealing a border as an approach to containment is something that has been discussed and it was our planning assumption should an outbreak of a new strain of influenza occur overseas. We had plans for trying to swoop in and knockout or quench an outbreak if it were occurring far from our borders. That’s not the case here,” Besser told a telephone briefing of Nevada-based health providers and reporters. “The idea of trying to limit the spread to Mexico is not realistic or at all possible.”

“Border controls do not work. Travel restrictions do not work,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in Geneva, recalling the SARS epidemic earlier in the decade that killed 774 people, mostly in Asia, and slowed the global economy.

Authorities sought to keep the crisis in context: Flu deaths are common around the world. In the U.S. alone, the CDC says about 36,000 people a year die of flu-related causes. Still, the CDC calls the new strain a combination of pig, bird and human viruses for which people may have limited natural immunity.

Hence the need for a vaccine. Using samples of the flu taken from people who fell ill in Mexico and the U.S., scientists are engineering a strain that could trigger the immune system without causing illness. The hope is to get that ingredient — called a “reference strain” in vaccine jargon — to manufacturers around the second week of May, so they can begin their own laborious production work, said CDC’s Dr. Ruben Donis, who is leading that effort.

Vaccine manufacturers are just beginning production for next winter’s regular influenza vaccine, which protects against three human flu strains. The WHO wants them to stay with that course for now — it won’t call for mass production of a swine flu vaccine unless the outbreak worsens globally. But sometimes new flu strains pop up briefly at the end of one flu season and go away only to re-emerge the next fall, and at the very least there should be a vaccine in time for next winter’s flu season, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health’s infectious diseases chief, said Tuesday.

“Right now it’s moving very rapidly,” he said of the vaccine development.

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Originally posted 2009-04-29 07:37:53.

Popularity: 1% [?]

A new book by a former employee of Alcor, the company that froze Ted Williams’ remains, alleges the Baseball Hall of Famer’s body was mistreated by the company.

Larry Johnson says in the book “Frozen: My Journey Into the World of Cryonics, Deception and Death” that he watched an Alcor official swing a monkey wrench at Williams’ frozen severed head to try to remove a tuna can stuck to it. The first swing accidentally struck the head, Johnson contends, and the second knocked the tuna can loose.

Alcor Life Extension Foundation of Scottsdale, Ariz., issued a statement on its Web site denying the allegations and promising legal action.

“Alcor denies allegations reported in the press that there was mistreatment of the remains of Ted Williams at Alcor,” the company said. “Alcor will be litigating this and any other false allegations to the maximum extent of the law.”

Johnson says he worked for Alcor for eight months in 2003, first as clinical director then as chief operating officer. He included several photographs in the book, including one of an upside-down severed head, not Williams’, that had what appeared to be a tuna can attached to it.

Johnson says Alcor used the cans, from a cat that lived on the premises, as pedestals for the heads.

Williams’ head was being transferred from one container to another when the monkey wrench incident took place, Johnson said in the book. When the head was removed from the first container, Johnson described it.

“The disembodied face set in that awful, frozen scream looked nothing like any picture of Ted Williams I’ve ever seen,” he wrote.

Johnson said that an Alcor employee tried in vain to remove the tuna can.

“Then he grabbed a monkey wrench, heaved a mighty swing, missing the tuna can completely but hitting the head dead center,” Johnson wrote. “Tiny pieces of frozen head sprayed around the room.”

The next swing, Johnson wrote, knocked the can loose.

Johnson also contends that there was a significant crack in Williams’ head. He also repeated an allegation he had made earlier that samples of Williams’ DNA are missing from the facility.

Johnson is scheduled for a Tuesday appearance on the ABC news show “Nightline.”

Johnson, who says he wired himself surreptitiously the last few months of his employment, was the source for a story in Sports Illustrated in August 2003 that said Williams’ head had been severed and damaged.

At that time, Alcor officials said there never was mistreatment of any of those frozen at the facility. The company said that severing heads is a common practice in its preservation, and that cracking has been noted as a problem in the procedure and is not the result of any mishandling.

Ted Williams died in July 2002. At the direction of his son, John Henry Williams, the baseball player’s remains were flown from Florida to Arizona.

Johnson had not yet gone to work for Alcor, but he recreated the scene based, he said, on “conversations with the Alcorians who were in the room and performed the procedures, the files I have read, and the discussions I’ve had with other people involved, including members of Ted’s family.”

Johnson paints a macabre scene in a room packed with people, many of whom posed for pictures with Williams’ body, both before and after the head was cut off. The book contends the head was “hanging by a thread” when an official entered the room and shouted that it was supposed to be a full-body freezing.

Williams’ head and body were frozen separately, Johnson wrote.

The process, known as cryonics, is conducted with the hope that someday scientists will be able to bring the subjects back to life. The heads and bodies, along with those of cats, dogs and other pets, are stored in stainless steel containers at extremely cold temperatures.

John Henry Williams died of leukemia at age 35 in 2004 after a bitter court fight against Williams’ daughter, Bobby-Jo, who contended the wishes expressed in her father’s will should have been followed. In the will, Ted Williams said he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered at sea.

She eventually abandoned the legal battle, citing lack of funds.

Johnson says in his book that he believes the small piece of paper used as evidence that Williams wanted to be frozen was fraudulent. The paper is signed by Ted Williams, John Henry and Williams’ other daughter, Claudia.

Scott Baldyga is the book’s co-author.

A phone message left at Ted Williams Family Enterprises in Florida was not returned. A phone message for comment from Bobby-Jo Williams’ attorney also was not immediately returned.

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Originally posted 2009-10-03 13:59:34.

Popularity: 8% [?]