"There is a growing sense of urgency about what's going on in the environment," Todd Clear, dean of Rutgers University's School of Criminal Justice, said here at a symposium Tuesday (May 14) on wildlife crime.

A variety of new research projects highlighted during the conference show that poaching and crimes against wildlife do follow patterns seen in other areas of criminology, knowledge that could be used to prevent these misdeeds. Famed Rutgers criminologist Ronald Clarke called on biologists and criminologists to work together to fight poaching and other issues where illegal acts are committed against nature.

As with other crimes, poaching often takes place in certain hotspots where conditions are optimal. Rhinos and elephants, for example, are often shot near watering holes where they predictably return to drink and the poaching of elephants and rhinos is at an all-time high in many areas. Poaching has already pushed , for example. []

Andrew Lemieux, a scientist at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, has outfitted rangers in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park with GPS-enabled cameras that allow them to cheaply document signs of crimes like poaching, setting animal snares or harvesting of firewood. The project, which began earlier this year, will help rangers know where to go to best prevent these illicit activities, he said during his presentation.

'Hot products'

Animals like parrots are also desirable to poachers in the same way certain "hot products" like cellphones and jewels are desirable to thieves. These products can be described by the acronym "CRAVED," which stands for concealable, removable, available, valuable, enjoyable and disposable, Clarke said. Most parrots poached from the , for example, meet these criteria, and are opportunistically plucked from the forest by villagers looking for supplemental income, said Stephen Pires, a Florida International University researcher.

The same goes for fish, which are illegally caught more often when they are CRAVED. Fish found in multiple recipes, a measure of enjoyableness, are nine times more likely to be caught illegally than those less often found in cookbooks, said Gohar Petrossian, a researcher at William Paterson University in New Jersey. There are also 10 ports around the world that account for a large percentage of , she said. In the same way the most crimes occur near a perpetrator's home, the illegal fishing tended to take place near these ports, Petrossian said.

Poverty also plays a large role, said Kenyan scientist andat the conference. In many cases poachers are opportunistic, poaching to supplement their incomes, or merely survive. Throwing money at the problem, like hiring rangers, doesn't necessarily help, Leakey said. Some rangers in East Africa make about $500 per month. If you've got 10 elephant tusks, though, you could make a cool $10,000. It's easy to see how rangers could be bought off, especially if poaching seems like the only viable way to feed one's family, said Leaky, who is the son of famed paleontologist and fossil hunters Louis and Mary Leakey, and himself a paleoanthropologist.

"If you haven't got enough money to see your kid through the next semester of school, and if you can be offered several years worth of income by turning a blind eye who wouldn't?" Leakey said. "Hell, I would if my family were at stake."

Too often Westerners ignore the underlying poverty and assume the people committing these crimes have completely different values, Leakey said. "I think we need to change the idea that if you went to Cambridge or Rutgers, you have a different value set."

Taking aim at poaching

Besides dealing with poverty, Leakey offered two options to fight poaching. First, he advocated building more fences around large reserves a suggestion that was met with some resistance by at least one ecologist at the conference, who questioned Leakey after his talk about the fence's ability to stop elephants. Leakey noted that electrified fences were quite capable of stopping the large animals. In places where they've been installed, he added, sheep herders have come to rely on fences to protect their flock from predators inside the parks meaning they can help both people and animals, he said.

Fenced reserves have helped South Africa prevent more poaching than many of its neighbors, Leakey added (athough even in ). While this takes funding, he said, the problem is not lack of money per se, but a lack of political will.

By making it harder to enter and exit reserves, fences increase both the risks and difficulties involved in poaching, both widely accepted tenets of crime prevention, Clarke said.

The second tool to fight poaching is awareness. One of the main reasons thatand rhinos has shot up in the past few years is due to growing demand in China for ivory and medicinal products (although rhino horns are made of the same material in finger nails and have no curative properties, they are desired for their supposed healing powers in traditional Chinese medicine). But Leakey said that most of these consumers buying , or visiting traditional pharmacies have no idea these animals are dying out. []

Increasing awareness would likely reduce demand for these products. As with other illegal activities, reduced rewards mean reduced crime, Clarke said.

In 1989, when Leakey headed the Kenya Wildlife Service, he came up with the idea to burn 12 tons ofto bring public attention to poaching, which in the late '80s had flared up. The ploy worked, cutting the value of ivory by a factor of 30 and almost single-handedly suppressing elephant poaching for nearly two decades, Clarke said.

Perhaps it's time to do something similar, he said. But as to what exactly that might be, Leakey didn't have any concrete suggestions.

"We need to get youngsters in the conservation world to think outside the box," he said. "Thinking inside the box isn't working... continuing to talk, talk, talk nothing gets done."

Emailor follow him onor. Follow us ,or. Article originally on LiveScience.com.

The symposium also included discussions about , the sun and past, present and future space missions.

John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for NASAs Science Mission Directorate, said that the upcomingwill be able to make important observations of the atmospheres of exoplanets. []

He said JWST wont be able to locate the exoplanets, only study them, but the recently selectedcould act as a  planet scout for JWST targets. It is estimated that TESS will discover around 300 "super-Earth" alien planets, many of them in the habitable zone.

But the number one challenge, Grunsfeld noted, is figuring out the .

Sherin will take over from GE Capital CEO Michael Neal, who has been at the helm for eight years, as early as this summer, the paper said.

GE spokesman Seth Martin told Reuters that the company doesn't speculate on future scenarios, adding "Mike Neal is an excellent leader of GE Capital".

The Journal reported last month that the diversified company was looking for successors to Neal, citing sources.

The conglomerate has been focusing on shrinking its financial business since the 2007-2008 global economic crisis. It has offloaded several assets held by GE Capital to reduce its dependence on the unit.

(Reporting by Mridhula Raghavan in Bangalore)

The Congressional Gold Medal will go to Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair.

Addie Mae, Carole and Cynthia, all 14, and Denise, 11, were killed when a bomb planted by white supremacists exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on Sept. 15, 1963. Twenty-two others were injured.

Denise's mother and sister, and Carole's sister were among those who stood around Obama's desk in the Oval Office as he signed the bill.

"For us to be able to be in this Oval Office with so many people who have worked hard to make this day possible, and understanding that that tragic loss, that heartbreak helped to trigger triumph and a more just and equal and fair America, that's an incredible thing for us to be able to participate in," he said.

September will mark the 50th anniversary of the bombing, which helped spur passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Three Ku Klux Klan members were convicted of the bombing years after the attack. Two are dead and one is in prison.

While Congress widely embraced awarding the medal, the idea has divided the victims' relatives.

Some are supportive while others say they would prefer financial compensation and have little interest in the award.

Sisters of Denise and Carole sat in the House gallery during the debate and vote on the measure. Relatives of Addie Mae and Cynthia, also known as Cynthia Morris, have said they aren't interested in a medal. Addie Mae's sister lost an eye in the bombing.

Also present for the bill-signing was Attorney General Eric Holder and his wife, Sharon Malone. Her late sister, Vivian Malone Jones, was one of the first black students to enroll at the University of Alabama in 1963 in defiance of racial segregation.

Reps. Terri Sewell, a Democrat, and Spencer Bachus, a Republican, led the Alabama congressional delegation's efforts to honor the bombing victims. They represent adjoining Birmingham districts in Congress.

Past recipients of the Congressional Gold Medal include George Washington, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., and his wife Coretta Scott King.

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Associated Press writer Henry C. Jackson contributed to this report.

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Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

The agri-processing company said diluted headline earnings per share for the year to end-March totalled 942.3 cents from 819.4 cents a year ago.

Total sugar output rose 9 percent to 1.254 million tonnes. Tongaat Hulett has interests in land management and property development, but its main business is sugar production and milling.

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Quick background is in order. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISC, was created in 1978 to "review applications for warrants related to national security investigations," . Its creation stemmed from the , a Senate group organized to address instances of domestic spying by the military and presidentially authorized assassination attempts. By empaneling federal judges to review requests for surveillance under the , the goal was that FISC serve (somewhat ironically) as a check on executive branch power, while keeping the information classified. FISC, after all, is a secret court; the government appears before the judges and asks for authorization to surveil suspects, who aren't represented. As the War on Terror expanded, so did FISA, and so did FISC's reviews.

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Last July, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon releasedin response to a question about one of the FISA expansions. Written by Kathleen Turner, Director of Legislative Affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the letter stated flatly: on at least one occasion, FISC ruled that some of the government's information collection violated the Fourth Amendment. The violations, Turner indicated, related to , a controversial provision added in 2008 which allows the government to eavesdrop on electronic communication if it involves non-Americans, outside the United States.

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Which brings us to the EFF, a non-profit advocacy group focused largely on protecting online privacy. Once it became public that there existed a court opinion outlining how the government violated the Constitution, the group sought to have it made public (this sort of thing being in their purview). In a phone interview with The Atlantic Wire today, Mark Rumold, a staff attorney with the organization, described the process of requesting a secret document from a secret court.

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First, EFF requested the FISC opinion from the Department of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The DOJ responded saying that the document was classified and refused to release it.

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Second, the EFF sued Justice. Rumold: "A principle in FOIA says that if there's any information that can be segregated and released, it has to be." Since the opinion is long, more than 80 pages, EFF assumed there must be significant legal discussion that could be released. "To us, it seemed very much like they were trying to hide the fact that what they were doing was unconstitutional," Rumold said. Justice responded to the lawsuit with a new argument: FISC's rules prohibited DOJ from releasing the document.

Which differs from what FISC told the ACLU five years ago, when the ACLU tried to get information from the court. FISC said that the proper avenue for accessing information was FOIA. As , this is a Catch-22: The judicial branch (FISC) says to ask the executive branch (DOJ). The executive branch says to ask the judicial.

So, third, the EFF filed a motion with FISC. Or, rather, it began to try to do so. The thing about secret courts is that they don't have well-lit offices into which one can walk and drop off paperwork.

Filing the motion "was unusual, to say the least," Rumold says. "Very little about the FISC is known. They have published rules. The public knows the judges that are on the FISC." But that's about it. The EFF found a phone number that was supposed to be used to file with the court, and called it. For four days. "We kept calling and leaving messages and calling and leaving messages and no one returned our calls."

Fourth, the EFF tried another number, meant to be used if you need to serve the Department of Justice. "I think I talked to four diff people in the DOJ," Rumold said. "Finally they said they'd contact the FISC for me." Rumold didn't hear back.

Fifth, the EFF reached out the presiding FISC judge who sits on the bench in Washington, DC. Rumold called his chambers and asked his clerk to help file a motion with FISC. The clerk said no.

Sixth, the EFF finally got a call back from someone at FISC. That person explained that the light on the phone that indicated if there was a voicemail was broken, so none of the EFF's messages had been heard. But at last the EFF got an answer to the question of how to file the motion: Send it to the Department of Justice.

Seventh, the EFF did that. And the DOJ said they'd pass it along.

The result of the motion, mind you, will not be the release of FISC's opinion on the Fourth Amendment. Instead, it is meant to have FISC answer the question of whether or not its rules prohibit FOIA disclosures. (You can , if you speak Law.) If that response indicates that its rules don't prevent FOIA release, the EFF will return to court and force the DOJ to release FISC's opinion. Or at least some heavily redacted subset of the opinion. At some point after that, then, the American public may learn how and when the government violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unwarranted searches. (It's not certain that the government did spy on citizens, Rumold notes, but he thinks it's "quite likely.")

, the president pointed to a FISC-like court as a possible way of ensuring more transparency in the use of drones against terror targets.

If one model of making the drone program more transparent is FISC-like review, there's certainly reason for skepticism.

But Rumold, speaking with us prior to Obama's speech, pointed out that all of the attention paid to drones by the media had actually prompted a much different response from the government. "The transparency issues with drone strikes and with this type of electronic surveillance — in terms of the legal rationale for hiding this information — are identical," he said. "In the drone strike example, there's been a dramatic increase in transparency."

"If I had that in terms of electronic surveillance, I'd be happy."

Photo: Obama speaks in Mexico City, May 5. (AP)

Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Bert and Ernie of "Sesame Street" fame, the stars of "Fraggle Rock" and other puppets, costumes and items from throughout Muppets creator Jim Henson's career have been donated to the Museum of the Moving Image, which is building a new gallery to house them, the institution announced Tuesday.

Encompassing almost 400 items ranging from original puppets to behind-the-scenes footage, the gift is a boon for the 25-year-old museum, which saw attendance skyrocket in 2011 and 2012 during a temporary exhibit of Henson's work. And it fulfills a cherished goal for Henson's widow and collaborator, Jane Henson, who died last month at 78.

"She loved the Muppet characters as though they were part of her own family," and the actual puppets themselves were special to her, one of the couple's daughters, Cheryl Henson, said at a news conference. "It was her dream to have these dear friends find a good home where they could be seen and enjoyed, and where new audiences could learn about the many facets of my father's work."

The exhibit is to open next year at the museum in the Long Island City neighborhood, across the East River from midtown Manhattan. The city is chipping in $2.75 million toward the $5 million cost for a project it sees as furthering its goal of persuading more tourists to venture beyond Manhattan.

"The only major item that I know will not be represented is the Muppet that they made of me," Mayor Michael Bloomberg joked at the news conference, where he bantered with Miss Piggy about the city's film and television industry and reminisced about their joint work in the 2008 TV special "A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa," which featured Bloomberg as himself.

"You were wonderful almost lifelike," the porcine prima donna quipped Tuesday. (For the record, Bloomberg's personal Muppet has a nice home of its own, in a reading room at the mayor's Manhattan town house.)

A puppeteer, screenwriter and producer, Henson introduced a raft of beloved and familiar characters during a career that spanned from the 1950s until his death in 1990, at 53. Some, including his Muppets and Fraggles, appeared in both television shows and movies, among them the 1984 film "The Muppets Take Manhattan," which depicted the fuzzy crew striving to stage a Broadway musical.

While being a shrewd and innovative businessman, "Jim Henson created indelible, memorable characters that live with us throughout a variety of media," said Carl Goodman, executive director of the Museum of the Moving Image. Henson's career showed "that you can march to the beat of a different drummer and succeed in this world," Goodman said.

Ten Henson puppets from the 1950s TV show "Sam and Friends," including the original version of Kermit the Frog, were donated to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in 2010. The Smithsonian already had a Kermit puppet from the "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show" era.

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Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

This marks the first companion diagnostic that detects epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene mutations to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the agency said. The diagnostic is called the Cobas EGFR Mutation Test.

"Companion diagnostics play an important role in determining which therapies are the safest and most effective for a particular patient," Alberto Gutierrez, of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement.

The approval will also move Tarceva up the treatment chain for those patients who test positive for the EGFR mutation. The drug was originally approved in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer only after they were not helped by at least one previous chemotherapy regimen.

"People with this type of lung cancer now have the option to use a personalized medicine as their initial treatment to help them live longer without their disease worsening," Hal Barron, chief medical officer of Roche Holding Ag's Genentech unit, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Carol Bishopric)

Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that makes our military strong, Obama said in remarks at the schools commencement in Annapolis, Md. Thats why we have to be determined to stop these crimes, because theyve got no place in the greatest military on earth.

Obama tied the recently disclosed spate of sex assaults in the military to other scandals in which the misdeeds of some hurt the publics faith in important institutionsfrom Wall Street to politicians to the civil service. He never named the IRS, but plainly alluded to wrongdoing there.

Its no secret that, in recent decades, many Americans have lost confidence in many of the institutions that help shape our society and our democracy, he said.

As weve seen again in recent days, it only takes the misconduct of a few to further erode the peoples trust in their government. Thats unacceptable to me, and I know its unacceptable to you."

The president also warned those about to assume the burden of leadership and, with it, the responsibility for the lives of those under their command that our military remains the most trusted institution in America.

And yet we must acknowledge here, even in our military, weve seen how the misconduct of some can have effects that ripple far and wide, he said.

In our digital age, a single image from the battlefield of troops falling short of their standards can go viral and endanger our forces and undermine our efforts to achieve security and peace, he said.

You could find out, perhaps, by joining the next space mission to another galaxy, or, slightly easier, you could go to your local multiplex and watch "Fast & Furious 6" without having seen the first five movies.

Should you decide to undertake this anthropological experiment, you'd immediately discover there are things everyone except you already knows. For example: jokes about baby oil and big foreheads are very funny in this universe. Cars, of course, are the most important thing, and of course there are no speed limits. Weapons come next on the list, and the bigger the better but in one-on-one physical combat, bald heads are surprisingly effective. Speaking of those fights: They're brutal, yet somehow, no organs get damaged and even bruises are minimal.

And oh yes, bikinis and bottoms are important. Not bikini bottoms well, those too but bottoms in bikinis. What this has to do with car racing is not entirely clear.

Most importantly, in this universe, there is no such thing as "less is more." More is always more, and so, "Fast & Furious 6" will delight fans of the franchise, because there is more of everything here. Director Justin Lin gives us not only great cars doing ridiculous things at ridiculous speeds, but also a huge army tank and a great stunt involving a giant cargo plane.

Newcomers will be a little confused as to who everyone is, since there is little explanation at this point, but fans will be glad to know their favorites are back, starting with Vin Diesel's Dom, the hotshot driver with the clean-shaven head (the better to butt other heads with) and a strong sense of family. When we first see him, he's careening down a winding cliff road in the Canary Islands with cohort/former cop Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker). Turns out they're heading to the hospital, where O'Conner's wife (and Dom's sister), Mia (Jordana Brewster, in a small role this time) is giving birth. A sweet family moment.

Meanwhile, Dom, on the lam from the U.S. and hugely wealthy from his last venture, is shacked up in a sunny love nest with a gorgeous Brazilian cop (Elsa Pataky). Who needs to work? That's what he tells Hobbs, the insanely buff federal agent played by Dwayne Johnson, when he comes calling, a nemesis from the last film who's now promising immunity in exchange for Dom's help. He wants Dom to nab a villain named Shaw (Luke Evans) he's the snarly guy with the tank and the plane and a huge military arsenal which is one little component short of wreaking total havoc.

A reluctant Dom gets on board when he learns that Letty, his former love (Michelle Rodriguez) is working for Shaw. But wait ... wasn't she dead? Well, actually she's alive, but she has amnesia. Anyway, the game is on.

Happily, amid all the noise, the races there's a terrific one through the streets of downtown London the crashes and the outlandish stunts, there is some humor, and it's very welcome. Particularly funny are Tyrese Gibson as Roman and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges as Tej, Dom's partners in crime. Also back for more adventures are the attractive duo of Han (Sung Kang) and Gisele (Gal Gadot); Gina Carano is a newcomer as an agent whose fighting skills give Letty a run for her money.

Not everyone gets out alive. As for the lucrative franchise, though, it's more than alive and kicking, judging from the new film's overseas success. A post-credits sequence teases the upcoming seventh film. In the "Fast & Furious" universe, it's not just international criminals who rake it in.

"Fast & Furious 6," a Universal Studios release, is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action and mayhem throughout, some sexuality and language. Running time: 130 minutes. Two stars out of four.

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Motion Picture Association of America rating definitions:

PG-13 Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.