MAUMERE, Indonesia — A crocodile swallowed a girl in Indonesia as her father looked on helplessly.

District official Victor Mado Waton says the 10-year-old girl was searching for turtles with her father and brother in East Nusatenggara province when a giant saltwater crocodile sprang from a river and pulled her in.

Waton said Saturday that villagers found pieces of her clothing several hours later but there was no sign of her body.

Waton said the girl’s father was a few yards (meters) away when the crocodile attacked Thursday but there was nothing he could do.

Last month, a boy was killed by a crocodile in the same river.

Villagers living near the river have reported a loss of livestock in recent weeks as

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities have arrested two men for carrying 40 pythons on board a flight to Dubai.

Jakarta airport official Salahudin Rafi says the two Kuwaitis were about to enter the departure area Friday when X-rays showed their bags were filled with sedated snakes.

Fourteen passengers have died from snake bites, including two flight attendants and one of the pilots.

The men told investigators they planned to sell the pythons to collectors in the United Arab Emirates.

The men are being questioned after being charged with carrying wild animals on board the Emirates plane, attempted murder and murder.  They could face up to seventy years in jail and a fine of $30 million and the death penalty.

In December, police at Abu Dhabi’s airport stopped a passenger who passed through an Indonesian airport carrying a box containing four snakes, two parrots and a squirrel.  But that passenger was stopped.

What have they done with the pythons?  Well, PETA has stepped in to protect the pythons, but the UAE authorities want the snakes beheaded and fed to the camels.  We’ll see who wins that battle?

In the meantime, aren’t the snakes cute:

INDONESIA – Mount Merapi in Central Java spewed cloud of hot ash.

Towering clouds of hot ash gushed from the mouth of Indonesia’s deadly volcano Thursday, forcing motorists in cities 20 miles (30 kilometers) away to use their headlights in broad daylight and raising concerns about aviation safety. The death toll climbed to 44.

As rocks and ash rained from the sky, soldiers helped load thousands of frightened villagers into trucks for a second day, including those seeking shelter in crowded emergency shelters.

Merapi’s more than a dozen powerful blasts and thousands of volcanic tremors and ash bursts since Oct. 26 temporarily shut nearby airports and — in recent days — closed air routes affected by the ash.

With no winds early Thursday, white clouds shot a spectacular 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) into the sky. Gusts later carried the smoke westward, with cities and towns up to 240 kilometers (150 miles) dusted in white power.

“I have asked the air transportation authorities to make sure the ash isn’t affecting visibility, ” said state volcanologist Surono, as motorists in the ancient city of Yogyakarta, where one airport is located, navigated dust-choked streets.

Officials insisted, however, that a Qantas jetliner forced to make an emergency landing after one of its four engines failed over Batam, an island 800 miles (1,400 kilometers) to the west, was unrelated.

“There was no connection with Mount Merapi,” said Bambang Ervan, a spokesman for the Transportation Ministry. “It was too far from the volcano — the sky over Singapore and Sumatra Island is free of dust. “

Scientists said pressure apparently building inside Merapi’s crater may mean the worst is yet to come.

“It’s never acted like this before,” Surono said after watching the wide, fast sweeps of a needle on a seismograph machine. “It looks like we may be entering an even worse stage.”

The volcano, one of the world’s most active, has erupted many times in the last century, often with deadly results.

The number of people killed since it burst back to life just over a week ago climbed to 44, said Eka Saputra, a disaster officiall, raising the toll after three people died in a powerful eruption Wednesday and another succumbed to injuries from an earlier blast.

In 1994, 60 people were killed, while in 1930, more than a dozen villages were torched, leaving up to 1,300 dead.

But as with almost all the blueish-gray volcanoes jetting from the landscape in this seismically charged country, tens of thousands of people live on the mountain’s rolling slopes, drawn to soil made fertile by generations of molten lava and volcanic debris.

More than 75,000 are now packed in crowded government camps well away from the base and, with no sign Merapi is going to quiet any time soon, may have to stay for weeks, or possibly months.

Some officials warned food, water and other supplies were running short.

Mount Merapi’s danger zone was widened Wednesday from six miles to nine miles (10 to 15 kilometers) from the peak. Even so, dozens of villagers displaced by the disaster took advantage of brief lull in activity Thursday afternoon to head back up the mountain to check on their livestock.

“We are really scared, but we have to feed our cattle,” said Sukadi, a 48-year-old farmer, as he brought grass to Boyong, his village six miles (nine kilometers) from the crater.

“We’re just going quickly,” added Semin, 54, his friend. “We’ll head back to the camp as soon as we’re done… our families are there.”

Indonesia, a vast archipelago of 235 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanos because it sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped string of faults that lines the Pacific.

The volcano’s initial blast occurred less than 24 hours after a towering tsunami slammed into the remote Mentawai islands on the western end of the country, sweeping entire villages to sea and killing at least 428 people.

There, too, thousands of people were displaced, many living in government camps.

INDONESIA – Scientists have hit a jackpot with the discovery of multiple new species!

Scientists exploring a remote Indonesian forest have uncovered a collection of new species, including a long-nosed frog, the world’s smallest known wallaby and a yellow-eyed gecko. Scientists found the species made their discoveries in the Foja Mountains on the Island of New Guinea back in late 2008. They released their findings on Monday, ahead of the International Day of Biological Diversity on May 22.

“While animals and plants are being wiped out across the globe at a pace never seen in millions of years, the discovery of these absolutely incredible forms of life is much needed positive news,” said Conservation International’s Bruce Beehler, a participant of the expedition.

The Foja Mountains are in the Indonesian province of Papua on the island of New Guinea and cover a large area of undeveloped and undisturbed rainforest.

“The Foja mountains are a virtual island where species have evolved for millennia,”  said John Francis, vice-president for research, conservation and exploration at National Geographic.

Conservation International says that they are highlighting the new discoveries to encourage the government of Indonesia to bolster long-term protection of the Foja area, which is classified as a national wildlife sanctuary.

The tree frog, which was found on a bag of rice in the campsite, has a Pinocchio-like protuberance on its nose that points upwards when the male calls, but deflates and points downwards when he is less active.

Additional discoveries include a new blossom bat, which feeds on rainforest nectar, a small tree-mouse, a new black and white butterfly and a new flowering shrub.

Scientists are becoming increasingly concerned over the rate of species loss on the planet and point out the huge benefits of forests, river systems, wetlands and oceans to human livelihoods and economies. Negotiators are set to meet in Japan in October to discuss new targets to stem biodiversity loss for the next 40 years.

Check out pictures of the new discoveries.

So I hear a bunch of A-rabs are tearing down another statue of some guy named “Hussein”!

No, not in I-raq this time! I mean those A-rabs in that Indianeezy country Obama used to live in when he was a kid – they built a statue of the guy, and they already want to pull it down!

Finally: Americans and A-rabs feel the same way about something!

These foreigners say Obama hasn’t done enough for their crappy country since he got elected. Sounds familiar!

Speaking of crappy: one of the A-rabs said, “We could say Obama only ate and s***” here” before he took off for the U. S. of A. I better not say anything about that!

We really need to jump on this right away. A-rabs and Americans don’t see eye to eye about anything – mostly because those rags on their heads are always slipping down.

So let’s say to them, “Hey, we know just how you feel about Obama being a total loser! While we’re at it, can we finally work out that whole ‘oil and Jews and blowing up stuff’ thing?”

After all the time Jimmy Carter wasted trying to get these A-rabs’ minds right, turns out all it took was a crappier President than him to get elected and piss us all off together!

And here I thought they gave the Communist-in-Chief that Peace Prize way too soon.

They might even find Obama’s lost birth certificate under that statue when they pull it down!

What are we waiting for, my fellow Americans? I say we forget about that Haiti hellhole and start sending rope and backhoes over to Indianeezy right now!

LOS ANGELES, CA – Thousands have attended the Huntington Botanical Gardens in order to catch a rare glimpse of a blooming corpse flower.

Corpse flowers only bloom once ever few years, so displays of such rarity are widely attended. Huntington’s flower has not bloomed since 2002, and Lisa Blackburn, a spokeswoman for the gardens, said, “It might be done for the next decade.”

So what is a corpse flower? It’s official name is Amorphophallus titanum, which roughly translates to “large formless phallus”. It is one of the largest single flowers in the world – Huntington’s is 6-foot, 7-inch tall – and is only found in the wild in Sumatra, Indonesia.

When it blooms, the plant opens up to reveal the flower. The scent of the insides smells like rotting meat, which attracts carrion-eating beetles and flesh flies, which will inadvertently pollinate it. The tip even becomes human body temperature, which helps create the illusion of an actual corpse for the insects!

Check out the time-lapse video below of the last flower to bloom in the United States, at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens:

STONY BROOK, NY – A skeleton cast of the possibly new species nicknamed “The Hobbit” has gone on display for the first time.

The skeleton of Homo floresiensis was discovered in 2003 in Indonesia. Scientists continue to argue whether the remains are that of a human dwarf or an entirely new hominin species. The discovery of partial remains of eight other individuals as well as small stone tools have left researchers puzzled.

The Homo floresiensis would have only stood about three feet tall, weighed around 70 pounds, walked upright and may have hunted and used fire.

The cast was on display at Stony Brook University during a one-day symposium that debated the nature of the proposed new species. One anthropologist, Dean Falk, explained how she had compared the size and shape of the brain to various other kinds, including chimpanzees, the early species Homo erectus, and humans with a disorder called microcephaly, a common hypotheses for those who believe the Homo floresiensis are merely deformed humans.

Falk stated, “In our view we dispensed at that point with the microcephaly hypothesis. It’s not just that their brains are small; they’re differently shaped. It’s its own species.”

Homo floresiensis is thought to have survived until as recently as 12,000 years ago. If it is ultimately considered an entirely new species, it will considered the longest-lasting non-modern human, surviving long past the Neanderthals by at least 12,000 years!