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Animal Rights "Domestic Terrorism" at UC Santa Cruz

The devices used in two firebombings targeting UC Santa Cruz biologists are similar to some used in the past by animal rights activists, investigators said Sunday.

The bombs were so powerful they were like "Molotov cocktails on steroids," said Santa Cruz police Capt. Steve Clark.

One struck the home of assistant biology Professor David Feldheim on Saturday morning, forcing him to flee with his family. The other exploded just a few minutes earlier, gutting a car parked outside the campus home of a second researcher.

Later, Santa Cruz County sheriff's deputies went to the home of a third researcher who received a threatening telephone message, but officers found no explosives.

More than 50 investigators, including some from the FBI's regional terrorism task force, are looking into the attacks.

Feldheim, whose townhouse was firebombed just after 5:30 a.m., uses mice in laboratory research on brain formation.

He told The Chronicle that he and his wife, along with their 7-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, had to drop a ladder from the window of a second-floor bedroom to escape after smoke filled the home's first floor.

"Everyone is OK," Feldheim said in an e-mail. "The kids are taking it pretty well. My wife and I are very shaken up. I also injured both feet in the escape."

Act of Terrorism

Feldheim was treated at a hospital and released, police said. Clark said the attack on Feldheim is being considered an act of terrorism and attempted murder.

Clark said the bomb at Feldheim's house was similar to those used by animal rights extremists in the past, adding, "There are instructions on how to make it on their Web sites."

Feldheim and the unidentified faculty member who received the threatening message were named on pamphlets that were left on a stack of newspapers in a downtown Santa Cruz coffee shop last Tuesday, Clark said. The unsigned pamphlets at Caffe Pergolesi, which printed 13 researchers' pictures and addresses, called them murderers and torturers and said, "Animal abusers everywhere beware."

The name of the researcher whose car was bombed was not on the pamphlets, Clark said.

The attacks may mark an escalation in a series of protests against UC researchers that prompted a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to issue a temporary restraining order against three animal rights groups in February.

In January, a Molotov cocktail exploded on a UCLA researcher's porch. A month later, six people in masks tried to force their way into the home of a UC Santa Cruz researcher and hit her husband on the head, police said.

And at UC Berkeley, officials said 24 animal researchers and seven staffers have been harassed in recent months, with some homes and cars vandalized.

Clark said authorities are offering security to UC Santa Cruz animal researchers and have contacted every person named on the pamphlet, whether or not they were involved in animal testing. He said investigators were combing the Internet to see if anyone would take credit for the attacks. But as of Sunday, no one had.

"It's one thing to be an activist, it's another to be an extremist," Clark said. "It's absolutely outrageous that you would bring this kind of an attack to a family, all because of your passion over this cause. To me, it's indicative of people who have a complete inability to articulate their point in a constructive manner."

UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal condemned the bombings as "criminal acts of anti-science violence."

A different view was expressed today by Jerry Vlasak, a Los Angeles spokesman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which often posts on its Web site communiques from activists taking credit for attacks. He said the benefit of animal research does not justify its expense or the exploitation of animals.

Vlasak said the bombers likely were not trying to hurt Feldheim, but were instead "trying to send a message to this guy, who won't listen to reason, that if he doesn't stop hurting animals, more drastic measures will be taken ... it's certainly not an initial tactic, but a tactic of last resort."

Feldheim, whose work includes introducing genes into living mouse brains, said Sunday that his research "is aimed at understanding how brain connections form during development, with special focus on the visual system." He said the work is important "so we can learn how to fix these connections after damage due to injury or disease."

Sunday afternoon, Feldheim's front door and concrete patio in a complex of townhouses on Village Circle remained blackened by flames and smoke. A neighbor said that residents, who are mostly faculty and students, awoke to the sound of an alarm.

"I feel bad that anyone would take that drastic a step to harm people," said Miriam Ting, a Santa Cruz pharmacist.

No Answer

Just a few blocks away, no one answered the door at the brown faculty townhouse where the car had been firebombed, and a biology professor listed as living there did not respond to an e-mail. His driveway was still charred; the car was no longer there.

"It's a threat to everyone who lives here," said David Anthony, a history professor whose home is attached to the one where the car was firebombed.

Feldheim described a frightening escape. When the bomb exploded near his front door, he said, his family was awakened by the sound of smoke detectors.

"The downstairs was so smoky that we could not see," said Feldheim. "My wife and children all escaped out of the bedroom window using a fire-escape ladder. A neighbor and then the Fire Department came and put out the fire."

Feldheim said his home had been vandalized last year, with "hateful messages" written in chalk on the sidewalk outside, trash strewn about and some flower planters broken. The university responded by paying for an alarm system and motion-sensitive lights, he said.

"I'm not sure what we'll do in the future," Feldheim said

Santa Cruz Firebombs Look Familiar

Wyatt Buchanan, Demian Bulwa,
San Francisco Chronicle
4 August 2008

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/04/MNMI124HSI.DTL&type=printable

http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/

Firebombs Target UC-Santa Cruz Scientists who use Animals in Research

http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/media_coverage2008/2008-08-03_ucscarsons_sjmercurynews.htm

Bank of America: Racist and Cruel to Animals

What the March of Dimes [Funded by Bank of America] Does to Animals Will Turn Your Stomach

Gourmet chefs, caterers, and local celebrity cooks are taking part in the March of Dimes’ Star Chefs or Chef’s Auction fundraisers, which are currently being held nationwide. But if the participants—and attendees—knew what the March of Dimes does to animals, they’d lose their appetites. Here’s what the March of Dimes does and what you can do to help stop the cruelty!

In one sickening experiment funded by the March of Dimes, kittens’ eyes were sewn shut and left that way for a year. Then, the kittens were killed. Because it is already well established that the optical development of humans is fundamentally different from that of nonhumans, the findings of this study were meaningless. March of Dimes-funded experimenters have also wasted millions of dollars administering cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine to pregnant rats and newborn opossums, even though we have known for years that these substances can harm developing babies. In addition, the March of Dimes has funded inhumane experiments in which monkeys were kept in restraints for days at a time and ferrets and other animals were given severe brain damage.

The March of Dimes has provided funds to an experimenter at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center who tethers pregnant monkeys to cage walls by wires that have been implanted in their backs.

http://marchofcrimes.com/starchefs.html

BEFORE THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

COMPLAINT SEEKING ACTION AGAINST THE BANK OF AMERICA FOUNDATION FOR DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING REGARDING ITS FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS CONDUCTED BY THE MARCH OF DIMES

Submitted to:

Federal Trade Commission
CRC-240
600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, DC 20580

Submitted by:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc.
Jeffrey S. Kerr, General Counsel
501 Front Street
Norfolk, VA 23510
Tel: 757-622-7382
Fax: 757-622-0457

December 30, 2002

NATURE OF THE COMPLAINT

1. This complaint requests that the Federal Trade Commission (Commission) take action against the Bank of America Foundation’s (hereinafter "BOAF") ongoing deceptive advertising practice of falsely representing that it does not fund national health organizations in an apparent attempt to evade public criticism of its support for the March of Dimes, a national health organization engaged in animal experimentation. For more than two years, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc. (hereinafter "PETA"), on behalf of its more than 750,000 members and supporters, together with several other charities and their supporters, has conducted a nationwide educational campaign to inform banking consumers that the BOAF provides millions of dollars annually to the March of Dimes for use in animal experimentation. The growing national opposition to animal experimentation makes the BOAF’s support of that practice a material factor in the decision of compassionate consumers to conduct their banking elsewhere. PETA recently learned that despite its ongoing, multi-million dollar support of the March of Dimes, the BOAF falsely advertises that "[n]ational health organizations (or their local affiliates) or research/disease advocacy groups" such as the March of Dimes are ineligible for BOAF support. Accordingly, the BOAF advertisements are unlawfully deceptive and an appropriate subject of Commission action.

PARTIES

2. PETA is a nonprofit charitable corporation organized under the laws of Virginia and is exempt from federal income tax pursuant to §501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. PETA is headquartered at 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510. PETA and its members are committed to ameliorating the suffering of animals and ensuring their humane treatment. PETA has conducted investigations into and campaigned extensively against the use of animals in experiments and maintains several Internet Web sites that detail the horrific suffering and abuse inflicted on primates, mice, rabbits, and other animals by the animal experimentation industry. Since September, 2000, PETA has specifically directed its efforts toward protesting the March of Dimes for funding experiments on animals. PETA maintains a Web site dedicated to this educational campaign at MarchofCrimes.com. PETA files this complaint for itself and on behalf of its members.

3. Upon information and belief, the BOAF is a private foundation established by the Bank of America Corporation, a for-profit banking institution, for the purpose of managing all charitable operations of Bank of America offices and branches around the United States. The BOAF is located at 315 Montgomery St., 8th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94194-1866. According to its Web site (www.bankofamerica.com/foundation), the BOAF is an extremely sophisticated organization, boasting the largest philanthropic budget of any financial institution in the U.S. It donated a total of $87.4 million in 2000 and more than $85 million in 2001. Control over the BOAF’s funds is placed in the hands of local executives who determine where the funds go and in what amounts. The BOAF also advertises that proposals not aligned with its focus will not receive funding. For many years, the BOAF has been a large corporate sponsor of the March of Dimes, including its annual Walk America walk-a-thon fundraising events. Upon information and belief, local Bank of America offices across the country donate funds and send representative teams of walkers to many of the individual walk events each year. According to the March of Dimes, the BOAF generally contributes more than $1million each year to the March of Dimes.

http://www.marchofcrimes.com/ftc.html

Bank Of America Sued For Race Discrimination May 18, 2007

Posted by C.A.R.D in African Americans, African-American, Bank of America Racist, Bank of America discrimination, Bank of America racism, Black, Blacks, Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, Discriminate, Discrimination, North Carolina, Racism, Racist, anti-Black discrimination.
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Five black current and former employees of Bank of America Corp. have sued the second-largest U.S. bank, accusing it of racial discrimination by steering lucrative clients to their white counterparts.The 29-page complaint, filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Boston, contends that the bank discriminates against African-Americans in pay, promotions, training and support services.

It said the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank regularly teams African-American workers together and assigns them to largely minority neighborhoods and low net-worth clients.

When the workers complained, according to the lawsuit, the bank said it believed that clients are more “comfortable” dealing with bankers and brokers of their own race.

A spokeswoman for the bank was not immediately available for comment.

“There is a perception at the bank that predominantly white, wealthy customers in high net-worth neighborhoods are only going to be comfortable with Caucasian financial advisers and bankers,” said Darnley Stewart, a partner at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP who represents the plaintiffs, in an interview. “It’s a complete stereotype.”

The complaint covers April 2003 to the present, and seeks class-action status. It seeks a halt to the alleged improper practices, back pay and compensatory and punitive damages.

According to the complaint, Bank of America’s investment services unit employs 4,400 “premier bankers” and 3,000 brokers in 30 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. It is unclear how many African-Americans might be covered by the lawsuit.

Other brokerages have also faced bias lawsuits accusing them, among other issues, of steering wealthy clients to particular groups of workers.

Merrill Lynch & Co. faces an 18-month-old lawsuit in Chicago by African-American brokers and trainees. Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, last month agreed to pay $46 million to settle bias accusations by six former female brokers.

The Bank of America plaintiffs work or have worked for the bank in the Atlanta, St. Louis and south Florida areas, according to the complaint.

Stewart said that while the alleged discrimination differs from accusations other brokerages have faced of creating hostile work environments, she said “it’s equally pernicious.”

“The tone from the top needs to be that the bank will treat professionals equally, and that is not happening,” she said. “Too many decisions are left to people at the local level.”

http://card.wordpress.com/2007/05/18/bank-of-america-sued-for-race-discrimination

Granting Rights to "Our Non-Human Brothers"

Britches, the monkey liberated from the University of California at Riverside laboratory by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 1985. The vivisectors had sewn the baby monkeys' eyelids together and grafted a sonar device onto her head. 

http://www.novivisezione.org/mostra/index_en.htm

A resolution heading to the Spanish parliament would grant rights to “our non-human brothers.” Following the agenda of the Great Ape Project (GAP), the proposed law would declare that apes may not be killed or arbitrarily deprived of their liberty. Reuters reports the proposal would require the government to end the involuntary use of apes in circuses, television and dangerous experiments. “There is no sound moral reason why possession of basic rights should be limited to members of a particular species,” said philosopher and GAP co-founder Peter Singer. He believes the new law could eventually “pave the way forthe extension of rights to all primates, or all mammals, or all animals.” But some opponents say the legislation amounts to extremism. Wesley Smith of the faith-based Discovery Institute wrote in his blog: “Once people accept that premise (ape rights), Judeo-Christian philosophy goes to the guillotine.” He warned that apes could become viewed as more important than some humans.

Steve Newman
Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet
July5.2008

http://www.earthweek.com/Earthweek.pdf

Apes "Extinct in a Generation"

Apes "Extinct in a Generation"

Some of the great apes - chimps, gorillas, and orangutans - could be extinct in the wild within a human generation, a new assessment concludes.

Human settlement, logging, mining and disease mean that orangutans in parts of Indonesia may lose half of their habitat within five years.

There are now more than 20,000 humans on the planet for every chimpanzee.

The World Atlas of Great Apes and their Conservation is published by the UN's environment and biodiversity agencies.

It brings together data from many sources in an attempt to assess comprehensively the prospects for the remaining great apes; the gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos of Africa, and the orangutans of south-east Asia.

Gloomy outlook

The general conclusion is that the outlook is poor.

"All of the great apes are listed as either endangered or critically endangered," co-author Lera Miles from the World Conservation Monitoring Centre near Cambridge told the BBC News website.

"Critically endangered means that their numbers have decreased, or will decrease, by 80% within three generations."

One critically endangered species is the Sumatran orangutan, of which around 7,300 remain in the wild.

Most live in Aceh province at the northern tip of Sumatra, which saw armed conflict for decades between the Indonesian government and separatist rebels, and which suffered heavily during December's tsunami.

In mid-August, a peace deal was signed which may end the 29-year conflict.

"The irony is that just as things are getting better for the people of Aceh, they're getting worse for wildlife, with people collecting timber, dormant logging concessions being activated, and illegal logging as well," said Dr Miles.

"Projections show that in 50 years' time, there could be as few as 250 left in the wild; but that's not a viable size for a population."

The other species of orangutan, in Borneo, is much better off, with around 45,000 animals remaining; though data gathered for this report by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) and its biodiversity agency the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) suggests that numbers have declined 10-fold since the middle of the last century.

African falls

The mountain gorilla of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Cross River gorilla, found on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon, are also listed as critically endangered, with numbers estimated at 700 and 250 respectively.

For gorillas and chimpanzees, ebola fever is emerging as a significant threat.

Why ebola is now taking its toll of apes is not clear, but may be connected with forest clearance. One theory is that the as yet unidentified animal which harbours the virus lives on the edges of forests; logging creates more edges, and so enhances the transmission of ebola.

An expert group of researchers which convened in May has just released an action plan for conserving apes in western equatorial Africa.

"If we find ways to protect apes from the ebola virus, we also will protect humans," it concludes.

But disease is not the only threat to the well-being of chimpanzees, their close relatives bonobos, and gorillas.

Bushmeat hunting and habitat removal by logging are also major issues.

The 1990s saw forest cover declining in all African countries where gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos live.

Close to human

The World Atlas comes with a foreword by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in which he argues forcibly for the preservation of apes.

"The great apes are our kin," he writes. "Like us, they are self-aware and have cultures, tools, politics, and medicines; they can learn to use sign language, and have conversations with people and with each other.

"Sadly, however, we have not treated them with the respect they deserve."

His thesis on the close kinship of ape and man has been reinforced by the publication this week of the chimpanzee genome, demonstrating that humans and chimps share 99% of their active genetic material.

But stopping the decline of ape populations may not be easy, with human encroachment continuing, often under the pressure of poverty.

A key player is the Great Ape Survival Project (Grasp), launched under UN auspices in 2001, which aims to establish strategies for all regions of Africa and Asia which still have ape populations.

It holds its first council meeting next week in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Simian Menace"

Monkeys Rampage in Indian Capital

Just weeks after the Indian capital's deputy mayor toppled to his death fighting off a pack of monkeys, the animals are back on the attack, sparking fresh concerns about the simian menace.

One woman was seriously hurt and two dozen other people were given first aid after monkeys rampaged through a neighbourhood in east Delhi over the weekend.

"There were about three or four monkeys involved," deputy police commissioner Jaspal Singh told AFP.

"Wildlife officials are trying to find them. As police we're not experts in dealing with monkeys. We can deal with mad bulls but monkeys are more difficult," he said.

Along with an estimated 35,000 sacred cows and buffaloes that roam free in the capital, marauding monkeys have been longstanding pests.

They routinely scamper through government offices, courts and even police stations and hospitals as well as terrorise neighbourhoods.

Trouble boiled over in late October when the city's deputy mayor, Sawinder Singh Bajwa, 52, fell to his death driving away monkeys from his home.

He was on his balcony reading a newspaper when four monkeys appeared, his family said. As he waved a stick to scare them away, he tumbled over the edge and died in hospital from head injuries.

In the latest incident in Delhi's low-income Shastri Park area, residents reported the monkeys appeared late Saturday and rampaged for hours.

"I was talking to someone at my door at around 11 pm when a monkey appeared," Naseema, who goes by one name, told the Times of India. "As I moved inside, the monkey followed and sank its teeth in my baby's leg."

Six more bites were reported Monday in Shastri Park, while in an upscale neighbourhood in central Delhi, a rogue monkey bounded into the residence of Priyanka Gandhi, daughter of ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, The Indian Express said.

Animal control officers were deployed to chase the beasts away.

Estimates of Delhi's monkey population range from 10,000 to over 20,000.

In 2001 residential districts petitioned courts to make Delhi "monkey-free" and last May, federal lawmakers demanded protection.

But there has been little visible progress.

"We're trying to catch them but the difficulties are a shortage of monkey catchers. We're not able to take full action at full speed," A.K. Singh, a senior municipal official, said.

Delhi has a 10-million-rupee (253,000 dollar) budget to capture the common rhesus macaques which are handed over to a shelter in a disused mine area on the outskirts.

Neighbouring states have refused to release the macaques into their forests because they say the "urban monkeys" terrorise the local monkeys and swipe food from villages.

Animal control officials often use langurs, which are bigger and fiercer monkeys, to scare away the smaller macaques or drive them into cages.

Efforts to drive out the animals is complicated by the fact that devout Hindus view them as an incarnation of Hanuman, the monkey god who symbolises strength. Killing them is unacceptable.

Delhi's mayor has admitted authorities are fighting a losing battle.

"We've neither the expertise nor the infrastructure," said Mayor Aarti Mehra.

Once caught, "we're under pressure to release ... from animal activists and from people due to religious reasons."

Kartick Satyanarayanan, head of India's Wildlife SOS, said the invasion of natural habitats by mushrooming populations was at the root of the problem.

"Humans are taking all their space."

Watch it, Tom! Experts find Fearless Jerries

An undated handout photo shows a cat and a brown mouse within an inch of each other. -Reuters News

This was a rather odd bit of propaganda discovered yesterday on Yahoo News. Not sure what to make of it. Some sort of  'role reversal' going on there apparently?

In Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale graphic novel (the first such to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1992), the Jews are depicted as human-like mice, Germans as cats, Americans as dogs, and Poles as pigs.

'Jerries' or 'Gerries' were, of course, what the British called the Germans during World War II.

Another interesting association during that period was what was known as a 'jerrycan,'  a term which was also adopted by the Americans and British:

The jerrycan was invented by the Germans during a secret project ordered by Hitler. The Germans called it the Wehrmachtskanister. The Germans had thousands of jerrycans stockpiled by 1939 in anticipation of war.

Today similar designs are used for fuel and water containers, some of which are also produced in plastic. The designs usually emulate the original steel design and are still known as jerrycans, although they have also been called "jerryjugs" (or "jerry jugs", just as jerrycan is sometimes spelt as two words as well).

In 1940, the MGM cartoon studio in Hollywood started producing the Tom and Jerry cartoon series; production lasted until 1957.  The first Tom and Jerry cartoon episode was titled Puss Gets The Boot, released on February 20, 1940, produced by Rudolf Ising and received an Academy Award nomination.

--

Fear may be linked to the sense of smell, and can be switched off simply by shutting down certain receptors in the brain, Japanese scientists have found.

In an experiment with mice, the researchers identified and removed certain receptors on the olfactory bulb of their brains -- and the result was a batch of fearless rodents.

To prove their point, the scientists showed pictures of a brown mouse within an inch of a cat, sniffing up its ear, kissing it and playing with its predator's collar.

"They detect the smell of predators ... like a cat and urine of a fox or snow leopard, but they don't display any fear. They even show very strong curiosity but they can't tell the smell is a sign of danger," said Hitoshi Sakano at the University of Tokyo's department of biophysics and biochemistry.

"So these mice are very happy with cats. They play with cats. But before taking the picture, we had to feed the cat," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Experts have long thought that fear in animals may be prompted by their keen sense of smell.

But this is the first time scientists have discovered that smell detection and how that translates to fear take place in different parts of the olfactory bulb.

"How do our brains interpret the odorous information? What we found is that in the mammalian system, there are two circuits, one is innate and one is associative learning for detecting smells," Sakano said.

Sakano and his colleagues created two lines of mice -- one lacking the receptors to translate odors and the other lacking receptors for smell detection. They were then exposed to the urine of predators such as snow leopards and foxes.

"(The first group) keeps smelling and they turn around and they show very strong curiosity but they never can tell any danger," Sakano said.

As for the second group, Sakano said: "They are very poor in detecting smell, but as soon as they detect the fox urine, they would freeze and they will pretend to be dead.

"They are very poor in detecting smell, discriminating them and associating their memory with detecting information. They are very slow. But when they do, they can immediately tell the danger."

Mice have about 1,000 smell receptor genes, while humans have only 400 functioning ones and about 800 non-active ones, he said.

"Our sense of smell in us is bad. We can't detect this year's wine from last year's," he said.

Image: Fear may be linked to the sense of smell, and can be switched off simply by shutting down certain receptors in the brain, Japanese scientists have found. In an experiment with mice, the researchers identified and removed certain receptors on the olfactory bulb of their brains -- and the result was a batch of fearless rodents.

(Editing by Roger Crabb) [No relation to Buster Crabbe]
 

Container Ship Crashes into Bay Bridge

Heavy-duty bunker fuel oil has washed up on beaches throughout the San Francisco and Marin coastlines all day, leaving purplish sheens on the water, ugly black blobs in the sand, and hundreds of injured or dead birds.

Some 9,500 gallons of oil have been contained since a container ship rammed the Bay Bridge and spilled 58,000 gallons of its fuel...

Spill closes bay beaches as oil spreads, kills wildlife (video, photos)

The Hanjin container ship, Cosco Busan, struck the Bay Bridge tower, at left, on Wednesday.

"The Only Good Human is a Dead Human"

'Marauding Simians'

The mayor of the Indian capital said Monday that authorities could not deal with the scourge of violent monkeys, blamed for the death of a top city official over the weekend.

The danger posed by the estimated 10,000 monkeys that roam the city was brought home sharply on Sunday when deputy mayor S.S. Bajwa, 52, died after falling from his apartment while fighting a horde of wild simians.

"We have neither the expertise nor the infrastructure to deal with the situation," said Delhi's mayor Aarti Mehra, amid a barrage of criticism.

If the animals are caught, "we are under pressure to release them due to pressure from animal activists and from people due to religious reasons," Mehra said.

Culling is unacceptable to Hindus who revere the monkeys as a living link to the deity Hanuman, a monkey god who symbolises strength.

The animals routinely invade parliament, ministries, courts and government offices.

In May, federal lawmakers demanded protection from the marauding simians, which have even broken into the complex that houses Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office.

Several city residential districts petitioned local courts in 2001 to initiate steps to make New Delhi "monkey-free."

But primatologist Iqbal Malik said local authorities have failed to take action.

"I was first approached by the authorities in 1987 when I drew up a plan to relocate the monkeys," she told AFP. "But all that the authorities have done is listen."

Activist Kartick Satyanarayanan, who heads Wildlife SOS, said the problem was due to the "constant erosion" of the animal's natural habitat.

Indian Capital Can't Cope with Monkey Menace, Mayor Says

Planet of the Apes French Lobby Cards

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TAYLOR
Dr. Zaius, I know who I am. But who the HELL are you? How did this upside down civilization ever get started?

ZAIUS
You may well call it upside down Taylor, since you occupy its lowest level. And deservedly so.