Free wedding for quitting smoking

A charity in the Saudi capital Riyadh has come up with a novel incentive to encourage young men to quit smoking - an all-expenses-paid wedding.

Hundreds of men have expressed interest in the anti-smoking drive, including a non-smoker who was ready to start the habit just so he could take part.

Banners in Riyadh are advertising the campaign slogan: "Kicking the habit is on you, and marriage is on us."

In much of the Arab world, the groom alone bears the cost of a wedding.

The charity Purity says participants will complete a seven-day course to quit smoking.

'Sexist'

The name of the grand prize winner will be decided in a draw on 6 August. Twenty runners-up will get free furniture.

The high expense for a wedding means that Arab men often put off marriage until they have saved enough money to take a bride.

Some in Saudi Arabia have criticised the campaign, suggesting it might devalue what they consider a holy union, while others called the concept sexist.

But a spokesman for the charity said the aim was to create a smoke-free family.

"The fact that people are discussing the campaign means we have fulfilled our goal of spreading the word about it," said Salem al-Majdali.

It is estimated about a quarter of Saudi Arabia's 27.6 million residents smoke.

Lion prides form to win turf wars

Lions form prides to defend territory against other lions, not to improve their hunting success, a study reveals.

In doing so, they act much like street gangs, gathering together to protect their turf from interlopers, says a leading lion expert.

The bigger the gang, the more successful the lions are, information that could help conserve wild lions.

The discovery helps explain why lions, uniquely among the cat species, live together in social groups.

Lions stand out amongst all the cat species for their gregarious nature.

Across Africa and Asia, lions form prides of varying sizes comprising one or more males and often numerous females and cubs.
But why they do so has remained a mystery. A long-standing idea is that female lions socialise in order to hunt cooperatively. But despite the common sight of multiple females working together to outflank and bring down large prey, there is no clear link between how many lions hunt together and their hunting success.

Another is that lions gather to protect territory. Indeed, a range of animals from social insects to primates form social groups that defend territories against competitors.

But while there has been anecdotal evidence that bigger groups have a competitive advantage, the idea has never been rigorously tested over long periods of time.

That has now changed with a study analysing the behaviour of 46 lion prides living in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

'Street gangs'

Conducted by ecologists Anna Mosser and Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota in St Paul, US, the study collated data about the prides' behaviour over 38 years, including where they ranged, their composition and how they interacted.

Mosser's and Packer's key finding was that competition between lion prides significantly affects the mortality and reproductive success of female lions, they report in the journal Animal Behaviour.
Larger prides with more adult females not only produced more cubs, as might be expected, but the females within these prides were less likely to be wounded or killed by other lions.

Prides with more females were also more likely to gain control of areas disputed with neighbouring prides, and those prides that recruited lone females improved the quality of their territory.

"The most important way to think about this is that lion prides are like street gangs," says Packer.

"They compete for turf. The bigger the gang, the more successful it is at controlling the best areas. The main difference from humans is that these are gangs of female lions."

Best 'real estate'

Both researchers think the study, alongside other work they have yet to publish, finally confirms that bigger prides form to defend territory.

"The advantage of large group size for group-territorial animals has been suspected for a long time, but had never been proven with data," says Mosser. "With this paper, we were able to do just that because of the many groups studied over a long period."

One surprise revealed by the research is that male lions turn out to play a much bigger role in how prides interact than expected.
Large coalitions of female lions are so successful at dominating small neighbouring prides that male lions step in to try to alter the balance of power. Males will often attack and attempt to kill female lions in neighbouring prides to tip the odds in favour of their own pride.

"Males turn out to be playing a greater role than we realised," says Packer. "Males attack females from neighbouring prides, likely altering the balance of power in favour of 'their' females."

The territorial advantages gained by coming together into larger social groups would have driven the evolution of social behaviour in lions, say the researchers.

"It also confirms a pattern that is probably applicable for many species, including group-territorial ants, birds, and chimpanzees," says Mosser, who is now at The Jane Goodhall Institute, in Kigoma, Tanzania.

Such insights will help with the conservation of lions, the numbers of which are suspected to have fallen by at least a third across Africa over the past two decades.

The research shows that "the lions are competing for relatively scarce 'hotspots' of high value real estate," says Packer.

So "lion numbers are ultimately limited by the number of hotspots that are safely inside national parks".

UK 'must slash defence spending'

The UK should consider slashing defence spending by up to £24bn and revisit plans to renew its Trident nuclear deterrent, a think-tank report says.

Britain cannot afford much of the defence equipment it plans to buy, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report says.

Its authors include former defence secretary Lord Robertson and the ex-Lib Dem leader, Lord Ashdown.

It comes after news of a £1bn cost overrun on two new aircraft carriers.

The original budget for the two carriers for the Royal Navy was £3.9bn but the BBC has seen a memorandum revealing the programme will come under "severe pressure" because of the cost escalation.

The head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, has previously defended the new carriers from accusations they were outdated "Cold War relics".
His counterpart in the British Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, had earlier suggested many of the Ministry of Defence's new equipment programmes were "irrelevant" to modern warfare.

Similarly, the IPPR report suggests there ought to be a radical rethink of the way the UK budgets for defence.

Spending on the aircraft carriers, along with the fighters which would fly from them and the destroyers protecting them, should be in the frame for cuts, its report says.

The authors say the aim should be to eradicate nuclear weapons, and there should be renewed debate about the Trident submarine-based missile system.

The government is committed to renewing Trident at an estimated cost of £20bn. The policy is backed by the Tories but opposed by the Liberal Democrats and many Labour backbenchers.

The report's authors also claim that the mission in Afghanistan is on course for possible failure unless it is changed to include a joint civilian-military stabilisation and reconstruction taskforce.

It also draws lessons from the Mumbai attack in India, appealing for new preventative measures in case the UK has to face a terrorist attack at multiple locations in one of its major cities.

That would be a job for strengthened special forces, not the police, the report argues.

There is also a broader appeal for Britain to do more to co-operate with Europe and stop relying on the Americans when it comes to security.

The report says Britain would be deluded to think the US would always help Britain out.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said the 180-page document, published after two years of research, would carry weight in Whitehall, given its highly-experienced authors.

As well as Lord Robertson and Lord Ashdown, former chief of the defence staff Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, former UK ambassador to the United Nations Sir Jeremy Greenstock, and former Association of Chief Police Officers president Sir Chris Fox also contributed.

US soldiers leaving Iraq's cities

US troops are withdrawing from towns and cities in Iraq, six years after the invasion, having formally handed over security duties to new Iraqi forces.

A public holiday - National Sovereignty Day - has been declared, and the capital, Baghdad, threw a giant party to mark the eve of the changeover.

US-led combat operations are due to end by September 2010, with all troops gone from Iraq by the end of 2011.

Iraqi troops are on the alert for insurgent attacks during the handover.

Despite the pullback from cities and towns, due to be completed on Tuesday, US troops will still be embedded with Iraqi forces.

BBC defence and security correspondent Rob Watson says that while the pullback is significant, the actual withdrawal of US combat troops next year will pose a greater challenge.

The success of that depends on Iraq's political leaders and their ability to tackle the country's many outstanding problems and tensions, he says.

Some 131,000 US troops remain in Iraq, including 12 combat brigades, and the total is not expected to drop below 128,000 until after the Iraqi national election next January.

'Now is the time'

Iraqi soldiers paraded through Baghdad's streets on Monday in vehicles decorated with flowers and Iraqi flags, while patriotic songs were played through loudspeakers at checkpoints.

US commanders have said security and stability is improving, and that Iraqi forces are now ready to take over security operations.

The US Ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, said there would be no major reduction in forces until next year but the pullback was a "milestone".

"Yes, we think Iraq is ready and Iraq thinks Iraq is ready," he said.

"We have spent a lot of time working very closely with Iraqi security services... and I think there is an understanding that now it is the time."

Mr Hill stressed that there would still be "a lot of US combat capabilities in Iraq for months to come".

"After June 30, with US combat forces out of cities and villages, localities, we'll still be in Iraq," he said.

"We will still have a very robust number of US troops in Iraq and, in fact, those troops will not begin to withdraw from Iraq until probably several months from now."

The pullback comes two years after the US "surge" of extra troops between February and June 2007, which took US troop levels in Iraq to 168,000.

There was a decline in violence, but recent months have seen an upsurge.

In the past 10 days nearly 170 people have been killed and many more injured in three attacks in Baghdad and Kirkuk.

Many sharks 'facing extinction'

Many species of open ocean shark are under serious threat, according to an assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The Red list gives the status of 64 types of shark and ray, over 30% of which are threatened with extinction.

The authors, IUCN's Shark Specialist Group, say a main cause is overfishing.

Listed as endangered are two species of hammerhead shark, often subject to "finning" - a practice of removing the fins and throwing away the body.

This is the first time that IUCN Red List criteria, considered the world's most comprehensive inventory of the conservation status of plants and animals, have been used to classify open ocean, or pelagic, sharks and rays.

The list is part of an ongoing international scientific project to monitor the animals.

The authors classified a further 24% of the examined species as Near Threatened.

Sharks are "profoundly vulnerable" to overfishing, they say. This is principally because many species take several years to mature and have relatively few young.

"[But] despite mounting threats, sharks remain virtually unprotected on the high seas," said Sonja Fordham, deputy chair of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group and one of the editors of the report.

"[We have] documented serious overfishing of these species, in national and international waters. This demonstrates a clear need for immediate action on a global scale."

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization recognised the potential threat to sharks over a decade ago, when it launched its "International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks" in 1999.

But the "requested improvements fisheries data from member states... have been painfully slow and simply inadequate", according to this report by the IUCN.

Many pelagic sharks are caught in high seas tuna and swordfish fisheries.

Although some are accidentally caught in nets meant for these other fish, they are increasingly targeted for their meat, teeth and liver oil, and because of high demand, particularly in Asia, for their fins.

Discarded bodies

"The hammerheads are special because they have very high quality fins but quite low quality meat," explained Ms Fordham. "They often fall victim to finning."

She told BBC News that, although finning is widely banned, this ban is not always well enforced.
"The EU finning ban is one of the weakest in the world," she said.

"The best, most sure-fire way to enforce a ban is to prohibit the removal of fins at sea.

"But in the EU, you can remove them, providing the fins you bring ashore weigh less than 5% of the weight of the bodies."

This rule was designed to prevent finning, but it provided "wiggle room", said Ms Fordham.

"The IUCN has estimated that, under these rules, you could fin and discard two to three sharks for every shark you keep, " she explained.

'No fishing'

Species listed as Vulnerable included the smooth hammerhead shark, the porbeagle shark and the common, bigeye and pelagic thresher sharks.

Fisheries have fought to keep their right to fish porbeagle sharks because their meat is so valuable, according to Ms Fordham.

"Yet we've already had recommendations from scientists that there should be no fishing of these sharks."

For certain species - that are considered particularly vulnerable - the authors have recommended their complete protection.

"The big-eyed thresher shark, for example, is very slow growing," explained Ms Fordham.

"Fishermen can very easily identify it, because it has a very big eye. So if they catch it accidentally, they can throw it back.

"These sharks tend to survive well when they're thrown back."

By the end of this year, the Shark Specialist Group will publish a complete report, outlining the status of all 400 species of shark, and closely-related skates and rays.

Protesters 'in new Iran clashes'

Iranian riot police are reported to have clashed with demonstrators defying government decrees to stop street protests over disputed elections.

Eyewitness reports say there have been clashes near the parliament building in the capital Tehran, in the streets around Baharestan Square.

Reporting restrictions in Iran mean the BBC cannot verify the reports.

The new protests came hours after Iran's supreme leader said he would "not yield" over the election result.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei again said the result would stand, despite days of protests in which at least 17 people are reported to have died.

See map of central Tehran

The ayatollah has repeatedly demanded that the protests stop, but his calls have gone largely unheeded.

Witnesses told the Associated Press that police beat protesters with batons, fired tear gas and shot into the air to disperse the crowd on Wednesday.

Although some demonstrators fought police, others fled to another square about 2km (1.2 miles) to the north, the witnesses said.
Another witness told Reuters that the crowd had been dispersed by tear gas, but did not know of any casualties.

Iran has placed severe reporting restrictions on the BBC and other foreign media which mean many reports from the country cannot be verified.

The main protest leader, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, has not been seen in public for days, but his website quoted his wife as saying the protests would continue.

Zahra Rahnavard was also quoted as demanding the release of people detained since the election. They include 25 employees of her husband's newspaper.

"It is my duty to continue legal protests to preserve Iranian rights," she was quoted as saying on the website.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of the 12 June poll.

Mr Mousavi alleges the election was rigged and is demanding a re-run.

The ayatollah had earlier agreed to extend by five days the amount of time allowed to examine complaints of electoral fraud.

But Iran's state-run Press TV channel said on Wednesday that a partial recount of the vote had verified the result, although it did not give details.

In other developments, another defeated candidate, the moderate Mehdi Karoubi, reportedly denounced the new government as "illegitimate", Reuters reported on Wednesday.

"I do not accept the result and therefore consider as illegitimate the new government. Because of the irregularities, the vote should be annulled," he is quoted as saying on his website.

Diplomatic row

Iran has blamed foreign governments for inflaming the protests.
Tehran said on Wednesday it was considering downgrading ties with Britain, after expelling two diplomats the previous day for "activities incompatible with their status".

The UK later announced that two Iranian diplomats were being sent home in retaliation.

Washington said on Wednesday it had rescinded invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend US 4 July celebrations held by embassies around the world.

A White House spokesman said Iranians had not replied anyway.

The BBC's Kim Ghattas, in Washington, says it is the first concrete step taken by the Obama administration in protest at Tehran's crackdown on demonstrators.

'Dozens dead' in Baghdad bombing

At least 69 people have been killed by a bomb blast in the eastern Sadr City area of Baghdad, Iraqi officials say.

Police said the device went off in a market place in the predominantly Shia area of the Iraqi capital.

More than 130 people were also reported to have been injured in the blast, one of the worst in Iraq this year.

It comes less than a week before US soldiers pull out of all Iraqi cities, a move the US said would not be affected by a recent surge in violence.

'Horrific'

An interior ministry official told the AFP news agency the blast struck the market place at about 1930 (1630 GMT).

The official said the bomb was hidden underneath a motorised cart carrying vegetables for sale.

"I heard a boom and saw a ball of fire," said Najim Ali, a 30-year-old father who was injured in the blast.

"I saw cars flying in the air because of the force of the explosion," he was quoted as saying by AFP.

Raad Latif, a local shop owner, said the scene after the blast was "horrific".

He said people ran to help the injured after hearing the explosion but were initially kept back as security forces tried to get emergency vehicles to the scene.

"After a while they came to their senses and allowed us to help as much as we could. The scene was horrific," he told Reuters.

Another witness told the Associated Press news agency he heard a sound like "unbelievable thunder" and was knocked to the ground by "a hurricane".

Market stalls were set on fire and an official told AP that people standing 600m away were hit by shrapnel.

'Confident'

Under an agreement with the Iraqi authorities, most of the 133,000 US troops in Iraq are due to leave the country's cities and towns and withdraw to military bases by 30 June.

Combat operations across Iraq are due to end by September 2010 and all US troops will be out of the country by the end of 2011.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the top US commander in the country, Gen Ray Odierno, had told President Barack Obama that he felt "confident in moving forward" with the withdrawal.

"Gen Odierno has mentioned that we have seen violence greatly decrease even in the past many months from what it was," he said.

Mr Gibbs said Mr Obama had no plans to change the withdrawal arrangements.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says the location of the latest blast was significant, as Sadr City has been struck often and provocatively in the past.

The attacks have been attributed to Sunni militants' attempts to provoke sectarian tensions.
But this tactic has failed since the Shia Mehdi militia, which used to retaliate, was disbanded last year, says our correspondent, and the attacks now only succeed in killing civilians.

The attacks are the latest in a violent week in Iraq.

On Monday, at least 29 people were killed in attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere.

Three people, including a four-year-old child, were killed in the Shaab district of north Baghdad, while a car bomb killed five people in the capital's central Karrada district.

In the largest attack of the year, more than 70 people died in a truck bombing in Kirkuk on Saturday.

But Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has said the violence will not delay the withdrawal which, he said, would ultimately be a triumph for the country.

He urged Iraqis: "Don't lose heart if a breach of security occurs here or there."