In a world full of disappearing, or threatened, species, here is some good news at last. The planet is about to welcome a new species of penguin.

The birds - a few thousand, small penguins on the French islands of Amsterdam and Saint Paul in the southern Indian Ocean - resemble millions of rockhopper penguins found all around the northern fringe of the Antarctic.

And thanks to the stubborn research of a French ornithologist, they have been declared a species in their own right.

Pierre Jouventin, scientist and film-maker and one of the world's foremost experts on penguins, first claimed that the Amsterdam and St Paul rockhoppers were a separate species 25 years ago.

He pointed out that they had a mating song with deeper notes than their cousins elsewhere and that their beautiful, feathered eyebrows - one of the characteristics of all rockhopppers - were longer and bushier.

His claims were dismissed by other ornithologists. Now, two years before his retirement, Mr Jouventin, 63, has been vindicated. In a forthcoming article in the magazine Molecular Ecology he will reveal DNA tests which show that the Amsterdam and St Paul rockhoppers are a distinct species.

M. Jouventin said: ‘‘It is an interesting discovery because it is not every day that you find a new species of a bird this large.’’

All rockhoppers are about 18 inches to 24 inches high. They take their name from the fact that they hop over crevices on the rocky shores and islands where they live.

M. Jouventin said that his discovery might also help the birds to survive. Because they were now a separate type of penguin, with only a few thousand examples, they will instantly become a protected species. Collection and sale of their eggs will become illegal.

The latin name of the new species is Eudyptes moseleyi. Previously they were a sub-species of rockhopper (E. chrysocome) and therefore E. chrysocome moseleyi. — By arrangement with the Independent 

Tank (Pakistan), May 26
When the Pakistan army’s frontline in its war on terrorism moved elsewhere and the Taliban took control of his hometown, Baidar decided it was time to leave.

“The government is helpless. The Taliban is in full control there, not religious students, but militant Taliban,” said the 30-year-old Wazir tribesman.

Baidar shut his medical store in the bazaar at Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, one of Pakistan’s seven semi-autonomous tribal agencies, and moved to Tank, just across the boundary in North West Frontier Province.

“The real worry is for businessmen and educated people because they fear being targeted or killed by the Taliban on suspicion of being informers for the government or America,” said the shopkeeper, who, unlike many others, dared to give his name.

The Pakistan army, in the words of President Pervez Musharraf, chased Al-Qaida out of South Waziristan “valley by valley” in an offensive that lasted from late 2003 to early 2005.

Thereafter, the focus switched to North Waziristan, where more than 300 militants have been killed since mid-2005.

A few of them were core Al-Qaida members, such as an Egyptian wanted for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa, but most of the 75 or so foreigners killed were from Chechnya or Islamist guerrillas from Central Asia.

In an interview with Avt Khyber TV, an independent Pashto-language channel, aired on May 19, General Musharraf said the operations against Al-Qaida had been very successful, but in the next breath he said: “Extremism and Talibanisation are spreading... now the focus has shifted from terrorism to extremism.”

And while the fighting has intensified in North Waziristan, its southern neighbour has become quiet — too quiet.

“If you say there is peace, I would say yes there is no trouble. But if you ask whether there is any government I would say no,” said a member of the Mehsuds, the other dominant tribe in South Waziristan, who, like Baidar, has moved to North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to escape the Taliban’s power grab.

“Almost all malakan (pro-government tribal elders) have left Waziristan,” said Baidar. — Reuters

Washington, May 26
The US Senate has approved a landmark immigration reform Bill that will give citizenship to millions of illegal persons and double the number of H1B visas from the present 65,000, a move that will greatly benefit thousands of Indian software professionals.

The Bill passed yesterday provides for doubling the H1 B visas from the present 65,000 annually to about 115,000 and with a 20 per cent increase on an annual basis.

Various software and technology companies like Microsoft and Intel have been pressurising the US Government by threatening to move jobs abroad if it does not raise the cap on H1 B visas and allow more skilled workers into the country.

In the version that cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee was also a new student visa classification for high tech studies.

However, the House version of the Bill has nothing on the H1 B visa and according to analysts it is most likely to be neglected when legislators get down to the negotiations at the conference committee stage.

The main provision of the Bill is, however, to provide nearly 10 million to 12 million illegal migrants in America citizenship rights that was denounced in many quarters as downright amnesty and something that House of Representatives has nothing to say when it passed the immigration legislation late last year.

The US Senate cleared the Bill with a 62-32 comfortable margin but threw up the deep split between the majority Republican Party and the Conservatives.

The Bill does not have anything on temporary worker programme or eventual citizenship and it will make illegal immigrants subject to felony charges. — PTI