Birds do better in 'agroforests' than on farms

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 6-Aug-2012
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Contact: Lee Siegel
lee.siegel@utah.edu
801-581-8993
University of Utah

Study indicates growing coffee and cacao in shade helps birds

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 7, 2012 Compared with open farmland, wooded "shade" plantations that produce coffee and chocolate promote greater bird diversity, although a new University of Utah study says forests remain the best habitat for tropical birds.

The findings suggest that as open farmland replaces forests and "agroforests" where crops are grown under trees reduced number of bird species and shifts in the populations of various types of birds may hurt "ecosystem services" that birds provide to people, such as eating insect pests, spreading seeds and pollinating crops.

"We found that agroforests are better overall for bird biodiversity in the tropics than open farms," says study author a?an H. ?ekercio?lu (pronounced Cha-awn Shay-care-gee-oh-loo), an assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah.

"This doesn't mean people should farm in intact forests," the ornithologist adds. "But if you have the option of having agroforest versus open farmland, that is better for biodiversity, with shade coffee and shade cacao [the source of cocoa and chocolate] being the prime examples."

?ekercio?lu's new study, funded by the University of Utah, is being published this month in the Journal of Ornithology. He will present the findings Thursday, Aug. 9, at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting in Portland, Ore.

If consumers wish to support bird diversity and agroforests, "a good way is by choosing certified, bird-friendly, shade coffee or shade chocolate," he says. While such coffee or chocolate often cost more because they are more labor-intensive to produce, the certification "is usually better for the farmers' income as well."

He adds: "There are trustworthy environmental organizations that certify shade coffee," including the Smithsonian Institution, the Rainforest Alliance and the Rainforest Action Network.

Other crops grown in shade include cardamom, which is a spice, and yerba mate, which is steeped in hot water to make a beverage popular in South America.

Study Focuses on Birds of Forests, Farms or Both

An agroforest "is a type of farm where the crops are grown under trees at a reasonable density," ?ekercio?lu says. "Often, it's not like forest-forest it feels more like a open park," although in Ethiopia "commercial coffee is grown under full-on forests in its original native habitat."

?ekercio?lu conducted the study in two steps. First, "I used my world bird database that has information on all the 10,000-plus bird species of the world," he says. "I sorted birds based on habitat choices and compared species that prefer forests to those that prefer agricultural areas and others that prefer both forests and agricultural areas."

Next, he reviewed about 40 previously published studies that examined bird communities in forests, agroforests and open agricultural areas.

"The global analysis of all the birds species mostly agrees with the findings of detailed local bird studies," ?ekercio?lu says.

The study focused 6,093 tropical bird species, including migratory birds, in which their top three habitat choices (out of 14 possible habitats) included forests, farms or both, with the latter described as agroforest birds. So the study found 4,574 bird species that include forest but not farms in their top three habitats, 303 species that include farms but not forests in their top three habitat choices, and 1,216 agroforest species tha include both forests and farms among their top three habitats.

The findings suggest, but don't prove, that conversion of forest to farmland may reduce ecosystem services, which are services birds provide to people.

"As you go to more and more open agriculture, you lose some bird groups that provide important ecosystem services like insect control [insect eaters], seed dispersal [fruit eaters] and pollination [nectar eaters], while you get higher numbers of granivores [seed and grain eaters] that actually can be crop pests," ?ekercio?lu says. Specifically:

  • Insectivores or insect-eating birds do best in forests especially those that live near the ground in the understory, the layer of plants below the tree canopy and above the ground cover. But small and medium insect-eating birds, especially migrant and canopy species, do well in agroforests. The number of insect-eating species declines on open farms, where they help control pests.
  • Frugivores or fruit-eating birds, especially larger ones, "do best in forest because they have more habitat and more food, and the large ones often are hunted outside forests in agricultural settings. Overall, frugivores especially smaller ones do OK in agroforests, but the number of fruit-eating species decline significantly on open farms." Frugivores help spread the seeds of the fruits they eat.
  • Nectarivores or nectar-eating birds help pollinate many plants. They "tend to increase in agroforests compared with forests. A lot of nectar-eating birds obviously like flowers, and many plants flower when there's some light. When you have extensive forest its often pretty shady so not many things are in flower at any given time." The nectar eaters are less common on open farms.
  • Omnivores, which are birds that eat many things, "tend to do better in agroforests and especially on open farms" than in forests, because their diet is so generalized instead of specialized in certain foods.
  • Granivores, or grain- and seed-eating birds are "the only group that significantly increases in open agricultural areas. A lot of the seeds they eat are grass seeds, but also from crops. Some of these seed-eating bird species are major agricultural pests, and that's another reason for encouraging agroforests. In completely open agricultural systems, you have more seed-eating birds that can cause significant crop losses."

While the study found fewer species on farms than in agroforests, and fewer on agroforests than in forests, ?ekercio?lu says it doesn't answer a key question: "Does the decline in the number species translate into a decline in individuals providing a given ecosystem service?" If so, farms and agroforests have lost birds that provide important insect-control, pollination and seed-dispersal services.

"It is possible you may lose a lot of species, but some of the remaining species increase in number and compensate and for the decline in ecosystem services by the lost species," he adds. "It's one of the biggest questions in ecology."

The Trend toward Sun Coffee

Noting that the study found forests have more tropical bird species than agroforests, which in turn have more bird species that open farms, ?ekercio?lu says: "A lot of threatened species globally are found only in forests, and most of them disappear from agroforests and open agricultural areas."

He says many migratory birds that breed in the United States are in decline even though the nation has a law to protect them and not just because of U.S. environmental problems, "but due to problems in their wintering grounds in Latin America, such as loss of habitat and intensification of agriculture."

"Coffee was originally a mid- to high-elevation African forest understory plant," he adds. "For centuries in Ethiopia and parts of Central and South America, coffee has been grown as an understory plant with shade traditionally provided by native trees."

But fungi can be a problem in humid shade coffee plantations, and growers have come up with varieties that grow well in the sun with less fungus and bigger yields, so in recent decades, there has been a trend toward converting Central and South American shade-coffee forests to open farms, ?ekercio?lu says.

"As tropical forest is converted to increasingly open types of agriculture, hundreds of endangered bird species are being lost," he says. "Tropical forest is the only refuge for thousands of bird species and hundreds of endangered bird species. Although agroforest is better than open farmland, at the end of the day intact tropical forest is the only suitable habitat for thousands of bird species."

###

University of Utah Communications 201 Presidents Circle, Room 308
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-9017
(801) 581-6773 fax: (801) 585-3350
www.unews.utah.edu


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?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 6-Aug-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Lee Siegel
lee.siegel@utah.edu
801-581-8993
University of Utah

Study indicates growing coffee and cacao in shade helps birds

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 7, 2012 Compared with open farmland, wooded "shade" plantations that produce coffee and chocolate promote greater bird diversity, although a new University of Utah study says forests remain the best habitat for tropical birds.

The findings suggest that as open farmland replaces forests and "agroforests" where crops are grown under trees reduced number of bird species and shifts in the populations of various types of birds may hurt "ecosystem services" that birds provide to people, such as eating insect pests, spreading seeds and pollinating crops.

"We found that agroforests are better overall for bird biodiversity in the tropics than open farms," says study author a?an H. ?ekercio?lu (pronounced Cha-awn Shay-care-gee-oh-loo), an assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah.

"This doesn't mean people should farm in intact forests," the ornithologist adds. "But if you have the option of having agroforest versus open farmland, that is better for biodiversity, with shade coffee and shade cacao [the source of cocoa and chocolate] being the prime examples."

?ekercio?lu's new study, funded by the University of Utah, is being published this month in the Journal of Ornithology. He will present the findings Thursday, Aug. 9, at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting in Portland, Ore.

If consumers wish to support bird diversity and agroforests, "a good way is by choosing certified, bird-friendly, shade coffee or shade chocolate," he says. While such coffee or chocolate often cost more because they are more labor-intensive to produce, the certification "is usually better for the farmers' income as well."

He adds: "There are trustworthy environmental organizations that certify shade coffee," including the Smithsonian Institution, the Rainforest Alliance and the Rainforest Action Network.

Other crops grown in shade include cardamom, which is a spice, and yerba mate, which is steeped in hot water to make a beverage popular in South America.

Study Focuses on Birds of Forests, Farms or Both

An agroforest "is a type of farm where the crops are grown under trees at a reasonable density," ?ekercio?lu says. "Often, it's not like forest-forest it feels more like a open park," although in Ethiopia "commercial coffee is grown under full-on forests in its original native habitat."

?ekercio?lu conducted the study in two steps. First, "I used my world bird database that has information on all the 10,000-plus bird species of the world," he says. "I sorted birds based on habitat choices and compared species that prefer forests to those that prefer agricultural areas and others that prefer both forests and agricultural areas."

Next, he reviewed about 40 previously published studies that examined bird communities in forests, agroforests and open agricultural areas.

"The global analysis of all the birds species mostly agrees with the findings of detailed local bird studies," ?ekercio?lu says.

The study focused 6,093 tropical bird species, including migratory birds, in which their top three habitat choices (out of 14 possible habitats) included forests, farms or both, with the latter described as agroforest birds. So the study found 4,574 bird species that include forest but not farms in their top three habitats, 303 species that include farms but not forests in their top three habitat choices, and 1,216 agroforest species tha include both forests and farms among their top three habitats.

The findings suggest, but don't prove, that conversion of forest to farmland may reduce ecosystem services, which are services birds provide to people.

"As you go to more and more open agriculture, you lose some bird groups that provide important ecosystem services like insect control [insect eaters], seed dispersal [fruit eaters] and pollination [nectar eaters], while you get higher numbers of granivores [seed and grain eaters] that actually can be crop pests," ?ekercio?lu says. Specifically:

  • Insectivores or insect-eating birds do best in forests especially those that live near the ground in the understory, the layer of plants below the tree canopy and above the ground cover. But small and medium insect-eating birds, especially migrant and canopy species, do well in agroforests. The number of insect-eating species declines on open farms, where they help control pests.
  • Frugivores or fruit-eating birds, especially larger ones, "do best in forest because they have more habitat and more food, and the large ones often are hunted outside forests in agricultural settings. Overall, frugivores especially smaller ones do OK in agroforests, but the number of fruit-eating species decline significantly on open farms." Frugivores help spread the seeds of the fruits they eat.
  • Nectarivores or nectar-eating birds help pollinate many plants. They "tend to increase in agroforests compared with forests. A lot of nectar-eating birds obviously like flowers, and many plants flower when there's some light. When you have extensive forest its often pretty shady so not many things are in flower at any given time." The nectar eaters are less common on open farms.
  • Omnivores, which are birds that eat many things, "tend to do better in agroforests and especially on open farms" than in forests, because their diet is so generalized instead of specialized in certain foods.
  • Granivores, or grain- and seed-eating birds are "the only group that significantly increases in open agricultural areas. A lot of the seeds they eat are grass seeds, but also from crops. Some of these seed-eating bird species are major agricultural pests, and that's another reason for encouraging agroforests. In completely open agricultural systems, you have more seed-eating birds that can cause significant crop losses."

While the study found fewer species on farms than in agroforests, and fewer on agroforests than in forests, ?ekercio?lu says it doesn't answer a key question: "Does the decline in the number species translate into a decline in individuals providing a given ecosystem service?" If so, farms and agroforests have lost birds that provide important insect-control, pollination and seed-dispersal services.

"It is possible you may lose a lot of species, but some of the remaining species increase in number and compensate and for the decline in ecosystem services by the lost species," he adds. "It's one of the biggest questions in ecology."

The Trend toward Sun Coffee

Noting that the study found forests have more tropical bird species than agroforests, which in turn have more bird species that open farms, ?ekercio?lu says: "A lot of threatened species globally are found only in forests, and most of them disappear from agroforests and open agricultural areas."

He says many migratory birds that breed in the United States are in decline even though the nation has a law to protect them and not just because of U.S. environmental problems, "but due to problems in their wintering grounds in Latin America, such as loss of habitat and intensification of agriculture."

"Coffee was originally a mid- to high-elevation African forest understory plant," he adds. "For centuries in Ethiopia and parts of Central and South America, coffee has been grown as an understory plant with shade traditionally provided by native trees."

But fungi can be a problem in humid shade coffee plantations, and growers have come up with varieties that grow well in the sun with less fungus and bigger yields, so in recent decades, there has been a trend toward converting Central and South American shade-coffee forests to open farms, ?ekercio?lu says.

"As tropical forest is converted to increasingly open types of agriculture, hundreds of endangered bird species are being lost," he says. "Tropical forest is the only refuge for thousands of bird species and hundreds of endangered bird species. Although agroforest is better than open farmland, at the end of the day intact tropical forest is the only suitable habitat for thousands of bird species."

###

University of Utah Communications 201 Presidents Circle, Room 308
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-9017
(801) 581-6773 fax: (801) 585-3350
www.unews.utah.edu


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-08/uou-bdb080612.php

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Ad Links Romney to Lost Health Insurance and Death

Must-read: Will Harry Reid regret his claim about Mitt Romney's taxes?

August 07, 2012


Priorities USA Action has unveiled the harshest ad yet about Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital. It features a former steel worker at a Bain-owned company talking about their family's lost health insurance and his wife's death from cancer.

Alex Burns: "It's always a risk to air such a charged ad, but Priorities has made a habit of going several steps beyond where the Obama campaign will go in attacking Romney."

Here's the video:

Source: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/08/07/ad_links_romney_to_lost_health_insurance_and_death.html

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Update: It?s Done. Time Warner Buys Bleacher Report, Price Reportedly Under $200M

Screen shot 2012-08-06 at 17.00.03Update: TBS has now confirmed this acquisition. The division will become a part of the?Turner Sports division. That group currently manages digital properties on behalf of the NBA, NCAA and PGA, and it oversees ad sales for NASCAR.COM as well as a strategic sales relationship with Yahoo! Sports. It has 86 million unique visitors. The price of the deal was not disclosed but is thought to be in the region of $200 million. Original story follows. The Federal Trade Commission has approved a deal between Bleacher Report and Time Warner -- and according to reports from Bloomberg and AllThingsD, this is the signal that Time Warner division Turner Broadcasting System is finalizing an acquisition of the sports site network.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/c6T2oK34np8/

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Extreme hot spells rising

Temperature records reveal inexorable warming and increasing episodes of extreme heat

Web edition : 4:12 pm

It?s not your imagination. Not only are extremely hot temperatures occurring more frequently across the globe, but those heat waves are getting more severe.

Back in the 1950s, temperatures on any given summer day were just as likely to be near average as they were to be unseasonably high or low. Climatologist James Hansen of NASA?s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City likens that scenario to rolling a die with two sides each corresponding to low, average and above-normal temperature.

Since the 1980s, that metaphorical die has increasingly become weighted toward delivering a warm day, Hansen and his coworkers report August 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In fact, Hansen says, since 2000 it?s as though on any roll almost 4.5 sides will draw hotter than average summer heat.

Hansen says the study also suggests that a new level of extreme heat is emerging ?that almost never occurred 50 years ago.? Formerly striking about 0.2 percent of the Northern Hemisphere in any given summer, this degree of anomalous warmth now strikes about 10 percent of the land area. Within a?decade, his data suggest, these hot spells?could reach 16.7 percent of the hemisphere's summer weather.

?We?re not showing that this is a consequence of an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases,? Hansen says. In fact, his team?s analysis makes no attempt to attribute the underlying source of warming to any particular cause. He does volunteer, however, that there is ?a strong consensus within the scientific community that the warming we?re seeing is primarily a response to an increase in greenhouse gases.?

Markus Donat and Lisa Alexander of the University of New South Wales in Sydney reported similar conclusions online July 31 in Geophysical Research Letters. Their group integrated daily temperature changes at monitoring stations across the globe to identify a shift toward warmer temperatures globally and year-round ? with more days of extreme heat.

The Sydney researchers found that increases in daily minimum temperatures (which tend to occur at night) rose most strongly. Compared with the period from 1951 to 1980, daily minimum temperatures rose in the three decades ending in 2010 by 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit); the daily maximum increased in that second period by only 0.6 ?degrees Celsius.

What?s more, the new analysis shows, the temperature threshold exceeded on the hottest 5 percent of days in the first 30-year period was crossed 7 percent of the time in the more recent 30-year period, an increase of 40 percent.

John M. Wallace of the University of Washington in Seattle says he is not surprised to see this shift toward more extremely warm days ? and hotter extremes within those periods. ?Just as a rising tide lifts all ships,? he says, there is good reason to believe that growing global warming should elevate warming extremes. Computer projections of Earth?s changing climate call for such a pattern. ?If a trend in that direction is detectable already,? Wallace says, ?that would constitute an important finding.? But to be convinced, he?d like to see a longer track of temperatures broken down by region and covering both land and water (not just land temperature, as here).

The focus by both papers on temperature changes in recent decades ? as opposed to all types of weather extremes, including floods, storms, droughts and more ? constitutes ?picking a relatively ?easy target,? says Thomas Knutson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration?s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. Still, he says, the new data are interesting and ?underscore the substantial changes already underway in terms of surface temperatures and their extremes.?


Found in: Climate Change, Earth, Earth Science and Environment

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/342823/title/Extreme_hot_spells_rising

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Auburn family says city tree-cutting went too far ? Lewiston-Auburn ...

AUBURN, Maine ? Steve and Tara Kristman pay a lot of attention to their yard at their home on Silva Street near Taylor Pond.

There?s a swing set for the kids, and there used to be a blackberry bush just starting to bear fruit, and more shade.

?It was beautiful out here,? Steve Kristman said, walking his property Thursday. ?Now it?s disgusting.?

The Kristmans are upset over a public works tree pruning earlier this week that they say went too far.

Public works maintains that the boxelder trees were in the city right of way, potential hazards, and had to go.

Neighbors and plow drivers had complained to them, according to Deputy Director Nick Labbe. He said two licensed arborists and the highway supervisor reviewed the work ahead of time.

?It is the responsibility of public works to maintain safe conditions along the roadways in Auburn and in order to do this, trees and brush sometimes need to be cut down,? Labbe said. ?There is occasional confusion in regards to property lines and who ?owns? a tree.?

The city can prune and trim in its right of way, he said. Depending on the road, that either stretches to the end of the pavement or several feet into the property beside it. When a tree or bush is on private property the city leaves the owner a note ahead of time, Labbe said.

Public works cuts about 80 mature trees and four miles of brush a year, according to its website.

Steve Kristman said he had been warned a year ago that the city planned to trim 10 feet around a nearby pole, and said he was fine with that. He said the end result was closer to 20 feet.

?After all the hard work we?ve put in over the years, eight years of work, when we drove up the street it just took my breath away,? he said.

He disputes that all of the cut area falls within the right of way.

Kristman also claims workers left brush and debris behind, and that he hasn?t gotten far with public works despite several phone calls and visits to his property.

Labbe said it?s practice to remove limbs, trees and cut brush. He also pointed to an email thanking the crew for ?such a great job clearing the brush and trimming trees on Silva Street a few mornings ago.?

Kristman isn?t thanking anyone.

?I?m not looking for $1 million, I?m not looking for $100 ? I?m looking for them to clean up their mess and maybe apologize,? he said.

To see more from the Sun Journal, visit sunjournal.com.

Source: http://bangordailynews.com/2012/08/04/news/lewiston-auburn/auburn-family-says-city-tree-cutting-went-too-far/

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YouTube streaming Lollapalooza festival for those of us who can't be in Chicago

YouTube streaming Lollapalooza festival for those of us who can't be in Chicago

YouTube is plenty busy with a livestream of the Olympics in HD for Asian and African audiences, but it's keeping tabs on the scene in the states, too. The service is running a free, two-channel webcast of Chicago's Lollapalooza music festival this weekend, which features big-name acts such as Jack White, The Black Keys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. As you may recall, YouTube also offered a live broadcast of the event last year. Click through to the source link to see who's on stage. Hey, it's not the same as being at Grant Park, but it's probably a lot less sweaty.

Filed under:

YouTube streaming Lollapalooza festival for those of us who can't be in Chicago originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Aug 2012 04:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Verge  |  sourceYouTube  | Email this | Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/04/youtube-streaming-lollapalooza-festival/

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Wind-whipped Oklahoma wildfires destroy homes

A home burns during a large wildfire Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 in Luther, Okla. A wildfire whipped by gusty, southerly winds swept through rural woodlands north and south of Oklahoma City on Friday, burning several homes as firefighters struggled to contain it in 113-degree heat. (AP Photo/The Oklahoman, Bryan Terry)

A home burns during a large wildfire Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 in Luther, Okla. A wildfire whipped by gusty, southerly winds swept through rural woodlands north and south of Oklahoma City on Friday, burning several homes as firefighters struggled to contain it in 113-degree heat. (AP Photo/The Oklahoman, Bryan Terry)

A home burns during a large wildfire Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 in Luther, Okla. A wildfire whipped by gusty, southerly winds swept through rural woodlands north and south of Oklahoma City on Friday, burning several homes as firefighters struggled to contain it in 113-degree heat. (AP Photo/The Oklahoman, Sarah Phipps) TABLOIDS OUT

A horse tries to escape a wildfire burning in the eastern part of the Cleveland County, Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 in Slaughter, Okla. The horse was eventually rescued. A wildfire whipped by gusty, southerly winds swept through rural woodlands north and south of Oklahoma City on Friday, burning several homes as firefighters struggled to contain it in 113-degree heat.(AP Photo/The Norman Transcript, Jerry Laizure). (AP Photo / The Norman Transcript, Jerry Laizure

A smoke surrounds home during a large wildfire Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 in Luther, Okla. A wildfire whipped by gusty, southerly winds swept through rural woodlands north and south of Oklahoma City on Friday, burning several homes as firefighters struggled to contain it in 113-degree heat. (AP Photo/The Oklahoman, Sarah Phipps) TABLOIDS OUT

Area firefighters fight a grass fire east of 120th at Cemetery Road on Friday, Aug. 3, 2012, east of Norman, Okla. A wildfire stirred by high winds sweeping through rural woodlands just south of the Oklahoma City area has set at a number of homes on fire. (AP Photo/The Oklahoman, Steve Sisney) TABLOIDS OUT

(AP) ? The gusty, southerly winds that whipped wildfires through rural woodlands north and south of Oklahoma City started to die down early Saturday, but not before burning dozens of homes.

Hundreds of people were told Friday to leave their homes in at least four counties, while smoke and flames prompted authorities to close parts of Interstate 44, the main roadway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and two state highways. I-44 reopened late Friday night.

"A man refused to leave. From what I know, he wanted to protect his property, but your life has to be more valuable than property," Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel said late Friday night.

The sheriff said at least 25 homes, a daycare center and numerous outbuildings had burned in a fire that may have been deliberately set near Luther, a town about 20 miles northeast of Oklahoma City.

Deputies were looking into reports about someone in a pickup truck who was seen throwing out newspapers that had been set on fire. By Friday night, the blaze had spread across 80 square miles, but officials said it had calmed some due to lighter winds and higher humidity.

About 40 structures were destroyed by a blaze near Tulsa. And yet another blaze destroyed at least 25 structures, including a handful of homes, after starting near Noble, about 30 miles south of Oklahoma City, and moving toward Norman, home to the University of Oklahoma.

Steve Palladino, operations chief for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, said six Oklahoma National Guard helicopters will be dispatched to the fires on Saturday. Palladino said three were sent out on Friday.

"I loaded the kids up, grabbed my dogs, and it didn't even look like I had time to load the livestock, so I just got out of there," said Bo Ireland, who lives a few miles from where the Noble-area fire started. "It looked to me that, if the wind shifted even a little bit, I would be in the path of that fire. It was just too close."

There were no immediate reports of injuries or livestock losses.

Dayle Bishop said he may not have made it out of his home had a woman not knocked on his door and woken him up. Standing in a convenience store parking lot about 2 miles away from his home, he was pessimistic about its chances.

"I know it's gone," said Bishop, who works nights as a nurse. "Didn't even have time to get anything out." But he noted, "it's just stuff."

Charles Wright was with his daughter, Christina, along with their cat, at a makeshift evacuation center doubling as a staging area for fire engines, ambulances and other emergency equipment. He said law enforcement ordered them to leave their home in Norman.

"Praying for miracles. Praying for the best, that's all we can do," said Wright, who managed to pack some clothes, jewelry and legal papers before fleeing.

Ruth Hood splashed water onto two Chihuahua puppies that she grabbed along with several other animals and her children, and left as flames burned in her neighbor's yard. She said she couldn't be sure her home would survive.

"No guarantee," Hood said.

With the ongoing drought, high temperatures and gusty winds, it took little for fires to begin and spread ? and there was little crews could do to fight them.

"It's difficult for the firefighters to get into the area because it's heavily wooded on either side of the smaller roads. When the winds are blowing 25 mph it just blows the embers and fireballs across the roads as if they weren't even there," said Jerry Lojka with the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.

At mid-afternoon Friday, the temperature in Norman hit 113 degrees, and winds were gusting at 24 mph. "I can tell you the temperatures and the wind are not helping the situation at all," said Meghan McCormick, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland County Sheriff's office.

Russell Moore, 53, who lives in the Noble area, said he was outside in his yard when a sheriff's deputy drove down the road and told people to leave. He and his son went to a shelter set up at Noble City Hall.

"About all we saw was smoke and a little bit of ash raining down from the sky," Moore said. "Everybody was piling into their vehicles and leaving as we were."

The state was monitoring 11 fires by Friday afternoon. Gov. Mary Fallin announced a statewide burn ban as the fire danger heightened. She previously had announced a state of emergency for all 77 counties due to the extreme drought.

___

Associated Press writers Rochelle Hines and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-08-04-Oklahoma%20Wildfires/id-20571cbeb0f74c04bd357d7b5a3d1c16

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Fairs, Like Crops, Are Drooping With the Heat

[unable to retrieve full-text content]At county and state fairs across corn country this year, the most widespread drought since the 1950s is evident, as the hot summer has seeped into even the cheeriest, oldest tradition.

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a13d0f65af3e537c3a3eef0b320687cf

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Medicare fraud busters unveil command center

FILE - In this Feb. 14, 2012 file photo, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius speaks at HHS headquarters in Washington. Federal fraud busters invited the news media to visit their new $3.6 million command center and watch staffers explain how they'll jump on unfolding Medicare scams. While the action on the tour Tuesday wasn't real, the problem is _ more than $60 billion a year is lost to fraud. And two Republican senators immediately questioned whether the new multimillion-dollar facility is just throwing more money away. (AP Photo Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 14, 2012 file photo, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius speaks at HHS headquarters in Washington. Federal fraud busters invited the news media to visit their new $3.6 million command center and watch staffers explain how they'll jump on unfolding Medicare scams. While the action on the tour Tuesday wasn't real, the problem is _ more than $60 billion a year is lost to fraud. And two Republican senators immediately questioned whether the new multimillion-dollar facility is just throwing more money away. (AP Photo Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

(AP) ? Medicare's war on fraud is going high-tech with the opening of a $3.6 million command center that features a giant screen and the latest computer and communications gear. That's raising expectations, as well as some misgivings.

The carpeting stills smells new at the facility, which went live a week ago in a nondescript commercial office park on Baltimore's outskirts. A couple dozen computer workstations are arrayed in concentric semicircles in front of a giant screen that can display data and photos, and also enable face-to-face communication with investigators around the country.

Medicare fraud is estimated to cost more than $60 billion annually, and for years the government has been losing a game of "pay and chase," trying to recoup losses after scam artists have already cashed in.

Fraud czar Peter Budetti told reporters on a tour this week that the command center could be a turning point. It brings together in real time the geeks running Medicare's new computerized fraud detection system with gumshoes deployed around the country. Imagine a kind of NCIS-Medicare, except Budetti says it's not make-believe.

"This is not an ivory-tower exercise," Budetti said. "It is very much a real-world one."

But two Republican senators say they already smell boondoggle.

Utah's Orrin Hatch and Oklahoma's Tom Coburn say Medicare's new computerized fraud detection system, a $77-million investment that went into operation last year, is not working all that well. In a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, they questioned spending millions more on a command center, at least until the bugs get worked out.

"Institutionalizing relationships through establishing a (command) center may be useful, but if huge sums of money have indeed been spent on a video screen while other common-sense recommendations may have not been implemented due to 'resource concerns,' this seems to be a case of misplaced priorities," wrote Hatch and Coburn. Insiders are telling them the screen alone cost several hundred thousand dollars, the senators say.

The two Republicans may have more than congressional oversight in mind. In an election year, Medicare fraud is an issue with older voters because it speaks to the Obama administration's stewardship of the program.

Responded Budetti: "Our expectation is that this center will pay for itself many times over."

Conducting what amounted to her first formal inspection on Tuesday, HHS Secretary Sebelius set the bar high for the command center, nothing less than the end of "pay and chase."

"Preventing fraud and abuse is what this effort is about," she said.

The government's new antifraud computer system aims to adapt tools used by credit card companies to stop theft from Medicare and Medicaid. It was launched with great fanfare last summer. But by Christmas, it had stopped just one suspicious payment from going out, for $7,591. Administration officials say that shouldn't be the only yardstick, and the system has made other valuable contributions.

Sebelius spoke with three groups of staffers during her visit Tuesday. One group was responsible for developing computer models to query billing data for suspicious patterns; another in charge of investigating data generated by the computer models, looking for mistakes as well as real fraud; and a third handling coordination with law enforcement around the country. The staffers said they expect the coordination to cut the time it takes to investigate suspected fraud schemes from months to days and weeks.

Hatch's office says development of the computer models has lagged. Command center staffers told Sebelius the first-year goal is to have 40 such computerized anti-fraud queries to sift through millions of incoming claims.

The administration must report to Congress on the antifraud computer system later this year, an assessment that will first be independently reviewed by the Health and Human Services inspector general's office.

Hatch and Coburn say they have repeatedly pushed the administration for details and "the responses have been polite, but vague."

Medicare scams have grown into sophisticated networks where crooks file millions of dollars in bogus claims and take off with the money. Sometimes they even manage to flee abroad to countries where the feds can't touch them.

Associated Press

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