ShareThisWASHINGTON - During the Pacific campaign of World War II, the Australians protected U.S. troops deployed to New Caledonian ports by constructing 12 minefields to prevent Japanese ships from attacking them.
Though U.S. forces later cleared many of the contact mines, more than 200 were believed to remain. Last month, American Navy and Air Force personnel went back to rid the ports of the remainder.
The secret de-mining weapons the U.S. forces brought to help them: four bottlenose dolphins and a monk seal, all trained in detecting, locating and marking underwater mines.
The animals were hauled in mammoth C-17 cargo planes specially rigged for their special passengers. The dolphins were loaded into containers that looked like a cross between a hammock and a bathtub, and had at least one crew member assigned to each to bathe them in water and feed them frozen fish during the 20 hours of travel to New Caledonia. The seal was secured in a kennel-like compartment of his own.
In charge of the mission: McChord Air Force Base's 446th Airlift Wing, which in 1996 flew Keiko the orca -- star of the "Free Willy" films -- to his new home in Iceland.
Now aboard the International Space Station: Four "butterflynauts." Shuttle astronauts brought four larvae with them when they headed to the space station Nov. 16.
The insects are part of an educational science experiment for school kids. In classrooms across the country, students have set up habitats for similar larvae in order to compare the growth and behavior of ground-based butterfly larvae and adult butterflies with those in the microgravity of space.
As of Dec. 1, the space bugs had transformed into four "Painted Lady" butterflies, which are large, colorful and commonly found around the globe.
Photos and videos can be found at www.bioedonline.org.
In a first, the USO has come up with a "care package" for U.S. women troops only.
Deployed women in uniform until now had received what were regarded as unisex goodies for both genders: phone cards, music CDs, hand wipes, hand sanitizers, and beef jerky and other snacks.
The women-only packages include many of those items, but also cosmetics courtesy of Maybelline, skin- and hair-care products, sweet-smelling deodorant, hair bands, razors and a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine.
The USO says it stayed away from what a spokesman called "frilly things," but came up with the contents based on suggestions from women troops.
More than 20 of the nation's leading news organizations have signed on to a legal brief that calls on the U.S. Supreme Court to review a current federal ban on in-person interviews with death-row inmates, and prohibitions against inmates telling the press about their treatment, prison conditions or actions of other inmates.
The organizations argue that these curbs violate the constitutional right of free speech for prisoners.
After Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was interviewed by CBS' "60 Minutes" in 2000, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered the ban, which he said was designed to keep McVeigh from spreading his extremist views from prison.
The news outfits say the ban prevents the press from exposing poor conditions, unhealthy environments, rape and other abuse, and from providing a way for the public to monitor how its tax dollars are spent.
Among the news organizations are Tribune Co., The Washington Post, The E.W. Scripps Co. and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
(SHNS science and health correspondent Lee Bowman contributed to this column. E-mail Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com and Bowman at bowmanl(at)shns.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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