Holiday warning: Beware of flying fish

A sturgeon is "like an alligator on the outside of their skin," FWC officer Dorvan Daniel says.Sturgeon jumped in a boat, breaking Tina Fletcher's tibia and fibulaGulf sturgeon can grow up to 8 feet long and weigh up to 200 poundsUp to 14,000 of these fish swim into the Suwannee River each season, official estimates

(CNN) -- Still using crutches to walk, Tina Fletcher is the most recent victim of a gulf sturgeon strike while on the Suwannee River in Florida.

"I have been on the river my whole life," she says. "For some freak accident like this to happen -- it's just crazy."

It was Memorial Day weekend when Fletcher and her boyfriend borrowed a friend's airboat for a joyride on the river. Fletcher was seated with one leg bent on her chair and the other leg stretched out straight atop a footrest when a sturgeon jumped in front of the boat.

"When the fish was coming down I was like, 'Oh my gosh, it's going to hit me!' so I went to pull my leg up, and when I pulled my leg up I made it about halfway -- like about my calf muscle," recalls Fletcher. "Then the fish collided with my leg."

Jumping fish break boater's leg

The impact broke her tibia and her fibula, sending Fletcher to the hospital for the remainder of the holiday weekend.

"The report said it [the sturgeon] was between 4 and 6 feet and between 60 or 70 pounds," says Fletcher. "But I think it was bigger than 60 to 70 pounds. It looked huge."

It may have looked huge, but it was a relatively small fish considering that gulf sturgeon can grow up to 8 feet long and weigh up to 200 pounds.

"They're really bony, hard fish," explains Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) Officer Dorvan Daniel "It's like an alligator on the outside of their skin. They're really almost as hard as a rock."

As the Fourth of July approaches, public services announcements warn of firework and campfire dangers, but near the Suwannee River in Northwest Florida the message to the public is: Beware of flying fish.

"We don't want to scare anyone off the river," says Karen Parker, FWC spokesperson, "but we do want to make people aware that these fish they do jump and people have gotten injured by them."

In 2010 there were no injuries by sturgeon reported.

"We were hoping for another quiet year like that," says Parker, "but we've already had nine encounters so far this year."

The encounters occur when a sturgeon jumps out of the river as a watercraft is approaching and just as the fish is on its downfall it lands in the vehicle.

"There's a bunch of theories out there, but we're not really sure why they jump out of the water," says FWC Biologist Allen Martin. The largest population of gulf sturgeon can be found in the Suwannee River, Martin says. The sturgeon travel into the river from the Gulf of Mexico every summer to spawn.

"The Suwannee is the last of what they call 'wild rivers' left in Florida," explains Parker, "There's no dams or man made structures in it. So the sturgeons can get on in and up here." Parker estimates that between 10,000 and 14,000 of these fish swim into the river every season.

The spawning season takes place when the weather is warm, schools are on summer break and most companies are closed for the long holiday weekends. These factors contribute to the river's popularity as a place for people to celebrate.

Daniel works hard to assure that celebrations do not turn into catastrophes. A few years ago, Daniel witnessed a sturgeon jump out of the water and hit a 9-year-old girl in the face.

"I heard the thump, and I saw a young girl fly out of the boat, not just fall out of the boat, she actually went up in the air," recalls Daniel. "Probably about 15 feet up and out of the boat and she hit the water."

When the little girl was rescued from the water she had two deep lacerations on her jaw and neck, Daniel remembers. He guesses the sturgeon that hit her was 5 feet long and weighed about 70 pounds.

Witnessing that accident has changed the way Daniel patrols the 30-mile stretch of river that he is assigned. In the past, Daniel would occasionally warn boaters about the dangers of the jumping fish.

"Now it's almost every boat I will stop and say, 'Watch out for these sturgeons, they are really dangerous,'" he warns. "I wouldn't sit anybody up front."

The front of the boat is where Fletcher was sitting when she was injured. Since her accident, Fletcher doesn't even want to be on the back of a boat on the Suwannee River. She admits it may take some time to get over her fear of the flying fish, but in the meantime she is trying to keep a sense of humor about her accident.

"I joke with everybody (who asks what happened) and tell them I was trying a new type of fishing lure -- I was trying my toes out to see how it worked."

CNN

Afghanistan says will deal with IMF crisis after summer holiday (Reuters)

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan said on Sunday it won't be able to address a key International Monetary Fund concern over a looming cash crisis, sparked by a corruption scandal at a failed bank, for more than a month because lawmakers are on holidays.

Reuters reported on Friday that the IMF had rejected Afghanistan's plans to deal with the failed Kabulbank and other broader financial concerns, a step that automatically blocked the payment of $70 million in aid from foreign donors.

Diplomats involved in negotiations between aid-reliant Afghanistan, international donors and the IMF said Kabul had failed to address the fund's concerns and now fear a "cash crunch" as soon as next month.

Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said Afghanistan relied on aid for about 40 percent of its operating budget and for all of its multi-billion dollar reconstruction and development projects. He said the government would "exert every energy to reach a satisfactory agreement with donor countries."

"Suspending aid delivery will naturally cause difficulties for a country like Afghanistan," Zakhilwal said in a statement, the government's first official response since the latest tranche of aid was withheld.

"So far, our difficulties are not at a level to cause us serious and immediate concern. I ask my compatriots not to be influenced by negative propaganda by some foreign media in this very critical stage in our history," he said.

The wages of hundreds of thousands of civil servants are at risk, adding more tension and political uncertainty just as foreign forces begin handing over security control to Afghans in a gradual process that will end with all foreign combat troops leaving by the end of 2014.

No payments have been made by donors into the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust fund (ARTF), the main vehicle for international aid to Afghanistan, for the past three months.

Payments to the ARTF have been suspended because of the continued lack of an IMF support program, which is a seal of approval most donors need before pledging aid.

The IMF has been reviewing its support program for Afghanistan since September.

The IMF and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government are at loggerheads over Kabul's handling of the crisis over the failed Kabulbank and Afghanistan's fractured financial system.

Karzai's cabinet met 11 days ago and the Finance Ministry sent a letter containing proposals to address two outstanding issues -- parliamentary approval of a supplementary budget and the auditing of a second Afghan bank -- to the IMF.

Diplomats told Reuters the IMF rejected Kabul's proposals as inadequate to guard against future abuses.

On Sunday, Afghanistan's Ministry of Finance said Kabul "agrees in principle with both demands," however parliamentary approval was needed for a supplementary budget.

"The Ministry of Finance will present a supplemental budget request to parliament immediately after the parliamentary summer vacations," the statement said.

Afghan lawmakers began their 45-day summer recess on June 5. Lawmaker Mirwais Yasini said there were no plans to reconvene parliament to deal with the Kabulbank crisis.

$900 MILLION AT RISK

Corruption, bad loans and mismanagement cost the politically well-connected Kabulbank, Afghanistan's biggest private lender, hundreds of millions of dollars in what Western officials in Afghanistan openly call a classic Ponzi scheme.

Kabulbank has about $926 million in outstanding loans, of which around $900 million is considered to be at risk. Afghan officials say about $347 million will be recovered, but donors want more aggressive action on asset recovery.

The bank doled out nearly half a billion dollars in unsecured, undocumented loans to a roster of Kabul's elite, including ministers, relatives of Karzai and a vice-president, and a powerful former warlord, anti-corruption officials say.

Zakhilwal said the IMF had asked the Afghan parliament to make a commitment to approve a supplementary budget so that money spent by Afghanistan's central bank bailing out Kabulbank could be repaid.

There has been no mention yet of how much that might be or where it might come from, but international donors fear Afghanistan, one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world, might dip into its limited cash reserves.

The withholding of aid began with a warning shot when the British government refused to pay 85 million pounds ($137.5 million) in promised aid in March. The ARTF was also expected to funnel about $200 million to support the Afghan government's recurrent costs.

That represents about 25 percent of Afghanistan's non-security wages bill, most of it in teachers' salaries.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Yahoo! News

Thank D.C. Holiday Calendar for Extended Tax Filing Deadline

Associated Press

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WASHINGTON -- Taxpayers got an extra three days to file their federal tax returns this year. They can thank the nation's capital for the extra time. 

The filing deadline was delayed until midnight Monday because the District of Columbia observed Emancipation Day last Friday. By law, local holidays in the nation's capital impact tax deadlines the same way federal holidays would. States generally follow the federal deadline. 

Emancipation Day marks the occasion when President Abraham Lincoln signed a law ending slavery in the District of Columbia. Lincoln signed it April 16, 1862, more than eight months before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which eventually led to all slaves being freed. 

April 16 fell on Saturday this year, so the holiday was observed April 15, the traditional tax filing deadline.

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