According to this article, a wolf has been seen in the open in Norway for the first time in "modern times."

It's amazing how often life will find a way.

Cthulhu Coffee is a website primarily focused on the horror genre. With such a predilection towards all things Lovecraft you probably wouldn't expect such a site to have much that would interest the Furry fandom. That's where you'd be wrong.

PETA has threatened to file suit in contest of the "Happy Cow" commercial claims. Sponsored by the California Milk Advisory board, the commercials pitch the slogan: "Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California".

PETA argues that the life of the cows is far removed from the lush rolling pastureland depicted in the campaign's television advertisments.

A poetry contest was held on Furtopia’s “Poetry Corner” forums that was open to all furs. The contest ran from Nov 30 to Dec10.

This is WhiteShepherd, admin of Furtopia. I would first like to thank all the great and gifted furs who posted in our contest. It is furs like you, who are willing to contribute a piece of yourselves to this fandom, that make our furry world such a wonderful place to live. Part of furry is the treasures from the dreams we all share. All the poems we got had good points. It was very hard to narrow such a good list of writing. So here now is a link with the final results of the judging including comments:

Contest results:
http://www.furtopia.org/choice_of_the_week/poetry_contest/index.html

I highly recommend you read all the poems submitted here at this link:

http://cgi.furtopia.org/cgi-bin/ib311/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=20

As reward the winning poems will linked up in large for all to see on Furtopia’s main page:
http://www.furtopia.org
The link will remain up for 3 months until Furtopia’s next contest.

Now that it's only about six months until CACE2, the time is about right for a few more details about our 2003 event.

CACE is proud to present our Guests of Honour! Chris Goodwin, a well known artist and illustrator renowned for his superb graphic design sense, will be our Artist Guest of Honour. In addition to being an excellent artist, Chris is also a great teacher, and we look forward to having him at our event.

For those of you who know, Trixi and Tet, two of the many who help the YNA website and art archieves exisit - have taken on a wonderful new task to help others. Their "Art to Heart" mission is to raise donations to buy art supplies, craft kits, and art books to give to children in the National Children's hospital just in time for the holiday season. In doing so, they hope the kids will be inspired to explore their creativity and express themselves and their experiences through arts and crafts.

Donations can be made via their webpage and paypal.

The SeattlePost-Intelligencer ran this AP story about a mange epidemic in Ocala National Forest. Poor bears!

An article ran today in both The Globe and Mail and The National Post about two young girls on a mission to rescue tens of thousands of horses in Alberta from slaughter.
The girls began their efforts after hearing word that due to drought the horses could not be fed over the winter and would have to be put down. Industry is baffled over the efforts as they recognize horse slaughter as a viable and profitable enterprise.

The two girls - Katie and Emma Harvey, from Cupids, Newfoundland - have a website at http://www.freewebs.com/freealbertahorses/

The top 10 finalists at the IGF (independant games festival) were announced today, and furcadia was one of them!

Approximately 100 games were submitted to the IGF this year.

For more information visit the IGF website

Yerf, that popular archive of PG-13 furry art, has returned, after a long battle of the DNS with Verisign.

And the masses rejoice...

Christmas starts early at the San Fransisco Zoo, where animals got presents of fun food and toys to unwrap, sponsored by visitors. Frozen fish blocks proved very popular with the polar bears, for example.

In this article, Flayrah published that scientists want to insert human stem cells into the brains of mice. Scientists at Stanford University today announced that they have already done so. Dr. Irving Weissman of Stanford and Fred Gage of the Salk Institute of La Joya created a mouse with millions of human brain cells.

Flayrah's webserver had some Apache configuration problems today from about noon central time to early this evening. As I'm not often on a computer during my work day, I was unable to submit a trouble ticket to my host until late this afternoon. Sorry for the inconvenience, we're open for business, again.

Artists who participated in Midwest FurFest's art show should find their payment checks in the mail later this week. They were mailed today, after only a three week turnaround time. If you have any questions, you can email artshow@furfest.org.

This Google News search will find the Associated Press investigative report on the underground trade in exotic animals for meat and hides. The full article (transmitted in advance to news organizations but not available to the general public) runs about 2000 words, although local papers may edit it to include a local angle or shorten it for space.