BirdLife International reported that the species, once found on Lake Alaotra, the largest lake in Madagascar, declined rapidly due to carnivorous fish being introduced to the lake and the use of nylon gill nets by local fishermen.

“No hope now remains for this species. It is another example of how human actions can have unforeseen consequences,” Dr Leon Bennun, BirdLife International’s director of science, policy and information said in a statement.

Invasive alien species are causing extinctions around the globe, Bennun says, and are one of the major threats not just to birds but to other wildlife.

BirdLife International’s report is the latest update to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species for birds and highlights additional cases of the negative impact of invasive species on bird life.

The status of Zapata Rail — a blue/brown bird native to Southwest Cuba — was upgraded to “critically endangered” due to the introduction of mongoose and exotic catfish to its marshland habitat.

In Asia and Australia, pollution of coastal wetlands is contributing to the falling populations of wading birds like the Great Knot and the Far Eastern Curlew.

The destruction of inter-tidal mudflats in Saemangeum, South Korea, an important migratory stop-over site, has seen numbers of the Great Knot fall by 20 percent, according to BirdLife.

But the news isn’t all bad. Conservation projects are having a positive impact on the survival of bird species.

In particular, the Azores Bullfinch has been downgraded from “critically endangered” to “endangered” thanks to conservation work to restore its natural vegetation on its Atlantic island home.

And in Colombia, the numbers of Yellow-eared Parrot have been rising as its nesting sites are preserved and local communities take part in educational programs to learn about conservation.

Martin Fowlie, communications officer at BirdLife International told CNN: “The overall state of the world’s birds is getting worse year on year. But these are two very good examples in the list this year that show conservation works.

“We have the skill and the expertise, so these things can be prevented. But we need commitments from governments to provide money to help birds and animals to survive.”

Here are 10 things we have learnt from the study, which surveyed 25,000 people in 19 countries.

1. 75% of South Africans think polygamy is “morally wrong” – bad news for their president, as Jacob Zuma took his third wife earlier this year and is engaged to a fourth. However, the survey also revealed some possible double-standards. While only 7% of Rwandans approved of polygamy (although this did include women), a rather higher number – 17% – of men said they had more than one wife.

2. An overwhelming majority of respondents disapproved of homosexual behaviour. In three countries – Zambia, Kenya and Cameroon – this was a massive 98%. Interestingly, one of the countries with the highest numbers of people – 11% – accepting homosexuals is Uganda, where an MP is trying to get legislation passed which would punish homosexual acts with life in prison and even death in some cases. The former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique were also relatively tolerant of homosexuality.

3. Africa is probably the world’s most religious continent, with more than 80% saying they believed in God in most countries. At least half of the Christians questioned expect Jesus Christ to return to earth during their lifetimes. In Ethiopia, 74% of Christians say they have experienced or witnessed the devil or evil spirits being driven out of a person and in Ghana, 40% of Christians say they have had a direct revelation from God.

4. Zimbabwe, where the Lemba people say they are the lost tribe of Israel, was not one of the countries surveyed. But 26% of Nigerian Christians said they traced their origins back to Israel or Palestine.

5. Belief in witchcraft is also common – about 40%; a similar percentage also visit traditional healers to cure sickness. Belief in witchcraft is highest in Tanzania with 93% – this is the country where witchdoctors say that magic potions are more effective if they contain body parts of people with albinism. Ethiopia had the lowest levels of belief in witchcraft – at just 17%. Belief that juju or sacred objects can prevent bad things happening was generally lower – between 20 and 30%. In Senegal, however, 75% thought such things worked – far higher than in Tanzania (49%). It may come as a surprise to learn that South Africa had the highest number of people – 52% – saying they took part in ceremonies of traditional religions, or honoured or celebrated their ancestors.

6. Predictably, there was also a religious split concerning alcohol, banned by Islam. Surprisingly, however, more Muslims in Chad (23%) approved of booze, than Ethiopian Christians (5%).

7. Attitudes to divorce showed a strong divide along religious lines in Nigeria. A massive 79% of Christians thought it was “morally wrong”, while among Muslims, a narrow majority (46-41%) accepted divorce.

8. In recent years, Islamist hardliners in Somalia and Nigeria have introduced strict punishment based on Sharia law, such as amputating the hands of thieves and even stoning to death for adultery. The majority of people disapproved of such Sharia punishments. In Nigeria, they were backed by about 40% of Muslims and less than 10% of Christians. However, a majority did approve of whippings and amputations in Senegal and Mali. In nearby Guinea-Bissau, even 50% of Christians backed them. This was double the rate among Muslims in Ethiopia (25%) – maybe it feels like a more realistic prospect to them, as they share a border with Somalia and most Muslim Ethiopians are ethnic Somalis.

9. The survey also asked about material well-being in the world’s poorest continent. Not so long ago, Cameroon regularly topped surveys of champagne consumption per head. However, a shocking 71% of Cameroonians surveyed said there were times in the past year when they did not have enough money to buy food. In Ethiopia, which is commonly seen as a country struggling to feed itself, the rate was far lower – at 30% – the lowest of all countries surveyed.

10. Ethiopia did, however, have the lowest numbers of people – 7% – who said they regularly used the internet. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame is striving to turn his country into Africa’s answer to Silicon Valley and is being helped by the arrival of several new fibre optic cables off the east coast of Africa. He will be encouraged by the finding that 30% of his countrymen – the highest number – regularly browsed the web. Mobile phones, were far more common – with 81% of respondents in Botswana owning one. Many countries reported more than 50% having phones but here, Rwanda lagged behind at just 35%.

The 3,000-year-old head of Amenhotep III – grandfather of Tutankhamun – was dug out of the ruins of the pharaoh’s mortuary temple.

Experts say it is the best preserved example of the king’s face ever found.

The 2.5m (8ft) head is part of a larger statue, most of which was found several years ago.

Antiquities officials say the statue is to be reconstructed.

“Other statues have always had something broken – the tip of the nose, or the face is eroded,” said Dr Hourig Sourouzian, who has led the Egyptian-European expedition at the site.

“But here, from the top of the crown to the chin, it is so beautifully carved and polished, nothing is broken.”

Vast empire

Egypt’s antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, described it as “a masterpiece of highly artistic quality”.

Amenhotep III ruled Egypt from about 1387 to 1348 BC and presided over a vast empire stretching from Nubia in the south to Syria in the north.

Scientists using DNA tests and CT scans on several mummies have identified him as the grandfather of Tutankhamun – the boy-king born of an incestuous marriage between Akhenaten and his sister, both the offspring of Amenhotep III.

The massive mortuary temple in Luxor was largely destroyed, possibly by floods, and little remains of its walls.

Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team says it is the first example of tool use in octopuses.

One of the researchers, Dr Julian Finn from Australia’s Museum Victoria, told BBC News: “I almost drowned laughing when I saw this the first time.”

He added: “I could tell it was going to do something, but I didn’t expect this – I didn’t expect it would pick up the shell and run away with it.”

Quick getaway

The veined octopuses (Amphioctopus marginatus) were filmed between 1999 and 2008 off the coasts of Northern Sulawesi and Bali in Indonesia. The bizarre behaviour was spotted on four occasions.

The eight-armed beasts used halved coconuts that had been discarded by humans and had eventually settled in the ocean.

Dr Mark Norman, head of science at Museum Victoria, Melbourne, and one of the authors of the paper, said: “It is amazing watching them excavate one of these shells. They probe their arms down to loosen the mud, then they rotate them out.”

After turning the shells so the open side faces upwards, the octopuses blow jets of mud out of the bowl before extending their arms around the shell – or if they have two halves, stacking them first, one inside the other – before stiffening their legs and tip-toeing away.

Dr Norman said: “I think it is amazing that those arms of pure muscle get turned into rigid rods so that they can run along a bit like a high-speed spider.

“It comes down to amazing dexterity and co-ordination of eight arms and several hundred suckers.”

Home, sweet home

The octopuses were filmed moving up to 20m with the shells.

And their awkward gait, which the scientists describe as “stilt-walking”, is surprisingly speedy, possibly because the creatures are left vulnerable to attack from predators while they scuttle away with their prized coconuts.

The octopuses eventually use the shells as a protective shelter. If they just have one half, they simply turn it over and hide underneath. But if they are lucky enough to have retrieved two halves, they assemble them back into the original closed coconut form and sneak inside.

The shells provide important protection for the octopuses in a patch of seabed where there are few places to hide.

Dr Norman explained: “This is an incredibly dangerous habitat for these animals – soft sediment and mud couldn’t be worse.

“If they are buried loose in mud without a shell, any predator coming along can just scoop them up. And they are pure rump steak, a terrific meat supply for any predator.”

The researchers think that the creatures would initially have used large bivalve shells as their haven, but later swapped to coconuts after our insatiable appetite for them meant their discarded shells became a regular feature on the sea bed.

Surprisingly smart

Tool use was once thought to be an exclusively human skill, but this behaviour has now been observed in a growing list of primates, mammals and birds.

The researchers say their study suggests that these coconut-grabbing octopuses should now be added to these ranks.

Professor Tom Tregenza, an evolutionary ecologist from the University of Exeter, UK, and another author of the paper, said: “A tool is something an animal carries around and then uses on a particular occasion for a particular purpose.

“While the octopus carries the coconut around there is no use to it – no more use than an umbrella is to you when you have it folded up and you are carrying it about. The umbrella only becomes useful when you lift it above your head and open it up.

“And just in the same way, the coconut becomes useful to this octopus when it stops and turns it the other way up and climbs inside it.”

He added that octopuses already have a reputation for being an intelligent invertebrate.

He explained: “They’ve been shown to be able to solve simple puzzles, there is the mimic octopus, which has a range of different species that it can mimic, and now there is this tool use.

“They do things which, normally, you’d only expect vertebrates to do.”

Chouhan was a 10-year veteran employee of the plant when disaster struck 25 years ago. Shortly after midnight on December 3, 1984, a cloud of methyl isocyanate gas wafted into the Bhopal atmosphere. Outside the factory’s concrete walls, quiet neighborhoods quickly became chaotic.

“Everybody started screaming, ‘There’s a gas leak, there’s a gas leak!’ So we started running,” recalled Bhopal resident Bashiran Bi.

“When we stepped out of the house, there was no room on the streets,” remembered Hamid Qureshi, another survivor. “There was chaos everywhere. People were running in each and every direction.”

Within hours, more than 3,000 people were dead. Thousands more died in the coming days, months and years.

“And people still continue to die,” said Satinath Sarangi, managing trustee of the Sambhavna Trust Clinic. “This month, this week, someone would have died an untimely death because of the exposure back in 1984. And there are still 100,000 or more people suffering from chronic illnesses.”

Sarangi’s clinic is a charitable trust in Bhopal that provides free medical care and treatment to survivors. More than 150 patients show up every day; in all, more than 22,000 people are registered for long-term care. Sarangi came to Bhopal immediately after the disaster, thinking he would help out for a week or so. He has been there ever since.

Similarly, Abdul Jabbar led his first public demonstration on behalf of gas victims shortly after the disaster. And he has been holding them ever since.

Jabbar is the head of the Bhopal Gas-Affected Working Womens’ Union, whose members meet in a public park every Saturday, railing against injustices to anyone who will listen.

“We have held more than 5,000 protests here,” Jabbar said. “We protest against the state, and whoever necessary.”

Jabbar’s core demands echo those of other activists. They want more medical and financial assistance, they want someone to clean up the dilapidated Union Carbide site, and they want someone to be held criminally responsible for the disaster.

The U.S.-based Union Carbide Corporation paid a $470 million settlement in 1989, after which it denied any further liability or responsibility for cleaning up the site. In a written statement to CNN, Union Carbide spokesman Tomm Sprick said, “Our understanding is that the (Indian) Central and State governments have plans for site clean up and we’re hopeful they will follow through with their remediation plans.”

Twelve years after the disaster, Union Carbide became part of the Dow Chemical Corporation. Dow also rejects demands that it clean up the Bhopal site. “The fact is that Dow never owned or operated the facility in Bhopal,” wrote Dow spokesman Scot Wheeler, in a statement to CNN.

Back on the factory grounds, Chouhan pointed to a marshy area.

“This was the local dump area for the Union Carbide plant,” he explained. “Even to this day, there are many chemicals present here, which are continuously polluting the underground water.”

Union Carbide and many local government officials insist that there is no conclusive evidence of any groundwater contamination.

Chouhan disagreed. “The smell from the water that comes out of the local hand pumps is the same that you can smell standing here right now.”

Chouhan, like Sarangi and Jabbar, said he was committed to making sure the disaster was never forgotten.

“If we don’t learn from it,” he warned, “tomorrow, another Bhopal will happen.”

“With the passage of time, we try to forget a lot of things,” Jabbar added. “Unfortunately, what happened in 1984, neither Bhopal nor the country learned anything from it.”

Most people think the disaster was “a horrible thing,” Sarangi said, “but it happened in the past, and they were paid a lot of money, and now everything’s okay. So the first news we have to break, which is sad news: It’s ongoing.”

(CNN) — The ice and snow that cap majestic Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are vanishing before our eyes.

If current conditions persist, climate change experts say, Kilimanjaro’s world-renowned glaciers, which have covered Africa’s highest peak for centuries, will be gone within the next two decades.

“In a very real sense, these glaciers are being decapitated from the surface down,” said Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. Thompson is co-author of a study on Kilimanjaro published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study’s authors blame the disappearing ice on increases in global temperatures and diminished snowfall at Kilimanjaro’s summit.

Previous studies of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers have relied on aerial photographs to measure the rate of the retreating ice. For this new survey, scientists climbed the mountain and drilled deep into the glaciers to measure the volume of the ice fields atop the 19,331-foot (5,892-meter) peak.

The ice sheet that capped Kilimanjaro in 2007 was 85 percent smaller than the one that covered its plateau in 1912, paleoclimatologists explained in the study.

The mountain’s ice cover shrank about 1 percent a year from 1912 to 1953, a rate that has accelerated in recent years. From 1989 to 2007, that rate jumped to 2.5 percent a year. Since 2000, the plateau’s three remaining ice fields have shrunk by 26 percent, scientists found.

Thompson and his team of researchers have spent seven years measuring the glaciers of Kilimanjaro, whose snow-capped profile rises dramatically over the surrounding tropical plains.

Using 110 “porters,” or local residents, they carried 6 tons of equipment to the mountain’s plateau. Battling temperatures as low as 35 degrees below zero, and with very little oxygen, Thompson and his crew lived atop Kilimanjaro for nearly two months, drilling and collecting core ice samples buried thousands of feet below the glaciers’ surface.

The new data shows that both the Northern and Southern ice fields atop Kilimanjaro have thinned dramatically in recent years, while the smaller Furtwangler Glacier shrank as much as 50 percent between 2000 and 2009.

As the glaciers break up into smaller pieces, more of the darker surface of the crater is exposed. This causes temperatures to rise on the mountain and accelerates the melting of the ice, scientists say.

“The shrinkage and ultimate disappearance of these glaciers will create tremendous ecological and social problems in the near future,” said Doug Hardy, senior research fellow in the Climate Systems Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Hardy contributed research to the new study.

“The Kilimanjaro glaciers are indicators for a larger-scale process,” Thompson said. “It’s not just Kilimanjaro, it’s every tropical glacier in Africa, in the tropical Andes of South America, it’s the glaciers in New Guinea. We are losing all those glaciers in today’s world.”

A snowless Mount Kilimanjaro also could have economic effects.

Kilimanjaro is a tourist attraction and a crucial revenue generator for Tanzania, one of the world’s poorest counties. A study published by the Overseas Development Institute in January estimated that 35,000 to 40,000 people visit Kilimanjaro every year, spending almost $50 million annually in the country.

Diabetes has ravaged his body, but his mind is sharp.

“Bill’s never allowed himself to be institutionalized,” said Dolores Kennedy, his long-time friend and advocate. “He’s kept himself focused on the positives.”

The days are spent mostly watching television and reading magazines. Using a wheelchair and sharing a cell with a roommate in the health unit of Dixon Correctional Center, he still yearns for a chance at freedom. It is something he has not tasted since 1946.

Heirens has been locked behind bars and walls for 63 years, making inmate C06103 the longest-serving prisoner in Illinois history, state officials say.

According to Steven Drizin, the legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, Heirens “has served longer than anyone in the U.S. that I can find.”

He was put away a year after the end of World War II. It is a dubious record, but fitting for the man dubbed the Lipstick Killer, whose crime spree remains among the most infamous in the history of Chicago, the city of Capone and Leopold and Loeb.

The scar-faced gangster and the thrill-kill pair are long gone. Heirens, however, has not slipped into the past. He lives in the present and hopes for a future outside prison. Supporters have championed his cause, convinced that he is innocent, or arguing that he has been rehabilitated, a model inmate who has served his sentence.

“Pray for my release,” he wrote in a letter dated October 11.

“There is no reason to keep this man behind bars,” said Drizin. “He meets all the criteria for parole.”

While Drizin, who has represented Heirens since 2001, and others passionately plead for his release and prepare to re-petition the state parole board that has consistently refused to free Heirens, others are convinced he is a manipulative murderer.

“He was the bogeyman,” said Betty Finn of the man convicted of strangling her sister. “I don’t think you need to feel sorry for him. He chose his life and he chose his actions.”

Josephine Ross was the first victim. The 43-year-old was found stabbed to death in her apartment. She was killed on June 5, 1945.

In December, police discovered the body of Frances Brown in her bathroom. She was stabbed through the neck and shot in the head. The killer left a message on the wall. It said, “for heavens sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself.” It was scrawled in red lipstick. The press seized on the detail. The headlines would soon scream of the Lipstick Killer.

Four weeks later, an intruder used a ladder to enter the second-floor window of Suzanne Degnan’s bedroom. The killer approached the sleeping 6-year-old girl and abducted her. “I was old enough to know everything that happened and remember the looks on my parents’ faces,” Finn said of the crime against her younger sister.

“Can you imagine as a child to have this happen? Can you imagine going to bed at night and all of a sudden your sister is not in her bed?”

There would be a ransom note demanding $20,000. But there would also be the horrific discovery of Suzanne’s severed head in a sewer. Other body parts were found within days.

Chicago was gripped in fear. Scores of people were questioned, but the investigation dragged on for months without a break. One, however, came in June, when two police officers confronted a burglar near the Degnan home.

The young thief was a 17-year-old student at the University of Chicago. His name was William Heirens, and police soon became convinced he was the killer.

Drizin said Heirens was subjected to days of brutal interrogation. He also was beaten and given sodium pentothal to make him tell the truth, Drizin said. He underwent a spinal tap, another extreme measure to compel him to talk.

Prosecutors said his handwriting matched that of the words scribbled in lipstick at the scene of the Brown killing. The FBI determined that a fingerprint lifted from the Degnan ransom note matched Heirens.

That gave the state’s attorney two powerful pieces of evidence against Heirens. But a confession would seal his fate. On August 7, 1946, Heirens supplied it, describing how he killed Degnan, Brown and Ross.

He pleaded guilty to three counts of murder. In exchange for the plea, Heirens was spared the death penalty and given three consecutive life sentences.

Heirens has distinguished himself in prison. He was the first inmate in Illinois to receive a college degree. “He helped redesign the library system in the department of corrections,” said Drizin, who also commended Heirens for becoming a “first-rate jailhouse lawyer.”

Drizin said Heirens has been eligible for parole nearly every year since the 1970s. The Center on Wrongful Convictions mounted a clemency campaign for Heirens on the grounds that he has served longer than required, and that the evidence used to convict him was unreliable. “Smoke and mirrors” was how Drizin described it.

Kennedy, who wrote a book that attempts to prove Heirens is innocent, said a political component is keeping him in prison.

“It’s a very political case,” she said. “Authorities have made statements that he would never get out. I think the courts managed to look the other way and the [parole] board didn’t want to take the heat.”

John Russick, senior curator for the Chicago History Museum, said the story of William Heirens is complicated.

“This is not a largely understood case,” Russick said. “People know the term Lipstick Killer, and that there was a sensational crime, but I don’t think it’s talked about in detail.”

He added, “I feel like it defies logic, and that’s what’s troubling about it. When you look closely at the nature of these kinds [of confessions] and when you know how these confessions were acquired, there’s enough there to — at the very least — to make you feel very unsure.”

Frank Czagany, who met Heirens when both were working in the machine shop at U.S. Steel in 1944, remembers his friend as being “very quiet, not wild.” “He wouldn’t say crap if he had a mouthful of it,” Czagany said.

Finn calls the efforts supporting Heirens misguided. “I’m not a vindictive person, I’m not doing this out of anger. It’s fear,” she said. “There is no evidence that says he’s the least bit innocent. How can every single court be wrong?”

Finn, who attended Heirens’ most recent parole hearing, in July, said he is not innocent by any stretch of the imagination. “Keep him locked in jail,” she said.

Kennedy said she and others are looking for a suitable placement in a nursing home for Heirens. She said she believes there is some indication that if an acceptable facility is located, he may have a chance to spend his final days a free man.

“He looks for any glimmer of hope,” said Kennedy. “He still wants to be out.”

Drizin said that time has come. “This is a case where I have serious doubts about his guilt,” he said. “But it’s a case where there is no question in my mind that the circus-like atmosphere that pervaded his arrest and his prosecution resulted in a trial proceeding for Bill and a guilty plea that was fundamentally unfair.”

“They probably have good hearts and are dedicated,” Finn said of Heirens’ believers. “He is not innocent by any stretch, no matter how they twist it.”

But it spends more than $130 million a year on its capital punishment system — housing and prosecuting inmates and coping with an appellate system that has kept some convicted killers waiting for an execution date since the late 1970s.

This is according to a new report that concludes that states are wasting millions on an inefficient death penalty system, diverting scarce funds from other anti-crime and law enforcement programs.

“Thirty-five states still retain the death penalty, but fewer and fewer executions are taking place every year,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “But the overall death row population has remained relatively steady. At a time of budget shortfalls nationwide, the death penalty is turning into an expensive form of life without parole.”

His group commissioned the study released Tuesday.

A privately conducted poll of 500 police chiefs released with the report found the death penalty ranked last among their priorities for reducing violent crime. Only 1 percent found it to the best way to achieve that goal. Adding police officers ranked first.

The death row population in 2007, the most-recent statistic available from the Justice Department, was 3,220. It was at 2,250 two decades ago, but the numbers have not grown significantly since 2000.

Forty executions have occurred so far in 2009 in 10 states, all by lethal injection. That total is up from 37 for all of last year, but less than half of the high of 98, from 10 years ago. The Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Ohio recently suspended lethal injections after corrections officials were forced to cancel the execution of Romell Broom last month, when a suitable vein could not be found after two hours of trying.

Virginia plans a Nov. 10 execution for John Allen Muhammad, the so-called Beltway Sniper, convicted of randomly killing 10 people in 2002 with a high-powered rifle.

The Death Penalty Information Center study found that death penalty costs can average $10 million more per year per state than life sentences. Increased costs include higher security needs and guaranteed access to an often lengthy pardon and appellate process. The group is an information resource on capital punishment, and opposes its application as unworkable, inefficient and prone to mistakes.

Florida, where two men have been put to death this year, spends an average of $24 million per execution. That average has remained consistent since 2005, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Many death penalty proponents say part of the problem is that states have added unnecessary, time-consuming delays, and have been reluctant to carry out the death penalty that their own legislatures have enacted. They say states should carry out the wishes of judges and juries that weighed evidence and imposed death on the worst murderers.

Death penalty supporters acknowledge that states outside the South have been reluctant to impose the punishment, even in the face of rising big-city crime rates.

“I think we need to build support for the death penalty and need to impose it more regularly where it is warranted,” Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Sacramento, California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation told CNN earlier this year.

Having the death penalty can offer powerful incentives in plea bargaining, Scheidegger said, and could provide states with large savings in trial and incarceration costs.

His group conducted a study earlier this year comparing murder cases resolved by guilty plea with those that went to trial.

In states with the death penalty, the average county obtained sentences of at least 20 years in almost 51 percent of cases in which the defendant was charged with murder and convicted of murder or voluntary manslaughter. Those sentences were reached through a guilty plea in about 19 percent of the cases.

In states without the death penalty, sentences of at least 20 years were obtained in 40 percent of those cases, but only 5 percent were guilty pleas, about one-quarter of the number in the death penalty states.

That study relied on U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics data from 33 large urban counties.

One example cited by Scheidegger of the plea bargaining effect involved Shaun Earl Arender. He confessed this year to the sexual assault and murder of 6-year-old Hanna Mack in Texas, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in return for avoiding the death penalty. Texas consistently leads the nation with the most executions.

Eleven state legislatures have considered repealing the death penalty this year. New Mexico has banned it, and Maryland has narrowed the criteria under which it can be used.

Kansas, New Hampshire and the U.S. military are the only jurisdictions that have death penalty laws but have not conducted any executions since 1976. Lethal injection is used in the vast majority of executions, but electrocution, the gas chamber, hanging and firing squad remain as alternative methods.

1. Robert Lucas, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on the theory of “rational expectations,” split his $1 million prize with his ex-wife.

If there were a Nobel Prize for Foresight or Timing, she should be nominated, based on a clause in their divorce settlement from seven years earlier: “Wife shall receive 50 percent of any Nobel Prize.” The clause expired on October 31, 1995. Had Lucas won any year after, he would have kept the whole million.

2. Physicist Lise Meitner, whose work helped lead to the discovery of nuclear fission, was reportedly nominated for the Nobel Prize 13 times without ever winning (though nominations are kept secret, so we don’t know for sure). This makes her the Dynasty of the Nobel Prize scene — that show was nominated for 24 Emmy Awards but never won. Other analogies we’d accept: The Color Purple (11 Oscar nominations in 1985, no wins), the Buffalo Bills or Minnesota Vikings (4 Super Bowl losses each without a victory) and William Jennings Bryan (three-time Democratic nominee for President, losing twice to McKinley and once to Taft.)

3. People who refused the prize:

• Le Duc Tho was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Henry Kissinger for their roles in brokering a Vietnam cease fire at the Paris Peace Accords. Citing the absence of actual peace in Vietnam, Tho declined to accept.

• Jean Paul Sartre waved off the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature. His explanation: “It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner. A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form.”

• Afraid of Soviet retribution if he traveled to Stockholm to claim his prize, Boris Pasternak declined to accept the 1958 Prize in Literature, which he’d earned for Doctor Zhivago. The Academy refused his refusal. “This refusal, of course, in no way alters the validity of the award. There remains only for the Academy, however, to announce with regret that the presentation of the Prize cannot take place.” Yevgeny Pasternak accepted the prize on behalf of his deceased father in 1989.

• Swedish poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt won for Literature in 1918. He did not accept because he was Secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize. He was given the award posthumously in 1931. This was allowed because the nomination was made before Karlfeldt died — no candidate may be proposed after death.

4. In 2007, 90-year-old professor Leonid Hurwicz became the oldest person to ever win (one-third of the Prize in Economics); at 87, writer Doris Lessing became the oldest woman (Literature).

5. DNA expert Kary Mullis — 1993 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry — was scheduled to be a defense witness in O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. However, Simpson’s lawyer Barry Scheck felt the prosecution’s DNA case was already essentially destroyed, and he didn’t want Mullis’ personal life to distract jurors (he’d expressed an affinity for LSD.)

6. Nobel Laureates you must know: Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Jimmy Carter, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Pierre & Marie Curie, Max Planck and Albert Einstein.

7. Big names who never won: Dmitri Mendeleev, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein, Henrik Ibsen, Joan Robinson, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Jules-Henri Poincaré, Raymond Damadian and Mahatma Gandhi.

8. Winners without the greatest reputations:

• Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, who won in 1976 for his research in human slow-virus infections, spent 19 months in jail after pleading guilty in 1997 to charges of child molestation.

• Johannes Fibiger won in 1926 after discovering parasitic worms cause cancer — a breakthrough that turned out to not be true.

• Yasser Arafat shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. This decision caused Nobel Committee member Kare Kristiansen to resign. “What consequences will result,” he asked at the time, “when a terrorist with such a background is awarded the world’s most prestigious prize?”

• William Shockley won for Physics in 1956 for his role in the invention of the semiconductor, but his support of the eugenics movement alienated the scientific community. Shockley also donated sperm to the Repository for Germinal Choice, a sperm bank developed to spread humanity’s best genes.

9. As part of his divorce settlement, Einstein’s Nobel Prize money went to his ex-wife, Mileva Maric.

10. The Curie family is a Nobel Prize machine, winning five: Pierre and Marie for Physics in 1901; Marie solo for Chemistry in 1911; daughter Irene and her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie for Chemistry in 1935; and Henry Labouisse — Irene’s daughter Eve’s second husband — accepted on behalf of UNICEF in 1965. No family has won more.

11. Marie Curie’s second prize was marred by scandal. Then a widow, Curie had an affair with a married scientist, Paul Langevin — a former pupil of Pierre Curie. Love letters were involved, eventually leading to a duel between Langevin and the editor of the newspaper that had printed them (no shots were actually fired.) According to NobelPrize.org, when it was suggested that Curie not accept the prize, she wrote a shrewd letter, “which pointed out that she had been awarded the Prize for her discovery of radium and polonium, and that she could not accept the principle that appreciation of the value of scientific work should be influenced by slander concerning a researcher’s private life.”

12. Singing support –While there’s no evidence the Nobel judges can be swayed by theme songs, that hasn’t stopped Loriana Lana from composing one for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. “Peace Can” includes the lyrics, “Silvio forever will be / Silvio is reality / Silvio forever! /Silvio gives us trust.”

13. Alfred Nobel — inventor of dynamite — may have been inspired to create the Nobel Prize after a premature obituary in a French newspaper called him a “merchant of death.”

14. Nobel died on December 10, 1896. The formal awards ceremony is held in Stockholm each year on the anniversary of his death. The first awards show took place on December 10, 1901. (These things take time to plan.)

And in case you were wondering just how much of a say Alfred Nobel had in the prize, here’s what he wrote in his will:

“The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way:

“The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical works by the Caroline Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm; and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, so that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.”

The organization suggested the situation could worsen if the rate of premature births increases.

Each year, 12.9 million infants — or nearly 10 percent of the annual worldwide birth total — are born before 37 weeks of development in the womb, the organization said. More than 85 percent of the premature births occur in developing countries in Africa and Asia.

“Premature births are an enormous global problem that is exacting a huge toll emotionally, physically and financially on families, medical systems and economies,” March of Dimes President Jennifer Howse said in a statement. “In the United States alone, the annual cost of caring for preterm babies and their associated health problems tops $26 billion.”

The March of Dimes report, which used data collected by the World Health Organization, breaks down premature birth rates by continent.

The highest premature birth rate is in Africa, where 11.9 percent of births each year are preterm, with more than 4 million premature deliveries annually. In populous Asia, although the preterm birth rate is lower at 9.1 percent, the number of premature births is higher, at nearly 7 million a year.

While North America — consisting of the United States and Canada in this report — counts fewer than 500,000 premature births a year, its preterm birth rate is close to that of Africa, at 10.6 percent of all births, according to the report. The rate is the world’s second highest.

In the United States, the rate of preterm births has increased 36 percent in the past 25 years, with births between the 34th and 36th week of gestation accounting for the majority of the increase, the organization found. Much of the hike in preterm births is linked to more pregnancies after the age of 35 and the use of fertility treatments that can lead to multiple births.

“Wherever trend data are available, rates of preterm birth are increasing,” the report said.

Infants who survive premature birth face lifelong health risks, including the possible development of cerebral palsy, blindness, hearing loss, learning disabilities and other chronic conditions, according to the March of Dimes.

“Preterm birth is a global problem that needs greater attention by policymakers, researchers, health care providers, the media, donor organizations and other stakeholders,” the report said.

“The marked disparities in preterm birth along racial/ethnic lines in many high-income countries and the concentration of preterm births in Africa and Asia also clearly indicate that addressing preterm birth is essential for reducing the pronounced inequities in neonatal health and for the world to achieve,” it added.

The March of Dimes, a nonprofit agency engaged in pregnancy and baby health research, said some premature births can be prevented by addressing risk factors in mothers, including diabetes, high blood pressure, nutrition, body weight and tobacco and alcohol use. Women who earlier gave birth to a preemie face a greater risk of having another.

While doctors know some of the health and behavior factors in mothers that increase the risk of preterm births, doctors have yet to identify a reliable remedy to prevent early labor, said Christopher Howson, vice president for global programs of the March of Dimes.

“While much can be done right now to reduce death and disability from preterm birth even in low-resource settings, we need to know more about the underlying causes of premature birth in order to develop effective prevention strategies,” Howson said.