Walt Disney Co. is being sued in South Africa for infringement of copyright on the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight, which was used in the film The Lion King. According to the lawsuit, the song was originally titled "Mbube" and was written by migrant worker Solomon Linda in 1939. Heirs of Linda, who died in 1962, are seeking royalties of more than $1.5 million. A recent legal move by the plaintiffs attached Disney's other trademarks to the lawsuit; if successful, the trademarks could be auctioned off to raise the funds.

Story from Reuters available here.

Conifur Northwest is Sept 24-26 in Tacoma, Washington. You can register now here. Also, through the miracle of the internet, you can reserve your hotel room for the convention on-line here.

It's not too late to pre-order your Conifur Northwest 2004 t-shirt! Designed by Guest of Honor, Chad Krueger, (your can see the design at the Conifur homepage default color is a black shirt with the 2004 design in white on the front.

This is the initial posting of the fourth annual Recommended Anthropomorphics List. It has two purposes. Firstly, it is open for all Furry fans to recommend the best anthropomorphic movies, TV series, novels, artwork, games, etc. that they find during 2004. It is for fans who want to know what Furry movies, TV series, novels, etc. are worth looking for. The List is open to anyone to add to, and it will be updated at least three times before the end of the year. If you find any 2004 Furry movies or comic books or comic strips, etc. that are worth recommending, please send your recommendations through the end of 2004 to:

Fred Patten
11863 West Jefferson Boulevard
Culver City, California 90230-6322
fredpatten@earthlink.net

Secondly, this List is to be used as a guide for nominations to the 2004 Ursa Major Award, which will be presented at Anthrocon 2005 for the Best of the calendar year 2004 in the first ten categories. The List was actually started in 2001 as an aid to those fans who said, "The Award sounds like a good idea but I don't have the slightest idea what's eligible to be nominated." Read the List and find out what is eligible for the Best of 2004.

A new category has been added this year: Recommended Anthropomorphic Miscellany. This is for items such as action figures and plush dolls, songs, and other items which do not fit into the existing categories but are still worth recommending. This category will not be included in the Ursa Major Award, due to the inappropriateness of comparing such diverse items for a "best" vote.

Continuing publications such as comic books, comic strips, and fanzines are not carried over from one year to the next. If a favorite comic or fanzine of yours was on last year's List, it must be resubmitted to appear on this year's List.

This Recommended List is posted at http://www.ursamajorawards.org/ This website includes links to as many as possible of the recommendated items that have their own entries on the Internet; so if you want to know more about any of them, you can go right to its site. It also includes the previous Lists, for the benefit of those looking for recommendations of good Furry art & literature since the 21st century started.

From a national park on the edge of Bombay, India, leopards have killed ten people this month that has prompted forest officials to let loose pigs and rabbits to feed the big cats.

The killings are up from previous years, and six of this month's deaths occurred outside the park as leopards extended their range in search of food.

The Sunday Star-Times reports that Disney and Walden Media were denied use of reindeer in New Zealand for pulling the Ice Queen's sled in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Filming of the $170 million production started last week. The animals, which also pull Santa's sled in one scene, are now likely to be created by Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop special effects department.

Film-maker Lamp-Post Productions hit a speed bump on the road to Narnia when it applied to the Ministry of Argiculture and Forestry for permission to bring in the reindeer and eight wolf cross-breeds. The ministry was happy with wolves in the Auckland studio - which has been set up on the former Hobsonville airbase - but drew the line at reindeer.

Coming Soon News

DVD Premiere



Further Confusion will have a table in the Dealer's Room at AnthroCon, and
we are excited to announce that this will be the first place the FC2004 Highlight DVD will be available for sale. It will be on sale at the low price of $10 each, and will be playable in DVD players on all regions. This DVD includes over 1,000 convention photographs, three songs from GOH Heather Alexander's concert, Critterlympics footage, as well as the Masquerade and FVS. It also contains the Late Night Show interviews with all three Guests of Honor (including Larry Niven and Grant Freckelton), plus other extras. We have put a lot of work into it, kept the price as low as possible and we hope you enjoy it for years to come.



Registration Sale



Even though FC2005 is still over 6 months away, AnthroCon is a great place for you to buy your FC membership. We will be selling full memberships for all five days of the convention for $35. This will probably be the last opportunity to get this price. We have a limited amount of the 2003 Highlights DVD for sale as well, at a discounted price of $5 each for those of you who didn't get one last year.

We hope everyone has a great time at AnthroCon this year, be watching for our full July newsletter when you get back from the con.



--
Further Confusion

http://www.furtherconfusion.org/

Our webserver died suddenly sometime on Friday. As such, the MFM webpage, mailing lists, and email accounts for the staff are currently unavailable. Since this is impacting the upcoming deadline for the T-Shirt Contest, we're announcing....

Been struggling with your T-Shirt Entry? Been working your pencils to nubs as we approach the deadline on the 10th?

Well, I have some good news, folks...

The dedicated folks at Sofawolf Press have been working overtime to finish four new projects for debut at Anthrocon next week (July 9-11). We’re very excited about this latest batch of art and writing, and we hope you will be too.

Comics updates from both Doodles and Treesong! "Beware the Ides of March and the doldrums of Labor Day. And any class in college where the instructor wrote the book..."

Rabbit Valley ® Comics has just released Circles Issue #5 and the long awaited Rocketship Rodents Issue #1 today. Read more for additional shipping details.

Morphicon has concluded, and the convention was a success beyond our wildest dreams!

Given the unfortunate proximity to other conventions, we anticipated only about 80 attendees. When registration closed on Sunday, 120 furries had registered for the convention, 113 of them paid registrations! 115 furries in all attended the convention, 108 of them paid.

Those who registered but were unable to attend con will be sent convention materials through postal mail (including sponsor goodies for sponsors), so they can still have something from us.

(more below)

A bluish brown arctic fox apparently survived on garbage for two weeks after becoming an inadvertent stowaway on a ship.

The arctic fox is believed to have boarded the ship during a port stop in the Aleutian Islands and was found in the vessel's trash bin after it arrived at a shipyard last month.

[Read Article]

Due to Aatheus' interest in furthering his education, he has found he has less time for Furbid. He says, "I don't want to end up giving FurBid and its users any less time than they deserve, but I will have to do so for the next several years." Control will be turned over to Ayukawa, previously an assistant.

A stocky, knuckle-dragging 340-pound gorilla leaped across a 12-foot-wide moat and a wall that separated him from visitors at the Dallas Zoo.

13-year-old Jabari escaped and went on a 40-minute rampage in March, snatching up a toddler with his teeth and injuring three other people before being shot to death by officers.

[Read Article]

Many people have heard of the ill-fated Shackleton expedition, which ended with a sucessful six man mad dash across open ocean to get help for the crew, left behind on a rocky outcrop.
One of the most tragic moments of the story involved the execution of the sled dog team, but many people are unaware that one cat also had to be shot. Mrs Chippy, a tom owned by the ship's carpenter and unofficial ship's mascot, has now finally been reunited with his owner in the form of a memorial statue on Harry McNeish's gravesite.
The statue is designed to be ever alert, but relaxed, as if the cat is "lying on McNeish's bunk".

Sadly, McNeish's love for his cat may have contributed to the carpenter's minor rebellion against Shackleton, the team leader, which lead to him being denied a Polar Medal, in spite of his work building and repairing boats and shelters to save the team. To the end, he never forgave Shackleton for shooting his beloved cat. Harry McNeish's grandson, Tom McNeish, comments, "I think the cat was more important to him than the Polar Medal."