1 of 2. Researches use heavy machinery to perform a necropsy on a dead finback whale that had washed up on the shore of the Queens borough region of Breezy Point, New York, December 28, 2012.

LOS ANGELES | Fri Dec 28, 2012 5:26pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Several endangered whale species may get a new lease on life when some cargo shipping lanes off the California coast are shifted next year.

Routes due to be changed by June 2013 are used by ocean-going cargo vessels, tugboats and automobile carriers near San Francisco Bay, the Channel Islands in central California and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, environmental officials said on Friday.

The shipping channels overlap with whale feeding and migration areas, and several blue whales and fin whales have been killed by ships, they said.

"The issue really struck home for us" with those deaths, said Michael Carver, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) deputy superintendent of Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary in northern California.

The changes will not reduce the risk to zero, said Sean Hastings, a resource protection coordination with NOAA's Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

Financial incentives to get vessels to slow down on their approach to the California coast are also being considered, Hastings said, adding that boats are now asked to voluntarily slow down but they are not doing it.

The Cordell sanctuary and other protected patches of ocean near San Francisco and the Channel Islands are habitats for blue, humpback and fin whales, which are protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

In 2007, four blue whales were believed to have been killed by ships near the Channel Islands, according to NOAA, and five whales were killed off the coast of San Francisco and in nearby areas in 2010.

This year, a fin whale was struck by a ship and died off the coast of San Francisco and a vessel is believed to have killed another fin whale that washed ashore in Malibu, near Los Angeles, NOAA said.

In November, the International Maritime Organization, which governs shipping worldwide, said it had adopted changes to lanes off the coast of California to reduce whale strikes by ships. One of the proposals, for example, involves moving a shipping lane near the Channel Islands north by one mile to avoid a whale feeding area, Hastings said.

Carver said the U.S. Coast Guard would consult with the shipping industry and the public before the lane adjustments take effect.

(Additional reporting by Dana Feldman; Editing by Tim Gaynor)

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1 of 3. Protesters take part in a demonstration in Ramadi, 100 km (62 miles) west of Baghdad, December 26, 2012.

ANBAR, Iraq | Wed Dec 26, 2012 11:46am EST

ANBAR, Iraq (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims blocked Iraq's main trade route to neighboring Syria and Jordan in a fourth day of demonstrations on Wednesday against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The massive show of force marks an escalation in protests that erupted last week after troops detained the bodyguards of Sunni Finance Minister Rafaie Esawi, threatening to plunge Iraq deeper into political turmoil.

"The people want to bring down the regime," chanted thousands of protesters in the Sunni stronghold of Anbar, echoing the slogan used in popular revolts that ended in the toppling of the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

Waving the old flag of Iraq that was changed after Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, protesters sat in the road, choking off the main trade route between Iraq, Jordan and Syria.

Another smaller protest was held in the city of Samarra in the predominantly Sunni province of Salahuddin, next to Anbar.

The move against Esawi's guards came hours after President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who has mediated among Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish factions, left for Germany for treatment for a stroke that could end his steadying influence over Iraqi politics.

The arrest was reminiscent of Maliki's move to arrest Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who he accused of running death squads, just as U.S. troops withdrew in December 2011.

Iraq's fragile power-sharing government has since lurched from crisis to crisis and the conflict in Syria risks reigniting sectarian tensions that brought the country to the brink of all-out civil war in 2005-2007.

Addressing the protesters, Esawi said the detention of his guards was politically motivated and that Maliki was deliberately provoking strife.

"It is enough! The country should not be run by such a mentality," he said, to cries of "God is greatest".

Maliki has sought to play his rivals off against one another to strengthen his alliances in Iraq's complex political landscape before provincial elections next year and a parliamentary vote in 2014.

Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, another rival of Maliki, offered his support to the protests in a statement, rejecting what he described as Maliki's sectarian policies.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Jon Hemming)

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