Osprey at Leighton Moss – Born in Lake District: here.
First osprey chick in living memory for Dumfriesshire – Caerlaverock: here.
Ospreys, the spectacular fish hawks whose return to Britain has been a conservation success story, have nested in Northumberland for the first time in more than two centuries: here.
Ospreys breed in Northumberland for first time in over two centuries: here. Chicks ready for take-off: here.
Nesting herons, nuthatches, jackdaws, swallows and ospreys on CCTV in Scotland: here.
On Monday 6th April 2009, seven days after occupying their factory in Basildon, Essex, the Visteon car plant workers decide to give their former boss, Steve Gawne, a visit at his country manor to hand-deliver a letter demanding justice be served.
HUNDREDS of people rallied in Belfast on Wednesday in support of the ongoing sit-in by laid-off Visteon workers.
UNITE END ENFIELD OCCUPATION – but Belfast stands firm: here.
SHARES in Ireland’s three leading banks plummeted on Wednesday after the government announced plans to create a “bad bank” to soak up toxic debts: here.
French workers release ‘bossnapped’ British bosses: here.
MAYOR of London Boris Johnson came under fire on Wednesday for pulling the plug on an anti-racism music festival which was due to take place in Finsbury Park later this year.
Mr Johnson, who caused uproar last year when he removed the anti-racism message from the promotional material for the Rise Festival, announced that the event would not go ahead at all blaming lack of sponsorship.
Instead, the money from the Greater London Authority will be used for a capital-wide event called Rhythm of London focusing on music education.
Last year, the union sponsors of the Rise event were so incensed by the mayor’s actions that they withdrew their funding for the festival, which has attracted 100,000 people.
A spokesman for the mayor said: “Without a major sponsor in place, it is not considered appropriate to spend such a large amount on a single music event, particularly during a recession.
This year instead, the money will be used to fund a multitude of events and grassroots activities across London.”
But UNISON, a previous sponsor of the event, accused the mayor of passing the buck.
UNISON regional secretary for London Linda Perks said: “We withdrew funding from the Rise festival after Boris Johnson watered down the anti-racist message of the event.
“But UNISON sponsored Rise to the tune of £30,000, which is a giant leap away from the £551,000 total cost of the festival.
Former London mayor Ken Livingstone also weighed in on the row, saying: “Boris Johnson’s cancellation of London’s anti-racist music festival Rise is a blow to good community relations in the city. Rise was the biggest anti-racist festival in Europe and, on that basis, attracted significant sponsorship.
“It lost much of this when Boris Johnson dropped the central anti-racist message last year. It is no surprise that Boris Johnson is now cancelling the festival altogether.”
October 2010: Europe’s biggest anti-racism festival Rise returns to the capital on Sunday – just a year after Tory Mayor Boris Johnson cancelled the event: here.
PUBLIC-SECTOR workers condemned London’s Tory Mayor Boris Johnston on Friday for keeping senior bureaucrats at City Hall in work while lower grade staff stand to lose their jobs: here.
More than half the world’s workers have no contract, social security
Business News
Apr 8, 2009, 10:36 GMT
Paris – With mass layoffs becoming more common as a result of the economic crisis, more and more workers around the world are forced to take jobs without a contract and any social security, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Wednesday in Paris.
According to a new OECD study, some 1.8 billion people, or more than half the world’s labour force, now find themselves in this precarious situation.
‘That number is projected to grow to two thirds of the workforce by 2020, assuming stable population trends and growth patterns, and could go higher if more jobs are lost to the economic crisis and more migrants return home to informal sector jobs,’ the OECD said.
The situation affects primarily women – who make up the majority of workers in poor-quality jobs – and workers in developing countries with no unemployment insurance, the OECD said.
To remedy the situation, the authors of the study call for immediate and unconventional action. ‘The support of donor countries will be essential,’ the OECD said.
Tests on a captive dolphin have demonstrated that hearing can be lost for up to 40 minutes on exposure to sonar. Hearing is the most important sense for dolphins and other cetaeceans, and losing it is likely to cause them to become disorientated and alarmed.
Dr Mooney said that this could explain three of the best-known strandings that have been linked to military sonar – in the Bahamas, the Canaries and Hawaii – because all three regions had a mountainous underwater topography.
Observations by researchers while carrying out the tests, which are reported in the journal Biology Letters, showed that even though the dolphin involved was well accustomed to man-made noises and disturbances, it suffered subtle behavioural changes, which could cause further confusion.
The whale, a male specimen of the Blainville’s Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon densirostris), was seen circling the area for two days, then ended up dead at the seashore on Wednesday morning, witnesses said: here.
Wicken Fen complete natural history goes omline [sic]
08/04/2009 00:32:34
Wicken Fen set for wildlife first on the web
Britain’s best documented and most species-rich nature reserve, Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, has published an online archive of 56,000 records dating back to the 1820s.
More than 7,400 species
The archive includes records of more than 7,400 different species over a 180 year period and this is the most comprehensive collection of natural history information for a single site. Developed by the National Biodiversity Network, the archive will enable wildlife enthusiasts to access maps and records about Wicken Fen at the click of a mouse. …
The most diverse group of species is not the plants or birds, but the invertebrates and especially the insects. Three groups of insects each have over 1000 species, the flies (1,893 species), the beetles (1,527 species) and the moths (1,083 species).
These three groups alone make up more than 56 per cent of all the species found at Wicken Fen. When all of the records from Wicken Fen have been added, and once classifications are complete, this will take the total number of species found here to more than 8,100 species.
Stuart Warrington added: “Just a short distance from Cambridge, Wicken Fen has a prodigious list of rare species from plants such as the Great Fen Sedge, Fen Violet and Whorled Water-Milfoil to birds including the Marsh Harrier and Cuckoo. Perhaps even more impressive is that there are over 600 insect species at Wicken that are listed as nationally endangered, rare or scarce in the UK Red Data Books.”
May 2010. Local bird watchers have recently reported sightings of rare wading birds including avocet, temminck’s stint and whimbrel on the National Trust’s Tubney Fen (Part of Wicken Fen National Nature Reserve), near Reach in Cambridgeshire: here.
Wicken Fen Nature Reserve, near Ely, Cambridgeshire, will be holding a Dragonfly Discovery Day on Saturday 11 June to officially launch National Dragonfly Week (11 – 19 June): here.
Antarctic ice shelf collapse: climate change and capitalism
8 April 2009
The disintegration last Sunday of a 40-kilometre ice bridge connecting the Wilkins Ice Shelf to the Antarctic Peninsula is another stark indicator of the threat posed by climate change.
The ice bridge was the last link between the 14,000 square kilometre Wilkins Shelf and the Antarctic mainland. Scientists now anticipate that the ice shelf—a vast expanse of ice—will be rapidly eroded or completely melted, especially if it drifts north into warmer ocean currents. The erosion of the Wilkins Shelf, first identified by scientists through satellite images taken in March 2008, proceeded much faster than anticipated. In 1993 the British Antarctic Survey identified the area as vulnerable, but predicted that significant deterioration would take 30 years.
Average world temperatures are 0.8 degrees Celsius higher than in the pre-industrial era, but the Antarctic Peninsula (the part of the continent that juts toward South America) has proven much more sensitive to global warming. Temperatures there have risen by 2.5°C in the past six decades alone. …
In the late nineteenth century Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first hypothesised that industrial pollution, above all the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, could produce global warming through a greenhouse effect. Empirical data confirming that warming was underway was gathered by climate scientists in the post-World War II period; significant evidence of climate change had been accumulated by the 1980s. Despite this, the response of governments throughout the world was to do nothing.
Climate change makes migrations longer for birds: here.
Conservation groups have blasted European Union leaders after they failed to stump up money for poor countries to help combat climate change, warning that the EU was jeopardising a global pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions: here.
The earthquake that shook central Italy early Monday morning has already claimed the lives of at least 228 victims. It destroyed some 15,000 buildings, leaving up to 100,000 people homeless. The death toll is expected to rise in the coming days as rescuers dig through rubble in conditions made worse by low temperatures, rain, the rugged terrain of the region and aftershocks.
The quake, which registered 6.3 on the Richter scale, struck the mountainous region of Abruzzo some 110 kilometres northeast of Rome. Aftershocks have continued to plague the region even as thousands of the homeless remain housed in makeshift tents.
The quake was centred on the medieval city of L’Aquila, where entire housing blocks were razed to the ground. The city (total population of 68,000) lies just 1 kilometre from the quake’s epicentre. A total of 26 settlements across the region are reported to have been affected. After concentrating on the main urban centres, rescue workers are increasingly focusing their efforts on the more remote settlements, which in turn may well reveal an increased number of victims. …
Some residents in the town of L’Aquila said the government had failed to take action despite tremors in the region growing worse over the past few months. The first tremors were felt in mid-January and continued at regular intervals, creating mounting alarm. One woman whose home collapsed said that there was a severe jolt a week ago.
Maria Francesco, a survivor of the earthquake who lives in L’Aquila, said: “It’s a scandal what’s happened. For the past three months, there have been regular tremors, and they’ve been getting stronger and stronger. The authorities were well aware.”
Warnings given
Not only was Monday’s quake preceded by a series of tremors, it had been predicted with some accuracy by one leading scientist. The disaster took place just weeks after a warning was given by a researcher that a “disastrous seismic event” was imminent in the region. Giampaolo Giuliani, from the National Physical Laboratory of Gran Sasso, warned of the dangers of a quake after sensors in the L’Aquila region detected radon gas escaping from the ground.
Following Giuliani’s warning, vans with loudspeakers were driven around the medieval town, urging residents to evacuate their homes. This campaign was then wound down after Giuliani was reported by the local authorities to the police for “scare-mongering.” He was then put under pressure to withdraw his warning and remove information he had placed on the Internet. Giuliani had made a video and included an interview on the Internet in which he warned that a “disastrous seismic event” was on its way.
This used to be a video of pro Berlusconi Italian TV, mocking the earthquake predictions by Giampalo Giuliani, just before the quake happened, here. However, YouTube has deleted that video.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was among the first to dismiss Guiliani’s warning and told a press conference after the quake that there was “no scientific basis” to any suggestion that the earthquake had been predicted.
In response to claims by other scientists that it was not possible to predict earthquakes, Giuliani told the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera: ‘It is utterly false to say that we cannot predict seismic events. We can. We have been able to do so for 10 years. We have been seeing these signs…. I too have been evacuated; we have lived the worst night of our lives.”
Giuliani’s research has been supported by other leading seismologists and experts in the field.
Shoddy construction and corruption
There is considerable evidence that the damage inflicted by Monday’s quake could have been minimised by the planned evacuation of residents. At the same time, it is also apparent that the high toll of deaths and casualties is directly attributable to the shoddy construction standards that prevail throughout the entire country.
“Buildings are the main killers when earthquakes strike,” wrote the Geneva-based UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. In the case of L’Aquila, many of the collapsed buildings were “old structures which did not meet modern seismic standards,” it said. …
One leading geologist and disaster expert, Franco Barberi, told Italian state television that with correct building standards, including anti-seismic protection, it would have been possible to avoid any deaths for a quake of this scale.
The damage caused in the town of L’Aquila included a number of its precious medieval buildings. According to initial estimates, nearly half of the city’s medieval centre has been razed to the ground. Nevertheless, despite the damage done to such older buildings, the fact remains that medieval or even ancient monuments and structures were frequently constructed on a sounder basis than many of Italy’s modern building and housing projects.
A large number of the buildings that have been destroyed in L’Aquila are just 10-15 years old. According to one city resident, Nicoletta Giusti: “We always told ourselves that everything here would be able to withstand an earthquake, but it’s obvious that they took cost-cutting shortcuts like using, I don’t know, inferior cement or not enough steel.”
Rescue efforts have been hampered by the collapse of L’Aquila’s new public hospital, which was built in 2000. La Stampa newspaper quoted Paolo Rocchi, an architect and university professor on the conservation of historic buildings: “I am really startled that a reinforced concrete hospital in a highly seismic zone can be so devastated to be declared off-limits. It’s absurd.”
To cut corners and increase profits, building companies often use inferior materials, and there is a long tradition of corruption in the Italian public works and construction industry.
Just a few weeks ago, judges convicted five people in the 2002 collapse of a school in a 5.4-magnitude quake. Prosecutors alleged shoddy construction was a factor in the tragedy in southern Italy that claimed 28 lives, including the small town’s entire first grade.
Prime Minister Berlusconi, who rushed to assure the media that this latest quake and the damage it caused was an unavoidable act of fate, made his own fortune in the building industry before shedding large parts of his empire to his brother Paolo. In recent years, Paolo Berlusconi has been repeatedly accused of malpractice and bribery in relation to his own practices as head of the family’s building concerns.
At the end of March, the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi founded a new right-wing party in Rome. He merged his own party, Forza Italia, which he first set up in 1994, with the neo-fascist National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale) led by Gianfranco Fini to create the right-wing party People of Freedom (Popolo della Libertà, PdL): here.
Exclusive footage obtained by the Guardian shows Ian Tomlinson, who died during G20 protests in London, was attacked from behind by baton–wielding police officer.
NEW evidence showing that Ian Tomlinson, who collapsed and died during last Wednesday’s G20 protests, was assaulted by police minutes before his death sparked calls for a full independent inquiry on Wednesday: here. See also here.
THE Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) yesterday afternoon announced a ‘criminal investigation’ into the death of Ian Tomlinson: here.
Video footage, photographs and at least five eyewitness accounts have been published over the past several days indicating that Ian Tomlinson, who died during the London G20 demonstrations on April 1, was twice subjected to physical assault by police officers: here.
THE Morning Star can reveal that the officer at the centre of the investigation into the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests was interviewed by officers of the City of London police, not the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC): here.
Police cover-up over military-style operation against City protests: here.
