The youngsters, which were born to mother, Nina were snuggled tightly in their maternal nest and keepers gently lifted them out to check their body condition and determine their sex.
Closer inspection revealed that Nina had given birth to one female and three male joeys.
October 2011. Culling will not control the spread of facial tumour disease among Tasmanian devils, according to a study published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology. Unless a way of managing the disease is found, the iconic marsupial could become extinct in the wild within the next 25 years: here.
October 2011: The release of 12 Gilbert’s potoroos into a tiny mainland population on Western Australia’s south coast is aiding the recovery of the world’s rarest marsupial: here.
There are 880 aquariums now. Mainly fish are on sale. But also some amphibians, sea anemones, sea stars, shrimps (both as aquarium inhabitants and as fish food), and water plants.
An innovative tool for tracking the migratory patterns of waterbirds has won first prize in an ESRI International Conservation Mapping Competition. The “Critical Site Network (CSN) Tool” (CSN Tool) and the supporting “Flyaway Training Kit” (FTK) are some of the products of the Wings over Wetland (WOW) project, the largest flyway scale waterbirds conservation initiative ever attempted, covering the 118 countries included in the range of the African-Eurasian Waterbirds Agreement (AEWA): here.
September 2011: The first of tens of thousands of wintering geese have started to arrive back in Scotland as part of their annual migration. More than 1,000 pink-footed geese were recorded at RSPB Scotland’s Loch of Strathbeg nature reserve in Aberdeenshire so far: here.
NATO allows Libyan refugees to drown in the Mediterranean
13 August 2011
According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, 1,500 Libyan refugees have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe since the beginning of the war against Libya in March. On August 4, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported a death toll of 1,820 since the beginning of the year.
The victims are people from Libya and other African countries trying to flee economic hardship, political persecution or escape the war, risking their lives in the process. Penned into small, unseaworthy boats by unscrupulous traffickers, they drown or die of thirst at sea.
The distance between the Italian island of Lampedusa, the goal of most refugee boats, and Tunisia, the nearest point on the African coast, is just 130 kilometers. The distance to the Libyan coast is about twice as far.
This relatively small area of sea is currently filled by one of the largest navies in the world. About 20 warships from 10 NATO countries, including several aircraft and helicopter carriers, are supporting the assault on Libya. They are equipped with radar and other advanced technology and can easily detect any movement on the sea. The region is also constantly monitored by NATO AWACS aircraft, which can detect minute vessels.
In addition, there are the boats and planes of the Italian border police and the European border agency Frontex, which patrol the waters between Lampedusa and the North African coast in order to detect and send back refugee boats.
Vulnerable refugees therefore could have been easily detected and rescued. The many deaths were entirely avoidable. They are the victims of the failure to provide aid to those in distress—a criminal offence. NATO forced them to flee with its war against Libya and when it transpires that their escape route is a deadly trap, NATO has left them to their fate.
NATO has not merely “overlooked” the refugees. It has also refused to provide shipwrecked refugees assistance when alerted.
The Italian Coast Guard on August 4 retrieved a wrecked, 20-meter-long wooden boat with nearly 300 refugees from the waters south of the island of Lampedusa. The wreck had drifted at sea for a week with a faulty engine. Conditions on the boat were appalling. According to the survivors, 100 people had died of thirst and exhaustion, and had been thrown overboard. The refugees themselves were severely dehydrated, many in critical condition, and were flown to hospital on the Italian mainland.
As it turned out, the damaged boat had already been detected by a Cypriot tug, which sent an SOS signal but then proceeded on course. The Italian Coast Guard then alerted NATO. NATO refused to help the refugees, however, although one of its ships was just 27 nautical miles (50 km) from the stranded boat.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has accused NATO of failing to provide assistance and requested an investigation into the incident. At the same time, he proposed extending the NATO mandate in such a way that NATO is made responsible for the rescue of civil war refugees. This is all smoke and mirrors, however. Under current international law every civilian and military ship is bound under all circumstances to help the shipwrecked.
This is not the first time NATO has been accused of negligence. At the end of March NATO ships are alleged to have ignored distress calls from a damaged refugee boat from Libya. A military helicopter spotted the boat but merely tossed the victims water bottles and crackers. The refugees waited in vain for rescue. According to the British Guardian newspaper an aircraft carrier in the vicinity also failed to respond. In the end, 61 people died of thirst.
The NATO operation against Libya bears the name “Unified Protector” and is officially justified as a mission aimed at the “protection of civilians” from attacks by the Libyan government. If any further proof were necessary, the fate of Mediterranean refugees delivers the final blow to this cynical excuse for an imperialist war. The life of refugees and civilians is the least of the priorities of NATO.
European governments also have no interest in helping the refugees. It would be easy to equip ships to track down and rescue the refugees in the Mediterranean, and such an operation would cost only a fraction of the daily costs of the Libyan war. This is politically undesirable, however, with EU countries fearful of an increase of refugees. The entire European refugee policy is aimed at deterrence.
The intrigues and infighting in Benghazi following the murder of General Younis are not only an indictment of NATO, but of the various liberals and pseudo-radicals that have acted as cheerleaders for its military intervention in Libya: here.
Libya: Veteran Lockerbie justice campaigner Doctor Jim Swire expressed concern today that US special forces may kill the only man convicted of the bombing, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi: here.
Libya, Africa And the New World Order – An Open Letter: here.
Arms controls continue to be flouted in the context of the Libyan armed conflict. Both France and Qatar have openly admitted to supplying arms to the rebels as a complementary strategy to the NATO-led air strikes. Such actions not only undermine the United Nations arms embargo regime, but may also violate contractual obligations between arms-exporting and arms-importing states: here.
Street fighting raged on in Libya’s coastal city of Zawiya today four days after rebels claimed to have taken the town: here.
“Libyan Deaths, Media Silence” Dozens claimed dead in Majer airstrikes; U.S. press mostly silent: here.
TUNISIA: War Strangles Livelihoods on the Border: here.
Is the Ballooning Military Budget Keeping You Safe? Chris Hellman, TomDispatch: “The killing of Osama Bin Laden did not put cuts in national security spending on the table, but the debt-ceiling debate finally did. And mild as those projected cuts might have been, last week newly minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was already digging in his heels and decrying the modest potential cost-cutting plans as a ‘doomsday mechanism’ for the military. Pentagon allies on Capitol Hill were similarly raising the alarm as they moved forward with this year’s even larger military budget”: here.
The Victims’ Stories: PA Kids 4 Cash Judicial Corruption Slavery Racket. Personal Stories (2009) + Current Criminal Trial News (Feb 2011). Reload w updates. Judges got nearly $3Million in kickbacks in exchange for sending more kids to juvenile detention centers.
A long-serving US judge has been ordered to spend nearly 30 years in prison for accepting bribes to send youngsters to a privately run jail in a scandal dubbed “kids for cash“: here.
According to the latest figures from the German Statistical Office and Eurostat, youth unemployment across Europe has increased by a staggering 25 percent in the course of the past two and a half years: here.
France’s banking sector and economy were the latest casualties of the wild swings on world financial markets and growing financial speculation against European government debt: here.
Italy’s largest union is gearing up for a general strike against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s “socially unjust” austerity drive: here.
A look at the social situation in Greece reveals the thoroughly inhuman character of the austerity measures demanded by the banks, EU and IMF: here.
US Postal Service plans to cut 220,000 jobs: here.
US postal unions pledged to defend their 630,000 members on Thursday after the US Postal Service (USPS) revealed plans to lay off 120,000 employees in breach of labour contracts: here.
A US court has granted bosses at telecoms firm Verizon a sweeping injunction that restricts picketing at the company’s facilities: here.
USA: Central Falls, Rhode Island, declared bankruptcy earlier this month. The impoverished city is devastated by a lack of basic services and a decaying social infrastructure: here.
The international financial turmoil, together with the prospects of recession in the US and Europe, has prompted a nervous response in Indian business circles and demands for further restructuring: here.
Company confirms spill from flow line serving Gannet Alpha platform and takes further measures to isolate it
Agencies
Friday 12 August 2011 23.57 BST
Royal Dutch Shell has said it is working to contain an oil leak at its Gannet Alpha platform in the North Sea, but declined to specify the size of the leak.
What a shame that such a polluting platform, run by Shell on their principle: “Profits first, profits second … profits three hundredth first, environment a very poor three hundredth second” is named for such a beautiful bird.
“We can confirm we are managing an oil leak in a flow line that serves the Gannet Alpha platform. We deployed a remote-operated vehicle to check for a subsea leak after a light sheen was noticed in the area,” a Shell spokesman said.
“We have stemmed the leak significantly and we are taking further measures to isolate it. The subsea well has been shut in, and the flow line is being depressurised.”
Asked about the size of the leak, a Shell spokeswoman declined to say.
One of the wells at the oilfield 112 miles east of Aberdeen has been closed, but Shell did not specify whether output was reduced.
According to Argus Media, the Gannet field produced about 13,500 barrels of oil between January and April. The field is co-owned with US firm Exxon and operated by Shell.
A document available on Shell‘s website says the Gannet facilities have capacity to export 88,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Shell also said it had restarted its North Sea Brent Alpha and Bravo fields on Thursday after a seven-month shutdown, while two other fields remained shut.
The company shut all four of its Brent platforms, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta, in January for repairs.
“Brent Alpha and Brent Bravo are producing gas for export via the Flags(far north liquids and gas line) to the St Fergus gas plant,” Shell said.
“It is anticipated that Brent Delta will resume export in the near future and Brent Charlie will restart in early 2012.”
The statement said that the work at the Brent fields was technically challenging and depended on the weather in the area.
Green party co-leader Patrick Harvie said: “It’s too early to tell how serious this spill is, but it is imperative now that Shell act both urgently and efficiently.
“They must also keep the public and the authorities properly informed about progress, something BP failed to do during the Gulf of Mexico disaster last year.
“Whatever the outcome of this incident, it certainly underlines the need for the oil industry to publish proper response plans, as Greenpeace have been asking them to do. If they refuse to do so, ministers should act to make it a condition of their licences.”
Before the shut-in, the four Brent fields produced about 4.5 million cubic metres a day of gas, less than 2 percent of current UK gas demand, and just 20,000 barrels per day of oil.
Brent was once Britain’s largest oilfield, and still has global significance as one of the four key North Sea crude streams along with Forties, Oseberg and Ekofisk.
Shell “Should Have Been More Open About Oil Spill” in North Sea: here.
Environmental campaigners demanded today that energy giant Royal Dutch Shell cough up more details about the nature of an oil spill in the North Sea: here.
New Labour MP Geoff Hoon is caught using taxpayers money to fund multiple homes. Luckily at the SAME time, the army he sent to their deaths in multiple wars had substandard equipment because “there was no money“.
Seems there was enough money for Hoon, but none to save the lives of those that came back in bodybags.
The Labour leader said the riots were a symptom of a society that has lost its sense of what is right and wrong.
He said: “There is an issue which went to all our souls. This is an issue not just about the responsibility and irresponsibility we saw on the streets of Tottenham. It’s about irresponsibility, wherever we find it in our society.”
Mr Miliband told Radio 4’s Today programme that Labour had laid some of the foundations for the riots which exploded last weekend.
“The fact that we are an unequal society is in the background of some of the things which have happened.
“There’s a debate some people are starting – is it culture, is it poverty and lack of opportunity? It’s probably both.”
Britain’s top police officers have hit back at the armchair criticisms made by David Cameron and other politicians over the police’s handling of the recent riots: here.
Cameron, like Mubarak, has shrugged off responsibilities to the populace – and chaos is the unsurprising result, argues Caroline Rooney.
Fifty per cent say spending cuts fuelled the riots.
David Harvey on the English riots: Feral capitalism hits the streets: here.
ON Thursday the Tory Chancellor, George Osborne, made an emergency statement to parliament on the international economic crisis that is engulfing British capitalism to the point of collapse and, in particular, the Bank of England revising down its growth forecast for 2011.
With trillions of dollars being wiped off share prices on the world stock markets virtually every week, the once mighty US economy in meltdown and state bankruptcy sweeping Europe, Osborne was called up to give answers as to what the coalition government intended to do to survive this onslaught.
Osborne’s response to this catastrophe was to insist that there would be no change in the policy of savage cuts to public expenditure, no let-up in privatisation of the welfare state, and a continued attack on jobs and wages.
The one thing that he did emphasise as a main plank of the coalition’s policies was an all-out assault on the trade unions and on the employment rights of workers.
Fire crews ‘sickened’ by politicians’ silence over fire cuts
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) says fire crews are ‘sickened’ by the silence of politicians over fire service cuts.
Politicians have been queuing up to question police cuts, but none have yet challenged the same cuts to the fire service, the FBU added in a statement.
The union has been inundated by fire crews complaining about the lack of opposition to major fire service cuts in the wake of widespread civil disturbances.
The strongest and most recent comments have come from fire crews working in areas of recent unrest.
Fire crews have made similar comments over recent years in the aftermath of floods, extensive wildfires and in dealing with extreme winter weather.
Like civil disturbances involving widespread arson, these incidents can tie up crews for protracted periods, sometimes months.
The last wave of cuts saw the loss of 1,000 frontline posts by April 2011. But ever increasing government cuts will see that rise to at least 6,000 by 2014.
The cuts are being concentrated on full-time fire crews in largely urban areas, some of which have taken the brunt of recent unrest.
The biggest cuts have happened, with more threatened, in Manchester, Merseyside, West Midlands, Yorkshire and the South West.
Recent civil unrest has shown how easily and quickly fire services can be stretched and struggle to cope. These disturbances, like others in the past, have seen widespread and major arson.
British Gas signalled an end to doorstep selling today after consumer groups claimed that the practice put pressure on people to switch to worse deals: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 