This is a brown shrike video. This Asian bird is a vagrant in Europe.
Brown shrike video
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Daily Archives: February 16, 2017
Film on 1871 Paris Commune reviewed
This video from London, England says about itself:
15 February 2017
The New Babylon is a 1929 Russian silent film about the 1871 Paris Commune. It was directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, with a musical score by Dmitri Shostakovich. Ian Christie, Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, explains the importance of this film from a political and film history context.
Sunset Boulevard: here.
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Hooded merganser video
This is a hooded merganser video; made in the Netherlands, where this North American species occurs very rarely.
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Oroville dam danger in California, USA
This video from the USA says about itself:
Oroville dam evacuees criticize state response, remain ready to flee
15 February 2017
After the tallest dam in the US appeared ready to fail on Sunday, 188,000 California residents were ordered to evacuate their homes. Thousands of poor and working class families with nowhere to go frantically packed their most essential belongings and sought emergency shelter in nearby towns.
At the fairgrounds in Chico, California, more than a thousand men, women, children, and infants spent two nights sleeping on Red Cross cots or in their cars. Now, after crews reinforced the dam spillway with boulders, the evacuation order has been lifted and residents were told to return home. However, an evacuation warning remains in place, meaning they must be prepared to re-evacuate at a moments notice. A solid week of rain is now forecast for the area.
Oroville Dam crisis highlights deteriorating state of US infrastructure: here.
California and federal government ignored numerous warnings about Oroville Dam: here.
DAMS LIKE OROVILLE ARE JUST THE BEGINNING 56,000 bridges are also in trouble across the country. [HuffPost]
Oroville Dam is also at seismic risk: here.
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Rosy starling on video
This is a rosy starling video; from the Netherlands, where this East European species is rare.
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Donald Trump administration news
This video from the USA says about itself:
15 February 2017
Protests erupt in Tacoma, Washington after ICE arrests immigrant ‘dreamer’ near the state’s capital.
SEATTLE – A man who was brought to the U.S. illegally as a child but was protected from deportation by the Obama administration has been taken into custody in the Seattle area in what could be the first case of its kind in the country.
Daniel Ramirez Medina, 23, was arrested last Friday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Civil rights attorneys have now filed a federal lawsuit, challenging what they call the “unconstitutional detention” of Ramirez Medina.
According to court documents, ICE agents went to a Seattle area home to arrest his father. The younger Ramirez Medina was also at the home.
His attorneys say that ICE agents asked their client whether he was in the U.S. legally. He told them “Yes, I have a work permit.”
Court documents say the ICE agents responded by saying, “It doesn’t matter because you weren’t born in this country.”
Ramirez Medina has a work permit under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA).
The program provides a reprieve from deportation as well as renewable work permits to eligible immigrant youth who came to the United States illegally when they were just children. Roughly 750,000 young people, often referred to as “Dreamers,” are DACA recipients.
Court documents say the application process to become a DACA recipient includes a thorough background check in which the Department of Homeland Security must make sure the applicant has no serious criminal history and does not pose a threat to public safety.
Ramirez Medina’s attorneys say he went through that strict screening on more than one occasion over the years.
“Our country made a promise to these young people that by coming forward and following the rules, those who have grown up with America as their home would not be deported to a country that is unfamiliar to them,” said Luis Cortes, who is one of the attorneys representing Ramirez Medina. “The administration has indicated its willingness to find solutions that don’t renege on that promise. It’s important to remember that the legal status of DACA recipients hasn’t changed.”
But attorneys say ICE agents completely ignored Ramirez Medina’s DACA status when took him into custody. He’s being held at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, awaiting removal proceedings before an immigration judge.
Protestors gathered outside the detention center Tuesday evening, demanding Ramirez Medina be released.
“He told them he was a DACA recipient and they said it doesn’t matter,” said Rolando Avila, who helped organize the protest. “They said we’re going to take you anyway. So we’re here in solidarity, and we demand he be released, because he is someone that is valuable in this community. We are seeing this across the country, attacks on immigrants, and we don’t want to stand idle.”
An attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Projects, one of many co-counsels on Ramirez Medina’s case, told KING 5 he hopes it was all a big misunderstanding and that the young man was taken into custody by mistake.
By Zaida Green in the USA:
First ICE raids under Trump arrest nearly 700 immigrants in five days
16 February 2017
Over 680 people were arrested in a five-day-long campaign of raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency last week, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A quarter of those arrested had no criminal records.
The first immigration sweep by the Trump administration also marks the first arrest of a DACA recipient, 23-year-old Daniel Ramirez Medina.
Ramirez, who arrived in the United States at the age of seven, was granted a temporary stay of leave and a work permit under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Ramirez was arrested at his father’s house in Seattle, Washington on the morning of February 10, in a raid targeting his father.
ICE is seeking to deport Ramirez in spite of his DACA status, which he renewed last year. Ramirez has no criminal record. ICE claims that Ramirez has admitted to being a gang member, but his attorneys assert that the agents “repeatedly pressured [him] to falsely admit affiliation.”
“The agents who arrested and questioned Mr. Ramirez were aware that he was a DACA recipient, yet they informed him that he would be arrested, detained, and deported anyway, because he was not ‘born in this country,’” according to the complaint filed by his attorneys.
Ramirez is being held in an ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington ahead of deportation proceedings before an immigration judge. His attorneys are arguing that his detention is unconstitutional, and are seeking an injunction against further arrests. Federal magistrate judge James Donohue has ordered DHS to justify Ramirez’s detention by today.
More than two dozen demonstrators gathered outside the Northwest Detention Center on Tuesday to protest Ramirez’s detention. “All his life is here, he has his family here, he has his dreams here,” Wendy Pantoja, one of the protesters, told the News Tribune. “But now he’s here,” she said motioning toward the detention center. In the past few days, tens of thousands of workers and young people have rallied in the defense of immigrant rights and in opposition to the recent ICE raids.
Ramirez is one of 750,000 young “DREAMers” who were brought to the United States as children and granted a two-year, renewable reprieve from deportation under the DACA program. The Trump administration is now in possession of the fingerprints and addresses of all 750,000 DREAMers. Up to 8 million people are potential targets for deportation under Trump’s January executive orders, including immigrants only accused of committing a crime.
“The crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise,” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!”
A majority of last week’s raids were conducted near or around homes, in the early hours of the morning. Immigrant advocacy groups report ICE agents posing as other branches of law enforcement and arresting immigrants heading out to work.
Multimillionaire fast-food boss Andrew Puzder withdrew his nomination to head the Department of Labor Wednesday, in another sign of the deepening political crisis of the Trump administration. He is the first one of Trump’s 16 cabinet picks to fail to win confirmation: here.
A growing number of activists are calling for a general national strike against President Drumpf on February 17, 2017: here.
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New crab species gets Harry Potter name
This video says about itself:
1 February 2017
A new species of crab has been named after two characters from JK Rowling‘s “Harry Potter” stories, according to a new study in “ZooKeys”.
From Science News:
Coral reef crab named after Harry Potter characters
16 years after its discovery, the crustacean is labeled a new species
By Helen Thompson
7:00am, February 13, 2017
Deep beneath coral rubble in reefs off the coast of Guam, there lives a pale, black-eyed crab whose true taxonomic character has long been unknown.
In 2001, amateur researcher Harry Conley discovered the translucent crab burrowing among reef rocks. Eventually, two specimens — each several millimeters long — came to the lab of biologist Peter Ng at the National University of Singapore. Now, Ng and colleague Jose Mendoza have identified the quirky crustacean as a new species and bestowed on it the moniker Harryplax severus, the researchers report January 23 in ZooKeys.
The genus name honors two Harrys: Conley, who died in 2002 and had a reputation for finding otherworldly ocean critters, and Harry Potter, the titular character in J.K. Rowling’s popular books. Mendoza, a Potter fan, suggested the species designation severus — a reference to the books’ notoriously uptight and misjudged Severus Snape, whose true nature remains elusive until the series’ end.
H. severus belongs to a group of crabs first found in shadowy caves on Christmas Island. With small beady eyes, well-developed antennae, washed-out coloration and long legs, the crabs are suited to the dimly lit nooks and crannies of Guam’s rubble beds — a place where Snape, a prickly potions master who worked in a dungeon, might feel right at home.
A new species of mangrove-climbing micro-crab from Hong Kong, Haberma tingkok, has recently been discovered, described and named: here.
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Donald Trump defeated by workers
This video from the USA says about itself:
Unions protest at Trump’s hotel in Washington
16 October 2016
Workers are protesting at one of Trump‘s hotels in DC. They make millions for him, but Trump won’t allow them to unionize.
By Larry Rubin in the USA:
Trump workers force recognition of their union
Thursday 16th February 2017
IT TOOK years of demonstrating, negotiating and lobbying, but workers at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC have finally won the right to join a union and bargain collectively.
When recognising the workers’ right to join a union, Eric Danziger, the chief executive of Donald Trump’s hotel chain Trump Hotels, said in a statement: “We share mutual goals with the union, as we both desire to ensure outstanding jobs for the employees.”
Nonsense!
Trump recognised the workers’ union because he was forced to do so.
Unlike many hotel developers in Washington, the Trump Organisation fought unionisation as long as it could.
Because tourism is central to the economic health of Washington, the city’s government gives many hotel developers subsidies to build or renovate.
The subsidies come with a condition, though — thanks to tough, persistent lobbying of Unite Here Local 25, the US union to which many hotel workers belong — hotel managements must not interfere if their employees want to join a union and bargain collectively.
However, the subsidy Trump received to turn an old federally owned building — Washington’s old Post Office — into a hotel carried no such condition.
Because he could, during his hotel’s construction, he refused to promise that he would allow his permanent hotel employees to organise.
So about three years ago, hotel workers began almost weekly demonstrations in front of the construction site. One of their leaflets read:
“This is how inequality happens. Trump wants us to be dazzled and distracted by his promises of ultra-luxury for the super-wealthy. But he hasn’t told us how he’s going to create middle-class jobs for residents of the nation’s capital.
“He hasn’t committed to middle-class wages or fair working conditions for the men and women who will clean rooms and cook meals at his hotel.
“Wonder why we have growing inequality? This is how it happens: billionaires who are more concerned with posh than with people and expect the rest of us to play along.”
Still, Trump refused to pledge he would recognise a union if his employees chose on.
Then he decided to run for president.
Throughout the campaign, he repeatedly made clear how anti-union he is and even went so far as to insult leaders of the steelworkers.
Shortly before the election, the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) found Trump guilty of violating federal labour laws by refusing to recognise a union at his Las Vegas hotel, another Unite Here branch.
Still, Trump refused to bargain with the union. Instead, his corporation appealed against the decision.
Late this past December, however, the Trump Organisation abruptly change course.
It agreed to recognise the union its employees had voted to join in Las Vegas and agreed to allow its employees at its new Washington hotel to conduct a union election without interference.
A few weeks ago, the Washington workers, about 40 housekeepers and guest-room workers, voted to join Unite Here.
Why did Trump do such a fast about face?
John Boardman, executive director of Unite Here Local 25, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying: “I have been trying to parse out in my own mind on what might have motivated the Trump Organisation to do this and I haven’t quite figured that out.”
Most observers, however, say that Trump changed because of two reasons: now that Trump can appoint his own members to the NLRB he wanted to settle his own case to avoid what would be an absolutely obvious, undeniable conflict of interest.
But first and foremost, Trump recognised the right of his Washington workers to join a union because they and their allies from unions across the country forced him to do so.
Two distinct processes have emerged in the month since the inauguration of Donald Trump. Millions of people in the United States and internationally have participated in protests against the fascistic policies of the new government. They are motivated by genuine and deeply felt anger over the administration’s attack on immigrants and its cabinet of billionaires and social reactionaries. At the same time, much of the media and major sections of the political establishment have been carrying out an escalating campaign against Trump that is of a very different character. In close coordination with US intelligence agencies, Trump’s establishment critics are seeking to hijack the opposition of workers and youth to Trump and channel it behind their own imperialist and militarist agenda: here.
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American songbirds threatened by climate change
This video from the USA says about itself:
7 May 2016
Some rather excellent close up shots of a lesser goldfinch having lunch outside my window.
From Science News:
Desert songbirds increasingly at risk of dehydration
by Susan Milius
5:11pm, February 13, 2017
Desert songbirds, especially the little fit-in-your-hand ones, could soon face widening danger zones for lethal thirst in the southwestern United States, a new study predicts.
Coping with heat waves can demand so much water evaporation to prevent heat stroke — from panting, for instance — that birds can die from dehydration, says Blair Wolf of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
Small species like the lesser goldfinch (Spinus psaltria) dehydrate at a proportionately higher rate than larger birds such as towhees. If temperatures rise 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, a lesser goldfinch could face a risk of death within five hours on as many as 120 days a year in the worst hot spots, Blair and colleagues report February 13 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Four other larger bird species studied, including cactus wrens and curve-billed thrashers, probably won’t see as many risky days as the goldfinch, but there’s dangerous thirst ahead for them, too.
Hot spots
For the lesser goldfinch, danger zones in its range — where heat waves could cause lethal dehydration in hours — are expected to grow under a business-as-usual climate change scenario in which local temperatures rise 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
Climate change could deliver final blow for world’s threatened species: here.
A warming climate is pushing organisms towards the circumpolar areas and mountain peaks. A recently conducted Finnish study on changes in bird populations reveals that protected areas slow down the north-bound retreat of species: here.
Birds sing differently in response to traffic noise, which potentially affects their ability to attract mates and defend their territory, according to research published in Bioacoustics: here.
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Animals and love
This video is called Bird Of Paradise Makes An Unforgettable First Impression – Animal Attraction – BBC.
From Science News:
The animal guide to finding love
by Sarah Zielinski
6:00am, February 14, 2017
Are you feeling the pressure of Valentine’s Day and in need of advice on how to find someone special? The animal world has some advice for you.
Make sure you look nice.
There’s no need to go for an entire makeover, but looking your best is usually a good idea when on the search for a partner. Male black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys appear to have taken a lesson from Revlon — they go for the rouge-lipped look during the mating season. Those with bright, red lips tend to be surrounded by females.
This 2016 video from Australia is called Peacock Spider 14 (Maratus fimbriatus).
Learn to dance …
As anyone who has ever watched John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever knows, having the right dance moves can make finding a mate easier. For some animals, it’s essential. That’s true for male peacock spiders, which raise colorful flaps on their behinds and wave them while lifting their third legs in an adorable dance aimed at luring a mate. And if a guy doesn’t have the best moves or try hard enough, females don’t just reject him — they get aggressive.
… and how to flirt.
Even if you’re an expert dancer, you’ll probably need to do at least a little flirting. It may be a bit more subtle than torrent frogs, though, who turn flirting into a big production. A male frog will get a female’s attention by first calling out and puffing up his vocal sacs. Then he’ll shake his hands and feet and wiggle his toes. If he’s successful, the female will let him know with a special call.
Attend a party.
The best place to put all of this on display is, of course, a party! And there are parties everywhere, even at the bottom of the ocean. Scientists exploring a seamount off the Pacific coast of Panama in 2015 found an enormous party of small, red crabs swarming all over each other. Such large aggregations are common among crab species and may be linked to reproduction.
Practice, practice, practice.
Once you’ve landed a partner, you might want to serenade him or her with the perfect love song. But first you’ll need to practice, just like great reed warblers (probably) do. Males spend their entire winter vacation singing the songs they seem to use to woo the ladies come spring. All that singing cuts into time the guys could spend foraging for food or resting, but that practice might pay off because female warblers prefer males that sing more complex tunes.
Keep an eye on the competition.
You may not be the only one interested in your partner, so make like a peacock and check out your competition. Peacocks fan out their feathers to lure the ladies, but females only pay attention to what’s happening at the bottom of the show, studies have revealed. Males do likewise, keeping their gaze tuned to the bottom of the competition’s display.
Bring a gift.
You probably don’t need to worry that your partner will go cannibal, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a hint from a species where that does happen. When approaching a female, male nursery spiders are smart to bring a gift of a big dead insect wrapped up in silk. The gift will not only keep the female busy while the male mates with her, but it can also double as a shield if she sees him as a potential meal rather than a mate.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 