Both the museum and the big Jurassic Diplodocus sauropod dinosaur mentioned in this video are named after Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) from the USA, one of the richest men in the world a century ago.
Like Alfred Nobel, contrary to many capitalists, especially capitalists profiting from wars, which included Nobel and Carnegie, Carnegie opposed wars. He was a member of the Anti Imperialist League, like, eg, leftist author Mark Twain. That League opposed, eg, United States colonial war in the Phillipines.
One of Carnegie’s plans to promote peace was using Diplodocus carnegii, nicknamed Dippy the dinosaur.
On 11 April 2017, at Groningen university in the Netherlands, Ilja Nieuwland will present his PhD thesis: The Colossal Stranger. A Cultural History of Diplodocus carnegii, 1902-1913. See here.
According to Nieuwland’s book, in 1905-1913, Carnegie had eight plaster copies of ‘Dippy’ made, shipping them to musea in Europe and Argentina. He hoped this would lead to contacts between various governments and himself, causing world peace.
Unfortunately, these dinosaur copies did not prevent World War I starting in 1914.
Puerto Rico has announced plans to close 179 public schools just days after filing for a form of bankruptcy protection, seeking to restructure $123 billion in debt and pension obligations, in the largest local government insolvency in U.S. history. The move is likely to slash money for healthcare, pensions and infrastructure. The territory petitioned for relief under Title III of the PROMESA law, which recognizes that Puerto Rico is not part of any state and must in some ways be treated as sovereign. Puerto Rico is legally barred from using Chapter 9, the bankruptcy route normally taken by insolvent local governments.
On Saturday May 13, students from the Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) marched in San Juan to denounce the government’s austerity measures and attempts to criminalize their protests. A student strike at the main campus of the island’s university system has entered its fifth week: here.
Birdwatchers were delighted by the thousands of Ruffs that gathered at the end of April in Turau Meadow, Belarus. While the area is usually an important stopover for the species, this time the impressive numbers broke records in the country.
By Victoria Tereshonok & APB team
Despite the cold weather, bird migration is in full swing. Millions of birds have started moving from their wintering grounds in Africa, stopping over in the cold tundra of Eurasia.
At this time of the year, Turau Meadow in Belarus becomes a paradise for nature lovers – as many as 150,000 Eurasian WigeonMareca Penelope and 20,000 Black-tailed Godwit Limosa limosa can gather in these plains, sometimes in a single day.
But this year, it’s the Ruff Calidris pugnax that gave birdwatchers the most joy, when thousands of these long-necked birds blanketed the skies.
While this site is currently the largest stopover site for the species during their spring migration across Europe, this year the numbers were a surprise to everyone.
A group of ornithologists, including researchers from APB (BirdLife Belarus), registered a record number of 120,000 Ruffs in a single day, which hadn’t been reported since the observations began in Turau Meadow back in 1997.
Turau Meadow is an open floodplain in the middle of Pripyat River and one of Europe’s most essential nesting and stopover areas for more than 50 migratory wading bird species such as Black-tailed Godwit, Great Snipe Gallinago media and Eurasian Oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus – the three of them classified as Near Threatened by BirdLife for the IUCN Red List. And these species don’t only stop there – this is where they nest.
For this reason, the floodplains were categorized as an Important Bird and Biodiversity Area by BirdLife and, since 2008, it has been recognized as a locally significant wildlife sanctuary by the Belarussian authorities.
This recognition has helped Ruff populations, whose range and populations have shrunk significantly in Belarus in the last 30-40 years. While listed as Least Concern by BirdLife, global populations are thought to have been decreasing as a result of habitat loss, intensive agriculture and climate change. It comes as no surprise then that they have been added to Belarus’ Regional Red List, which means the species is excluded from the list of huntable species and their nesting area needs to be protected by the government.
Banding data shows that these birds nest across a territory that spans Scandinavia to Yakutia. Migration is often a difficult time for all birds, and stopover sites such as Turau Meadow, where they can relax and gather energy, are critical so they can reach their final destination.
Unfortunately, stopovers like this meadow are now few and far between in Europe. Birds are reportedly staying in the floodplain for up to a month, taking the opportunity to feed on the invertebrates and grain available on the surrounding fields – almost doubling their weight in the process. This energy is vital for them to continue their journey to the next site.
Seeing how many birds depend on this habitat along the Pripyat River remind us of how important it is to conserve these vital ecosystems so we can save these birds from disappearing.
“The Pripyat River floodplain is such a vital place. It’s important to protect it and leave it unchanged,” says Pavel Pinchuk, Head of the Belarusian Center for Bird Ringing.
Since 2007, APB rents the area of Turau Meadow and has created a management plan for the local authorities. Both parties agreed on how to best safeguard this unique landscape and every year APB organizes volunteer camps to clean the area of overgrowing bushes while also managing the closing of the hunting season within the floodplains. They also participate in the surveying of the area and record bird population trends.
In March 2014, ornithologists recorded the largest number of birds in Turau Meadow ever. As many as 200,000 birds were counted within one square kilometer of the sanctuary. A similar number of migrating birds had not been recorded anywhere in Belarus up to that point.
With continued protection, we expect the area will continue to surprise everyone with record-breaking numbers of birds for many years to come.
This 2017 video shows an aerial view of the meadow at the beginning of April, preceding the mass arrival of the Ruff.
The plot was exposed with the arrest of a German lieutenant, Franco A, who was found to be posing as a Syrian refugee in order to carry out a shooting attack targeting left-wing politicians.
One of his friends at Illkirch-Graffenstaden barracks in France has now been detained for allegedly covering for the soldier’s absences as he periodically returned to Bavaria to continue the ruse.
Maximilian T, a 27-year-old German national, was also a member of Jägerbataillon 291 and was arrested on Tuesday after being questioned by military intelligence officers.
Like Franco A, Maximilian T is a first lieutenant. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily, Maximilian T already had been investigated for right-wing extremism in 2015. However, that investigation had stopped without consequences.
He had joined his friend on a trip to Vienna in January – supposedly for an officers’ ball – where Franco A stashed an unregistered gun to be used in the attack at the city’s main airport.
Maximilian T was also part of an online messaging group where he, Franco A and other members exchanged far-right posts, photos and audio files, Der Spiegel reported.
He is assumed to be “number three” in the plot, following Franco A and Mathias F, a friend from his hometown who was also arrested in April.
“They were willing, or at least claimed to be, to kill for their cause,” an investigator said.
As well as the loaded 7.65mm pistol stashed in a toilet at Vienna International Airport, around 1,000 rounds of ammunition were found at Mathias F’s home in Offenbach – mostly stolen from the German army.
The federal prosecutor’s office said the three suspects were suspected of planning to attack senior politicians and public figures “who are committed to an immigration and refugee policy which has failed in the view of the defendants”.
The names of the former German President, Joachim Gauck, and left-wing justice minister Heiko Maas (SPD) were on a list of potential targets, said spokesperson Frauke Köhler.
She told a press conference Franco A planned to frame Islamist militants for the attack, which would have been linked to his fake identity as a Syrian refugee.
“Especially with regard to the ongoing public discussion over immigration and refugee policy, an alleged terrorist attack by a registered asylum seeker would have attracted particular attention and contributed to the sense of threat.”
…
Franco A had created a fake persona under the name David Benjamin, telling immigration officials he was a Damascus fruit seller …
No doubts appear to have been raised over the credibility of the 28-year-old’s background, despite him speaking mainly French with a smattering of Arabic from a language course.
The lieutenant registered in Giessen, Hesse, on 30 December 2015 – as Germany was overwhelmed by the arrival of almost a million asylum seekers – then submitted an asylum application at Zirndorf in Bavaria in January last year.
Despite having to return to Germany to collect monthly welfare payments, Franco A continued his army post in France until the day of his arrest because his friend covered for him, prosecutors said.
“Maximilian T is strongly suspected of planning a serious act of violence against the state out of a right-wing extremist conviction,” a spokesperson added.
“The resulting absences were at least partly covered up by Maximilian T, who had excused Franco A to his superiors.”
Officials said he obtained a Second World War era Unique Model 17 pistol for the attack, which he hid in a disabled toilet in Vienna International Airport while passing through in January.
Franco A’s double life was only discovered when he was arrested after returning to retrieve the gun in February.
A fingerprint check revealed his fake identity as a Syrian refugee, but when “David Benjamin” failed to answer a court summons in Austria, a wider investigation was triggered and the plot unravelled.
The soldier had not raised alarm over extremism in the army, despite writing a master’s thesis on ”political change and subversion strategy“ at a French university in 2014 that was found to contain far-right thinking.
An assault rifle case carved with a swastika was found in his barracks room, where the letters HH [Heil Hitler] were inscribed on the wall and a Nazi-era pamphlet depicting a Wehrmacht soldier was discovered.
The unprecedented plot has shocked Germany, prompting investigations within the army and interior ministry over how Franco A was able to lead a double life for more than a year.
The defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, has come under fire for her handling of the case after attacking “weak leadership” following the discovery of 275 suspected right-wing extremists within Germany’s military.
This video showing a German army instructor telling one of his soldiers to envision African-Americans in the Bronx while firing his machine gun was broadcast Saturday.
After the arrest of 28-year-old First Lieutenant Franco A, who is accused of preparing terrorist attacks while falsely pretending to be a refugee, it soon emerged that his neo-Nazi sympathies had long been known and tolerated by his superiors, and that such views are widespread in the Bundeswehr. Now suspicions are growing that Franco A is part of a larger network reaching into the leadership structures of the Bundeswehr.
In the Fürstenberg Barracks in Donau-Eschingen, a meeting room decorated with memorabilia from the Wehrmacht (Hitler’s army) was discovered. The hurried attempts at a cover-up and an order from General Inspector Volker Wieker, the Bundeswehr’s highest-ranking general, to search all barracks and Bundeswehr buildings for such commemorative Wehrmacht items cannot hide the fact that the preservation of Wehrmacht traditions and the toleration of neo-Nazi views in the Bundeswehr are not individual lapses, but a widespread, systemic phenomenon.
In some barracks, no search is necessary to recognize the continuity of Hitler’s Wehrmacht. A look at the name of the barracks is enough.
Two barracks are named after Hitler’s most famous military commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Three bear the names of fighter pilots awarded hero status under the Nazis—Hans-Joachim Marseille, Helmut Lent and Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen—and two bear the names of tank commanders who were prominent in the war of extermination against the Soviet Union—Dirk Lilienthal and Adelbert Schulz. Another one is named after Paul von Hindenburg, a key figure in the First World War, who, as German president, appointed Hitler as Reich chancellor in 1933.
In the Leclerc Barracks in the French town of Illkirch, where Franco A served in an infantry battalion, the traditions of the Wehrmacht and the Nazis were obviously a matter of course. According to Spiegel Online, investigators find “more and more signs of a far-right fellowship in the barracks around Franco A.”
Although German soldiers have been stationed there only since 2010, the wall of the recreation room, the so-called “bunker,” was painted with Wehrmacht soldiers. The base commander admitted he had visited the bunker, but said the large-scale depictions of the Wehrmacht soldiers were not evident to him.
Already in 2012, there was a scandal at the Leclerc barracks when soldiers spread a four-meter-wide swastika on the ground during an international football match. This case was reported to superiors and the Ministry of Defence, in contrast to the neo-Nazi attitudes of Franco A. However, except for minor fines for three soldiers, it did not have any consequences.
Militaristic propaganda by politicians, the media and historians also plays an important role in the promotion of Wehrmacht traditions. Three years ago, leading politicians, including von der Leyen, announced that Germany must once again play a global political and military role appropriate to its economic clout. Bundeswehr soldiers have been sent to Afghanistan, Mali and other countries and are now accustomed to fighting and killing. This inevitably boosts the glorification of the Wehrmacht.
An important ideological step in the rehabilitation of the Wehrmacht was already made in 1999, when, after a fierce public debate, the travelling exhibition “The Crimes of the Wehrmacht—War of Annihilation 1941-44,” which had attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors over four years, was cancelled and its director Hannes Heer dismissed.
At the time, the WSWS commented, “All those who have an interest in preserving the myth of the Wehrmacht, from the nationalist German historians and magazine columnists to the parties in the SPD-Green government coalition and the ‘tradition-conscious’ Bundeswehr generals, to the right-wing extremist skinheads on the streets—all felt encouraged by the dismissal of Heer.” This has now been confirmed.
First Lieutenant Franco A’s Infantry Battalion 291 is directly involved in the international war efforts of the Bundeswehr. “This battalion stationed in France is no ordinary unit, but a kind of pioneer organization for special tasks,” reports the website NachDenkSeiten. “The battalion is present where it is geopolitically precarious, such as in Lithuania or Mali. It is also involved in politically explosive maneuvers like Operation ‘Sabre Strike’ 2015 in Poland, which was commanded not by NATO but by the US Army.”
According to Der Spiegel, Franco A was a member of the staff responsible for planning “international exercises and maneuvers.” His superior, the battalion commander Colonel Marc-Ulrich Cropp, has excellent international and political connections. He participated in training missions in the US several times; from 2008 to 2010 he completed elite training with the US Marine Corps. He then headed the planning department for operations of the Bundeswehr special forces in the German Ministry of Defence.
In the Ministry of Defence, Cropp worked closely with high-ranking politicians, according to NachDenkSeiten. This included the head of the planning staff, Ulrich Schlie, a member of the Atlantik-Brücke, which describes itself as “private, non-profit, nonpartisan association with the goal of building a bridge between Germany and the United States.” Membership is by invitation only. Schlie began his career working with Wolfgang Schäuble and as a foreign policy advisor to Roland Koch (both leading Christian Democratic politicians). Cropp also worked with Schlie’s successor Géza Andreas von Geyr, who also came from Schäuble’s circle and was vice president of the secret service BND from 2010 to 2014.
Franco A also seems to have maintained international contacts. In January 2017, he attended the elite “Officers’ Ball” at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. According to the organizers, the annual social event is “a meeting place not only for officers of the Austrian Armed Forces and Viennese society, but also for European politics and business.” Its sponsors included the major international armaments companiesKrauss-Maffei Wegmann, BAE Systems and General Dynamics.
Franco A’s visit to the Officer’s Ball became known because afterwards he hid a gun in a toilet at Vienna airport, which was discovered by maintenance staff. At the beginning of February, Franco A fell into a trap laid by the Austrian police as he sought to pick up the gun from its hiding place.
Franco A’s neo-Nazi views, their cover-up by his superiors, the prominent status and international connections of his battalion, and many unresolved questions indicate that he was a cog in a wider conspiracy. The great effort being undertaken by the law enforcement authorities certainly suggests this. Following his arrest, which took place only three months after he went to recover the gun in Vienna, 90 police officers searched 16 buildings in Germany, Austria and France.
However, the public has been informed only about two accomplices so far. One was found to be in possession of 1,000 rounds of ammunition and other material from Bundeswehr bases. The other is said to have drawn up a list of possible targets of a terror attack, which includes left-wing activists and Bundestag (parliamentary) deputies, former President Gauck, Justice Minister Heiko Maas, and Jewish and Muslim associations.
While the media report extensively about every newly discovered piece of Wehrmacht memorabilia, the background and possible links of this sinister network are veiled in silence.
“Molecular oxygen is very hard to find out there in the universe,” says Caltech chemical engineer Konstantinos Giapis. When the Rosetta spacecraft detected oxygen around comet 67P, astronomers argued it must be primordial, trapped in water ice as the comet formed roughly 4.6 billion years ago. Intrigued by the result, Giapis and Caltech colleague Yunxi Yao wanted to see if an alternative way to create O2 existed. Drawing on their work with fast-moving charged particles and materials such as silicon, they performed experiments that showed that charged water particles could slam into rust or sand grains and generate O2.
Something similar could happen on comet 67P, they suggest. As the sun evaporates water from the comet’s surface, ultraviolet light could strip an electron from the water, giving it a positive charge. Then, fast-moving particles in the solar wind could shoot the ionized water back toward the comet’s surface, where it could collide with rust or sand particles. Atoms of oxygen from the water could pair with atoms of oxygen from the rust or sand, creating O2.
Rosetta mission scientist Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern in Switzerland calls the result interesting, but is skeptical it can explain comet 67P’s oxygen abundance. As the comet gets closer to the sun, a protective bubble develops around 67P, data from the mission showed; that bubble would prevent solar wind particles or other ionized particles from reaching the comet’s surface, Altwegg says. Also, the ratio of oxygen to un-ionized water also stays constant over time. It should be more variable if this chemical reaction were generating oxygen on the comet, she says.
Goldsmith, however, suggests researchers keep an open mind and design missions with instruments to test whether this newly detected reaction does, in fact, generate oxygen in space.
See a new mosaic of images of comet 67P from the Rosetta mission: here.
The cigar-shaped object called ‘Oumuamua spotted tumbling through space last year is a comet, scientists have confirmed. ‘Oumuamua was the first interstellar object found passing through our solar system.
‘Oumuamua might be a shard of a broken planet. Simulations led to this new origin story for the first known visitor to our solar system: here.
A narrow, sometimes treacherous path took Rising Star cave explorers from the surface to the Lesedi Chamber in South Africa. Homo naledi fossils excavated there come from at least three individuals, including an adult male that the investigators named Neo. An adjacent, belowground passageway connects to the Dinaledi Chamber, where H. naledi fossils were first unearthed.
Homo naledi may have lived at around same time as early humans
New dating puts famed hominid in South Africa as recently as 236,000 years ago
By Bruce Bower
4:00am, May 9, 2017
Fossils of a humanlike species with some puzzlingly ancient skeletal quirks are surprisingly young, its discoverers say. It now appears that this hominid, dubbed Homo naledi, inhabited southern Africa close to 300,000 years ago, around the dawn of Homo sapiens.
H. naledi achieved worldwide acclaim in 2015 as a possibly pivotal player in the evolution of the human genus, Homo. Retrieved from an underground chamber in South Africa, fossils of this species were thought to be anywhere from 900,000 to at least 1.8 million years old (SN: 8/6/16, p. 12). A younger age for H. naledi resolves one mystery about these cave fossils. It doesn’t, however, answer questions about how long ago the species first appeared and when it died out.
What is now known is that H. naledi bodies somehow ended up in Dinaledi Chamber, part of South Africa’s Rising Star cave system, between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago, an international team reports in one of three papers published May 9 in eLife. Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg headed the team. Geoscientist Paul Dirks of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, directed the dating effort.
In the first paper, two methods of measuring the concentration of natural uranium and other radioactive elements, and damage caused by those elements over time, provided key age estimates for three H. naledi teeth. A thin sheet of rock deposited by flowing water just above the fossils was also dated.
In a second new paper, Berger’s group — led by paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison — describes 131 newly discovered H. naledi fossils from a second underground cave, dubbed Lesedi Chamber, within the Rising Star cave system. The finds come from at least three individuals and include an adult male’s partial skeleton comparable in completeness to Lucy’s famous, 3.2-million-year-old remains from East Africa. Both of these specimens consist of about 40 percent of the skeleton. The researchers named the Lesedi partial skeleton “Neo,” which means gift in Sesotho, a language spoken in South Africa.
Berger and his colleagues say the Lesedi discoveries support their controversial suggestion that H. naledi deliberately put bodies of the dead in Rising Star’s underground chambers (SN: 5/14/16, p. 12). The team says there are no signs that either predatory animals or streams carried H. naledi corpses into the caves.
Individuals from both underground chambers display the same distinctive pattern of skeletal features, signs that they all belong to H. naledi, not to Homo erectus or any other previously identified Homo species, the investigators contend. These features include relatively small, orange-sized brains and curved fingers like those of Homo species that lived around 2 million years ago, as well as wrists, hands, legs, feet and body sizes comparable to those of Neandertals and humans.
Although the Dinaledi finds are unexpectedly young, H. naledi’s ancient-looking characteristics suggest that the hominid originated near the root of the Homo genus, 2 million years ago or more, Berger and colleagues propose in the third new paper. That would make the South African species a possible ancestor or close relative of H. erectus, which dates to around that time. The oldest Homo fossils date to 2.8 million years ago in East Africa (SN: 4/4/15, p. 8).
Another possibility, Berger’s group says, is that H. naledi originated a few hundred thousand years ago and is most closely related to early H. sapiens or other Homo species that may have inhabited southern Africa at that time. A relatively late origin for H. naledi would suggest it evolved from larger-brained ancestors, the researchers say. That would be unusual: Scientists have long held that the brain only became larger as Homo species evolved.
But that proposed scenario has some parallels to Indonesia’s Homo floresiensis, better known as the hobbit. These hominids, whose remains date to between about 100,000 and 60,000 years ago (SN: 4/30/16, p. 7), had chimp-sized brains, short statures and, like H. naledi, some skull features resembling early Homo species. Hobbits either evolved smaller brains or retained small brains after splitting from a much older Homo species in Africa.
Unlike H. naledi, hobbits lived on an island where a lack of competition with other Homo species may have assisted their survival. It’s unclear how H. naledi survived in Africa alongside larger-brained Homo species, perhaps even H. sapiens. Occasional interbreeding in southern Africa — similar to what occurred later among H. sapiens, Neandertals and Denisovans in Eurasia (SN: 10/15/16, p. 22) — may have benefited H. naledi, Berger’s team suspects.
H. naledi DNA would help clarify the species’ evolutionary status. But attempts to extract DNA from Dinaledi fossils have so far failed. Researchers have yet to test Lesedi fossils for DNA or to try to generate age estimates for the new finds.
“My intuition is that Homo naledi points to a diversity of African Homo species that once lived south of the equator” in Africa, Hawks says. It’s unlikely Homo evolution proceeded in a straight line, from one species to the next, in a specific part of subequatorial Africa, he proposes.
Paleoanthropologists familiar with the new reports interpret the findings differently.
An “astonishingly young” age for a Homo species with several ancient-looking features suggests H. naledi was the sole survivor of an array of much older, closely related species, proposes Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. H. naledi probably made some of the many stone tools found at southern African sites dating to around 300,000 years ago that have not yielded hominid fossils, he adds. But despite Berger’s claims, Stringer doubts a creature with a brain size close to that of a gorilla disposed of its dead deep within a pitch-black, hard-to-navigate cave system, especially since the controlled use of fire for torches was probably also needed.
Berger’s team plans to excavate near openings to the Rising Star cave system where stone tools and signs of fire use may turn up.
However complex H. naledi’s behavior may have been, ancient aspects of its anatomy rule it out as an ancestor of H. sapiens, says Donald Johanson of Arizona State University in Tempe. Johanson, codiscoverer of Lucy, argues that H. sapiens originated in East Africa. Researchers generally place that evolutionary turning point, wherever it occurred, at between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. “The Rising Star Cave hominids, much like the hobbits, evolved in isolation and have no relevance to the origins of humankind,” Johanson says.
Still, even a largely isolated H. naledi population may have occasionally interbred with other Homo species in southern Africa, says Fred Smith of Illinois State University in Normal. Later Homo evolution “is far more complex than has generally been thought,” he says.
Berger and his colleagues second that point.
Newly obtained dating of the fossil hominin species Homo naledi, which was first discovered in 2015, significantly alters its position in the overall pattern of human evolution. Furthermore, it raises significant questions regarding the pattern of human evolution more generally: here.
The fossil record of early hominins in South Africa is biased towards periods of drier climate, suggests a study of cave deposits. This finding suggests there are gaps in the fossil record, potentially obscuring evolutionary patterns and affecting our understanding of both the habitats and dietary behaviors of early hominins in this region. South Africa’s highest concentration of early hominin fossils comes from the ‘Cradle of Humankind’ caves northwest of Johannesburg: here.
Fossil tooth pushes back record of mysterious Neandertal relative, Denisovans lived in Asia at least 100,000 years ago, DNA analysis suggests. By Bruce Bower, 2:00pm, July 7, 2017.
TRADE unions, students and youth marched through the streets of Paris yesterday against Emmanuel Macron’s proposed ‘Labour Reforms’ on the very next day after his election.
President-elect Macron’s ‘Labour Reforms’ make it easier to hire and fire workers and remove the 35-hour week, instead bosses can ‘negotiate directly with employees on working time.’
French CRS riot police wearing full body armour surrounded the march and then charged at protesters wielding their batons. Before the attack, one of the hundreds who were on the march, Anorina said: ‘We are here to say we do not have the same position as him. We are protesting to say do not forget that we are here and we are against you.
‘The protest today is important. Although I did vote for him, I just want to let him know that we did not vote for him but against Marine Le Pen. I do not want him to feel at ease as President because we did not vote for him but against Le Pen.
‘When Macron was economy minister under Hollande he decided many things which took away our social protection. He decided to open many shops on Sundays and that had a big affect on the shop workers.
‘Many of our friends decided not to vote, but for me I was so scared of Marine Le Pen, so I decide to vote for Macron. Unfortunately in our system now they do not want to recognise the people who do not vote and now in this election the amount of people who did not vote was a bigger amount than any other election that we have had, they do not care at all.
‘Our system does not work at all because we voted for a President that we don’t want and the people who didn’t vote are not recognised at all so this is a complete disaster for democracy.’
A female American Robin reinforces her nest with mud. Females build the nest from the inside out, pressing dead grass and twigs into a cup shape using the wrist of one wing. Other materials include paper, feathers, rootlets, or moss in addition to grass and twigs. Once the cup is formed, she reinforces the nest using soft mud gathered from worm castings to make a heavy, sturdy nest. She then lines the nest with fine dry grass. The finished nest is 6-8 inches across and 3-6 inches high.
This American Robin is sitting on four eggs—and the first one hatched today.
Discover Robins From A New Perspective
The red breast and cheery song of the American Robin are common sights and sounds across much of North America. Here at the Cornell Lab, robins often nest on our building and throughout Sapsucker Woods. This year, we’re lucky enough to have a nest that’s easy to access, and we’re excited to share the opportunity to watch from a front row seat. Watch cam.
The female has been incubating the nest for about the last 12 days, and once the eggs hatch it will be a mad dash for the parents as they forage for themselves and the ravenous appetites of the growing young. But be sure not to blink—it will only take about 12-14 days for the nestlings to fledge! Learn more about robins in our AllAboutBirds.org species guide.
The Environmental Protection Agency has removed several members from an internal review board meant to provide scientific advice to the agency, a move some say could impair future research into climate change and provide sweeping benefits to polluting industries.
The news, quietly announced on Friday, affects the EPA’s 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, which reviews the agency’s own research in an effort to “sustain and enhance the quality of science.” The New York Times reports at least five members have been dismissed from their roles after serving a three-year term, and E&E News said up to a dozen could eventually be let go.
A spokesman for EPA head Scott Pruitt told the Times the positions, which have mostly been filled with university-affiliated researchers, could likely be given to representatives from polluting industries the EPA is meant to monitor, in an effort “to take as inclusive an approach to regulation as possible.”
“The administrator believes we should have people on this board who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community,” said the spokesman, J.P. Freire.
Freire told E&E News the dismissals weren’t firings, but that researchers completing their terms hadn’t been asked to participate in another. “They’re not guaranteed a second three-year term,” he said.
In a statement Monday, John O’Grady, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union representing more than 9,000 EPA employees, said “any degradation of the quality of science will have far-reaching, and lasting impacts” on human and environmental health.
“One of the gravest concerns we have is whether the US EPA’s SAB will be repopulated with scientists who operate within the realm of opinion, rather than fact,” O’Grady said. “We are already aware of the opinion of this Administration and Mr. Pruitt with respect to climate change. However, opinions are neither fact nor theory and do not belong to the realm of science. Without independence and sound peer review of the science conducted by the Agency, it will be impossible to distinguish between good science and bad science at the US EPA.”
The Board of Scientific Counselors ― composed of members drawn from academia, environmental groups, industry and local government ― provides expert advice to the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, the prime research arm of the agency. The office supports a barrage of research programs that include efforts to understand climate change, monitor water quality and promote chemical safety.
Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the White House has instructed the EPA to roll back several Obama-era pieces of legislation, including rules on methane emissions and fuel efficiency standards, and taken steps to dramatically rein in the agency’s power.
In March, Trump proposed slashing the EPA’s budget by 31 percent in 2018, as well as gutting climate change programs across federal agencies. At the time, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, said the White House considered such spending “to be a waste of your money.”
“The SAB provides a mechanism for the agency to receive peer review and other advice designed to make a positive difference in the production and use of science at EPA,” the board’s website reads.
In February, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, proposed two bills meant to make it harder for the EPA to use scientific research to do its job. One of the bills, the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, would take away incentives for academics to sit on the panel and instead encourage industry representatives to join.
The House passed both pieces of legislation in March.
“This is one of several attempts by Congress to meddle with and ultimately undermine the process of science informing policy decisions,” Genna Reed, a policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote at the time. “These measures are attacks on public health, safety and environmental safeguards, plain and simple.”
Trump’s proposed 2018 budget takes an ax to science research funding: here.
This video, recorded in North America, says about itself:
17 Year Periodical Cicadas – Planet Earth – BBC Earth
5 May 2017
The biggest insect emergence on the planet is underway – after an absence of 17 years the next batch of Periodical Cicadas will grace the forest for just a mere few days. For the turtle and other forest inhabitants this will be one very rare but ultimately satisfying banquet.
Cicadas on different schedules can hybridize, by Helen Thompson, 5:00pm, April 20, 2018.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 