SPECIES CRASH

Biodiversity crashing Australia-wide

Australia has the worst record for mammal extinctions and near-extinctions of any developed nation in the world. And according to the latest national audit of Australian biodiversity, the nation is still losing plant and animal species on a continental scale.

Forest ecologist David Lindenmayer said "we are seeing massive crashes of mammal populations in northern Australia now, and we're not seeing those in southern Australia because essentially mammals have gone from huge areas of woodlands, and we are starting to see the bird populations crash."

FROG PLAGUE

Tadpole downpour stumps Japanese meteorologists

An office clerk in Nanao first noticed the anomaly when he heard a dull thud in a parking lot last week, news reports said. Looking around, he saw about 100 dead tadpoles splattered on car windscreens and on the ground.

"People speculate that a waterspout picked them up and dropped them from the air," an official at a local weather observatory said. "But from a meteorological point of view, I have to say it is most unlikely. We have checked the weather conditions of last week, thinking gusts of wind might have hit the area but confirmed no damage.

"To be honest, I don't think it was anything caused by a weather condition."

AIR CRASH INVESTIGATION

A pilot says that he saw fall a “sparkle of white light” where the French airplane disappeared

Suddenly, we observed in the distance a strong and intense sparkle of vertical white light that took a descendent trajectory and that vanished in six seconds”. This one is message that commander of flight 974 of Air Comet, that covered File-Madrid to the same hour that disappeared the Airbus de Air France, reported to its company.

Original story here

CROP CIRCLES

Plea over jellyfish crop circle

A 250m-long crop circle of a jellyfish has appeared on farmland causing up to £600,000 worth of damage.

The owners of the land in Oxfordshire have urged visitors to stay away from the circle, which is also 60m (197ft) wide, to avoid further crop damage. Sally Ann Spence and husband Bill, who own Berry Croft Farm near Ashbury, say hundreds of visitors have been trampling over their field.

They said it is "beautiful" but the flattened crops are now "useless". "We have not given permission for people to walk on our land," Mrs Spence said."The pattern has already cost a great deal of damage - possibly about £600,000. "People can get a better view from the air."

She said she was not concerned about tracking down the culprits and the incident has not been reported to the police. It is not the first time crop circles have appeared on their land, they said, but the jellyfish is one of the most spectacular.

Crop circlers warned 'stay away'

People who create crop circles are being urged to consider how their actions affect farmers' livelihoods.

The patterns started to appear again in Kent and Sussex with the onset of summer and now cereal farmers are urging the pranksters to stop. The National Farmers' Union (NFU) said damage is made worse by so called crop circle tourists who trample on crops making them impossible to harvest.

The NFU believes the circles are man-made and not created supernaturally.

FORGET 2 FORGET

forget2forget :: memory & memorial

TIANANMEN TWEET

China blocks Twitter before Tiananmen anniversary

Access to the popular social networking service Twitter and email service Hotmail has been blocked across mainland China, two days before the 20th anniversary of a bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square. Indignant users filled chatrooms with protest, after access to Twitter was denied.

"The whole Twitter community in China has been exploding with it," said Beijing-based technology commentator Kaiser Kuo. "It's just part of life here. If anything surprises me, it's that it took them so long."

Other internet users reported not being able to access Windows Live, a service offered by Microsoft which also owns Hotmail, and also Flickr, an online photo sharing service owned by Yahoo.

"This is so frustrating. Now I feel China is exactly the same as Iran," said a financial professional and avid Twitter user in Shanghai, referring to Iran's May ban of popular social networking site Facebook.

Thursday is the 20th anniversary of June 4, 1989, when tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square before dawn to quell weeks of protest by students and workers. China has never released a death toll from the crackdown on what it classes as a "counter-revolutionary" conspiracy.

TIANANMEN TANK MAN

China blocks attempts to mark Tiananmen anniversary

It is 20 years since China's brutal crackdown in Tiananmen Square which saw an unknown number of civilians killed. Thousands of students sat in China's Tiananmen Square not knowing that their six-week long protest would come to a violent end that night.
Troops had been brought in from outside Beijing because the local soldiers could not be relied on to shoot down the country's best and brightest - especially people they knew.

The Government is hoping that this will be a non-event, but has tightened security in and around Tiananmen Square.
It also hopes that the solid economic growth delivered over the past 30 years means that most people are now of a mood not to upset the status quo by protesting in the street.

International news reports about this anniversary, like those from the BBC and Voice of America, are being blocked in China and the authorities
have denied foreign reporters access to Tiananmen Square.

REMEMBERING TIANAMEN

Hong Kong march marks Tiananmen crackdown

The rally included a small group of mainland Chinese students, who wore T-shirts citing former Communist leader Mao Zedong: "Whoever suppresses student movements is going to have a bad ending.""I am very excited to see so many people, as this is forbidden on the mainland," said one of the students, 20, who did not want to be named.
"It shows there is hope."

Meanwhile, a Danish sculptor who flew to Hong Kong to protest the bloody crackdown was refused entry.
Jens Galschiot, whose sculpture commemorating those who died in the 1989 military crackdown, "Pillar of Shame," is displayed at Hong Kong University, was stopped by officials Saturday and sent back to Zurich, an immigration spokesman confirmed.

CROSSING OVER

Leslie Hore-Belisha's very British zebra

Zebra crossings are endangered, but not as endangered as the poor pedestrian. The AA estimates that 1,000 zebra crossings have been abolished, while Britain has sunk to the third most dangerous nation for pedestrians, behind Italy and Spain. Their attitude to driving speaks for itself.

The zebra crossing promotes civility. A driver seeing a belisha beacon and striped road markings ahead drives more carefully.

A pedestrian red or amber light provides, by contrast, just one more frustration. And there is something British in the best sense about the zebra crossing. The belisha beacon came in first in the 1930s, the brainchild of the Liberal politician Leslie Hore-Belisha; the stripes followed in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain.