Toxic pellets threatening marine life

A Western Australian beach conservation group is working with a Japanese university to investigate the high levels of toxic plastic pellets washing up on the south-west coast.

Tangoroa Blue says large numbers of pellets used to manufacture plastic have been found between Cape Leeuwin and Cape Naturaliste.

Spokesman Wally Smith says the pellets are hazardous to sea creatures.

"Ingestion of the chemicals contained in the plastic resin pellets magnify as they move up the food chain," he said.

The group has been examining the pellets being washed ashore and sending its findings to a research team at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, which is monitoring the pellets worldwide.

Mr Smith believes it is a problem affecting the entire Western Australian coast.

Creationism should be tackled in science lessons, schools told By Richard Garner, Education Editor Published: 06 October 2007

The controversy over whether creationism should be addressed in science lessons has been reignited after a leading professor said teachers should treat the belief with respect.

Professor Michael Reiss, head of science at London University's Institute of Education, argued that a rise in creationism was making it increasingly difficult to teach evolution in British schools. Some science teachers were, as a result, ignoring the topic of evolution completely.

Toilet conference opens in Delhi
By Sanjoy Majumder
BBC News, Delhi

A World Toilet Summit has opened in the Indian capital, Delhi, with more than 40 countries taking part.

The four-day meeting will examine solutions and technologies that can be used to provide a basic need for nearly half the world's population.

According to estimates, 2.6bn people around the world lack access to a hygienic toilet.

The United Nations hopes to halve this figure by 2015 as part of its millennium development goals.

Call for US to re-open UFO file
By Will Grant
BBC News
A group of former pilots and government officials has called on the US government to re-open an investigation into claims of UFO sightings.

Project Blue Book, run by the US Air Force, was stopped in the late 1960s.

The group, which includes former military officers from seven countries, all say they have seen a UFO or have conducted research into the phenomenon.

However, the Air Force says nothing has happened in the past four decades to justify resuming investigations.

Every year thousands of people say they have seen UFOs in the United States and their claims are usually met with scepticism.

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Gus: if you were an alien, would you visit the planet of evolving dangerous mad midgets with spiders in their brains?... See toon at top of this line of stuff...

Save the whale. Again

 

The humpback was spared from extinction in 1963, one of the first whales to be protected. Yesterday a fleet set out to start hunting this animal once more

 

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

 

Published: 19 November 2007

 

They're the whales that behave like dolphins, leaping right out of the water in one of the most spectacular animal displays on earth. They've enchanted millions. And they're the ones the Japanese are now off to kill.

Not content with harpooning minke whales, fin whales, sei whales, Bryde's whales and sperm whales – all unnecessarily, all in the face of hostile world opinion and all in the laughable guise of "scientific research" – the Japanese whaling fleet set off yesterday to hunt the best-loved whale of all, the humpback.

It has been protected for more than 40 years, since long before the current international moratorium on commercial whaling came into force in 1986. It had been hunted so hard in preceding decades that its estimated numbers dropped to little more than a thousand in 1963 – even the whalers agreed to leave it in peace.

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Gus: see sad cartoon at the top...

Wild dolphins tail-walk on water
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

A wild dolphin is apparently teaching other members of her group to walk on their tails, a behaviour usually seen only after training in captivity.

The tail-walking group lives along the south Australian coast near Adelaide.

One of them spent a short time after illness in a dolphinarium 20 years ago and may have picked up the trick there.

Scientists studying the group say tail-walk tuition has not been seen before, and suggest the habit may emerge as a form of "culture" among this group.

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Gus: dolphins are very intelligent animals. Their biggest problem is they might trust humans to do the right thing... Ah ah... See previous blog here... see toon above...

Population rises fast as more call Australia home

Australia’s population rose a brisk 2.1 per cent last year, just a whisker from the fastest pace in four decades and a boost to demand for everything from consumer goods to housing and infrastructure.

Government data out today showed 451,900 more people called Australia home in the 12 months to end September, taking the total to 22.07 million.

The growth pace of 2.1 per cent was almost twice the global average of 1.1 per cent, and far above most rich nations.

The natural rate of increase, births minus deaths, stood at 154,500, while net migration added 297,400. The Bureau of Statistics also revised up past immigration numbers to show a net addition of 77,300 people in the two years to September.

The rapid rise in population helped Australia dodge a recession last year as the global financial crisis raged.

"Population growth to a major extent underpins the domestic growth story," said James Craig, chief equities economist at CommSec.

"More people translates to increased spending and demand for homes, and as a result, increased momentum for our economy," he added. "And while population has been going backwards in Japan and stagnating across the European nations, Australia is moving ahead."

http://www.smh.com.au/business/population-rises-fast-as-more-call-australia-home-20100325-qzel.html



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Meanwhile at the stables:

The Stable Population Party of Australia wants to keep the national population static despite a projected population increase to 9.2 billion globally, from 6.8 billion now.

''Australia's extreme population growth is either causing or exacerbating our economic, environmental and social problems,'' he said.

The main problems were housing affordability in cities, soaring power prices, scarce water resources and a straining health system, he said.

Migration and inducements for families to have more children were contributing, he said.

Mr Carr said Australia should show an ''enlightened lead'' to the rest of the world.

''Just because other countries are on a tragic path of population explosion, doesn't mean Australia's got to degrade its environment as well,'' he said.

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said last year that he believed in a big Australia and was optimistic the nation's infrastructure and environment would cope.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/carr-wants-migrant-intake-cut-to-curb-growth-20100324-qwtv.html

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see toon at top...

Aliens almost certainly exist but humans should avoid making contact, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned.

In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was "perfectly rational" to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere.

But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources, then move on.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said.

Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.

He explained: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet."


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Intelligent civilisations are out there and there could be thousands of them, according to an Edinburgh scientist.

The discovery of more than 330 planets outside our solar system in recent years has helped refine the number of life forms that are likely to exist.

The current research estimates that there are at least 361 intelligent civilisations in our Galaxy and possibly as many as 38,000.

The work is reported in the International Journal of Astrobiology.
Even with the higher of the two estimates, however, it is not very likely that contact could be established with alien worlds.

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see toon at top.

A group of former US air force officers have made the astonishing claim that UFOs "tampered" with nuclear missiles in both Britain and the United States. They also called on the American and British authorities to release 60 years' worth of files they claim prove the existence of extraterrestrials.

Six retired officers and one former non-commissioned officer broke their silence at a press conference in Washington yesterday, claiming to have gathered evidence of UFOs from more than 120 military personnel. According to the ex-airmen, the witness testimonies reveal that aliens infiltrated nuclear sites as recently as 2003.

In some cases, they claim, nuclear missiles malfunctioned during the encounters. Captain Robert Salas told journalists how he was working as a missile commander at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967 when some of his men spotted a "glowing red object" hovering above their underground weapons silo. Moments later they discovered that all of the 10 Minuteman missiles had been deactivated.

Another retired US airman, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Halt, told journalists about his encounter with aliens while working in Britain 30 years ago.

The Lt-Col recounted how, in the early hours of December 27 1980, he and several of his security team watched a UFO hover above the RAF Bentwater airbase in Suffolk. The men "observed a light that looked like a large eye, red in colour, moving through the trees" of the Rendlesham Forest.

A few minutes later, he said, the mysterious object "appeared to be winking and was shedding molten metal... A short while later it broke into several smaller, white-coloured objects which flew away in all directions".

One possible explanation for the incident - which has been dubbed 'Britain's Roswell' is that the beams came from a nearby lighthouse. However yesterday Col Halt insisted that the mysterious objects were "extraterrestrial in origin".

At the end of the press conference, Salas insisted that the UFO phenomenon is "real, not imaginary and there is excessive secrecy... about this issue. The tampering of nuclear weapons is a national security concern".

UFO researcher Robert Hastings, who collated the witness testimonies and organised the press conference, told reporters that "this planet is being visited by beings from another world who, for whatever reason, have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race".

"The fact the Pentagon and CIA have kept the truth from public view for so long is in itself mind-boggling." 

Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/69325,news-comment,news-politics,aliens-interfered-with-nuclear-weapons-say-us-airmen#ixzz10tAQ8Yxq
See toon at top and tune your visionator to channel A34, the channel for aliens with zaperators on holidays — lost in this stupid corner of XZYUKJCH galaxy the local dummies call the Milky Way...