Wednesday, August 31, 2011



Communities may lose ability to influence decision-making as planning is streamlined in favour of developers, green groups say

. Previously refused plans for major developments being resubmitted and automatically passed.



Tuesday, August 30, 2011

A planning free-for-all leading to blighted landscapes, urban sprawl, more congestion and an undermining of local democracy is inevitable if the government insists on pushing ahead with proposals for new rules, say the UK's leading conservation, heritage and green groups.

Martin Harper, RSPB conservation director, said: "The planning system is there to represent the interests of the public in the face of complex decisions, and it will fail us all if one factor - economic growth - is set higher than any other."



Although Callender was born in Mottingham, Kent (now deep inside south-east London), he lived in Scotland for 60 years, following a short time (1948-49) at art school in South Shields, County Durham. From 1951 he studied medical illustration at Edinburgh University, but in 1954 moved to the painting class at Edinburgh College of Art, concluding with a postgraduate year spent in Italy, France and Spain on a couple of travelling scholarships from the university and the British School at Rome. In 1960, he began a parallel but successful career as a teacher at the college for the next 33 years, with stints lecturing at the American university in Aix-en-Provence in France.

The momentum of the disaster was two years his work was later displayed in a remarkable show, between tides, at the Talbot Rice Gallery at the University of Edinburgh. Callender avoided direct reference to the Arcadia and instead showed what looked like the skeletons of abandoned boats working, cut and detached bow rudder, but actually surprisingly accurate simulacra of balsa wood, paint, cardboard and papier-mâché made. A boat that looked newly painted white, ghostly white against the un-plastered walls of the gallery. The exhibition seemed to destroy the lives of those ships and their crew to whisper. It was a triumph of realism into handmade elegiac poetry, and was interspersed with photos and acrylic. He regarded the reconstructed wreckage of the boat rather than sculpture, but as an image in three dimensions - less frustrating and more real than the painting on canvas.

In an exhibition called Sea Salvage along the same lines in the same place four years later, Callender used wood ash, sawdust and peat to give texture to his sea pieces. He pointed out that he was making paper from trees look like wood again, and his heart may well have resonated with the ecological implications: however sombre his theme or sad the plastic detritus that he reconstructed, Callender had a great sense of optimism about the enduring culture of the Scottish coastline.

In fact, although he has not thought much about himself, was Callender part of a tradition of Scottish marine painting, by William MacTaggart to Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Bellany, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and of course his wife Liz, who survive him along with two sons, John and Mike, and four grandchildren, Fiona, Laura, Robbie and Sula.

. Robert Callender, artist, born 14th January 1932, died 27th July 2011

Michael McNay


Monday, August 29, 2011

The concept has been around for years. In 2000, a UN taskforce on food security in the Horn of Africa highlighted the need for farmers to adopt drought-tolerant crop varieties. The Food and Agriculture Organisation talks about improving dryland crop production to build resilience, so the issue is to turn these ideas into reality.

Eunice Makenga could be part of the answer. She runs a small shop in Kenya's Nzaui district selling seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. One of only a few agro-dealers to sell improved drought-tolerant seeds, she buys small "trial packs" from Leldet farm in Nakuru - where Janey Leakey runs the first seed business to focus on these "neglected crops".

Leakey has been working with researchers from the International Crop Research Centre for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat) as well as the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute to develop and distribute higher-yielding and more drought- and pest-resistant crop varieties. For instance, improved pigeonpea varieties have produced an average 38% rise in harvests, Icrisat's research shows, while improved groundnut and chickpea varieties have increased harvests by 59% and 33% respectively.


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The future of the 200-year union between England and Scotland was discussed has never been so hot. We asked some of Scotland's 's best-known authors for their opinions on the state of marriage and what that could mean independence for their homeland

Iain Banks: 'Scotland could have a future as a fully independent country'

Iain Banks, 57, was born in Fife, where he still lives. Beginning with The Wasp Factory (1984), he has 23 novels, including written last Surface details , one of 13 science fiction titles published under the name Iain M Banks.

When I was about eight years old, I told my parents that I felt more Scottish than British. They were horrified. These days I feel much more Scottish than British. Sometimes I feel more European than British.

At that time I felt proud that we (has been told) the best police force in the world and the best post in the world (etc.) and that we, the BBC and the NHS and all the other institutions that unites people through the feeling that - despite the class system and the divisions between bosses and workers - but somehow we were all together, yet a nation.

Then Margaret Thatcher took over the Tory party and swung to the right. Out went one-nation Conservatism; came deep cuts, privatization, the glorification of greed and globalization. And the Big Bang for the city, the deregulation program, the minimum required and probably sufficient to our role in the financial crisis that began in 2008 and their most debilitating results, we have to suffer, perhaps still was.

The thing is, the Scots was never Thatcherism. We were always skeptical. When they announced that there were no such thing as society, most of us, frankly, incredulous. Thatcherism, and the enthusiasm with which it was adopted by so many in England did, to recognize a lot of Scots begin, after all that we sense different from English en masse, more communitarian, less convinced of the primacy of competition over cooperation. There was not a nation.

So, the Scots learned to vote tactically, ganged up on the Tories and reduced the Conservative party in Scotland to a rump. In England, even in the depths of its unelectable ghastliness, I don't remember seeing a poll where they scored under 30%.

I spent the early and mid 80s in London and Kent, returning in 1988. From then on through the 90s, I remember reading Scottish National Party manifesto and think they 're the left of Labour. Of course, as Labour had shifted to the right of Ted Heath 's last government that left him didn' t tell that Hercules a success, but still.

Until then, I 'd only ever voted Labour. After Blair had the same trick with the Labour Party, which had turned to Thatcher, the Tories, I have never voted Labour again. I Green, Scottish Socialist Party, Liberal Democrats or SNP, mostly as a protest vote, but by and by - and with a little more hope - increasingly for the SNP. Not because I was very nationalist - as many people on the left I 've always suspicious of the populist, divisive appeal of nationalism - but because the SNP' s have been policies of progressive, left wing, more fair, at the end of another party with a realistic chance to power over. Labour stopped working, so I was a pragmatic vote for the SNP.

These days, I support the idea of an independent Scotland. It's with a heavy heart in some ways; I think I'd still sacrifice an independent Scotland for a socialist UK, but. I can't really see that happening. What I can imagine is England continuing to turn to the right and eventually leaving the EU altogether.

Scotland could, however, a viable future as either a fully independent country, or - more likely - in Europe. The European ideal takes an abuse immediately, safely, and the gloss has compared our prospects for Ireland 's or Iceland' s coming, but it remains possible and plausible that Scotland could be a transparent, low-inequality society to become the Scandinavian model, with fair, non-regressive taxes, strong unions, a nuclear-free policy, no sanctions tertiary education system, enlightened social policy in general and long-term support for green energy programs.

We 'd have to make sure that our banks were small enough to fail, and there are problems of poverty, disease and religious tribalism, take decades to overcome. But with the benefits and attractions that Scotland already has, and, more importantly, taking into account the moral thrust, the sheer excitement of an entire nation that would arise because we finally had our destiny, at least substantially back again into our own hands - I think we could do it.

And we should.

Janice Galloway: "You will not miss us, just what we mean - the last kick of Empire '

Novelist Janice Galloway was born in 1955. She describes her first years in Ayrshire in This Is Not About Me , An award-winning 'anti-memoir'. A second volume, All Made Up Was published this month (Granta, £ 16.99). She now lives in Lanarkshire.

We were in London, me and a wonderful writer from Oban, share a taxi to Westminster. The taxi driver had noticed my hair color, my friend 's Highland pine, but somehow our different accents individually defined. The Bank of Scotland ten we offered as a deal, but he threw. No use, he said. It 's Scotch. We had nothing else. He refused again and announces slowly. It 's, he repeated, scotch. This is what we 've got my friend said. Please. Stop buggering about and take it. The taxi driver got out, threw note insult to the wind, quietly advised us to fuck off, then reached for a can of air freshener. Bleedin 'Scotch, he staged whispered, more in sorrow than anger, from the heart of a hissing lavender fug. Bleedin 'smart-mouth Bastard Scotch.

Small Is Beautiful than "Scotland the Brave"


I 'm an old-fashioned social democrat and while my heart was marbled through with love of country my head always distrusted nationalism. I'm nationalism with racism, xenophobia, inward-ness and equate militarism. I've spent my adult life, voting and campaigning for a British Labour Party. The whole time I 've kept my eye on Scottish nationalism watch, and wait, they distrust, expected to reveal his true dark heart.

But it never has.

For 25 years, Scottish nationalism is a civic, social democratic, multicultural movement. Nationalists have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in opposition to Trident it. They have been open for a campaign more Immigration. The SNP proudly claims the multicultural nature of modern Scotland and its MSPs at the parliamentary oath in Urdu, Gaelic, Italian and English. Nationalists promote and engage with the EU. They advocate sustainable energy, land reform, promotion of art ... the list goes on.

Novelist Shena Mackay was born in Edinburgh in 1944, but has lived mainly in the south of England. Your selected stories The Atmospheric Railway , Are now available in paperback (Vintage, £ 9.99)

In JMcorrect Barrie's novelSentimental Tommy Has Tommy Sandys, a young Scottish boy lives in a London slum, was brought to his exiled Scottish mother 's stories of her hometown, Thrums. He brags to his friend forever Shovel (a hard and brutal abuse lad) of the beauty and superiority Thrums. After her mother 's death, are Tommy and his little sister, Elspeth, returned to Thrums. The local boys taunt his English accent and pretend not to his attempts to "scotch" to speak and understand. Tommy yells that he could and shovel the fight many of them. Heartbroken, he sobs, to Elspeth, that he is always bragging about Thrums to shovel and here he is in Thrums "bouncing" on blade.

The question should be: what would be best for Scotland, and England, but I feel I have nothing useful to add to the debate because any feelings I might have are sentimental, and although I am delighted when I am counted as a Scottish writer, I don't imagine that anybody in Scotland will care much what I or other disenfranchised expatriates think. I see why many Scots want independence but voters in England will have no say in the matter.


Heavy rains and thunderstorms are due to the British 's short-lived heat wave end

Get the latest weather forecasts

Parts of southeastern England are on the alert for flash flooding after predictions that heavy rains and thunderstorms through the UK 's short-lived heat wave is over.

Employees of the Federal Environment Agency (EA) are in search of flooding from storms, the likely influence of Essex and Kent.

The brief violent weather can also be reached London, but the Met Office warnings were initially reduced by about night at home counties, East Anglia and parts of the Midlands.

The majority of the country is now expected to funneling a lot quieter end of the 3 days of mild Spanish flag effect of the warm air from the Sahara brought, have over the Iberian Peninsula and the western and northern coasts of Britain.

The EA and Met Office still expect fall to 40 mm rain within a very short period on the south-east, and flood warnings - just the lowest warning - even for Thames tributaries were exhibited in the London districts of Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich and Lewisham. The warnings follow the hottest day of the year on Monday, when the temperatures at Gravesend station, Kent hit 32.8C (91F).

A spokesman for the EA, said: "Our staff will be on 24-hour alarm monitoring teams with river levels, as the band of rain moved across the country, the public encouraged to tune into local media for forecasts for the region and to . keep an eye out for signs of surface water flooding. "

A Met Office spokesman said the "sheer amount of rain falls in such a short time" could overwhelm flood protection, but would probably help the very dry spring, absorb rain. Parts of eastern and central England officially in a state of drought, which should relieve some of the rain.

The Met Office said that most parts of the United Kingdom would be a dry but fresh day, with a pattern of largely sunny and warm weather in the rest of the week, interrupted by occasional showers.

Martin Wainwright

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Regional vegetable prices rise by 40% affected rainfall floods more than 1m hectares of arable land and the lives of 5.7 million people


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Sunday, August 28, 2011

Cameron made the decision with the backing of climate secretary Chris Huhne, but against wishes of some on the Tory right. Liam Fox, secretary of state for defence, which owns one of the biggest government estates, was against it.

The votes of 16 of the 23 Tory MPs helped swing the European Parliament 's decision not to ambitious climate protection goals.

Fiona Harvey


Activists such as White House disappointed, says 1700-mile pipeline will not cause significant environmental damage

The Obama administration gave an important approval yesterday to a controversial pipeline that will pump oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the Texas coast.

The State Department in its report said the project - which would pipe more than 700,000 barrels a day of tar sands crude to Texas refineries - would not increase greenhouse gas emissions. It also downplayed the risks of an accident from piping highly corrosive tar sands crude across prime American farmland.


Saturday, August 27, 2011

Chairman, Badger Trust



Green Futures: Cutting-edge design is based on the light exerts pressure as the driving force

The force is with us, even if it is very small indeed. Scientists have long been aware that radiation of any kind exerts pressure, and light is no exception. In the 1920s, the Soviet rocket-designer Friedrich Zander suggested that a spaceship could be propelled solely by sunbeams and over time could reach very high velocities.

Sure enough, May 2010, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the world 's first spacecraft designed to use solar power as the primary driving force. IKAROS - or the 'Interplanetary Kite-craft by radiation from the sun \ Accelerated' - developed a polyimide-sail and set out for Venus, which it has achieved, as expected, in December. The sail is 14 square meters, but only 7.5 microns thick, and its highly reflective surface doubled the thrust power of the sun there, all of 0.112 gram force.

Now a team of researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York has revealed another trick can make a light. Take a transparent rod, semi-circular in cross section and thinner than a human hair, and a beam directly on them. As the stream of photons flowing through them, the pressure they exert first turns, until she finds her balance and then she does not push in the direction of the stream, but to a certain angle. It 's not unlike the way the air flow around an airfoil creates' lift '.

Tiny as this effect, such a 'lightfoil' applications were not only in the near vacuum of space, but also on the Earth. "The advantage of these rods" said Ortwin Hess, professor of physics and Leverhulme Chair in metamaterials at Imperial College London, "is that you can use a lot of them together." And on the nano-scale, adds He can also add very small effects have a huge impact.

So, what is that good? The pressure exerts light is tiny, and there are only two contexts in which it can be used: in space where there is an almost total vacuum, and therefore almost no resistance to the force it applies, and in nanotechnology, where things this need have moved very little mass.



It is not too strong to claim that successive governments over the last decades have worked to destroy the family. They have expected parents to do two jobs at the same time, because they did not value one of those jobs. Now the victim of their policies - the family - is taking the blame. This situation used to apply mostly to single parents, but nowadays, with the huge rise in property prices and rents, and in the face of low wages, many young families find themselves in the position where both parents need to work.

It is significant that benefits for those choosing to stay at home with their young were purposively set at a punitive level to drive people into paid work. It was assumed that only paid work could offer hope - a way out of depression. The alternative of supporting families properly in their invaluable work of raising children was not considered by any of the main political parities. Only the Green party suggested a citizens' wage for everyone, which would have supported those choosing to live more slowly and care for their children - good for their children and good for the globe - and would also have supported those choosing to go back to work, because it avoided the poverty trap of losing benefits when work started.

Alicia Hull, Peter Crouch , Colin Millen, Brigid Warner

North Norfolk Green party



Friday, August 26, 2011

American industrialist who burned a trail in the reduction of his company 's environmental

For most of his many years as head of the world 's largest commercial carpet tile manufacturer was, the American industrialist Ray Anderson, who died of cancer at the age of 77, never gave any thought to the negative impact that its petrochemical company could rely on society or the environment. Then, in 1994, he read a book about the state of the Earth, which radically changed his views. He transformed his company, InterfaceFLOR, a copy of how a multinational can try to significantly reduce its environmental footprint while maintaining or even improving the profitability.

It was set in this way, when the employee reported that customers are increasingly inquiring about the company 's environmental performance. They asked him to give them a lecture on the topic, so that they could be better informed. Anderson did not know what he could say. At the same time landed a book, The Ecology of Commerce (1993), by environmentalist Paul Hawken, on his desk. It was an epiphany, "\ a spear in the chest," said Anderson. "I was amazed at how much I did not know about the environment and the impact of the industrial system on the environment. A new definition of 'hit' began to creep into my consciousness, and made the latent sense of heritage to claim wants. I was a plunderer of the earth, and that's not the legacy we leave behind. "

Shortly afterwards he made his presentation to employees, present with the stunning announcement that the company had a new goal - "to ultimately nothing of the earth that is not naturally and rapidly renewable". What became known as "Mission Zero" was a radical way for mainstream industrial companies, especially in the mid-1990s, and even more ambitious program than presented by small, innovative "ethical" company.

Anderson won over his staff and the work began, as you deliver the goal of zero negative impact to 2020. In 2009, he stated that his company was 60% of the way to achieving the goal. InterfaceFLOR had reduced its water consumption by 75% since 1996 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 44% and a decrease of energy consumption by 43%. It also switched to 100% renewable energy at its facilities in Europe and has 36% of its products from recycled materials, up from 0.5% in 1996. And it managed to remove oil from the manufacturing of its products.

Anderson was keen to see the idea of ??bionics, which, as nature works and then applies the lessons of industrial processes. A study of the leaves on the forest floor resulted in the establishment of carpet tiles with random designs that could be installed in any pattern, whereby waste. The observation of the Gecko helped a way to glue tiles, floors without glue.

While much of what Anderson is initiated now relatively common - even measures like car pooling for employees, flexible distribution of wealth, water and rail, switching to an element of fair trade suppliers and the introduction of sustainability training for employees - his company was burning a trail. It also showed how Anderson was keen to point out that most of the measures were positive on the final result - money. Waste saving innovations in the past 13 years alone saved the company $ 372 million.

After the commissioning of his company on his way to what he called "Mount Sustainability" Anderson always his attention to missionary work around the world. He was one of the major proponents of corporate responsibility, to practice a great deal of what he preached and respects with an existing company rather than a purpose-built for the task. InterfaceFLOR setting up a unit that lent their expertise to other large companies, and Anderson is contributing at least partly to convince executives at Wal-Mart to rethink their social and environmental performance credited. He also wrote influential books, including Confessions of a Radical Industrial (2009).

Anderson, who was steeped in the culture of hard-nosed business, exercised great influence in the corporate sector. Ralph Nader, one of the leading figures in the U.S. Green movement, called him "the greatest educator of his colleagues in the industry, and most knew each motivator, through example and vision for the environmental movement". Anderson, co-chaired by the President 's Council on Sustainable Development during Bill Clinton' s administration, which to him, co-chairman of the President Climate Action Plan in 2008.

The youngest of three children of William Anderson, a postal worker, and Ruth McGinty, a teacher, was born in Anderson, West Point, Georgia. He won a football scholarship at the Georgia Institute of Technology and graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering in 1956. After initially selling fireworks, he spent more than a decade working in the technical side of the carpet business. In 1973 he was on his own branches in a 15-employee company, which is known as an interface and was later found InterfaceFLOR. The business has brought about the innovative idea to make the UK, durable modular carpet tiles, which could be easily misplaced. It grew quickly beyond the Georgia base to have an international presence on four continents and went public in 1983. By 2010 it had revenues of nearly $ 1 billion and 5,000 employees.

Anderson 's first marriage to Harriet Childs, with whom he had two daughters, Mary and Harriet, ended in divorce. His daughters, he is survived by his second wife, Pat a stepson, Brian, a brother, William, five grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

. Ray Christie Anderson, industrialist, born 28 July 1934; died 8 August 2011

Peter Mason

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Thursday, August 25, 2011

But the intensity of cosmic rays striking the Earth varies. When the sun is more active today, creates the stream of particles it produces, known as the solar wind, a stronger magnetic field deflects cosmic radiation. This means that less gets into the atmosphere.

"Our work leaves open the possibility that the cosmic radiation could influence the climate. But at this stage, there is absolutely no way we say that they can do," said Kirkby.

Philip Bull, of the Climate Processes Group at Oxford University, heads, said the study was "an experimental leap forward", but it was too early to discuss the implications for climate models or climate in general to speculate. He added that the study would inspire more research in this area.



Demand for resources has driven conflict throughout history. Now it 's time for a policy rethink on land and water

Let 's back to basics - historically and conceptually. The cornerstone of security for all civilizations before the industrial age was land and water without secure tenure based on the country, the life of one 's citizens, each ruler' s tenure was short-lived. Without water, agriculture and productive enterprise was impossible. Armies were fed either a 's own land and water, or take the property \ by someone else' s. ProtectTools

It was not 't all that different from the Age of Empires, by the end of the Second World War. It was still influence over territory, resources and habitat and geopolitical. It 's only in recent decades, military security is not following some of this, and gear motors more conflicts like the Cold War, and the current' Wars "on" terrorist 'and drugs.

Now there are all kinds of signals that safety concerns are beginning to once more on land and water - which is most tellingly in the growing furore over food security and the so-called "land grab 'around the world.

It 's almost a decade since the CIA first drew \ people's attention on China' s enthusiasm for the acquisition of land (through direct purchase or long-term lease) in Africa and other countries. Since then, many other countries (mainly from the Middle East) joined the party - specifically to meet their own nutritional needs. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 20 million hectares of arable land - almost half the size of all arable land in Europe - have been sold or had been negotiated for sale or lease in 2010.

Meanwhile, all that over-excited rhetoric about 'the peace dividend' that followed the end of the Cold War has pretty much evaporated; expenditure on arms reached an astonishing $1.62 trillion in 2010. A significant percentage of that is related (directly or indirectly) to the Middle East.



The attacks inspired the great books and great films. But where are the big plays? When approaching its 10th anniversary, Andrew Dickson reports on a daring attempt to bring this order

It 'sa feeling of fear in the air. People are milling around, trying to work their cell phones. Some of them pounding the keys that are willing the person to bring it 're calling others gaze skyward, waiting patiently to be connected to the signal. In the background there 'sa recording of a man singing softly: "New York, I love you, but you' re Bringing Me Down". The scene is so clear, so scary, it could be a photo. And each of us could supply the caption: 11 September 2001.

This is a dress rehearsal for the decade, instead of behind the scenes at the Union Chapel in London. An ambitious new piece of theater, directed by Rupert Goold and his company, Headlong, she focuses on the history of 9 / 11 on the 10th To tell anniversary of the event. In a few days, the occupation of their actual venue to relocate - a converted warehouse at St Katharine Docks, near the Thames. Time is short, worn nerves. Moments later, Goold trying to run a different section, but nobody can quite work out which bit he says. "I think it has that cut," says one of the cast. The stage manager frowns. Everyone reaches for her script.

It looks complicated, I say, if Goold breaks for lunch. He looks uncomfortable. "Now 's always the point at which directors are to be most at risk with her. ... This is a very" He doesn' t finish the sentence.

How do you solve a problem like 9 / 11? Although Goold and his team are hardly the first theater to the attacks of 11th Respond to September - a year after the event, there was even a three-day theater festival in New York dedicated to the topic - most writers who have gone near it are so inclined, or done in miniature. Neil LaBute 's The Mercy Seat (soon to be in Islington \ be revived' s Pleasance) is an intimate two-handed sword with a couple having an affair, to see the disaster as an opportunity to begin a new life. One of the first American plays to be written after the event, Anne Nelson 's The Guys fight, zooms in close, with a focus lost on a New York City Fire Department captain praises crew for his writing. The attacks inspired the great novelists, including Don DeLillo and Jonathan Safran Foer, and great filmmakers, including Oliver Stone and Paul Greengrass - but not many great playwrights.

There are obvious difficulties of scale, and also of taste, for a piece of history that feels, to many people, uncomfortably raw. Even 10 years on, something about it seems just too real to represent in the flesh. Goold agrees: "We've been very vigilant about what a bad 9/11 show would look like. When we announced the project, there was an assumption that we'd be running around going, 'Oh God, the building's falling,' something crass like that. But that's not what the show is."

If someone fix this, it 'sa theater alchemists like Goold. Besides working his magic on classic texts such as Macbeth (transformed into a Stalinist parable in 2007) and The Merchant of Venice (set in a money-hungry Las Vegas earlier this year), he also has corporate malfeasance in the rivets made theater: Lucy Prebble ' s Enron was catapulted by the director into a spectacle of blood-red computer screens, screaming monsters and city dealer turns over the stage. It opened at the Chichester Festival in 2009 before being sold in London, but prematurely closed on Broadway after being savaged by the critics - some beats Goold, because the topic was too painful for the U.S. audience in the wake of the credit crisis: " The thing that the Americans can 't look, is that money is the root of the whole thing. "

A key component of the Long Head of the team's choreographer Scott Ambler. A classically trained dancer who has performed with physical theater company DV8 and created works for Matthew Bourne and Rambert, Ambler those frantic traders at Enron and the hectic world choreographed the lap-dancing bars and street scenes that its earthquake in London, completed last year.

Ambler decade and was instrumental in trying to find a physical language catalyze the words. "It 's interesting," he says. "All the different voices and strands, trying to play around with what kind of movement, we can use." Some links are direct, as in this phone scene that turns into a kind of soft-shuffle dance to the music, all clutching their cell phones. Sometimes they 're less so than in any other section, if a text is reminiscent of Simon Schama September 11, as the cast perform gestures to read the notorious photos taken at Abu Ghraib coverage. At times, the choreography is reminiscent of the self-mocking style of Joan Littlewood 's Oh! What a Lovely War, in others, it 's pure Broadway razzmatazz. "The movement," says Goold, \ tends "to the glue, or the soup, that's all \ are explicitly reflected a text's coming from sometimes it is \. '; Often it' s sitting on the other hand \. "

Where they were both on 9 / 11? "In LA," says Ambler, "which shut down completely. They were convinced they were going to take place next to his." Goold looks embarrassed. "I was at the Bristol Old Vic, rehearsing a one-man show with Pete Postlethwaite, who was a bit drunk. My wife left me six missed calls, starting with 'I' m in the gym, the first plane 's just gone in,' on 'on the back to come to London, we' re under attack! \ laughs "He. "Was listening to them one after the other completely crazy."

That 's the thing with 9 / 11, I say: everyone has their own story. Goold's true. "It sounds glib, perhaps, but what samples I 've implemented this is that the days between the first plane into the north tower down over the length of a game it does not have is that this unit Aristotelean. -. a place for a while, I think that relationships with people 's memory in a way, it feels like it validates our approach "Or you might say, al-Qaeda \ ..' s: This was, after all, a meticulous attack on live TV, a supreme, shocking planned piece of political theater. Goold nods thoughtfully. "Great God, stage equipment. Yes."


Wednesday, August 24, 2011

The transaction was delayed because of a row over royalty payments between Vedanta and state-owned ONGC, a 30% shareholder in the Rajasthan venture.Regulators also needed time to look at whether Vedanta had the financial strength, technical ability and expertise to take control.



U.S., Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway are always embroiled in disputes over boundaries on land and at sea

Two nations on opposite sides of the military alliance of NATO to share - Russia and Norway - have signed an agreement on who owns what, signed in the Barents Sea. But there are many other territorial disputes going on - some good friends.

An area of ??great interest to oil drilling - oppose the United States and Canada still on the setting of boundaries in the Beaufort Sea.

Similarly, Canada has a dispute with Denmark over the ownership of Hans Island and where the control line (whose sovereignty remains with Denmark) in the strait between Greenland and Ellesmere Iceland should be taken to solve.

But even more important in a world of melting ice is the control over the Northwest Passage. Canada insists that it has sovereignty over the sea and therefore asked about their use. The U.S. is seen as a potential area of ??open water that there is an automatic right of passage for its warships.

The Canadians were incensed when the Americans increased the oil tanker Manhattan through the canal in 1969 followed by the icebreaker Polar Sea in 1985, drove both, without asking for Canadian permission.

The Svalbard Archipelago, north-west of Norway, already signed by an international treaty in 1920 is was. But that does not stop, friends such as Great Britain and Norway, with disagreements over the way the contract has been interpreted.

Norway was given sovereignty and responsibility for the management of fishing rights and the protection of the environment.

But it should also give other signatories to the Treaty - Russia, the USA, China and Britain - to use the same rights Svalbard 's natural resources 4 miles on the Continental Shelf. The problem is that Norway does not respect the archipelago, as they have their own shelf, the area of ??conflict. A big oil discovery off Svalbard would undoubtedly trigger a result.

In the meantime, the U.S. and Russia still disagreement about the exact sea borders from the Bering Sea into the Arctic Ocean. It has signed a deal with the former Soviet Union, but Russia has refused to ratify it.

All Arctic states have a big disagreement over who owns the bits of the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean, especially the 1800 km Lomonosov Ridge. Claims submitted under the Law of the Sea Convention.

Terry Macalister

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Colibri thalassinus (Protonym, Trochilus thalassinus), Even when the Mexican Violet-ear, near Keats (Riley County) Kansas (USA) photographed known.

Image: Dave Rintoul, 11 June 2011 [velociraptorize].
Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 100-400 mm f/5.6 lens

E-mail: grrlscientist@gmail.com
twitter: @ GrrlScientist

GrrlScientist

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Amazon customers trying to buy Mark Lynas 'new book on technology and environment, Species of god , Yesterday stated that the paper version from the sale of the retailers had (there remains the Kindle Edition) drawn. As I write this on Saturday morning, the product page contains the following message:

Item Under Review

This product is not currently offered by Amazon.co.uk because a customer recently told us that the item he or she received was not as described.We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. In the meantime, you may still find this product available from other sellers on this page.

I have a copy of the book for review, and I do not understand how the product differs from the description, or even like this, a book in the first place rather than, say, a TV or stereo system can be used. The most reasonable explanation I can come up with is something like a faulty bearing, but if so it 'sa very strange message to set up.

Lynas himself believes it may be a result of disgruntled critics. Like George Monbiot he has been the subject of frenzied abuse from anti-nuclear and anti-capitalist greens for his stance on topics like nuclear power, "At the George 's debate in London [Thursday] night I actually had to go sooner than someone screamed and tried to confront me," He told me yesterday.

I'm not generally given to conspiracy theories, but as far as I can tell it has to \ be a kind of campaign "Hack 'of the Amazon sales page - the book was withdrawn and has therefore fallen on the Billboard charts.

I can not think of many candidates from all those who have to send me negative, hateful e-mails and postings related blogs. However, I have no idea about the real truth behind this - I just know that it ruined the introduction of species to God, the first full day of sales.

So far, Amazon has offered no explanation to Lynas or his publishers:

"I asked my publisher this way with Amazon, but they were unable to determine the location, either whatI s going on or how to fix it. Someone told me that this message should only apply to faulty hardware sold by Amazon are not books. "

I tried to reach 'reply've yet to my e-mail, so I assume it' their press office last night and this morning for comment and / or explanation, but nobody picked up the phone, and she \ s nobody in until Monday. If I get an answer I 'll update this blog (or post a new one).

I can 't see any reasons for the described customer complaints at Amazon' s website. If it turns out that these is have taken the result of misfortune rather than cock-up, and it 's so easy, a book from the shelves of such a large distribution, then we could witness the start of a very worrying trend.

Until someone gets an answer from the company but we can 't be sure what happened. It 's possible that there is an innocent explanation, in this case should give Amazon a lot more information when they do this sort of thing in the future. A dealer of their size and influence has the duty to open and clear about incidents like this.

Martin Robbins

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Tuesday, August 23, 2011



Shell 's highlights an admission of liability for oil pollution in Nigeria, the need for a' ecocide 'Law to make man-made environmental disasters, illegal

After years of struggle, Shell is finally prosecuted for the damage it in the Niger Delta, where it is estimated up to 10,000,000 gallons of oil leaked has caused.

A class action lawsuit originating in London forced the Dutch oil company to take full responsibility for the fiscal year 2008, ruptures of the Bodo-Bonny Trans-Niger pipeline to take over. Together, the Ivorian community and a London law firm which forced power companies to take responsibility for their actions.

This precedent is cause for great celebration. However, one thing, this law can not achieve that caused decades of social and environmental injustice, the Niger Delta 's make to communities and the natural environment back.

During a wrong is righted again, it seems that the law is used reactively. It will be decades before the Niger Delta, is something back, as it was before. This underlines how we need a little more active, something that goes to the pre-and large-scale destruction of the environment does not stop it happening. Basically, we need those illegal man-made disaster.



For example, a group of teenagers (of the group iMatter) teamed up with a group of lawyers to take the United States government to court over its failure to protect the atmosphere. The aim of such lawsuits is to have the atmosphere declared a 'public trust' deserving of special protection, a concept previously used to clean up polluted rivers and coastlines.


"Well, yes," says Sulston, "but DNA gives the instructions for making a baby, not an adult. There's a lot more to me than DNA."

The collaboration came about when Quinn was from the National Portrait Gallery commissioned with the support of the Wellcome Trust to do Sulston 's portrait on. "John did all the work," says Quinn. The artist, at least, chose the portrait 's frame. "People can be surrounded in the reflective, is highlighted in the that we connected 're all - one of the great messages of the Human Genome Project.

"Because it 's true, isn' t it true that our DNA is 90% the same as banana '?" Asked Quinn. "Well, no, actually it 's more like 50%," says Sulston, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002. "Our DNA is about 90% the same as other mammals \." Our objective connection with everything else, not only our world but in the universe, clearly appeals to Quinn: no wonder his iris painting subtitled from the 2009's, we share our chemistry with the Stars.

Filled in Quinn 's most famous work, Self (1991), he made a sculpture from a mold of his head with nine liters of his own frozen blood. It is carefully kept in a cooling unit, and reminds us of the fragility of being. Every five years since 1991, he replaced what he a 'frozen moment' alive with a new transfusion of his own blood. He calls it an ongoing project, while the portrait Sulston is interrupted in time forever, even the Nobel Prize winner dies, there is something in this picture of him get a code from which he could possibly be cloned.

The poet and the speech scientist

"I once heard someone say," His mother was a crab, '"says Valerie Hazan, professor of linguistics at University College London." Can a situation where that would be used? I often ask my students this. "

When Mary Morrell and Catherine Yass collaborated on a project called Waking Dream, each hoped to unravel what, if anything, essentially happens in the transition from sleep to wakefulness. Physiologist Morrell, now professor of sleep and respiratory physiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, wanted to give a scientific account of that transition.

"I was inspired by your attitude," says Yass. "I came with a tentative idea and you would say, 'This is how you can do it.'" Could Yass imagine having been a scientist? "I used to think about being a brain surgeon, but I wouldn't trust myself in a million years. In terms of science, I've always been daunted by the amount of knowledge a scientist needs, but I love the idea that there's a lot of knowledge and someone like Mary has it."

"If you hear a recording of someone whispering in your ear," says theatre director David Rosenberg, "you can convince yourself you felt their breath."

The supplied headphones binaural recordings of every spectator 's ear. Rosenberg, together with sound designer and composer Max and Ben Ringham, a complete score made up not only the music, but of everyday sounds. Soft noises were heard to thrilling audiences near 'ears: A woman pulls a robe after a swim, the plumping a pillow. The illusory effect was that the individual viewer, far from being in a crowd of other spectators, was in the room with them. While these noises sounded like they were would take place on the stage, in reality, they were part of a pre-recorded soundtrack for the dancer 'choreographed moves were installed.

What does mean binaural? "It 's two ears to hear, and involves the extraction of information you couldn' t have one by ear," says McAlpine. "There are binaural recordings with two microphones at a reasonable distance from each other in a dummy head used to try to reproduce the effects of normal hearing," says Rosenberg.

McAlpine, recalls the sophisticated binaural illusion that he had ever heard. "I was with Dolby 's headquarters in San Francisco. You sit up on headphones, close your eyes and you hear' re on an airplane, and you plunge into the ocean. I really felt a sense of the whoosh water and the feeling of up to a sandy beach. The sensations were filling my brain in the experience of what is heard. "

Rosenberg says a key moment of the electric-hotel was another illusion. "The sound moves into the audience and the audience was confused about whether what they 're hearing was part of the actual performance or the audience around them."

It sounds like the sound application of Brechtian alienation technique. Is it? "Totally. It was very important in a show that is essentially that you are alone with the performer, and then suddenly you have a moment when you realize the audience around you."


Post-riot policy must be balanced, humane and realistic, if we are to bring the Company contract, you are not farther apart

Earlier this month a spate of terrifying violence and disorder erupted on to our streets. Communities were terrorised, individuals attacked and city centres trashed. Horrendous images on our TV screens of burning buildings and mindless looting created a climate of fear in which people were scared to leave their homes - and in which public trust in the capacity of our police force to respond effectively was shaken.

The Green Party has unequivocally condemned the violence and vandalism left, the indelible scars on families, businesses and urban environments in England. Our sincere condolences to those who lost loved ones in the chaos. And we feel admiration for those who have the peaceful defense of their neighborhood, as well as those who came out on the road for the clean-up effort.

In the days when the sheer number of words devoted to trying to understand why the riots and looting took place - shows the enormous complexity of this issue - and how we will be able to prevent such devastation in the future. The plain truth is that there are no easy answers.

As a political party, we believe it is of crucial importance for the structure of British society, the government and the police strike a balance between keeping our roads safer and to propose maintaining the hard-won civil liberties of our citizens. And we want to keep things in perspective. We do not like David Cameron, the British company is "sick".

We are also concerned that Cameron 's support for draconian punishments will undermine respect for the law. The harsh sentencing of offenders riot \ as a political and very misguided "set an example".

The varying sentences given out so far reveal serious inconsistencies and an alarming lack of proportionality. Overly tough sentencing will lead to costly and time-consuming appeals, and add to the sense of unfairness already rife in our society.

The government should also be clear about the consequences of sending hundreds of young people to jail - especially when prison capacity is at an all time low - with little prospect of an adequate rehabilitation.

The Greens also totally opposed to withdrawal of these benefits in connection with the events, and the eviction of families from government-subsidized housing. Such measures are only the existing problems of poverty and alienation increase - more and more cutting the ones we try to be closer together. Driving people make deeper into poverty in the future, not the roads safer - it will still help us a stronger, fairer society.

Ultimately, should underpin the analysis of the riots, a recognition of the profound inequality that lies at the heart of British society. So should we understand the impact of a consumer culture, the endless accumulation of material goods, an aggressive sense of entitlement and promotes a demoralizing level of status anxiety.

The coalition government 's reckless economic policies, combined with rising youth unemployment and economic stagnation, is contributing in no small measure to a feeling of hopelessness. It 's clear that many people feel powerless, and that some have come loose from their own communities, unless it is prepared to attack them without fear of consequences.

In focusing on long-term solutions, the government must show it is ready, the shocking level of inequality that exists in our country address. Studies by UNICEF indicate that Britain is one of the worst places to live as a child or young person in the developed world, is - above all thanks to the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. This is not something that the government showed no interest in fighting.

We need a policy to create a more just society. And as the economy teeter dangerously on the brink of disaster continues, we must act urgently to create jobs and people in work. The Green Party has long supported and implemented, as far as possible to begin the introduction of a living wage to tackle these problems. We will also push for this change to continue at every opportunity.

We will also continue our call for government investment in clean industries of the future to create millions of new green jobs and help our transition to a greener future. And we demand bold action to tackle the scourge of fraud and tax evasion, which enables those with impunity at the top of society for the public sector prey.

In light of events this month, the Greens are for a moratorium on all police cuts to December 2012 appeal, in other words, after the colossal policing challenge that the 2012 Olympics in London, and after the various investigations into the unrest reported back. In the meantime, the police should be smart about money, and ensure that police officers to concentrate not burdened with administrative tasks that take away the front-line police.

Although we reject the idea that any kind of military-based military service, the Greens would support a voluntary national community service program for young people - especially with a focus towards training and subsequent employment. Unfortunately, such a positive rule would require a higher level of funding to expect much from this government.


Monday, August 22, 2011

Jane Goodall Institute



Sunday, August 21, 2011

Fourth largest industrial nation set to replace nuclear energy with renewable energy

German MPs have \ an overwhelming majority plans to shut down the country's nuclear power plants by 2022, making Europe 's largest economy passed on the way to an ambitious development of renewable energies.

The lower house of parliament voted 513-79 for the shutdown of the plan by Angela Merkel 's government to Japan' s moved to the tsunami, nuclear disaster. Most of the opposition voted in favor.

MPs sealed the shutdown of eight of the older reactors, which have made the network since March. Germany 's remaining nine reactors will be shut down in stages until the end 2022nd

By 2020 Germany wants the share of energy, the doubling of water, wind, solar and biogas to at least 35%. Until this year, nuclear power accounted for slightly less than a quarter of Germany 's power.

Opposition leaders taunted the government over its U-turn, which Merkel initiated less than two weeks before two state elections in March.



The battle for Lydd airport 's proposed expansion in Kent highlights the conflict in anticipation of the government' s new planning policy framework

Down in the marshes of Kent, are drawn battle lines. In Lydd, a historic gateway town near the promontory of Dungeness - a bleak moonscape of gravel dunes, bungalows and tundra - are the people angry.

They are angry at proposals more houses on the outskirts of the city at a time when younger people are moving away to build. They are angry at plans to develop for a number of quarries, the conveyor continues to run all night. And they are angry about the airport.

Local heritage and environmental groups warn that expanding plans for Lydd 's tiny airport - now of private jets, transport planes and Lydd Air, which flies Le Touquet in France used - will dramatically change the haunting atmosphere of the wetlands, is an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The RSPB claims pollution and the use of bird-strike inspection passenger aircraft carrying between 200,000 and two million people a year, to protect the area to be devastating for 's wildlife.

Orr knows the figures better than most. Last year about 100,000 homes were built in Britain, but most experts agree there is a need to build about 250,000 homes a year to cater for the country's burgeoning population.

So far the government has dismissed the objections, claiming the framework reiterates a commitment to protecting the greenbelt and areas of outstanding natural beauty. Planning minister Bob Neill has gone as far to suggest the objections are the work of a "carefully choreographed smear campaign by leftwingers based in the national headquarters of pressure groups" - a charge rejected by those at whom it was targeted.

Orr has concerns: "This will not result in a concreting the countryside Period \ .." But many Tory backbenchers are aware that the line could interfere with their core support, and it is rumored that the government is looking for an NHS-style "listening practice" in the fall to try to defuse the situation. The government knows it is not the leftwing it needs to be afraid. It's the middle England. And it 's ready for a fight.

Jamie Doward

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Saturday, August 20, 2011

Activists say that the two-week protest is the largest civil disobedience in a green generation

A protest against the White House against a pipeline from the Alberta oil sands as the largest green campaign of civil disobedience in a generation that said the organizers.

About 1,500 people have signed up to court arrest during the two week campaign outside the White House, which begins on Saturday morning.

The campaign is to convince as a last chance, Barack Obama, a planned 1,600-mile-pipeline, the oil from the oil sands of Alberta will be seen across America gather rich farmland to the Gulf of Mexico to stop.

The State Department is expect to produce its final environmental analysis of the pipeline by the end of the month. Obama will then have 90 days to decide whether going ahead with the project would be in the national interest.

The Keystone XL project has a focus of environmental protests. Greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands are 40% higher than for conventional oil and mining has Alberta 's destroyed boreal forests.

Recent pipeline accidents in Michigan and Montana have also deepened fears about possible dangers along the pipeline 's route through prime U.S. farmland.

The veteran environmentalist Bill McKibben, who is leading the protest, describes it as the biggest civil disobedience action in environmental circles for years.

It also puts Obama on the spot to make good on his promise as a presidential candidate in 2008 to act on climate change.

Congress is not the main point of Obama 's green agenda to act - and has pressure of Tea Party activists forced the Environmental Protection Agency to delay or weaken the rules for dealing with climate change - climate change legislation.

But this time Obama has freedom of action - or at least that's McKibben 's hope.

Obama must personally sign out on the pipeline, if it going forward. "We think we can have a chance because for once Obama gets the call to make himself, he has to sign or not sign -. - approve," said McKibben.

The protest will begin at about 11 clock on Saturday morning, when a first group of 100 activists at the gates of the White House, an area that should be kept free to gather and wait to be arrested.

Unlike other campaigns, "s actions have geographical reach - with protesters descending on Washington from areas along the pipeline 's the next two weeks \ route.

A group of East Texas, has hired an RV to make the trip.

The campaign against the pipeline has been steadily gaining momentum amid concerns pipeline safety.

The pipeline route crosses fertile farmland and important aquifers.

Suzanne Goldenberg

Thursday, August 18, 2011

As a teacher, college leaders, educators, students, employers and representatives of trade unions and third sector organizations, we are with the proposal to the climate change from the national curriculum (Letters, June 17) are concerned.

This also threatens to undermine the government's "green deal" and the "green industrial revolution", which promises to create a quarter of a million jobs over the next 20 years, according to Chris Huhne, the energy secretary. Colleges and training providers are being encouraged to create the green skills that will satisfy the demand for green jobs, but this will be undermined if learners do not have an understanding of the issues underlying the green economy.

,

Paul Bodenham, Chairman of Christian Ecology Link

Jo Clarke, The Change Project Manager Project Otesha

Phil Thornhill, Coordinator National Campaign Against Climate Change

Julie Pollard, Education Manager, Practical Action

Nigel Rayment, research director Magnified Learning



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