Local and Global Community News – Activism / Protests - Animal Advocacy - Animal Rescue- Archaeology/Anthropology/Paleontology/Crypto-zoology , Corporate Assault on our Lives and Our Health, Environmental- Internet/IT - Signs of the Times – Wildlife : News Affiliate of Family Survival Protocol.com
Wolves return to Poland more than 50 years after being wiped out
National park outside Warsaw says several of the animals seem to have settled there again after government cull in the 1960s
Agence France-Presse in Warsaw
Wednesday 25 November 2015 13.51 EST
Wolves
have returned to a large national park on the outskirts of Warsaw,
decades after they were wiped out there under a hunt launched by the
communist authorities.
“We’re really happy,” said Magdalena
Kamińska, spokeswoman for the 150sq mile (385sq km) Kampinos national
park, Poland’s second largest. “The fact that wolves have returned to
our park, from which they completely disappeared in the 1960s, means
that nature is in good health and is renewing itself.”
Park
employees spotted a first wolf in 2013, but the animal was just passing
through. Now there are several and they appear to have settled in for
the long haul, Kamińska said.
Israeli and foreign fighter jets fly in formation through cloudy skies over the Negev desert during the ‘Blue Flag’ exercise at Ovda Airfield near Eilat on October 27, 2015. (Israeli Air Force)
Air forces from around the world have gathered deep in the Arava desert in the south of Israel for the past week and a half to take part in the largest aerial exercise in the history of the Israeli Air Force.
The “Blue Flag” exercise, which is continuing through November 3, pits the Israeli Air Force, the United States Air Force, Greece’s Hellenic Air Force and the Polish Air Force against a fictional enemy state, the captain in charge of all IAF exercises told The Times of Israel Thursday night.
A number of other countries, including Germany, also sent pilots and officers to observe the exercise, but did not take part.
This joint drill is the second “Blue Flag” exercise; the first took place in 2013 and was the largest multi-lateral exercise the IAF had ever hosted.
The various air forces collaborated closely through every step of the current exercise, the IAF captain said, from planning to execution and finally to debriefing.
Though the exercise began on October 18, planning for it started nearly eight months ago, the Israeli official said, with an IAF representative contacting each participating country and initially asking, “What do you want to train for?”
Those requests came together to form the plan for “Blue Flag,” which sent Israeli and American F-15 squadrons, along with Israeli, Hellenic and Polish F-16 squadrons, flying through nearly all of Israel’s air space, firing simulated weapons against fictional enemy missile launchers, convoys and aircraft, he said.
Israel hosts largest-ever intl air force drill, pitting troops against fictional enemy
Israel is hosting its largest-ever international air force exercise. The two-week 'Blue Flag' drill features Israeli, American, Greek and Polish troops in a battle against a fictional enemy state.
The Blue Flag drill consists of Israeli and American F-15 squadrons, as well as Israeli, Hellenic, and Polish F-16 squadrons flying through Israeli airspace while firing simulated weapons against fictional enemy missile launchers, convoys, and aircraft, the Israeli Air Force captain in charge of the exercise told the Times of Israel.
However, the captain said the exercise is designed to test the capabilities of the troops involved, rather than the military equipment itself.
“We wanted it to be challenging for the airmen, rather than for the machines,” said the IAF captain, who could not be named due to security reasons.
However,
the Egyptian government has rubbished that the plane was shot down by
missile. The Russian concluded that the Russian Airbus A321 that crashed
in the Sinai broke up in mid-air at 36,000-feet. The
plane had been heading from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to the
Russian city of St Petersburg before the crash.
(Reuters) - Poland could halve its demand for coal
by 2030 with a shift to renewable energies that would end its image as a
laggard in European Union efforts to slow climate change, a study
showed on Friday. The report, by researchers in Germany
and Poland, renewable energy groups and environmental group Greenpeace,
included a foreword by ex-Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki
who called it a "feasible, realistic scenario".
It estimated that Poland, which now generates 90 percent of its electricity from coal, could create 100,000 jobs with a shift to wind, hydro, biomass, geothermal and solar power by 2030.
The scenario would require investment of $264 billion, double the $132 billion cost of business
as usual. Still, free renewable energies would be cheaper in the long
run by eliminating costs of fuel to generate electricity, it said.
Poland
"has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to move beyond coal," it said.
"Poland is home to a geriatric energy system, based on coal. Its power
plants are old with about 70 percent of them being over 30 years old."
