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
Brian, who has three ears, is believed to be between four and ten years old.
We’ve all heard about cats having nine lives but have you heard the one about the cat with three ears?
Staff at a Norfolk rescue centre were equally perplexed when one intrepid feline arrived sporting an extra ear.
As
Feline Care Cat Rescue in East Harling continue to care for the moggie,
it is hoped its owner will now step forward. Brian, as he has been
affectionately called, arrived at the centre on Monday after being
caught in one of the centre’s traps after setting off security alarms at
a nearby business.
Manager of the centre, Molly Farrar, said: “We
expected it to be one of our own cats who’d been causing problems so
this handsome, mature gentleman was quite a surprise to us.
“We’ve
cared for plenty of cats with one eye, three legs or six toes and
several cats with no tail left, but this is our first three-eared cat.
The centre is hoping that Brian has not been dumped but has simply got lost.
Miss
Farrar, 38, said: “He’s obviously very distinctive with his extra
little ear so someone must be missing him or recognise him.
“He’s
in a bit of a tatty and skinny state. He’s been in the wars a bit and
has a fractured canine tooth and ear mites so he obviously needs looking
after.
Activist
collective Anonymous have released details of the 2015 Million Mask
March, which will see coordinated demonstrations in cities across the
globe protesting against corruption, human rights abuses and censorship.
Following
in the footsteps of previous marches, the worldwide demonstration will
take place on November 5, coinciding with bonfire night in the UK.
This year’s message is “building a better future through collective action,” a statement from the group released on Monday reads.
The
London march in 2014 attracted over 1,000 participants who marched
through the city center wearing distinctive Guy Fawkes masks, which have
become the unofficial emblem of the movement.
Fawkes, part of a
band of persecuted English Catholics, was captured and executed by the
British state after attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament in
1605. His image was popularized by the 2005 film adaptation of the Alan
Moore graphic novel V for Vendetta.
When
an adorable seal named Celebration was only a few days old, she found
herself already fighting for her life: After being separated from her
mother, the baby was stuck in the mud in Frampton Marsh nature reserve
in the UK.
Luckily,
help quickly arrived on the scene, but Celebration's rescuers were
certainty not who you'd expect. Ian Ellis, who was bird-watching nearby,
spotted a herd of 30 cows all gathered in one area. Upon closer
inspection, he was surprised to see a little seal pup in the middle of
the group.
Monsanto under investigation for 'illegal dumping'
by SEAN POULTER
Last updated at 18:04 12 February 2007
Monsanto
is under investigation amid allegations it sanctioned the dumping of
toxic waste on sites across the country despite evidence that it would
poison the landscape for generations.
The activities of the US
chemical giant, best-known in the UK for its support of GM farming, are
being examined by the government's Environment Agency and public health
bodies.
The focus of the investigation is a site in south Wales that has been called 'one of the most contaminated' in the country.
It
appears that toxic chemicals were dumped in the Brofiscin quarry in the
1960s and 1970s despite the fact there was no licence for these
materials and the site was not lined or sealed.
This meant a
cocktail of highly poisonous chemicals has been able to escape into the
environment and threatens to poison local streams and rivers.
The
quarry, which is on the edge of the village of Groesfaen, near Cardiff,
first erupted in 2003, spilling fumes over the surrounding area.
Since
then surveys have found that 67 chemicals, including Agent Orange
derivatives, dioxins and PCBs which could have been made only by
Monsanto, are leaking from the site.
The Environment Agency says
that if the dumping were to take place today there would be a criminal
prosecution and civil action to raise the money needed to clean up the
site.
However, it appears that much of the dumping was carried out
during years when Britain's regime for environmental protection was
more lax.
Consequently, there are doubts as to how far any legal
action can go or which companies should be liable for clean-up costs
that are expected to run into tens of millions of pounds.
A
spokesman for the Environment Agency said: "Our overall aim is to
understand the current risks to ground water and surface waters and to
determine the most cost-effective way forward to protect the local
environment and to recover costs from those liable."
• 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
• Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk
• Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy'
• Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images
The GCHQ program saved one image every five minutes from the users' feeds. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal. GCHQ
files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance
program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo
webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of
whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.
In
one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery –
including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications –
from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.
Yahoo
reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the
Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program,
accusing the agencies of "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy". GCHQ
does not have the technical means to make sure no images of UK or US
citizens are collected and stored by the system, and there are no
restrictions under UK law to prevent Americans' images being accessed by
British analysts without an individual warrant.
The documents also chronicle GCHQ's
sustained struggle to keep the large store of sexually explicit imagery
collected by Optic Nerve away from the eyes of its staff, though there
is little discussion about the privacy implications of storing this
material in the first place.
Optic Nerve, the documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show, began as a prototype in 2008 and was still active in 2012, according to an internal GCHQ wiki page accessed that year.
The
system, eerily reminiscent of the telescreens evoked in George Orwell's
1984, was used for experiments in automated facial recognition, to
monitor GCHQ's
existing targets, and to discover new targets of interest. Such
searches could be used to try to find terror suspects or criminals
making use of multiple, anonymous user IDs.
Rather than collecting
webcam chats in their entirety, the program saved one image every five
minutes from the users' feeds, partly to comply with human rights
legislation, and also to avoid overloading GCHQ's
servers. The documents describe these users as "unselected" –
intelligence agency parlance for bulk rather than targeted collection.
One
document even likened the program's "bulk access to Yahoo webcam
images/events" to a massive digital police mugbook of previously
arrested individuals.
"Face detection has the potential to aid
selection of useful images for 'mugshots' or even for face recognition
by assessing the angle of the face," it reads. "The best images are ones
where the person is facing the camera with their face upright."
The agency did make efforts to limit analysts' ability to see webcam images, restricting bulk searches to metadata only.
However,
analysts were shown the faces of people with similar usernames to
surveillance targets, potentially dragging in large numbers of innocent
people. One document tells agency staff they were allowed to display
"webcam images associated with similar Yahoo identifiers to your known
target".
Optic Nerve was based on collecting information from GCHQ's huge network of internet cable taps, which was then processed and fed into systems provided by the NSA. Webcam information was fed into NSA's XKeyscore search tool, and NSA research was used to build the tool which identified Yahoo's webcam traffic.
Bulk surveillance on Yahoo users was begun, the documents said, because "Yahoo webcam is known to be used by GCHQ targets".
Programs like Optic Nerve, which collect information
in bulk from largely anonymous user IDs, are unable to filter out
information from UK or US citizens. Unlike the NSA, GCHQ
is not required by UK law to "minimize", or remove, domestic citizens'
information from its databases. However, additional legal authorisations
are required before analysts can search for the data of individuals
likely to be in the British Isles at the time of the search.
Six lions killed at popular zoo in BritainPhoto by Morne de Klerk/Getty Images
February 10, 2014
A
popular wildlife safari park in Britain is on the receiving end of
public outcry after word got out that six lions in their care have been
destroyed, reported Sunday's publication of the Daily Mail.
A lion, lioness and four cubs were destroyed at the Longleat Safari Park last month.
Officials
at the zoo blame the killings on an increase in pregnancies at the
park. On Sunday, the Longleat Safari Park posted this statement on their
Facebook page:
In
regards to the lions, there has been a large increase in pregnancies,
resulting in a 40 per cent increase in population. This has
unfortunately resulted in excessive violent behaviour, putting 21 of
them at risk.
The park added:
Longleat takes the utmost care in trying to protect the welfare and safety of all our animals.
The explanation has fallen flat with many individuals.
Outrage as lioness and cubs who were the pride of Longleat are put down leaving staff in tears
Henry the lion, Louisa the lioness and four cubs were killed last month
Longleat bosses claimed the lions were becoming violent and dangerous
Employees wept when they heard what had become of the beloved animals
By Martin Delgado and Nick Constable PUBLISHED: 17:42 EST, 8 February 2014 | UPDATED: 10:22 EST, 9 February 2014
Six
lions at Longleat Safari Park have been put down, triggering outrage
among staff who claim there was no obvious reason for the animals to be
killed. An
adult male called Henry, a lioness named Louisa and four of her cubs
were all put to death last month in an operation supervised by vets. Bosses
at the safari park on the Marquess of Bath’s Wiltshire estate insist
the decision was taken because of ‘health risks’ after a population
increase led to violent behaviour.
At play: Lions and cubs, left, from the pride that was culled by vets at Longleat, pictured three weeks
But
former workers in the lion reserve have questioned whether the animals
should have been destroyed, and revealed that some employees were in
tears when they found out what had happened. The lions are one of the biggest attractions at Longleat, which opened in 1966 as Britain’s first wildlife safari park.
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