Australian Drought Leads to First "Water Rage" Murder

In Australia's first known case of murder due to "water rage," a dispute over a suburban man's water usage led to him being beaten to death in front of his home. According to police, 66-year-old Ken Proctor was watering the lawn in front of his home in Sydney on October 31 at approximately 5:30 p.m. when a passerby made a comment to him about wasting water. Proctor then turned his hose on the other man, who knocked him to the ground and began to punch and kick him. The attacker was tackled by two bystanders, including an off-duty policeman, and an ambulance came for Proctor. Proctor later died in the hospital after experiencing a massive heart attack.

Due to a severe, nearly eight-year drought, intensive water restrictions are in place across most of Australia. Nearly all states have banned garden sprinklers and the use of hoses on cars or sidewalks.

Sydney, in addition, prohibits leaving hoses or taps unattended except to filling pools, and permits are required for pools larger than 10,000 gallons. The use of fire hoses is prohibited for any use other than firefighting. Hand watering of lawns or gardens is only allowed on Wednesdays or Sundays before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m.

Because the incident that led to his death happened on a Wednesday, Proctor was actually complying with the city's water rules at the time.

The drought is Australia's worst in at least 100 years. Combined with over-extraction of water, the drought has caused the flows of the country's two largest southeast rivers, the Murray and Darling, to dwindle. More than three-quarters of New South Wales is experiencing a drought, and Victoria has announced that 100 percent of its farmland has been hit.

While a number of suburban disputes, arguments and calls to police have risen from water restrictions, Proctor's is believed to be the first death cause by such a water dispute.

Global Food Production Plummets in 2009

Global food production is expected to plummet between 20 and 40 percent in 2009, due to widespread drought and other stresses on agricultural production

Two-thirds of the world's food is produced in countries currently in the grip of droughts. The extent of this crisis can easily be seen by a chart on the Web site of the Center for Research on Globalization:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index....

Much media attention has focused on a severe drought in Northern China, one of the wheat producing capitals of the world. There, the worst drought in 50 years has already resulted in damage to 161 million mu (26.5 million acres) of crops. In Australia, suffering its worst drought in 117 years, 41 percent of crops have been harmed, farmers have begun abandoning land, rivers have run dry and lakes have evaporated to such an extent that they have turned toxic.

In the United States, Texas and the Southeast remains in the throes of a severe drought. California's drought is the worst in recorded history, with thousands of acres already fallow and worse likely to come -- the Northern Sierra snowpack, which provides much of the state's water as it melts, only reached 49 percent of its average thickness this winter.

Less well-publicized but equally devastating droughts have also gripped other agricultural areas of the world. In Latin America, agricultural emergencies have been declared in six countries, including soy-, corn- and cattle-producing giants Argentina and Brazil. The La Nina weather pattern is expected to make the situation worse in both Pacific South America and the southern United States.

Eastern and southern Africa, and western and central Asia are also facing severe droughts. The wheat harvest in eastern South Africa is expected to be the lowest in 30 years. In Central Asia and the Middle East, wheat harvests have dropped an average of 22 percent, reaching as high as 98 percent in northern Iraq.

Farmers have also been hurt by a lack of credit due to the financial crisis, making it harder to buy fertilizer or seed. Even in Europe, which has been relatively untouched by drought, unusual climate conditions and degraded soil have led to a projected 10 to 15 percent drop in crop output.

Indigenous ‘genocide’ in battle for oilfields

It has been called the world’s second “oil war” but the only similarity between Iraq and events in the jungles of northern Peru over the past few weeks has been the mismatch of force. On one side have been police armed with automatic weapons, tear gas, helicopter gunships and armoured cars. On the other are several thousand Awajun and Wambis Indians, many of them in war paint and armed with bows and arrows, and spears.

In some of the worst violence in Peru in 20 years, the Indians warned Latin America what could happen if companies are given free access to the Amazonian forests to exploit an estimated 6billion barrels of oil and take as much timber as they like.

After months of peaceful protests, the police were ordered to use force to remove a roadblock near Bagua Grande.

In the fights that followed, nine police officers and at least 50 Indians were killed, with hundreds more wounded or arrested. The indigenous rights group Survival International described it as “Peru’s Tiananmen Square”.

“For thousands of years, we’ve run the Amazon forests,” said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. “This is genocide. They’re killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity.”

As riot police broke up more demonstrations in Lima and a curfew was imposed on many Peruvian Amazonian towns, President Alan Garcia backed down in the face of condemnation of the massacre. He suspended – but only for three months – laws that would allow the forest to be exploited.

Peru is just one of many countries in open conflict with its indigenous people over natural resources. Barely reported in the international press, there have been major protests around mines, oil, logging and mineral exploitation in Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America. Hydroelectric dams, biofuel plantations as well as coal, copper, gold and bauxite mines are all at the centre of major land rights disputes.

A massive military force continued last week to raid communities opposed to oil companies’ presence on the Niger delta. The delta, which provides 90 per cent of Nigeria’s foreign earnings, has always been volatile but guns have flooded in and security has deteriorated.

Nigeria’s main militant group said yesterday it had destroyed an oil pipeline belonging to the US company Chevron.

“A major gas pipeline manifold and another major crude oil pipeline belonging to Chevron JV recently repaired at a sum of over $US56 million [$68million] were both blown up,” the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said.

It warned that its fighters were heading to the Chevron tank farm in Escravos and urged staff to flee.

The escalation of violence came in the week that Shell agreed to pay £9.7million ($19.7million) to ethnic Ogoni families – whose homeland is in the delta – who had led a peaceful uprising against it and other oil companies in the 1990s, and who had taken the company to court in New York accusing it of complicity in writer Ken Saro-Wiwa’s execution in 1995.

In West Papua, Indonesian forces protecting some of the world’s largest mines have been accused of human rights violations. Hundreds of tribesmen have been killed in the past few years in clashes between the army and people with bows and arrows.

“An aggressive drive is taking place to extract the last remaining resources from indigenous territories,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpus, chairwoman of the UN permanent forum on indigenous issues. “There is a crisis of human rights. There are more and more arrests, killings and abuses.

“This is happening in Russia, Canada, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mongolia, Nigeria, the Amazon, all over Latin America, Papua New Guinea and Africa,” MsTauli-Corpus said. “It is global. We are seeing a human rights emergency. A battle is taking place for natural resources everywhere. Much of the world’s natural capital – oil, gas, timber, minerals – lies on or beneath lands occupied by indigenous people.”

Source: Global Research

Aldi tools

Aldi seem to have a steady influx of home tools at the moment some of which i have bought. These tools are aimed at the home DIY enthusiast. Here's the list of my new toys all of which may still be in your local Aldi (descriptions from aldi web site). I'm very happy with them btw.
Update, they may look toyish but they do the job, i also added a few stickers over the power craft logos, they look a lot better already.



500W Bench Drill £41


Whizzing through wood and metal with pinpoint precision, this brilliant bench drill will make light work of all sorts of workshop tasks.
9 adjustable speeds (from 280-2350rpm)
16mm keyed chuck with safety guard
Drilling capacity: metal 16mm, wood 35mm
Fully-adjustable table with 0-45° left or right tilt
54mm clamp width
Sturdy cast-iron construction
Depth stop for precision drilling
Magnetic safety switch


240W Bench Grinder/Belt Sander £19.99


Dual-purpose system that will flatten/smooth out all sorts of imperfections in metal or woodwork pieces for a cleaner finish.
No load speed: 2950rpm
Grinding disc (for metal): 150 × 20 × 12.7mm
Abrasive grinding belt (fitted): 50 × 686mm (Grade: 150)
2 spare belts included – 50 × 686mm (Grade: 150)




204 Piece Drill Bit Set £19.99



40W Model Building and Engraving Set £10.69

Super-light, super-versatile tool for the dedicated model maker/arts and crafts enthusiast. It contains all you need to achieve a professional looking finish on a variety of creative projects. Includes 40 accessories for drilling, cutting, grinding, sanding, engraving and polishing.
Variable speed: 0-20,000rpm
Adaptor AC 230V, DC 18V
Transparent storage/carry case



1020W Angle Grinder £17.99


Metalwork, bricks, paving slabs, ceramic tiles, rusty rivets – slice through them all with ease.
1020 watts, 230V, 50Hz
2 diamond blades included
Safety goggles included


24V Cordless Hammer Drill £39.99
Versatile drill, including an all-purpose bit set, to tackle a range of jobs from masonry to metalwork.

24V/1.5Ah NiCad battery
2 mechanical speeds
Quick charger with LED load indication
Adjustable side handle
9 bits (plus bit holder)
Peacock keyless chuck (1.5-3mm)



Also bought extra grinding/cutting disks and other odd and ends, i have quite a few projects lined up which i will be posting here hopefully with video.

Palmyra woman finds roses made from birch shavings 'so real'

PALMYRA, Mo. — Joyce Wagner knew about good, unique crafts -- she'd been buying them for years.
But the Palmyra resident never really made any of her own until last year when she spotted wooden roses at a fair in Fulton.
"People were walking by, and I thought 'Why aren't those wilting?' " Wagner said.
She tracked down the booth selling the long-stemmed roses and discovered that they were wooden, made from birch shavings.
Wagner bought eight dozen and gave them away, then decided to track down the supplier herself. Once she found the maker in Colorado, she ordered 3,200 the first time. She has placed similar orders three more times since June.

Wagner's venture with the roses, along with her other business of selling streak-free cleaning cloths, has proven so successful she's quit her full-time work. Every weekend, she heads somewhere for an event where she sells the roses.

Story from HERE

Saving Chile's southern wilderness

Charles Darwin wrote about the region during the voyage of the Beagle

It is not every day that a Wall Street bank finds itself in possession of a chunk of land 50 times the size of Manhattan, covered in pristine forest, windswept grassland and snow-capped mountains.

But that's the position Goldman Sachs found itself in, in 2002 when it bought a package of distressed debt and assets from a US company called Trillium.

The resulting conservation project in the very south of Chile has been hailed by the bank and its partners, a US-based NGO, as an example of how the public and private sectors can work together to safeguard the world's last remaining wildernesses.

Chilean environmentalists are more sceptical but, even so, have largely applauded the project.

The story of what is now known as the Karukinka nature reserve dates back to the 1990s when Trillium bought land on Tierra del Fuego - a cluster of inhospitable islands between Chile and Argentina - clinging to the southernmost tip of South America.

The company planned to use the land for logging and wanted to cut down the lenga - a type of beech tree found only in this part of the world.

Environmental groups opposed the project and it eventually failed.

That was when Goldman Sachs stepped in, buying up Trillium's assets, including the land.

"It's not often that you're in a position where you buy a security and learn that you have 680,000 acres of land in Tierra del Fuego," says Tracy Wolstencroft, head of Goldman Sachs' Environmental Markets group.

"The more we realised what we had the more we realised how unique this property was."

The bank considered selling the land but realised it would face the same opposition as Trillium had.

So it took what some environmentalists now regard as a radical and enlightened step - it gave the land away to a New York-based environmental group, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

Full story HERE

Nature defies the Big Freeze and heralds spring

Published Date:
02 March 2009
By Richard Morris
Ignore the cold snaps and big freezes - spring is on its way.
According to a recent nature survey bumble bees have been spotted here in 1066 County. Wildlife recorders have also logged birds building nests, snowdrops and frogspawn - all signs that spring is sprung.

However, according to one wildlife expert, it is not necessarily good news - especially with more cold weather predicted.

Shaun Nixon, manager for the Nature's Calendar, said: "The timing of natural events is one of the most responsive aspects of the natural world to warming, so it is an important indicator of change."

"There will be variations year on year, however, if we look back over the past 30 years we can see a marked advancement of spring, up to two weeks for insects and a week for plants.

"The fundamental concerns thrown up by spring's gradual advance are that food chains also come under pressure or even break down and species fooled by warmer weather into activity, blossoming or breeding can very vulnerable and can get caught out by the sort of freeze not uncommon in March."

As always this story was stolen from HERE

Maple syrup producers wait on Mother Nature

MONCTON - As David Briggs trudges into his forest of sugar maples, he thinks out loud about the coming syrup season.

"We can only hope it's not like last year," he said. "Not that there's much we can do about it - other than hope."

His boots break fresh holes in the snow around hundreds of trees, signalling the beginning of a new season.

New Brunswick ranks third in the world in maple syrup production and is home to the country's largest organic and conventional syrup producers.

Some of the province's 112 maple syrup makers already have spent months tapping their trees and setting up lines of plastic tubing in preparation for just a few weeks of production that may begin any day now.

They are praying that this year the weather will co-operate.

Two straight seasons of foundering production has cost the industry millions, spiking prices and decimating any reserve of syrup around the world.

"I mean 2007 was bad, but 2008 was miserable," Yvon Poitras, general manager of the New Brunswick Maple Syrup Association, said.

"It was the worst year in 35 years of production. We didn't even produce 50 per cent of normal production."

Canada accounts for 85 per cent of the world's production of maple syrup, the majority of it coming from Quebec. Each year the industry prefers to have a reserve of at least 30 per cent of its product to meet higher demands, Poitras said.

But there is currently virtually no reserve.

"If we don't get a good season we're going to be in big, big trouble," he said. "There are no reserves left anywhere. There is a lack of product all over the world."

Sap drips from maple trees when temperatures fluctuate from -5"‚C at night to 5"‚C during the day, usually beginning in mid-March.

Last year, snow storms buried tubing and forced producers to spend thousands of dollars clearing obstructions.

When the season finally came, it lasted only four days before temperatures turned drastically warm, ruining the sap season.

"We thought we had it made last year. The old guys were saying it was going to be a great season, and then nothing," he said. "We depend so much on Mother Nature that it's unbelievable.

"Everyone's got their fingers crossed, their legs crossed and everything else crossed to see what Mother Nature is going to dump on us this year."

New Brunswick can produce more than four million pounds of maple syrup each year, originating from more than two million tree taps.

That ranks behind Quebec and Vermont.

Poitras said the industry as a whole lost more than $5 million last year.

Even though syrup producers have had a difficult time of late, the industry could easily grow bigger. Poitras said his association is working with the province to utilize more Crown land that is heavily covered with maples.

New Brunswick is home to the largest single producer with 168,000 taps near Saint-Quentin. It is also home to a producer in Bath with 110,000 taps for organic syrup.

"Those are two things we love to boast about," Poitras said. " But if the weather doesn't co-operate, they may be the biggest, but the biggest of nothing in not much."

Gus Hargrove, owner of Canadian Organic Maple Co. Ltd., of Bath agrees.

His business has tapped into a growing sugar market, as an organic trend steers followers away from the refined substance. Hargrove now has an international market that spans Germany and China.

"The demand actually opened up some of the market for us, but it would be nice to have more to supply it," he said. "They seek you out because of it (a decrease in supply), especially in the last two years.

"But we're optimistic because we have had a couple bad years, so hey, third time lucky."

Briggs, the fifth generation in his family of maple syrup producers from the Moncton area, said there's no way to know what this season will have in store.

Regardless, the industry has served his family well. He plans to expand Rocky Mountain Maples to include a year-round business in Riverview to sell his maple syrup, butter, cream, candy, barbeque sauce and classic taffy.

"There's absolutely nothing we can do other than get ready for it," Briggs said.

"But this is a growing industry. Producers from all over the province are growing their operations."

Story stolen from HERE

England's largest forest takes shape on the edge of St Albans

When and if a plan to create an 850-acre forest on the edge of St Albans gets the go ahead it will create the largest new native woodland the people of England have ever seen. Neil Skinner joined residents on a guided tour on Saturday.

It's a development of immense size and scale; far in advance of anything the area has witnessed before – a project which dwarfs any supermarket or housing estate past or present.

Why, then, has it created such limited local opposition and why is the £8.5 million project necessary at all? Why spend so much money on a project many of us won’t live to witness in its full glory?

The UK, apparently, languishes at the bottom of the European woodland league, with a mere 12 per cent coverage compared to 44 per cent in other parts of the continent. Extricate from this the vast wooded areas in Scotland the comparative poverty of England becomes clear; a poverty not just of aesthetic beauty but of fragile woodland species – 78 of which are thought to on the verge of extinction.

Full story HERE

Plant diseases threaten woodland

They are Phytophthora kernoviae and Phytophthora ramorum.

Rhododendrons, a carrier of both diseases, are likely to be removed in woodland to combat the problem.

The flowering shrubs, popular as an ornamental species in many gardens, also grow wild in wooded areas and an area of the New Forest has already been cordoned off to allow rhododendrons to be cut down and burned.

Phytophthora kernoviae, first found in the south-west of England in 2003, reached Scotland five years later. It attacks and kills many trees and shrubs, including the oak and beech trees which make up so much of Britain's woodlands.

Full story HERE

(The evil Rhododendron, coming to a woodland near you soon)

Sumatran tiger faces extinction as forest habitat shrinks

The Sumatran tiger is in danger of becoming the first major mammal to become extinct in the 21st century, as villagers on the Indonesian island fight a deadly war with the magnificent but ferocious predator.

At least four tigers, and nine people, have been killed in the past month alone, as the shrinking of Sumatra’s already depleted forests brings an increase in attacks on farmers, hunters and illegal loggers.

With fewer than 400 of the creatures estimated to be left in the wild, the Sumatran tiger is classified as critically endangered, the most vulnerable of all the six surviving tiger subspecies.

The fact that several victims of the recent attacks have been devoured by the tigers, which usually have little taste for human flesh, suggests how hungry and desperate they are becoming, as economic exploitation of their habitat confines them in ever smaller and more impoverished patches of jungle.

Full story HERE

The forests of southern Korea yield a prized elixir

HADONG, South Korea: At this time of year, when frogs begin stirring from their winter sleep and woodpeckers drum for newly active insects, villagers climb the hills around here to collect a treasured elixir - sap from the maple tree known as gorosoe.

"It's important to have the right weather," said Park Jeom Sik, 56, toting plastic tubs and a drill up a moss-covered slope. "The temperature should drop below freezing at night and then rise to a warm, bright, windless day. If it's rainy, windy or cloudy, the trees won't give."

For centuries, southern Korean villagers like Park have been tapping the gorosoe, or "tree good for the bones."

Unlike North Americans who collect maple sap to boil down into syrup, Korean villagers and their growing number of customers prefer the sap itself, which they credit with a wide range of health benefits.

In this they are not alone. Some people in Japan and northern China drink maple sap, and birch sap has its fans in Russia and other parts of northern Europe. But no one surpasses southern Koreans in their enthusiasm for sap, which they can consume in prodigious quantities

.

Full article HERE

One third of Britons cannot identify trees

A third of Britons cannot identify the nation's most famous types of trees, according to a new study.
Researchers found that when it comes to telling the difference between an English oak or a sycamore, many of us are stumped.

One in 20 people questioned could not name any of Britain's common trees.

Even the horse chestnut, which has produced conkers for generations of schoolboys, is a mystery to nearly seven in ten people, said the study by UK firm Forest Holidays.

It took a mixed sample of 250 adults and showed them pictures of 10 of Britain's most popular types of tree and asked them to name them.

Full story HERE

To be honest i suspect it's a lot more than a third.

Is there a virgin forest in your neighborhood?

Is there a virgin forest in your neighborhood? - remnants of old-growth forests - includes related article on identifying remnants of virgin forests - Tree Facts.

There may well be, according to this tree-ring researcher, but it probably won't be calendar material.

Some things in the natural world overwhelm you with power and grandeur. If you've stood on the Hurricane Deck beneath the Bridal Veil at Niagara Falls, if you've confronted the full-size African elephant near the front entrance of the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, if you've leaned against the railing and gazed into the Grand Canyon, you know the truth of that statement.

Full article HERE

Activists slam Finnish paper maker for logging 'virgin forest'

HELSINKI (AFP) — Environmental groups on Thursday blasted Finnish paper maker Stora Enso for logging old growth forests in northern Finland, insisting the unique trees should be protected.

Environmental groups Greenpeace, Suomen Luonnonsuojeluliitto and Luonto-Liitto said they had found that some trees more than 300 years old had been logged in Finnish Lapland in the north of the country and shipped to Stora Enso's pulp mill in Oulu.

The logged forests, also known as old growth forests or ancient woodlands, are owned by the Finnish state.

"It is unbelievable that at a time when forestry companies have slashed their production sharply, untouchable forests are logged," Risto Mustonen from Luonto-Liitto said in a statement.

Old growth forests are often home to rare, threatened and endangered species of plants and animals, making them ecologically significant.

Full story HERE

Land freed for 1,000 allotments

The National Trust is releasing enough land for up to 1,000 allotments, on some of the most famous country estates in Britain.

The land will be available for individuals or community groups in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The release will be organised through the Landshare website, which matches growers with available land.

Full story HERE

Grizzlies reveal 'fancy footwork

They may look slow and clumsy, but underwater cameras have revealed that grizzly bears can perform some fancy footwork when a meal is on the cards.

A BBC team followed the bears as the annual salmon migration got underway.

They filmed them using their huge feet to deftly kick dead fish from deep pools into shallower water.

This behaviour, caught on camera for the first time, meant that the grizzlies could grab the fish without the bother of getting their ears wet.

Full story with video HERE

Extinct Bird Found, Photographed & Then Eaten

This rare Worcester's buttonquai, thought by scientists to be extinct, was recently photographed in the Philippines by a TV crew and then sold for food at a market. Over at Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman summarizes various news reports on the matter. From Cryptomundo:

Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester’s buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago...

Wild Bird Club of the Philippines President Michael Lu asked a question that naturally came to my mind: “What if this was the last of its species?”

He told the Agence France-Press news agency that it’s unfortunate that the locals aren’t more conscious of the threatened wildlife around them.

More HERE

Climate change threat to woodland

Climate change could be the "last straw" for rare woodlands in the far north of Scotland already damaged by overgrazing animals, it is claimed.

Full story HERE

Plants 'more important than ever'

Plants have never been as important to the environment, the director of Kew Gardens has said, ahead of the London conservation site's 250th anniversary.

Full story HERE