Victoria’s worsening flesh-eating ulcer epidemic has spread to
Geelong and the Surf Coast, raising fears the number of victims could
increase over the summer months.
Ten new cases of buruli ulcer
have been reported in the Geelong suburb of Belmont and the nearby town
of Aireys Inlet on the south-west coast this year
The Trump 2020 campaign has responded to Twitter shutting down political ads because of their dishonesty and spreading of ''misleading information'' by saying it is an attack on conservative voices. If you need to be dishonest and misleading again to get elected maybe you dont deserve to be elected.
Moscow:
A steppe eagle has nearly bankrupted a Russian bird-tracking programme
with roaming text messages after it flew to Iran and began transmitting
backlogged GPS data.
Scientists from the Siberian Environmental
Centre were forced to turn to online crowdfunding, with donations
flooding in since the story made the national news.
Named
"Min" after its birthplace near the city of Minusinsk, the steppe eagle
was fitted with a GPS tracker powered by a miniature solar panel in
2018. It is one of 13 eagles being tracked for a project by the Russian
Raptor Research and Conservation Network to better understand what
threats the birds face during their migration south to countries in
Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Outfitted with a mobile
phone card, the tracker takes an eagle's location 12 times a day and
texts the co-ordinates to the researchers' number in four messages. If
the bird is outside mobile coverage area, as is often the case, it
stores the data to text once it comes back within range.
After
spending most of this northern summer out of coverage in western
Kazakhstan, Min flew to Iran so quickly earlier this month that its
tracker still couldn't get a mobile connection.
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Once
it landed, near a rubbish dump in Iran, it began sending hundreds of
text messages of GPS data costing the programme's shoestring budget up
to 7000 roubles ($160) a day. Each text from Iran is priced at 49
roubles ($1.12), about 25 times more than in Russia and three times more
than in Kazakhstan.
Min's data quickly used up all the
researchers' phone credit, which had already been depleted by three
other eagles that flew to Iran, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, Yelena
Shnaider, a SibEco Centre ornithologist, said. The researchers even had
to take out a loan.
"He wasn't in touch all summer... we were
happy to get a text from him," she said. "We had expected to get it from
Kazakhstan but suddenly he's in Iran, and we started to get his summer
locations at three times the price."
"But Min's a good boy, about a week ago he left Iran and went to Saudi Arabia where it's cheaper," she added.
Since she called
upon supporters to "put money on the eagle's phone," more than 250,000
roubles has been raised, enough to track all 13 birds through to the
end of the year.
The steppe eagle, which is featured on the flags
of Egypt and Kazakhstan, can have a wingspan of more than 2.1 metres and
preys on small mammals and birds in the plains and deserts of Eurasia.
It
was once found as far west as Ukraine but numbers have plummeted in
recent years. The species was updated to "critically endangered" on the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list in 2015,
in part due to Russian tracking programmes.
During a long annual
migration south to Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent,
the bird often comes across dangerous power lines or poison traps that
farmers put out for wolves and other predators. Not above scavenging
from carcasses, the eagle is also highly vulnerable to the veterinary
drug diclofenac, which has already killed off 99 per cent of India's
white-rumped vulture population.
Tracking
steppe eagles will help identify problem areas, Shnaider said. Farmers
can be fined for putting out illegal poisons, and companies can be
pressured to put bird protecting insulation around power lines.
"The
steppe eagle meets many dangers, and we can't neutralise these dangers
across its whole range, but we can focus our on concrete points."
Mazda Australia accused of ripping off consumers sold dud vehicles
Mazda will be forced to defend itself in Australia's Federal Court
after allegedly ripping off consumers who purchased dud vehicles over a
four year period.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)
this morning started proceedings against the vehicle manufacturer
following an investigation into seven vehicles purchased by individual
consumers.
The ACCC alleges that Mazda made false or misleading
representations after consumers returned their cars to Mazda dealers,
and were denied a refund or a replacement vehicle.
Faults were found to have affected owners of Mazda 2, Mazda 6, Mazda
CX-5, Mazda CX-5B, Mazda CX-3 and Mazda BT-50 purchased between 2013 and
2017.
These consumers began experiencing faults with their vehicles within one to two years of purchasing.
In some cases, the vehicles would unexpectedly lose power and decelerate while they were being driven.
Separated at birth: The extraordinary true story of estranged identical twins who lived the same life.
Billi Fitzsimons
n 1940, a pair of identical twin brothers were separated at birth and
put up for adoption. At three weeks, their respective adoptive parents
called their new sons ‘James’, or Jim for short.
They didn’t know of each other, but growing up they lived a mere 40 miles from each other.
Jim
Lewis had a brother, Larry, and a dog called Toy. As a student, Jim
Lewis enjoyed mathematics and woodwork, but had a strong dislike for
spelling. He eventually married a woman named Linda, however they
divorced after a number of years together. Jim Lewis then married his
second wife, Betty. They had a son, called James Alan. Jim Lewis was a
chain smoker, suffered from migraines and drove a Chevrolet. He worked
as a security guard.
Jim Springer had a brother, Larry, and a dog called Toy. As a student, Jim Springer enjoyed mathematics and woodwork, but had a strong
dislike for spelling. He eventually married a woman named Linda,
however they divorced after a number of years together. Jim Springer
then married his second wife, Betty. They had a son, called James Allan.
Jim Springer was a chain smoker, suffered from migraines and drove a
Chevrolet. Springer worked as a deputy sheriff.
It sounds almost made up – so extraordinary are the circumstances. Their lives co-existed in parallel lines of one another.
LOL at the story of "The Widow Of Walcha ". We have close connections in that area, one of them was the husband,s executor ( is that the word ? or maybe caretaker ? ) of his affairs, and boy could I tell you some stories abou that one.
She is as guilty as sin, no doubt about that. Her big mistake was thinking because he was just a bit "different" that no one would know and she could pass it off as suicide. Fancy thinking that would work in a town the size of Walcha where everyone is related either by blood or marriage.
Malaysian PM says Australia's European roots will give way to Asian influence
Bangkok: Asian immigration is transforming Australia and the country will soon become "more Asian than European", Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has predicted.
Dr Mahathir, the 94-year-old political elder statesman of south-east Asia, made the comments during an exclusive interview with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He will meet with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Bangkok on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit on Monday.
The
ABC has hit new lows': Calls for Q&A host Fran Kelly to be sacked
after allowing feminist panel to encourage women to 'murder all rapists'
and declare 'violence is okay'
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Charlie Moore For Daily Mail Australia
Thanks for that opinion tlaz. Can you put it in the correct thread next time (that would be under the heading "Folau" ). i think one prolific thread multiplier in here is enough
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