Fighting for fish where's the catch?

Clues from Christmas
A blizzard of Retailers have been reporting on how they fared over the crucial Christmas period. And, perhaps not surprisingly, many are pointing to the freezing December weather for problems they have endured. But what have we learned about the state of the High Street and the confidence of the consumer? Snow nonsense? The BRC says December's Bad Weather made the month an even tougher month for Retailers Pity the young Children of Britain who, according to retailer Halfords, had fewer bic...

Fee waiver would apply across EU
State funding for poor Students at English universities could have to be made available to all EU citizens, according to draft government plans. Any proposed discounts or fee waivers would have to be open to all EU Students on an equal basis, they say. Before the crunch Tuition fees vote it was suggested poor Students could get a year's fees paid for by the government. A government source said if all EU Students could apply, they would have to think very carefully about the idea. It comes...

Brisbane Wakes Up to Good News, Long Road Ahead
On Wednesday night, Megan Junker, a Brisbane resident, had a barbeque with her neighbors. They drank wine and watched the Riverwalk concrete walkway tearing away from the pavement and getting hurled down the river. Junker and her neighbors had packed their bags, ready to evacuate at a moment's notice. She had also boiled several liters of water as a measure against contaminated water supplies, and packed food in case Supermarkets were sold out. This morning Junker woke up to a pleasant surpri...

DuPage zoning board rejects mosque request
The DuPage County Zoning Board of Appeals on Thursday night recommended against a request to construct a Mosque in an unincorporated residential neighborhood in the southeastern part of the county. The board voted 5-2 to reject the petition by the Muslim Educational Cultural Center of America (MECCA) for a conditional-use permit and several building-height variations for a proposed mosque, school and recreation center on 91st Street in unincorporated Willowbrook. Board Members who voted against ...

Study tracks salmon coping with warming river
Scientists working with sockeye salmon struggling to cope with warming temperatures in British Columbia's Fraser River have identified broad genetic traits that can predict which fish will live or die before spawning a new generation. Oregon State University salmon geneticist Michael Banks, who did not take part in the study, says it represents a breakthrough in tracking how salmon are surviving new stresses from Global Warming. The study combined radio tracking of fish in the ocean and river wi...

N.C. senator keeps security at minimum for events
MANTEO, N.C. There were no bag checks or metal detectors or intimidating Bodyguards at the Dare County Center on Wednesday afternoon. Security amounted to little more than a few sheriff's deputies roaming the Parking Lot and a few others in plain clothes mingling with the crowd inside. But that's just the way U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., wanted it. Four days after a gunman killed six people and critically wounded a congresswoman and 13 others at a similar event in Arizona, Hagan stepped out of a...

Siberian cold stops German bicycle tourist
ULAN-UDE, Russia, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Russian authorities said a German cyclist underestimated Siberia's brutal weather and wound up in a Hospital during a long-distance ride this week. Sven Riedel, 37, suffered a serious case of frostbite while attempting to pedal 300 kilometers (186.4 miles) from Ulan-Ude to Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia. "I wanted to see Lake Baikal," Riedel told Russia's Ria Novosti news agency. "I didn't think it would be so cold." Officials said it was actually plenty cold w...

Meathead Goldwyn: Glögg: An Ancient Hot Spiced Wine Recipe for Après-Shoveling
Samuel Johnson, author of the first English dictionary, wrote "Claret is the drink for boys, port for men, but he who aspires to be a hero must drink Brandy." By that definition, Scandinavian glögg will make us saintly. Glögg, pronounced more or less like gloooog, is a sweet, high-octane, mulled wine, which is to say it is made with a potpourri of spices and all three of the above: Claret (Red Wine), port, and Brandy. Because it is served warm it is especially popular around Christmas. It i...

Teacher defends sled use in lesson
Richard Tremelling, 37, was fired from the Cefn Hengoed community school in Swansea after allowing a pair of 15-year-old Students to try out the Scandinavian-style racing sled he demonstrated in the snow, The Sun reported Tuesday. "He used the sledge on snow-covered slopes at the rear of the school," Rosa Fernandes, speaking on behalf of the school, told the Cardiff disciplinary hearing. "He failed to carry out appropriate risk assessments and failed to provide a written risk assessment. He didn...

Food foragers find fun and cash amid the wild fungi
Hunting may get more attention as a primal human endeavor, but for Connie Green, there's something even deeper and older: gathering. "I think it triggers something in people's brains that we're hard-wired for," she says. It "involves the joy of finding food, and it's really quite beyond our control in some way." Green is a professional forager. She makes her living gathering wild foods in the woods and selling them to chefs, stores and the occasional very lucky individual. Her tramps through Nor...

Apocalypse then: How a comet ended the Roman Empire
© Unknown A close shave with a comet nearly 1,500 years ago caused a catastrophic change in the global climate, leading to famine, plague, the end of the Roman Empire, the birth of the Dark Ages and even the legend of King Arthur, a leading British scientist said at the British Association meeting in London yesterday. Debris from the near miss bombarded the Earth with meteors, which threw enough dust and water vapour into the atmosphere to cut out sunlight and cool the planet to cause cr...

Teacher Fired After Allowing Students To Sled After Class
In Wales, Design teacher Richard Tremelling has been sacked. He was not fired for poor teaching or hitting on Students or even habitual lateness. He was fired because he let two 15-year-old Students go sledding after his class at Cefn Hengoed Community School in Swansea — failing to prepare a “risk assessment” and getting prior written approval. That’s right, the Students asked if they could try out a sled that he brought into class as a design object. He said yes and now...

DeLay Blames Liberal Jury For Conviction (VIDEO)
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), who has long argued that his indictment on Money Laundering charges was politically motivated, said on the "Today Show" this morning that his conviction was political, too. "I was tried in the most liberal county in the state of Texas and, indeed, in the United States," he said, referring to Travis County, the home of Austin. DeLay and his lawyers had tried to get his trial moved to a different, more conservative county, to no avail. "The forema...

Oil 'needs to attract graduates'
Scotland's offshore sector needs to rebuild its reputation to halt the drift of graduates towards renewables, it has been claimed. Offshore industry body Oil and Gas UK said attacks from groups such as Greenpeace needed to be combated. The fear is that civil and chemical engineering graduates are starting to see oil as an industry with no future. The environmental campaign group last year mounted a high-profile stance against drilling in the North Sea and North Atlantic. It followed the dev...

China first in wind power capacity
BEIJING, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- China has surpassed the United States as the country with the largest wind power installation in the world, China's state-run news agency Xinhua reports. China installed 16 gigawatts of wind power capacity in 2010, a 62 percent increase from the previous year, said the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association, Xinhua reports. That brings the country's total installed capacity to 41.8 gigawatts, giving China -- the world's top emitter of Greenhouse Gases -- the po...

Most oppose whaling, Greenpeace finds
In a telephone survey of 1,004 adults during December, Greenpeace reported that 69 percent of the participants answered negatively when asked if they were in favor of Japan sending a Whaling fleet to the Southern Ocean to catch whales, some of which are Endangered Species. When asked if U.S. President Barack Obama should stand by a campaign pledge to strengthen the international ban on commercial whaling, 83 percent of the respondents told interviewers they favored the measure. Of those intervie...

How to Fish Sustainably
Photo by Fir0002, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Community-based cooperative management—wherein fishers, fisheries managers, and scientists work together to create sustainable fisheries—yields big catches. Now the authors of a new paper in Nature present their findings on what elements of co-management are most effective. They write: The dominant theme in fisheries management has been that privatization is necessary to avoid Hardin...

Panel is unanimous: Don't tear down Waterside
NORFOLK Instead of tearing down Waterside, the city should refurbish the downtown landmark and hire a private developer to manage it, according to a five-person group tasked with studying the struggling marketplace. Three influential groups - the Downtown Norfolk Council, the Greater Norfolk Corp., and the visitors and convention bureau - urged Mayor Paul Fraim and the City Council in September to tear down the facility, saying it had outlived its usefulness. Since opening in 1983, Waterside has...

Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup
Ciano Ciano, the East 22nd Street Italian Restaurant helmed by chef Shea Gallante (Cru) gets an enthusiastic two star review from Sam Sifton in the Times this week. Sifton says Gallante's food "is ambitious, beautiful and flavor packed, a kind of Italian home cooking made grand and attractive, rich as Berlusconi, not as oily. It is less precious, less purposefully fancy, less aggressively upscale than what he was putting forth at Cru, where he cooked until 2009 and which closed last year... He...

Scottish salmon leaps into China
Is GM salmon swimming against the tide? China is to open its kitchens to Scottish salmon it has emerged. In agreement between the Scottish and Chinese governments, exports are to be allowed into the Asian giant's market for the first time. The move, for AQSIQ, a Chinese Food safety agency to approve a range of products, is being seen as a big boost to Scotland's fish farming industry. It already supports 6,000 jobs in Scotland, worth £500m to The Economy, with exports worth nearly...

In first, China buys salmon from Scotland
EDINBURGH, Scotland, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- The Chinese Government, for the first time, reached an agreement to import Atlantic salmon from Scotland, the fisheries secretary said from Edinburgh. Chinese demand for salmon and salmon products is more than Scotland produces in a year. China is one of the largest Seafood markets in the world and the Scottish Government said it expected demand for Atlantic salmon to increase. Scotland is the third-largest producer of Atlantic salmon in the world. "The Scot...

China animal rights groups protest seal meat deal (AFP)
Beijing (AFP) – More than 40 Chinese Animal Rights groups on Thursday hit out at Canada for turning China into a "dumping ground" for its seal meat and oils, after the products were banned in the European Union. The agreement to allow the imports into China was reached during a visit to Beijing by Canadian Fisheries Minister Gail Shea, and follows a EU ban on seal product imports imposed after an Activist outcry over commercial seal hunting. "'Do not give to others wha...

Jewel-Osco Unveils 'nutrition iQ' Food Labeling Program to Help Shoppers Make Choices for Better Health
nutrition IQ, which is now in all JEWEL-OSCO stores, uses color-coded shelf tags and signs that allow consumers to quickly identify better-for-you food options.  The program comes as research shows consumers are having difficulty making sense of nutrition guidelines and are looking for an easier way to make informed food choices for better health.  For example, a survey by the International Food Information Council Foundation shows almost half of Americans feel food and health informat...

Joel Reynolds: Sanction Iceland, the World's Whaling Outlaw
A U.S. response, with teeth, is needed to stop Iceland's violations of international treaties. Weighing up to 80 tons and almost twice the length of a School Bus, the massive fin whale -- known as the greyhound of the sea for its swimming speed -- was the Victim of decades of commercial slaughter that killed the whales by the tens of thousands each year. Then, in 1986, with the species on the brink of extinction, the nations of the world agreed to a Moratorium on commercial Whaling, and this ...

Ocean acidification: one less thing to worry about
Carbon dioxide has been named as the chief culprit in rampant “ocean acidification” which, according to Environmentalists on the Natural Resources Defense Council, will soon start killing off fish and dissolving Coral Reefs, putting a major dent in the Seafood and eco-tourism industries. According to a 2009 statement by Britain’s Royal Society, co-signed by Dr. James Hansen, of NASA’s Goddard Center, and Dr. Mark Spalding of The Nature Conservancy: “Temperature̴...