Daily Archives: November 7, 2015

It was as news came through that another 11 children had drowned trying to reach Greece that Benedict Cumberbatch finally cracked.

“Fuck the politicians,” the usually painfully polite upper-class actor told a theatre audience in London last week after playing Hamlet, before making a despairing plea on behalf of thousands of refugees arriving daily on Europes beaches.

The “Sherlock” star has been making impassioned speeches in support of migrants from the stage of the Barbican since August, raising £150,000 (212,000 euros, $230,000) for Save the Children from nightly collections.

All across Europe, artists are similarly rallying to the migrant cause, determined not to let anger at governments squabbling over the crisis drift into indifference or hostility towards refugees fleeing war and misery.

An Austrian artist topped the iTunes music charts with a minute of silence to symbolise deafness to their plight, “performing” it later in front of 150,000 people at an open-air Vienna concert, while a theatre backed by some of Britain’s leading directors has opened in the Calais “jungle” to lift the spirits of those stuck in the squalid camp on Frances north coast.

Austria’s Nobel prize-winning writer Elfriede Jelinek has even updated her 2013 play “The Wards” to castigate the “smugness and cynicism” of Europe’s response to suffering on its doorstep. But with the crisis falling off the front pages, Cumberbatch felt they were raging against a tide of apathy as he told the audience how 5,000 migrants a day were arriving on Lesbos, in a video of the speech posted on social media.

“No one puts children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land,” he said, quoting from a poem called “Home” by the Somali poet Warsan Shire.

Twenty more babies and children have drowned in the Aegean since Cumberbatch lost his temper last week, according to an AFP count, bringing their number to an estimated 110 since the pictures of Syrian toddler Aylan washed up on a Turkish beach first pricked the world’s conscience in September.

The Oscar-nominated British actress Samantha Morton this week offered to put up refugees on land she owns, while James Bond star Daniel Craig told AFP: “There is a human tragedy going on. It is up to European governments to step forward and get this sorted.”

Morton said history will not be kind to governments like Britain’s which has offered to take only 20,000 refugees over five years – a gesture “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling slammed as “utterly shameful” with the UN expecting up to 1.35 million refugees and migrants to have entered Europe by February.

“People will look back and they will judge,” said Morton as film-makers led by Michel Hazanavicius, director of the Oscar-winning “The Artist” lobbied Brussels to act decisively, warning of growing xenophobia stirred by the EUs inability to tackle the problem.

“Europe seems to want to do crisis management, we want a Europe that shouts its values loud and clear,” he said as he presented a petition signed by some of cinemas biggest names to officials last month.

“The only way Europe can hope to block the dangerous progress of populism and demagogy is by remaining both political and human,” he added. But it is not just the EU that is failing – the Arab world must also shoulder the burden, conductor Daniel Barenboim insisted this week.

“Europe alone can’t deal with Syrian refugees… The Arab world should also take them,” he told reporters.

Not all artists however have rallied to the migrant banner. Graffiti artist Dan Park last month caused outrage in Sweden – which after Germany has taken the largest number of migrants – with posters declaring, “Terrorist Welcome, bring your own weapons.”

And Swedish pop singer Christer Sandelin also questioned its open-door approach in a post on Facebook: “Is there anyone who believes we can help 2,000 refugees who enter our country daily (but not Norway, Denmark, nor Finland). What is going on???” However, singer Carola, who won the Eurovision song contest for the Nordic country in 1991, claims they do not represent the Swedes and has been putting migrants up in her own home.

Fellow Eurovision winner, bearded Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst – a former choirboy – has supported the Popes call for Catholic parishes to take in refugees and also appears with Peter Gabriel in a video for a new song called “Do Something” by British singer Charlie Winston.

The video, supported by the Red Cross, was shot in refugee camps across Europe including Calais’ “jungle”, and warns, “There is only so long this can keep going on…”

source:ekathimerini.com

FOR ambush predators, there have been a few great white sharks have been making a bit of a scene along sections of that big hole in the ground known as Lake Macquarie.

Dorsal fins slicing through the glass-like water off Warners Bay, flashes of white bellies under boats near the Swansea Channel entrance, circling off the jetty at Murrays Beach and powerful breaches off Marmong Point and Pulbah Island.

But do the sightings, and they are almost being reported every other day, mean there is an increase in shark numbers or an increase in the awareness.

The Department of Primary Industries shark expert, Dr Vic Peddemors, said there were at least two great white sharks enjoying themselves in Lake Macquarie right now.

But there may be more.

‘‘It is absolutely a massive ecosystem and it is varied. The power plants pumping in warm water would inevitably change the system there a bit,’’ Dr Peddemors said.

‘‘There is such a variety of habitats within the lake and the positives that come from that is things like the resident pod of dolphins, and the number of sharks.’’

Dr Peddemors’ first trip to Lake Macquarie was last year after the Newcastle Herald revealed footage of a great white cruising in very shallow water off the popular swimming spot at Murrays Beach.

He was impressed by the place.

‘‘I didn’t realise how big the lake actually was,’’ Dr Peddemors said.

‘‘Our aim at that stage was to come down and locate the shark to see if we could catch it and lead it out to sea.’’

It didn’t happen and the shark disappeared, although news that a fisherman caught it and killed it remain unconfirmed and unlikely.

It probably just swam out and moved on.

Since then, there have been dozens of sightings of various-sized great whites, all appearing to be in good health and inquisitive.

Theories for the sightings have included the banning of professional fisherman from the lake in 2002, allowing fish stocks to increase and, in turn, allowing it to support apex predators such as great whites.

‘‘Historically we had thought great whites were coastal, then we found them travelling immense distances by using tracking devices,’’ Dr Peddemors said.

‘‘We are also finding out more and more that they go into the shallow water areas like Lake Macquarie, like Port Stephens, like Sydney Harbour and the Hawkesbury River.

‘‘If you said that 20 years ago, people probably would not have believed you.’’

He later said: ‘‘I am a great believer that animals only move for food or reproduction. So if there is a lot of food around, there is no need for them to move.’’

The invention of the smartphone has also helped gather credible information, with most people now in possession of a camera and video player in their pocket or their purse.

‘‘And pretty much everyone is on social media,’’ Dr Peddemors said.

‘‘It is a totally new world out there.

‘‘The rule that social media has got on reporting shark sightings and shark bites is going to be very difficult to untangle.

‘‘I don’t think there are more shark bites than 10 years ago, I think we just hear about more of them.’’

But are there more sharks.

‘‘I would like to believe there is; they have been protected since 1990,’’ he said.

‘‘But sharks are like mammals, they reproduce very slowly.

‘‘It takes a long time to recover from a depleted state.’’

And do they pose a threat to lake users in the lead-up to summer?

‘‘They are all juvenile white sharks. Although 2 metres, to most of us, is a really big fish, these guys are just juveniles,’’ Dr Peddemors said.

‘‘However, they do have the potential to be dangerous.

‘‘Fortunately no one has been bitten, touch wood, but obviously it is going to be on the top of everyone’s mind when the lake is used by so many people.

‘‘It is a worry but we can’t catch every fish.

‘‘There are bull sharks in there, there is everything in the lake.

‘‘Just because there is a white shark in there does not automatically put people onto the menu of food selection.’’

In fact, Dr Peddemors said the well-versed theory that all great white sharks moved on from fish to larger prey, such as seals, once they reached the size that have been seen in the lake, is now being questioned.

In fact, some tests on shark tissue suggest some sharks never graduate from fish to mammals.

‘‘This is all relatively new understanding.

‘‘Everyone has heard from people, including me, that there is a change in diets of white sharks,’’ Dr Peddemors said.

‘‘From fish to seals, for example.

‘‘But to be accurate it is going from solely fish to mainly fish with possibly a few seals.’’

source:theherald.com.au

More charges are expected over the disappearance of a newborn baby and her teenage mother from a Victorian hospital.

Amanda Clay, 17, and her one-day old daughter Phoebe went missing from the special care unit of the Northern Hospital on Thursday, sparking a state-wide search.

Police were afraid that Ms Clay, who gave birth to Phoebe via caesarean only hours earlier, and her baby both needed urgent medical attention.

The mother and baby returned to the hospital on Friday afternoon.

CCTV footage revealed that three women, believed to be family and friends of Ms Clay, had taken the baby before Ms Clay left of her own accord.

A 27-year-old Mill Park woman has been charged with child stealing and reckless conduct, and has been bailed to appear in court at a later date.

Police say investigations are continuing and more charges may be laid.

source:skynews.com.au

Russian president Vladimir Putin has been named the world’s most powerful person by Forbes magazine, followed by German chancellor Angela Merkel and US president Barack Obama.

This is the third year in a row Mr Putin has taken out the top spot, and this year’s results mean Mr Obama is the first sitting US president to slide out of the top two power rankings.

The magazine published its seventh annual ranking just weeks after Mr Putin opened a new front in the Syrian war by conducting air strikes, then Mr Putin hosted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in Moscow.

“As Obama enters the final year of his presidency, it’s clear his influence is shrinking, and it’s a bigger struggle than ever to get things done,” Forbes wrote.

“At home, his approval ratings are perpetually stuck under 50 per cent; abroad, he’s outshined by Merkel in Europe, and outmanoeuvred by Putin in the Middle East.”

In August, Mr Putin’s domestic approval rating soared to 87 per cent, the highest level in six years, according to an independent polling centre.

His intervention in Syria has seen Mr Putin seek to muscle his way back to global influence after months of Western isolation over Ukraine.

“Putin continues to prove he’s one of the few men in the world powerful enough to do what he wants — and get away with it,” Forbes said.

Despite international sanctions imposed after Moscow annexed Crimea and over the conflict in Ukraine, Mr Putin has made the US and NATO look weak, and helped rebuild Russian influence abroad, Forbes said.

“Sure, there were some international sanctions that were put on Russia [after the annexation of Crimea] but they don’t seem to have affected Putin at all, he’s really established that there’s no checks to his power within Russia, and increasingly there’s ineffectual checks around the world,” contributing editor at Forbes David Ewalt said.

Pope Francis, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump make list

The German chancellor, jumped up three places to grab second spot, last year occupied by Mr Obama.

“Merkel is the backbone of the 28-member European Union, and her decisive actions dealing with the Syrian asylum seeker issue and the Greek credit crisis helped bump her up the list,” Forbes said.

Pope Francis was number four and Chinese leader Xi Jinping number five, falling two spots from last year. The 2015 list ranks 73 powerbrokers among 7.3 billion people on the planet.

Among the eight newcomers were Saudi Arabia’s new monarch, King Salman number 14, and US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at number 58 and 72 respectively.

Thirty on the list come from the US, eight come from China, and four each from Japan and Russia.

Nine women made the cut.

The youngest on the list are 31-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, at number 19, and North Korea’s 32-year-old leader Kim Jong-un at number 46.

The Forbes Magazine list looks at four factors — control over large numbers of people, financial resources, multiple realms of power, and willingness to use that power.

source:abc.net.au