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Millions of tiny spiders recently fell from the sky in Australia, alarming residents whose properties were suddenly covered with not only the creepy critters, but also mounds of their silky threads. But that’s not where the frightful news ends: Experts say that such arachnid rains aren’t as uncommon as you might think.

This month’s spider downpour in the country’s Southern Tablelands region is just the most recent example of a phenomenon commonly known as “spider rain” or, in some circles, “angel hair,” because of the silky, hairlike threads the spiders leave behind. Ian Watson, who lives in the region affected by the spooky shower, took to Facebook to describe what this strange “weather” looks like, according to the Goulburn Post.

“Anyone else experiencing this “Angel Hair” or maybe aka millions of spiders falling from the sky right now? I’m 10 minutes out of town, and you can clearly see hundreds of little spiders floating along with their webs and my home is covered in them. Someone call a scientist!” Watson wrote on the Goulburn Community Forum Facebook page.

So, here at Live Science, call a scientist (or two) is exactly what we did. Rick Vetter, a retired arachnologist at the University of California, Riverside, said Watson and his neighbors likely saw a form of spider transportation known as ballooning.

“Ballooning is a not-uncommon behavior of many spiders. They climb some high area and stick their butts up in the air and release silk. Then they just take off,” Vetter told Live Science. “This is going on all around us all the time. We just don’t notice it.”

The reason people don’t usually notice this ingenious spider behavior is that it’s not common for millions of spiders to do this at the same time, and then land in the same place, said Todd Blackledge, a biology professor at the University of Akron in Ohio.

“In these kinds of events [spider rains], what’s thought to be going on is that there’s a whole cohort of spiders that’s ready to do this ballooning dispersal behavior, but for whatever reason, the weather conditions haven’t been optimal and allowed them to do that. But then the weather changes, and they have the proper conditions to balloon, and they all start to do it,” Blackledge told Live Science.

This is likely what happened in New South Wales, where certain species of small spiders — as well as the tiny hatchlings of larger spider species— are known to balloon around the Outback during late autumn (May) and early spring (August). But, as Blackledge explained, an abrupt change in the weather or wind pattern may have carried these migrating spiders up and away and then back down to earth en mass — not the orderly dispersal that they (or the residents of the Southern Tablelands region) were expecting.

source:nbcnews.com

Public broadcaster ERT will reopen in a week, two years after it was shut down, leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Monday.

Meeting with ERT chairman Dionysis Tsaknis and CEO Lambis Tagmatarchis, Tsipras urged the newly installed executives to work for a “pluralist and independent” network.

“Your responsibility is to restore people’s bond with ERT, which was severed by the blackout,” he said.

Tsipras added that June 11, the anniversary of ERT’s shutdown by the previous government and its replacement with NERIT, will be a day to celebrate “the victory of democracy.”

source:ekathimerini.com

Following a barrage of criticism after blocking the unveiling of a memorial to the city’s 1,484 Jews who perished in a Nazi extermination camp, the mayor of Kavala in northern Greece has apologized to members of the Jewish community and pledged that the inauguration, originally scheduled for last Sunday, will be held next month.

Mayor Dimitra Tsanaka, who had objected to the presence of the Star of David on the monument, said she had done so out of concern that the symbol would become a target for vandals.

Accusing the previous municipal authority of postponing the unveiling five times, Tsanaka said the monument would most likely be revealed on June 7.

source:ekathimerini.com

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras speaks at the annual general assembly of the Federation of Hellenic Enterprises (SEV) at the Athens Concert Hall, on Monday.

 Athens sent its proposals to creditors on Monday for an overhaul of the value-added tax regime as Greek officials indicated that an agreement on a reforms-for-cash deal was close.

In a bid to secure progress on the technical level of negotiations to enable a political decision that would unlock rescue loans, officials of the so-called Brussels Group were to hold a late-night teleconference on Monday that was expected to address these proposals.

Greece’s VAT proposal is said to foresee two rates of value-added tax instead of the current three. The highest would be set at 18 percent and relate to virtually all services and commodities except food and medicines, with a discount of 3 percentage points for non-cash transactions. The lower rate would be set at 9.5 percent and would relate to food, drugs and books, with the same discount applying to cash-free transactions. The proposals appear to be part of a broader bid by the government to boost non-cash transactions while curbing tax evasion. VAT evasion in Greece is estimated at 9.5 billion euros per year.

The Greek proposal was sent to creditors at around the time that To Vima reported that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had pitched a compromise proposal to Greece, foreseeing low primary surpluses and some 5 billion euros in reforms, chiefly tax measures. The report was quickly rebuffed by Greek and EC officials.

Speaking generally and apparently not referring to a rumored Juncker proposal, European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said Greece was quick to turn down proposals on reforms but slow to offer alternatives. “They are more eager to say what they don’t want to keep in the program than to propose alternatives,” Moscovici told a news conference in Berlin, while noting that “some progress” had been made in recent days.

In a speech at the annual general meeting of the Federation of Hellenic Enterprises (SEV) Alexis Tsipras was much more upbeat, claiming that Greece was “in final straight toward an agreement,” which, he said, “will come very soon.”

“We are working, with absolute honesty and dedication, to reach a solution,” he said. He echoed the conditions he set out last Friday for a deal, saying it should include debt restructuring, no further cuts to wages and pensions, and an investment plan. He added that Greece is ready to compromise but that he wanted a deal that would allow Greece to return to markets soon.

Liquidity restrictions are not the choice or responsibility of the Greek government but “a tough negotiating tactic” by creditors, Tsipras said.

In a speech at the same event on Monday, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said Greece has to be more competitive and its creditors need to realize that bailouts failed to control the country’s debt. He also reiterated comments of his last week, according to which the European Stability Mechanism should pay Greek bonds held by the European Central Bank that mature in summer.

Once an agreement is reached, Tsipras said, his government will turn to address the “ailments” of the Greek economy, which would involve restructuring ministries, simplifying the public administration and the tax system, fighting cartels and speeding up the dispensation of justice.

Although Tsipras, and many of his ministers, on Monday emphasized the government’s “red lines,” creditors are meanwhile said to be determined on reducing wages, at least those of civil servants, while also pressing authorities to dismiss public workers.

source:ekathimerini.com

Μη μας ξεγελά η απότομη πτώση της θερμοκρασίας και οι βροχές των τελευταίων ημερών.

Μπορεί η θερμοκρασία να έπεσε αισθητά χθες στη Μελβούρνη, μπορεί να έπεσαν τα πρώτα χιόνια γύρω από την πόλη και να σημειώθηκαν σημαντικές βροχοπτώσεις αλλά το μετεωρολογικό φαινόμενο Ελ Νίνιο, το οποίο το 2009 προκάλεσε την χειρότερη ξηρασία των τελευταίων 40 ετών στην Ινδία, ισοπέδωσε καλλιέργειες σιταριού στην Αυστραλία και κατέστρεψε σοδειές σε ολόκληρη την Ασία στέλνοντας στα ύψη τις τιμές των τροφίμων, επιστρέφει φέτος, όπως επιβεβαίωσε ιαπωνική πρόβλεψη, κι αναμένεται να πλήξει την Αυστραλία εντός του έτους.

Φέτος, το Ελ Νίνιο έφθασε την άνοιξη κι είναι πιθανόν να συνεχιστεί μέχρι το φθινόπωρο, ανακοίνωσε η Ιαπωνική Μετεωρολογική Υπηρεσία -η πρώτη υπηρεσία η οποία προέβλεψε την έλευση Ελ Νίνιο για το 2015.

Πρώιμες ενδείξεις του Ελ Νίνιο έχουν ήδη εμφανιστεί στην ανατολική ακτή της Αυστραλίας, ενώ άλλες χώρες που προετοιμάζονται για την έλευσή του είναι η Κίνα, η Ινδονησία και η Μαλαισία.

Το φαινόμενο αναμένεται να προκαλέσει συνθήκες ξηρασίας στην Παπούα Νέα Γουινέα, την Ινδονησία και σε άλλα τμήματα της νοτιοανατολικής Ασίας και σφοδρότερες βροχοπτώσεις στις χώρες του ανατολικού Ειρηνικού και της Νότιας Αμερικής, αυξάνοντας τις πιθανότητες για πλημμύρες και κατολισθήσεις.

Οι καλλιέργειες σιταριού στην Αυστραλία κινδυνεύουν να πληγούν, καθώς ο Ελ Νίνιο αναμένεται να συνοδεύεται από βροχοπτώσεις στην ανατολική ακτή, στο τέλος του χειμώνα και την άνοιξη.

Η Μετεωρολογική Υπηρεσία της Αυστραλίας, η οποία τον Απρίλιο προέβλεψε τουλάχιστον 70% πιθανότητες εμφάνισης του Ελ Νίνιο από τον Ιούλιο, ανακοίνωσε ότι ο Ελ Νίνιο έχει ήδη σχηματιστεί και ότι τα μετεωρολογικά μοντέλα μιλούν για “σημαντικής ισχύος” φαινόμενο.

Το Ελ Νίνιο είναι το μετεωρολογικό φαινόμενο κατά το οποίο τα κεντρικά και ανατολικά νερά του Ειρηνικού Ωκεανού κοντά στον Ισημερινό (ακτές του Περού) είναι θερμότερα σε σχέση με άλλες περιοχές.

Συμβαίνει κάθε δύο με οκτώ χρόνια και διαρκεί για ένα χρόνο, ενώ εμφανίζεται εδώ και αιώνες κατά την περίοδο των Χριστουγέννων. Στο φαινόμενο αποδίδονται ως συνέπειες ακραία καιρικά φαινόμενα σε όλον τον κόσμο, αλλά κυρίως στις περιοχές γύρω από τον Ειρηνικό, όπως ξηρασίες, βροχοπτώσεις, πυρκαγιές, τροπικοί κυκλώνες.

“Ελ Νίνιο” σημαίνει στα ισπανικά “αγόρι” (αναφορά στο θείο βρέφος) και η ονομασία δόθηκε στο φαινόμενο από Νοτιοαμερικανούς αλιείς, επειδή έβλεπαν περιοδικά τον ωκεανό να θερμαίνεται γύρω στα Χριστούγεννα. Αντίθετο είναι το φαινόμενο “Λα Νίνια” (κορίτσι), όταν τα νερά του Ειρηνικού στο ύψος του Ισημερινού γίνονται ασυνήθιστα κρύα.

Αιτία του φαινομένου είναι η διαταραχή των αληγών δυτικών ανέμων. Το Ελ Νίνιο έχει τα αντίθετα χαρακτηριστικά από την “Λα Νίνια”, ενώ και τα δύο μαζί θεωρούνται ως μέρος της νότιας ταλάντωσης, μιας ταλάντωσης του Ειρηνικού Ωκεανού.

Η Κίνα, η οποία συνήθως γλιτώνει από την μήνιν του Ελ Νίνιο, βρίσκεται παρ’ όλα αυτά σε επιφυλακή για τις καλλιέργειες καλαμποκιού της, που απαιτούν μεγάλες ποσότητες νερού, δήλωσε ο ειδικός αναλυτής Μα Ουενφένγκ.

Παρ’ ότι οι επιπτώσεις της ξηρασίας στους φοίνικες θα γίνουν αισθητές αργότερα, η αύξηση της ζήτησης και η μείωση των αποθεμάτων φοινικέλαιου αναμένεται να οδηγήσουν σε άνοδο τις τιμές του στην Ινδία. Οι τιμές είχαν αυξηθεί κατά 57% το 2009, εν μέρει εξαιτίας του Ελ Νίνιο.

Και οι φυτείες ρυζιού της Ινδίας αναμένεται να πληγούν.

Πηγή:Νέος Κόσμος

Yanis Varoufakis.

Varoufakis refuses any bailout plan that would send Greece into ‘death spiral’.

Suing the British government would offer the best chance of retrieving the sculptures if every other formal request fails.

Greece is stepping back from a fight with Britain over ownership of the Parthenon Marbles.

The Greek culture minister has declared that Athens will not pursue legal action to settle the bitter, decades-old dispute, despite the advice of international lawyers.

The move comes after a team of human rights lawyers in London, including Amal Clooney, told Greece in a 150-page report this week that suing the British government would offer the best chance of retrieving the sculptures if Britain rejected additional formal Greek requests to return them.

But the culture minister, Nikos Xydakis, suggested that the path of litigation was fraught with peril.

“You cannot go to court over every issue,” he said in an interview on Greek television.

“Besides, in international courts, the outcome is uncertain.”

Instead, Mr Xydakis said, he viewed the best means of securing the marbles as being through diplomacy.

“The road to reclaiming the return of the sculptures is diplomatic and political,” he said.

For decades, the Greek and British authorities have fought over the collection of sculptures and artefacts obtained in Athens by Lord Elgin, a British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, in the early 19th century.

The collection includes many pieces from the Parthenon, some of which Lord Elgin is said to have asked to be sawed off so that he could decorate his mansion in Scotland.

He later sold the pieces to pay off debts.

source:Neos Kosmos

“His name is even used today in Turkey as a saying ‘tell your sorrows to Marko Pasha’.

Pasas’ great-grandaughter Despina Anata admits

Did you know that the founder of the Turkish Red Crescent was in fact Greek?

While it is commonly excluded from modern day knowledge, Greek doctor Marko Pasa (Markos Apostolidis Pitsipios) founded the largest humanitarian organisation in Turkey and his name is still mentioned in Turkey today.

Born on the island of Syros in 1824, Pitsipios moved to Istanbul with his family where he studied at the Medical Military Faculty.

In 1861, the Sultan Abdulaziz dubbed him the palace’s chief doctor and director of the medical school.

In light of World Red Cross and Red Crescent day on 8 May, Pitsipios’ great-grandaughter Despina Anata spoke with Greek news agency ANA-MPA, where she disclosed that he was “a great man and a doctor who founded the Red Crescent”.

Anata went further to disclose the fact that Pitsipios’ name is still spoke in Turkey today.

“His name is even used today in Turkey as a saying ‘tell your sorrows to Marko Pasha’.

This is because Pitsipios was a patient doctor who would listen to his patient’s problems for hours with great patience, and would always endeavour to find a cure for their condition, but to also reassure and calm them.”

source:Neos Kosmos

The solar thermal field in Pentakomo, on the southern coast of Cyprus. [Photos:CSIRO]

Australian scientists have designed and installed solar energy technology in Cyprus to help the island nation shift away from fossil fuels and also to tackle its chronic water shortages.

A team from the CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, took five weeks to construct a ‘solar thermal field’ containing 50 heliostats – large mirrors that reflect the power of the sun. The solar thermal field lies in Pentakomo, on the southern coast of Cyprus and places the country at the frontier of solar energy research in Europe.

The CSIRO won an international tender to provide its technology to Cyprus for a trial that could lead to broad solar take-up in the country and elsewhere. It is understood that several other countries in Europe and the Middle East are interested in adopting CSIRO solar technology.

Cyprus hopes to take on the technology so it can reform its oil-dependent economy and meet a European Union target of 13 per cent of energy coming from renewable sources by 2020. The Mediterranean country is also plagued by water shortages and may use solar energy to power desalination plants.

The CSIRO technology uses mirrors to track the sun and reflect it towards a single receiving point on top of a tower. This heat then warms a fluid, in this case molten salt.

The molten salt, heated to 250°C, is stored in a hot tank and the steam produced powers a turbine for electricity. Crucially, this storage method allows for energy to be produced long after the sun has disappeared.

“The question about solar is always about storage at night-time,” said Wes Stein, solar research leader at CSIRO.

“This liquid is cheaper and more efficient than batteries, such as those made by Elon Musk. We can generate steam for electricity on a cloudy day.

“This is Cyprus’ first foray into real solar infrastructure and hopefully it’s replicated across the country. They are close to countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia who could translate this technology as well.”

The Cyprus project provided $500,000 for the CSIRO but Stein said the returns could be in the “tens of millions” if other countries licensed the technology for larger scale developments.

Stein added that Australia could theoretically provide all of its electricity via solar energy in this way, requiring a site measuring 50km by 50km, a third of it taken up by mirrors.

CSIRO built the first version of the heliostats in 2006 and hopes to license its technology to manufacturers around the world.

The science agency believes its heliostats are superior to those used elsewhere because their smaller mirrors provide a higher control over the reflected sunlight, while the infrastructure requires just two people to install it.

An experimental heliostat facility in Newcastle, New South Wales, has 450 mirrors. But opportunities for deployment across Australia have been stymied over the past 12 months amid a quest by the federal government to slash Australia’s renewable energy target.

Investment in large-scale renewable energy in Australia has slumped 90 per cent in the past year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Just one large-scale renewables project, worth $6.6 million, has been financed this year, due to uncertainty caused by political negotiations over the RET’s future. More than 2,300 jobs in the renewable energy sector have been lost in the past two years, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show.

“Hopefully there will be an opportunity to use heliostats in Australian projects,” said Stein.

“Australia has the best solar radiation of any continent in the world and we are looking for opportunities to deploy this technology here as well as overseas.”

According to the Australian Energy Market Operator, building a 100 per cent renewable energy system would cost the nation between $219 billion to $332 billion, depending upon the scenario.

Proponents of a complete switch to renewable energy argue that this level of investment, over a 35-year period as coal is phased out, is reasonable and similar to current levels of spending upon fossil fuel development.

Source: The Guardian

The Water Diviner slammed at US release Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko (who plays a Turkish war widow in The Water Diviner) with Russell Crowe at the Spanish premier of the film. Photo AP /Abraham Caro Marin

Warner Brothers’ insensitivity over timing felt worldwide.

Russell Crowe’s The Water Diviner opened in US cinemas to a wave of criticism last month – its appallingly mistimed launch coinciding with the centenary of the Armenian Genocide.

Its inappropriate release date in the US has added insult to injury for the film’s growing number of critics – mostly Armenian and Greeks united in their anger at what Greek Australian academic Panayiotis Diamadis described as the film’s “genocide denial by omission”.

In a letter to Warner Brothers, American Armenian film producers Garin Hovannisian and Alec Mouhibian said the American release of The Water Diviner in April could only be viewed “as complicity in the denial of the worst crime ever imagined” and that it should be “met with the offense and outrage it deserves”.

Hovannisian and Mouhibian’s film commemorating the Armenian Genocide of 1915 was also released last month.

Beyond the outrage over the timing of The Water Diviner’s American release, the film’s dewy-eyed interpretation of Turkey’s actions during WWI – along with inferences such that the Ottoman Empire was a blameless victim of western aggression – has incensed many.

The script’s ‘editing out’ of any mention of Turkish atrocities committed against Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks during and after WWI has caused most offence.

In the film, Russell Crowe – who also directs – plays Joshua Connor, a Victorian farmer who travels to Turkey after the war to find the bodies of his three Anzac sons, all believed to have fallen at Gallipoli.

The story – co-written by Andrew Anastasios and Andrew Knight – goes on to reflect a Turkish version of WWI and its immediate aftermath, including conflict with Greece during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922.

Made on budget of $22.5 million, The Water Diviner was the top-grossing home-grown movie of 2014 in Australia.

In a letter-writing campaign soon after the film was released, many in the Greek and Armenian diaspora writing from Australia, the US, Israel, Germany and elsewhere expressed outrage at the film’s depiction of events – particularly a scene in which what appear to be Greek bandits attack a Turkish military train, as well as omitting any reference to atrocities carried out by Turkey in 1919, when Crowe’s character is in Anatolia.

Historian Professor Peter Stanley believes that rather than a conscious distortion of history, the film’s problem lies in the fact that Russell Crowe “entered a highly contested historical arena … without any idea of what he was getting into”.

“His response was to simply roll over and accept the Turkish version.”

The UNSW Canberra professor told Neos Kosmos that Crowe had “blundered” into the depiction of the situation in Anatolia “like a bull in a china shop”.

“I think he could have done a much better job of depicting the history faithfully and fairly … but like a lot of Australians, he was captivated by the Turkish national epic and basically came down on that side of telling the story.”

source:Neos Kosmos