Santa Marta (Colombia) and birdwatching bleg
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About me? Mad, disabled, in debt, feminist, radical, angry, pacifist, warrior, radio 4 listener, geek, flower-power chick... About Hippie blog? Ramblings, photos, fury, giggles and musings about love, peace, friendship, madness, happiness, the state of the world, my life, cool pics, my health and general ranting...
UK Police: Man Killed Unrelated to Probe
LONDON (AP) - The man shot and killed on a subway car by London police in front of horrified commuters apparently had nothing to do with this month's bombings on the city's transit system, police said Saturday in expressing their ``regrets.''
A self-help guide to every thing women are doing and thinking in Britain today: including Health, Sexuality, The Sex Discrimination Act, Welfare Benefits, Work, Children, Rape, The Women's Movement, Fostering, The Arts.
Under the Iranian penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be hanged
"According to Iranian human rights campaigners, over 4,000 lesbians and gay men have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979.I also uploaded the story to Indymedia UK.
"Altogether, an estimated 100,000 Iranians have been put to death over the last 26 years of clerical rule. The victims include women who have sex outside of marriage and political opponents of the Islamist government.
"Last August, a 16 year old girl, Atefeh Rajabi, was hanged for 'acts incompatible with chastity.'
Alert at tube stations
Emergency services are responding to reports of incidents at three London underground stations today, and witnesses reported seeing smoke.
Scotland Yard said they were responding to incidents at Warren Street, Oval and Shepherd's Bush stations on the underground. British Transport police said all of the stations were being evacuated.
A passenger on a tube train about to arrive at Warren Street tube stations said there were reports of an exploding rucksack, the smell of smoke and dozens of panicking passengers running through the train.
"The train was not far short of Warren Street station when suddenly the doors between my carriage and the next one burst open and dozens of passengers started running through," a retired special constable, called Ivan, told Sky News.
Police said the first incident was reported at 12.54pm.
On July 7, two weeks ago today 56 people died when four suicide bombers attacked three tube stations and a bus in the capital. The Metropolitan police have warned of a risk of further attacks
'Incidents' spark Tube evacuation
Emergency services have been called to three Tube stations after "incidents", Scotland Yard said.
Police confirmed they had been called to Warren Street, Oval and Shepherd's Bush stations.
There have been reports of smoke coming from the stations and all three have been evacuated.
The whole of the Northern Line has been suspended, along with the Victoria Line and the Hammersmith and City. There are no reports of any casualties.
A spokesman for London Underground said the nature of the incidents was unknown.
One hospital, near Warren St station, has started its emergency plan.
Last summer, the ‘Steel Man’ dominated the Town Hall Square. The 12-foot high living sculpture of a steel worker came complete with crucible and molten steel and attracted many people each day that came to admire the work – and take a photo!
This year the city has gone one better with a new addition in the form of the Buffer Girl, who is shown polishing cutlery on a buffing wheel.
Local company Escafeld Art Metalwork Ltd has designed both structures, which over the coming weeks will be filled with 22 bags of compost and planted with over 7,000 plants by the City Council Nursery team.
Richard Payne, Assistant Area Manager for the Nursery Team, said: “The Steel Man was a huge hit with both young and old last year. This year we decided to introduce the Buffer Girl to highlight the buffer girls’ role in the city’s history.”
Councillor Harry Harpham, Sheffield Council’s Cabinet Member for Streetscene and Green Spaces, said: “The Steel Man and the Buffer Girl will be one of our crowning attractions in our bid to win European Gold in Entente Florale.
“Both structures show the two sides of Sheffield industrial heritage and the work that was carried out in the steel and cutlery industries. It is a great way to tie in both the heritage of the city’s industrial past and link this to Sheffield being one of the greenest cities in Europe.”
Entente Florale has been running for more than 25 years. Sheffield is one of only two places (along with St Ives), chosen to represent the United Kingdom in the 2005 competition.
In the Towns and Cities category, Sheffield will be up against Baden in Austria, Mako in Hungary, Le Plesis-Robinson in France and Potsdam in Germany amongst others. England’s entrants last year were Harrogate in the town’s category and Darley in the villages category, both winning Gold. It’s a great credit to the region that once again a place in Yorkshire is representing Britain in Entente Florale.
Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD. - Leviticus 19:28Oh my, oh my, oh my. I just did that thing that makes the internet the best thing ever in the world. You know, when you click on a link to a new page, then another link from there, then another from there, and you find yourself somewhere you never, ever thought was possible?
Leviticus 11:6-7 - The rabbit, though it chews the cud, does not have a split hoof; it is unclean for you. And the pig, though it has a split hoof completely divided, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you.
Leviticus 11:10-12 - But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales - whether among all the swarming things or among all the other living creatures in the water - you are to detest. And since you are to detest them, you must not eat their meat and you must detest their carcasses. Anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be detestable to you.
Leviticus 19:19 - Keep my decrees. Do not mate different kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
Leviticus 19:27 - Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
Leviticus 19:28 - Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.
Leviticus 21:5 - Priests must not shave their heads or shave off the edges of their beards or cut their bodies.
Watching him present the show - as he did for 23 years - sometimes felt like watching your dad dance at a wedding. Supremely confident yet squirmingly awkward, sensible suit and striped blazer topped off with a terrible tie, painful puns would tumble from his mouth, jokes and wordplay that you knew had never felt the touch of a professional script-writer, but had been thought up in the dressing room, and seemed like a terribly good idea at the time.Very, very true. Bless ya Mr Groovy Ties.
Dear Sir,
I am writing to thank you for bouncing the cheque with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, some three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque, and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire salary, an arrangement which, I admit, has only been in place for eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account with $50 by way of penalty for the inconvenience I caused to your bank.
The rather unimaginatively named Large Blue butterfly [...] begins life as a normal caterpillar and the young larvae feed on wild thyme flowers.
From then on its life depends on its con trick. As each larva drops to the ground, it secretes a sticky sugary substance which is irresistible to ants.
The ants are tricked into thinking that the larva is a lost ant grub and take it into their underground colony.
But not any old ant will do, only large colonies of a single species of red ant - Myrnica sabuleti - can act as a suitable host.
An incredible phase in the caterpillar's life then begins where for 10 months it turns into a carnivore - eating the ant grubs while the hapless ants feed and care for it as one of their own.
The caterpillar pupates in the ant nest, finally emerging for a few brief days in the last stage of its remarkable life as a beautiful butterfly.
Changing farming techniques led to the decline of the red ant the butterfly depends on and in 1979 the Large Blue became extinct in Britain.
Mathew Oates, the National Trust's adviser on nature conservation, said: "Over the next few weeks and future summers we look forward to welcoming visitors at Collard Hill to come and see this rare and beautiful butterfly and understand its extraordinary life of deception."
Chinese companies responsible for wristbands worn by thousand of charity supporters [...] have been accused of indulging in forced labour and of paying less than the official minimum wage. An audit also discovered breaches of health and safety regulations.
[...]
An audit report on Fuzhou Xing Chun Trade Company, in Fujian province, said workers were paid below the local minimum hourly wage of 2.39 yuan (16p), to as low as 1.39 yuan (9p). They were insufficiently rewarded for overtime work, had no paid annual leave and suffered pay deductions for disciplinary reasons.
Valerie Black. There's a rumour that the ID card is dead, do the panellists mourn its potential demise?
[...]
DIMBLEBYGermaine Greer.
GREERWell now I'm the sort of person who loses things like ID cards [LAUGHTER]. It has occurred to me several times to want to ask why do I have to have all these bits of paper with pictures of my face on them when this is my face. Could you not put a stamp on me like an egg that says registered authentic image or person number and then they could put my concentration camp number after that. I don't - girls clothes have no pockets - have you noticed that - where are we going to put the bloody thing? I'm already carrying all kinds of credit cards and driving licences and god knows what in my bra, I'm going to end up with a library. [LAUGHTER AND CLAPPING] Now tell me that for all my bits of paper I would now have one bit of paper and they would stable that to my hide so I couldn't lose it, it would be waterproof, then it would be fine but failing that all I see is chaos and despair. I will never know where the bloody thing is. And the other thing about this country, I don't know if you've noticed, but people are always asking to see documents that they're not entitled to see - they want you to put your address on the back of cheques and all this kind of thing, they're not happy with your credit card, you've got to give them something else. Every Tom, Dick and Harry's going to ask to see your bloody ID card. And if it's a certain petrol station in East London they're going to run away, forge it and then bring it back to you saying thank you very much.
DAVIESI think we could help you with this problem Germaine. For visiting Australians or long term resident Australians we could have sort of boomerang shaped ones. [LAUGHTER]
GREERListen ...
DAVIESEasier to secrete around your person.
GREERDon't you joke about that, I mean at this moment it looks as if my permission to stay here indefinitely is about to be rescinded by this wonderful government, for the simple reason that I have a new passport and I'm going to have to bribe someone with £250 in order to get the stamp that is mine by right. Don't trust this government, I mean if they can think of a way of milking you for the ID card, we haven't talked about how much it's going to cost, then you'll be paying through the nose, it will be a blood stained little object. And if you're very, very poor you won't be able to afford to have one anyway.
DIMBLEBYSo to summarise you're against ID cards? [LAUGHTER AND CLAPPING
Will the fact that he is disabled allow him to put the boot in? Or rather, make bold changes that will confuse the now reduced number of back-benchers sufficiently enough to allow reforms through? Though Alistair Darling may have seemed politically incorrect with an attack on disabled people, and caused what some saw as a kneejerk rebellion, will it seem so bad if done by a disabled man?