Thanks to Matty Edwards and BBC Online News for the Headline
The main thing that strikes me about this story is that yet again we have a beautiful old building going to wreck and ruin, owned by a foreign group called the “Fragrance Group” from Thailand who had acquired the building known as the “Grand Atlantic Hotel” in Weston Supermare with the promise of restoring it to it’s former glory and having a hotel that attracts high spending visitors to Weston.
Instead we have neglect and an increasingly deteriorating situation with the local Council up in arms as the building is increasingly being targeted by “urban explorers” who break into the premises , filming their exploits and in some cases writing graffiti on the internal walls and the “Fragrance Group” say they are doing everything they can to stop the dangerous and anti-social behaviour and they are working on plans to restore the hotel.
Their approach is to barricade the building with metal fences, however this hasn’t stopped the intrusions.
Perhaps the reality is time will move on , the building will become uninhabitable and the land will be redeveloped into luxury flats. Bye Bye Grand Atlantic hotel and hello profitable real estate deal.
Thanks to Nardine Saad and BBC Online News for the Headline.
Wow, this is something I wish they would pass in our Parliament here, and even President Trump think it’s a good idea. The House of Representatives have voted to make daylight saving time permanent by passing the Sunshine Protection Act on Tuesday. The bill removes the need for American’s to change their clocks twice a year and put the US under time currently observed between March and November, known as permanent standard time.
There are still those who argue that darker winter mornings will lead to increase in road accident and that increased light in the morning helps the sleep cycle. The rest of us feel that messing around with clocks twice a year is a pain and that your body adjusts naturally to the changing light conditions and does not need an artificial prod of an extra hour or one less hour about Easter and in November.
The mnemonic Spring Forward , Fall Back would be redundant.
Thanks to the Times of India World Desk for the Headline
Seems timely to revisit the choice that was made in Florida at the turn of last century to introduce a non-native tree into the swamplands in order to drain the land and allow development.
Today those invasive trees cover 400,000 acres of native sawgrass marshes and have led to significant changes to the ecological balance. The Melaleuca tree uses vast amounts of water in comparison to the Sawgrass which actually had a natural ebb and flow with it’s surroundings. The land needing an ebb and flow of water. Added to that the Melaleuca’s tree wafer thin and highly combustible bark and there is a double whammy of fire and water environmental damage, not to mention it’s cascading seeds and darkening canopy which prevents native species from thriving or even surviving.
The current cost of managing this invasive species is mounting and has to be met from Government resources. The use of biological methods such as introducing the Melaleuca Snout Beetle and the Melaleuca psyllid from Australia to reduce the tree’s ability to propagate have been moderately successful. Basically however the timebomb was set two hundred years ago without understanding the total picture and the ecology.
Thanks to Dearbail Jordan and Leanna Byrne and BBC Online News for the Headline
The Chief Executive of the Company Mondelez who now own the Cadbury’s brand and have factories in Russia has defended their decision to stay in Russia despite the Ukraine invasion by the Russian’s in 2022.
His reasoning is that although they pay taxes to Russia which could be being used to fund the Ukranian War, the reality is that they have also kept employing a lot of Russians , who let’s face it need jobs and careers and also that if they had left their factories and all the equipment, it would have been taken over by the Russian’s at great cost to Mondelez and it is estimated that the Russian’s would have made more money from their own production of chocolate then even Mondelez.
So it has been a compromise, unlike Mc Donalds who exited straight away, the makers of the Cadbury Brand has continued in the hope that the conflict will be resolved and that the Eastern European sweet tooth can continue to be satisfied.
The targeting of Russian Oil Refineries has had the knock on effect of causing fuel shortages in Russia and in President Putin announcing that Russia’s air defence systems were not robust enough.
The truth is becoming to come out, perhaps the Russian’s never saw air defence as a priority, it is such a big Country. There is also a problem with repairing and replacing spare parts should a key are of the refinery be damaged by a Ukranian Drone.
Sad to say , it all comes down to oil supplies again, with Russia now saying it will stop exporting oil and aviation fuel. So all of it’s output will be for the domestic market. Perhaps prices are coming down again since the Strait of Hormuz looks as if it will be open for traffic again.
Thanks to Dominic Waghorn and Sky News Online for the Headline.
Perhaps this is yesterday’s news or perhaps it isn’t. It’s really hard to tell. The one thing I know is we must have “Peace”.
What happened in the Middle East apparently is one of the greatest strategic blunders in US History.
I beg to differ, the whole thing was a crime against Humanity and perhaps we are fortunate today that we see these people for who they are and that their motives were despicable and so many innocent people have been harmed by their actions.
How culturally different the approach to being in the News is in Egypt. The citizen who spotted and successfully rescued six endangered loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) in the local Obour Market in Cairo Governate remains nameless.
However he bought all six turtles from the market stall holder and contacted the Ministry of the Environment and they intervened to ensure their safe rescue.
The Ministry’s Sea Turtle Rescue Center praised the citizen for his actions, I in turn praise the citizen for his modesty and initiative. The sea turtles play a vital role in maintaining the balance of marine ecosystems.
Thanks to Anastasia Stognei and Max Seddon and the Irish Times for the Headline
Before we all rush to the idea that the Russian secret service the FSB (which replaced the Soviet era KGB) is deliberately blocking the Russian Citizens freedom of expression out of choice. Not caring that it is returning the Russian economy to the late 1970’s where mobile payments were a thing of fantasy and it was faster using a geriatric pigeon then the Russian Postal Service and the connectiviy of e.mail and attachments was a distant dream.
Think the recent Israeli attacks on Tehran which wiped out most of the Senior Government figures. These targeted and effective attacks were facilitated by mobile phone towers and software embedded in Tehran’s video surveillance systems. No wonder the Russian Secret Service are worried.
Up until now the Russian Government has tried to create an appearance of normality in Moscow, as if the population could continue about their normal very Westernised activities with plenty of social interaction, communication and even a cashless society without the worry of terrorism or indeed invasion.
No longer, the threat from external forces led to the FSB requesting and receiving powers to block internet access. Unfortunately now “ordinary citizens” can no longer rely on what used to be a reliable service and connection. It has even hit Telegram which was used by over 90million Russians and now is being hit by “outages ” and lack of connectivity. I suspect a few Apple I-phones have been thrown out of high rise suburban flat windows in pure frustration.
Apparently it has been a major pet project of the Russian Government to offer alternatives to the Global Media Services which up until recently had flooded the market in Russia. There are government controlled applications which try and do what the more established Western applications do , and without all the “outages” .The uptake of these alternatives has increased. Their effectiveness, however, is patchy and one particular service is linked to a subscription to a news channel run by Vladamir Solovyov, one of Russia’s leading propagandists. Not something you wish to have if you just wanted to order some groceries online.
The FSB sounds a rather inefficient Big Brother, nevertheless there is an element of fear all around , not just from suppression of original thought but from how the freedom that technology allows has the potential to be manipulated by dangerous forces. Russia needs clever technologically savvy people to ensure their safety , they cannot afford a brain drain of those skills. Is the FSB fit for purpose?
Ten fire engines and an aerial ladder were sent to a fire on the Watermill Industrial Estate, the building housed a soft play area and a mini zoo.
All the animals died inside the building, including meercats, owls , giant tortoises , iguanas, genets and a 16 foot snake.
I wonder how long it will take them to replace their display animals or if they will be so upset that they don’t want to feature animals anymore. Time will tell.
Thanks to Greta Simpson and the Manchester Evening News for the Headline.
The wife of the teacher who saved two 14 year olds from being stabbed within a school in Blackley , in the City of Manchester,modestly agreed to provide a photo of her husband who could have been so easily killed in the frenzied attack by another child on the two 14 year olds.
It’s a beautiful photograph, he is in traditional dress of some kind, maybe at his wedding or perhaps a family wedding.
Thankfully, although he was stabbed in the neck, and the wound required hospital treatment, he was able to return home. The two children who were attacked also required hospital treatment but were able to return home. The child responsible for the attack was assessed by Mental Health Experts and is now in Police Custody.
The man’s wife explained that it was a phone call that she never wanted to recieve ” that her husband had been stabbed and was in hospital”. Thankfully he was OK. As well as the photo that she gave to the press, she asked that her best wishes be passed onto the two children who her husband had saved from more serious injury and perhaps death.
There is a lot of tragedy in this story, and there will be a moratorium as to the why and wherefore of what happened , what caused it and how are knives so easily accessed by children who think they are a solution to whatever they feel they have to face.
However, the photo of the teacher sticks in my mind, he did what all of us hope we would do in a similar situation. He acted heroically , his name is Maysum Aabdullah and he is 27.
thenotsomightyom 