Using data obtained during six years of regular aerial surveys and genetics data collected by a consortium of research groups, scientists have strengthened evidence pointing to the central Gulf of Maine as a mating ground for North Atlantic right whales, according to a study recently published online in the journal Endangered Species Research. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
Young harp seals off the eastern coast of Canada are at much higher risk of getting stranded than adult seals because of shrinking sea ice cover caused by recent warming in the North Atlantic, according to a Duke University study. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
Icelanders were voting Saturday in a parliamentary election that could return to power the center-right parties that led the country into economic collapse five years ago — and stall plans to join the European Union.
Polls show the Progressive and Independence parties, who oppose EU membership, leading the Social Democrat-Left-Green coalition that has governed Iceland during four years of crisis and uneven recovery.
“The government that many people thought was cleaning up the mess is getting severely punished for the last four years,” said political analyst Egill Helgason. “I don’t know whether they deserve it. In many ways I think not. But this is politics — cruel.”
A volcano-dotted North Atlantic nation with a population of just 320,000, Iceland went from economic wunderkind to financial basket case almost overnight when the credit crunch took hold in 2008.
In the first years of this century — under a coalition of the Independence and Progressive parties — Iceland‘s economy experienced a credit-fueled boom that saw its banking sector grow to nine times annual gross domestic product.
Then all three major commercial banks collapsed within a week of one another in October 2008. The value of the country’s currency plummeted, while inflation and unemployment soared. Iceland was forced to seek bailouts from Europe and the International Monetary Fund.
A wave of protest — dubbed the Saucepan Revolution after the pots and pans banged by demonstrators — ended with the government blamed for the crisis replaced with a left-of-center alliance led by Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, which opened EU membership talks.
Since then, Iceland has in many ways made a strong recovery. Unemployment has fallen and the economy is growing.
But inflation remains naggingly high, and many Icelanders still struggle to repay home and car loans they took out — often in foreign currencies those value soared after the crash — in the years of easy credit.
Both the Progressive and Independence parties are appealing to voters with promises to ease austerity. Progressive Party chief Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson is promising to write off some mortgage debt, taking money from foreign creditors.
Independence Party leader Bjarni Benediktsson is offering lower
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
By Neal Colgrass Already annoyed by airplane turbulence and flashing seat-belt signs? Those bumpy rides will get significantly worse over the North Atlantic in years to come, according to a new study. A British research team has found that climate change will probably intensify North Atlantic winds that were already growing stronger. That…
From: http://www.newser.com/story/165891/new-effect-of-climate-change-bumpy-flights.html
Buckle up.
Researchers say that more pollution is likely to mean bumpier flights for trans-Atlantic travelers, explaining that models show increased turbulence over the north Atlantic as carbon dioxide levels rise.
University of East Anglia climate expert Manoj Joshi says that scientists have long studied the impact of the carbon-heavy aviation industry on climate change. Unusually, he said, “we looked at the effect of climate change on aviation.”
In a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change Joshi and his University of Reading colleague Paul Williams ran a climate simulation which cranked up the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to twice its pre-industrial level.
What they found was a 10 to 40 percent increase in the median strength of turbulence over the North Atlantic in winter months.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
By The Huffington Post News Editors
From Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer:
Transatlantic airline passengers might expect to stay seated with their seatbelts securely fastened more often in the future, according to new research that finds climate change could lead to more airplane turbulence.
By the middle of the century, turbulence strength over the North Atlantic flight corridor could increase between 10 percent and 40 percent, and turbulence frequency could jump between 40 percent and 170 percent, according to the new study published online today (April 8) in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Read More…
More on Climate Change
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
A Russian cruise ship with only rats aboard is floating aimlessly in the North Atlantic, hundreds of miles off the coast of Newfoundland after breaking loose from a tugboat.
The MV Lyubov Orlova — named after an iconic Russian film actress — was being towed to a scrapyard in the Dominican Republic when a cable snapped, leaving the 295-foot vessel adrift. A brief effort to re-secure the boat was abandoned days later due to rough seas. As of Tuesday, the ship was roughly 760 miles off the coast of Newfoundland and 1,125 miles from Ireland, a U.S. intelligence agency told FoxNews.com.
“We continue to receive information about the ship’s location, and will issue message when needed to facilitate safe navigation,” Christine Phillips, a spokeswoman for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
The 37-year-old, Yugoslavia-built ship is slowly floating toward Europe. Phillips said she was unaware of any government-led efforts by any country to secure or salvage the Orlova.
Nine days after its initial departure, the ship was reportedly spotted by the Atlantic Hawk, an oil platform supply vessel that was able to intercept and briefly secure the Lyubov Orlova until Feb. 4. But Transport Canada — Canada’s transportation authority — then ordered it be cut loose since the ship had left the country’s waters and was in potentially dangerous seas with waves of up to 23 feet and 80 mph wind gusts.
“Continued efforts to tow the the Lyubov Orlova would have caused unacceptable risk to the crews of the towing operation,” Transport Canada spokeswoman Marie-Eve Higo wrote in an email to The Globe and Mail.
The agency said the ship’s owner was now responsible for its movements.
“The vessel has drifted into international waters, and given current patterns and predominant winds, it is very unlikely that the vessel will re-enter waters under Canadian jurisdiction,” the department said in a statement last month.
The ship, at the time, was roughly 50 nautical miles outside of Canadian waters and was moving northeasterly, according to the Transport Canada statement.
Phillips said the Canadian Coast Guard later relayed the location of the derelict vessel to NGA officials. NGA officials, in turn, informed mariners through the World Wide Navigational Warning Service on Feb. 19, Phillips said.
The owner of the ship, according to court records cited by The Globe and Mail, is Hussein Humayuni, owner of Neptune International Shipping Inc. A message seeking comment from Neptune officials by FoxNews.com was not immediately returned on Wednesday.
The ship’s current status is not the first time it has made headlines. Due to a reported financial dispute between Cruise North Expeditions, which wanted to charter the ice-fortified ship for summer cruises in the Arctic Ocean, the vessel was seized in St. John’s when it arrived in September 2010. Local residents reportedly donated food, clothing and other necessities to the stranded crew of 44 until they could be repatriated to Russia three months later.
Barista Uno, a blogger who writes about maritime issues, said the ship likely poses no danger as long as it is far from land or shipping lanes.
“I’m not …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
In the age of instant information, globe-spanning viral videos and the World Wide Web, can a thoroughly wired country become a porn-free zone? Authorities in Iceland want to find out.
The government of the tiny North Atlantic nation is drafting plans to ban pornography, in print and online, in an attempt to protect children from a tide of violent sexual imagery.
The proposal by Interior Minister Ogmundur Jonasson has caused an uproar. Opponents say the move will censor the Web, encourage authoritarian regimes and undermine Iceland‘s reputation as a Scandinavian bastion of free speech.
Advocates say it is a sensible measure that will shelter children from serious harm.
“When a 12 year old types ‘porn’ into Google, he or she is not going to find photos of naked women out on a country field, but very hardcore and brutal violence,” said Halla Gunnarsdottir, political adviser to the interior minister.
“There are laws in our society. Why should they not apply to the Internet?”
Gunnarsdottir says the proposals currently being drawn up by a committee of experts will not introduce new restrictions, but simply uphold an existing if vaguely worded law.
Pornography is already banned in Iceland, and has been for decades — but the term is not defined, so the law is not enforced. Magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse are on sale in book stores, and more hard-core material can be bought from a handful of sex shops. “Adult” channels form part of digital TV packages.
Iceland‘s left-of-center government insists it is not setting out to sweep away racy magazines or censor sex. The ban would define pornography as material with violent or degrading content.
Gunnarsdottir said the committee is still exploring the details of how a porn ban could be enforced. One possibility would be to make it illegal to pay for porn with Icelandic credit cards. Another, more controversial, route would be a national Internet filter or a list of website addresses to be blocked.
That idea has Internet-freedom advocates alarmed.
“This kind of thing does not work. It is technically impossible to do in a way that has the intended effect,” said …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
In the age of instant information, globe-spanning viral videos and the World Wide Web, can a thoroughly wired country become a porn-free zone? Authorities in Iceland want to find out.
The government of the tiny North Atlantic nation is drafting plans to ban pornography, in print and online, in an attempt to protect children from a tide of violent sexual imagery.
The proposal by Interior Minister Ogmundur Jonasson has caused an uproar. Opponents say the move will censor the Web, encourage authoritarian regimes and undermine Iceland‘s reputation as a Scandinavian bastion of free speech.
Advocates say it is a sensible measure that will shelter children from serious harm.
“When a 12 year old types `porn’ into Google, he or she is not going to find photos of naked women out on a country field, but very hardcore and brutal violence,” said Halla Gunnarsdottir, political adviser to the interior minister.
“There are laws in our society. Why should they not apply to the Internet?”
Gunnarsdottir says the proposals currently being drawn up by a committee of experts will not introduce new restrictions, but simply uphold an existing if vaguely worded law.
Pornography is already banned in Iceland, and has been for decades — but the term is not defined, so the law is not enforced. Magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse are on sale in book stores, and more hard-core material can be bought from a handful of sex shops. “Adult” channels form part of digital TV packages.
Iceland‘s left-of-center government insists it is not setting out to sweep away racy magazines or censor sex. The ban would define pornography as material with violent or degrading content.
Gunnarsdottir said the committee is still exploring the details of how a porn ban could be enforced. One possibility would be to make it illegal to pay for porn with Icelandic credit cards. Another, more controversial, route would be a national Internet filter or a list of website addresses to be blocked.
That idea has Internet-freedom advocates alarmed.
“This kind of thing does not work. It is technically impossible to do in a way that has the intended effect,” said Smari McCarthy of free-speech group the International Modern Media Institute. “And it has negative side effects — everything from slowing down the Internet to blocking content that is not meant to be blocked to just generally opening up a whole can of worms regarding human rights issues, access to information and freedom of expression.”
Despite its often chaotic appearance, the Internet is not a wholly lawless place. It is regulated, to varying degrees, around the world. Police monitor the net for child pornography and other illegal material, and service providers in many countries block offending sites.
Some governments also censor the Internet at a national level — though the likes of authoritarian Iran, North Korea and China are not countries liberal Iceland wants to emulate.
European countries including Britain, Sweden and Denmark ask Internet service providers to block child pornography websites, measures that have met with only limited opposition.
But broader filtering has mostly been resisted. A few years …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
AP
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at AOL
A Russian cruise ship abandoned and adrift in the North Atlantic has been located about 2,400 kilometers off the west coast of Ireland, according to a US intelligence agency. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
The Australian billionaire who’s planning to build a high-tech replica of the Titanic at a Chinese shipyard has received an “overwhelming” response from people who want to be the first paying passengers.
Representatives for Clive Palmer, who in April announced a preliminary agreement with state-owned Chinese company CSC Jinling Shipyard to build Titanic II, said Saturday that his shipping company has received inquiries from people in the U.S., Britain, Asia and South America.
Interest has been so strong that “we’ve probably had half a dozen people already offering more than $1 million to get on the maiden voyage” slated for 2016, said James McDonald, global marketing director of Blue Star Line Pty. Ltd.
The strong interest comes even though construction has not even started on the ship. Blue Star officials said they hoped to sign a final contract soon with CSC Jinling, based in Jiangsu province. They would not reveal how much Titanic II is expected to cost.
The Titanic was, at the time, the world’s largest and most luxurious ocean liner when it hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank on April 15, 1912, killing more than 1,500 people.
Palmer has said the new ship will be just as luxurious as the original but also have the latest navigation and safety technology. The designers will be assisted by a historical research team as they try to make the ship look as close as possible to the original. The diesel-powered ship will even have four smoke stacks like the coal-powered original, but they will be purely decorative.
Raymond Tam, Blue Star‘s director of Asia operations, said the contract for Titanic II will be a shot in the arm for China‘s fledgling shipbuilding industry as it tries to compete globally.
“China has been one of the strongest players in building bulk carriers and container vessels,” said Tam. “In terms of building luxury ships, they have a small market share. However, Titanic II will be the start of a massive Chinese challenge to the European luxury shipbuilders.”
Palmer built his fortune in real estate and coal. Australia’s BRW magazine estimated his net worth last year at $4 billion although Forbes puts it at $895 million.
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Online:
Scientists from Stanford University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and other organizations are closing in on the answer to an important conservation question: how many humpback whales once existed in the North Atlantic? …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
(Phys.org)—Two robots equipped with instruments designed to “listen” for the calls of baleen whales detected nine endangered North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of Maine last month. The robots reported the detections to shore-based researchers within hours of hearing the whales (i.e., in real time), demonstrating a new and powerful tool for managing interactions between whales and human activities.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
