'Giant Rat' Caught And Killed By Grandad in North East of England

A 'giant rat' has been caught and killed by a man in the North East of England.

Grandad Brian Watson killed the large rodent with a piece of wood in Castleside, County Durham.

It was first spotted by the boyfriend of Mr Watson's granddaughter, while he was out cutting grass on a tractor.

In an interview with Sky Tyne and Wear, Mr Watson said: "I heard him shouting there was a large rat.

"I came running round the corner. I managed to grab some wood on the way."

"It wasn't very fast. I managed to kill it there and then.

"I've never seen a rat as big in my life before." Read More

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Starbucks bows to vegan pressure and stops using crushed insects for dye in drinks....WHAT!!!! They put crushed Beetles in my Smoothie??

Starbucks is to stop using colouring made from crushed beetles as it bows to pressure from vegetarian customers.

The coffee giant has been using the colouring derived from cochineal insects in its strawberry frappuccinos and smoothies as deserts including the raspberry swirl cake.

However following an online campaign asking for the ingredient to be removed, it will be replaced with lycopene, a tomato extract. Read More

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Texas cockfight turns into a gunfight, killing 3 and leaving 8 Injured

Three people were killed and eight injured when masked gunmen opened fire during an illegal cockfight on a Texas ranch.

The attack, described by authorities as a bloody massacre, sent spectators fleeing from makeshift bleachers surrounding the fighting ring near Edcouch, near Mexico.

Police were searching for the attackers and for clues as to their possible motives, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said.

Homer Jasso, the justice of the peace for that area of the county, said the scene was shocking in its gore.

'It was a massacre,' Jasso said. 'I haven't seen this kind of violence in the valley here on my watch. This is the first time in my life I've seen something this bad.'

Authorities were withholding the names of the victims until after they had notified the men's families, but they said two of them, aged 49 and 53, were brothers. The other man was 42 years old. Read More

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Spill causes die-off of salmon in Nooksack River

FERNDALE, Wash. (AP) — State and tribal environmental officials are seeking information about a spill that caused a small die-off of young salmon in the Nooksack River.

The Lummi Natural Resources Department are reporting 11 dead Chinook salmon smolts and more than a 100 dead pink and chum salmon found in a smolt trap at Hovander Park in Ferndale.

The Bellingham Herald reports the dead fish were found at midday Tuesday. The same trap was fine that morning.

Officials believe the die-off may have been caused by a spill or the dumping of chemicals into the river. Tests found a higher acidity level in the water and scientists observed the scent of juniper or an evergreen chemical cleaner nearby.

Water samples and fish carcasses have been sent for laboratory analysis. Source

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What’s killing the fish in Meghalaya

Govt refuses to accept that uranium mining is the cause, blames the locals for coal mining with toxic substances.

THE DEATH of a large number of fish in West Khasi Hills district since 5 April has caused more than a ripple in the state. The Mukul Sangma-led Meghalaya government says preliminary investigations suggest that the death of fish in Ranikor river is due to ‘use of toxic substances by locals’ in coal mining.

The delay in solving the mystery has pitched the powerful Khasi Students Union (KSU) against the government. “We have collected samples of dead fish as well as river water from different locations and we will send it to an independent body,” says Daniel Khyriem, ksu President. “There is a high chance the deaths are due to uranium radiation.” KSU alleges that a similar incident was reported in the 1990s during exploratory drilling of uranium in the West Khasi Hills.

Deputy Chief Minister Bindo Lanong denies the charge. “If uranium radiation had caused the deaths, all other aquatic animals should have been affected and there should have been lesions on the fish,” he says. “This was not the case.” Read More

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Open sores, parasitic infections, gashes and shrimp with no eyes: The sick fish in the Gulf two years after the BP oil spill

Open sores. Parasitic infections. Chewed-up-looking fins. Gashes. Mysterious black streaks.

Two years after the drilling-rig explosion that touched off the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, scientists are beginning to suspect that fish in the Gulf of Mexico are suffering the effects of the petroleum.

The evidence is nowhere near conclusive. But if those suspicions prove correct, it could mean that the environmental damage to the Gulf from the BP disaster is still unfolding and the picture isn't as rosy as it might have seemed just a year ago.

And the damage may extend well beyond fish. In the past year, research has emerged showing deep-water coral, seaweed beds, dolphins, mangroves and other species of plants and animals are suffering.

'There is lots of circumstantial evidence that something is still awry,' said Christopher D'Elia, dean of Louisiana State University's School of the Coast and Environment. 'On the whole, it is not as much environmental damage as originally projected. Doesn't mean there is none.' Read More

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Polar bears have been in Arctic for five times longer than anyone thought - and beasts which survived Ice Ages could be wiped out by Man

Polar bears are five times older than previously thought and adapted slowly to Arctic conditions during the last Ice Age, research suggests.

Polar bears evolved long ago to cope with Arctic conditions - and are not, as some scientists have suggested, a recently evolved variation of brown bears.

Scientists now believe polar bears date back some 600,000 years - during one of the Earth's coldest periods - and evolved gradually over a series of repeated glacial cycles.

International experts led by Dr Frank Hailer, from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt, Germany, report the findings in the journal Science.

They wrote: ‘Our data suggest that polar bears are a genetically distinct lineage that is older than previously recognised.

‘An evolutionary origin several hundred thousand years ago implies that polar bears as a species have experienced multiple glacial cycles and have had considerable time to adapt to arctic conditions.

If this is true, they may not have time to adjust to rapidly rising temperatures. Read More

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China reports bird flu outbreak

Agricultural authorities in northwest China have culled about 95,000 chickens after an outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus, state press reported Wednesday.

The outbreak in Touying township of the Ningxia region was discovered on Friday last week after over 23,000 chickens began showing symptoms, Xinhua news agency said, citing the Ministry of Agriculture.

The ministry said the "epidemic is now under control", the report said, while work teams have been sent to the area to step up prevention measures. Read More

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Enormous great white shark hauled up by Sea of Cortez fishermen

Two commercial fishermen in Mexico received the surprise of a lifetime Sunday when they hauled up a great white shark measuring nearly 20 feet and weighing about 2,000 pounds, according to local news reports. The rare catch of such a large white shark -- at 20 feet it'd be among the longest ever recorded -- was made in Mexico's Sea of Cortez near Guaymas, by fishermen who thought they had merely scored a large haul of much smaller fish as they hoisted up their net.

"We were amazed and immediately realized that we had a huge, dead, great white shark, and then we thought what are we going to do?," Guadalupe, one of the fishermen, said in an interview with Pisces Sportfishing, which is located in the Baja California resort city of Cabo San Lucas. The other fisherman was named Baltazar.

The shark was dead when it was brought to the surface. The fishermen, whose skiff measures 22 feet and is powered by a 75-horsepower outboard, required an hour to tow the carcass two miles to the coast. About 50 people helped drag the behemoth onto dry sand. Milenio News reported the length of the fish to be six meters, or 19.8 feet. Read More

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Ron Fouchier the bird flu virologist is on Time list of 100 most influential..... But then Again So is Bashar Assad and Kim Jong Un

The Dutch virologist at the centre of the row over a mutant bird flu virus is included in the latest Time Magazine ranking of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Ron Fouchier is a professor at Rotterdam's Erasmus teaching hospital where he led research to develop a highly infectious strain of the bird flu virus H5N1 on behalf of a US health institute.

H5N1 rarely transfers from animal to human, but if it does, the infection is often fatal. Foucher was asked to find out if H5N1 could lead to a pandemic and was able to show that a couple of mutations in the virus dna changed it into an extremely virulent form.

There is an ongoing dispute about whether the research should be published. The Dutch government has slapped an export ban on the research because of fears it could end up in the wrong hands. Read More

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FAO to probe resurgence of H5N1 virus in Tripura, India

AGARTALA: Reports of repeated resurgence of pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza in Tripura have prompted the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to send a five-member specialist team to the state on Wednesday to investigate the matter.

According to official records, as many as 13 lakh poultry have either died or been culled in the past four years in Tripura. The poultry industry has received a setback due to frequent outbreaks of avian flu and the state has incurred an estimated loss of Rs 25 crore over the years.

More than 10,000 poultry farmers and nine state-owned companies, including the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), have borne the brunt of the outbreaks.

Animal resource development minister Aghore Debbarma said that the state government had requested FAO to investigate the reasons of frequent occurrence of bird flu in government-run companies over the past three years. Read More

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H5N1 Cases Confirmed in China

China's Northwestern Ningxia Hui autonomous region has reported an outbreak of the highly epidemic H5N1 bird flu virus in poultry, the Ministry of Agriculture announced.

More than 23,000 chickens at several farms in a village of Touying town in the city of Guyuan in Ningxia showed symptoms of suspected avian flu Friday and the National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory confirmed the epidemic was a H5N1 bird flu case after testing samples collected at those sites.

The body said in a statement that a total of 95,000 chickens have been culled after the H5N1 bird flu case was confirmed.

The epidemic is under control now as a team was dispatched to the quarantined area to guide epidemic prevention. Source

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Beached whale died of old age, experts believe‎

COCOA BEACH — A 10-foot long male pigmy sperm whale that beached Wednesday near 11th Street South appears to be the victim of heart disease.

Officials with Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute found no signs of trauma, just hallmarks of old age.

“We didn’t find anything grossly abnormal,” said Teresa Mazza, a research assistant at Hubbs who performed the field examination of the whale.

A small crowd gathered as Mazza carved out samples of the animal’s organ tissue. Those will be used to test for toxic metals, pathogens and signs of disease.

City officials brought in a backhoe to bury the whale in a hole about eight feet deep. Read More

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Dead fish could attract predators, South Africa

The recent discovery of scores of dead fish in the vicinity of Durban’s uShaka/South Beach has raised concern that careless dumping of undersize fish and by-catches might attract sharks to nearby bathing beaches.

Spear fishermen Carl Stow and Selwyn Rautenbach found dead, undersized shad lying on the sea bed near the backline last week.

How the fish died remained a mystery, but fish researchers speculated that these might have been discarded by seine netters or ski-boat fishermen.

Durban spear fisherman Rory O’Connor said he was concerned that the presence of dead fish or fish blood so close to the shore could attract sharks and predator species to nearby bathing beaches.

He was also concerned that the presence of large shoals of fish struggling to escape from seine nets could also lure sharks. Read More

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Dead fish in Pakistan lake raise fears over drinking water

Karachi Some unknown poisonous element Wednesday killed thousands of fish and other species at the Kenjhar Lake, one of the largest freshwater sources that supplies 70 per cent of drinking water to Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan.

The onslaught of fish, cows, and dogs which drank the water, was seen early yesterday morning. Even the seashells, which are found in the bed of the lake died and lifelessly floated on the lake surface and the shore, wildlife official and witnesses said.

"What I can see is that in the area of more than three kilometres all the living things in water have died including fish, other species and water plants," said Ghulam Rasool Khatri, the World Wildlife Fund representative in the Thatta district some 125 kilometres east of Karachi.
The lake, also known as Kalri Lake, is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Pakistan with extensive reedbeds and flowering plants of lotus. The lake breeds a diverse range of flora and fauna and a wide variety of waterfowl, thus it is a wildlife sanctuary. Source

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48 lambs drown when concrete slab protecting well is deliberately removed

A farmer has spoken of his anger after a concrete slab protecting a well in his field was deliberately removed and resulted in the death of 48 lambs.

Clive Taylor, 62, found the animals dead floating at the bottom of a disused well at his farm at Broomcroft Farm, near Much Wenlock, Shropshire on Sunday.

The 8ft-deep well was covered with a 200kg stone slab which Mr Taylor believes was deliberately removed to expose the 2ft wide hole which the lambs tumbled into. Read More

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Michigan government unleashes armed raids on small pig farmers, forces farmer to shoot all his own piglets

"I think this is an unconstitutional order, these actions of the DNR are way out of bounds," attorney Joseph O'Leary told NaturalNews in an interview today.

He is representing one of the farmers who was targeted in these raids. "To take what was six months ago an entirely legal activity, and suddenly people are felons over it. They're not growing drugs, running guns or killing anybody, they're raising animals pursuant to USDA regulations and state of Michigan regulations. They haven't done anything wrong here, and the DNR is treating them like they are hardened criminals."

In anticipation of the DNR arriving on the scene, one farmer engaged in what can only be described as a heart-wrenching task of shooting his own pigs, one by one, including baby piglets before the DNR arrived. This was to avoid being arrested as a felon. His livelihood is now completely destroyed, as the state of Michigan has put him out of business. Read More

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New Mexico firm applies for first horse meat slaughterhouse

A New Mexico slaughterhouse has petitioned the federal government to become the first business to offer horse meat for human consumption since an effective ban on the practice ended last year, according to state officials and animal welfare groups.

Those groups said last week they are rallying to try to block the slaughterhouse’s petition, hoping to head off what they fear could be a series of slaughterhouses applying to produce horse meat.

“Horse slaughter means tremendous suffering of horses, a proven history of environmental and waste violations, and allowing a toxic meat product to enter the human food chain,” said Hilary Wood, president and founder of Front Range Equine Rescue, a Colorado-based group that said it uncovered the slaughterhouse’s plans.

The animal welfare groups said the slaughterhouse has been in negotiations with the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for several months about beginning to process horse meat. Read More

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