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Draft Motion for a Resolution prepared for the EU Parliamentary Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, March 2016
Draft Motion prepared by Rapporteurs Pavel Poc (Socialists and Democrats Group), Kateřina Konečná on behalf of the European United Left and Nordic Green Left group, Bas Eickhout of the Greens / European Free Alliance Group, Piernicola Pedicini of the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group, Mark Demesmaeker, Sirpa Pietikäinen and Frédérique Ries. This draft Motion was carried forward for the vote in a Parliamentary Plenary Session in April 2016.
About 89% of the public want their governments to do more to tackle the climate crisis – but don’t know they’re the majority
A superpower in the fight against global heating is hiding in plain sight. It turns out that the overwhelming majority of people in the world – between 80% and 89%, according to a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies – want their governments to take stronger climate action.
As co-founders of a non-profit that studies news coverage of climate change, those findings surprised even us. And they are a sharp rebuttal to the Trump administration’s efforts to attack anyone who does care about the climate crisis.
Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope are the co-founders of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now
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Discovery could provide valuable clues as to how the climate crisis might affect Antarctica, says study
Giant, flat-topped icebergs the size of the city of Cambridge drifted off the coast of Britain during the last ice age, according to a study that has uncovered evidence of their existence for the first time.
A series of distinctive, comb-like grooves found preserved in sediment near Aberdeen in Scotland were left behind by the underside of huge “tabular” icebergs that dragged across the North Sea floor between 18,000 and 20,000 years ago, the researchers said.
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Campaigners condemn decision amid growing evidence of harm to health and climate from heating appliances
Wood-burning stoves will be allowed to heat new-build homes in England despite growing evidence showing their significant contribution to air pollution and carbon emissions.
The government is writing its future homes standard, a set of rules for developers, aimed at decarbonising England’s housing stock. Heating the UK’s 28m homes accounts for about 18% of greenhouse gas emissions.
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Birds in their 40s wintering on mudflats of the Wash received leg rings in early 1980s
If your ears are assaulted by the shrill piping calls of an excitable bird on the east coast of England, fear not: it’s probably an oystercatcher experiencing a midlife crisis.
Two of the handsome black and white birds with bright red-orange bills have been found to be the oldest known oystercatchers ever recorded in Britain, clocking up at least 41 and 43 years on the mudflats of the Wash.
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Two Belgian 19-year-olds have pleaded guilty to wildlife piracy – part of a growing trend of trafficking ‘less conspicuous’ creatures for sale as exotic pets
Poaching busts are familiar territory for the officers of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), an armed force tasked with protecting the country’s iconic creatures. But what awaited guards when they descended in early April on a guesthouse in the west of the country was both larger and smaller in scale than the smuggling operations they typically encounter. There were more than 5,000 smuggled animals, caged in their own enclosures. Each one, however, was about the size of a little fingernail: 18-25mm.
The cargo, which two Belgian teenagers had apparently intended to ship to exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia, was ants. Their enclosures were a mixture of test tubes and syringes containing cotton wool – environments that authorities say would keep the insects alive for weeks.
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The Marches, Shropshire: In this garden we’ve had woolly aphids, rose aphids, whitefly and blackfly, now we have Californian maple aphids, who have a story of their own
An accidental touch of a branch brings a handful of little sticky dots. Looking at the branch, the surprise is that all the lower ones are covered with a shifting pointillism of dots moving together. Under a hand lens they become autonomous animals – aphids.
There are thousands of them, moving independently as individuals, each with a sense of purpose and moment, determined and working together. Forming clusters around scar tissue on bark wounds, walking upwards towards the canopy of opening leaves, the aphids catch the sunlight and their amber bodies shine with the viscosity of drops of honey. In the morning sun they cast shadows, an imaginary material to which old fears and prejudices stick.
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Americans have often moved between states for opportunities. Now they’re being forced to uproot themselves to escape hostile forces under Trump
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The UN has called the detention of Pablo López Alavez ‘arbitrary’, while human rights organisations say his sentence is part of a systematic and alarming pattern of criminalisation of Mexico’s environmental activists
The meeting room in the prison of Villa de Etla, a town in Oaxaca, Mexico, doubles as a classroom with school desks and a small library. The walls feature motivational phrases such as “First things first”, “Live and let live” and “Little by little, you’ll go far”.
Pablo López Alavez, a 56-year-old environmental defender, has had nearly 15 years to contemplate these sentiments – and faces 15 more, after being imprisoned for murders he says he did not commit.
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‘As a species, these crocs are easy to find and easy to catch. Brice Itoua is the most skilled hunter in his village. But they kill the crocs to eat – not to sell’
The Congo dwarf crocodile is a lovely species. They’re very shy and, unfortunately, very easy to find and catch. Mostly hunted for their bushmeat, these crocs only grow up to a few feet in length and during the dry season, they often spend the daytime hiding in burrows and dens at the water’s edge. Hunters use a long, woody liana vine with a hook on the end to drag them out, before binding their snout with a shorter vine and carrying them away.
Last summer, I shot a story about the Congo dwarf crocodile after being given access to the Lake Télé Community Reserve by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which manages this protected area in the Republic of the Congo with the Congolese government.
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Rock deposits provide first land-based evidence of Earth’s largest flood, when water surged through strait of Gibraltar
The event that refilled the Mediterranean basin 5m years ago is thought to have been the largest flood in Earth’s history, with water surging through the present-day strait of Gibraltar 1,000 times faster than the Amazon River, filling the basin in just a couple of years. Now jumbled rock deposits on the top of hills in south-east Sicily provide the first land-based evidence for this flood.
The megaflood theory emerged in 2009, when scientists discovered a massive eroded channel at the bottom of the strait of Gibraltar. Subsequent research has revealed scours on the sea floor, showing how the water forced its way through the shallow gap between Sicily and mainland Africa, to fill the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
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Lajmska bolest (Lyme borelioza), koju uzrokuje bakterija Borrelia burgdorferi, a prenose je krpelji, sve je veći zdravstveni problem koji može uzrokovati ozbiljne bolesti ako se ne liječi pravilno. No, rano liječenje antibioticima može spriječiti razvoj srčanih, neuroloških i reumatoloških komplikacija koje se javljaju kasnije u bolesti.
Metabolički sindrom u srednjim godinama povezan je s povećanim rizikom od demencije u mladosti, prema nedavno objavljenoj studiji. Demencija u mladosti dijagnosticira se prije 65. godine života. Studija ne dokazuje da metabolički sindrom uzrokuje demenciju u mladosti, samo pokazuje povezanost.
Pacijenti s kroničnom limfocitnom leukemijom (CLL) ili malim limfocitnim limfomom (SLL) koji su uzimali statine, lijekove za snižavanje povišene razine kolesterola, na početku liječenja raka, imali su 61% manji rizik od smrti od raka u usporedbi sa sličnim pacijentima koji nisu uzimali statine, pokazuje nova studija.
Rezultati nove studije pokazali su da su majke koje su anemične u ranoj trudnoći suočene s većom vjerojatnošću da će roditi dijete sa srčanom manom. Nakon prilagodbe mogućim čimbenicima utjecaja, izgledi za rađanje djeteta s prirođenom srčanom bolešću bili su 47% veći među anemičnim majkama.
Sveobuhvatni pregled više studija pokazuje da mediteranska prehrana značajno smanjuje rizik od raka dojke kod žena u postmenopauzi, ističući potencijal prehrane kao strateškog alata za prevenciju.
Prema rezultatima nove studije, jednostavan krvni test za p-tau181 u plazmi može otkriti kognitivno opadanje, ranu, ali biološki različitu fazu Alzheimerove bolesti (AD), godinama prije pojave tradicionalnih simptoma bolesti.
Rezultati nove studije otkrivaju kako vitamin D suzbija upalu, pojačava imunološki nadzor i remeti razvoj tumora kako bi nas zaštitio od raka debelog crijeva. Dva glavna oblika vitamina D su vitamini D3 i D2. Vitamin D2, kojeg proizvode biljke i gljive, značajno je manje učinkovit od vitamina D3.
Nekoliko je studija izvijestilo da je crijevna mikrobiota zamršeno uključena u nastanak ateroskleroze, patološkog stanja povezanog s koronarnom bolesti srca (CHD), cerebrovaskularnom bolešću i bolešću perifernih arterija. Točnije, poremećaj crijevne barijere može dovesti do translokacije lipopolisaharida (LPS) izvedenog iz crijevne mikrobiote i sistemske upale niskog stupnja, a oboje doprinosi patofiziologiji ateroskleroze.
Nova studija je otkrila da više od 1 od 5 dječaka i muškaraca u Kanadi i SAD-u može zadovoljiti dijagnostičke kriterije za poremećaj prehrane, naglašavajući hitnu potrebu za većom sviješću, prilagođenim naporima za prevenciju i uključivom kliničkom podrškom za ovu nedovoljno prepoznatu skupinu.
Izgleda da uobičajeni lijekovi poput acetilsalicilatne kiseline, ibuprofena, statina i beta blokatora usporavaju napredovanje Parkinsonove bolesti, sugeriraju rezultati nove studije.
