No animals should ever be kept in a cage!

We know how healthy our society is, by how healthy its animals are!
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Caged chook cruelty?

April 5, 2013, 6:18 pm Helen Wellings Today Tonight

Aussies eat nearly five billion eggs a year but there’s controversy over how those eggs are produced as critics are calling for caged eggs to be banned.

Caged chook cruelty?

Australian eat nearly five billion eggs a year but there’s controversy over how those eggs are produced as critics of the caged system are calling for it to be banned.

Vision captured by Animal Liberation shows multiple deaths caused by fire at a Pace egg farm.

Animal Liberation’s Mark Pearson and Felicity Andersen say “intensive egg farming is barbaric, causing suffering and injury.”

55 per cent of the eggs consumed by Australians are from caged birds. There are 4.8 million hens in Australia that live this way in long rows with six to eight birds a cage.

Animal Liberation wants this practice to be banned.

“Eleven thousand birds cooked to death (from the fire),” Pearson said.

The hens at Libreri Farm in the New South Wales Hunter Valley show the scars of captivity.

“This is the issue with the cage, the birds can’t get away from the aggressor, they are stuck in the corner, they have to be pecked and pecked and pecked and they can’t get away from it,” Pearson explained.

“You can see the shocking injuries, the dead decaying hens left in cages. There are hens with infections and diseases, the suffering is unimaginable,” Andersen said.

Some Animal Liberation members have been fined for trespassing on Somerville Egg Farm at Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

Lou and Maria Napolitano who own Somerville Egg Farm are upset and deny allegations of mistreatment.

“The science says that is what they are designed for. They have been selectively bred to be happy in there and that’s where they are,” Napolitano said.

“These people are vegans and they don’t want to farm animals at all. There’s no wounds on the chooks, no one has shown me anything,” Napolitano said.

According to Napolitano the chickens are in the care for “the rest of their life” which is 12 months.

“That is totally legal and totally scientific,” Napolitano said.

The Napolitano’s have accused Animal Liberation of causing the birds to injure each other and of planting carcasses in cages when they broke in.

“That is simply not true. We found carcasses that had clearly been there for weeks that have decayed and sunken in to the wire,” Andersen said.

Veterinary Surgeon Dr Jesse Harvey thinks “industralised farming can be done in a more effective, productive way where the welfare of the animals is more taken into account as opposed to just mass production for cheap cost.”

Dr Harvey who examined the rescued hens says “the sores were many days old, so couldn’t have been caused by Animal Liberation’s break-in the night before.

Caged eggs are cheap with the average costing $3.10 a dozen compared to free-range eggs at $5.35 and barn-laid at $4.75.

But because of welfare concerns, Coles has removed caged eggs from its Coles brand product range.

Tasmania’s phasing out battery cages and the European Union, representing 27 countries, banned caged hen farming this year.

It’s also illegal in Switzerland and several states in the USA.

Free-range means birds are housed in sheds with access to outdoors. Barn-laid are free to roam inside a shed.

But there’s no legally enforceable definition.

“That’s the whole idea of free range, they are free to come and go,” Napolitano said.

But Napolitano says “free range is not all it’s cracked to be.” He has 10,000 free range hens in the shed and most like to be inside.

“I’ve never seen more than 40 per cent out at any one time. Most humans would say but they don’t go outside, well we say we give them the ability to go outside,” Napolitano said.

The Australian Egg Corporation wants to increase free-range density from the current voluntary code of 1500 hens per hectare up to 20,000 which means two hens per square meter. That’s 15 times more.

But the ACCC knocked it back.

But now Coles after rejecting own label caged eggs, plans to pack more free-range hens into its shed – 10,000 hens per hectare which is one square meter for each hen – making some free range more and more akin to the density of the caged system.

“It’s immoral and it needs to end, the egg producers have to be held accountable and the public needs to know the truth,” Andersen said.

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Preparations begin for damaging solar storms

Date

April 5, 2013 – 10:47AM

Mariette Le Roux

Zoom in on this story. Explore all there is to know.

• International Space Station
• Earth
• Juha-Pekka Luntama
• Quebec

An M9-class solar flare erupting on the Sun’s northeastern hemisphere. Photo: NASA

Europe launched its first space weather coordination centre on Wednesday to raise the alarm for possible satellite-sizzling solar storms that also threaten astronauts in orbit, plane passengers and electricity grids on Earth.

Though impossible to predict, a worst-case scenario mega-storm can happen at any time, leaving the world without internet, telephones, television, electricity and air and rail transport for days on end.

In the worst case, what could happen is that the transformers in the power grid are damaged and in that case, replacement of the transformers can take weeks or months.

Limited precautions can be taken, but early warning is key, say experts at the European Space Agency (ESA) which runs the centre from Brussels.

“A pilot can always land a plane… because they have alternatives [to satellites] for navigation, but if they get the disturbance without warning, at the wrong time, that can be dangerous,” Juha-Pekka Luntama, head of ESA’s space weather division said at the launch.

Even a slight satellite glitch can put navigation out by 100 metres – enough to miss a runway.

Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere protect the planet from radiation released during solar flares and geomagnetic storms – some of the most severe forms of space weather.

Smaller eruptions usually have little noticeable effect – perhaps slight problems with car navigation systems or mobile phones.

But a major solar storm on the scale of an event in 1859 that crippled global telegraph systems could have severe impacts today.

A “coronal mass ejection” – which sends electromagnetic radiation flying towards Earth at a speed of some 2500 kilometres per second and plays havoc with long transmission lines – caused surges on telegraph lines so strong in 1859 that offices caught fire and operators received electric shocks.

Such a storm today could claim about 50 to 100 satellites – 10 per cent of the total in orbit, according to ESA.

But probably the biggest threat to Earth lies in electric power grid surges.

“In the worst case, what could happen is that the transformers in the power grid are damaged and in that case, replacement of the transformers can take weeks or months,” said Luntama.

Even if only a small part of the grid is damaged, overloading in neighbouring systems can lead to more blackouts that spread domino-like, such as the nine-hour power blackout in Quebec in Canada in 1989.

Astronauts orbiting Earth on the International Space Station (ISS), closer to the source of the radiation, could be at high risk of a severe solar storm, as could plane crews and passengers flying over the polar regions.

Precautions would include turning off satellites to lessen the risk, reducing the load on power grids, astronauts taking cover in well-shielded part of the ISS, and planes being diverted or even grounded if communications become unreliable.

Once witnessed by space weather watchers, the fallout from a solar storm takes between 17 and 48 hours to reach Earth, depending on its severity.

The coordination centre, a central point for space weather enquiries, will draw on the expertise of dozens of European universities, research institutions and private companies.

A similar service already exists in the United States.

For the moment, the ESA service — funded by 14 member states — is free.

The centre started operating six months ago and is expected to be fully operational by 2020 – part of wider, multi-billion euro ESA system that also tracks objects in space that pose a collision threat.

AFP

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/preparations-begin-for-damaging-solar-storms-20130405-2hare.html#ixzz2PYrtvygI

We must all STOP asking doctor’s for antibiotics for every little thing!

This issue will only get worse.

Stupidity in over prescription of antibiotics has led to this deadly situation.

Mankind, continues to be, its own worst enemy!
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Superbug discovery triggers new health alarm

Date

March 30, 2013

Dan Harrison

Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent

View more articles from Dan Harrison

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Zoom in on this story. Explore all there is to know.

• Mycobacterium

Senator Richard Di Natale. Photo: Ken Irwin

Researchers have confirmed long-held fears that a drug-resistant bug that is increasingly common in Australia can spread from person to person.

In a finding that could carry major implications for how hospitals control infections, British researchers have provided the first proof the debilitating bug, Mycobacterium abscessus, can be transmitted between patients.

The bug, which accelerates decline in lung function and can prevent safe lung transplantation, has become increasingly prevalent in Australia over the past decade, a previous study found. It must be treated with an extended course of a poorly tolerated combination of antibiotics and treatment often fails.

The findings, published in The Lancet on Friday, come as a Senate committee examines Australia’s response to the problem of drug-resistant infections.

The study authors say their findings carry major implications for how hospitals care for patients and raise questions about the adequacy of current infection control measures.

The researchers conducted DNA analysis of samples collected from 31 patients at a cystic fibrosis centre in Britain and concluded the bug had frequently been transmitted between patients, despite infection-control measures. Previously, it had been thought people caught the bug from their environment. While experts had been concerned about the possibility of the bug spreading between people, the study provides the first proof.

Researchers were unable to identify exactly how it had been transmitted, but suggested it may have spread through contaminated clothing or bedding or through airborne water droplets.

England’s chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, recently called for worldwide action to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria, saying superbugs posed a ”catastrophic threat” to human health that should be likened to terrorism.

Greens senator Richard Di Natale, a medical doctor who instigated the Senate inquiry, said the emergence of superbugs was ”one of the great health challenges of this decade”.

”We only have a very narrow window to take action to start turning the problem around.

If we don’t, we face the prospect of a world without antibiotics, where people will die of simple infections,” he said.

He described evidence to the inquiry as ”alarming” and said the government needed to make tackling the problem a priority.

The federal government has set up a committee, comprising public servants, the chief medical officer and the chief veterinary officer to look at the problem.

Austin Hospital head of infectious diseases Professor Lindsay Grayson told the inquiry if authorities did not move to contain existing superbugs and prevent new ones emerging over the next three to five years, infections would increase dramatically.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/superbug-discovery-triggers-new-health-alarm-20130329-2gz4l.html#ixzz2OwKKKHqR

You think Gillard’s Climate Change Tax is Wrong? Read this!

This comment, is by Malcolm Turnbull, an Opposition Member of Parliament. A member of the Liberal Party.

Malcolm Turnbull missed out becoming the leader of the Liberal Party by only one vote, at the party ballot where Blabbott (sic) was elected the leader. I suspect that many Liberal Party members sorely regret that they supported Abbott now. But their strategy by showing a united front, has been the most effective weapon against Labor’s destabilising actions by Kelvin Dudd’s (sic) supporters.

And if people think the Liberal’s are a better choice than Labor, then something is wrong with the sanity of the people of this country, 

Following one party, no matter what, has to be one of the most stupid actions a voter can take. And it is definitely indicative of narrow minded thinking. That is not what Australia needs, to take it into the future.

Now read the words, of a person, who must surely be regarded as a potential future Prime Minister of this country of ours.
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Abbott’s climate change policy is bullshit

Date

December 7, 2009

Category

Opinion  Malcolm Turnbull

Bulls**t? Abbott laughs it off

Tony Abbott laughs off comments made by Malcolm Turnbull about his Emissions Trading Scheme.

While a shadow minister, Tony Abbott, was never afraid of speaking bluntly in a manner that was at odds with Coalition policy.

So as I am a humble backbencher I am sure he won’t complain if I tell a few home truths about the farce that the Coalition’s policy, of lack of policy, on climate change has descended into.

First, lets get this straight. You cannot cut emissions without a cost. To replace dirty coal fired power stations with cleaner gas fired ones, or renewables like wind let alone nuclear power or even coal fired power with carbon capture and storage is all going to cost money.

To get farmers to change the way they manage their land, or plant trees and vegetation all costs money.

Somebody has to pay.

So any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, “bullshit.” Moreover he knows it.

The whole argument for an emissions trading scheme as opposed to cutting emissions via a carbon tax or simply by regulation is that it is cheaper – in other words electricity prices will rise by less to achieve the same level of emission reductions.

The term you will see used for this is “least cost abatement”.

It is not possible to criticise the new Coalition policy on climate change because it does not exist. Mr Abbott apparently knows what he is against, but not what he is for.

Second, as we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion “climate change is crap” or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world.

Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is “crap” and you don’t need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing. After all, as Nick Minchin observed, in his view the majority of the Party Room do not believe in human caused global warming at all. I disagree with that assessment, but many people in the community will be excused for thinking the leadership ballot proved him right.

Remember Nick Minchin’s defense of the Howard Government’s ETS was that the Government was panicked by the polls and therefore didn’t really mean it.

Tony himself has in just four or five months publicly advocated the blocking of the ETS, the passing of the ETS, the amending of the ETS and if the amendments were satisfactory passing it, and now the blocking of it.

His only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with “Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but…..”

Third, there is a major issue of integrity at stake here and Liberals should reflect very deeply on it. We have an Opposition whose current leadership dismisses the Howard Government’s ETS policy as being just a political ploy. We have an Opposition Leader who has in the space of a few months held every possible position on the issue, each one contradicting the position he expressed earlier. And finally we have an Opposition which negotiated amendments to the Rudd Government’s ETS, then reached agreement on those amendments and then, a week later, reneged on the agreement.

Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy but we are now without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted.

Not that anyone would doubt it, but I will be voting for the ETS legislation when it returns in February and if my colleagues have any sense they will do so as well

This first appeared in former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull’s blog this morning.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/abbotts-climate-change-policy-is-bullshit-20091207-kdmb.html#ixzz2OkNbdwDo

How Pacific Ocean Currents affect our Weather

How El Niño & La Niña affects you

Posted on 26 March 2013 by Essie

We’ve seen some incredible weather in Australia over the last couple of years. How much of that is caused by the weather created by El Niño & La Niña? How do these weather systems affect our country and where? Find out how and why it matters to you in our latest Infographic!

The Age of the Universe Bullshit!

I have never, not even for one single solitary second, given the primitive, evolutionary stage that they, our ‘scientists’, and the rest of mankind, are at, ever believed, that in my lifetime, anyone, would know the real age of the universe!

My mind boggles, that our primitive minds, could be so arrogant, as to assume, and, put a date on, the creation of the universe.  

There will continue to be new discoveries, that will produce more data, that will make our 13.8 billion years estimate laughable. As laughable as the similarity that can be drawn to creationist thinking, that according to the bible, the universe is 5,000 years old.

And this also applies to my acceptance of the ‘Big Bang Theory’! What a load of crap! I can though, believe in how the universe may have evolved, as explained in that theory. But how it started? No way!

So much for my sermon from the mount. Or in my case, the sermon from the riverside. 🙂
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‘Infant’ universe, born before we knew

Date

March 22, 2013 – 11:13AM

This image allows astronomers to look back to the foundations of the universe, writes Dennis Overbye.

Big Bang map shows oldest light

Analysis of the best ever map of the earliest light reveals the shape of the universe a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

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Astronomers released the latest and most exquisite baby picture yet of the universe on Thursday, one that showed it to be 80 million to 100 million years older and a little fatter, with more light and dark matter than previously thought, and perhaps ever so slightly lopsided.

Recorded by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, the image is a heat map of the cosmos as it appeared only 380,000 years after the Big Bang, showing space speckled with faint spots from which galaxies would grow over billions of years.

It shows the seeds from which the current universe grew.

Marc Kamionkowski, Johns Hopkins University

The map, the Planck team said is in stunning agreement with the general view of the universe that has emerged during the past 20 years, of a cosmos dominated by dark energy that is pushing it apart, and dark matter that is pulling galaxies together. It also shows a universe that seems to have endured an explosive burp known as inflation, which was the dynamite in the Big Bang.

A view of the cosmic microwave background collected by the European Space Agency?s Planck satellite. The heat map of the cosmos was imprinted on the sky when the universe was just 380,000 years old. Photo: ESA

In a statement issued by the European Space Agency, Jean-Jacques Dordain, its director-general, said, “The extraordinary quality of Planck’s portrait of the infant universe allows us to peel back its layers to the very foundations, revealing that our blueprint of the cosmos is far from complete.”

Marc Kamionkowski, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University who commented on the work at a news teleconference sponsored by NASA, called Planck “cosmology’s human genome project”.

“It shows the seeds from which the current universe grew,” he said.

A map of relic radiation (microwave sky) from the Big Bang. Photo: ESA

David N. Spergel, a Princeton University cosmologist, described the new results as “beautiful”, adding that “the standard cosmological model looks even stronger today than yesterday. The universe remains simple and strange.”

Within the standard cosmological framework, however, the new satellite data underscored the existence of puzzling anomalies that may yet lead theorists back to the drawing board. The universe appears to be slightly lumpier, with bigger and more heat spots on one side than on the other, for example, and there is an unexplained cool spot in the middle of the map.

Those anomalies had shown up on previous maps by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, satellite, but some had argued that they were because of a bad analysis or contamination from the Milky Way.

The evolution of satellites designed to measure ancient light left over from the Big Bang: From left: NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer, or COBE, 1989; the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, 2001; Planck, 2009. Photo: ESA

Now cosmologists will have to take them more seriously, said Max Tegmark, an expert on the early universe at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not part of the Planck team and who called the new results “very exciting”.

It could be, he said, that “the universe is trying to tell us something”.

George Efstathiou of Cambridge University, one of the leaders of the Planck project, said in the European Space Agency news release: “Our ultimate goal would be to construct a new model that predicts the anomalies and links them together. But these are early days; so far, we don’t know whether this is possible and what type of new physics might be needed. And that’s exciting.”

The Planck satellite was launched in 2009 and has been scanning the sky ever since, recording the faint variations in a haze of radio microwaves that fill the sky. Those microwaves are believed to be the cooled-off remains of the fires of the Big Bang, shown 380,000 years later, when the first hydrogen atoms formed.

The microwaves were discovered by accident in 1965 by a pair of Bell Labs radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Using balloons, a U-2 spy plane and a series of satellites like the WMAP, astronomers have been teasing out the detailed features of this radiation.

Analysing the relative sizes and frequencies of spots and ripples has allowed astronomers to describe the birth of the universe so precisely that it would make the philosophers weep.

The new data have allowed astronomers to tweak their model a bit. It now seems the universe is 13.8 billion years old, instead of 13.7 billion, and consists by mass of 4.9 per cent atoms, 27 per cent dark matter and 71 per cent dark energy.

The biggest surprise here, astronomers said, is that the universe is expanding slightly more slowly than previous measurements had indicated. The Hubble constant, which characterises the expansion rate, is 67 kilometres per second per megaparsec — the units astronomers use — according to Planck. Recent ground-based measurements combined with the WMAP data gave a value of 69, offering enough of a discrepancy to make cosmologists re-run their computer simulations of cosmic history.

The fact that astronomers once would go to war with one another over a factor of two in measurements of this parameter shows how cosmology has progressed over the past 20 years.

Pressed for a possible explanation for the discrepancy, Martin White, a Planck team member from the University of California, Berkeley, said it represents a mismatch between measurements made at the beginning of time and those made more recently. He said it could mean that dark energy, which is speeding up the expansion of the universe, is more complicated than cosmologists thought. He termed the possibility “pretty radical”, adding, “That would be pretty exciting.”

The data also offered striking support for the notion of inflation, which has been the backbone of Big Bang theorising for 30 years.

Under the influence of a mysterious force-field during the first fraction of a second, what would become the observable universe ballooned by 100 trillion trillion times in size from a subatomic pinprick to a grapefruit in less than a violent eye-blink, according to the story first enunciated by Alan Guth of MIT.

Submicroscopic quantum fluctuations in this force-field are what would produce the hot spots in the cosmic microwaves, which in turn would grow into galaxies. According to Planck’s measurements, those fluctuations so far fit the predictions of the simplest model of inflation, invented by Andrei Linde of Stanford, to a tee.

Dr Tegmark of MIT said, “We’re homing in on the simplest model.”

Cosmologists still don’t know what might have caused inflation, but the recent discovery of the Higgs boson has provided evidence that the kinds of fields that can provoke such behaviour really exist.

Dr Tegmark and others said that another clue to the nature of inflation could come from the anomalies in the microwave data, which tend to happen on the largest scales in the universe. By the logic of quantum cosmology, they were the first patterns to be laid down on the emerging cosmos — that is to say, when inflation was just starting.

He compared it to walking in someplace and encountering a fight. If the fight had been going on for a while, he said, it is impossible to tell who started it or who was hurt first. But if you come in only a few seconds after it started, you have a better chance of figuring out who did what to whom.

“It may be,” he said, “we’re coming in early to the cosmic brawl.”

New York Times

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci-tech/infant-universe-born-before-we-knew-20130322-2gjru.html#ixzz2OHRWtpiJ

Tornadoes in Victoria? WTF???

I do not, in all my years on this planet, ever recall, tornadoes hitting Victoria!

I could be very wrong here, but still, this is the first one I recall.

I think it signifies the coming of the end of the world! :O
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It was like a bomb went off’: Tornado tears up towns

Date

March 22, 2013 – 1:13PM

Adrian Lowe
Reporter, theage.com.au

Tornado ‘flattened’ caravan park

“There’s nothing that hasn’t been damaged’,” says 3AW’s Michelle Zydower, reporting from Mulwala.

Residents in Victoria’s north-east have told of their terror as a tornado smashed through towns, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

“It was like a bomb went off,” said fish-and-chip store operator Dawn Leahy. “I was holding onto the front door of my shop watching things flying past.”

The main street of Rutherglen is in disarray, The Border Mail reports.

The Denison County caravan park lies in ruins. Photo: 3AW

Senior forecaster for the Bureau of Meteorology, Terry Ryan, said Thursday night’s tornado – there may have been more than one – had initially been assessed as between F1 and F2 on the scale for tornado strength, meaning they had wind speeds between 117 and 253 kilometres an hour and a path of destruction between 150 and 250 metres.

One empty building has crumbled, a car dealership has been left barely recognisable after a wall was completely torn away and the Tuileries winery has lost part of its roof. The number of other damaged properties is in the dozens.

Parts of Rutherglen have had no power since 10.30pm Thursday.

Tornado wreckage in Victoria’s north-east. Photo: Mark Jesser/The Border Mail

At Barooga, post office operator Max Steward likened the tornado to a lawnmower moving through his property.

The State Emergency Service says a car was picked up and tossed onto its roof at Mulwala, close to where the tornado struck.

Spokesman Lachlan Quick said most of the injuries had come from the Denison caravan park in Mulwala, where damage was extensive.

What remains of the Jasper Bros. car dealership in Rutherglen. Photo: The Border Mail

‘‘People were pretty fortunate to get out of there,’’ he said. ‘‘It looks like people were taking shelter in their caravans.

‘‘It looks the weather will calm down for the next couple of days … we’re just grateful it didn’t happen over the Easter weekend.’’

Paramedics treated 20 people after dozens of calls in Yarrawonga and Mulwala, when severe storms, flash flooding and the tornado came through about 8pm on Thursday. Paramedics said there were as many as 80 ‘‘walking wounded’’ in the affected areas.

This weather radar image show the rotation of the thunderstorm over Yarrawonga, preceding the formation of a tornado Photo: Bureau of Meteorology

A couple in their 70s were flown to hospital in Melbourne after they were injured when their motorhome was overturned in the wind. Two men in their 50s were flown to hospital, both in a critical condition with head injuries.

Mr Quick said the towns of Bundalong, Yarrawonga, Koonoomoo and Rutherglen were among the worst hit, with several buildings damaged and fallen trees.

Crews spent much of Friday morning clearing corrugated iron and removing debris from trees, he said, after working through dangerous conditions overnight.

Tornado … A picture taken at Mulwala. Photo: David Jones/Twitter

The Moira Shire Council has set up an emergency refuge centre for those affected.

Across the affected areas, the SES received 180 calls for help, mostly for building damage.

Storm damage also briefly forced the closure of the Hume Freeway near Benalla.

A resident surveys the damage. Photo: Mark Jesser/The Border Mail

Several people were hit by flying debris, Ambulance Victoria emergency management manger Jon Byrne said.

He urged people who did not need to be in storm-affected areas to stay away so emergency services could mop up.

To form tornadoes a long-lasting thunderstorm is needed with strong updraft winds, Mr Ryan said. As the front collides with humid surface air it begins to spin off and rotate.

‘‘They [tornadoes] are really good at dissipating energy, the whole show is about dissipating energy,’’ Mr Ryan said.

Mr Ryan said bureau radar images had captured the thunderstorm beginning to rotate just north of Yarrawonga at about 7.30pm.

But he said it was difficult to capture tornadoes on radar because they typically last only short periods of time and it was hard to know how many there had been last night.

Rainfall has also been extensive across parts of the region. At Mount Buffalo, 117 millimetres was recorded in the 24 hours to 9am Friday, with 101mm at Handcocks and 86mm at Harrietville, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

Premier Denis Napthine said emergency packages and accommodation support would be made available to those whose homes have been damaged or destroyed.

Newly appointed Police and Emergency Services Minister Kim Wells is flying to Yarrawonga and Bundalong Friday afternoon to survey the damage. ‘‘He will assess what further assistance is required,’’  Dr Napthine said.

With Tom Arup, Michelle Slater and Craig Butt

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/it-was-like-a-bomb-went-off-tornado-tears-up-towns-20130321-2gj86.html#ixzz2OEnaM14d

HUGE CROCODILE CAUGHT!

They grow ’em big in the Northern Territory! :O

There are only two animals on earth, that will actively stalk man.

One is the Polar Bear, and the other is Australia’s Saltwater Crocodile. 
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Yahoo!7 March 19, 2013, 4:34 pm

A 4.5metre crocodile which had been menacing a small community in the Northern Territory has been shot and captured – although it was barely able to fit into the back of this ute.

The crocodile had been stalking waters close to Palumpa in the Daly River Reserve, reports the ABC.

Locals had reported that it had sometimes stopped children from crossing the causeway to attend school and senior wildlife ranger Tommy Nichols said they trapped and shot the crocodile.

“We had a report the other day that there was a large crocodile there that was menacing the kids,” he told ABC.

The Northern Territory News reported that they had been tipped off by a reader who posted this amazing image of the crocodile of what he says is a ‘4.8m croc caught at Palumpa yesterday’ on his Facebook site, although he admitted he did not know if it was real or fake.

Just last week another monster saltwater crocodile that had attacked a horse has been caught at Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

The 4.5metre crocodile barely fitted onto the back of a Ute. Photo: Facebook

We must all reject Genetically Modified food sources!

Mankind has a terrible history of introducing new, miracle products, miracle pesticides, miracle changing of plant genes to suit this condition, or that, miracle productivity gains of food crops, so many miracles that cannot be counted.

But these miracles have not occurred without cost. As we know, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that exists in isolation from something else. So when the scientists say a crop has been made disease resistant, what other impacts have been effected on those plants, because disease resistance, is only a part of a whole, and when you tamper with the disease resistance, you tamper also with things that are related indirectly.

It is physically, and chemically, and biologically, IMPOSSIBLE, to tamper with say disease resistance genes in a plant, without affecting something else. AND TODAY, WE DO NOT HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE TO KNOW WHAT THAT ‘SOMETHING ELSE’ IS! And companies like Monsanto will not devote research to the side effects because that is NOT,WHAT THEY WANT KNOWN!

Why have so many more allergies developed since scientists started mucking around with the genes of so many living things? Things they swore, would not affect anything else, once they ONLY changed the disease resistance gene!!! Yeah, sure!!!

Why is it that the EU as a whole, has banned ANY and ALL attempts to modify the SUNFLOWER plant genetic make-up. And the USA has also banned attempts to genetically modify Sunflower genetics!

What I don’t understand, is that given this overwhelming rejection of the Sunflower gene modification, because of potential problems that have not been disclosed, why are genetic modifications allowed on other food crops?

I have an extreme aversion, to companies with no conscience, and only objectives, to provide returns to greedy shareholders, AT ANY COST, tampering with anything that is essential to life on this planet of ours. 

The prime requisites for existence on the earth of ours, are the meeting of mankind’s need for the provision of food, clothing, and shelter!  

Greed, is not necessary for mankind to exist! Profits to multinational companies, that produce nothing of value, are not necessary. Any activity that does not generate something tangible, that directly assists mankind in meeting the above three objectives is simply a parasitic enterprise, that needs to be destroyed!

Unless someone makes something that can be directly given to another, to help with meeting the objectives of food, clothing or shelter, and in more advanced societies, the creation of music, of painting, of hobbies, then it is a draining resource on the people and the vast other resources of our planet!

And the post below shows that we do not need the parasites of the multi national corporations such as Monsanto!

It is my desire, that one day, Monsanto’s executives, past and present, will be charged for committing crimes against humanity!
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Millions Against Monsanto by OrganicConsumers.org

Indian Farmers Produce Record Amounts of Crops, Without GMOs
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_27164.cfm

“The UK newspaper The Guardian recently ran a feature on the “rice revolution” in India, where people have been producing record amounts of rice as well as wheat, potatoes, and other crops. What’s more, they’ve done it without the help of expensive genetically modified (GM) seeds, instead using a technique called System of Rice Intensification (SRI).”

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_27164.cfm

 

Imported seafood concerns

March 8, 2013, 6:18 pm Helen Wellings Today Tonight

Imported seafood, containing illegal antibiotic residues, has health experts concerned over its link with dangerous superbugs.

Antibiotics are lifesavers which revolutionised medicine, but they’re also dangerous if overused.

We now import 72 per cent of our seafood, mainly from Asia. But inside it and on it are antibiotic residues which are illegal here, but sneaking in all the same. And along for the ride are dangerous bacteria and deadly superbugs.

Dr Peter Collignon, Professor of infectious diseases at the Department of Microbiology at ANU warns that feeding antibiotics to farmed seafood to promote growth and treat diseases not only contaminates our food, but any bacteria living in or on that seafood can become immune to these drugs.

• What’s really in your seafood
• Something’s fishy in imports
• Banned chemicals in berries

“We need to be very careful that we do not ingest these foods that have in them antibiotics or drugs that shouldn’t be there,” Dr Collignon said.

Through constant exposure, the bacteria evolve into notorious superbugs, resistant to the most potent, last-resort antibiotics.

“We may well have an organism that’s difficult to treat or impossible to treat,” Dr Collington said.

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