New Educaingles

Help! London theatre seeks Beatles lookalikes

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

UNITED KINGDOM, London : More than a hundred mop-topped musicians have flocked to a London theatre in the hope of being cast as Paul, John, George or Ringo in a new Beatles-inspired musical.

Transcript:

In London's Gielgud theatre echoes the sound of a familiar tune.

John, Paul, George, Ringo, the 'Fab Four' are back.

The auditions for Beatle-inspried musical 'Let it be' are underway, and more than a hundred musicians have flocked to London to try their luck.

The show will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the release of the band's first single, 'Love Me Do'.

Selection is tough, however, and only a dozen applicants will be picked by the judges.

Musician: "On the stage, there will be four judges oh yeah which is pretty pretty scary."

The jury is made up of musical specialists. They claim to be looking for musicians true to the band's legacy, rather than just look-alikes.

John Maher (musical director): "This show is to recreate the sound of the Beatles very authentically, including the music they didn't perform live, because, as you probably know, a lot of music from their later period they never got played live."

Jamie Hendry (producer): "You can't recreate the Beatles. They are an iconic British band and what we're trying to do, it's to get as close musically to them as possible."

Auditions were also held in the band's hometown of Liverpool, where the Beatles formed in 1962.

Eight successful years and 13 studio albums later, the Fabs went their separate ways.

However for the ten lucky young musicians who get to play them, this is just the beginning.

The global rhino trade

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

Graphic factfile on the global underground trade in poached rhino parts.

Blind American painter helps children see hope

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

She sees little more than shadows and shapes. However, American artist Bojana Coklyat not only pursues her passion for painting, but transmits it to children with impaired sight so that they can see the world in a new way.

Coklyat, 33, lost most of her sight four years ago as a result of diabetes. She had to give up her job at an art gallery and, despairingly, put down her paint brushes.

Today, Coklyat is full of energy, greeting visitors with a big smile at Saint Joseph's School for the Blind in Jersey City.

An accomplished painter, she started as a volunteer, having decided to reexamine her life. At the school, which teaches children through all grades, she found "they did have an art class(room), a beautiful one, but no art teacher. I said, 'can I volunteer?'"

At first, her initiative was something of a surprise at the school. But over the last two years she has become indispensable and money has been found in the budget to pay her.

During a recent session, she taught two blind adolescents and nine nursery school aged children.

Some of the younger children had limited ability to see colors. The older ones did not, but had mental concepts of different colors.

The older classmates arrived with their telescopic white canes, which they folded and attached to their jeans on arrival.

Coklyat moved from group to group, telling Kevin, 17, to keep on with a painting started the previous week.

"What color do you want?" she asked, taking his hand and guiding it from a part already painted to an unpainted area, then bringing him paint and a brush.

Omar, 15, had started illustrating the words "hope, fear, kindness," she said. Again, she guided his hand, tracing the edges of the paper, before giving him a brush. Omar asked for white to illustrate "hope."

"Hope is like a clarity, hope is clear, that's why I chose white," he said.
At the other end of the classroom, the young children were getting impatient.

"Can I start? I want pink," a little girl said.

Coklyat suggested spring and flowers as a subject. Immediately she was off again to check on Omar.

"That is pretty much a perfect circle," she said, congratulating him.

The art works were highly clumsy, but what matters, Coklyat said, "is the process of creating."

"They are so into it. It is so important for them. It's another way of expressing themselves. It gives them a sense of accomplishment."

With the younger children, she got them to touch the wet paint.

"How does that feel? It's wet paint," she said. "You like the feeling of the brush?"

"Yes, that tickles," a child replied.
Omar asked for red to paint the word "fear."

"My favorite color is red. Red reminds me of the passion that I have for painting, it gets me strength," he said.

He said he loves the class. "When I think about something I like to visualize it before I put in it on paper."

When she's not teaching, Coklyat paints at home, her face close to the canvas. She favors big pieces in vivid colors and her style has changed since she went through her huge health problems.

"I am less focused on details, and more focused on feelings. I use more contrasts, more bright colors, and black lines to guide me," she said.

"That is amazing how people find connections with my art and my feelings."

In November she underwent a kidney and pancreas transplant and no longer needs dialysis and insulin injections. With her improving health, new projects are taking shape.

Coklyat is preparing several exhibitions and says now she's keen to expand her experiences and become an art therapist.

Internet: Cybercrime

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

Sixty-five percent of all internet users are victims of cybercrime at some point in their lives, whether it is property theft like credit card fraud or the mass reproduction of protected documents.

Scientists in New Zealand try to tackle cow emissions

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

NEW ZEALAND, Palmerston North : Scientists have long accepted that gas from farm animals is a major factor in climate change, but how do you stop cattle and sheep from doing what comes naturally?

Transcript:

These cud chewers may look quite innocent, but their bodily functions are environmental villains.

Nitrogen in urine turns into nitrous oxide and evaporates into the atmosphere. Every belch is a little puff of methane because, unlike humans, cows pass gas through their mouths.

Livestock is responsible for 18 percent of the world's emissions of greenhouse gases, according to the United Nations.

In New Zealand, with about 35 million sheep and eight million cows, the percentage is more than half.

That's why scientists at the Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre are hard at work measuring ever burp, as part of a $50 million programme aimed at curbing emissions.

Cows and sheep are studied for two days at a time, with an intricate tubing system that monitors their methane output.

Peter Janssen (principle investigator, New Zealand Greenhouse Gas Research Centre): "We can then vary the conditions, for example give the animal different feed, use different animals, administer a vaccine, or administer an inhibitor, and understand how the amount of methane changes, euh, with those different treatments."

Small chambers like this one measure the nitrous oxide released after a herd has grazed.

This research is aimed at improving technologies like sprays that farmers can apply to their pastures to make it easier for plants to use up the excess nitrogen.

Surinder Saggar (scientist, Landcare Research): "The issue with nitrous oxide is it's global warming potential is 310 times more than a molecule of carbon dioxide."

So what's to say that farmers will actually adopt practices that are going to cost them?

Rick Pridmore (sustainability officer, Dairy NZ): "So if it keeps that nitrogen in the plants and it grows more grass, you might break even and more farmers will use it. Right now, we're still not convinced it does that, so until there is a reason, like a carbon tax or trading scheme, most farmers will be a little bit hesitant to spend the money right now."

Attempts at introducing a carbon tax have been less than popular in agricultural industries worldwide

In New Zealand, a proposed levy on livestock farmers was mocked and called a "fart tax" even though farts have nothing to do with it.

Greece: Country brief

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

Greece in figures (population, unemployment, GDP growth...).

East Asians short-sighted for snubbing outdoors: study

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

Snubbing the outdoors for books, video games and TV is the reason up to nine in ten school-leavers in big East Asian cities are near-sighted, according to a study published on Friday.

Neither genes nor the mere increase in activities like reading and writing is to blame, the researchers suggest, but a simple lack of sunlight.

Exposure to the sun's rays is believed to stimulate production of the chemical dopamine, which in turn stops the eyeball from growing elongated and distorting the focus of light entering the eye.

"It's pretty clear that it is bright light stimulating dopamine release which prevents myopia," researcher Ian Morgan of the Australian National University told AFP of the findings published in The Lancet medical journal.

Yet the average primary school pupil in Singapore, where up to nine in ten young adults are myopic, spent only about 30 minutes outdoors every day -- compared to three hours for children in Australia where the myopia prevalence among children of European origin is about 10 percent.

The figure in Britain was about 30 to 40 percent and in Africa "virtually none" -- in the range of two to three percent, according to Morgan.

More than other groups, children in East Asia "basically go to school, they don't go outside at school, they go home and they stay inside. They study and they watch television," the scientist said.

The most myopic school-leavers in the world are to be found in cities in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, where between 80 and 90 percent were affected.

Of these, 10 to 20 percent had a condition called high myopia, which can lead to blindness.

"Most of what we've seen in East Asia is due to the environment, it is not genetic," said Morgan, contrary to the common belief 50 years ago.
The researchers, collating the findings of studies from around the world, stressed that being a bookworm or computer geek does not in itself put you at risk.

"As long as they get outside it doesn't seem to matter how much study they do," explained Morgan.
"There are some kids who study hard and get outside and play hard and they are generally fine. The ones who are at major risk are the ones who study hard and don't get outside."

The scientist said children who spent two to three hours outside every day were "probably reasonably safe". This could include time spent on the playground and walking to and from school.

"The amount of time they spend on computer games, watching television can be a contributing factor. As far as we can tell it is not harmful in itself, but if it is a substitute for getting outside, then it is," said Morgan.

He said ways must be found to get children to spend more time in reasonably bright daylight without compromising their schooling.

"It is going to require some sort of structural change in the way a child's time is organised in East Asia because there is so much commitment to schooling and there is also a habit of taking a nap at lunchtime, which is from our perspective prime myopia prevention time."

Science: The action of tides

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

The action of the tides, the variation in sea levels due to the gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun on the Earth.

Chernobyl sarcophagus project

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

Graphic illustration of the ageing containment structure covering the destroyed Chernobyl reactor4 and the planned new sarcophagus

World heritage : Mont Saint Michel an island again

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

Mont Saint Michel, the World Heritage site in northern France which attracts 2.4 million tourists a year, will become a true island again in a few years' time as work gets underway to dredge the bay and remove sand and sediment that have built up around the granite rock for centuries.

Los Angeles marks 20th anniversary of riots

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

America on Sunday marked the 20th anniversary of the devastating Los Angeles riots, one of the worst spasms of violence in modern times in this country, sparked by the on-camera police beating of a black motorist.

A series of events were scheduled in Los Angeles including speeches by civil rights activist the Reverend Al Sharpton and LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and a community "speakout" at the epicenter of the six-day riots in gritty South LA.

Local radio and other media have hosted wall-to-wall debates about the lessons learned from the unrest, triggered by the acquittal of four police officers over the beating of African American Rodney King.

Fifty-three people died and property damage exceeded $1 billion before the frenzy of burning, looting, assault and murder, much of it caught live on camera, was brought under control.

King -- who has released an autobiography timed with the anniversary -- was 26 years old when a group of white police officers brutally beat him while a bystander videotaped them from his apartment window on March 3, 1991.

A year later, on April 29, 1992, an all-white jury acquitted four police officers over his assault.

Hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets in anger, igniting a wave of deadly violence and arson that swept through large areas of Los Angeles.

The police seemed powerless to stop it. Order was restored on the fourth day of the rioting, when army troops arrived. By that time, thousands of people had been injured and many had died.

The run-up to the anniversary has seen a surge of reflection on what has changed in the decades since the riots, which were centered on South LA, primarily composed of African and American and Hispanic communities.

"After the riots, we learned it is not our city," Los Angeles Police Department Lieutenant Andrew Neiman told AFP. "We work for the people and it's their city."

The LAPD also became more representative, and is approved of by 70 percent of city residents. "Back in 1992, we had 1,800 Hispanic officers," Neiman said. "Today we have 4,223... we became more diverse to match our community."

Of the West Coast city's four million residents, 48 percent are now Latino, 28 percent white, 13 percent Asian and eight percent black, according to Los Angeles magazine.

But the social problems that fueled the pent-up frustration remain: unemployment in South LA is as high as almost 24 percent -- several points higher than in 1992, according to the report in the LA Times Saturday.

On Sunday, the anniversary is marked in day-long events, including sermons by activist and broadcaster Sharpton, while mayor Villaraigosa will attend a "South L.A. Rises: Community Fair and Rally."

The Korean Churches for Community Development will hold a commemorative event, while a public speakout meeting will be held at the epicenter of the riot -- the junction of Florence and Normandie avenues, at 3:00 pm.

In Long Beach, south of LA, where the riots also raged, an interfaith service will be held by the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Rodney King, who has battled drugs and had a number of brushes with the law since 1992, said racism still has to be challenged.

"There's always going to be some type of racism. But it's up to us as individuals in this country to look back and see all the accomplishments that we have gotten to this far."

"I have much respect for (the police), much respect... some of them went out of their way over the years to try to make it up to me. Not all of them is bad," he added.
In his new memoir, "The Riot Within," King describes his life since the riots, during which he famously appealed for calm, asking "can't we all get along?"

Economy: Spain in turmoil

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

Foreign exchange markets show growing concerns over Spain's sovereign debt outlook ahead of bond auctions by Madrid when evidence of waning demand for Spanish debt could see a heavy toll taken on the euro.

Climate change 'impacts Europe's mountain plants'

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

The acceleration of climate change is stressing mountain plants in Europe and driving them to migrate to higher altitudes, according to a study released by US researchers.

The plant migration is also decreasing species diversity, the study's authors said in the April 20 edition of the journal Science.

The study was based on an inventory of flora on 66 mountains between northern Europe and the Mediterranean.

An increasing number of plant species was found only on mountains in northern and central Europe, the researchers reported, while in nearly all mountainous regions of the Mediterranean, the number of plant species was either stagnant or declining.

The researchers, who were coordinated by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna, produced a map of plant species on each of the sites studied in 2001 and 2008.

"Our results showing a decline at the Mediterranean sites is worrying because these are the mountains with a very unique flora and a large proportion of their species occur only there and nowhere else on Earth," said Harald Pauli, coordinator of the project.

"The observed species losses were most pronounced on the lower summits, where plants are expected to suffer earlier from water deficiency than on the snowier high peaks," he said.

Mountainous areas at lower elevations typically experience a dry season in summer whereas at higher elevations, melting snow provides water to plants during the summer dry season.

Climate warming and decreased rainfall in the Mediterranean region in recent decades corresponds perfectly to the decrease in plant life, said Georg Grabherr, who chairs the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments.

"In addition, most of the Mediterranean region will become even drier in coming decades," Grabherr said.

"Impacts of climate change, either through warming or combined with increased drought stress, are likely to threaten alpine plants not only on the continent, but even on the world-wide level," he said.

Delhi helmet law takes deadly toll on women

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

In New Delhi, there's a growing campaign to change a law which makes wearing a crash helmet on a two-wheeler optional for women. Campaigners argue that in a country where someone dies on the road every four minutes crash helmets should be compulsory for everyone.

Transcript:

Arriving at her office in central New Delhi , Priya Mahindroo rides on the back of her friend's bike. But while he wears a crash helmet, Priya goes without.

Priya Mahindroo (motorbike passenger): "I don't see girls wearing helmets and why I don't wear a helmet is basically because I feel really hot when I wear a helmet so you know I feel really suffocated inside so I don't really think about the safety at that time."

Priya is not the only one not thinking about safety. Across the Indian capital women zip around on two-wheelers without protection, saying crash helmets ruin their hair, look silly or are just uncomfortable.

It may be dangerous but for Delhi's women riding without one is perfectly legal.

Twenty years ago the Sikh community argued wearing helmets went against their religion.

Sikh men were exempted and as authorities said it would be too difficult to tell a Sikh woman from a non-Sikh, helmets were made optional for all women.

For writer Antara Dev Sen the law is proof that women in India are second-class citizens.

Anatara Dev Sen (writer): "To be a good woman you need to ignore yourself, you need to neglect yourself, so you, it's also not quite done to talk about your own safety or own issues."

With accidents soaring, India's roads are now the deadliest in the world.

Doctors at the capital's busiest trauma centre see 50,000 patients a year.

The majority are bike accident victims. And increasingly they're women.

Dr Sanjeev Bhoi (AIIMS Hospial Trauma Centre): "A female patient who was not wearing a helmet will have a more severe brain injury compared to the person who was the biker or rider who is having lesser form of head injury."

Nearly sixty women died in two-wheeler accidents in New Delhi last year.
Thousands were injured. And pressure to change the law is growing.

Satyendra Garg (Delhi Traffic Police): "Unless the law makes it compulsory, the compliance to this safety concern is not that high. So maybe that if you make a law that it becomes compulsory for everyone that only let will be the number of women wearing helmets will go up."

India recently approved tougher penalties for road traffic violations.

But despite growing protest, Delhi shows no sign of making helmets compulsory for women.

Making the capital's roads particularly dangerous for half the population.

Ghosts of Titanic’s crew haunt Southampton 100 years on

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:33:32 +0100

Nowhere suffered as much from the sinking of the Titanic as Southampton and a century after the disaster the city wants to tell the forgotten story of its 549 residents who died.

A job aboard the mighty liner was a dream come true for the men of this port on England's south coast in 1912, offering three square meals a day and lodgings for the night at a time of severe hardship.

Three-quarters of Titanic's crew came from the city, many toiling as stokers in the ship's engine rooms or as stewards tending to the needs of passengers.

When Titanic set off from Southampton docks on her fateful maiden voyage to New York on April 10, 1912, the people of the city cheered it off full of pride.

The contrast could not have been greater five days later when the liner hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic, plunging Southampton into mourning and leaving many of the victims' families in poverty.

"Southampton's Titanic story is very special because most of the crew came from Southampton and that story hasn't really been told anywhere else before," said Maria Newbery, curator of SeaCity, a new maritime museum that focuses on the liner's crew.

The first news of the sinking was posted in the window of a local newspaper just hours after the disaster, but no one believed it at first.

When the awful truth began to dawn, "a great hush descended," Charles Morgan, who was nine at the time, recalls in the city's archives.

"I don't think that there was hardly a single street in Southampton that hadn't lost someone on that ship."
Photographs at the time show anxious relatives gathering around the names of the dead posted outside the offices of the Titanic's owners, the White Star Line, where a small black plaque on the now-shabby building marks the spot.

Of 724 members of Titanic's crew with an address in Southampton, just 175 survived, according to figures given by the museum.

One survivor was Alexander Littlejohn, a first-class steward, who was ordered to row one of the lifeboats which were mostly filled with women and children.

His grandson Philip, who gives lectures about the disaster, told AFP: "He was just 40 but the shock of it turned his hair white within months.

"He never talked about the sinking, which I find is absolutely typical of Titanic survivors. He had mouths to feed so he went on to work on 30 voyages on Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic."

One of those less fortunate, Sidney Sedunary, a steward, had been carrying a pocket watch which stopped at 1:50am, about half a hour before the Titanic sank.

A few days later, his body was hauled from the water by a rescue ship and the watch, which now takes pride of place in the new museum, was found in his pocket.

The extent of the disaster is poignantly illustrated by a floor map in SeaCity, plastered with red spots to indicate the houses where a crew member was lost. The dots come thick and fast in the working-class areas near the docks.

"Lots of people working as stokers and in the boiler rooms were from Southampton and in the days before social security, if you lost the main breadwinner in the family, you were in trouble," curator Newbery explained.

The city pulled together to raise money for the bereaved families and in the months after the disaster, every concert and church fete was turned into a Titanic fundraiser.

As the centenary of the disaster approaches, Southampton is acting as a magnet for the descendants of those who perished.

Jane Goodwin, 38, had a special reason to visit the city -- her grandmother Cecilia's first husband Frederick James Banfield sailed on Titanic to join his brother in Michigan where they were planning to work in mining.

"I have seen copies of the letters that he sent her from the Titanic, which are so sad. He was obviously very much in love with her," the shop worker from Salcombe in southwest England told AFP.

"He was doing so well at such a young age, only 28 years old, and he was going on this magnificent ship for a new life abroad," said Jane's husband Richard.

"He had been on the Olympic and in his letter he was comparing the Titanic to these other great ships and he was saying she would have to be there to appreciate how big this ship really was."