Monday 05/06/13

Human Interest News   —   Posted on May 6, 2013

Freeze! It’s the cooler for you

A Greenpeace activist dressed as a polar bear was cuffed and thrown in a squad car on April 25th, during a protest outside an oil-drilling firm’s offices in Moscow.

The environmental group has been railing against Russia’s Rosneft company and Norway’s state-run oil giant Statoil, and members costumed as polar bears have been helping get the message out.

Early last month, a Greenpeace “bear” paddled down Moscow’s Moskva River, past the Kremlin, on a white raft designed to look like an iceberg and adorned with signs that read, “Help!” and “Arctic not for sale.”

The protester was stopped by a patrol boat and briefly detained.

More than a week later, three other “bears” climbed aboard a Statoil-chartered rig in the Norwegian fjords before it headed for drilling in the Barents Sea. They were escorted off.

UK Supermarket withdraws nuts from shelves because labeling doesn’t state they contain nuts

A supermarket chain in England has made the surprising decision to withdraw a range of nuts because they were incorrectly labelled and didn’t state they may contain peanuts.

Booths removed Whole Hearted Roasted Monkey Nuts from its shelves because of the packaging.

The company’s technical manager Mr Waheed Hassan, who alerted the Food Standards Agency, said: ‘It is our responsibility as retailers to accurately record allergy advice, and in this instance we felt a responsibility to recall the product and issue a notice to our customers who might suffer from a specific peanut allergy.’

A spokesperson for the store stressed the supermarket chain took labeling very seriously and had posted notices around its shops regarding the incident.

An FSA spokeswoman added:’ The packaging does not state that the product contains peanuts, which is a specific allergen that’s listed in legislation.

‘People who are allergic to peanuts may not be allergic to other types of nuts.

‘Without the correct information on the packaging, people with an allergy to peanuts who might not know or make the connection between peanuts and monkey nuts, for example children, might eat the product and experience an adverse reaction.’

Customers who bought the product are being advised not to consume it if they are allergic to nuts.

Giant snails on advance in Florida

South Florida is battling a growing infestation of the giant African land snail.

The snail is considered one of the most destructive invasive species, feeding voraciously on more than 500 plant species.

They can also eat through plaster walls, which provides the calcium content they need for their shells.

Experts recently gathered at a science meeting in Gainesville to seek the best way of eradicating the snails.

According to Denise Feiber, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, more than 1,000 of the snails are being caught each week in Miami-Dade county and 117,000 in total since the first snail was spotted by a homeowner in September 2011.

Residents could soon begin encountering them more often, crunching them underfoot as the snails emerge from underground hibernation at the start of the state’s rainy season in seven weeks, Ms Feiber told the Reuters news agency.

She added that the snails – about the size of an adult’s hand – attack “pretty much anything that’s in their path and green”.

Jon Ablett, curator of Mollusca at the Natural History Museum, says there is “no clear answer” on how to stop African land snails. Among the solutions discussed by experts at the Giant African Land Snail Science Symposium last week, was the use of a stronger bait approved recently by the federal government.

Ms Feiber said many people viewed the snails as cute pets.

“They’re huge, they move around, they look like they’re looking at you … communicating with you, and people enjoy them for that,” she said.

“But they don’t realize the devastation they can create if they are released into the environment where they don’t have any natural enemies and they thrive.”

Many invasive species now live in Florida’s sub-tropical climate, including the Burmese python, which has been linked to a sharp decline in mammal populations in the Everglades region.

From The New York Post, BBC News and Metro, UK.