Breaking Waves: Ocean News

This blog is now closed. Peter Dutton proposes criminalisation of Nazi symbols after Tuesday’s question time stoush Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast Voice negotiations The referendum machinery legislation will set up how the voice referendum will run – the machinery surruounding the vote, if you will. We’re negotiating in good faith in the Senate that’s being led by Jane Hume who is doing an outstanding job. What we said to the government in the beginning is what we’re saying to them now and that is that we are not prepared to trash decades of referendum precedent, and not do this in a way that Australians expect us to, in their interests, for their information. We’re asking for a pamphlet to outline the yes and no case, and we’ve talked about that. We’re asking for equal funding of the yes or no case, not the millions of dollars that may go into a public campaign on either side of this debate, but just the administration funding. Fifty-seven per cent of the population does not want to open new coal and gas mines and I think there’s a very clear message coming through there. Secondly, no, I have got a lot of time for Jacqui Lambie, but we had an emissions trading scheme in this country and she was part of a party that voted to repeal it so let’s let’s not get too carried away with the spin here. We’re in a climate crisis, as the UN secretary general has made clear. The decisions that we make now will reverberate for generations to come and the big decisions that we’ve got to make, do we open new coal and gas mines or not? Continue reading...

Protesters cut up credit cards and march to Washington branches of JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo Hundreds of older Americans gathered in Washington on Tuesday to protest against four of the country’s largest financial institutions, cutting up their credit cards in an act of defiance meant to condemn the banks’ funding of oil and gas projects. The protesters marched to the downtown DC branches of the four targeted “dirty banks” – JPMorgan Chase, CitiBank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo – before staging a “die-in” to symbolize the global threat posed by fossil fuels. In a nod to the age of the protest’s participants, demonstrators sat in painted rocking chairs as they chanted “Cut it up!” to those slashing their credit cards outside the banks’ branches. Continue reading...

When exotic species such as parrots, snakes, monkeys, or aquarium fishes are kept as pets, this may lead to unsustainable trade and impact negatively the conservation of these species globally. Understanding what drives demand among keepers may help inform adequate conservation strategies to address unsustainable trade.

Councillors vote to chop down trees in Coton Orchard for busway from Cambridge to Cambourne Hundreds of trees in an orchard designated as a habitat of principal importance in England should be felled to build a new busway to tackle climate change, councillors in Cambridgeshire voted on Tuesday. The county council voted by 33 to 26 to approve a new public transport busway, which will use optically guided electric or hybrid buses on its route, to provide links between Cambridge and Cambourne, an expanding new town eight miles outside the city. Continue reading...