Country diary: if they're not tadpoles what are these little wrigglers?

 Posted on April 20, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  381 words  |  Valentine Belue

Country diaryAnimalsStamford, Lincolnshire: These curious creatures won’t grow into cute froglets, they’ll be menacing little blood suckers In a week, heat, then rain. Heavy air settles, and thunder seems hiding around its edges. Water collects in everything concave. Then my five-year-old daughter comes in and tells us there are tadpoles outside. It’s late for tadpoles. I’ve seen no frogspawn, but she’s insistent. And there, in an outdoor sink, amid leaf rot, detritus and two inches of stagnant rain, is that familiarly sinuous movement: front heavy, tail frantic. [Read More]

Gemini the celestial twins

 Posted on April 20, 2024  |  3 minutes  |  460 words  |  Kary Bruening

StarwatchAstronomyA look at the stars that make up the constellation of Gemini, including Castor, a tight binary, and Pollux, an orange giant Starwatch Gemini chartGraphic: Finbarr SheehyThe evening star, Venus, reaches its peak brilliance at magnitude -4.6 this week. Obvious in Britain’s SW sky at nightfall, it sets in the W at 21:30. Mars, to its left and higher and now pulling away, is a good deal fainter at mag 1. [Read More]

Pierre Celis obituary | Beer

 Posted on April 20, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  779 words  |  Aldo Pusey

BeerObituaryPierre Celis obituaryMaster brewer behind a revival in the white beer of HoegaardenPierre Celis, who has died aged 86, put the small Belgian town of Hoegaarden on the beer map in the 1960s when he revived cloudy wheat or "white" beer made with the addition of spices and fruit. White beer for centuries had been a style brewed in the Belgian region of East Brabant, where the rich, dark soil is ideal for growing barley, oats and wheat. [Read More]

Roxy Music review arch art-rockers peacock their peerless anthems

 Posted on April 20, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  768 words  |  Chauncey Koziol

Roxy MusicReviewOVO Hydro, Glasgow Reuniting for a 50th anniversary tour, the band have lost none of their sophisticated swagger in a career-spanning set which highlights their enduring originality and influence The air of mystique that pervaded Roxy Music’s 1970s prime has, in recent years, been replenished by their absence from the live arena. It’s been more than a decade since the debonair art-rock contrarians last played in the UK, a span of time longer, incidentally, than the band’s entire eight-album recording history from 1972-1982. [Read More]

Sedition Hunters: how ordinary Americans helped track down the Capitol rioters

 Posted on April 20, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1236 words  |  Aldo Pusey

BooksIn his new book, Ryan J Reilly of NBC tells how the FBI got a much-needed helping hand from a band of citizen sleuths For one rioter at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, wearing a Caterpillar hoodie proved a bad fashion choice. Admittedly, with an American flag-patterned cap and some shades, the garment helped shield his identity as he manhandled a police officer. Yet it came back to haunt him. [Read More]

The Tale of the Juniper Tree | Children and teenagers

 Posted on April 20, 2024  |  15 minutes  |  3136 words  |  Chauncey Koziol

Children and teenagersThe Tale of the Juniper TreeA long time ago now, perhaps 2,000 years, there was a rich man who had a fair and godly wife, and they loved each other very much. But they had no children and they greatly wished for some. The wife prayed for a child day and night, but they did not get one. In front of their house there was a yard where a juniper tree grew, and one day in winter the wife was standing beneath it peeling an apple, and as she was peeling the apple she cut her finger and the blood fell on to the snow. [Read More]

Warnings over NHS data privacy after stalker doctor shares womans records | NHS

 Posted on April 20, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1191 words  |  Valentine Belue

NHS This article is more than 8 months oldWarnings over NHS data privacy after ‘stalker’ doctor shares woman’s recordsThis article is more than 8 months oldExclusive: Victim speaks of feeling violated by hospital doctor incident that expert says is evidence of ‘systemic’ flaw in England ‘I felt anger, fear and horror that she had obtained my data’ The confidentiality of NHS medical records has been thrown into doubt after a “stalker” hospital doctor accessed and shared highly sensitive information about a woman who had started dating her ex-boyfriend, despite not being involved in her care. [Read More]

Wisconsin supreme court appears poised to strike down legislative maps and end Republican dominance

 Posted on April 20, 2024  |  8 minutes  |  1673 words  |  Jenniffer Sheldon

The fight for democracyWisconsin This article is more than 2 months oldWisconsin supreme court appears poised to strike down legislative maps and end Republican dominanceThis article is more than 2 months oldDecision from four liberal justices in lawsuit could eliminate some of the most gerrymandered districts in the United States The Wisconsin supreme court appeared poised to strike down the current maps for the state legislature after three hours of oral argument on Tuesday, a decision that could end more than a decade of Republican dominance and eliminate some of the most gerrymandered districts in the United States. [Read More]

A fistful of euros: the Spanish town where spaghetti westerns never died in pictures | Art and d

 Posted on April 19, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  400 words  |  Valentine Belue

A fistful of euros: the Spanish town where spaghetti westerns never died – in pictures Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email In the dust of Tabernas desert near Almería in Spain is a wild west town where gunslingers still roam. The saloons and stores built as sets for Sergio Leone’s iconic films like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly stayed standing after the film crews rode out. [Read More]

Curious humpback whale swims alongside kayaker off Bondi beach in Australia video | Environment

 Posted on April 19, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  129 words  |  Aldo Pusey

Whales Curious humpback whale swims alongside kayaker off Bondi beach in Australia – video A drone pilot captures footage of a humpback whale following a kayaker near Bondi beach. Up to 50,000 whales are expected to pass Australia’s east coast during the annual migration from Antarctica to the Great Barrier Reef. Humpback whales were removed from Australia's threatened species list last year after a significant increase in numbers, from just 1,500 at the height of the commercial whaling industry to an estimated 40,000 [Read More]