September 4th, 2010 by author1
The love-struck red titi monkeys sat in their branch with their two prehensile tails romantically entwined. The emperor tamarins with their outlandish white moustaches played mischievously in the canopy, while the noisy trumpeter birds stalked the dank undergrowth of the forest floor below.
It was a steamy 27C, but feeling much hotter because of the 75 per cent humidity, and as the watery spring sunlight of a March morning filtered through the plastic domed roof, a little bit of tropical rainforest emerged through the artificial mist pumped out from the aerial nozzles of the humidifier.
A chunk of South American rainforest has been transported to central London as part of a new open gallery of plants and animals, where a variety of small mammals and birds are allowed to roam freely among species of trees and shrubs that are normally only found in equatorial jungles.
Rainforest Life, the latest exhibit at London Zoo, will open to the public tomorrow and is expected to draw crowds eager to experience one of the world's most vibrant ecosystems – which for many will only ever be seen through the televisual narrative of a David Attenborough documentary – first hand.
Stepping in from the chill of a British spring day, the suffocating heat and humidity of the rainforest gallery hits you like a warm, damp pillow. The screeches, squawks and chattering of monkeys among the verdant leaves and dark tree trunks indicate that this is no ordinary hothouse.
There are no barriers or bars separating the walkways from the wildlife and the animals can come up to the visitors, something the golden-headed lion tamarins are likely to do. It is part of the ethos of trying to create an authentic rainforest experience, according to the zoologists behind the scheme.
"The rainforests, alongside the oceans, are the most precious natural treasure we have. They are the lungs of the world. They provide our food, our medicines and our oxygen," said David Field, zoological director of London Zoo. "Rainforest Life will give people a real taste of the rainforest. These forests are living ecosystems which are home to thousands of endangered animals and they are disappearing fast. Hopefully by seeing how breathtakingly amazing rainforests are, we can encourage visitors to protect the world's last remaining few.
"Using knowledge we've got from being in Brazil we've created this environment because we've also got to make the other animal here – the humans – feel they are in a rainforest. They need to be able to step into this building and be transported," he said.
The exhibition, created in the zoo's 1960s-built Clore gallery, places living plants alongside about a dozen species of small mammals and birds. The grey-winged trumpeter bird and sun bittern forage together – in a bickering sort of way – on the forest floor, while monkeys, tamarins and sloths patrol the canopy above.
Red-cowled cardinals, a bird from north-eastern Brazil, dart from branch to branch and pose a particular danger to any human visitor careless enough to stand too long below their perches – this writer suffered a direct hit on his left shoulder.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
September 3rd, 2010 by author1
A feared piranha has been caught in a British pond, thousands of miles from its common habitat in South America.
Angler Derek Plum, 46, caught the fish, regarded as the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world, at Radnor Park in Folkestone, Kent.
The 1lb 4oz catch was identified as a red-bellied piranha, whose diet consists mainly of fish, insects and worms.
Mr Plum told the Sun newspaper: "It took about 15 minutes to reel it in. When it emerged, it was thrashing around and was going crazy.
The other fishermen were yelling 'You've caught a piranha'. I couldn't believe it."
The Environment Agency said it was probably placed in the pond once it became too large for its tank after being kept as a domestic pet.
Experts say that while piranhas would not survive in UK rivers, the introduction of non-native species poses a serious threat to native wildlife.
Fish species commonly found in the pond include carp, tench and roach.
Reaching up to 14 inches long, the piranha is mainly found in the Amazon River basin in South America and is infamous for its razor-sharp teeth and for hunting prey in packs.
In shoals, the piranha ambushes its prey, stripping the flesh of large animals such as anaconda snakes or even jaguar within minutes.
Qualified fishery scientist Ben Weir, of Angler's Mail magazine, said today: "On the photographic evidence that I've seen, I believe it's a red-bellied piranha.
"I used to keep them and they would sharpen their teeth on the glass of the tank, so I know one when I see one.
"It's probably become too big for its tank but it's extremely irresponsible to release it like this.
"They are a top-end predator. I'm extremely shocked that this has happened because fish aren't keen on acute stress.
"They will keel over in a matter of seconds, but like everything in life there are freaks."
An Environment Agency spokesman said: "Native wildlife is thriving due to the work we've done to improve our rivers but releasing exotic pets and plants into our waterways can cause serious harm."Rather than dumping things in the wild, we would urge people to seek advice about what to do with exotic species."
Paul Foot, chairman of the Folkestone and Shepway Angling Club, said someone was seen emptying a bin into the pond the week before the piranha was caught.
He said: "It's 100% kosher because our secretary, who is a professional angler, saw it.
"Our pond gets dumped full of goldfish and the odd koi carp because people cannot afford to keep them.
"It's unusual that this fish survived because the weather has been so cold.
"Someone was seen during the week emptying a bin into the pond so it's possible that it had only been in there a few days.
"Unfortunately, our pond does get used as a dumping ground for people's unwanted pets."
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September 2nd, 2010 by author1
It was the 1950s, before the halcyon days of the swinging Sixties. Sir Terence Conran was in Sweden. With a girl. And he found himself lying under a strange cover that was a bit like an eiderdown but with no sheets or blankets between him and it.
He enquired casually what it was and was informed that it was a Slumberdown quilt. A few years later, he would be the first person to sell duvets in Britain in his new shop on the King's Road in west London.
Habitat opened on 11 May 1964. It was selling a lifestyle and stocked new and interesting homewares – the chicken brick, the wok and, of course, the duvet. When the catalogue was launched in 1966, it became a coffee-table book in its own right and the store expanded rapidly throughout the country.
Sir Terence recalls: "People do credit me with bringing the duvet to Britain. I had been in Sweden in the 1950s and was given a duvet to sleep under. I probably had a girl with me and I thought this was all part of the mood of the time – liberated sex and easy living. It was wonderful that when you came to make your bed, it was just a couple of shakes."
You have to admit that it was rather sweet that after his liberated sex, he even bothered to think about making the bed. Anyway, the continental quilt, as it was more usually known until the mid-1970s, wasn't an instant best-seller. James Greig, the assistant producer of If Walls Could Talk, an intimate history of the home (to be shown on BBC 4 later this year), says: "When they first came out, people were very reluctant to give up their sheets and blankets, which might have been wedding presents. But the duvet was really pioneered by the housewives who loved the idea that it was so quick to make the bed. Habitat even had an advertising slogan: 'the 10-second bed'. I think they had a few in some stores to see how they went and the advertising tended to include a series of illustrative pictures so people could see how they worked."
Greig has been unable to pinpoint the very first appearance of the duvet, but says it was used mainly in Scandinavia and the colder alpine countries.
To start with, Habitat sold more single duvets than doubles as they were initially regarded as something that was good for children. But gradually they became accepted by everyone. Today, it's practically impossible to find anyone who sleeps under blankets any more.
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September 1st, 2010 by author1
Sitting in the heart of Holland Park like a miniaturised Alhambra Palace, the Belvedere is a thing of considerable beauty. It dates back to the 17th century, when it was a summer ballroom connected to Holland House. A century ago, it was made over as an art deco palace and more recently it's been redesigned by David Collins in a mixum-gatherum of old and new styles. Walk in and you gasp at its crazy opulence: the mile-high ceiling, the beautiful arches, the long, white silk curtains, the hanging white Botticelli oyster-shells, the silver mirrorballs like huge pearls, the dangling Fortuny lamps with their saucy nipple tassels. It's all fabulously swish and kitschily chaotic. Outside, the restaurant's name glows in blue neon. Inside, the far wall is dominated by one of Damien Hirst's vast, circular butterfly paintings. But for all these strenuous attempts at trendiness, there's something stolidly old-fashioned about the place: it's the mullioned windows, perhaps, or the long service table that dominates the middle of the room.
The menu's pretty vieux chapeau too: hefty Anglo-French terrines, rillettes and parfaits, and classic Escoffier sauces (of which more later) applied to sturdy English ingredients such as calves' liver and pork loin steak. One can imagine Lord Leighton (whose wonderful Leighton House is only a stone's throw away) dining here with Waterhouse or Alma Tadema, and discussing how best to represent the flimsy gauze that half-covers the perky flesh of his naked Carthaginian slave girls?
It's also damned expensive (£9.95 for asparagus, this late in the season?) but I suppose you're paying for the lovely setting. I'd been hoping to score an al fresco table out on the terrace, but tonight a private party had colonised the upper room and the outside terrace, from where bursts of cheering and applause regularly punctuated our conversation.
A consensus soon arose about the starters. Smoked trout rillettes with a tomato and cucumber dressing was "deliciously subtle and smoky but without enough salsa", while seared scallops with a "salad Japonaise and oriental dressing" brought a similar criticism: the ginger-and-soy "salad" served the scallops well but the shredded carrot and cucumber was without any dressing at all. Had they forgotten? A cocktail of Devon crab and king prawns came in a cocktail glass, the seafood bulked out with too much shredded greenery, but tasted fine. My plate of Parma ham with roasted figs, rocket and parmesan, while perfectly OK, could have done with a touch of moisture.
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August 31st, 2010 by author1
When Pope Benedict XVI kicks off his four-day visit to the UK with a greeting from the Queen at Holyrood House in Edinburgh on 16 September, he will be accompanied by a gaggle of cardinals known as "Princes of the Church". And, if high-level leaks are correct, among them will be a handsome, modest and very intelligent man who is a potential contender to be the next pontiff. If that were to happen Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson would be the first African pope for 1,500 years.
He was born in 1948 in what was then known as the Gold Coast, a British colony in West Africa. As a boy he was, like his compatriot the former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, a subject of the Queen's father, King George VI. Indeed, for a few years after the king's death he was her subject, but in 1957 the Gold Coast attained independence and became Ghana.
His Eminence Cardinal Turkson, the fourth of 10 children, has wasted little time in hitting the highest reaches of the Roman Catholic Church. He is 122nd in seniority among the 179 cardinals, many of whom have retired and would never be regarded as papabili (papal material). In precedence, the Ghanaian stands just a few places behind the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, Keith O'Brien, and the semi-retired former archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.
Although bookmakers have made Nigeria's Cardinal Francis Arinze the favourite to succeed Pope Benedict – and thus become the first African pope since the death of Pope Gelasius in 496 – Arinze is now 77 and retired and he may well be too old by the time of any vacancy at the Vatican.
Never seen as an ambitious cleric, Cardinal Turkson, when asked if a black man should become pope, replied with a laconic "Why not?"
Though much ancient flummery has been hacked away from today's papal court, Vatican usage remains strict. It divides the "Princes of the Church" into four hierarchical groups. As cardinal-priests Turkson, O'Brien and O'Connor take precedence over mere cardinal-deacons, such as the sonorously aristocratic Italian, Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo.
The young Turkson did well at primary school. He had a talent for mastering scripts of plays and poems, and a love of maths which brought him the nickname Archimedes. But until his teen years, his Catholic father, Pius – a carpenter in the manganese mining town of Nsuta Wassa – and Agnes, his Methodist mother, saw him as far too boisterous for the church.
Speaking at his mother's funeral he recalled her begging him with tears in her eyes to stop being such a tearaway. Because of his mother's tears, he stuck to his books in the seminary, got his GCEs and became a priest in 1975. In addition to his native Fante and English, he learnt French, Italian, and German, as well as Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Greek and devoted himself in his mid-twenties to scriptural studies.
He returned to Ghana to teach: a pupil recalled that he had inherited his father's practical streak and was keen on using tools and gardening. "We all wondered what flowers he would plant in the school garden but he ended up planting cabbages."
As a priest in his forties he was preparing for a doctorate at the Biblicum, the famous biblical institute in Rome, when the Archbishop of Cape Coast, John Kodwo Amissah, died. At 43 he was offered – and reluctantly accepted – the job in Ghana's former capital, dominated by its castle, a reminder of the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Cape Coast Castle was the last halt in Africa for thousands – including, possibly, Michelle Obama's forebears – before they were sent to the American plantations.
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August 30th, 2010 by author1
A road along the Yalu river which was destroyed by a flash flood. Four people have been killed and more than 100,000 evacuated in the broder region between China and North Korea. Photograph: Jacky Chen/ Reuters Photograph: Jacky Chen/Reuters
More than 100,000 people have been evacuated and at least four killed as the worst floods in a decade inundated the border between China and North Korea.
After downpours in south and west China took 3,900 lives earlier this summer, it was the turn of the north-east to take a battering this weekend when torrential rains swelled the Yalu river to dangerous levels.
Chinese television showed army helicopters airlifting people and soldiers reinforcing dykes with sandbags.
Local newspapers ran pictures of the river, which demarcates the border with North Korea, rising over the top of its banks and seeping across the park that separates the river from Dandong city in Liaoning Province.
At its peak the flow of the Yalu was 27,000 cubic meters per second on Saturday evening and remains at high levels with more rain forecast for the coming days. According to the state-run Beijing Times, the floods in Dandong are the second most serious since 1949.
Ninety-four thousand people in the city have been relocated, according to the municipal flood-control headquarters. An additional 30,000 have been moved from outlying regions where the river has burst its banks in 158 places.
On the Chinese side of the river, the worst affected area is Kuandian, where an elderly couple and a mother and child were swept to their deaths in a flash flood. A 60-year-old man was missing after his home was ripped from its foundations in a landslide.
The situation in North Korea is less clear due to tight controls on movement and the media. At least 5,000 people have been evacuated and parts of Sinuiju – the nearest city to the border – have been "completely inundated", according to the Korean Central News Agency.
The nation's leader, Kim Jong-il, reportedly ordered the military to rescue people stranded on roofs and hilltops. The country is particularly vulnerable to flooding because so many areas have suffered deforestation during the energy and food shortages of the past two decades.
The bridge across the Yalu river at Dandong is a vital source of supplies and fuel for North Korea. According to local media, it remains open, but rail services have been disrupted.
The floods in the north-east come as rescue workers in the southern province of Yuannan continue to search for 69 people who have been missing since a rain-induced landslide engulfed a remote mountain town last Wednesday. Twenty three people were killed in the slippage and more bodies are being found every day.
drive from www.guardian.co.uk
August 28th, 2010 by author1
GM food remains a hugely contentious issue. Despite more than 12 years of public resistance to GM, knowledge of its drawbacks – from the rampant growth of herbicide-resistant "superweeds," to the loss of insects vital to the food chain – and unknown long-term risks to humans, the debate keeps returning.
Yesterday, the European commission (EC) approved changes to how GM food and organisms are regulated. The EC proposals aim to keep the current authorisation system for GM at EU-level, but would give member states the right to ban GM cultivation at a national level. This is something that the Greens/European Free Alliance group in the European parliament has campaigned in favour of for a long while, as it brings greater democratic control of GM cultivation. Once countries can decide for themselves whether or not to grow GM, it will be much easier for GM critics to make national politicians directly accountable for those decisions.
The changes would also require that any deliberate release of GM organisms into the environment would have to be adopted in co-decision between member states and the commission. This is the normal legislative procedure in Europe, and it would be in contrast to the commission being able to make decisions purely through regulations.
The flip side is that in countries with weak or non-existent legislation on GM, such as the Czech Republic, Spain and the
Netherlands, seed and feed that is contaminated with GM will be able to spread around those countries more easily. Farmers that want to remain organic or farm conventionally, will find it harder to do so. It may also present a green-light to the rest of the world, including the US, and South America, to loosen GM regulation in their own jurisdictions. The explicit intent of the commission to bypass the "widespread opposition to the authorisation of [genetically modified organisms] for cultivation both at member states and citizen's level." In its "roadmap" for the legislation, and also in public, the EC wants to achieve quicker authorisations of GM trials, in exchange for member states being allowed to ban specific GM varieties afterwards.
Some aspects of the commission's proposals are still not clear. Would the UK be permitted to declare itself GMO-free? Will member states be able to reject GM that is authorised at the commission level, and not justify it to the EC?
drive from guardian.co.uk
August 26th, 2010 by author1
Fast food chains and restaurants have quietly sunk a plan by Britain's food watchdog to display calorie counts in eating outlets across the country, The Independent can disclose.
With increasing numbers of Britons eating meals outside of the home – most often in cafés, sandwich stores and fast food outlets – the Food Standards Agency had set up a trial with many of the largest fast food and restaurant companies, in which they printed calorie counts next to products on the shelves, on menus or next to tills.
But chains such as KFC and Burger King have failed to commit to extending the trials. Others, such as Pizza Hut, Mitchells and Butlers, which runs the Harvester chain, and the caterer Compass have abandoned theirs. Only one major company of 18 firms that tested the idea, Pret A Manger, now displays calories next to all its products.
Despite growing waistlines and the annual cost of billions of pounds to the NHS in treating obesity and other diet-related illness, diners usually have to search out calorie information.
Most chains only list nutritional information such as calories and fat and sugar content on their websites rather than prominently in their stores. Some, such as Starbucks and Costa Coffee, do offer an in-store leaflet – if customers request the information.
But many are unaware of how quickly calories can add up, with one Pizza Hut pizza weighing in at 2,656 calories – the daily allowance of 2,500 for a man – a large Burger King milkshake having 612 calories and a Starbucks carrot cake 560 calories, a quarter of a woman's recommended daily intake of 2,000.
The news means that calorie counts are only being listed next to food in the way the FSA intended in about 200 outlets, or 3 per cent of the 6,000 major fast food and sandwich shops run by leading names such as McDonald's, KFC and Starbucks. Food campaigners expressed disappointment that the project looked doomed to fail. "It's deeply disappointing," said Jackie Schneider, a spokeswoman for Sustain, a food and farming group which runs the Children's Food Campaign.
"Providing a calorie count is a simple way to pass on information to people to make decisions. With [the Health Secretary] Andrew Lansley's comments about people taking personal responsibility, it's imperative that companies give calorie information."
Last summer the Food Standards Agency announced plans to trial the display of calories in dozens of outlets across 18 fast food chains, restaurant companies, cafés and workplace caterers. The companies taking part included Pizza Hut, KFC, Burger King, Subway, Wimpy, Compass, Mitchells and Butlers and Merlin Entertainments.
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August 25th, 2010 by author1
It started as a bit of a laugh. After my food memoir, The Settler's Cookbook, was published earlier this year, friends who can't cook and won't cook asked if I could show them how to make some of the recipes. So they came, a motley crew, to my house. I taught them five dishes in a couple of hours and we ate a jolly lunch. They brought their own mates, new people, amiable strangers – some of whom had been dying to have meaty arguments with me about my "provocative" newspaper columns. It was exhilarating.
Then I took my spices and kit to do cook-ins in people's homes, sometimes as birthday treats. One of them was for Livia Firth, wife of the actor Colin Firth, and Colin's energetic mum, Shirley. From here, I have gone on to a few awayday sessions for small organisations.
Corporate team-building days are often based on getting people into outdoor situations to test their mettle and capacity to help others. Helplessness brings on strength. Cooking is an altogether different experience. It uses pleasure rather than pain to bring teams closer. It is indoors, gets people into a shared space, multi-tasking; it needs fast and good communication and camaraderie. Instead of top to bottom, information is exchanged horizontally, and trust appears to go up.
My hands are now turmeric-stained and my hair often smells of masala. I had tea with an MP at a café in St James's Underground Station after one of the sessions, and he kept wondering whether a new Indian had opened in the precinct.
The feedback has been encouraging – except for two women so far, who couldn't cope with cooking feasts because they are on strict diets. Most who have attended say it brought colleagues together – "much better than a piss-up in the pub, when you hide who you are". Some revealed unknown talents, others their vulnerabilities.
One arts administrator, for example, normally a "dogsbody", in her words, took charge and was soon organising the peelers, cutters and stirrers. Suddenly Ms Independent, she fearlessly experimented with the spices and encouraged the faint-hearted. Then the boss, a little self-important though nice, burnt himself and revealed the child inside him. His astounded staff came to his aid and nothing will ever be the same again. "Did you set him up?" asked one attendee. Now there's a thought.
The queen of such courses is Pinky Lilani. She has no equal. For several years this British Asian woman has opened her kitchen to a vast array of influential individuals and their staff. Her connections make one weep with envy. How did she become so spectacularly successful? She is a good cook herself, but that is not it. She seems to sense and meet some indefinable need. People see her as part guru, part friend, a deliverer of strong self-belief and great curries. Her new book, Coriander Makes the Difference is a spicy Chicken Soup For the Soul, with recipes and folksy homilies, garnished with "inspirational" quotes from a gallery of the great and good – CEOs of top FTSE companies, Baroness Susan Greenfield, Nicole Farhi, Cherie Blair, Lord Levy et al – who savour their relationship with her. Some may find it cheesy, but there is no denying her networking talents and business skills.
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August 24th, 2010 by author1
In Heinrich von Kleist's play The Prince of Homburg, a production of which opens tonight at the Donmar Warehouse in a new version by Dennis Kelly, Wilhelm I, the Elector of Brandenburg, takes exception to the behaviour of one of his commanders in a battle. Notwithstanding his victory at the Battle of Fehrbellin (there was such a battle in 1675), he has the Prince of Homburg arrested for disobeying an order and is court-martialed. The Prince, a day dreamer, fails initially to grasp the seriousness of the situation until he hears that the Elector has signed his death warrant. He then begs for his life and is prepared to give up all that is dear to him. When the Elector hears of the Prince's reaction, he too is confused, possibly astonished and an extraordinary series of events start to unfold.
While the anger of the Elector in the play is justified and punishment inevitable, there is historical precedent for such anger. At the battle of Wagram in Austria in July 1809 the Emperor Napoleon dismissed Bernadotte, Marshal of France on the spot for disobeying an order, an event that was to have a profound impact on France and the German-speaking nations. Despite the fact that Napoleon was the uncontested winner, as in the play, he failed to secure a complete victory and the Austrian casualties were only slightly greater than those of the French and Allies, a result partly due the disobedience of Bernadotte. The irony of this was that Bernadotte, an able general, was to go on (by now Crown Prince Carl Johan of Sweden) to be one of the allied commanders who was to deliver upon Napoleon one of his most decisive defeats at the Battle of Leipzig also known as the "Battle of the Nations".
The Prince of Homburg, like Bernadotte, was an able commander and a figure of inspiration to his men. Perhaps it is for this very reason that the Elector feels he needs to act. Was he doing so out of an unswerving obedience to justice, or was he just cutting the day-dreaming prince down to size, establishing for one and all who was the boss? The events dramatised in the play are based on real events at the Battle of Fehrbellin, but romanticised. On that day, the Brandenburg cavalry did indeed rout a regiment of Swedish infantry, but on that occasion Frederich, the real Prince of Homburg attracted nothing but praise.
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