Frontline closer to the capital than at any point since the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime
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Euan Ferguson travels to Pembrokeshire, where sightings of sea turtles have surged, to find reasons for the marine invasion This is, it hardly needs saying, the story everyone’s been talking about all week. The turtles are coming! Giant leatherback sea turtles. Dermochelys coriacea , to be formal about it. Those who know about these things include them in an elite group known as “charismatic mega-fauna” – lions, elephants etc – not because they (necessarily) light up a room when they join a party, but because, without wishing to anthropomorphise too much, they’re much “nicer” than slugs and jellyfish, and possess a serious wooo! factor. Children are happy to stare and stare; adults get a frisson at the sheer size, the grace in the water. They are big, up to three metres long. This is one big turtle. This is Turtlezilla. And sightings, normally, are extremely rare. This summer is different though. The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has asked the public to log any sighting of a giant leatherback. There have already been an unusually high number; eight in the last fortnight, mainly from around here, by walkers, yachtsmen, surfers. August is the month to watch for them. “What we do know,” according to Peter Richardson of the MCS, “is that something’s been happening in the Atlantic which is good for the leatherbacks.” They’re still on the list of critically endangered species – a colony in Gabon which was huge in the 1970s is now practically extinct. But, in the Atlantic, the leatherback population appears to be starting to thrive. So here I am in very wet, very Welsh, very west Wales, near the whales. Looking for a turtle, somewhere out at sea, off the coastline near Solva, a coast of such grandeur it would be rejected by film-location scouts as ridiculously overblown unless they were scouting for ridiculously overblown things such as Dr Who or Camelot . My turtle sighting is, frankly, unlikely to happen. There’s a lot of coast to cover for one: there’s 180
Continue reading …Tina Fey has a second kid on the ground, having given birth to a daughter on Wednesday, People reports. Penelope Athena joins big sister Alice, 5. The 41-year-old comedian announced the pregnancy , which she called “easy,” earlier this year while promoting her book, Bossypants. Fey is married to 50-year-old composer…
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Texas governor says he will work to make Washington as ‘inconsequential’ to people’s lives as possible if elected Texas governor Rick Perry entered the Republican presidential race on Saturday, jolting the crowded field seeking to unseat Barack Obama. Perry told voters in a conference call from Columbia, South Carolina, that he wants to take on Obama and said that “I full well believe I’m going to win.” About an hour later, he outlined his principles in a speech at a conservative conference in Charleston, South Carolina, declaring that if elected president, he would work to make Washington as “inconsequential” to Americans’ lives as possible. He accused Obama of providing “rudderless” leadership at home and abroad, and declared that he wants to cut taxes and free businesses from the shackles of regulation to spark an economic recovery. Perry spoke only a few hours before the release of results from a straw poll in Iowa, the state which holds the first nominating contest next year. In Iowa, thousands of Republicans mingled with presidential hopefuls on a college campus in Ames where they began voting in the first test to see how the candidates are faring with the party’s base. The poll results are nonbinding, but the outcome will probably provide a road map for the Iowa campaign heading into the caucuses that are scheduled for early February. Mitt Romney leads national polls and many states’ surveys for the chance to challenge Obama, who is considered vulnerable in next year’s election because of lingering high unemployment and the sputtering economic recovery. But there is no shortage of rivals looking to emerge as the top alternative to Romney, who lost the nomination in 2008 to John McCain. Even before he officially entered the race, polls of Republican voters showed Perry running only a few percentage points behind Romney, who has been emphasising his business background to persuade voters he can turn the economy around. But many conservatives have not embraced him because of his past support as Massachusetts governor for abortion and gay rights and a health care reform package used by Obama as a model for legislation that Republicans loathe. Evangelical Christians, a key part of the Republican base, also look askance at Romney’s Mormon faith. Through three terms as Texas governor, Perry has overseen significant job growth in his state while working to keep taxes low. He was an early backer of the small government, anti-tax Tea Party movement. He enjoys the support of social conservatives because of his opposition to abortion and gay rights. He is also an evangelical Christian who organised a well-attended prayer rally in Houston last week. Rick Perry Republicans US politics United States guardian.co.uk
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Senior Liberal Democrats attack ‘hasty’ measures as housing charities condemn the threat of eviction Coalition efforts to present a united front over the riots have come under strain as senior Liberal Democrats call for an end to “kneejerk” reactions by politicians and warn that stripping those involved of their benefits could worsen crime on the streets. In a clear sign of tensions between the governing parties, the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, Simon Hughes, insists that long-term solutions lie in supporting communities by offering opportunities and redistributing wealth, not slashing help from the state and cutting taxes for the
Continue reading …A Pennsylvania Turnpike spokesman says rescue crews freed a woman trapped when a Greyhound bus overturned on the interstate, injuring about two dozen people. Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo said the westbound bus flipped on its side at about 6am today at milepost 267, one mile east of the Lebanon-Lancaster exit….
Continue reading …Someone tweeted an LA sheriff station’s phone number on the Game’s Twitter account last night, encouraging all 580,000 of his followers to call for an internship—and incidentally jamming emergency lines for two hours. The rapper appears to be backtracking, notes the LA Times, suggesting that, ahem, he was…
Continue reading …Fidel Castro marked his 85th birthday outside of the public spotlight today, with little fanfare around the aging revolutionary icon who is rarely seen in public these days but still casts a long shadow over Cuban society. There were no announced celebrations of Castro’s birthday, though the previous night two…
Continue reading …Gunmen abducted an American after breaking into his house in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore today, officials said, an unusually brazen raid that illustrated the threat to foreigners living in the militancy-wracked country. The US Embassy identified the victim as Warren Weinstein. A man by that name serves as…
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