Case No. 34 of 2019 1

2. The Informant is an association of the plywood manufacturers in State of Assam. The OP is a public sector undertaking of Government of Assam established for production of methanol and formalin.

3. As per the Information, formalin is used by plywood units for manufacture of resin, which, in turn, is used as a binding agent in the manufacture of plywoods. The Informant states that formalin is purchased by them from OP, which is the sole unit in North-Eastern India manufacturing the same. The Informant has alleged that the OP is abusing its dominant position by charging a discriminatory price of formalin in State of Assam and State of West Bengal, while it charges Rs. 15,300/- per Metric Tonne ('PMT') in State of Assam, it charges only Rs. 11,000/- PMT in State of West Bengal.

The prep has begun for the stars who have a hot ticket to this 2020 BRIT Awards.

ROBERT MUIR-WOOD: Containment - isolating those who are ill and infectious - is the oldest known response to mass infection, dating back thousands of years.

WHEN CLIVE MET EDDIE: The man in charge of England's 2019 challenge meets the man he is striving to emulate ahead of England launching their World Cup in Sapporo next weekend.

Litigation specialist RGL Management says it is edging closer to launching a group legal claim against Hargreaves Lansdown for its aggressive promotion of Woodford Equity Income ahead of its closure.

The Oasis star, now 52, did not expose the identity of the mystery guest but admitted it was very bizarre behaviour.

The star of Netflix's Hollywood showed off his abs in 2015 for Dirty Grandpa, only his second film. Ryan Murphy recently teased the possibility of doing a second season of Hollywood.

Former Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood lost his battle with cancer last November and was remembered at a memorial service at Westminster Abbey this afternoon.

Some of the hits of the last few years (post-liberalisation) show a decided nostalgia for a traditional way of life where women are the homemakers, says Shahla Raza.

It seemed like an insignificant demand, but in fact it is filled with meaning, and the answer has remained challenging in more ways than one. R Balasubramaniam continues his series of Voices from the Grassroots.

In the spirit of Mother's Day today, we're taking a look at the most stylish celebrity moms. In addition to being a hands-on mom, these Bollywood beauties never fail to impress us with their sartorial choices.

On Mother's Day 2020 here are some of the most iconic and heartfelt Bollywood songs written about mothers to dedicate to your mom.

On Mother's Day 2020, let's look at some examples of motherhood in Bollywood that were non-traditional and non-biological.

After debuting in Bollywood with Sushant Singh Rajput's Kedarnath, Saif Ali Khan and Sara Ali Khan's daughter Sara Ali Khan, is counted as one of the most promising talents in the film industry. As Sara continues her film journey, now, all

Bollywood cinema often experiments with its characters, the storylines, music, and morals, in tune with the changing society, but one thing that hasn't changed much in cinema are the mothers, and their loving and caring nature. Their importance on-screen

Every mother faces their own set of struggles, however, single mothers have a bit of more struggle to face than usual. Bollywood too has seen their fair share of unmarried mothers, whether single or divorced, but they have always put their kids

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the entire nation has been put under lockdown. Film Industries around the world have come to a complete halt due to the pandemic crisis. And now, in a recent media interaction, Puneeth Rajkumar spoke about how he

The nation woke up to the sad news of legendary Bollywood star Rishi Kapoor's demise today on April 30. The 67-year-old actor, who was suffering from cancer, was shooting for a film in Delhi when he fell ill again earlier this

Every mother faces their own set of struggles, however, single mothers have a bit of more struggle to face than usual. Bollywood too has seen their fair share of unmarried mothers, whether single or divorced, but they have always put their kids

Behind every successful man, there is a woman. This quote is perfectly apt for all the wonderful mothers across the world. Mother's Day marks an occasion when mothers are thanked for their immense efforts, love, and for compromising their dreams to

Tamil film industry aka Kollywood is all set to resume work from May 11 amidst lockdown imposed by the government to curb Novel Coronavirus spread.  Earlier this week, the Tamil Film Producers Council (TFPC) and the Film Employees Federation

Archives, Room Use Only - TK5123.V35 1845

Archives, Room Use Only - TK6560.G74 1961

Archives, Room Use Only - Q143.H6.A2 1972

Archives, Room Use Only - TK5123.V35 1847

Latest Bollywood News: Shehnaaz, Jassie's 'Keh Gayi Sorry' t...

It is mother's day today, and what better day to take a look at some of Hollywood's most stunning mommy-daughter duos, who look exactly alike. Not only did these daughters win the gene lottery, but have grown up to look just like their mothers. We have drawn up a list of our favourite duos who take the phrase 'like mother like daughter' to the next level.

Scientists from the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, the University of Valencia in Spain and the University of Minnesota, recently made an important observation regarding charcoals […]

The post Fungi still visible in wood charcoal centuries after burning appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

For the past 50 years, the number of wood thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) that breed in the United States has decreased more than 60 percent. However, […]

The post Smithsonian Scientists Solve Puzzle of Dramatic Wood Thrush Decline appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Now that we have a deal between Time Warner Cable and CBS, we can turn our Hollywood focus back on the movie industry.

Steve Julian: Business analyst Mark Lacter, would you agree it's been an up and down summer at the box office?

Mark Lacter: It's been a flaky summer for Hollywood, Steve.  On the plus side, ticket revenue was up more than 10 percent, and attendance increased around six-and-a-half percent compared with last year (this covers the first week of May through Labor Day weekend).  The problem is that the studios and their investors spent huge amounts of money to make a lot of these movies, and they had to compete in a very crowded market - 23 big-budget films came out this summer, which is way higher than normal, and some of them never had a chance.

Julian: Some examples?

Lacter: Probably the biggest clunker was "The Lone Ranger," which could end up losing close to $200 million for Disney.  Another big disappointment was "White House Down," which was distributed by Sony and brought in only $140 million, which for a big-budget action film is really bad.  Even a film like "Pacific Rim," which did well at the box office, might still end up in the red because the production and marketing costs were so high.

Julian: And summer, of course, is the time when studios want to bring out these monster releases -

Lacter: - right, what they call "tent poles" - and in that category, the biggest winner was Disney's "Iron Man," which took in $1.2 billion.  Also having a great summer was "Monsters University" from Pixar, with $700 million.  You also had "Despicable Me 2" and "Fast and Furious 6," which might not be our cup of tea (speak for yourself, it takes me back to my police car days!), but did very well for Universal.  Eight of the top 12 films this summer were sequels - and yet, sequels were no guarantee of success (a number of them really struggled).  And, some non-blockbuster films found considerable success: "Now You See Me" from Lionsgate only cost $75 million to make.

Julian: So, in some ways, Hollywood was its usual unpredictable self.

Lacter: That's right - and don't expect any big changes in strategy when it comes to big-budget films.  The prospect of having huge success with one of these blockbusters is just too great, but perhaps more important is the fact that many of these films are financed by multiple groups of investors, and so the risk is spread around.  It's not like the old days when a studio bankrolled the whole thing.

Julian: Though, sounds like it's bad news for the city of Los Angeles: the "Man of Steel" sequel is going to be shot in Michigan?

Lacter: Mayor Garcetti has actually declared a state of emergency because the city keeps losing business to other states that offer big tax incentives to films - what's known as runaway production.  The truth is that business has been lost over the years, but L.A. is hardly in any danger of losing its spot as the center of entertainment.  And, you can see that with the L.A. County Board of Supervisors signing off on Disney's plan for a TV and movie production facility near Santa Clarita that will add more than a half-million square feet of studio space.

Julian: And, Universal's expanding, too.

Lacter: Earlier this year, Universal was given the approval to build more production facilities, and Paramount is planning an expansion, as well.  Now, these are all very ambitious projects - not the sort of investments that would be made if these studios were looking elsewhere to make movies and TV shows.  And, of course, they mean jobs - actually, employment levels in the entertainment industry have remained fairly steady going back the last decade.

Julian: Are there states that are pulling back their incentives?

Lacter: Yes, the state of North Carolina, which has been especially aggressive in using tax incentives to draw in movies and television going back to the 80s, is phasing out the giveaways because legislators have decided that the economic benefits aren't worth the tax revenues being lost.  And, other states with tax incentive programs are pulling back as well - they're finding that the payback is very difficult to measure.

Mark Lacter writes for Los Angeles Magazine and pens the business blog at LA Observed.com.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

What might lure someone away from the sunny beaches and lush forests of Brazil to the concrete jungle of Washington, D.C.? For wood anatomist Marcelo […]

The post Rigid yet flexible: Anatomy of woody vines has its grip on botanist Marcelo Pace appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today named the 2018-2019 class of RWJF Health Policy Fellows.

Hachette Book Group employees in New York City, during a Thursday walkout protesting their company's decision to publish Woody Allen's memoir.; Credit: Kendra Barkoff Lamy/Twitter

On Thursday afternoon, dozens of employees of the publishing imprints Grand Central Publishing and Little, Brown staged a walkout to protest Grand Central's decision to publish Woody Allen's memoir, Apropos of Nothing, next month.

Both imprints are owned by Hachette Book Group (HBG), the same house that published journalist Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill. The walkout comes after Farrow announced on Tuesday that he felt he could no longer work with HBG after the Allen acquisition.

Farrow is Allen's son with actress Mia Farrow; his sister, Dylan Farrow, has accused Allen of having sexually abused her as a child. Allen has long denied her allegations.

In his statement, Farrow wrote in part that HBG "concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on Catch and Kill — a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse."

Dylan Farrow also released a statement on Monday evening, in which she said in part: "Hachette's publishing of Woody Allen's memoir is deeply upsetting to me personally and an utter betrayal of my brother whose brave reporting, capitalized on by Hachette, gave voice to numerous survivors of sexual assault by powerful men. ... This provides yet another example of the profound privilege that power, money and notoriety affords. Hachette's complicity in this should be called out for what it is and they should have to answer for it."

Employees at both HBG's New York and Boston offices participated in the Thursday walkout. Many also sent out an auto-reply email that read in part: "We stand in solidarity with Ronan Farrow, Dylan Farrow and survivors of sexual assault." Those include Little, Brown executive editor Vanessa Mobley, who was the editor of Catch and Kill.

In a statement sent to NPR Thursday afternoon, HBG CEO Michael Pietsch said: "We respect and understand the perspective of our employees who have decided to express their concern over the publication of this book. We will engage our staff in a fuller discussion about this at the earliest opportunity."

NPR reached out for comment to Allen's agent, who did not respond as of publication time.

The New York Post reported that HBG employees approached the company's human resources department on Thursday afternoon to complain about the planned publication of Allen's book. A Hachette employee told NPR that HBG's CEO, Michael Pietch, attempted to hold a town hall meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue, but the employees walked out before the meeting was held.

Farrow's agent, Lynn Nesbit, told NPR on Thursday, "I feel moved almost to tears by the walkout. It was such a brave gesture to management who, in my opinion, made such a misguided decision." Signing Allen, she said, was "a betrayal of Ronan, of the women in his book, of the issues in the book and of the staff of this publisher." She added that Farrow is "grateful for the support of his colleagues at Little, Brown."

Last year, The New York Times reported that Allen had tried to sell the memoir to several major publishing houses, "only to be met with indifference or hard passes"; one source told NPR on Thursday afternoon that the title had been considered "radioactive" in the publishing world.

Farrow also said in his Tuesday statement that HBG had not fact-checked Allen's memoir, nor did it contact Dylan Farrow for any response. "It also shows a lack of ethics and compassion for victims of sexual abuse, regardless of any personal connection or breach of trust here. ... I've also told Hachette that a publisher that would conduct itself in this way is one I can't work with in good conscience."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Rob Marshall is either the bravest director in Hollywood or the most foolhardy. Three of his five theatrical films — the musicals "Chicago," "Nine" and now "Into the Woods" — don't just invite comparison to the eccentric genius of other artists, they insist on it.

Originally a Bob Fosse stage project, "Chicago" was so imbued with Fosse's vitriolic spirit that even in Marshall's more straightforward hands the movie version felt like the missing piece in a triptych with Fosse's "Cabaret" and "All That Jazz."

"Nine" is the musical created from Fellini's masterpiece "8 1/2."

(Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini's "8 1/2")

Odd enough that someone thought Fellini's intimate but epic fugue on his own creative doubts and sexual fantasies should be adapted by others for Broadway; stranger still to re-import the hybrid back to the screen, in the workmanlike form Marshall gave to it.

And now we have "Into the Woods," a film placing Marshall in the long line of moviemakers defeated by Sondheim's difficult musical brilliance and penchant for challenging material. It's distinguished company, reaching back all the way to "A Hard Day's Night" director Richard Lester's re-invention of "A Funny Thing Happened (On the Way to the Forum)" as a kind of psychedelic Keystone Cops movie, and forward to Tim Burton's more adept but still wrong-headed Murnau-meets-Hammer-Horror approach to "Sweeney Todd."

Even director Hal Prince, the principal theatrical collaborator during Sondheim's most fertile and formative period, made an absolute hash of their shared stage success "A Little Night Music" in a film version later disavowed by both men, and mostly remembered for Elizabeth Taylor's chirpy and discernibly flat rendition of "Send in the Clowns."

Liz singing "Send in the Flat Clowns"

It's just possible that the real problem is that Sondheim's self-reflexive and deconstructive impulse (his musicals are almost always and to varying degrees commentaries on the Musical itself) makes his projects unfit for screen adaptation. In movies, we miss the artifice of the proscenium, the sweat on the actor's brow. But if any of Sondheim's late-period projects held out the hope of a successful movie version it was surely "Into the Woods," a droll recombination of the fairytale form's literary DNA into something like Sondheim's masterpiece "Company," set in a realm of magic beanstalks and slippers made of glass.

The characters are straight out of the Disney pantheon (or "Shrek"): Cinderella meets Rapunzel meets Red Riding Hood meets Jack and his Beanstalk, with a generic Wicked Witch, a couple of not so charming Prince Charmings, plus a peasant couple thrown in. But the issues at stake — marital fidelity, raising children, the fear of aging and death — are complicated, and filled with gray tones which Sondheim and librettist James Lapine masterfully etched across the fairytale's Manichean black and white.

What seemed audacious when Sondheim and Lapine conceived it in 1987 ought to fit comfortably into the era of "Sleepy Hollow" and "Maleficent," but in Marshall's hands, it does not. The good news is that though populated by what old school TV shows used to call a Galaxy of Today's Brightest Stars (Anna Kendrick as an appealingly unglamorous Cinderella; Chris Pine as the nymphomaniac Prince who stalks her; Meryl Streep quite moving in the Wicked Witch role made famous on Broadway by Bernadette Peters) this is mostly a very well-sung movie. There have been controversial excisions and revisions (enabled by Lapine, who is Marshall's screenwriter), but as an introduction to one of Sondheim's more beloved scores, "Into the Woods" makes for a solid musical primer.

WATCH: The "Into the Woods" trailer

But though Marshall has taken a lot of flack for daring to cut out characters (most notably the stage production's Narrator, who served as a kind of Greek Chorus in the original) and for softening plot points (Rapunzel died onstage), the big problem is that Marshall isn't nearly ruthless enough in rethinking "Into the Woods" as an honest-to-God movie. There are many moments (Johnny Depp ending a scene with a stagy howl at the Moon that virtually screams "and... fade out!;" the unseen death of a major character) where Marshall embraces the limitations of stagecraft when something bigger and more cinematic is needed, as if afraid to mar the pedigree of Broadway with Hollywood's debased visual stamp.

"Giants in the Sky," Jack's coming-of-age number, where he describes finding manhood in the sexual and physical dangers available above the clouds in the Giant's Castle, is a showstopper onstage, where we're willing to accept rhetoric in place of physical immediacy. Onscreen, it's simply frustrating for a character to suddenly appear and tell us he's just had the adventure of a lifetime, and that it's too bad we missed it.

The Woods themselves — both character and symbol onstage, a kind of living maze representing moral confusion — are lush here and geographically nondescript, like a particularly plush unit set, done up in a generic Lloyd Webber-meets-Disney house style.

Perhaps most unfortunately of all, Marshall seems constitutionally incapable of conveying the pervasive satiric impulse at the heart of the Sondheim/Lapine original, which could have been called "What Happens After Happily Ever After." Without ironic distancing, the film's second half, where the characters betray each other in decidedly contemporary sexual and self-interested terms, plays as non-sequitur.

It's possible to imagine a more idiosyncratic movie director who both understands and embraces the arsenal of cinematic effects available through editing, camera movement and design transforming "Into the Woods" into a rousing cinematic triumph — the young Terry Gilliam comes to mind. But Hollywood doesn't really embrace its daring cranks and visionaries very often, as Gilliam's difficult career demonstrates. Whenever possible, today's studios like to import genius at a safe remove, and then hand it off to a reliable journeyman who won't make waves or piss off the suits. The limitations of that approach are visible in every scene of "Into the Woods," and perhaps they explain its failure best of all. It's one thing not to be up to the task of adapting a work of odd brilliance. It's something else again to not even take it on.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The TLC Chinese Theatre is shown on April 11, 2020 in Hollywood, California. ; Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Last week, L.A. City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell introduced a motion that would create a taskforce to revitalize on-location television and film production, which went down 18 percent in the first quarter of 2020, thanks to the coronavirus. 

The motion asks Film L.A., the nonprofit that oversees film and TV productions in Los Angeles, to create a taskforce of industry experts who will prepare recommendations for how filming might be resumed safely. It also asks the nonprofit to create a guideline of best practices for on-location filming, as well as protocols regarding sets and facilities. 

We sit down with the president of Film L.A. to discuss what progress has been made and how Hollywood might start up again. 

If you’re in the industry, whether in front of the camera or behind it, tell us about how the pandemic has affected your work life. Can you see a way for filming to resume while following public health best practices? Call ust at 866-893-5722.

Guests:

John Horn, host of KPCC’s “The Frame”; he’s been reporting on the reopening of Hollywood; he tweets @JGHorn

Paul Audley, president of Film L.A., the nonprofit that oversees film and TV productions in Los Angeles

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief operating officer and general counsel of SAG-AFTRA, the union representing media artists; he is currently leading SAG-AFTRA’s “Safety and Reopen Initiative”

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

California Jerry Brown will sign a bill to expand California's film and television tax credit program into law in Hollywood; Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A moment Hollywood's been waiting a while for will take place... in Hollywood. 

A ceremony is planned for Thursday morning at the Chinese Theater where Governor Jerry Brown will sign the "California Film and Television Job Retention and Promotion Act" into law.

The bill - also known  as AB 1839 — will more than triple the funding for California's film and television production tax credit program. 

The push to expand and enhance the tax credit program has been going on for more than a year. In August of 2013, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti used the term "state of emergency" to characterize the flight of film and television production to other states and countries. Garcetti is expected to speak at the ceremony. 

Los Angeles-area Assemblymen Mike Gatto and Raul Bocanegra are also expected to be on hand. They introduced AB 1839 in February and moved it strategically through the legislature in Sacramento. While there were few vocal opponents of expanding the tax credit program, the big question was by how much. Many supporters hoped to see the annual pot raised from the current $100 million to at least $400 million, but an exact dollar amount wasn't specified until very late in the legislative process.

In April, the state Legislative Analyst's Office released its hard look at the current tax credit program, pointing out that the state is only getting back 65 cents in tax revenues for every dollar it’s spending on the film and TV subsidy.  The bill to expand the program kept moving.

California's magic number turned out to be $330 million dollars, not as high as chief rival New York State's $420 million per year, but still more than triple California's current offering. Along with the extra cash, AB 1839 also changes the way the tax credit program will be administered.   Rather than using a one-day lottery to determine which productions receive the credit, the state will measure the projects based on their potential to create jobs.   A project that overestimates that potential could be penalized.  

In this file photo, California Gov. Jerry Brown speaks during a news conference on January 17, 2014 in San Francisco, California. Brown on Thursday signed a bill that more than triples the state's annual tax credit for film and TV production to $330 million.; Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Gov. Jerry Brown has headed to the cradle of the Hollywood film industry to sign legislation that more than triples the state's annual tax credit to $330 million a year for films and TV shows produced in California.

Brown says the increase is needed to help prevent other states and countries from hijacking film and TV production by offering their own lucrative incentives.

Brown signed the bill Thursday at the former Grauman's Chinese Theatre, where handprints and footprints of stars from the eras of Humphrey Bogart to Robert De Niro are embedded in concrete.

Under the new system, credit will be awarded based on the number of jobs a production creates and its overall positive impact on the state.

The historic cinema is now called the TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX.

Film tax credit doc

A rendering of he new stadium and complex to be built near the Forum in Inglewood was released by the Hollywood Park Land Company, Kroenke Group and Stockbridge Capital Group earlier this month.; Credit: Courtesy Hollywood Park Land Company

A measure that would allow an 80,000-seat NFL-caliber stadium to be built in Inglewood could be on that city’s ballot by this summer after developers submitted almost three times as many signatures than needed for a voter initiative.

“22,216 signatures were submitted to the city clerk today,” said Gerard McCallum, project manager with the Hollywood Park Land Company. “It was unbelievable. The response was more than we could have ever anticipated.”

Normally, before construction can begin on any project there has to be an environmental review, but that can take a long time and time is something in short supply for St. Louis Rams Owner Stan Kroenke and his plan to move the team to L.A.

“We would be going through another three year project process, and the current construction wouldn’t allow that,” said McCallum, referring to the redevelopment of 238 acres of the old Hollywood Park site that was permitted in 2009.

“If we were going to make any modifications, it would have to be approved this year,” said McCallum.

To speed things up, developers decided to bring the stadium project directly to Inglewood voters, which required 8,000 signatures.

Once the signatures are verified, Inglewood’s City Council will consider the measure, then developers hope a special election would take place before the start of the next NFL season.

McCallum says construction would begin whether the Rams or any other team decides to move here, though on Monday Kroenke made another move suggesting a return of the NFL to Los Angeles could be closer than it has been at any point during the last two decades, though not until after the 2015 season. From The St Louis Post-Dispatch:

Rams management sent a letter to regional officials on Monday afternoon. The letter said the team was converting its 30-year lease to an “annual tenancy,” effective April 1 and, “in the absence of intervening events,” extending through March 31, 2016.

The notice, which has long been expected, does two things:

• It allows owner Stan Kroenke to pull the team out of St. Louis as soon as 2016, because the Rams lease will now expire at the end of every season. The original lease was to expire in 2025.
• It also legally binds the Rams to play at the Edward Jones Dome next fall — a point on which many here were uncertain.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Scientists in the US have found a way to make a 'biorenewable' plastic from wood by-products. Their fossil fuel-free plastic is similar to polyethylene terephthalate (PET) - a material used to make plastic bottles and packaging. Such green chemistry approaches could help reduce reliance on dwindling fossil fuel resources.

Researchers have devised a blueprint to integrate the efficient use of waste wood throughout a bioeconomy system — part of the economy that uses renewable biological resources from land and sea. This study assessed the environmental sustainability of three scenarios for increasing targeted levels of industrial symbiosis within the wood-based bioeconomy of central Germany, and found that, in most cases, the three alternative future bioeconomy networks outperformed the selected fossil-based reference systems, mitigating environmental impacts by 25 to 130%.

International trade in wood and wood products affects forest stocks around the world. A recent study examines the relationship between changes in forest cover and international timber trade at global level. If finds that some wealthier nations with low population density can maintain forest areas while exporting wood; but other, usually poorer, nations, are losing forests through domestic and global demand for wood.

Illegal timber imports into the EU were between 8 and 18 million m³ in 2009, representing 6-13% of total imports, new research suggests. Although figures for illegal logging are associated with high uncertainties, the authors claim that these figures provide the best available estimates for policy and decision makers.

The North American pine wood nematode (PWN), Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, is a pest worm species that causes a disease known as pine wilt. It was discovered for the first time in the EU in Portuguese forests in 1999. Today, the entire territory of Portugal is demarcated for the presence of PWN, with a 20 km buffer zone, free from the pest, established along the Spanish border with the aim of preventing its further spread. The spread and establishment of PWN in the rest of EU territory is very likely if no strict measures are taken, as required by Decision 2012/535/EU of the European Commission, with serious economic and environmental consequences. To date, Spain has experienced five outbreaks of PWN, three of which have been successfully eradicated thanks to the EU measures and the effective work of the Spanish forest administration; and two outbreaks are currently being eradicated.

Tracing products through the supply chain is a key feature for all businesses and industries; this is currently possible via automated identification systems that link a product to a database to track its progress, and through information-tracing (‘infotracing’) systems that keep accessible records of this progress. A study now introduces blockchain technology as a way to electronically trace timber as it travels from the forest to final product, using an infotracing system based on open source and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology that retains records in a secure, decentralised, distributed ledger.

Scientists have proposed new recommendations to increase the species diversity and sustainability of Mediterranean forests, since programmes to enhance reforestation by planting vast areas of pine trees have not been as successful as planned.

Ash dieback in the UK is likely to lead to the extinction or decline of over 50 species which are reliant on or highly associated with this tree, including mosses, lichens and beetles, a new study suggests. The researchers recommend that the ash trees are not felled but left to die naturally and in time replaced with mixtures of species such as beech and sycamore which support similar woodland species.

Managing urban green spaces to ensure that they have a good mix of tree species, including some older and larger trees, can enhance species diversity of woodland birds, a new study has shown. The study, carried out in Prague, Czech Republic, also showed that the presence of water bodies increased the number of species of woodland birds.

Woody networks in agricultural landscapes are known to harbour high intrinsic biodiversity (i.e. diversity of plant species) and functional biodiversity (i.e. ecosystem services that arise from biodiversity). In order to clarify the drivers of intrinsic and functional biodiversity in woody networks, researchers analysed the plant species diversity, pollinator resource value (PRV), and potential edibility value (PEV) of a woody network in northern Belgium. The analysis confirmed that woody elements are a rich source of intrinsic and functional biodiversity and identified several important drivers. From a policy perspective, this research highlights the value of protecting existing woody elements and thoughtfully designing and locating new ones to maximise intrinsic and functional biodiversity in the countryside.