Sarah Ferguson he reportedly working on a new cause before Princess Beatrice gives birth the second time.

The Duchess of York is working to eliminate plastic diapers under a new initiative called The Greater Good.

Writing about it in a special piece for...

Wayne Borg, Neom media executive, reportedly continues to make offensive remarks despite complaints.

The turn of events altered the medal standings, upgrading the silver medal of India’s Navdeep Singh to gold.

Jiang Yuyan breaks the Paralympic world record in the women's 100m backstroke

More than 4,400 athletes from 168 Paralympic delegations partied despite persistent rain

A Christie's employee poses with The Aga Khan Emerald during a press preview in Geneva, on November 7, 2024. — AFP

A rare square 37-carat emerald owned by the Aga Khan fetched nearly $9 million dollars at auction in Geneva on Tuesday, making it the world's most expensive green...

Meghan Markle gives major giveaway by exposing true feelings about Harry appearance

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s body language, as well as major ‘giveaway’ from his wife gets exposed.

Royal expert Darren Stanton made these comments during his interview on...

Karachi’s coastline is deteriorating due to plastic and sewage waste, putting marine life at serious risk.

Faraz lost control of car due to speeding, rammed into tree

Check now the final video from team rider Robin Kachfi on his Youtube Channel, which he had filmed during his Barcelona vacation.

Enjoy the video, your kunstform BMX Shop Team!



Video: Robin Kachfi

Related links:

• all Products of kunstform
• all products of Radio Bikes
• kunstform YouTube Channel

Lara has an extreme progress, is very motivated and you can see here at many BMX events. In 2018, she won gold in the Youth Olympics for Germany.

BMX Since: 2009
BMX Disziplin: BMX Park
Hometown: Flensburg
Residence: Berlin
Sponsors: Total BMX, TSG, Red Bull, VANS, sporthilfe, kunstform BMX Shop
Homespots: Mellowpark (Berlin), Schlachthof (Flensburg)
Favorite thing beside BMX: Dogs, Instagram, Friends
Instagram: @lara_lessmann

Photos by Jan Bekurtz (@janbekurtz)

Oh yes, sun, beach & sea and a massive BMX Park a.k.a. Eurocamp. Who doesn't want that?! When the world was still normal, our Bratina Lara Lessmann went to Spain with the Bros Robin Kachfi, Michael Meisel and Julian Bachmann to stack tons of clips for a new video. Unfortunately Lara injured herself directly on the first day and had to take a break for the rest of the trip, watching the boys shredding the Park. Get well soon, Lara!

Have fun with the video, your kunstform BMX Shop Team!

Video: Robin Kachfi

Related links:

• all products of kunstform
• FreedomBMX Youtube Channel

What could be more natural than to wander the streets alone to satisfy your desire for BMX these days? Miguel Smajli takes you with him for some lonely BMX Street Sessions in and around his hood. Stay safe everyone!

Have fun with the video, your kunstform BMX Shop Team!

Video: Miguel Smajli

Related links:

• all products of Subrosa
• all products of kunstform
• Miguels Youtube Channel

Our Sis Lara Lessmann shot a little how-to video for freedombmx magazine. On Rudi's Resterampe, Lara explains how the classic BMX trick called Can-Can works. Make sure you try it, too!

Have fun with the video, your kunstform BMX Shop Team!

Video: freedombmx

Related links:

• all products of Total
• all products of kunstform

Our bro Felix Prangenberg filmed this 7 minute long banger part with his teammate Jordan Godwin last summer. You are only one click away from witnessing this madness, check it!

Have fun with the video, your kunstform BMX Shop Team!

Video: Felix Prangenberg

Related links:

• all products of wethepeople
• all signature parts of Felix Prangenberg

Yeah, we're super stoked of our team rider Lara Lessmann, who is now officially supported by VANS BMX . In her "Welcome Edit" Lara shows her BMX lifestyle combined with beautiful pictures from Berlin.

We hope you enjoy the video.

Video: Hans Friedrich

Sidste uge kolliderede to store kulturbegivenheder på dansk grund. RokokoPostens reporter var med begge steder - samtidig!

Indlægget Komparativ kulturanmeldelse: Folkemødet vs CopenHell blev først udgivet på RokokoPosten.

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Karachi Police Chief Javed Alam Odho speaks during an event in Karachi, on July 24, 2024. — Facebook/@ssusindhpoliceOdho calls for stricter laws to address this alarming trend.Karachi's top cop warns security company owners of action.Legislation to tighten rules for companies in...

Police personnel stop commuters at a checkpoint on a road leading towards Karachi airport, on November 13, 2024. — ReporterLEAs close off road leading from Star Gate to Jinnah Terminal.Traffic being diverted from Model Colony to Sharea Faisal: police.New measures taken due to...

An undated image shows Pakistan's baseball team poses with national flag Arab Classic Dubai 2024 championship. — APP/File

DUBAI: Pakistan’s baseball team clinched the Arab Classic Dubai 2024 championship as the team trampled the hosts United Arab Emirates with an...

India blind cricket team players. — CABI/File

With the Blind T20 World Cup in Pakistan just days away, the Indian government has yet to clear its blind cricket team for participation, India Today reported.

Although the Sports Ministry has issued a No Objection Certificate for...

The Parable Of The Ten Talents is an online Bible study about using your Spiritual gifts and fruit to glorify God. We interpret this famous parable of Jesus and apply it to the life of a Christian disciple.

A eclectic group of stars - including reality TV's Ariana Madix, Broadway belter Idina Menzel, hip-hop's T-Pain, members of the WNBA champions New York Liberty and country duo Dan + Shay - will feature in this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Five D.C. United fan groups said Monday they'll remain quiet for the first four matches this season to protest the Major League Soccer team's partnership with Saudi Arabia.

Manchester United secured its first win in Europe for more than a year by beating PAOK 2-0 in the Europa League on Thursday.

Galatasaray forward Mauro Icardi tore his right ACL in the Europa League match against Tottenham and could miss the rest of the season, the team said Friday.

Donald Trump's first picks for immigration policy jobs spent the last four years angling for this moment.

Activist investor Elliott Investment Management has taken a more than $5 billion stake in Honeywell International and is calling for the conglomerate to split into two separate companies.

We first met the guys at Barbara’s Groceries back in 2015 on the 4700 block of Liberty Heights Avenue. This episode, we reunite with them, we listen back together to their original recordings, and we ask them, “How’s life changed in the past six years?” Plus, Aaron & Wendel bid a fond farewell to listeners as Out of the Blocks comes to a close.

Nearly two decades ago, My Chemical Romance released their career-defining rock opera, "The Black Parade," cementing their shift from mainstays of the emo scene to mainstream recognition and becoming one of the most inventive bands of the 21st century.

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign spent at least $20 million on celebrity appearances during her failed presidential bid, federal election records revealed.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, including Shohei Ohtani and his dog, celebrated their eighth World Series championship with a downtown parade on Friday.

Left-hander Aaron Bummer agreed Saturday to a $13 million, two-year contract with the Atlanta Braves, who reached a revised $30 million, three-year deal with All-Star Reynaldo Lopez that guarantees the right-hander an additional $4 million.

IOC presidential candidate Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. has urged European lawmakers to regard investing in sport as a public health policy in his first keynote speech of a six-month Olympic leadership campaign.

USA Track and Field is bringing the U.S. Paralympics Track & Field program in-house beginning Jan. 1 as part of a partnership that will unite all of its athletes under one roof.

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) was initiated by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) together with a group of editors and publishers of scholarly journals after a meeting in  December 2012 during the ASCB Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The document recognizes the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of scientific research are evaluated.

DORA puts into question the use of Journal Impact Factor as a main tool for assessment, and proposes the consideration of various other factors towards more sophisticated and meaningful approaches. DORA is a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines.

To read the whole declaration, please follow the link: http://am.ascb.org/dora/

In this guest post Martin Sharman opens up a rich area of debate by arguing that as a policy concept, ecosystem services puts human wants first and foremost and undermines moral-aesthetic value arguments for conservation that are widely held in society. Martin was the policy offer responsible for biodiversity and ecosystems in the European Commission’s DG Research & Innovation up until his retirement last November. During his career he made an enormous contribution to biodiversity research and policy, including the initiation of the BioFresh project. The opinions expressed in this post are, of course, his own and are not intended to represent a position of either the Commission or BioFresh.

A "resource" is something that is useful to someone. A "natural resource" is something in the natural environment that a human can use to satisfy want or increase wellbeing.

To adopt this vocabulary is to adopt a forthright utilitarian view of the natural environment, and implicitly to accept that human benefit is the only good. Not only is human benefit the only good, but it is quantifiable – for if not, then we can never agree on what constitutes a resource, or who has the greater right to it. Thus someone who speaks of natural resources accepts, again implicitly, that happiness and wellbeing can be quantified. The vocabulary also requires that this quantified human benefit remains, if not constant, then comparable over cultures and generations.

More than this: the wellbeing of the "resource" is insignificant. It is only by setting concern for the wellbeing of the resource to zero that one can regard it as merely something to satisfy human want. Human benefit is the only good. This is the First Commandment; in the limpid words of the King James version of the bible, thou shalt have no other gods before me.

In this observation lies much of the moral argument against the concept of ecosystem services: just as oranges are not the only fruit, so humans are not the only species.

The concept of ecosystem services is one thing; the premise of its proponents is another. It is, in short, that conservation based on intrinsic value of biodiversity has failed to stop the loss of species, ecosystems, and the complex web of interactions between them. Since an ethical argument has failed, then we should try self-interest. By demonstrating that human wellbeing is increased by the services rendered by ecosystems, we can motivate people to protect the source of the service – biodiversity.

We know that conservation is not working because we continue to lose biodiversity. Oh yeah? This is the equivalent of me deciding that my accelerator is not working because my car is losing speed. Why is such a daft non-sequitur accepted by otherwise intelligent people? You immediately thought of many reasons my car might be losing speed – I have the brakes on, I’m going up a hill, I’ve run out of fuel, I’ve run into sand, I’ve hit an oncoming truck. The obvious reason that we are losing biodiversity is the memento mori that stares at us from our looking glass – biodiversity loss is the inevitable result of our debt-based economic system and our swelling population’s unsustainable demands on nature. We all know that. Why do we mutely accept the dangerously diversionary nonsense that "biodiversity is being lost because conservation is not working"?

Ecosystem services takes the utilitarian logic of natural resources one important step further. A "service" by definition benefits humans. If we are to protect services only if they benefit humans, then what happens to the useless ecosystems? Are they simply to be cemented over?

I recently heard a discussion in which one person said "most people are useless", meaning that they are surplus to requirement. The outrage that this provoked was spearheaded by someone saying that you can never prove that anyone is useless, because you can never know enough about their contribution to their social fabric. So does this mean that you can never show that an ecosystem is useless? If so that leaves the ecosystem services argument saying that because some ecosystems benefit humans, we have to protect every ecosystem.

Which may be the right answer, but why reach it by such objectionable means?

For those of us with a reverence of nature, the ecosystem services rhetoric and mindset are abhorrent, being fundamentally immoral and unethical. They take the most ecologically damaging invasive species in the history of life, and place it above all other species on Earth. They cast all other – voiceless – species in the role of consumables. This mindset might have worked for Homo habilis. It will not work for Homo sapiens.

Martin Sharman  for the BioFresh Blog: http://biofreshblog.com/2013/07/03/perspective-martin-sharman-on-ethics-and-the-ecosystem-services-paradigm/

EU BON takes care to enhance the expertise of its consortium by affiliating associate partners, an approach the project is planning to continue with. EU BON is pleased to welcome the latest addition to our list of associate partners - HaMAARAG- The Israel National Program for Ecosystem Assessment.

HaMaarag was established in 2006, following a decade’s worth of research in Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) stations. Its main objective is to promotescience-based management of open landscapes and natural resources, for human well-being and for long-term sustainability of nature in Israel.

HaMaarag aims to:
•   Generate science-based knowledge about the state of ecosystems and biodiversity in Israel
•   Strengthen the relationship between scientific knowledge, management and policymaking, in the fields of natural resource and open landscape management, land use planning and nature conservation.
•   Improve accessibility of this knowledge to decision-makers and the general public.

By achieving these aims, HaMaarag promotes the development of a common language, knowledge base and perspective regarding ecosystems in Israel, thus facilitating efficiency of management and policy within the relevant organizations.

A new EU BON derived paper, publsihed recently in the journal Remote Sensing, introduces eHabitat+, a habitat modelling service supporting the European Commission’s Digital Observatory for Protected Areas.

Abstract:

Protected areas (PAs) need to be assessed systematically according to biodiversity values and threats in order to support decision-making processes. For this, PAs can be characterized according to their species, ecosystems and threats, but such information is often difficult to access and usually not comparable across regions. There are currently over 200,000 PAs in the world, and assessing these systematically according to their ecological values remains a huge challenge. However, linking remote sensing with ecological modelling can help to overcome some limitations of conservation studies, such as the sampling bias of biodiversity inventories. The aim of this paper is to introduce eHabitat+, a habitat modelling service supporting the European Commission’s Digital Observatory for Protected Areas, and specifically to discuss a component that systematically stratifies PAs into different habitat functional types based on remote sensing data. eHabitat+ uses an optimized procedure of automatic image segmentation based on several environmental variables to identify the main biophysical gradients in each PA. This allows a systematic production of key indicators on PAs that can be compared globally. Results from a few case studies are illustrated to show the benefits and limitations of this open-source tool.

Original Source: 

Martínez-López, J.; Bertzky, B.; Bonet-García, F.J.; Bastin, L.; Dubois, G. Biophysical Characterization of Protected Areas Globally through Optimized Image Segmentation and Classification. Remote Sens. 2016, 8, 780. DOI: 0.3390/rs8090780

From a cowboy hat to a WWE belt, the NBA champions each put a unique spin on their fits for Friday's celebrations.

The post Photos: The Celtics arrive in style for championship parade and celebrations appeared first on Boston.com.

Former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and five other separatist leaders from the region have appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva, denouncing what they call the “suspension” of their political rights by Spanish authorities.

SWISSINFO

Decembrer 20, 2018

(© KEYSTONE / MARTIAL TREZZINI)

Speaking to journalists in the Swiss city on Thursday, Puigdemont said that the joint appeal to the rights body aimed to denounce the “serious violation of rights and freedoms in Spain, something unacceptable in the framework of European Union law”.

Puigdemont, Oriol Junqueras, Raul Romeva, Josep Rull, Jordi Sanchez, and Jordi Turull are all members of Catalonia’s parliament, but were charged and suspended from taking office by the Spanish Supreme Court for their role in organizing an October 2017 independence referendum in Catalonia in northeast Spain.

“Six people, democratically-elected and not yet convicted – five of whom have been detained for over a year – cannot exercise their rights,” said Puigdemont.

Having been accused of rebellion and sedition by Spanish authorities after the unauthorized referendum, Puigdemont has since lived in Belgium. An international arrest warrant against him was withdrawn last July.

Puigdemont and Sanchez, president of the independent association ANC, had already filed a separate complaint to the same UN rights body in March 2018 to denounce their "impossibility of running for president of the Generalitat” [the Catalan government]. The UN committee has yet to take any decision on the complaints.

+ Puigdemont said the Swiss federal model could offer a vision for Spain

It’s not the first time the emblematic Catalan figure has visited Geneva; an international human rights film festival hosted him for a debate on self-determination in March, a visit from which cantonal authorities distanced themselves.

Several other ‘wanted’ separatists, including Anna Gabriel and Marta Rovira, have sought exile in Switzerland following their condemnation in Spain.

Thursday’s action in Geneva comes as the Catalan separatist row shows no signs of ending. This week, four imprisoned leaders of the movement ended an almost three-week hunger strike, while Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez has chosen to hold this Friday’s cabinet meeting in Barcelona – a deliberate “provocation”, for some Catalan supporters.

Periods of music are often hotly contested and accompanied by the notion that over-night one period of music magically transformed into the next. Imagine falling ... Read more

The post Characteristics of Classical Music: An introduction appeared first on CMUSE.