Category Archives: Viva!

Outrage as blue shark is cooked and served at Plymouth Seafood festival

Sick!

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Animal is paraded through town before being chopped up as part of cookery event

Conservationists have criticised an event during a seafood festival in which a shark was paraded through a British port city before being chopped up, cooked and served to onlookers.

The blue shark, a near-threatened species, was hoisted in the air by two men and carried through Plymouth, Devon, before being deposited on a stage where it formed part of a cookery demonstration.

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US academic given two weeks to leave UK after eight years

UK is coming unwound!

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Visa system for researchers is hostile and costly and risks jamming a pipeline of talent, universities warn

After eight years researching music history at Glasgow University, Elizabeth Ford hoped her request for a visa extension would sail through this summer. Instead, the Home Office gave the American academic two weeks to pack up her life and leave the country.

Ford has held a research fellowship at Edinburgh University – which, like Glasgow is in the elite Russell Group – and is due to begin a new research fellowship at Oxford University. But this is in jeopardy after a letter from the Home Office in July, which said that her leave to remain, granted a year before, was erroneous, and that she must leave within two weeks.

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Leading burger supplier sourced from Amazon farmer using deforested land

BOYCOTT!!!

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Brazilian meat company which has supplied McDonald’s and Burger King bought cattle from farm using deforested land earlier this year, investigation shows

The world’s biggest supplier of burgers sourced meat from a farmer in the Amazon who had been found guilty of using deforested land, say reports, even as new figures reveal the beef industry’s deforestation risks.

Marfrig, a Brazilian meat company that has supplied McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food chains around the world, bought cattle from a farm that had been using deforested land earlier this year, according to a joint investigation by Repórter Brasil and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

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Greta Thunberg to Congress: ‘You’re not trying hard enough. Sorry’

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The Swedish environmentalist was one of several who spoke at a Senate climate crisis task force

At a meeting of the Senate climate crisis task force on Tuesday, lawmakers praised a group of young activists for their leadership, their gumption and their display of wisdom far beyond their years. They then asked the teens for advice on how Congress might combat one of the most urgent and politically contentious threats confronting world leaders: climate change.

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish activist who has galvanized young people across the world to strike for more action to combat the impact of global warming, politely reminded them that she was a student, not a scientist – or a senator.

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‘See you on the street!’ Greta Thunberg urges all to join Friday’s climate strike – video

‘Even though it is slow, the pace is picking up and the debate is shifting,’ 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg tells a rapturous audience at George Washington University. Thunberg pioneered the Fridays for Future school climate strikes in August last year by staging a solo protest outside the Swedish parliament. The movement has since grown around the world. The next mass protest is on 20 September. ‘Activism works’, she says, before concluding: ‘See you on the street!’

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Johnson humiliated by Luxembourg PM at ’empty chair’ press conference

Xavier Bettel gesticulates at empty podium as British PM skips press conference amid loud protests

Boris Johnson was left humiliated and his claims of progress in the Brexit negotiations in tatters after a chaotic visit to Luxembourg ended in the prime minister being mocked by a fellow European leader for cancelling a press appearance to avoid protesters.

Johnson was booed and jeered as he left a working lunch with the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, before opting out of plans to speak alongside Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, after being targeted by a larger crowd.

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