What you need to know about old growth trees in B.C. — and the threats facing them | CBC News

…conservation groups like the Ancient Forest Alliance, the Wilderness Committee and Sierra Club B.C. have all used provincial data to argue that old growth trees in the areas where the trees grow biggest are being cut down at an unsustainable rate. A panel of independent scientists produced a report last June which used provincial data to show that the oldest trees in B.C. in some of the most lush, biodiverse forests were on the brink of extinction.

The report found that areas able to grow massive trees cover less than three per cent of the province and “intense harvest” has removed significantly old trees from nearly all of those areas.

“These ecosystems are effectively the white rhino of old growth forests,” said the report said. “They are almost extinguished and will not recover from logging.”

Source: What you need to know about old growth trees in B.C. — and the threats facing them | CBC News

The Observer view on deadly government incompetence | Observer editorial | The Guardian

Johnson is culpable for deaths that did not need to happen. The only conclusion to be drawn from the first wave of the pandemic was that the government took too long to introduce social restrictions and eased them too quickly in early summer. Neil Ferguson, one of the country’s most eminent epidemiologists, said last summer that locking down a week earlier – at which point many advisers inside and outside government were urging the prime minister to do so – would have halved the death toll in the first wave. Yet Cummings said that Johnson regretted imposing a lockdown during the first wave and was determined not to do it again: “I should have been the mayor of Jaws and kept the beaches open.” This allegation fits with what we know about the prime minister’s behaviour during the critical period last autumn, when scientists and others were again urging him to lock down to contain the spread of the virus, but he refused to act.

Source: The Observer view on deadly government incompetence | Observer editorial | The Guardian

Two dead and more than 20 injured in Florida banquet hall shooting | Florida | The Guardian

Art Acevedo, chief of the Miami police department, a separate jurisdiction to Miami-Dade detectives investigating the shooting, blamed political inaction for failing to curb gun violence.

“We had our own shooting the night before where seven people were shot and one dead,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation. “It’s just an indication of the problem we have with the scourge of gun violence in this country that we need to do much more at a federal level to stop.

“We need universal background checks. We need to make burglarising licensed gun stores a federal crime with mandatory sentencing. And we need the federal government and both sides to address this issue because without legislation, without certainty as it relates to holding these criminals accountable, we’re never going to get through the summer without much more death and destruction.”

Gun control is stalled in the divided US Senate, following the passage of two bills by the House. Joe Biden announced in April his own series of executive orders designed to address the “international embarrassment” of gun violence in America.

Source: Two dead and more than 20 injured in Florida banquet hall shooting | Florida | The Guardian

Third wave of Covid may be under way in UK, scientists say | Coronavirus | The Guardian (Me: Boris still more concerned with wrong choice – jobs vs health – than maintaining health so people can work)

Experts cautioned that any rise in coronavirus hospital admissions could leave the NHS struggling to cope as it battles to clear the huge backlog in non-Covid cases.

Downing Street insisted it was too soon for speculation about whether the plan to lift all lockdown rules in England on 21 June could go ahead, prompting calls from the hospitality industry for the government to ensure it provided “advance notice” for struggling businesses of any “lingering” measures.

The vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, refused to deny that some restrictions such as mask wearing and working from home might remain in place to reduce the spread of the virus. Senior scientific advisers believe that, where possible, working from home makes sense beyond June because it would cut the number of people who come into contact with each other.

Source: Third wave of Covid may be under way in UK, scientists say | Coronavirus | The Guardian

Ron DeSantis Won’t Let Cruise Ships Require Vaccines – Mother Jones (Me: Doesn’t care if people die because he is dying to run for new nonsense right-wingnut President in 2024)

Wendy Parmet, director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University, told the Post last week that the state’s argument was “amazing on so many levels,” given the federal government’s authority to regulate interstate commerce.
“The idea that the federal government in general doesn’t have the authority to set the conditions for cruise ships and that Florida somehow has more authority over who comes in and out of the ports, that’s really an odd one,” she said.

Source: Ron DeSantis Won’t Let Cruise Ships Require Vaccines – Mother Jones

Old corporate champions can’t save Japan | East Asia Forum

In Japan, 70 per cent of corporate giants still believe that they must do everything in-house. However, with 10 per cent of a car’s manufacturing cost involving software — and with that amount steadily increasing with time — automakers can no longer go it alone. Having repeatedly failed to develop a collision-avoidance system on its own, Honda finally bought technology from Bosch, only to face outrage from the company’s research and development veterans who insist that using homegrown parts was central to ‘Honda’s soul’.

Analogue era champions were so successful that they have an ingrained a mindset which companies find hard to change — even when they try hard. These firms do not hire or promote recruits who are eager to revamp business models. Around 82 per cent of senior managers in Japan’s leading corporations have never worked in another firm. In Germany, that share is 28 per cent and in the United States, just 19 per cent.

The difficulty of teaching an old dog new tricks is hardly unique to Japan, but what differentiates it is the difficulty new firms face in supplanting past corporate leaders. Not a single new manufacturer has entered the top ranks of electronics since 1946, when Sony and Casio were born. By contrast, 8 of the top 21 electronics hardware manufacturers in the United States did not exist in 1970. Among rich countries, Japan has the second-lowest rate of new firms entering and old firms exiting.

Source: Old corporate champions can’t save Japan | East Asia Forum

Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them.

Just days after violent conflict erupted in Israel and the Palestinian territories, both Facebook and Twitter copped to major faux pas: The companies had wrongly blocked or restricted millions of mostly pro-Palestinian posts and accounts related to the crisis. Source: Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them.

No singing here

Roadtirement

That is right. Downy Woodpeckers do not sing like most birds. They communicate by “pecking” or drumming on wood or even metal. Surprisingly these woodpeckers make very little or no sound when going after their insect prey. They are capable of feeding on insects that larger woodpeckers cannot catch, like fly larvae in weed stems.

Male Downy, the female does not have the red on her head

We see both male and female Downy Woodpeckers quite often in our backyard. They like the suet feeders, and we have spotted a male on our hummingbird feeder. Like the White-breasted Nuthatch, Downy Woodpeckers like to flit from branch to branch, lighting on the suet feeder, grabbing a bite or two and then off they go.

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