They Cracked This 250-Year-Old Code, and Found a Secret Society Inside

From Wired.com: They Cracked This 250-Year-Old Code, and Found a Secret Society Inside


The master wears an amulet with a blue eye in the center. Before him, a candidate kneels in the candlelit room, surrounded by microscopes and surgical implements. The year is roughly 1746. The initiation has begun.
The master places a piece of paper in front of the candidate and orders him to put on a pair of eyeglasses. “Read,” the master commands. The candidate squints, but it’s an impossible task. The page is blank.

The candidate is told not to panic; there is hope for his vision to improve. The master wipes the candidate’s eyes with a cloth and orders preparation for the surgery to commence. He selects a pair of tweezers from the table. The other members in attendance raise their candles.
The master starts plucking hairs from the candidate’s eyebrow. This is a ritualistic procedure; no flesh is cut. But these are “symbolic actions out of which none are without meaning,” the master assures the candidate. The candidate places his hand on the master’s amulet. Try reading again, the master says, replacing the first page with another. This page is filled with handwritten text. Congratulations, brother, the members say. Now you can see.
For more than 260 years, the contents of that page—and the details of this ritual—remained a secret. They were hidden in a coded manuscript, one of thousands produced by secret societies in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the peak of their power, these clandestine organizations, most notably the Freemasons, had hundreds of thousands of adherents, from colonial New York to imperial St. Petersburg. Dismissed today as fodder for conspiracy theorists and History Channel specials, they once served an important purpose: Their lodges were safe houses where freethinkers could explore everything from the laws of physics to the rights of man to the nature of God, all hidden from the oppressive, authoritarian eyes of church and state. But largely because they were so secretive, little is known about most of these organizations. Membership in all but the biggest died out over a century ago, and many of their encrypted texts have remained uncracked, dismissed by historians as impenetrable novelties.
It was actually an accident that brought to light the symbolic “sight-restoring” ritual. The decoding effort started as a sort of game between two friends that eventually engulfed a team of experts in disciplines ranging from machine translation to intellectual history. Its significance goes far beyond the contents of a single cipher. Hidden within coded manuscripts like these is a secret history of how esoteric, often radical notions of science, politics, and religion spread underground. At least that’s what experts believe. The only way to know for sure is to break the codes.
In this case, as it happens, the cracking began in a restaurant in Germany.

Plymouth divers are probing mystery of wreck site off the Mewstone

From This is Plymouth:  Plymouth divers are probing mystery of wreck site off the Mewstone

PLYMOUTH divers are investigating the mystery of a wreck site off the Mewstone dating back hundreds of years.
The Mewstone Cannon site, thought to date back to the 18th century, was discovered just off the coast of Wembury in 1968.

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   The wreck site has cannons, anchors and fragments of olive oil jars

Now it has been adopted by Plymouth Diving Centre, based at Queen Anne's Battery, through the Nautical Archaeology Society's Adopt-A-Wreck scheme.
The wreck site covers a large area between five and 18 metres deep, with cannons nearly two metres long scattered across the sea bed alongside anchors and fragments of olive oil jars which originally stood over a metre tall.
The site was discovered by visiting divers and was surveyed and finds noted, but no further work was done until last year, when non-profit marine research organisation ProMare took up the investigation.
As part of its SHIPS – Shipwrecks and History In Plymouth Sound – programme, it carried out a geophysical survey with Plymouth University to map accurate locations for the cannons before handing its findings over to Plymouth Diving Centre.
Diving centre manager Lisa McLernon said: "This project will test our divers' investigative skills, as the cannons are in the same area as a couple of other wrecks.
"There are various theories about how the site came about.
"It could be a shipwreck destroyed in a storm in the 1700s, with the wood eaten away by marine organisms over time.
"It could be that the cannons were thrown overboard in bad weather in an attempt to save the ship.
"It's exciting that we'll be finding out what really happened all those years ago."
The team will also be creating a diver trail with an easy-to-follow map.

 

The 'Lost' Island That Maps Made Up

From YahooNews:  The 'Lost' Island That Maps Made Up

Sandy Island was nowhere to be found when Australian scientists reached the South Pacific location where it appeared on Google Earth, nautical charts and world maps.

"It raises all kinds of conspiracy theories," expedition member Steven Micklethwaite said, adding that the CIA is among the sources of the world coastline database. "It reminded me of the hypernatural island in the "Lost" TV series."

The phantom Manhattan-size island in the Coral Sea was shown as Sandy Island on Google Earth, sized about 15 miles by three miles on Google Maps, and halfway between Australia and the French New Caledonia.

Sandy Island has been featured in various publications, even the most authoritative sources, for at least 116 years and, according to Jethro Lennox, a publisher of The Times Atlas of the World, "back in the 19th century, cartographers would gather their information from various sources like explorers or even sailors, so you could never have a perfect map."

From 1967, The Times Atlas of the World identified the phantom isle, in the supposedly French territorial waters, as Sable Island, but was among few publications to remove it from the map, when it got new bathymetric data in 1999. It also does not appear on French maps from 2000.

Local weather maps placed it 700 miles from the coast of Brisbane, Australia. Many scientific maps, as well as weather maps used by the Southern Surveyor, an Australian maritime research vessel, also placed the island there, according to Maria Seton, the chief geologist at the University of Sydney who led the expedition.

"Somehow this error has propagated through to the world coastline database, from which a lot of maps are made," she said.

Researcher Micklethwaite, in a phone interview, explained that the expedition was investigating the sea bed and plate tectonics around Australia and decided to head to an unusual island listed on their charts.

But there were some perplexing issues. "We checked the coastline database, you could see it there but when you zoom in on it it's just a black blob. Google has no photos from it," Micklethwaite, an associate professor at the University of Western Australia, said. "It's just a sort of slit in the earth so we went upstairs, and the navigation charts didn't have it on.

"So, who do we trust, Google Earth or the navigation chart? So we decided to sail through the island.

"The captain was understandably very nervous because although it wasn't on the navigation charts, it was on his weather maps, so he put into place all the safety stops to make sure we didn't run aground.

"We all had a good giggle at Google as we sailed through the island. It was one of those happy circumstances in science. You come across something somebody has never noticed before."

Where Sandy Island was marked on maps they found only deep blue ocean, very deep, as it turned out: water depth of 4,620 feet.

Micklethwaite said the mapping was most likely a cartographic error.

The scientists recorded information about the seafloor so the world maps can be changed.

Bottom line: the Pacific Ocean just lost an island it never had.

 

 

Secret message found with carrier pigeon may never be deciphered

From Yahoo News:  Secret message found with carrier pigeon may never be deciphered

Before military forces had secure cell phones and satellite communications, they used carrier pigeons. The highly trained birds delivered sensitive information from one location to another during  World War II. Often, the birds found the intended recipient. But not always.

A dead pigeon was recently discovered inside a chimney in Surrey, England. There for roughly 70 years, the bird had a curious canister attached to its leg. Inside was a coded message that has stumped the experts.

The code features a series of 27 groups of five letters. According to Reuters, nobody from Britain's Government Communications Headquarters has been able to decipher it. The message was sent by a Sgt. W. Scott to someone or something identified as "Xo2."

A spokesperson remarked, "Although it is disappointing that we cannot yet read the message brought back by a brave carrier pigeon, it is a tribute to the skills of the wartime code-makers that, despite working under severe pressure, they devised a code that was indecipherable both then and now."

The bird was discovered by a homeowner doing renovations earlier this month. In an interview with Reuters, David Martin remarked that bits of birds kept falling from the chimney. Eventually, Margin saw the red canister and speculated that it might contain a secret message. And it seems as if the message will always be secret.

Carrier pigeons played a vital role in wars due to their incredible homing skills. All told, U.K. forces used about 250,000 of the birds during World War II.

Reef protest 'funded by US group'

From BigOnNews:  Reef protest 'funded by US group' 

Queensland coal miners say activists dressed as sharks, octopuses, fish, turtles and coral polyps don't care about regional communities because they're being funded by a US organisation.
About 50 Greenpeace activists dressed as creatures from the Great Barrier Reef protested outside a coal mining conference in Brisbane on Monday.
They say the Galilee Basin Coal Conference showcased plans for at least nine new coal mines in central Queensland.
'It's clear that official institutions, governments have failed to protect the Great Barrier Reef from the coal industry,' Greenpeace said in a statement.
'It's time for people who love the reef to come together and demand that it is protected.'
The Queensland Resources Council (QRC) says Greenpeace is trying to drive a wedge into regional communities.
Speaking at the conference, QRC chief Michael Roche told miners Greenpeace's anti-coal campaign was funded by US philanthropic organisation the Rockefeller Foundation so it wasn't interested in local development.
'Regional communities understand their long-term prosperity relies on the economic diversity that the minerals and energy sector is delivering,' Mr Roche said.
'Greenpeace have no interest in the future of these communities, particularly when you learn that seed funding for their latest anti-coal campaign came from the United States.'
Greenpeace was not available for comment.

 

CT: A Bounty of Souvenirs From a Captured Ship

From the New York Times: A Bounty of Souvenirs From a Captured Ship
Naval adventure, detective yarn, travel diary, shopping survey. You don’t normally expect to encounter these narratives at an art show. But despite the presence of paintings, prints, sculptures and such, “The English Prize,” at the Yale Center for British Art, isn’t mainly about looking at art. As suggested by its double subtitle, “The Capture of the Westmorland, An Episode of the Grand Tour,” this show has many other things on its mind.

The story starts in 1778, when France joined the Revolutionary War on the side of the Americans. In the course of harassing British ships near the coast of Spain the following year, two French warships seized the Westmorland, a 300-ton “merchantman” sailing home from Italy, as a prize of war. Its English crew and passengers were exchanged for French and Spanish prisoners and its cargo sold, as was the custom. Insurers paid off the owners of the lost goods to the tune of £100,000 — about $210 million in today’s dollars — and the Westmorland’s bad luck was forgotten.

A couple of centuries later, in the late 1990s, scholars poking around in the archives of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid determined that the mysterious initials PY, inscribed on many objects in the collection, stood for Presa Ynglesa, the English Prize. Over the next decade, following leads in Spain, Italy, England and elsewhere, they pieced together the story of the Westmorland and its cargo.

In addition to silk, olives and 32 wheels of Parmesan cheese destined for London markets, the Westmorland had carried crates of books, maps, pictures, statues and other souvenirs being shipped home by English travelers on the Grand Tour. These make up the bulk of this varied show — an inlaid marble tabletop here, pages of sheet music there, and in between, watercolor views of the Alban hills and lakes near Rome by the English landscape painter John Robert Cozens and a bootleg edition of Laurence Sterne’s entertaining novel “Tristram Shandy.”

By the 18th century, the Grand Tour had become a rite of passage for young men of the British upper classes. Accompanied by tutors, they spent months, sometimes years, acquiring firsthand knowledge of the European arts, languages and even sciences. Along the way, they sat for oil portraits and busts, commissioned work from the fashionable artists of the day, and bought rarities, copies and fakes.

The Westmorland’s hoard, most of which landed at the academy in Madrid, comprises all this and more. And for “The English Prize,” the dispersed contents of several of its crates have been reassembled, allowing us to discern not just the tastes and interests of the Grand Tourists in general, but those of specific individuals as well.

For example, in a portrait by Pompeo Batoni, Francis Basset, heir to a Cornwall tin and copper fortune, leans on a classical plinth with a map of Rome in his hand and the dome of St. Peter’s in the background. He looks quite the serious fellow, and the objects he shipped home included classical statuary, architectural drawings and Piranesi prints. But that saucy Sterne novel belonged to him, and so did the proto-romantic watercolors.

Another traveler who sat for Batoni — the go-to painter for Englishmen in Italy — was George Legge, Viscount Lewisham. His father, the Earl of Dartmouth, had been painted by Batoni some 25 years earlier, but the son’s portrait seems to have been something of a splurge. His other purchases were more modest. One, a small, skillful copy by an unknown artist of Raphael’s tenderly religious “Madonna della Seggiola,” from the Pitti Palace in Florence, stands out among all these artifacts of the Age of Reason.

The Grand Tour was not only about art and ideas, however. Frederick Ponsonby, Viscount Duncannon, sent home painted fans and fanciful ceiling designs with classical motifs. And lacking cameras, the travelers had to buy pictures of the sights they were so busy seeing. These images will look both familiar and startling to modern-day travelers. The Alpine scenery at Chamonix, the ski resort in France, betrays no sign of winter sports. The Arch of Titus, in Rome, stands ruined amid remnants of later brick walls. Glowing lava from Mt. Vesuvius paints the night red in a hand-colored print.

To the Englishmen who bought them, the works were travel mementos; to us, they are vehicles for a trip through time. They are also collateral damage from the war that gave us independence. And clues in a scholarly mystery story. And, yes, shopping.

“The English Prize: The Capture of the Westmorland, an Episode of the Grand Tour” is at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, through Jan. 13. For more information: (203) 432-2800 or ycba.yale.edu.

How a freakish predator put a Markham vendor behind bars

From the Globe and Mail:  How a freakish predator put a Markham vendor behind bars

The investigation bears all the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster: an undercover sting, mobile surveillance teams, an international smuggling operation and, most importantly, a catchy name – Operation Serpent.
It also contains one heck of a fish story involving a freakish predator with near-mythological powers.

Bearing razor teeth, an insatiable appetite for aquatic vegetation and other fish and an ability to slither up to half a kilometre over land, the snakehead fish has become the stuff of urban legend, inciting mild panic seven years ago in New York, when conservation officials caught five in a brackish Queens lake, one measuring more than two feet long.
The fearsome fish hails from Asia, where many consider it a culinary delicacy. North American importers have found a healthy market for the fish among the Asian diaspora here, as well as fish collectors who enjoy watching aquarium-bound snakeheads devour everything in their paths, according to investigators. That aggressive disposition has also earned it invasive species designation throughout North America, where it has no known predators.
That incident, along with the creature’s knack for destroying habitat, fed a zeal to root out and destroy the so-called monster fish in the United States. Last year, U.S. authorities began gazing to the porous northern border in the battle against the snakehead and, more specifically, an unassuming fish store in Markham’s Pacific Mall.
On Wednesday, authorities in Canada and the United States officially closed their case against Lucky Aquarium after the company and employee Jimmy Ip pleaded guilty to importing and selling snakehead fish – banned in both Ontario and the United States – despite his lawyer’s reservations. “There was no real threat to the public,” attorney Darren Sederhoff said. “I thought that was exaggerated. The pictures, with the teeth and all that, I know, they can look scary, but the majority of snakehead fish are no threat to our ecosystems.”
The punishment amounts to more than $90,000 in fines and 120 days in jail.
According to documents and agents involved in the investigation, Operation Serpent began in March of last year, when agents traced online ads for snakehead fish to Lucky Aquarium.
Taking cues from hard-drug investigations, the team of Canadian and U.S. investigators first had to set up a confidence buy.
An undercover U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent posing as a customer began recording regular conversations with Mr. Ip, and eventually ordered 26 giant red snakehead fish to be sent to a Buffalo address. Apparently aware of the illicit nature of the transaction, Mr. Ip advised the agent how to avoid detection at the border and said he would courier the shipment using “a fake name and fake address on the packaging,” Bob Baxter, an operations manager with Environment Canada’s wildlife enforcement division and who was closely involved in the investigation, said in an interview. “That built a confidence between Mr. Ip and our undercover operator so that a second transaction could be entered into.”
For months, Canadian authorities gathered information on Mr. Ip, employing mobile surveillance teams to observe where he lived, where he did business and if he was picking up shipments at the airport. They even used telephone warrants to determine who he was talking to.
The investigative coup came in December, 2011. The U.S. agent travelled to Markham to buy 155 more snakehead fish, a potentially tricky transaction that required Environment Canada to supply a team to be on standby in case the covert operator’s safety was endangered. When the deal was done – $233 apiece for fish that were in Thailand one day and Pearson International Airport the next – officials in both countries knew they had enough evidence to take down Mr. Ip and his employer.
Environment Canada officials worked closely with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the New York Attorney-General’s office to create a plea bargain for Mr. Ip. He pleaded guilty on Friday. According to his lawyer, Mr. Ip has already paid fines totalling more than $90,000 in both countries and he will serve his two 60-day jail sentences on weekends.
“He’s accepted responsibility, he’s paid up, he’ll do a bit of a jail sentence and that’s the end of it,” said Mr. Sederhoff, who questioned why the agencies involved sent out several self-congratulatory press releases about the case. “A big win for the governments? I don’t know. They’re trying to toot their own horn here. You know, we’ve caught the big fish. Let me know when the parade is.”

 

Max meets his 16th century doppelganger

From the west.au.com:  Max meets his 16th century doppelganger

Max meets his 16th century doppelganger

At first Max Galuppo, university student, of Bloomsbury, New Jersey, didn't believe it.
Then he saw a picture of himself next to the portrait.
And he had to accept that he looked remarkably like the figure described as Nobleman with Dueling Gauntlet.
Max and his girlfriend were strolling through the Philadelphia Museum on November 11 when they stumbled across the portrait.
Max's girlfriend Nikkie Curtis told ABCNews.com: "We went into the armor exhibit and he loved the helmets. He was completely oblivious to it, and I walked past it and was like, 'Do you see this painting right now? It looks just like you.'"
Max said: "To be honest, I didn't see it. I didn't see the resemblance. Then I saw the picture of me next to it, and you can't deny that."
Max has been asked to pose with the 1562 portrait dressed in the same way.
He's thinking about that while he tried to find more information about the painting and the nobleman it depicts.

 

Australia: Fish trap a piece of coast life history

From thewest.com.au:  Fish trap a piece of coast life history

Archaeologists uncover the fish trap. Picture: David Guilfoyle

Archaeologists have found an ancient fish trap near Esperance, the first to be recorded in the area, which is believed to have been used up to 1000 years ago.
The trap is made up of a series of rocks placed across a tidal creek east of the south coast town and would have been supported by wooden stakes and covered in netting to catch passing fish.
A research team uncovered the fish trap while surveying the area.
Doc Reynolds, a traditional owner of the area and chairman of the Gabbie Kylie Foundation which organised the expedition, said the site was well known among indigenous people.
"The old fellas had a very complex understanding of the seasons, tides and animal behaviour and were able to harvest a catch with great skill and efficiency," he said.
Archaeologist David Guilfoyle said the rock structure harnessed the natural tidal cycles of the estuary by trapping fish as they moved in and out with the tides.
"It is difficult to determine how long these traps have been used, but we guess at least over the last 500 to 1000 years," he said.
Similar rock structures have recently been found elsewhere in the South West, including Albany.

 

'Ocean-grabbing' as serious a threat as ‘land-grabbing’

From Scoop World:  'Ocean-grabbing' as serious a threat as ‘land-grabbing’

Geneva / New York, 30 October 2012 – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, warned today of the threat of ‘ocean-grabbing’ to food security, and urged world governments and international bodies to halt the depletion of fish stocks, and take urgent steps to protect, sustain, and share the benefits of fisheries and marine environments.
“‘Ocean-grabbing’ – in the shape of shady access agreements that harm small-scale fishers, unreported catch, incursions into protected waters, and the diversion of resources away from local populations - can be as serious a threat as ‘land-grabbing,’” Mr. De Schutter said as he unveiled a new report on fisheries and the right to food. (An executive summary is available here.)

“Without rapid action to claw back waters from unsustainable practices, fisheries will no longer be able to play a critical role in securing the right to food of millions,” the expert said, noting that “with agricultural systems under increasing pressure, many people are now looking to rivers, lakes and oceans to provide an increasing share of our dietary protein.”
Estimates on the scale of illegal catch range from 10-28 million tons (mt), while some 7.3mt – 10 per cent of global catch – is discarded every year. “It is clear that as fish are becoming less abundant, fishing vessels are tempted to evade rules and conservation strategies,” the Special Rapporteur said.
Many of the world’s waters are fished by distance fleets, Mr. De Schutter noted, calling for the License and Access Agreements (LAAs) governing their activities to be urgently revised. He called for LAAs to include stronger oversight mechanisms to tackle illegal and unreported catch; take full account of the role of fisheries and small-scale fishers in meeting local food needs; strengthen labour rights on fishing vessels; and be concluded only on the basis of human rights impact assessments, to be prepared with the assistance of flag states.
The UN expert called on governments to rethink the models of fisheries that they support, highlighting that small-scale fishers actually catch more fish per gallon of fuel than industrial fleets, and discard fewer fish. “Industrial fishing in far-flung waters may seem like the economic option, but only because fleets are able to pocket major subsidies while externalizing the costs of over-fishing and resource degradation. Future generations will pay the price when the oceans run dry,” he said.
The key challenge, Mr. De Schutter indicated, is to ensure coexistence between industrial fishing and the rights of small-scale fishers and coastal communities - for whom even occasional fishing can constitute an essential safety net in times of crisis. He therefore made the following five recommendations:
1. Create exclusive artisanal fishing zones for small-scale fishers and clamp down on incursions by industrial fleets;
2. Support small-scale fishers' cooperatives and help them rise up the value chain;
3. Put co-management schemes in place to manage fishing resources locally;
4. Refrain from undertaking large-scale development projects, e.g. sand extraction, that adversely affect the livelihoods of small-scale fishers; and
5. Make fisheries and small-scale fishers an integral part of national right to food strategies.
The independent expert drew attention to positive examples, such as the decision to grant community-based user rights to small-scale fishers on the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia (Tonle Sap, Cambodia), and the decision to ban industrial tuna fishing in favour of local ‘pole and line’ fishers in the Maldives.
“It is possible, and necessary, to turn these resources away from over-exploitation, and towards the benefit of local communities,” the Special Rapporteur stressed.
Olivier De Schutter was due to present the report 'Fisheries and the right to food' to the UN General Assembly on 30 October 2012, but the interactive dialogue has been postponed due to Hurricane Sandy. He was appointed the Special Rapporteur on the right to food in May 2008 by the UN Human Rights Council. He is independent from any government or organization. Learn more about the mandate and work of the Special Rapporteur: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Food/Pages/FoodIndex.aspx or www.srfood.org

 

Poachers fined for stealing crayfish from historic ponds

From the Telegraph:  Poachers fined for stealing crayfish from historic ponds

A gang of poachers has been fined for trying to smuggle a large catch of crayfish from London's Hampstead Heath in the first case of its kind.

A red swamp crayfish Photo: PA

 

In a landmark hearing, Heath bosses prosecuted three crooks caught with two carrier bags full of Red Swamp Crayfish following a midnight raid on the ponds.

The lobster-like creatures, which are not native Heath dwellers, have bred at an alarming rate and are now feared to top 5,000.

But removing or harming the aggressive crayfish, which have been blamed for biting swimmers in the ponds, is a breach of Heath bylaws.

More and more people are believed to be stealing them from the Heath's waters.

But the City of London Corporation, which manages the open space, insisted that this was an isolated incident.
One of the raiders, Julian Glowacki, 27, was fined £220 for snatching the crayfish.
Glowacki, of Kilburn Park, north London, told the Ham&High last night he had not planned to sell his catch on.
The crayfish poacher said: "My cousin wanted to put them in an aquarium. It's the first and last time I do that."
Heath Constabulary officers spotted the three men with their lines out on Hampstead number two pond – a designated fishing site – on June 18, Highbury Corner magistrates, court heard.
The trio admitted they did not have licences to fish and were told to move on. But just after midnight the villains were spotted again at nearby Hampstead number one pond armed with a large fishing net.
Lawyer Philip Saunders, acting for City of London Corporation, said they were found with a large carrier bag of pond life with other crayfish crawling around by their feet.
All three were cautioned.
Officers searched their car and seized a second bag, teaming with more of the crustaceans.
Mr Saunders, who admitted this was a fairly unusual case, said: "When the officers returned them (crayfish) to the water they noticed that some had perished."
The bylaw states: "No person shall in any open space wilfully disturb any animal grazing or shall harry, ill-treat, or injure or destroy any animal, bird or fish, or take or attempt to take any animal, bird, fish or egg or set any trap."
Riko Glowacki, 19, of Upper Edmonton, and Wladislaw Grabowski, 23, of Ealing, north London, were each fined £285 after they admitted breaking the rules.
A City of London spokesman said only two students had been granted licences to catch crayfish for research purposes but it did not issue them for people to fish commercially.
“The City of London Corporation’s ecology and conservation specialists tightly control the red-swamp crayfish populations in Hampstead Heath’s ponds," he said.
"Whilst we do licence crayfish extraction for research, we don’t issue licences for commercial purposes.
"It must be remembered that this species is a non-native, very invasive species that causes great ecological damage outside their native range.
"Indeed red swamp crayfish have been introduced – both deliberately and accidentally - into many other places in the UK where they have caused problems for pond and waterway ecology.
"They are now widespread in Europe and have caused numerous problems for native wildlife and water quality. We must ensure that members of the public do not introduce them elsewhere.”
The red swamp crayfish, also known as the Louisiana crawfish, is native to the US and Mexico and was first recorded in Hampstead ponds in 1991. Several other populations have been identified elsewhere in Britain.
Measuring up to 3.5in, they are omnivorous and known for their aggressive behaviour. ŠThey mate in spring and females can lay up to 600 eggs at a time.
They threaten the survival of the native white claw crayfish and are said to be destroying fish stocks in the ponds.
One theory is that they were dumped in the Hampstead ponds, but individuals can also be dropped by herons or other large birds.
They can travel long distances over land to reach water, nearly two miles in a night having been recorded.

 

 

 

 

 

Cold War Spy Tunnel Under Berlin Found After 56 Years

From :  Cold War Spy Tunnel Under Berlin Found After 56 Years

A section of an ingenious tunnel built by U.S. and British spies to intercept Russian phone conversations in Cold War Berlin has been found after 56 years in a forest 150 kilometers from the German capital.
The 450-meter-long tunnel, built in 1955, led from Rudow in West Berlin to Alt-Glienicke in Soviet-occupied East Berlin. By tapping into the enemy’s underground cables, Allied intelligence agents recorded 440,000 phone calls, gaining a clearer picture of Red Army maneuvers in eastern Germany at a time when nuclear war seemed an imminent threat.

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A segment of a spy tunnel built by British and American intelligence agents in Berlin during the Cold War. The tunnel was exposed by the Soviet authorities in 1956, then excavated and its whereabouts was unknown until a part was recently discovered in a forest 150 kilometers away from the original site. Source: Allied Museum, Berlin via Bloomberg

Enlarge image

An exterior view of a spy tunnel built by British and American intelligence agents in Berlin during the Cold War. The tunnel was exposed by the Soviet authorities in 1956, then excavated and its whereabouts was unknown until a part was recently discovered in a forest 150 kilometers away from the original site. Source: Allied Museum, Berlin via Bloomberg.

The western part of the tunnel was excavated in 1997 and part of it is preserved at the Allied Museum in the former American sector of Berlin. The Soviet authorities dug up the eastern part in 1956 and until now, its fate was unknown.
“It seemed to have vanished without a trace,” said Bernd von Kostka, a historian at the Allied Museum. “I looked through the East German Stasi files, and there was nothing to be found about its whereabouts. We assumed it had been melted down because it was made of valuable metal.”
The find is one missing piece of a puzzle that will take decades to solve completely, as access to intelligence files about the construction and discovery of the tunnel -- a tale worthy of a John le Carre novel -- is still restricted.

Chopping Wood

The man who discovered the buried segment is Werner Sobolewski, 62, formerly employed in a civilian capacity by the East German army. He was chopping wood in his local forest in Pasewalk, near the Polish border north of Berlin, when he stumbled across the wide metal pipe. He remembered it being used for military exercises at the local barracks, where he had worked before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
He recalled too that it was then rumored to have been a part of the Allied spy tunnel, infamous throughout eastern Germany after the Soviets exposed it in a major propaganda campaign in 1956. He contacted the Allied Museum and Kostka traveled to Pasewalk to identify it last week.
“We would like to have it in the museum so that we have a part of the eastern tunnel,” Kostka said in an interview at the Allied Museum. “The sections we have are from the western side. It shouldn’t stay buried underground.”
The western tunnel segment is a prize exhibit at the Allied Museum, which is also home to the original Checkpoint Charlie guard-hut and a Royal Air Force Hastings plane used in the Berlin airlift of 1948 and 1949.

‘Stopwatch’ or ‘Gold’

Displays describe the complexity of building the tunnel and tapping the wires. The British had already constructed similar underground listening-posts in Vienna and brought the idea, manpower and know-how to the project, Kostka said. Codenamed “Stopwatch” by the British and “Gold” by the Americans, it was funded by the U.S. at a cost of $6.7 million (then a vast sum) and operated jointly by the CIA and the British SIS.
Yet the KGB learned about the tunnel when it was still in the planning stages -- thanks to intelligence from George Blake, the notorious British double agent who was later imprisoned, then escaped to the Soviet Union. Strangely, the KGB concealed its existence from the Soviet military because they wanted to protect their valuable mole.
The tunnel operated for 11 months and 11 days, intercepting some of the Red Army’s most secret communications, including those between Moscow and the military headquarters in East Berlin. Historians do not know why the Soviet authorities chose to expose it when they did, on April 22, 1956. The reason is still buried in the Kremlin’s files.
“It was clear that the tunnel had a finite lifespan and would be discovered one day,” Kostka said. “But the Allies expected the Soviet authorities to sweep it under the carpet.”
Instead, they held their first international press conference in 11 years of occupation and bussed in as many as 50,000 East German citizens so that they could see first-hand the treachery of the West.
Yet it was also a propaganda coup for the U.S. intelligence services as the tunnel’s ingenuity impressed American observers.
“It’s a great Cold War story,” said Kostka. “Each side could say they won.”

 

Controversial dam gets approval in Laos

A plot device type of article.... one day you're standing there watching water run through your land...the next day you wake up and your lake or river bed is dry because somebody built a dam a long way away and took all your water. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few?

From MongaBay: Controversial dam gets approval in Laos

Laos has given approval to the hugely-controversial $3.5 billion Xayaburi Dam on the Mekong River, reports the BBC. The massive dam, which would provide 95 percent of its energy production to Thailand, has been criticized for anticipated impacts on the river's fish populations, on which many locals depend.

In late 2011, the four Mekong River nations—Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia—announced that the dam would not go ahead until more research was conducted to allay concerns. Friction over the dam has created a rift between the Laos government and Thailand on the one side and Vietnam and Cambodia on the other, who fear the dam will hurt fish populations and river nutrients. The promised research has not come to light.

"The Xayaburi Dam is the first of a cascade of devastating mainstream dams that will severely undermine the region’s development efforts. The food security and jobs of millions of people in the region are now on the line," Ame Trandem, Southeast Asia Program Director for the NGO International Rivers said in a press statement.

The U.S. State Department also raised concern about the approval, which will force the eviction of 2,100 local people.

"The extent and severity of impacts from the Xayaburi dam on an ecosystem that provides food security and livelihoods for millions are still unknown," the State Department said in a statement, adding that they "hope" Laos will work with its neighbor before proceeding.

A recent study in Global Environmental Change found that if the 11 currently planned hydroelectric projects are built on the Mekong River, fish populations could fall by 16 percent. According to the paper, the "results suggest that basic food security is potentially at a high risk of disruption."

But the Laos government, which hopes to see significant economic gain from the hydroelectric project, says that modifications to the dams design will allow fish and sediment to move freely through the dam.

But environmentalists also contend that the dam could result in the extinction of dozens of freshwater fish species, including the Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas). Specimens of the Mekong giant catfish have been caught weighing up to 600 pounds (270 kilograms), but this monster fish has been overfished to the point of being listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List. Modifications to the dam may not large enough to benefit the Mekong giant catfish.

BBC reports that a ceremony will be held today as construction begins to move ahead full-steam. The date, November 7th, was selected to commemorate the anniversary of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution.

 

Russian divers find missing gold ship

From ZeeNews: Russian divers find missing gold ship

Moscow: Russian divers have located the sunken cargo ship Amurskaya which was carrying a 700-tonne cargo of gold ore, rescuers from the Yuzhsakhalinsk centre said Wednesday.

The ship had sunk near the Shantarsky islands in the Sea of Okhotsk Oct 28 with nine crew members on board. The vessel was en route from the port of Kiran to the port of Okhotsk with a cargo of gold ore weighing 700 tonnes.

Russia's Transport ministry confirmed the finding in a statement saying: "With improving weather conditions, after finding a submerged object on sonar, the rescue ship Rubin moored over the object. The object was confirmed as the Amurskaya."

"The divers work is completed. None of the sailors' bodies have been discovered, but a search inside the ship has not taken place," a source said.

A decision on whether it is safe to search inside the ship will be taken later by rescue authorities in Moscow.  

Underwater archaeology, shipwreck sites and ghost ships to be topics of upcoming talk at UNCA

This event actually took place last week, but there's a dearth of underwater news around..

From Mountain X: Underwater archaeology, shipwreck sites and ghost ships to be topics of upcoming talk at UNCA

“Ghost Ships of the Klondike Gold Rush,” an illustrated lecture by Robyn Woodward describing her work preserving and documenting shipwrecks along the Yukon River in Canada, will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 1 in Ramsey Library, Whitman Room.

Some 290 stern-wheelers and steam-tugs once plied the Yukon River, and provided the primary method of transportation during the great Klondike and later Alaska Gold Rushes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of these vessels were abandoned in remote locations and only two intact vessels survive.

Woodward, adjunct professor of archaeology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, will provide an illustrated lecture on the history, landscape and vessels of this dynamic period of North American history. She is project archaeologist for the Institute of Nautical Archaeology’s Yukon River Survey, and director of the excavation of Sevilla la Nueva in Jamaica.

The event is co-sponsored by the WNC chapter of Archaeological Institute of America and the UNC Asheville Departments of Art and Classics. It is free and open to the public.

For more information, call Laurel Taylor, UNC Asheville lecturer in classics and art, at 828/251-6290.

 

 

Mystery of Angkor Wat's huge stones solved

CBS News:  Mystery of Angkor Wat's huge stones solved

Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap province some 314 kilometers northwest of Phnom Penh

The massive sandstone bricks used to construct the 12th-century temple of Angkor Wat were brought to the site via a network of hundreds of canals, according to new research.
The findings shed light on how the site's 5 million to 10 million bricks, some weighing up to 3,300 pounds, made it to the temple from quarries at the base of a nearby mountain.
"We found many quarries of sandstone blocks used for the Angkor temples and also the transportation route of the sandstone blocks," wrote study co-author Estuo Uchida of Japan's Waseda University, in an email.
In the 12th century, King Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire began work on a 500-acre temple in the capital city of Angkor, in what is now Cambodia. The complex was built to honor the Hindu god Vishnu, but 14th-century leaders converted the site into a Buddhist temple.
Archaeologist knew that the rock came from quarries at the base of a mountain nearby, but wondered how the sandstone bricks used to build Angkor Wat reached the site. Previously people thought the stones were ferried to Tonle Sap Lake via canal, and then rowed against the current through another river to the temples, Uchida told LiveScience.
To see whether this was the case, Uchida's team surveyed the area and found 50 quarries along an embankment at the base of Mt. Kulen. They also scoured satellite images of the area and found a network of hundreds of canalsand roads linking the quarries to the temple site. The distance between the quarries and the site along the route Uchida's team found was only 22 miles, compared with the 54 miles the river route would have taken.
The grid of canals suggests the ancient builders took a shortcut when constructing the temple, which may explain how the imposing complex was built in just a few decades.