IGIHE

Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

  • It’s true: The sound of nature helps us relax

    {The gentle burbling of a brook, or the sound of the wind in the trees can physically change our mind and bodily systems, helping us to relax. New research explains how, for the first time.}

    Researchers at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) found that playing ‘natural sounds’ affected the bodily systems that control the flight-or-fright and rest-digest autonomic nervous systems, with associated effects in the resting activity of the brain. While naturalistic sounds and ‘green’ environments have frequently been linked with promoting relaxation and wellbeing, until now there has been no scientific consensus as to how these effects come about. The study has been published in Scientific Reports.

    The lead author, Dr Cassandra Gould van Praag said, “We are all familiar with the feeling of relaxation and ‘switching-off’ which comes from a walk in the countryside, and now we have evidence from the brain and the body which helps us understand this effect. This has been an exciting collaboration between artists and scientists, and it has produced results which may have a real-world impact, particularly for people who are experiencing high levels of stress.”

    In collaboration with audio visual artist Mark Ware, the team at BSMS conducted an experiment where participants listened to sounds recorded from natural and artificial environments, while their brain activity was measured in an MRI scanner, and their autonomic nervous system activity was monitored via minute changes in heart rate. The team found that activity in the default mode network of the brain (a collection of areas which are active when we are resting) was different depending on the sounds playing in the background:

    When listening to natural sounds, the brain connectivity reflected an outward-directed focus of attention; when listening to artificial sounds, the brain connectivity reflected an inward-directed focus of attention, similar to states observed in anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. There was also an increase in rest-digest nervous system activity (associated with relaxation of the body) when listening to natural compared with artificial sounds, and better performance in an external attentional monitoring task.

    Interestingly, the amount of change in nervous system activity was dependant on the participants’ baseline state: Individuals who showed evidence of the greatest stress before starting the experiment showed the greatest bodily relaxation when listening to natural sounds, while those who were already relaxed in the brain scanner environment showed a slight increase in stress when listening to natural compared with artificial sounds.

    The study of environmental exposure effects is of growing interest in physical and mental health settings, and greatly influences issues of public health and town planning. This research is first to present an integrated behavioural, physiological and brain exploration of this topic.

    Artist Mark Ware commented, “Art-science collaborations can be problematic, often due to a lack of shared knowledge and language (scientific and artistic), but the team at BSMS has generously sought common ground, which has resulted in this exciting and successful outcome. We have plans to continue collaborating and I am keen to explore how the results of this work might be applied to the creation and understanding of time-based art (installations, multimedia performance, and film) for the benefit of people in terms of wellbeing and health.”

    Source:Science Daily

  • 7 ways to attract good things to your life

    {What if you knew that you had the power to attract either good or bad things to your life? However, many people end up attracting bad and negative things into their lives by their thoughts and actions.}

    See some tips on how to attract good things into your life

    {{1. Focus on what you want }}

    To attract good things into your life, you must first have a clear view of what you truly want. What is it that you want? And when you have answered this question, never take your eyes off the prize.

    {{2. Be good }}

    You must have heard that like terms attract; it truly does, and in real life, if you want good things, you must be ready to attract good things.

    {{3. Distance yourself from certain negatives}}

    To attract good things, you must repel the bad. Negative energy gets in the way of attracting what you really want in life. Your friendships and the people you surround yourself with can be a source of negative energy, and they’ll gradually kill every positive thing going on in your life with their negative energy.

    To attract good things, you must be ready to distance yourself from certain negatives.

    {{4. Never let failure hold you back }}

    Failure and difficult challenges will most likely try to block your path; good things don’t just come easy. When you let failure hold you down, then you’ll never see the other side of it, which is success.

    To get to the other side, you must be ready to learn from and overcome failure.

    {{5. Patience is key }}

    Impatience has driven many people to their early graves. Patience is an important factor to attracting good things. It’s like planting a seed and expecting fruits within 24 hours. The joy of a seed bringing forth lies in the process which starts from germination to maturity stage of the tree.

    {{6. Focus on the positives}}

    Every situation has a positive and negative side to it; choose to open your heart to the positives. Seeing the positive side of things will lift your spirit, but if you choose to look at the negative side, your spirit will be dampened.

    {{7. Don’t wait for things to happen }}

    If you want good things in your life, you have to work your way to it; good things can’t just come to you just because you want them to. There’s always a working process, and you must be interested in that process.

    We all want to attract good things to our life, but good things don’t just happen on its own.

    A good person doesn’t just become good because he’s good; a good person is good because he does good things.

    Source:Elcrema

  • Solar wind stripped Martian atmosphere away

    {Solar wind and radiation are responsible for stripping the Martian atmosphere, transforming Mars from a planet that could have supported life billions of years ago into a frigid desert world, according to new results from NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) spacecraft led by the University of Colorado Boulder.}

    “We’ve determined that most of the gas ever present in the Mars atmosphere has been lost to space,” said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for MAVEN and a professor at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). “The team made this determination from the latest result, which reveals that about 65 percent of the argon that was ever in the atmosphere has been lost to space.”

    Jakosky is lead author of a paper on this research to be published in Science on Friday. Marek Slipski, a LASP graduate student, co-authored the study.

    MAVEN team members had previously announced measurements showing that atmospheric gas was being lost to space and that described the processes by which atmosphere was being stripped away. The present analysis uses measurements of today’s atmosphere to give the first estimate of how much gas has been removed through time.

    Liquid water, essential for life, is not stable on Mars’ surface today because the atmosphere is too cold and thin to support it. However, evidence such as features resembling dry riverbeds and minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water indicates the ancient Martian climate was much different — warm enough for water to flow on the surface for extended periods.

    There are many ways a planet can lose some of its atmosphere. For example, chemical reactions can lock gas away in surface rocks or an atmosphere can be eroded by radiation and wind from the planet’s parent star. The new result reveals that solar wind and radiation were responsible for most of the atmospheric loss on Mars and that the depletion was enough to transform the Martian climate. The solar wind is a thin stream of electrically conducting gas constantly blowing from the surface of the sun.

    Young stars have far more intense ultraviolet radiation and winds, so atmospheric loss by these processes was likely much greater early in Mars’ history, and these processes may have been the dominant ones controlling the planet’s climate and habitability, according to the team. It’s possible that microbial life could have existed at the surface early in Mars’ history. As the planet cooled off and dried up, any life could have been driven underground or forced into occasional or rare surface oases.

    Jakosky and his team got the result by measuring the atmospheric abundance of two different isotopes of argon gas. Isotopes are atoms of the same element with different masses. Because the lighter of the two isotopes escapes to space more readily, it will leave the gas remaining behind enriched in the heavier isotope. The team used this enrichment together with how it varied with altitude in the atmosphere to estimate what fraction of the atmospheric gas has been lost to space.

    As a “noble gas” argon cannot react chemically with anything so it won’t get sequestered in rocks, and the only process that can remove it to space is a physical process called “sputtering” by the solar wind. In sputtering, ions picked up by the solar wind impact Mars at high speeds and physically knock atmospheric gas into space. The team tracked argon because it can be removed only by sputtering. Once they determined the amount of argon lost by sputtering, they could use the efficiency of sputtering to determine the sputtering loss of other atoms and molecules, including carbon dioxide (CO2).

    CO2 is of interest because it is the major constituent of Mars’ atmosphere and because it’s an efficient greenhouse gas that can retain heat and warm the planet.

    “We determined that the majority of the planet’s CO2 also has been lost to space by sputtering,” said Jakosky. “There are other processes that can remove CO2, so this gives the minimum amount of CO2 that’s been lost to space.”

    The team made its estimate using data on the Martian upper atmosphere from MAVEN’s Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) instrument supported by measurements from the Martian surface made by NASA’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on board the Curiosity rover.

    “The combined measurements enable a better determination of how much Martian argon has been lost to space over billions of years,” said Paul Mahaffy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Mahaffy, a co-author of the paper, is principal investigator on the SAM instrument and lead on the NGIMS instrument, both of which were developed at NASA Goddard.

    “Using measurements from both platforms points to the value of having multiple missions that make complementary measurements,” said Mahaffy.

    NASA Goddard manages the MAVEN project and MSL/Curiosity is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

    An illustration of the MAVEN spacecraft.

    Source:Science Daily

  • Making cows more environmentally friendly

    {Research reveals vicious cycle of climate change, cattle diet and rising methane}

    Scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt have published a paper revealing an important discovery surrounding plants used to feed livestock; that plants growing in warmer conditions are tougher and have lower nutritional value to grazing livestock, potentially inhibiting milk and meat yields and raising the amount of methane released by the animals. Higher amounts of methane are produced when plants are tougher to digest — an effect of a warmer environment. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, around 25 times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. More than 95% of the methane produced by cows comes from their breath through eructation (belching) as they “chew the cud.”

    Dr Mark Lee, a research fellow in Natural Capital & Plant Health at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew who led the research says; “The vicious cycle we are seeing now is that ruminant livestock such as cattle produce methane which warms our planet. This warmer environment alters plants so they are tougher to digest, and so each mouthful spends more time in the animals’ stomach, producing more methane, further warming the planet, and the cycle continues. We need to make changes to livestock diets to make them more environmentally sustainable.”

    There are several reasons why rising temperatures may make plants tougher for grazing livestock to digest. Plants have adaptations to prevent heat damage, they can flower earlier, have thicker leaves or in some cases, tougher plants can invade into new areas replacing more nutritious species — all of which makes grazing more difficult. This is a pressing concern, because climate change is likely to make plants tougher for grazing cattle, increasing the amount of methane that the animals breathe out into the atmosphere.

    The researchers mapped the regions where methane produced by cattle will increase to the greatest extent as the result of reductions in plant nutritional quality. Methane production is generally expected to increase all around the world, with hotspots identified in North America, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia, where the effects of climate change may be the most severe. Many of these regions are where livestock farming is growing most rapidly. For example, meat production has increased annually by around 3.4% across Asia, compared with a more modest 1% increase across Europe.

    “Now is the time to act, because the demand for meat-rich diets is increasing around the world. Our research has shown that cultivating more nutritious plants may help us to combat the challenges of warmer temperatures. We are undertaking work at Kew to identify the native forage plants that are associated with high meat and milk production and less methane, attempting to increase their presence on the grazing landscape. We are also developing our models to identify regions where livestock are going to be exposed to reductions in forage quality with greater precision. It is going to be important to put plans in place to help those countries exposed to the most severe challenges from climate change to adapt to a changing world” said Dr Mark Lee.

    Global meat production has increased rapidly in recent years to meet demand, from 71 million tonnes in 1961 to 318 million tonnes in 2014, a 78% increase in 53 years (FAOSTAT, 2016). Grazing lands have expanded to support this production, particularly across Asia and South America, and now cover 35 million km2; 30% of Earth’s ice-free surface. However, livestock are valuable. They are worth in excess of $1.4 trillion to the global economy and livestock farming sustains or employs 1.3 billion people around the world (Thornton, 2010). The upward trend in livestock production and associated GHG emissions are projected to continue in the future and global stocks of cattle, goats and sheep are expected to reach 6.3 billion by 2050 (Steinfeld et al. 2006). If these rises are to continue then the researchers say that it will be necessary to limit the growth of livestock farming in the most rapidly warming regions, if significant losses in livestock production efficiency and increases in methane emissions are to be avoided.

    Regions in light grey are currently unsuitable for ruminant livestock, and regions beyond the range of the dataset are shaded dark grey.

    Regions in light grey are currently unsuitable for ruminant livestock, and regions beyond the range of the dataset are shaded dark grey.

    Source:Science Daily

  • Ivanka Trump to become US president adviser

    {Donald Trump’s daughter will become an official White House employee in an unpaid role.}

    Ivanka Trump will take an official government role as an unpaid adviser to her father US President Donald Trump, the White House announced on Wednesday.

    The first daughter, whose husband Jared Kushner also works as a senior advisor to the president, will not receive a salary for her work as a federal employee. Kushner, a real estate developer, is also unpaid.

    “We are pleased that Ivanka Trump has chosen to take this step in her unprecedented role as first daughter and in support of the president,” a White House statement said.

    “Ivanka’s service as an unpaid employee furthers our commitment to ethics, transparency, and compliance and affords her increased opportunities to lead initiatives driving real policy benefits for the American public that would not have been available to her previously.”

    In the couple of months since her father became president Ivanka, 35, has been a regular presence at the White House, where she already has an office.

    She was present when her father received Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in January, and earlier this month took part in a round-table discussion with President Trump and Chancellor Angela Merkel during the German leader’s visit to the White House.

    Her involvement with her father’s official duties has raised eyebrows in some quarters over possible conflicts of interest.

    But Ivanka, who was part of her father’s business empire and ran a fashion line, said those qualms are unfounded.

    “I have heard the concerns some have with my advising the president in my personal capacity while voluntarily complying with all ethics rules, and I will instead serve as an unpaid employee in the White House Office, subject to all of the same rules as other federal employees,” she said in a statement.

    “Throughout this process I have been working closely and in good faith with the White House Counsel and my personal counsel to address the unprecedented nature of my role.”

    Neither Kushner nor Ivanka Trump has any experience in elected office or public policy.

    In addition to raising questions over possible conflicts of interest, the young couple’s influence on the president has fueled broader debate on the absence of clear boundaries between the Trump family’s business dealings and its member’s political activities.

    Ivanka Trump’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, told the news website Politico last week that the president’s daughter will have access to classified information and be bound by the same rules that apply to other White House advisers who are on the government payroll.

    “Our view is that the conservative approach is for Ivanka to voluntarily comply with the rules that would apply if she were a government employee, even though she is not,” Gorelick told the outlet.

    Inside Story – Will conflicts of interest drag down President Donald Trump?
    “Having an adult child of the president who is actively engaged in the work of the administration is new ground.”

    Part of the novelty stems from the fact that relatives of elected officials cannot legally be hired for most federal jobs due to potential conflicts of interests.

    Yet Trump succeeded in getting Kushner on board at the White House by arguing that the executive office of the president was not covered by federal anti-nepotism rules. Kushner said that by putting his interests in a trust, and not being paid for the job, he could avoid the rule.

    Kushner’s family business has invested some $7bn in property acquisitions in the past decade, often with overseas partners – and his father-in-law now is formally in charge of financial regulation.

    Two Democratic senators, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tom Carper of Delaware, sent a letter to the Office of Government Ethics on Wednesday saying that Ivanka Trump’s “increasing, albeit unspecified, White House role … (has) resulted in substantial confusion,” and questioned how her ethics compliance would be ensured.

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • British government takes next steps towards Brexit

    {London to outline immediate plans towards leaving the European Union as EU reacts to the triggering of Article 50.}

    The British government will on Thursday introduce legislation known as the Great Repeal Bill – a crucial part of its next steps towards leaving the European Union.

    The move comes the day after UK Prime Minister Theresa May set the wheels of Brexit in motion by invoking Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, officially triggering talks to leave the bloc.

    Thursday’s bill repeals the European Communities Act 1972 and effectively ends the supremacy of European law in the Britain, transferring all EU laws currently in force onto the UK statute book.

    It will ensure the UK leaves the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

    The bill will come into force on the day the UK leaves the EU. On the current two-year timetable that will be in March 2019.

    MPs will get a chance to debate and vote on the bill before it is passed into law. Brexit Secretary David Davis has said this is an important step in giving certainty to businesses, workers and consumers.

    May published columns in seven European papers on Thursday to stress that a Brexit deal was “in all our interests”, striking a relatively conciliatory tone before negotiations begin.

    “We will continue to play our part in ensuring that Europe remains strong and prosperous and able to lead in the world,” May wrote in the Irish Times.

    She said Brexit was not an attempt “to do harm to the European Union or any of the remaining member states”.

    But she also reiterated her warning that failure to reach a trade deal would hamper security ties.

    “It would be to the detriment of us all if unnecessary barriers to trade were erected,” she said.

    {{A sombre mood}}

    Theresa Villiers, an MP with the ruling Conservative Party, told Al Jazeera: “I feel a sense of optimism and anticipation, I very much welcome the fact that the UK is going to be come an independent, self-governing democracy again.”

    But Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats , said “it’s a blow to Europe, it’s a much bigger blow to Britain, and as a patriot I want what’s best for my country, I want us to stay in the EU, so I’m in no mood to give up.”

    The mood was sombre in Brussels as the letter invoking Article 50 was handed over.

    “There is no reason to pretend that this is a happy day – neither in Brussels nor in London. After all, most Europeans including almost half the British voters wish that we would stay together, not drift apart” Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, said in a statement.

    Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken of her desire for the UK and the EU to remain close partners, but said that there cannot be parallel talks about trade deals alongside those concerning the terms of Brexit.

    “The old EU, the so-called intergovernmental EU, is dead it doesn’t work any more it’s not equipped for the 21st century so we need to move into a political union that is equipped to respond adequately, flexibly, quickly,” Sophie in’t Veld, a member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera.

    {{Requiem for a dream}}

    Tony Nash, chief economist and managing partner at Complete Intelligence, told Al Jazeera that the UK was fortunate not to have to deal with leaving the Euro and that, while the pound has lost value recently, the devaluation could compensate for having to pay tariffs to access the EU market.

    Nash said that financial services were the biggest immediate issue for the UK and that there were questions over whether there another European city could claim London’s crown as the continent’s financial centre.

    “If you look at places like Frankfurt or Paris, they just can’t compete with London as a financial centre,” Nash said. “I don’t think the impact on services is going to be as bad as many people have said because you just don’t have the skills and capabilities on the continent that you do in London.”

    A recent survey , though, suggested growing pessimism in the UK over the economic impact of Brexit.

    Just 29 percent of British households surveyed in March believed it would be good for Britain’s economy over the next 10 years, according to IHS Markit – down from 39 percent in July 2016.

    Outside parliament in London on Thursday, a choir of protesters sang the adopted anthem of the EU.

    “It’s called an Ode to Joy,” reported Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Phillips. “But for those who lost the referendum, [it is] a requiem for a dream that died.”

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Ethiopia extends state of emergency by four months

    {Opposition parties complain that the emergency is being used to clamp down on their members and activities.}

    The Ethiopian parliament has extended by four months a state of emergency it declared six months ago after almost a year of often violent anti-government demonstrations.

    The widely expected extension comes amid reports of continued violence and anti-government activities in some rural areas.

    At least 500 people were killed by security forces during the year of protests, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch group – a figure the government later echoed.

    “We still have some anti-peace elements that are active and want to capitalise on disputes that arise among regional states in the country,” Ethiopia’s defence minister, Siraj Fegessa, told MPs when he called on them to approve the extension on Thursday.

    “In addition, some leaders of the violent acts that we witnessed before are still at large and are disseminating wrong information to incite violence.”

    Opposition parties complain that the emergency powers are being used to clamp down on their members and activities, especially in rural regions far from the capital, Addis Ababa.

    The state of emergency, declared on October 9th, was a reaction to protests that were especially persistent in the Oromia region. Many members of the Oromo ethnic group say they are marginalised and that they do not have access to political power, something the government denies.

    A wave of anger was triggered by a development scheme for Addis Ababa, which would have seen its boundaries extended into Oromia. Demonstrators saw it as a land grab that would force farmers off their land.

    The protests soon spread to the Amhara region in the north, where locals argued that decades-old federal boundaries had cut off many ethnic Amharas from the region.

    Crushed to death

    Map of Oromia region in Ethiopia [Al Jazeera]
    The Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups together make up about 60 percent of Ethiopia’s population.

    The country’s ruling coalition, which has been in power for a quarter of a century, is controlled primarily by the Tigray ethnic group, who make up 6 percent of the population.

    Tensions reached an all-time high after a stampede in which at least 52 people were crushed to death fleeing security forces at a protest that grew out of a religious festival in the town of Bishoftu on October 2nd.

    In the following days, rioters torched several mostly foreign-owned factories and other buildings that they claimed were built on seized land.

    The government, though, blamed rebel groups and foreign-based dissidents for stoking the violence.

    The state of emergency initially included curfews, social media blocks, restrictions on opposition party activity and a ban on diplomats traveling more than 40 kilometres outside the capital without approval.

    Authorities arrested over 11,000 people during its first month.

    Some provisions of the state of emergency were relaxed on March 15th, two weeks prior to Thursday’s announced extension. Arrests and searches without court orders were stopped, and restrictions on radio, television and theatre were dropped.

    Protesters run from tear gas being fired by police during Irreecha, the religious festival in Bishoftu where at least 52 people died

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Hong Kong pro-democracy activists appear in court

    {The activists charged for their role in the Umbrella Movement have criticised the case as an attack on free speech.}

    Nine pro-democracy Hong Kong activists appeared in court on Thursday for their role in the 2014 Umbrella Movement mass protests. They’ve criticised the case as a form of political persecution.

    The group of campaigners, including students and lawmakers, were charged the day after pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam was selected as city leader by a committee skewed towards the mainland camp.

    The case comes as fears grow that semi-autonomous Hong Kong’s freedoms are increasingly under threat from Chinese authorities.

    It also precedes an expected visit by China’s President Xi Jinping in July to mark the 20th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China by Britain in 1997.

    The nine activists, ranging from 22 to 73-years-old, were charged with either conspiring to cause public nuisance or inciting others to do so in relation to the 2014 protests, which called for fully free leadership elections.

    The case was adjourned to May 25 after a brief hearing in magistrates’ court, during which the defence requested a High Court jury trial so that the public could participate in the decision.

    The defendants could face up to seven years in prison. They have yet to enter a plea.

    Dozens of Beijing supporters and pro-democracy protestors faced off outside the court, yelling profanities at each other, before the nine defendants were due to emerge.

    Some pro-China supporters slapped a picture of activist Benny Tai Yiu-ting with a pink plastic slipper, mimicking a local custom practised by some residents where a shoe is used to beat an image of an enemy.

    The 2014 uprising saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to protest against Beijing’s insistence that Hong Kong’s leader – the chief executive – must be vetted by a 1,200-person committee before facing a public vote.

    Speaking outside court, movement leader Benny Tai Yiu-ting told reporters the activists would not give up on the fight for democracy in Hong Kong.

    “I believe our society is steeped with the spirit of civil disobedience,” said Tai, co-founder of Occupy Central, one of the groups behind the 2014 Umbrella Movement rallies.

    “We won’t give up until Hong Kong has real democracy and real universal suffrage,” he added.

    Rights group Amnesty International condemned the charges, saying the case showed Hong Kong’s freedom of expression and right to peaceful assembly was “under a sustained attack”.

    New leader Lam has promised to try to unify divided Hong Kong, but opponents said the court case immediately undermined that pledge.

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Stansted Airport: Seventeen arrested after aircraft lock-in

    {Seventeen people have been arrested after a protest at Stansted Airport in Essex temporarily halted take-offs and landings on Tuesday.}

    Police were called at 21:30 BST as a group entered a non-commercial runway and locked themselves in an aircraft.

    Those involved were trying to stop a charter flight which they claim was due to deport people to Nigeria and Ghana.

    A spokesman for the airport said the runway was closed as a “precaution” but reopened at 23.17 BST.

    In total, 23 incoming flights were diverted to other airports, including scheduled arrivals from Naples, Cologne, Glasgow, Riga, Belfast and Bilbao.

    The spokesman said the protest took place in a remote part of the airport used by private operators, away from the passenger terminal or runway.

    {{‘Quickly contained’}}

    Essex Police said on Wednesday that officers were at the scene and in the process of removing protesters from the aircraft, which was destined for Nigeria.

    Acting Assistant Chief Constable Sean O’Callaghan said police “quickly contained” the protesters in one area of the airport.

    “We continue to work closely with our partners and the airport authority as we are working to apprehend the protesters quickly and effectively,” he said.

    He added that there was “minimal impact” on the airport. The force said three arrests had been made so far, but no more details were given.

    The activists posted images of the protest on social media, including a photograph of people lying on the ground as they were surrounded by security staff and police.

    In a Facebook post they said the flight was due to “forcibly deport dozens of people to Nigeria and Ghana” but this has not been confirmed.

    One of the protestors, Susan James, said: “I don’t want to stay silent in the face of mass deportations that are deliberately rushed and secretive.”

    Source:BBC

  • Kuki Gallmann’s Kenya safari lodge burned down

    {A luxury safari lodge in Kenya owned by Italian-born conservationist and author Kuki Gallmann has been burned down by suspected cattle herders.}

    It is the latest attack in the drought-stricken Laikipia region by suspected herders, who have been invading private property in search of fresh grazing.

    There were no visitors staying at the Mukutan Retreat at the time of the attack, according to local reports.

    The attack may have been retaliation for a police operation, reports said.

    Earlier this week, police reportedly shot dead about 100 cattle in the surrounding Laikipia Nature Conservancy, which is owned by Ms Gallmann.

    Ms Gallmann, who is best known internationally for her memoir I Dreamed of Africa, has not commented.

    However, her Facebook page was updated on Thursday with a link to an article in which landowners denied having any role in the police operations or encouraging them to shoot herders’ livestock.

    “Our association and its members has absolutely no influence or voice in the operation and anyone suggesting differently is spreading falsehoods,” the Daily Nation quoted Martin Evans, chairman of the Laikipia Farmers’ Association, as saying.

    “Along with area resident pastoralists, its smallholder farmers, wildlife, and business community, our members are the victims of this crisis, not its instigators,” he said.
    Laikipia, which covers about 10,000 sq km in Kenya’s central highlands, is where some of the country’s largest white landowners are based.

    Insecurity has risen sharply in recent months as a drought has led armed herders to seek out new pasture, pitting them against big landowners and smallholders.

    Tens of thousands of cattle are thought to have been driven onto private land and at least a dozen people have been killed.

    British rancher Tristan Voorspuy, who also ran a safari company, was shot dead in early March while inspecting his lodges in Laikipia.

    Hundreds of herders have been detained as part of police operations, and the authorities have accused some local politicians of using racially charged language and inciting locals to occupy private property illegally, ahead of general elections due in August.

    The MP for Laikipia North, Matthew Lempurkel, was charged with incitement earlier this month.

    An additional factor, some of the landowners say, is that there is now just too much livestock in the region, causing overgrazing and destruction of previously fertile land.

    The BBC’s Ferdinand Omondi in Nairobi says the pastoralists appear now to have resorted to a scorched earth policy in their battle for grazing.

    As well as the attack on Ms Gallmann’s lodge, they set about 4 sq km of the Laikipia Nature Conservancy on fire.

    The herders accused police of trying to force them off the land by shooting their livestock. Police say the livestock were killed in crossfire with the herders, who were using the animals as shields.

    The BBC’s Alastair Leithead tried to approach herders last month to ask about their grievances, but was forced to retreat when they shot at him.

    Ms Gallmann owns about 360 sq km in Laikipia, which is home to rare wildlife, birds and trees. Her organisation also runs community, education, arts and sports projects.
    The Mukutan Retreat lodge is made up of four stone and wood cottages, perched on the edge of the Mukutan Gorge.

    Visitors can pay more than $650 (£525) a night to stay there, according to travel websites.

    Source:BBC