SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. – When the wind blows just the right way, the overpowering smell of the chicken business – housing, slaughtering and processing – wafts across Shelbyville’s town square, past Bedford County’s historic courthouse and the benches where locals sit, grab a smoke and talk about life in town. The pungent smell is a powerful reminder of just how central the poultry industry is to this Middle Tennessee town, population 19,477. Since buying the facility in 1972, Tyson Foods Inc. has not only processed and packaged 67 million birds a year and provided 1,200 of the area’s jobs. It has also reshaped Shelbyville’s population. And the talk among the locals these days is how that population has been reworked yet again as part of the new immigrant wave. During more than 50 years of operation under various owners, the plant at first hired whites, then African-Americans and later Hispanics. But it’s the newest group of workers – Muslim Somalian refugees hailing from a politically unstable and war-torn East African nation – who this month pushed the town into the national spotlight. And it brought Shelbyville’s discomfort with its latest population change sharply into focus. In Shelbyville, […]
LONDON — New faces given to a Chinese man after a bear tore off part of his face and a French-Caribbean man disfigured by a rare tumor show that such transplants can work and are not medical oddities, researchers said on Thursday. The findings give hope to some people with severe facial disfigurement and suggest the transplants could prove long-lasting without major problems, two separate research teams reported in the Lancet medical journal. Despite recurrent episodes of tissue rejection in the first year after their transplants, neither man had psychological problems accepting their new faces and have been able to rejoin society, they reported. Only three people have received face transplants. The world’s first was carried out on French woman Isabelle Dinoire in November 2005 after she was disfigured in an attack by her dog. Last year, her doctors reported that she had recovered slowly and steadily, overcoming two episodes of rejection In 2006, Chinese doctors performed a face transplant on a 30-year-old mauled by a bear. While there were some complications with tissue rejection following the operation, two years later the man was doing well, his doctors said. ‘This case suggests that facial transplantation […]
Mexico plans to invest $16 million to save the highly endangered Gulf of California harbor porpoise in the upper part of the gulf, asking reluctant fishermen to adopt safer methods or give up their trade entirely, the Associated Press reports. Scientists say the population of the porpoise known as the vaquita marina — Spanish for ‘little sea cow’ — has dwindled to 150 or fewer. In the undated photo above released by Proyecto Vaquita, a porpoise lies dead on a beach along the Gulf of California. Plans include paying fishermen to avoid the porpoise’s habitat, give up drag nets that drown dozens of the animals each year or give up fishing, Environment Secretary Juan Rafael Elvira said in Ensenada.
OTTAWA — The weakened US dollar has fallen out of favor with organized crime groups to pay for drug shipments or to settle scores, a Canadian government report said Friday. And if the greenback continues its slide in 2008, as expected, more and more criminals are likely to exchange euros for illicit goods, said Criminal Intelligence Service Canada in its annual report. ‘The US dollar weakened significantly against other major currencies in 2007 and according to some economists, is expected to depreciate further in 2008,’ said the report. ‘As a consequence, other currencies — particularly the euro — are poised to weaken the US dollar’s dominance as the currency of choice for international remittances and payments,’ it said. ‘This trend could also drive an increase in observed instances of bulk-cash transfers denominated in currencies other than Canadian and US dollars,’ the report added. Organized criminal groups, topping 900 in Canada, are primarily focused on the illicit drug trade, but have also expanded into credit card fraud, organ trafficking, identity theft and even illegal logging of Canada’s vast forests, said the report. ‘The illicit drug market remains the largest criminal market in terms of extent, […]
Academics in Perth are leading an international project to predict how climate change will affect communities and how they can prepare for it. The £1.9m study is gathering evidence and experiences from areas across northern Europe – including Sweden, Norway, Greenland and Finland. They are also surveying the Cairngorms National Park and Glen Urquhart. They are looking at the affect of global warming on farming, tourism, methods of travel and fuel disruption. ‘Proactive now’ One idea they have studied is the development of bluetooth technology to inform skiers in the Cairngorms of poor conditions and give them tips on alternatives which can be enjoyed in the area. They are also looking into the use of electric vehicles and projects to burn wood for fuel. Clive Bowman, from the Centre for Mountain Studies at Perth College, said: ‘From a community point of view they’re not just getting the standard graphs where you see temperature going up or the global average, which doesn’t really mean a lot to a lot of people. ‘They’ll be able to find out as a community what the implications of climate change will be on them and how it […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
