‘No decision’ over RAF Leuchars

RAF LeucharsAbout 1,200 people are employed at RAF Leuchars in Fife

The Ministry of Defence has said that no decision has been made regarding the future of RAF Leuchars in Fife.

The comment comes amid reports that the airbase, which employs 1,200 people, could close to save a base in Moray.

Last month it was announced that RAF Kinloss in Moray would shut after ministers cancelled orders for the new Nimrod MRA4 surveillance aircraft.

The future of neighbouring RAF Lossiemouth is unclear. The closures stem from the strategic defence review.

In a statement, the MoD said: “The strategic defence and security review means that Kinloss and two other bases will not be required by the RAF.

“No decisions have been made on which bases or on any future use.”

The uncertainty about RAF Leuchars in Fife comes after reports in the Scotsman newspaper suggesting the base could be “sacrificed” to save RAF Lossiemouth.

Sir Menzies Campbell, who represents North East Fife, said RAF Leuchars was “vital” for the defence of the UK.

He said: “Well I know that the Ministry of Defence is conducting a wholesale review.

“But when it comes to Leuchars, the strategic case for the retention of Leuchars is absolutely overwhelming.

“Not least because it has just received the first of the three typhoon squadrons that was promised to it.”

Sir Ming said £40m had already been spent on the base preparing for the arrival of the typhoons.

He added: “The runway’s been resurfaced and there is no strategic case in my view of any kind whatsoever for taking Leuchars away from doing its job, which is to protect the airspace of the northern half of the United Kingdom. And it does that on a regular basis.”

Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray said the uncertainty surrounding Leuchars was “extremely worrying” for people in Fife.

He added: “Scotland has already lost one airbase to the Tory-Liberal government and there is no case to lose another.”

Westminster SNP leader and Moray MP, Angus Robertson said the review was nothing but a “finance driven sham”.

A final decision on the future of the bases is due to be announced early next year.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Chihuahua joins Japanese police force

Momo poses during a police dog examination held at Koriyama, western Japan (file picture)Momo will begin her rescue work in January

A chihuahua named Momo (Peach) has passed the exam to become a dog in the police force in western Japan, in what seems to be a first.

The 3kg (6.6lb) dog is set to become part of a search-and-rescue team used for disasters such as earthquakes.

Its small size means it will be able to squeeze into places too narrow for traditional rescue dogs, such as German Shepherds.

Chihuahuas, named after a Mexican state, are the smallest breed of dog.

“It’s quite rare for us to have a chihuahua work as a police dog,” said a police spokeswoman in Nara, western Japan.

“We would like it to work hard by taking advantage of its small size.”

Momo, aged seven, will begin work in January.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Plain cigarette packets proposed

Cigarettes in a packetThe government is considering making all cigarettes packets plain brown or grey
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Cigarette packets should have plain packaging to make smoking less attractive, ministers have suggested.

The government is currently planning to ask retailers to cover up their displays of cigarettes from next year to protect children.

But now cigarette packets could also be made a standard colour like grey, rather than the existing bright colours.

Campaign group ASH says this is “an enormous leap forward”.

The Department of Health is considering the idea of asking tobacco firms to put only basic information and health or picture warnings on their packets.

Making the cigarette packets a plain colour would protect children from taking up smoking in the first place, it suggests.

It would also help support people who are trying to give up smoking, the department said.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, said it was time to try a new approach.

Young smoker

“The industry use packaging to seduce our kids and mislead smokers”

Martin Dockrell ASH

“The evidence is clear that packaging helps to recruit smokers, so it makes sense to consider having less attractive packaging. It’s wrong that children are being attracted to smoke by glitzy designs on packets.

“We would prefer it if people did not smoke and adults will still be able to buy cigarettes, but children should be protected from the start.

“The levels of poor health and deaths from smoking are still far too high, and the cost to the NHS and the economy is vast. That money could be used to educate our children and treat cancer,” Mr Lansley said.

“We will shortly set out a radical new approach to public health in a White Paper.”

Martin Dockrell, director of policy and research at ASH, (Action on Smoking and Health), said the industry calls packaging “the silent salesman”.

“They use it to seduce our kids and mislead smokers into the false belief that a cigarette in a blue pack is somehow less deadly than a cigarette in a red one.

“By helping smokers who want to quit and protecting our children from the tobacco ad men this will be an enormous leap forward for public health, perhaps even bigger than the smoking ban,” he said.

“The government accepts that packaging and tobacco displays influence young people, so there is no time to waste. It may take years to pass a new law on plain packs but the law on tobacco displays is already on the statute books and comes into force next year.”

Recent research published in Tobacco Control showed that putting tobacco out of sight in shops not only changes young people’s attitude to smoking, it also doesn’t result in retailers losing money.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

UN urges tobacco additive limits

A young man smoking outside a pubThe guidelines aim to help reduce the numbers of young smokers
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A conference on tobacco held in Uruguay has recommended that additives used to make cigarettes more appealing to new smokers should be restricted or banned.

Delegates from over 170 countries that have signed a UN tobacco control treaty also said tobacco producers should disclose their products’ ingredients.

These guidelines – adopted by consensus – represent the latest public health setback for the tobacco industry.

WHO figures point to huge losses of life from tobacco use.

The World Health Organisation says that tobacco kills more people than Aids, legal drugs, illegal drugs, road accidents, murder and suicide combined.

It estimates that of the more than six billion people alive today, half a billion will eventually be killed by tobacco.

A spokesman for the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Tarik Jasarevic, told the BBC the industry had lobbied hard against the latest measures.

Mr Jasarevic suggested the delegates wanted to make it harder for the industry to target young people.

“The parties feel that from the point of view of public health, there is no justification to use ingredients that increase the attractiveness of tobacco products, that in turn increase the number of new smokers, especially among young people,” he said.

The guidelines would now be used by national governments to draw up legislation, he said. But he added that there was no specific timetable for them to do so.

The head of the International Tobacco Growers Association, Antonio Abrunhosa, criticised the decision.

It allowed governments great leeway in deciding what measures to take, he said.

And he told the AFP news agency that if one popular blend – American – was banned, “it will impact more than 6m producers worldwide”.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

NZ rescue attempt ‘still unsafe’

Peter Whittall

Pike River Mine Chief Executive, Peter Whittall, says the hole will be used initially for taking gas samples

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Latest tests on gases show it remains unsafe to attempt the rescue of 29 men trapped after an explosion at a mine in New Zealand, officials say.

A drilling rig has been brought to the site and rescuers will start to drill a new hole on Sunday to carry out further tests.

The police chief in charge said he was still optimistic and that this remained a rescue operation.

There has been no contact with the men since they were trapped on Friday.

Pike River Mine Chief Executive Peter Whittall told a news conference on Sunday the latest tests had shown there was still heat being given off underground.

Carbon dioxide, methane and other dangerous gases were still being generated but there was no evidence of a big fire, he said.

Mr Whittall said a drill rig had been mobilised and would try to sink a small hole to a depth of 100m-150m, with the intent of hitting the underground roadway.

He said it could take between 16 and 20 hours, depending on drill reliability and the topography.

Map showing Pike River mine in New Zealand

Employs some 150 peopleOperational since 2008Accesses Brunner and Paparoa coal seams via 2.3km tunnel under mountains5.5m-wide, 4.5m-high tunnel bisects Hawera fault, through which methane gas is known to leakBlast is believed to have happened at 1530 (0230 GMT) on Friday

“If we can make the hole big enough, we have some opportunities to put other devices into the mine,” he said, without elaborating.

Fresh air is being pumped into the mine through a shaft.

Regional police commander Gary Knowles said the families of the missing men were “distraught” but understood the situation.

He said no rescuers could be sent into the mine unless it was safe.

New Zealand’s PM John Key has said bringing the men out of the Pike River coal mine remains his top priority.

He said his government was “doing what we can to make sure these 29 brave men are taken out of the mine and are here in one piece”.

“This is a time of huge anxiety for the families and for the miners, so our heart and thoughts go out to them,” he said.

The explosion at the Pike River mine is believed to have happened at about 1530 (0230 GMT) on Friday.

An electrician went into the mine at 1550 to investigate a power failure, and 1,500m (4,920ft) into the shaft he discovered the driver of a loader who had been blown off his machine. He then raised the alarm.

Mining experts said it could have been an explosion of methane gas, coal dust, or a combination of the two.

The missing workers range in age from a 17-year-old – believed to be on his first shift – to a 62-year-old.

Cross-section of the Pike River mine

Mr Knowles said that there were 24 New Zealanders, two Australians, two Britons and a South African national.

Britain’s Foreign Office later confirmed that two Britons had been reported missing in the incident. It said both men were from Scotland.

New Zealand mine disasters

1879: Probable gas explosion kills 34 men and boys at Kaitangata mine

1896: Suspected gas explosion kills 65 men at Brunner mine, near Greymouth

1914: Gas explosion kills 43 men at Ralph’s mine in Huntly

1926: Explosion kills nine men at Dobson mine, near Greymouth

1939: Carbon monoxide asphyxiates 11 men at Glen Afton mine in Huntly

1967: Gas explosion kills 19 miners at Strongman mine, near Greymouth

Each miner carried 30 minutes of oxygen, enough to reach oxygen stores in the mine that would allow them to survive for several days.

The mobile phone of one of the men was said to be still working, but was not being answered when called.

Mr Whittall said there were also supplies of water underground and the temperature was about 25C.

He said that until the location of the missing men could be confirmed, the structure of the mine meant it was not possible to send supplies down “with any certainty as to where it’s going”.

Two workers who walked out of the mine have been treated in hospital for moderate injuries but have since been discharged.

Officials said one of the men had been very disorientated when he emerged. The other was able to speak to officials and said he believed he had been knocked over by a blast, causing him to briefly lose consciousness.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Poo and paws help in tiger count

Tiger pugmark (Image: Yadvendradev Jhala)While paw prints can identify individuals, scientists say the method is unreliable for assessing numbers
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A system that uses paw prints and faeces offers scientists a fresh way to determine how many tigers are left in the wild, a study has suggested.

Scientists hope the new technique will provide a low-cost and reliable way to accurately assess big cat numbers.

Fewer than 3,500 tigers remain in the wild, with more than half found in India where the population is spread over more than 100,000 sq km of forest.

The findings appear in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

“Tigers are cryptic, nocturnal and occur at low densities so they are extremely difficult to monitor,” said lead author Yadvendradev Jhala from the Wildlife Institute of India.

“Unless we know how many tigers are left in the wild, and whether their numbers are increasing or decreasing, we will not be able to conserve them,” he added.

Current monitoring methods include using camera traps or looking for paw prints.

“In the absence of abundance information, conservation management decisions are often based on crude estimates, expert opinion or educated guesses – which may result in erroneous decisions that can be counterproductive,” the India-based team observed.

While paw prints, otherwise known as pugmarks, allow individual tigers to be identified, scientists say they are not a reliable way to estimate a region’s overall population.

Camera traps offer a much more accurate assessment of an area’s tiger density, but the technique is expensive and labour intensive, resulting in its deployment being limited to places that have a relatively high number of the big cats.

‘Basmati rice’

“By showing that it is possible to accurately estimate tiger numbers from their paw prints and faeces, we have opened up a new way of cost-effectively keeping our finger on the pulse of the tiger population and gauging the success of conservation programmes,” explained Dr Jhala.

“Fresh tiger faeces are normally accompanied by urine sprays that smell like well-cooked basmati rice”

Dr Yadvendradev Jhala Wildlife Intitute of India

“This approach could be applied to monitoring other endangered species across vast landscapes,” he added.

Between 2006 and 2007, Dr Jhala and his team gathered samples from 18 tiger populations at 21 locations across central and northern India, recording the occurrence of pugmarks and faeces.

“Tiger faeces are the size of large beetroots and have a characteristic pungent, musky odour,” he explained.

“Fresh tiger faeces are normally accompanied by urine sprays that smell like well-cooked basmati rice.”

Tigers are solitary animals, and use the spray to mark their territory – hence the presence of scat offered an insight into the species density in the area.

When the team compared its findings with data from camera traps, the group found the new system provided similar results but for just 7% of the cost.

Writing in the British Ecology Society journal, the team concluded: “The approach and models… permit rapid and cost-effective assessments of abundance to monitor the status of tigers at landscape scales.

“This information is vital for conservation investment, habitat management, planning development projects, formulation of policy and for law enforcement.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

US bodies found in tree ‘stabbed’

Matthew Hoffman, in a booking photo from the Knox County sheriff's officeMatthew Hoffman, 30, is being held on a kidnapping charge
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Three people whose bodies were found in a hollow tree trunk in the US state of Ohio were stabbed to death before they were dismembered, a coroner has said.

Tina Herrmann, son Kody Maynard and her friend Stephanie Sprang were stabbed several times in the back and chest.

The bodies were later cut up, placed inside rubbish bags and lowered into the hollow of a large tree in a wildlife reserve, the coroner said.

The only suspect in the killings is being held on a kidnapping charge.

He is Matthew Hoffman, an unemployed tree surgeon and ex-convict.

The victims died sometime on 11 November and there were no signs of sexual assault, the coroner added.

Mr Hoffman gave information through his lawyers which led officers to the bodies, which were found on 18 November.

He was arrested after Tina Herrmann’s daughter, Sarah Maynard, 13, was found bound and gagged in his basement on Sunday, and he is now being held on kidnapping charges.

She was reported missing on 10 November, along with Tina Herrmann, 32, her brother, Kody Maynard, 11, and Stephanie Sprang, 41.

Mr Hoffman, who served time in prison in the state of Colorado for arson and other charges, has not yet entered a plea to the kidnapping charge.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Russia ‘to aid Nato missile plan’

breaking news

Russia has agreed to co-operate on Nato’s programme to defend against ballistic missile attacks, Nato’s chief has said.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a Nato summit in Lisbon that the two sides had agreed in writing that they no longer posed a threat to one another.

“For the first time the two sides will be co-operating to defend themselves,” Mr Rasmussen said.

The Lisbon summit has been redrawing Nato’s focus to face new challenges.

It is the first Nato summit Russia has attended since the Russia-Georgia war two years ago.

Nato members had earlier agreed on a programme to develop and deploy defences against ballistic missile attack on their territories.

Mr Rasmussen said he had extended an offer to Russia to co-operate on the programme and was “very pleased that [Russian President Dmitry] Medvedev has taken up that offer”.

Mr Rasmussen said this agreement was of “real political importance”.

There would be an exchange of information on the threats to European skies, he said, and the two sides “could conceivably co-operate on shooting down an incoming missile”.

Infrared satellite system picks up heat signatures of hostile ballistic missiles launched towards Nato target and transmits to ground stations. 1: Infrared satellite system picks up heat signatures of hostile ballistic missiles launched towards Nato target. 2: Information is transmitted to ground stations for processing. 3: Processed information is then sent to Nato command and control network.Command network relays information to sensor and weapons systems in the region. The command and control network relays information to sensor and weapons systems in the region. Once the missiles’ engines burn out, the infrared satellite can no longer detect them.Long-range sensors help command system calculate options for destroying them. 1: Long-range sensors such as the US AN/TPY-2 high-resolution radar and the Dutch sea-based Air Defence and Command Frigate (ADCF), continue to track the missile to help command system calculate options for destroying them. 2: Information is constantly shared among the sensors and weapons systems.Command system has the option of shooting down the hostile missiles while in the upper or lower layers of the atmosphere. Command system has the option of shooting down the hostile missiles while in the upper or lower layers of the atmosphere. As tracking continues, greater accuracy is achieved. Lower-layer shooter systems include the German or Dutch Patriot battery systems connected to the Nato network.
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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Vigil held in memory of flood Pc

Pc Bill BarkerPc Barker had been with the Cumbria force for 25 years
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A community vigil has been held to remember the floods in Cumbria and Pc Bill Barker who died when a bridge collapsed.

Pc Barker was directing traffic away from Northside Bridge, in Workington, when it collapsed early on 20 November, 2009, and he was swept away.

His widow Hazel Barker and her children have organised the memorial tribute.

The region suffered unprecedented rainfall last November during many homes and businesses were destroyed.

The vigil was held in the Tesco car park next to the River Derwent in Workington and was being followed by a fundraising event.

Money raised from the charity event will be split between the Great North Air Ambulance, which was Mr Barker’s preferred charity, and the Care of Police Survivors (COPS) which support families of officers killed while on duty.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Eco-friendly A4 Brochure (Brochures)

A green, environmental style A4 brochure. Strong natural theme. Professional designed layout.

ID CS3 template, A4 with 3mm bleed, print ready. CMYK 300dpi.

All Photos were taken by me and are included with the download!

Fonts used Humanist 521 and Garamond which you can find here: http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/humanist-521/
http://www.ascenderfonts.com/font/garamond-family.aspx

Although any Serif + San serif combo will do.

Download Eco-friendly A4 Brochure (Brochures)

Wall Calendar 2011 with four templates (Miscellaneous)

High quality layers, A3, CMYK , 300 DPI , print ready, fully editable layers, easy to modify.
Templates are separated in the folders, so it’s easy to edit.
You can simply change your slogan, or company logo,
also it is very easy to add your photos,
just add them in the folder “Your photos here”

Photos you see above are not included, you need to add your photos!

Fonts used: Swiss 921 BT
Free download here:
http://www.free-fonts-ttf.org/true-type-fonts/download.php?image_id=6438

Download Wall Calendar 2011 with four templates (Miscellaneous)

Retro Ribbon Business Card (Business Cards)

It’s a minimalistic Retro Ribbon Business Card especially for web designers, but also for the all old-fashioned products like clothes, paper goods etc.

Some facts about Retro Ribbon Business Card:

– size: 3.5×2 in.

– palette: CMYK (only whole values so you can easly check it on the CMYK process colour scale before printing)

– resolution: 300 DPI

– layers: yes

– bleed lines: yes

– guide lines: yes

– font 1: Bebas Neue, free font from http://www.dafont.com/bebas-neue.font

– font 2: Georgia (default font)

You can easly change:

– any color (each element on a different layer)

– any text (each text full editable)

– any shape (each element on a different layer or grouped layers)

I’ll be appreciate for your comments and very happy if you purchase it.

Download Retro Ribbon Business Card (Business Cards)