-Alarm over decline in flying insects-

Breaking:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41670472

Science behind it:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Clearly, preserving insect abundance and diversity should constitute a prime conservation priority.

and also for the pin-up,

Sciencemag.com

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone

FLORIDA MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY WILL AWARD TRAYVON MARTIN WITH A POSTHUMOUS BACHELOR'S DEGREE IN AERONAUTICAL SCIENCE FIVE YEARS AFTER HIS HIGHLY-PUBLICIZED DEATH.

"The University will confer upon TRAYVON MARTIN a posthumous degree in Aeronautical Science with a concentration in Flight Education in honor of his love for planes and the steps he took during his young life toward becoming a pilot," the Facebook post reads.

Trayvon's parents, Sybrina Fulton -- an FMU gradutate -- and Tracy Martin, will accept the degree on his behalf.
"This academic year is symbolic of the transformative changes that we continue to make to our academic programs that extend to benefit the community, such as our Cybersecurity degree program and Cyber Warrior Diversity center that offers certificates to local residents and professionals," Artis said.

"Of special significance is awarding posthumously the Bachelor of Science Degree in Aviation to Trayvon Martin," she added. "Sybrina, our alum, epitomizes strength and dignity as she uplifts other victims of violence while effecting change for a more equal and just society."
Trayvon was shot and killed in 2012 during a physical struggle with George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman had called the police to report a "suspicious" person after he observed the 17-year-old walking back from a convenience store, according to The Atlantic.

Zimmerman maintained that he shot the teen in self-defense. He was acquitted of second-degree murder in July 2013.
The high-profile case triggered nationwide protests and served as a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Since their son's death, Fulton and Tracy have committed themselves to fighting for social justice. In 2013 they co-founded The Trayvon Martin Foundation, which is headquartered at FMU.

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/trayvon-martin-awarded-posthumous-degree

DNC enters 2018 in cash panic. Party officials face a daunting rebuilding effort and worries about the committee's cash flow after years of atrophy.

The Democratic National Committee is reeling, facing a turnaround that's proving a much bigger lift than anyone expected as it struggles to raise enough money to cover its basic promises.
Many donors are refusing to write checks. And on-the-ground operatives worry they won’t have the resources to build the infrastructure they need to compete effectively in next year’s midterms and in the run-up to 2020.
Here in the halls of Bally's hotel and casino for the DNC's fall meeting through the weekend, state committee chairs and operatives echoed a now-common concern among donors and strategists: The DNC's recovery is still a ways away, and that could have serious repercussions for the party in the coming years.
"Donors, small and large, are so over the party," said Nebraska party chair Jane Kleeb, summing up the problem facing DNC chairman Tom Perez and his counterparts in the states. Kleeb, who is working on grass-roots fundraising efforts for the committee, said she believes the money will come eventually.

Much of the immediate anxiety centers on the State Party Innovation Fund, a planned $10.5 million competitive grant program that DNC leadership has made available to interested state parties over the next year. The money is meant to pay for organizing, ground operations and other mechanics seen as essential to countering Republican National Committee investments that helped elect Donald Trump and a slew of other other Republican candidates in 2016, leapfrogging Democrats in the process.
The planned funding is on top of the $10,000 each state party receives from the DNC every month.
But entering October, the DNC had just $7 million in its main account, which also has to cover its central responsibilities and salaries.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/22/dnc-2018-rebuilding-finances-244019

No one was injured in the shooting incident, which occurred on Thursday near the campus in Gainesville where hundreds of people protested Richard Spencer’s speech amid a heavy police presence and a preemptive state of emergency declaration by the governor.

Gainesville police said Tyler Tenbrink, 28, and William and Colton Fears, 30 and 28, respectively, stopped their car near the campus to argue with a group of protesters.

After threatening the protesters and making Nazi salutes, Tenbrink fired a single shot at them as the Fears brothers yelled “kill them” and “shoot them,” police said.

The shot hit a nearby building, and the suspects fled in their car, police said. One of the protesters reported the car’s license plate number to police, and trio were arrested a few hours later.

At least two of the men are linked to “extremist groups,” police said, without specifying which two. The Fears brothers were each being held under a $1 million bond.

Tenbrink, who faces additional charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, was being held under a $3 million bond, police said.

The incident came about two months after rallies by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to violent clashes with counter-protesters. A woman was killed there on Aug. 12 when a man who is said by law enforcement to have harbored Nazi sympathies drove his car into a crowd.

The protests in Gainesville were mostly peaceful. There were a few scuffles on campus that left five people with minor injuries, the university said in a statement.

Reuters journalists spoke with Tenbrink and Colton Fears ahead of the Spencer speech on Thursday. Tenbrink described himself as a white nationalist and said he was interested in “preserving our heritage and the American way of life.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-protests-arrests/three-charged-in-shooting-after-white-nationalists-florida-speech-idUSKBN1CP2JG

http://gotnews.com/breaking-puerto-rican-secretary-state-blows-whistle-hurricane-relief-fraud-finds-unopened-us-aid-dumpster/

>A shocking video recorded by Puerto Rico’s Secretary of State, Luis Rivera Marin, shows that United States aid to Puerto Rico is going to waste and being thrown away in dumpsters before it can reach the millions of island residents afflicted by Hurricane Maria:

But it's Trump's fault for sending such culturally insensitive meals

In The Guardian, the headline was “Ambitious 1.5C Paris climate target is still possible, new analysis shows.” But over at Breitbart, readers were told that “Climate Alarmists Finally Admit ‘We Were Wrong About Global Warming.’” Other headlines spanned pretty much the entire range between these two. The grist for the mill was a new study published in Nature Geoscience by a group of well-known climate scientists, but different news outlets baked very different breads with it.

That happens pretty frequently these days, but, in this case, the new study was especially complex and more easily misunderstood—even by those without a Breitbartian aggressive ideological bias against climate science.

The story in Nature Geoscience starts with a widely used figure from the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The figure was meant to provide an easier way to represent the consequences of future greenhouse gas emissions. It turns out that the relationship between global warming and the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution is roughly a straight line (at least for the near future). So rather than trying to match accounting of greenhouse gas emissions with one of myriad scenarios of future gas concentrations, you have a much simpler way to describe our situation: to limit warming to less than x degrees, you can emit no more than y CO2. This is the so-called “carbon budget.”

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/possible-good-news-about-climate-change-leads-to-confused-coverage/?comments=1&post=34036565

response of the researchers to misleading coverage
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/opinion/view/379

The northern island of Hokkaido is turning to manga to instruct residents how to respond in the event of a North Korean missile launch.

The prefecture has been under the North’s missile flight path in recent months and municipalities have been organizing evacuation drills in preparation for similar threats in the future.

“We have been receiving inquiries about how to react in specific situations,” a Hokkaido Prefectural Government official said Friday. “We thought it would be helpful to provide guidance in an easy-to-understand format.”

The four-page, A4-size comic penned by manga artist Manabu Yamamoto, who lives in Hokkaido, depicts multiple scenarios people may find themselves facing when the government’s missile alert system, known as J-Alert, goes off, warning of the a projectile’s imminent approach.

At a school, the manga illustrates a teacher telling students to stay away from windows and hide under desks. At a park, it shows a female jogger taking refuge in a public toilet, while a farmer is seen keeping a safe distance from his tractor and lying low in a field.

The manga also instructs how to react when on board a ship at sea, or when at home or while commuting to work in a car.
[...]

The manga manual, which can be viewed on the Hokkaido government’s website, will be distributed in digital format to schools and municipalities within the prefecture.

“We believe it’s the first case in Japan for a prefecture to issue missile-evacuation instructions in manga form,” the government official said.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/10/13/national/hokkaido-uses-manga-educate-people-react-north-korea-missile-threat/

Anyone know anything about this serial killer?
https://www.google.com.co/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/10/21/us/tampa-homicide-victims/index.html

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/354325-poll-trump-approval-hits-32-percent

President Trump's approval rating has sunk to a new low in a new Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey.

Thirty-two percent of Americans polled said they approved of Trump's handling of his job in office nine months into his presidency, while 67 percent of those polled said they disapproved.

The president's approval rating in the poll is down from 42 percent in March and 35 percent in June.

Trump also did not fare well among Americans who were asked if he understands their needs and problems.
Sixty-four percent of Americans said the president did not understand their needs "not very well" or "not very well at all."

Trump's job approval rating in the poll is lower than many released recently, as he is hovering around 40 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of such surveys.

The AP/NORC survey was conducted in late September and early October, at a time when the president was taking heat for his response to the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico.

The president stirred controversy when he attacked San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz on Twitter. Cruz had criticized the federal government's response to Hurricane Irma, which left virtually all of Puerto Rico without power.

The Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs research survey was conducted on Sept. 28-Oct. 2 among 1,150 adults. The margin of error was 4.1 percentage points.

https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/19/oh-dnc-rift-opens-wider-perez-boots-ellison-supporters/

The DNC civil war benefits America the most.