Tag: united kingdom

Badger culls to continue in England despite lack of scientific evidence

Badger cull licences have been issued by the government despite its own scientific adviser saying there is “no justification” for doing so.

Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs this month issued 17 new licences to continue culling badgers, overruling Dr Peter Brotherton, the director of science at Natural England, the government’s adviser for the natural environment in England.

Badgers are culled to the point of local extinction because they spread bovine tuberculosis (bTB) to cattle, and the disease can wipe out entire herds. Last year, figures released by Defra revealed more than 210,000 badgers had been killed since the cull began in 2013. However, scientific reports have shown that killing badgers is not the most effective way to end the disease.

Brotherton told Defra that while in previous years a cull could be justified, “based on the evidence, I can find no justification for authorising further supplementary badger culls in 2024 for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease and recommend against doing so”.

Defra officials said that in response they were pushing ahead with the cull because farmers who were most affected by bTB would lose confidence in the government if it was ended abruptly.

Sally Randall, Defra’s director general for biosecurity, food and trade, said in a letter to Natural England: “Those most affected by the disease must have confidence in both the process and the trajectory. Changes need to be carefully timed and communicated, whilst balancing a range of potentially opposing views. Any abrupt changes to policy would seriously undermine our ability to engage constructively with the industry on future disease control interventions.”

Brotherton said the badger population was likely to remain low for at least seven years, during which time vaccinations could be deployed to stop the spread of the disease.

He told Defra: “The balance of evidence has shifted. In my opinion it is now clear that badger vaccination can provide an effective alternative to [culls].”

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Proof the Beast of Cumbria exists?: Scientists find big cat DNA on savaged sheep in the Lake District

There have long been rumours that big cats roam the British countryside.

Blurred photographs, large inexplicable tracks and dramatic eye-witness accounts routinely add to the mystery of their existence.

But now scientists say they have found definitive proof a leopard prowls the Lake District – after they matched DNA found on a dead sheep to a non-native large feline.

Professor Robin Allaby analysed a sample taken from the sheep’s carcass and discovered ‘Panthera genus’ DNA – meaning it had to have come from a lion, leopard, tiger, jaguar or snow leopard.

He said a leopard was the most likely on British soil and that the exciting finding was the first scientific proof that large, non-native cats roam the UK.

Biologist Prof Allaby, who said he had always been ‘open-minded’ about the existence of big cats in Britain, told BBC Wildlife magazine that the results of his test had left him in no doubt there was one stalking the Cumbria countryside.

‘It makes me a convert,’ he said. ‘On the balance of probabilities, I think this is a genuine hit.’

The remains of the sheep were discovered by Cumbrian resident Sharon Larkin-Snowden in an undisclosed upland location in October.

She disturbed whatever had been feeding on the carcass and the animal ran towards a stone wall before disappearing.

‘I saw something black, running, and I assumed at first it was a sheepdog,’ she said. ‘Then I did a double take and realised it was a black cat. It ran towards a stone wall, stopped and then jumped the wall. It was big – the size of a German shepherd dog.’

Ms Larkin-Snowden took a swab of the carcass and sent it to Rick Minter, the host of the Big Cat Conversations podcast, who passed it on to Prof Allaby.

He analysed the sample at his laboratory at the University of Warwick and discovered both fox and Panthera DNA. He said the findings suggested the sheep had been eaten by both a fox and a big cat, such as a leopard.

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Google Tightens Influence on UK Elections with New “Moderation” Tactics

Google has found itself yet another election to “support.”

After the company made announcements to this effect related to the EU (European Parliament) June ballot, voters in the UK can now also look forward to – or dread, as the case may be – the tech giant’s role in their upcoming general election.

A blog post by Google UK Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy Katie O’Donovan announced even more “moderation” and a flurry of other measures, most of which have become tried-and-tested instruments of Google’s censorship over the past years.

They are divided in three categories – pushing (“surfacing”) content and sources of information picked by Google as authoritative and of high quality, along with YouTube information panels, investing in what it calls Trust & Safety operations, as well as “equipping campaigns with the best-in-class security tools and training.”

Another common point is combating “misinformation” – together with what the blog post refers to as “the wider ecosystem.” That concerns Google News Initiative and PA Media, a private news agency, and their Election Check 24, which is supposed to safeguard the UK election from “mis- and dis-information.”

Searches related to voting are “rigged” to return results manipulated to boost what Google considers authoritative sources – notably, the UK government’s site.

As for AI, the promise is that users of Google platforms will receive “help navigating” that type of content.

This includes the obligation for advertisers to reveal that ads “include synthetic content that inauthentically depicts real or realistic-looking people or events” (this definition can easily be stretched to cover parody, memes, and similar).

“Disclosure” here, however, is still differentiated from Google’s outright ban on manipulated media that it decides “misleads people.” Such content is labeled, and banned if considered as having the ability to maybe pose “a serious risk of egregious harm.”

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MI5 to shift focus from terrorism

Britain’s MI5 counter-intelligence service has shifted its focus from potential terrorist threats to challenges posed by spies of near-peer adversaries, including Russia, China, and Iran, The Telegraph reported on Saturday, citing sources.

While the UK authorities still deem international and domestic terrorism a priority, the agency is now reportedly devoting more resources to counterintelligence efforts. MI5’s calculus has changed because of the Ukraine conflict and the West’s stand-off with Russia, China’s alleged massive espionage campaign, and Iran’s alleged push to recruit criminals to target those who oppose the government in Tehran, The Telegraph said.

”Counterterrorism has not been deprioritized but this has been prioritized alongside it,” a senior government source told the outlet, adding that MI5’s “workload has definitely shifted in that direction.”

The Telegraph also claimed that Britain’s support for Ukraine has led to increased spying by Russia. “The more you step out, the more you find yourself in their crosshairs,” one of the sources said.

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Farmers are being booted off their land in a drive for more solar power, former union chief warns

The former head of Britain’s farming union yesterday spoke out against large-scale solar farms, declaring ‘there’s a huge amount not to like’.

But Minette Batters warned they will continue to be built while her members faced uncertainty about the future of dairy and arable farming – and while wealthy investors are free to buy up large chunks of the countryside.

Ms Batters, the ex-president of the National Farmers’ Union, also highlighted ‘horrific examples’ where tenant farmers are being booted off land for huge solar schemes so the landowner can make more money.

She said such changes of land use will continue while investors including overseas financiers and private equity firms are able to buy up huge chunks of the rural landscape unchecked, warning: ‘The country is up for sale’.

Ms Batters called for the next government to prioritise a new land strategy, so protections are given to traditional farming and its economic value is properly-acknowledged.

She added: ‘We are a country up for sale. We are selling off land to people who don’t pay their taxes here. It does have to change.’

Ms Batters was speaking during a debate at the Hay Literary Festival on Tuesday, in response to a question from an audience member horrified about the proliferation of giant solar farms covering several square miles of land.

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Pro-Palestinian Group Claims To Cut Fiber Cables At UK Defense Factory Making F-35 Targeting Systems

“It’s only a matter of when – not the if – when you are going to see a nation-state, group, or actor engage in destructive behavior against critical infrastructure in the United States,” Michael Rogers, the former second commander of the US Cyber Command (2014-18), warned during a 2016 speech.

Back then, Rogers should’ve expanded his geographical threat horizon across the West, not just the US. This is because there are mounting risks that some terrorist organizations, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), under the guise of pro-Palestinian demonstrations – are attempting to dismantle the Western world. Sounds outrageous, right? 

Well, not really. According to the Director of National Intelligence, PFLP is a terrorist group based in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It unites Arab nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology. It promotes the destruction of “Israel as integral to the struggle to remove Western capitalism from the Middle East and ultimately establish a Communist Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.” 

It should come as no surprise that the relationship between some Palestinian activist groups and global Marxist networks, like Black Lives Matter, are cut from the same radical cloth, with the end goal of destroying the West.

The quiet part is said out loud. 

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The government has been making plans for finding aliens

The government is officially gearing up for the discovery of aliens, a move described as ‘long overdue’ by the UK’s leading UFO expert.

A Freedom of Information request has revealed the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) is currently researching how it will react to the so-called ‘black swan’ event that is discovering extraterrestrial life. 

A black swan event is an unpredictable event that has wide-ranging consequences, but in hindsight appears to have been inevitable.

The report is investigating whether a plan already exists – none has ever been made public – what a plan would look like and how the UK can be ‘on the front foot’ should such an astounding scientific discovery finally be made.

It is being conducted over six months and will be finalised in July, at which point a new government could be in receipt of it.

An internal report will be presented to the DSIT Permanent Secretary setting out recommendations for an action plan including opportunities, challenges and areas of expertise.

While a summary of the work states the primary focus of the report will be ‘the impact on the science landscape’, it will also consider the wider impact.

Humans have pondered the existence of other lifeforms, at least on record, since medieval times. In recent decades, reports of UFOs have soared, the most famous being the Roswell incident in 1947, when a craft allegedly crashed in the New Mexico desert.

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FBI Joins Hunt for Missing Ancient Treasures from British Museum!

The FBI has joined the Metropolitan Police of Britain in the investigation of the sale of hundreds of artifacts believed to have been stolen from the British Museum in an alleged “inside job.” The US crime agency is aiding the search for approximately 1,500 items reportedly stolen by a former senior curator and sold on eBay. One of the stolen artifacts, an amethyst gem depicting the Roman god Cupid, was sold on eBay by “sultan1966,” a username allegedly linked to Dr. Peter Higgs, who was dismissed from the museum last year.

‘Paul Higgins’: An Alias of Disrepute

While no arrests or charges have been made, the British Museum is pursuing a civil case against Higgs, claiming he stole items from its storerooms and sold them online for over a decade. Higgs is defending himself against these claims. According to court documents, Higgs admitted that the eBay account “sultan1966” belonged to him.

Tonio Birbiglia, an antiquities dealer from New Orleans, told the BBC that he purchased the amethyst gem from sultan1966 in May 2016 for £42 ($55) along with an orange scarab beetle for £170 ($216). Birbiglia said the seller identified himself as “Paul Higgins” and used Higgs’s personal email address. He expressed shock when contacted by the FBI and mentioned he could not recall the purchases as he likely bought the gems to resell. When he asked for more information to help trace the items, he received no response.

The FBI is now assisting with the investigation of 268 items sold in the Washington DC area by the same seller. The museum has already recovered 626 missing items and identified another 100 that have been located but not yet returned. The museum acknowledged the difficulty in recovering all items, as many were uncatalogued, and some are fragments of larger objects.

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UK “disinformation unit” spied on citizens and flagged online speech for removal during pandemic

New documents reveal that authorities in the UK considered placing government employees inside of social media companies to form a type of digital KGB that would control online speech during the pandemic.

This is according to recently released minutes from the governing board of the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU). They show that, as many people suspected, British authorities were actively involved in monitoring people’s speech online and flagging certain viewpoints for removal.

At one point, they discussed a strategy to “embed” civil servants in various companies that were running social media platforms, and there is nothing in the document to indicate that they did not follow through on this.

The CDU, which has since been rebranded the National Security Online Information Team in response to heavy scrutiny, insists that it is “countering disinformation and hostile state narratives” but the agency, along with government-hired private contractors, was put in charge of surveilling British citizens and silencing those who were deemed to be “COVID measures dissenters.”

Instead of going after foreign adversaries who were spreading misinformation, they were targeting British citizens – from journalists and medical professionals to politicians – who were criticizing the government.

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UK Government Used Army “PsyOps” Division To Monitor Citizens And Then Lied About It

In January 2021, the UK government said that members of its infamous “77th Brigade do not, and have never, conducted any kind of action against British citizens.”

But it did. And thus it lied.

In 2022, the NGO I work for, Big Brother Watch, began investigating the UK government’s efforts to monitor social media posts and demand their censorship by the platforms. Over the next few months, we filed dozens of Freedom of Information requests, including for information on the 77th Brigade.

In other words, we discovered that the UK government had, in the name of fighting misinformation, spread disinformation.

The Army unit was not just involved in “countering misinformation,” it led the effort. The 77th Brigade monitored social media platforms throughout 2020 and worked alongside soldiers from the Royal Air Force (RAF).

The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) did not respond to requests to comment for this piece.

MoD created the 77th Brigade in 2015 to serve as its “information warfare” or “psychological operations” unit. The 77th Brigade would consist of “a new generation of ‘Facebook warriors’ who will wage complex and covert information and subversion campaigns,” reported the Financial Times in 2015.

When the Army created the 77th Brigade, its leaders told British Members of Parliament (MPs) that its job was to “build stability overseas,” not spy on citizens at home.

How did the UK military evade the ban on spying on UK citizens? A whistleblower from the 77th Brigade, who spoke to Big Brother Watch on condition of anonymity, said it did so by pretending that the British citizens who UK soldiers were spying upon could, perhaps, be foreigners

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