Chinese New Year Resolution – Let’s be kind to sharks and rays!
Mei Lin NEO
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Price of eggs up 4% over 6 months: Chan Chun Sing
Channel NewsAsia 14 Jan 19;
SINGAPORE: The local retail price of eggs increased by about 4 per cent between June and November last year, according to Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing.
He revealed this in a written parliamentary reply on Monday (Jan 14) in response to a question from Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Associate Professor Daniel Goh on the cause behind the increase in the price of eggs in the past six months and whether profiteering has been a factor.
Mr Chan said the import prices of eggs from some of Singapore's import sources have gone up significantly between June and November 2018, some by up to 50 per cent.
"However, we also have other import sources where the import prices have either remained stable or shown slight declines of up to 7 per cent. As such, the local retail price of eggs has increased around 4 per cent over the same period," he said.
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Thailand to make it rain as pollution chokes Bangkok
AFP Yahoo News 15 Jan 19;
Bangkok (AFP) - Thailand is set to deploy rainmaking planes to seed clouds in an effort to tackle the pall of pollution that has shrouded the capital in recent weeks.
The weather modification technique involves dispersing chemicals into the air to aid cloud condensation, which should in theory result in rain.
"The Department of Royal Rainmaking and Agricultural Aviation... expects the rainmaking to be done tomorrow (Tuesday) but it depends on wind and humidity levels," Pralong Dumrongthai, director-general of Thailand's Pollution Control Department, told reporters.
As Thais woke up Monday morning to another day of murky air blanketing its bustling construction-filled capital, environment group Greenpeace said Bangkok was currently the 10th most polluted in the world, rivalling some cities in China.
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Australia: Million dead fish cause environmental stink
AFP Yahoo News 14 Jan 19;
Sydney (AFP) - As many as a million fish are believed to have died along the banks of a major river system in drought-battered eastern Australia, and the authorities warned Monday of more deaths to come.
The banks of the Murray-Darling Rivers are thick with rotten fish, with officials putting the number of dead at hundreds of thousands and saying the toll is likely closer to one million.
Further high temperatures forecast for this week could make the situation worse, the New South Wales government has warned.
Low water conditions and the heat may also have encouraged an algae bloom that starves the fish of oxygen and produce toxins.
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Desalination produces more toxic waste than clean water
Marlowe HOOD, AFP Yahoo News 15 Jan 19;
Paris (AFP) - More than 16,000 desalination plants scattered across the globe produce far more toxic sludge than fresh water, according to a first global assessment of the sector's industrial waste, published Monday.
For every litre of fresh water extracted from the sea or brackish waterways, a litre-and-a-half of salty slurry, called brine, is dumped directly back into the ocean or the ground.
The super-salty substance is made even more toxic by the chemicals used in the desalination process, researchers reported in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
Copper and chlorine, for example, are both commonly used.
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Antarctica is losing ice 6 times faster today than in 1980s
SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press Yahoo News 15 Jan 19;
WASHINGTON (AP) — Antarctica is melting more than six times faster than it did in the 1980s, a new study shows.
Scientists used aerial photographs, satellite measurements and computer models to track how fast the southern-most continent has been melting since 1979 in 176 individual basins. They found the ice loss to be accelerating dramatically — a key indicator of human-caused climate change.
Since 2009, Antarctica has lost almost 278 billion tons (252 billion metric tons) of ice per year, the new study found. In the 1980s, it was losing 44 billion tons (40 billion metric tons) a year.
The recent melting rate is 15 percent higher than what a study found last year.
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Singapore otters a hit overseas
Fans across the globe ask interest groups where they can see the creatures when they visit Singapore
Nur Syahindah Ishak The New Paper 14 Jan 19;
National Geographic photographer Stefano Unterthiner, 48, from Italy has been to more than 30 countries and photographed exotic wildlife such as the Komodo dragon, European bison and brown bear.
When he learnt about Singapore's Bishan otters, he flew here in January last year for over three weeks.
He is not the only foreigner to be intrigued by our otters.
Otter groups here told The New Paper that they get messages from fans across the globe asking where to find the animals if they were to visit Singapore.
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Spike in fish prices likely to continue in run-up to Chinese New Year
Bad weather, rising demand, Malaysia's seafood export ban cited as reasons for higher prices of popular fishes
Rei Kurohi Straits Times 14 Jan 19;
A recent spike in the price of fish that is likely to continue with Chinese New Year just weeks away was partly the result of recent bad weather, which caused some shortages among Singapore's regular suppliers, fish sellers told The Straits Times.
Mr Lim Choon Yau, who represents wholesaler Song Fish Dealer, said fishermen in countries like Indonesia and Thailand have reported poor catches and unpredictable weather preventing them from fishing in recent weeks.
He said: "The price of Chinese pomfret has risen from about $30 to as much as $50 per kg. If the weather continues to be bad, who knows how high the price could rise?"
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Indonesia: Facebook post leads N. Sumatra police to alleged poacher
Rizal Harahap and Apriadi Gunawan The Jakarta Post 13 Jan 19;
Authorities in Riau and North Sumatra have arrested a man allegedly involved in illegal poaching after he posted a video of himself slaughtering an endangered bird on social media.
The Riau Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) joined hands with the Kuantan Singingi (Kuansing) Police to track down and apprehend Arhedi, 29, for allegedly killing a hornbill on Friday evening.
Arhedi, who is originally from Lebak, Banten, is a rubber plantation worker in Gunung Toar subdistrict, Kuansing, Riau. The police are still on the hunt for his coworker, OG, who allegedly took down the bird with a slingshot.
A video of Arhedi chopping up the hornbill went viral on social media and alerted the police.
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Best of our wild blogs: 13 Jan 19
Flew In Visitors (12 Jan 2019)
Beetles@SG BLOG
Butterfly of the Month - January 2019
Butterflies of Singapore
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Why Singapore is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world
Extreme heat, combined with the island’s high humidity, could be life-threatening, the programme Why It Matters discovers.
Desmond Ng and Tang Hui Huan Channel NewsAsia 13 Jan 19;
SINGAPORE: The recent spells of hot weather that Singaporeans have been experiencing may not be just temporary heatwaves.
The island is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world - at 0.25 degrees Celsius per decade - according to the Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS). It is almost 1 deg C hotter today than in the 1950s.
What is even grimmer news – Singapore’s maximum daily temperatures could reach 35 to 37 deg C by year 2100, if carbon emissions continue to rise at the same rate, warned Dr Muhammad Eeqmal Hassim, senior research scientist with the MSS Centre for Climate Research Singapore.
Other countries already experience hotter temperatures than this - but the reason this spells trouble for Singapore, is that humidity is high here all year round,
This could lead to potentially deadly situations, as the programme Why It Matters found out.
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