http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Politica/2007/09_Settembre/02/padoa_spesa_colloquio.shtml
Colloquio con il ministro dell'Economia
«Prima i tagli di spesa, poi le tasse»
Padoa-Schioppa: «L'emergenza non è il carico fiscale. Il caso California: ridussero le imposte ma licenziarono i dipendenti pubblici»
http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Esteri/2007/09_Settembre/02/rice_stanford_rivolta.shtml
Nella mitica università, dove fu già docente, pochi la difendono
«Torna la professoressa Rice»
E Stanford prepara la rivolta
Condoleezza ha detto che riprenderà a insegnare Scienze politiche nel gennaio 2009, quando scadrà il mandato di Bush
http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Spettacoli/2007/09_Settembre/01/francescca_lai_miss_Italia_eliminata.shtml
Erà già stata ammessa alle pre-finali di Miss Italia
Foto osè, squalificata dalla finale
La vicenda al concorso per Miss Toscana. Francesca Lai in lacrime ha chiesto lo stesso di andare a Salsomaggiore
http://www.proceso.com.mx/noticia.html?sec=0&nta=53592
Ejército y Marina, prioridades de Calderón
jorge carrasco araizaga
México, D.F., 1 de septiembre (Apro).- En sus primeros nueves meses de gobierno, el presidente Felipe Calderón ha echado mano como nunca antes de las Fuerzas Armadas.
Al margen de sus atribuciones constitucionales, Calderón sacó al ejército a la calle para reforzar la seguridad y lo metió a combatir el narcotráfico. Pero no es todo: también incrementó la presencia de militares en grupos especiales de seguridad fronteriza y antiterrorismo y propiciado una mayor integración a la estrategia de seguridad estadunidense.
http://www.proceso.com.mx/noticia.html?sec=0&nta=53589
No se ha erradicado el narcomenudeo ni las redes de los carteles en el país, admite Calderón
ricardo ravelo
México, D.F. 1 de septiembre (apro).- En materia de seguridad pública y crimen organizado, el informe que presentó el presidente Felipe Calderón destaca un sinnúmero de logros, pero en lo general prevalece la falta de una estrategia eficaz para que el Ejecutivo cumpla su principal objetivo: derrotar al narcotráfico.
http://www.proceso.com.mx/noticia.html?sec=0&nta=53578
Censura la Presidencia discurso e imagen de Ruth Zavaleta
jenaro villamil
México, D.F., 1 de septiembre (apro).- Antes de que el presidente Felipe Calderón diera un mensaje tan breve como un spot --90 segundos--, la transmisión en la televisión comercial censuró el discurso de la presidenta de la mesa directiva de la Cámara de Diputados, la perredista Ruth Zavaleta.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/us/02yurok.html?th&emc=th
For Struggling Tribe, Windfall Has a Dark Side
KLAMATH, Calif. — You do not have to drive far into the town of Klamath to see the poverty and the potential of the Yurok Indians, the largest tribe in California and one of the poorest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/world/asia/02singapore.html?th&emc=th
Modern
By SETH MYDANS and WAYNE ARNOLD
Published:
SINGAPORE, Sept. 1 — Lee Kuan Yew, who turned a malarial island into a modern financial center with a first-world skyline, is peering ahead again into this city-state’s future, this time with an idea to seal it off with dikes against the rising tides of global warming.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6974630.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6974643.stm
Storm Felix grows over
Felix has strengthened to a Category Two hurricane as it roars towards the
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6973614.stm
Twelve people in
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6973008.stm
Bush's media man sets exit date
White House press secretary Tony Snow has said he will resign from the high-profile job on 14 September.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6972093.stm
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/09/02/index.php?section=opinion&article=002a1edi
Editorial
La invención de un país
Ayer, minutos antes de que en la tribuna de San Lázaro Felipe Calderón Hinojosa convocara al diálogo al Poder Legislativo, alguien, en Televisa, Tv Azteca, o en el centro televisivo de la Presidencia de la República (Cepropie), censuró y dejó fuera de la cadena nacional la intervención previa de la titular de la mesa directiva de la Cámara de Diputados, Ruth Zavaleta, en la que la diputada perredista declinó recibir el informe de manos de Calderón y encomendó la tarea al vicepresidente, Cristian Castaño. Este hecho, la mordaza televisiva a la figura más importante del Congreso en el momento actual, ilustra con alarmante precisión el divorcio entre realidades y palabras que caracteriza a la actual administración, al conjunto de la institucionalidad política y al grupo gobernante, que incluye a Televisa y a Cepropie. En las semanas previas al trámite constitucional de ayer, el Ejecutivo federal pidió insistentemente “civilidad” a las bancadas opositoras a fin de permitirle a Calderón que así fuera la entrega del Informe escrito en el salón de plenos de San Lázaro; pero en cuestión de horas, el precario acuerdo logrado para este fin fue violentado por el círculo presidencial, en lo que constituye un gesto más elocuente que cualquier discurso posible.
British forces withdraw from Basra Palace base
Ian Black and Michael White
Guardian Unlimited
Official: obesity risk to half of all children
Official: obesity risk to half of all children
Rising numbers 'alarming' - minister
· New rules on healthy school meals
Anushka Asthana and Ailsa McNeil
Sunday September 2, 2007
The Observer
The German heroes who helped Allies against Hitler
A new book reveals the bravery of the men who joined the British forces to liberate
David Smith
The Observer
The tastiest tagine? The best ras-el-hanout? Fiona Dunlop, whose new book celebrates the food of
Named and shamed: City's ethical dunces
Which is the least responsible firm in
The Observer
Just how big is Barclays' overdraft?
An emergency loan of £1.6bn and speculation about the sub-prime fallout have rocked the bank - just as its battle with RBS to take over ABN Amro reaches a critical point.
Heather Connon
The Observer
Refreshing in the heat, a comfort in the cold, it adds a thrilling kick to Asian food, whatever the weather. Nigel Slater adds his favourite spice to an aromatic curry
The Observer
The times they are a-changing: pupils to learn poetry of Dylan
By Andrew Johnson
Published:
The times they have a-changed. Bob Dylan, the acclaimed songwriter and icon of protest for more than 40 years has finally been embraced by the establishment. For the first time next month his songs will be taught in secondary schools throughout the country as poetry.
Academics and poets, including the poet laureate Andrew Motion, have welcomed the Dylan education pack which will be rolled out to mark National Poetry Day. A range of Dylan songs, including "I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine", "Three Angels" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" will be available for pupils studying key stages three and four English. Children will also be asked to write a Dylan-inspired ballad on the theme of dreams, which is the theme of National Poetry Day.
Andrew Motion, who describes himself as a big Dylan fan, said : "I think it's a wonderful idea. It's an inspired notion."
Dr Richard Brown, a reader in modern literature at
The Scottish poet John Burnside agreed. "I think it's great," he said. "Dylan's is valued because more than any other song writer. He straddles the gap between the oral tradition and what can be described as more academic or high culture. He puts in literary references from Blake to Ginsberg."
Andrew Motion added: "He is a poet. That cheesy choice of Keats or Dylan – you don't have to choose. You can have them both. You can think of Dylan as a wonderful poet who sings his poems.
Dylan himself has never been in any doubt about his calling.
"I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet," he said.
Keats vs Dylan: you decide
From I DREAMED I SAW STAUGUSTINE by Bob Dylan
I dreamed I saw
Alive as you or me,
Tearing through these quarters
In the utmost misery,
With a blanket underneath his arm
And a coat of solid gold,
Searching for the very souls
Whom already have been sold.
"Arise, arise," he cried so loud,
In a voice without restraint,
"Come out, ye gifted kings and queens
And hear my sad complaint...
From ON A DREAMby John Keats
As Hermes once took to his feathers light
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept,
So on a Delphic reed my idle spright
So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes,
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away:
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto
Drunk disorderly: Britain's middle-class Asbos
Drunk disorderly:
Antisocial behaviour is not confined to hoodies. Drunk and badly behaved barristers are being targeted in a drive to raise standards among professionals. By Marie Woolf and Susie Mesure
Published:
A rampage after a football match, verbal abuse hurled at police officers as they moved to make an arrest after the suspect tried to hit a steward; a post-party reveller staggering around drunk and disorderly before breaking into a parked car, screaming, and throwing the car's back-seat contents out of one of its windows; a drunken "jape" in which 11 windscreen wipers were ripped from parked cars.
The latest instances of the hoodies or chavs – the Asbo generation – misbehaving after a few – more than a few – too many? A wild night on an inner-city council estate, perhaps? Simply more grist to the mill of those who bemoan the breakdown of society and the boorish behaviour of the poorer members of it?
Not a bit of it. They are, instead, all examples of a growing phenomenon identified by police and psychiatrists: the middle classes behaving badly.
And now comes signs of a backlash that professional watchdogs, including the General Medical Council and the Bar Standards Board, are taking steps to stamp out drink, drug and sexual excess, and to step into the private lives of doctors and barristers to do so.
Take the first incident. It concerned not an archetypal football yob on a post-match binge but Dr Simone Lester, a former senior director of NHS Direct and the woman charged with no less grave a task than drawing up guidelines for the public following the radioactive poisoning of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko. She faced a GMC disciplinary hearing last week after becoming involved in an alcohol-fuelled argument with police at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium. She called an officer a "poor peasant" and telling him that he was "worse than Jade Goody".
The second offender was no less a figure than the Bishop of Southwark. The Right Rev Tom Butler, a regular contributor to Radio 4's Thought for the Day, is one of the most senior clergyman in the Church of England. But that didn't stop him from raising more than a few parish eyebrows after he was discovered in a bad way in a stranger's car, throwing toys out of the vehicle. Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, announced his own investigation.
And the windscreen wiper stealer was a Scottish lawyer, making his way home after celebrating his mother's 80th birthday. He was dealt with by the courts.
Now the Bar Standards Board is stepping in to make it clear it will no longer tolerate anti-social conduct while off duty and is preparing to introduce a new offence of "improper behaviour" outside chambers.
The GMC too said last night it would act if it was confronted with a case of a doctor behaving badly outside of his or her role at the surgery or hospital, as it did with Dr Lester.
So just what is going on among the privileged classes?
Clinical psychologist Oliver James identifies a new trend of professionals " behaving in a way that is really very different to the way they ought to behave ". He blames a disease that he has termed "affluenza", where the middle classes have reacted to the widening inequalities of wealth by turning nasty.
He offers an example: "It is a relatively new phenomenon and includes examples such as a friend of mine, who went to
Drusilla Beyfus, the author of Modern Manners: The Complete Guide to the Etiquette of the 90s and an etiquette expert, backs the move to hold to account the badly behaving middle classes, often the most vocal in their criticism of similar behaviour in the less privileged sections of society. She says: "People who are accustomed to being looked up to should maintain a certain level of behaviour but standards have slipped across the board."
Drunken conduct by barristers, working under intense pressure to win cases, is a closely kept secret within the profession. The move is an attempt to stop it from impacting on the wider public.
And a recent spate of lurid headlines alleging bizarre behaviour has worried the Bar Standards Board, the profession's self-regulatory body. One barrister was recently caught secretly filming up women's skirts in supermarkets. Another was taken to court after he was alleged to have exposed himself to bridesmaids at a wedding, and brawled with a fellow guest. The barrister was finally acquitted – but not after a headline in The Sun appeared reading, "Barrister got willy out".
The Bar Standards Board's decision to change its disciplinary procedures will send a strong signal to barristers to treat not only their clients properly but also to watch what they say and do after taking their wigs off. Solicitors, too, are coming under increasing scrutiny. Nor is bad behaviour in the legal profession confined to advocates.
Last year, the public was enthralled by the story of two judges who are alleged to have made sex videos, one of which purported to show the woman snorting cocaine in
As well as the legal profession's own plans to self-regulate, ministers are paying close attention to both the conduct of lawyers and members of the judiciary. A new law being brought in this autumn to regulate the legal services is expected to address the issue of discipline for disreputable behaviour and is expected to enshrine in law the concept of "improper conduct".
The new rules on complaints against barristers will give the Bar Standards Commissioner the power to tell barristers, including QCs, to apologise to the people they have offended or abused. While being found guilty of loutish behaviour is unlikely to be end a barrister's career, it could jeopardies promotion. Under the proposals set to be adopted, a barrister who wishes to take silk or a senior judicial role would first have any offence of " improper behaviour" taken into account.
The proposal, included in a strategic review of complaints and disciplinary processes of the Bar Standards Board, explains how the new "concept of improper behaviour" is designed to deal with complaints from "non clients" – or members of the general public – "more effectively."
Rob Behrens, the Bar Standards Board complaints commissioner who drew up the proposals that regulate barristers' behaviour, said the new charge would enable complaints about poor conduct outside chambers to be dealt with swiftly. "In my experience the majority of barristers behave themselves extremely well," he said. "But now the only device to bring a barrister to account from behaviour towards somebody who isn't their client is to charge them with professional misconduct and that may be disproportionate. We need something more in keeping with the offence."
Either way, Mr James fears that attempts to crack down on the badly behaving middle classes are doomed to failure. He warned: "It will all be utterly irrelevant. We will just be scratching at the surface of the structural and cultural problems that have caused them to behave like this."
The foul-mouthed doctor
Simone Lester
What happened: Faced a medical disciplinary hearing last week for allegedly losing control at a football match after drinking and repeatedly swearing at police officers. The General Medical Council hearing was told that, during a match between Wigan Athletic and Arsenal on 11 February, Dr Lester, a former medical director at NHS Direct, tried to hit a steward and then verbally abused police saying: "I'm a fucking doctor. I want your fucking names and numbers." In a letter to the GMC, Dr Lester denied using abusive language. Consequences: The GMC said noted "two very different versions of events" and said that although it considered Dr Lester's behaviour on the day to be "intemperate" it did not fall sufficiently below standards to warrant a formal censure.
The coke-snorting policeman
Fraser Bisley
What happened: Bisley was arrested after being caught snorting from a wrap of cocaine during a night out with a friend in
Consequences: The arrest left Bisley's career in ruins. He resigned as a c onstable with Central Scotland Police, where he had worked for five years. He was also fined £500 after he admitted to a supply charge at
The ready for action judge
David Messenger
What happened: Mr Messenger, who worked as a district judge, was convicted for being drunk and disorderly in a kebab shop in
Consequences: Found guilty by Selby magistrates' court and fined £800 and costs. He was later sacked from as a district judge.
The vandalising lawyer
Paul Hutcheson
What happened: Went on a vandalism spree in
Consequences: Admitted seven charges relating to vandalism and paid for the damage he caused.
The amorous teacher
Lucy Hayward
What happened: English and RE teacher smoked cannabis with a group of pupils she befriended and eventually struck up a relationship with one of them, a 15-year-old boy.
Consequences: Jailed for two years, made to sign the Sex Offenders' Register for life and lost her job as a teacher.
The slurring bishop
Right Rev Tom Butler
What happened: After a Christmas party the bishop said he had been mugged, but witnesses claimed he climbed into the back of an unlocked car and threw toys.
Consequences: Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, dropped the matter after lawyers advised him the case could not be proved.
Further reading: 'The Asbo Effect' by Lynsey Hanley, published by Granta
Venice Film Festival hails a golden crop of British film-making
The festival's director Marco Mueller talks to the 'IoS' about the hottest films in world cinema. (Ours)
By Arifa Akbar
Published:
This time the British are not just coming, they may even have arrived. A quarter of a decade after screenwriter Colin Welland issued his warning as he collected his 1982 Oscar for Chariots of Fire, there is all the evidence to suggest that a golden age of British film-making has arrived.
With four homegrown movies in the running for the Venice Film Festival's coveted Golden Lion award, announced next Sunday, the festival's director, Marco Mueller, said it was one of the finest epochs for British films.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday, Mueller said that a "new tribe of British film producers, actors and directors were at the helm of this movement".
He also revealed that the festival's judging panel had unanimously agreed on selecting Joe Wright's adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement, as the opening night film, one of the hottest spots in the festival, and added: "Maybe the jury's eyes recognise Oscar material."
He also picked out James McAvoy, who stars opposite Kiera Knightley in Atonement, as one of the finest acting talents in world cinema today, and hailed British films as being at the cutting edge of innovation.
"When we were selecting films, we never thought, 'Let's focus on British cinema.' It happened naturally," he said.
Among this "tribe" is the acclaimed director, Peter Greenaway, whose murder mystery Nightwatching, based on the life of the Dutch painter Rembrandt, is up for the festival's main award as well as Kenneth Branagh's remake of the 1972 classic Sleuth, which stars Jude Law and Michael Caine; Wright's Atonement and Ken Loach's gritty drama about immigration, It's a Free World, which premiered last night.
"The diversity in British films has always been there. On the one hand, you have Exodus by [director] Penny Woolcock who comes from a non-cinema background, while on the other you have Peter Greenaway who is the opposite. And then you have Johnny Depp choosing Pinewood as his own private
The festival director, who has been at the helm of one of
His words echo director Stephen Frears's optimism about a British film revival. Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where he presided as the chair of the jury panel, he said: "The revival in British film-making is certainly not down to me. A lot of very good films are made in the
But Mueller has been criticised by those who believe he has a sway" towards
But Mueller argues their prominence simply means that some of the most powerful and challenging productions are emerging from
"The fact that many films from Venice go on to be nominated for Oscars can't be a coincidence and it means the Oscars are now accepting films which are original and innovative, such as Frears's The Queen.
"It does not mean that
More 'megafires' to come, say scientists
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published:
Fires of unprecedented ferocity are sweeping around the world, fuelled by global warming and misguided environmentalism.
Dubbed "megafires", they rage over thousands of miles at 1,000C and create their own weather, even triggering tornadoes. Rapidly increasing in number, they are often unquenchable by any human efforts, burning unchecked until they reach coasts or are put out by heavy rainfall.
The devastating fires that have ravaged
Matters are even worse in the
A year ago the Australian state of
Experts agree that they are caused partly by droughts and higher temperatures brought by global warming, but they also point to conservation practices which have discouraged controlled burning of forests and caused a huge build-up of up to 30 of 40 tons of tinder dry kindling on each acre of ground. Once lit – by lightning, arson or human error – they produce 20ft flames and generate temperatures of up to 1,200C. At this intensity they generate their own winds. One such fire caused tornados near
Professor Stephen J Pyne, an expert at
Dr Stuart Butchart: Shot by bandits, saved by 'The Birds of Mexico'
It was a two-inch thick bird book that saved the life of Dr Stuart Butchart. Paralysed by a vicious attack, he continues to devote his life to saving the world's birds
Published:
Jacanas are incredible birds, Dr Stuart Butchart tells me in a calm professorial tone. "They have an extraordinary mating system where females are dominant and have harems of males that do all the parental care. A modified wing bone allows the males to scoop up two chicks on each side. You see them running across the lily pads to get away from some danger with eight little legs dangling beneath their wings."
If anyone knows about the bronze-winged jacana (Metopidius indicus) it's Butchart. It was his doctoral thesis, based on three years observation of the birds at
Listening to Butchart's low, gravelly voice as he describes other rare species he's watched around the world is a bit like having Sir David Attenborough in the room practising the voiceover for his next documentary; even without stunning visuals, you can conjure up the birds in your imagination.
Ornithology has soared in the past 20 years. When Butchart was an undergraduate at Cambridge, he and his friends organised summer expeditions to research avian biodiversity in remote areas of the world, including islands off Indonesia that had not been surveyed since Alfred Russel Wallace – Charles Darwin's great rival – and other Victorian naturalists first explored them in the 19th century.
"We rediscovered a couple of species," he says nonchalantly. "Wallace's hanging parrot (Loriculus flosculus) hadn't been seen, apart from one observation in the Seventies, since its discovery. They're incredibly agile, crawling through the leaves like squirrels – rather than flitting from branch to branch – and hanging from one foot to eat fruit."
That sort of expedition into the unknown would be hard to do today, he says with a note of remorse in his voice. He means that few truly unexplored areas remain in a world girded with satellites, jumbo jets and the internet. But I can't help thinking that, for him, exploration is immeasurably more difficult now than for most people.
The moment passes and Butchart moves on to his next point. Bird scientists still have lots to learn, but the most important facts are known: the number of bird species (189) on the verge of extinction, for example, and what needs to be done to save them, and what it will cost. "£19m over five years," he says.
It's a trivial sum by almost any standard, especially so when matched against the ecosystem services that nature provides to humans, such as pollinating crops and maintaining the atmosphere and the global water cycle. That's worth $33 trillion (£16.5 trillion) a year by one estimate, he says: "And that's 1997 dollars; it's more than that now."
Birds can't claim credit for all of that, but they are good markers for the health of habitats. They can be found in some of the world's most inhospitable climes, from Antarctic waters to the deserts in the rain shadow of the
"We're playing a giant game of Jenga with the planet. Six billion people are pulling blocks out of the stack. Sooner or later that huge structure is going to come tumbling down," says Butchart, whose current job is global species programme co-ordinator for BirdLife International, the umbrella group for national organisations such as
The Preventing Extinctions programme launched last month has already recruited four corporate sponsors and Butchart seems confident that more will soon follow. The first four all have ties to the world of birds, but talks are under way with at least one global brand name, and a string of announcements is expected over the coming weeks and months.
Dragging 189 species back from the brink may seem a daunting task, but conservationists are much better now at identifying and dealing with threats such as introduced predators or loss of habitat. In the five centuries since 1500, 150 bird species have been lost, says Butchart. In the past decade alone, three disappeared, but, encouragingly, 16 others were saved, sometimes from population levels so low that the number of individual birds could be counted on your fingers.
A dramatic tale is that of the black robin (Petroica traversi) on
Continental birds, being less isolated, face different threats, but conservation is not impossible. Populations of the three species of vulture – including the slender-billed vulture (Gyps Tenuirostris), pictured right – declined by 90 per cent on the Indian subcontinent after veterinarians introduced a new pain-killer, diclofenac, for cattle. It turned out to be toxic to the vultures, so BirdLife International persuaded
His interest in birds started early, at his family home in
While he talks, his hands move restlessly, and the two thick silver rings on his thumbs make me think of the bands used to track birds. He laughs at this idea, insisting that I'm the first to suggest the parallel. But it reminds him of the day six and a half years ago when his life changed and he pauses. "It was when the bandits pulled my arm out from under me to get my ring that I woke up to what was happening," he says.
Butchart was in
"I turned a corner and walked into an ambush by a gang of four masked bandits. I turned around and one shot me. I was lying there on the ground for 45 minutes thinking I was probably going to die."
Fittingly, perhaps, it was his love of birds that saved his life. Had the bullet passed right through him, he would almost certainly have bled out on the spot. But the shot hit and stopped at the fifth thoracic vertebra. He's sure that it must have been slowed by passing through his 2in-thick copy of A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and
He has no way of checking; the book disappeared with his rucksack, watch and rings, taken by the bandits. It took 24 hours to get him out of the jungle and fly him to
And while his injury might have made expeditions into the wilderness more difficult, they haven't stopped him. My first glimpse of Butchart was in a photograph of a trip he made two years ago to
That wasn't the rough part of the visit, he says. The photograph was taken on a leisurely side trip during a conference. Once the meeting was over, he started a two-week trek through the rainforest, alone except for the guides who had to manhandle him through swamps, over fallen logs and across rivers. "I had one wheel on a six-inch wide plank and the other borne aloft by porters up to their necks in the raging water," he says. "They thought I was completely mad.
The rain was incessant. "It's the only place I've been where termites have evolved to build umbrellas over their mounds," he says. At their destination, the expedition waited for a glimpse of a grey-necked picathartes (Picathartes oreas), a species found in rich jungle close to caves and overhanging boulders. "They build nests under these rocks, like swallows' nests but much bigger. We were at the back of a cave when one suddenly appeared. They've been called the Gollums of the bird world because they have strange long necks, large heads with bare, violet and red skin, and they sort of bounce around on their long legs.
"I was determined from an early stage that I would carry on doing the stuff that I'd done before," he says. That included chasing dragonflies in
"They've become completely used to humans," he says. "When they want to climb up and look around for predators they will run up your body and stand on your head. I had pups running through the spokes of my wheels."
But it's clearly the birds that inspire him most, and despite the "frightening destruction and degradation" that he's seen in habitats around the world, he remains optimistic about their future: "We can turn this around."
Feathered friends: For the birds
Species guardians
In Focus (optics specialist): White-shouldered Ibis, below
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How 'IoS' readers can help
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