Poland/UK: UK ’messed up' allowing unlimited Polish immigration
A former UK interior minister has admitted that allowing hundreds of thousands of Poles to come to Britain after Poland joined the EU in 2004 was a “spectacular mistake”.
According to Jack Straw, who served successively as both Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2006, Britain should have enforced a 7-year delay period after Poland joined the EU, as France and most other EU countries did.
“Lifting the transitional restrictions on the Eastern European states like Poland and Hungary which joined the EU in mid-2004,” was a “spectacular mistake,” he writes in an article for the Lancashire Telegraph, a paper serving his local constituency as a Labour party MP. ...
The News
Italy: Italy’s museums ‘need social media to survive’
Italy’s museums may attract millions of visitors each year, but Francesca De Gottardo, who has started a campaign to get them up to speed with social media, warns they risk losing out on both visitors and crucial funding if they don’t get online fast.
With just 48 of Italy’s 6,000 museums having an online presence, they are seriously lagging behind their global counterparts when it comes to using social media to boost visitor numbers.
Out of those who are online, few know how to use Twitter - now seen as a crucial marketing tool - while several don’t even have a website, according to statistics from Museum Analytics, a website that gathers information about museums and their audience. ...
The Local
Australia: Asteroid could save life, not destroy it, say WA scientists
That well-worn science-fiction horror story of an asteroid ploughing into Earth may not be so catastrophic after all, according to researchers in Perth.
Scientists at Curtin University have discovered that an asteroid impact might actually preserve ancient ecosystems, rather than wipe out civilisation as we know it.
And the proof has been discovered in Tasmania, with new findings in the journal Nature Geoscience documenting amazing glass fragments produced by the massive impact at the island’s famous Darwin Crater.
The researchers believe that when large meteorites strike Earth - at speeds up to 18 kilometres a second - the energy released causes solid rocks to melt and blast into the air. ....
WA Today
Switzerland: Pink diamond shatters sale record in Geneva
A plum-sized diamond known as the “Pink Star” was auctioned in Geneva on Wednesday for $83 million, including the commission, a world record for a gemstone.
David Bennett, chairman of Sotheby’s jewellery division in Europe and the Middle East, brought down the hammer in a Geneva hotel after an intense, five-minute bidding race.
The winning bidder, a bearded man apparently in his sixties sporting a Jewish skullcap, was pitted in a one-on-race against a telephone competitor.
The bidding in Geneva was conducted in Swiss francs, starting at 48 million and working its way upwards million-by-million. ...
The Local
France: Can the Paris night be brought back to life?
Six months before Paris’s mayoral election, Parisian revellers have elected a “nightlife mayor” to address the difficulties of partying in the French capital. But can the fading Parisian bar and club scene be brought back to life?
In his memoir ‘A Moveable Feast’, Hemingway described a vibrant, thriving French capital full of nocturnal pleasure-seekers of varying income levels.
But that was Paris in the 1920s and 30s.
Today, exciting nightlife in the City of Lights is widely considered a thing of the past. Grumbling began a few years ago, with French daily ‘Le Monde’ crowning Paris “European Capital of Boredom” in 2009 and a New York Times article describing the city as “staid and bourgeois” – especially when compared to other hot spots across the continent like London, Berlin or Barcelona. ...
France 34
New Zeland: ‘Angry bird’ reward jumps to $1000
A reward for information on an invasive pest bird, dubbed the ‘angry bird’, has been upped to $1000.
The red-vented bulbul, native to Asia, can cause significant damage to fruit and vegetable crops and are known to chase and attack other birds.
Their distinctive black heads with a bright red rump, as well as their aggressive nature, has led to them being nicknamed angry birds, after the popular computer game. ...
The New Zeland Herald
Denmark: More parents abandoning public schools
Advocates of the public school system argue that the increasing number of private school students is detrimental to the overall quality of education.
An increasing number of parents are turning towards private education when choosing a school for their children, according to a new report from the Education Ministry.
At the beginning of the 2012 school year, roughly one sixth (15.6 percent) of all students in grades 0 to 9 attended a private school, up from 13.9 percent in 2008. During the same timeframe, the number of students in public schools fell by almost 20,000. As of 2012, there were 561,000 students in public schools and 104,740 attending private institutions. ...
The Copenhagen Post
