In this image taken from TV, Iain Lobban director of electronic surveillance agency GCHQ gives evidence as the heads of Britain's intelligence agencies face UK lawmakers to give televised testimony for the first time in public, in London Thursday Nov. 7, 2013. The three spy agency leaders Andrew Parker head of Britain's domestic security agency MI5, John Sawers head of Britain's foreign spy service MI6 and Iain Lobban director of electronic surveillance agency GCHQ, are taking questions from Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, questioned on the work of their agencies, their current priorities and threats to the U.K., but not on ongoing operations.(AP Photo / Parliamentary Recording Unit)
In this image taken from TV, Iain Lobban director of electronic surveillance agency GCHQ gives evidence as the heads of Britain's intelligence agencies face UK lawmakers to give televised testimony for the first time in public, in London Thursday Nov. 7, 2013. The three spy agency leaders Andrew Parker head of Britain's domestic security agency MI5, John Sawers head of Britain's foreign spy service MI6 and Iain Lobban director of electronic surveillance agency GCHQ, are taking questions from Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, questioned on the work of their agencies, their current priorities and threats to the U.K., but not on ongoing operations.(AP Photo / Parliamentary Recording Unit)
In this image made from TV, John Sawers head of Britain's foreign spy service MI6 give evidence as the heads of Britain's intelligence agencies face UK lawmakers to give televised testimony for the first time in public, in London Thursday Nov. 7, 2013. The three spy agency leaders Andrew Parker head of Britain's domestic security agency MI5, John Sawers head of Britain's foreign spy service MI6 and Iain Lobban director of electronic surveillance agency GCHQ, are taking questions from Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, questioned on the work of their agencies, their current priorities and threats to the U.K., but not on ongoing operations.(AP Photo / Parliamentary Recording Unit )
In this image taken from TV, Andrew Parker head of Britain's domestic security agency MI5 gives evidence as the heads of Britain's intelligence agencies face UK lawmakers to give televised testimony for the first time in public, in London Thursday Nov. 7, 2013. The three spy agency leaders Andrew Parker head of Britain's domestic security agency MI5, John Sawers head of Britain's foreign spy service MI6 and Iain Lobban director of electronic surveillance agency GCHQ, are taking questions from Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, questioned on the work of their agencies, their current priorities and threats to the U.K., but not on ongoing operations.(AP Photo / Parliamentary Recording Unit)
In this image made from TV, John Sawers head of Britain's foreign spy service MI6 give evidence as the heads of Britain's intelligence agencies face UK lawmakers to give televised testimony for the first time in public, in London Thursday Nov. 7, 2013. The three spy agency leaders Andrew Parker head of Britain's domestic security agency MI5, John Sawers head of Britain's foreign spy service MI6 and Iain Lobban director of electronic surveillance agency GCHQ, are taking questions from Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, questioned on the work of their agencies, their current priorities and threats to the U.K., but not on ongoing operations.(AP Photo / Parliamentary Recording Unit)
In this image taken from TV, the heads of Britain's intelligence agencies face UK lawmakers to give televised testimony for the first time in public, in London Thursday Nov. 7, 2013. The three leaders, from left, Andrew Parker head of Britain's domestic security agency MI5, John Sawers head of Britain's foreign spy service MI6 and Iain Lobban director of electronic surveillance agency GCHQ, as they take questions from Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, questioned on the work of their agencies, their current priorities and threats to the U.K., but not on ongoing operations.(AP Photo / Parliamentary Recording Unit)
LONDON (AP) — Al-Qaida and other British intelligence targets are having a field day with the leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, U.K. spy chiefs told lawmakers Thursday in a strong condemnation of the American's spying revelations.
Iain Lobban, chief of the eavesdropping agency GCHQ, said his spies have picked up "near-daily discussion" of the unauthorized disclosures among his agency's targets. His colleague John Sawers, the chief of the British foreign spy agency MI6, was even more explicit.
"It's clear that our adversaries are rubbing their hands in glee," he told lawmakers. "Al-Qaida is lapping it up."
Lobban, Sawers and Andrew Parker, head of MI5, Britain's domestic spying agency, were giving their first public, televised testimony to British lawmakers on Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee. Their appearances came amid a fierce international debate over British and American intelligence tactics — an uproar triggered by Snowden's revelations.
All three spy chiefs insisted their agencies operate within the law, guaranteeing parliamentarians that their work was both legal and proportionate.
"We do not spend our time listening to the telephone calls or reading the emails of the majority," said Lobban.
During a wide-ranging, 90-minute session, the spy chiefs discussed the war in Syria, cyberattacks against the U.K. and the lingering terror threat from Northern Ireland.
Syria got a particular amount of attention, with Parker warning that the civil war there was drawing in a large number of British residents to fight in the service of Islamic extremism. He said his intelligence service had "seen low hundreds of people from this country go to Syria," noting that some of them had since returned to the U.K.
European intelligence officials have long warned that the war between rebels and Syrian President Bashar Assad's government was attracting foreign fighters from European countries, many of whom have joined hard-line Islamic militant groups.
“I’m a two-time breast cancer survivor and I’m facing the loss of insurance,” the Pennsylvania Republican declared Wednesday at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the health-care law. “Three years ago, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis,” he added. “If my coverage is not in place before January 1st, I will have to go without my medications. This may cause permanent disability, blindness, inability to walk, speech problems.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Marvel will develop four original series for Netflix in a deal that gives the streaming service one of its most high-profile content partnerships.
The companies announced Thursday that the four live-action, 13-episode series will begin streaming in 2015. Marvel Entertainment President Alan Fine says the shows will be "a serialized epic" that begins with Marvel's "Daredevil" and is followed by "Jessica Jones," ''Iron Fist" and "Luke Cage." It will conclude with a miniseries of "The Defenders."
Last year, Netflix acquired the paid-TV rights to Walt Disney Studios movie releases beginning in 2016. Marvel Entertainment is owned by Disney.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The development order is the most ambitious TV foray for the superhero factory Marvel. This fall it debuted "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." on Disney's ABC.
She recently said she was ready to marry her fiance Ryan Sweeting as soon as possible, but Kaley Cuoco obviously didn't expect to have the wedding to be completely televised on a talk show.
During her interview on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" on Wednesday (November 6), the "Big Bang Theory" beauty announced her happiness after finding true love.
"Everything is great right now, I can't even tell you," Miss Cuoco told the audience. "We are so happy."
Ellen then asked, "Now, people don't understand [your new relationship]. How long have you known him."
"Not... It's, it's, newer. I know it looks a little crazy to some people," Kaley answered.
"When you know it, when you feel it, you just know it!" Miss DeGeneres stated.
After explaining the story about meeting Ryan, the 27-year-old actress was surprised with jewelry and flowers. Then Ellen announced that Kaley and her fiance were going to exchange their vows on stage. While enjoying a few laughs and exchanging rings at the alter with Ellen's writer officiating, Mr. Sweeting managed to ask, "This isn't legal, right?"
Check out the video below of Kaley and Ryan's "marriage" below!
Most nations lack means to assess biodiversity, key ecosystem services and their value: Experts
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
5-Nov-2013
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Contact: Terry Collins tc@tca.tc 416-878-8712 Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Most of the world's nations unanimously committed to protecting biodiversity nevertheless cannot measure and assess their genetic and biological resources, nor the value of key ecosystem services nature provides to them, international experts from 72 countries warned this week.
In addition to taxonomists, nations lack economists able to put a value on the water purification, storm protection and other services of nature, which would inform trade-off choices in development planning. And fewer still deploy social scientists to estimate nature's non-economic (e.g. cultural) values, or to find ways to effect needed changes in human attitudes and behaviour.
Those concerns drove a three-day meeting of 300 scientists ending today in Malaysia, looking at how best to help countries develop relevant expertise across a span of disciplines to take up these critical tasks.
Strengthening the ability of nations to conduct biodiversity and ecosystem service-related assessments for better informed policy decision-making is a key mandate of the UN's new Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which convened the meeting, hosted by the Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology and supported by the Government of Norway.
Often likened to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the new Bonn-based IPBES is chaired by Zakri Abdul Hamid, science advisor to Malaysia's prime minister.
"There's an old saying: We measure what we treasure," said Dr. Zakri, recently appointed also to the UN Secretary-General's new Science Advisory Board. "Unfortunately, though we profess to treasure biodiversity, most nations have yet to devote adequate resources to properly measure and assess it along with the value of ecosystem services. Correcting that is a priority assignment from the world community to IPBES."
The UN's new Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, now under consideration, are expected to include biodiversity-related targets for achievement by 2030, together with indicators of progress, he said.
"To be effective, obviously, it is vital that nations have the tools and personnel to establish authoritative scientific baselines and collect ongoing data to know whether headway is being made or not," Dr. Zakri said.
Delegates in Kuala Lumpur broke the capacity-building challenge down into three immediate tasks: identify the widely-varying existing resources and needs of individual nations and regions, set priorities for helping them address deficits, and create a way to monitor the adequacy of national capacities on an ongoing basis.
Dr. Zakri said biodiversity scientists, who see a crisis looming in the rapid rate of loss of species and ecosystem services in many areas, "need to stop talking amongst ourselves. The message needs to get through to policy makers, politicians, captains of industry and the general public. We need to start talking in terms people understand economics and health, for example."
Scientific papers have documented that biodiversity, for example, provides a kind of human health insurance, he noted, by diluting the pool of virus targets.
Other research in recent years has revealed enormous dollar values of ecosystem services including food, pollution treatment and climate regulation - provided by forests and coral reefs.
A single hectare of coral reef, for example, provides annual services to humans estimated at US $130,000 on average, rising to as much as $1.2 million, according to researchers with The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB).
TEEB estimated in 2010 that the planet's 63 million hectares of wetlands provide some $3.4 billion in storm protection, food and other services to humans each year. Up to half of the $640 billion pharmaceutical market relies on genetic resources, with anti-cancer agents from marine organisms alone valued at up to $1 billion annually. And the loss of biodiversity through deforestation will cost the global economy up to $4.5 trillion every year.
"Harvard professor E.O. Wilson put it well," said Dr. Zakri, "Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal." The rainforest in Malaysia is estimated to be around 130 million years old.
"The knowledge deficit is high," Dr. Zakri added. "Of the estimated 10.8 million species on land and in the oceans, less than 2 million have been scientifically described. If we don't know what species there are out there, we don't know what niche they fill in a healthy ecosystem or perhaps in remedying some human condition," he said, citing the Kalahari desert's San people plant (Hoodia gordinii) recently found to help curb obesity among those who include it in their diet.
Sir Robert Watson, IPBES vice-chair, stressed that social scientists are needed as well to evaluate nature's non-economic such as cultural and social values to be factored also into trade-off considerations by policy-makers.
"I'm not convinced there's even a handful of countries today that could do a proper evaluation of ecosystem services," he said, noting that the UK's efforts at such an assessment involved detailed databases dating back several decades, a highly-skilled scientific community, and about $5 million in expense despite the donation of time to the cause by many experts.
"In essence, three abilities are needed: generate knowledge, assess it, and then use it not only in government but in the private sector and civil society as well. Capacity-building is needed everywhere, even in the most developed countries."
In some parts of the world, he said, individual countries may need to begin by pooling and sharing resources to create, interpret and use regional and sub-regional rather than strictly national assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Recommendations from the Malaysia meeting will be taken up by the 114 members nations of IPBES at the organization's second world plenary session, December 9-14 in Antalya, Turkey.
###
About the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
http://www.ipbes.net
About the Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology (MIGHT)
http://www.might.org.my
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Most nations lack means to assess biodiversity, key ecosystem services and their value: Experts
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
5-Nov-2013
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]
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Contact: Terry Collins tc@tca.tc 416-878-8712 Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Most of the world's nations unanimously committed to protecting biodiversity nevertheless cannot measure and assess their genetic and biological resources, nor the value of key ecosystem services nature provides to them, international experts from 72 countries warned this week.
In addition to taxonomists, nations lack economists able to put a value on the water purification, storm protection and other services of nature, which would inform trade-off choices in development planning. And fewer still deploy social scientists to estimate nature's non-economic (e.g. cultural) values, or to find ways to effect needed changes in human attitudes and behaviour.
Those concerns drove a three-day meeting of 300 scientists ending today in Malaysia, looking at how best to help countries develop relevant expertise across a span of disciplines to take up these critical tasks.
Strengthening the ability of nations to conduct biodiversity and ecosystem service-related assessments for better informed policy decision-making is a key mandate of the UN's new Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which convened the meeting, hosted by the Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology and supported by the Government of Norway.
Often likened to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the new Bonn-based IPBES is chaired by Zakri Abdul Hamid, science advisor to Malaysia's prime minister.
"There's an old saying: We measure what we treasure," said Dr. Zakri, recently appointed also to the UN Secretary-General's new Science Advisory Board. "Unfortunately, though we profess to treasure biodiversity, most nations have yet to devote adequate resources to properly measure and assess it along with the value of ecosystem services. Correcting that is a priority assignment from the world community to IPBES."
The UN's new Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, now under consideration, are expected to include biodiversity-related targets for achievement by 2030, together with indicators of progress, he said.
"To be effective, obviously, it is vital that nations have the tools and personnel to establish authoritative scientific baselines and collect ongoing data to know whether headway is being made or not," Dr. Zakri said.
Delegates in Kuala Lumpur broke the capacity-building challenge down into three immediate tasks: identify the widely-varying existing resources and needs of individual nations and regions, set priorities for helping them address deficits, and create a way to monitor the adequacy of national capacities on an ongoing basis.
Dr. Zakri said biodiversity scientists, who see a crisis looming in the rapid rate of loss of species and ecosystem services in many areas, "need to stop talking amongst ourselves. The message needs to get through to policy makers, politicians, captains of industry and the general public. We need to start talking in terms people understand economics and health, for example."
Scientific papers have documented that biodiversity, for example, provides a kind of human health insurance, he noted, by diluting the pool of virus targets.
Other research in recent years has revealed enormous dollar values of ecosystem services including food, pollution treatment and climate regulation - provided by forests and coral reefs.
A single hectare of coral reef, for example, provides annual services to humans estimated at US $130,000 on average, rising to as much as $1.2 million, according to researchers with The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB).
TEEB estimated in 2010 that the planet's 63 million hectares of wetlands provide some $3.4 billion in storm protection, food and other services to humans each year. Up to half of the $640 billion pharmaceutical market relies on genetic resources, with anti-cancer agents from marine organisms alone valued at up to $1 billion annually. And the loss of biodiversity through deforestation will cost the global economy up to $4.5 trillion every year.
"Harvard professor E.O. Wilson put it well," said Dr. Zakri, "Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal." The rainforest in Malaysia is estimated to be around 130 million years old.
"The knowledge deficit is high," Dr. Zakri added. "Of the estimated 10.8 million species on land and in the oceans, less than 2 million have been scientifically described. If we don't know what species there are out there, we don't know what niche they fill in a healthy ecosystem or perhaps in remedying some human condition," he said, citing the Kalahari desert's San people plant (Hoodia gordinii) recently found to help curb obesity among those who include it in their diet.
Sir Robert Watson, IPBES vice-chair, stressed that social scientists are needed as well to evaluate nature's non-economic such as cultural and social values to be factored also into trade-off considerations by policy-makers.
"I'm not convinced there's even a handful of countries today that could do a proper evaluation of ecosystem services," he said, noting that the UK's efforts at such an assessment involved detailed databases dating back several decades, a highly-skilled scientific community, and about $5 million in expense despite the donation of time to the cause by many experts.
"In essence, three abilities are needed: generate knowledge, assess it, and then use it not only in government but in the private sector and civil society as well. Capacity-building is needed everywhere, even in the most developed countries."
In some parts of the world, he said, individual countries may need to begin by pooling and sharing resources to create, interpret and use regional and sub-regional rather than strictly national assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Recommendations from the Malaysia meeting will be taken up by the 114 members nations of IPBES at the organization's second world plenary session, December 9-14 in Antalya, Turkey.
###
About the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
http://www.ipbes.net
About the Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology (MIGHT)
http://www.might.org.my
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Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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