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EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you the nine things you need to know as you start your day.
1. #EUROZONE: EU leaders continue to consider how to ensure the new Greek bailout measures will not cause more difficulties for other areas in the eurozone and are due to meet on Sunday for a summit on the ongoing debt crisis. The ECB’s Jean-Claude Trichet says that changes should be made to the EU treaty to prevent any one country from “straying” and destabilising the rest of the region, Reuters report.
2. #SALARIES: Business group IBEC says its latest pay survey indicates that pay freezes will continue next year. It also said that pay expectations need to reflect current economic realities.
3. #GUN: Gardaí investigating the fatal shooting of 36-year-old Darren Falsey in August say they have recovered the firearm used in the killing.
4. #PARENTLINE:More parents have been calling the confidential phone service Parentline over the past year that in 2010, according to new figures. Over one in ten calls made to the line were linked to abuse, while over a fifth of calls were related to teenage issues.
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5. #ABDUCTED: A Somali official at the UN has told the BBC that if Kenyan troops have entered the country to chase suspected kidnappers, it would be a violation of Somali sovereignty. The troops are reported to have followed militants suspected of carrying out abductions in the area, including that of two Spanish aid workers last week, across the Somali border.
6. #MITCHELL: Presidential election candidate Gay Mitchell denies he has been confrontational in his campaign, telling RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that his questioning of fellow candidate Martin McGuinness was part of the “normal discourse”. Meanwhile, if you want to see where the candidates will be canvassing today, check out TheJournal.ie‘s #Áras11 diary.
7. #SARKOZY: France’s Socialist Party has selected Francois Hollande to face Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s presidential election. Hollande says he believes he can beat the incumbent and is currently polling better than the president among voters.
8. #SHRINKING: Climate change may be causing animals to shrink, according to a new report published in Nature Climate Change. The researchers say that changing weather patterns and warmer temperatures have led many species to shrink in size and “many others” are likely to follow suit.
9. #DUCK RACE: The third annual charity rubber duck race in Cumberland, Rhode Island got underway over the weekend – albeit to a slow start. Some of the 17,000 participants were reluctant to get wet, while it took a kayak crew to get the action going:
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Anthony, it is a well documented fact that atmospheric and environmental changes are inextricable linked to the size of animal. If we take a large section of earth’s history, the age of dinosaurs, this period was linked with very high oxygen levels. Much more so than exists today. The presence of oxygen enabled many of the earth’s animals to grow to extraordinary sizes. This size of animal is simply not possible in today’s climate because there is simply not enough oxygen to sustain the size. The only real exception is the Blue Whale. Environmental factors also influence size. Take the African elephant as an example. A group of these were stranded on islands in the Mediterranean at the end of the last Ice Age. When these islands became separated from the African continent it lead to a process whereby the elephants became miniature. These mini elephants, while now extinct, are well documented by the Romans and the Greeks. Look at Flores Man in Indonesia, a species of human believed to be the source of many hobbit, dwarf, etc.myths of Asia. Isolation on an island, combined with other environmental factors stunted its growth. The same can be seen with the Twa people of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda who still exist today. We know many factors stunt growth, including carbon monoxide (found in cigarettes), so how is it a step too far to believe that our pumping of noxious and toxic chemicals into the atmosphere is not also contributing to shrinking animals? After all, it is also well documented that we have changed our climate, our environment. Heck, we’ve even caused seas such as the Aral Sea (formerly 68,000 km2) to all but vanish. How do you think the animals in that area are surviving? In cases such as this, it’s the smallest animals, those that need less to survive, that will be successful procreators. This inevitably leads to shrinking animals.
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