Mind-over-body exercises are often recommended for individuals coping with high stress, or for athletes looking to improve their performance. Photo: BBC

Colorado, United States (BBN) - Stress and anxiety can wreak havoc on your financial life.
A pile of bills, a lost job or pay cut, no child care or in-person schooling, and a pandemic that feels never-ending can impact anyone’s psyche.
In fact, more than 4 in 5 Americans, or 84%, are feeling stress on their personal finances due the crisis, an October survey by the National Endowment for Financial Education found.
Here’s a look at six steps you can take to shake off those emotions, so that you don’t freeze up or make bad money decisions.
1. Recognize you are anxious or stressed
Pay attention to your body and your emotions. Are you breathing faster? Are you more rushed?
Once you recognize you are anxious or stressed, it may help to take a moment and a few breaths before you make a decision, said licensed marriage and family therapist Dr. George James, chief innovation officer and senior staff therapist at the non-profit Council for Relationships.
“When we are anxious, it can impact what we do,” he said. “It overwhelms our system and we make decisions or moves that maybe aren’t in our best interest.”
Reach out for help to the community you are involved with, such as a financial advisor, college friend or trusted family member, added James, a member of the CNBC Invest in You Financial Wellness Council.
2. Practice self-care
Self-care and self-kindness are key in time like this, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money on either, said financial therapist and coach Carrie Rattle, CEO and founder of New York-based Behavioral Cents, which provides financial coaching and therapy.
Self-care can mean good nutrition, sleep and exercise.
“Self-kindness is ensuring that, in this time of trauma, we are getting social interaction,” even by phone or Zoom, she said. “Don’t shut yourself off and live in your head.”
3. Pay attention to the present
People tend to get caught up in looking at everything that needs to be fixed, and don’t know where to start, Rattle explained.
Instead, think about one small thing you can do today to be smarter about your money. Attack it with an attitude of curiosity, rather than judgment, she said.
“When you pay attention to the present and you tackle one small behavior change, it is remarkably empowering,” she said. “It gives you control back in a world where very few of us have control.”
4. Get real about your finances
Look back at your finances over the past year, your income and your expenses.
This can help you become more knowledgeable about where you stand and will help you create a plan for the upcoming year, said certified financial planner Stacy Francis, president and CEO of Francis Financial, a New York-based wealth management practice.
“That is really important and powerful for not only, of course, staying on track financially, but often we think that we are either better off or worse off than we actually are,” she explained.
Catherine Lavelle, 47, didn’t realize how bad her finances were — and how that stress was impacting her— until she wanted to buy a middle-income apartment in New York City a few years ago.
“I was so good at being bad about money,” said Lavelle, admissions counselor for a New York state college.
After reviewing her situation, getting a handle on her credit card debt, hiring a financial planner and organizing her finances, she was able to bring her stress level down from what she called an 8 to a 1.
“I feel good about my finances for the first time in my life,” Lavelle said.
5. Set priorities
What do you need most and what can wait? What costs can be reduced in some way?
When there are too many priorities swirling around in your mind, you can lose focus, Rattle said. If you write them down on a piece of paper and prioritize them, you have clarity on what comes next.
6. Create an emergency fund
The pandemic is driving home the importance of having some cash stashed away in case of emergency.
“Anxiety comes from change,” said Francis, a member of the CNBC Financial Advisor Council. “No one loves change.
“Unfortunately, with finances in 2020, a lot of that change was negative,” she added. “The best defense you can have against a negative financial surprise is to have a good offense.”
Ideally, try to save three to six months of living expenses to fall back on in the event something unexpected happens, Francis said.
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In her new book, The Selfie Generation, author Alicia Eler breaks with clichés to imagine the selfie as a double-edged sword, at once an empowering and vulnerable phenomenon, characteristic of the digital age, reports BBC.

In opposition to the assumption that selfies are objectifying or narcissistic, selfies have been key for empowering marginalized groups like women, people of color (POC), the LGBTQ community, migrants and refugees. Mass media at our fingertips created access to all kinds of characters, a new generation of individuals who aren’t as afraid to be different or unique, ultimately creating a mirror, says Eler. “Was there ever a time when adolescents weren’t obsessed with their own image?” she asks. Young or old, you can’t blame people for wanting validation, and now it's just a swipe and a tap away.

Back in 2013, Eler wrote a piece for Hyper allergic titled The Feminist Politics of #Selfies, focusing on POC women and selfies, in response to an article posted on the women’s blog Jezebel that suggested selfies are a cry for help, among a plethora of negative slanting media coverage.

“Actually can we talk about what #selfies mean to people who never get a chance to see themselves in mainstream media?” wrote feminist comic book author Mikki Kendall on her Twitter account in November of that year.

While posting selfies publicly inherently exposes the person to trolling and hate speech, it also connects them with a global network of potential support. With the rise of the selfie, images of marginalized ‘others that were once kept out of the mainstream have become iconic.

Since 2013, when ‘selfie’ was Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year, these contemporary self-portraits have become ubiquitous in an age when visibility can be synonymous with political power. Resistance and protest movements have taken on new forms since then.

They’re less about marching with banners or community organizing and more about decentralized fluidity or being seen across multiple online platforms.

“They are aimed at gaining visibility through a different logic – by using common images, tactics, hashtags, identity politics and iconic events,” writes author Irmgard Emmelhainz for e-flux.

THE FLIP SIDE

Of course, there’s a drawback that has become all too apparent in recent years: surveillance. Despite revelations of spying by the NSA on ordinary American citizens, or the fact that our personal information is mined and sold by large social media corporations, we seem undeterred from posting our most personal moments for all to see.

We love to selfie, even if our own images are monetized for the profit of others, our every online action is monitored, and our movements tracked by the very tools that connect us.

“The threat is not a digital one so much as it is a personal one,” writes Eler. There is a pervasive attitude of ‘I have nothing to hide,’ but that reality is different for those same activists and artists who may be empowered by the visibility that selfies offer.

Working under the constraints of surveillance in an age where visibility translates to political power forces dissident movements to be fluid in their approach because their digital footprint may be used against them, even as today’s tech is one of their most important tools.

We see this playing out in the citizen journalism movement, whether it’s a smart phone video of a white police officer shooting and killing an African-American man or the recorded final messages of citizens in war-torn Syria, this new ‘self surveillance’ has resulted in some of the most moving documents of political events in history.

Eler cites the Standing Rock protests, where the US Company Energy Transfer was due to build a massive oil pipeline but was met with staunch resistance from the Native American community.

A descendant of the Lakota Oglala, poet and activist Mark Tilsen spent months at Standing Rock, and he told Eler about the constant surveillance happening there at the hands of the Tigerswan ‘counterterrorism’ contractor hired by Energy Transfer. When calls did go through, heavy breathing could sometimes be heard in the background, said Tilsen – their phones had been tapped. When the rumour circulated that law enforcement was using Facebook check-ins to track who was at the protest camp, over a million people across the world ‘checked in’ at Standing Rock in solidarity with the protestors.

I’m reminded of a recent Instagram post by artist Glenn Ligon: in a screen grab from his iPhone we see the image of the wireless network menu, and the first network reads “FBI Surveillance Van #9013C.” Was there really an FBI surveillance van nearby? We don’t know. But those shares or check-ins can also be understood as more sophisticated selfies, argues Eler. Under surveillance and perhaps even in physical danger, selfies are a way to declare, “I am here, I’m alive and I’m not afraid.”

How can selfies and online activism make a difference? In his December 2017 interview with Prince Harry for BBC Radio 4, former US President Barack Obama said that in order for online movements to have an impact in the real world communities need to “move offline”.

It’s easy to be a hateful troll or an outspoken political opponent veiled by the anonymity of the internet, Obama told the prince, but when you sit down with someone over a pint the complexities of their being are more apparent, and you might be able to connect with someone unexpected. If not, our ideas are only reinforced by the feedback loop of social media.

SELFIE-PORTRAIT

Artists were quick to adopt the selfie as a rich subject matter and material. In 2003 Ryan McGinley was launched to stardom with his first solo show, The Kids Are Alright, at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, one of the youngest artists to ever be featured by the prestigious institution.

Many recoiled from the works’ controversial subject matter, many more rejoiced over its rawness, which painted a portrait of a somewhat dystopian youth culture in New York and in the US.

Beyond uncensored documents, McGinley also turned the camera on himself for deeply intimate self-portraits in the style of what would later become known as ‘selfies’.

It wasn’t until 2006 that Paris Hilton claimed to invent the selfie posing alongside Britney Spears, according to The New York Times. More recently, controversy surrounding artist Richard Prince’s Instagram selfie appropriations, which were printed and sold for six-figure sums as contemporary art in the Gagosian Gallery, reached a fever pitch when he was sued for copyright infringement by photographer Donald Graham.

The case is ongoing. Though, to be sure, both photographers benefited from the visibility as a result of the controversy, which gets at the age-old question of what can or cannot be considered art.

Beyond controversy, younger artists are taking a more nuanced approach to the selfie. In The Selfie Generation, Eler refers to an up-and-coming generation of artists like Peregrine Honig, who created an exhibition of paintings specifically for the purpose of taking selfies, and Brannon Rockwell-Charland, who uses selfies to create her artist persona online.

“Selfies give me a sense of control in the face of the always-impending fetishisation of black women’s bodies,” says Rockwell-Charland. For her project 400 Nudes, artist Jillian Mayer searched the internet for nude selfies and posted her own face onto the bodies.

The selfie serves as a metaphor for a unique moment when, as Francisco de Goya claimed in his series The Disasters of War (1814), “the truth has died.” Selfies and internet culture call into question the basic premise of authenticity, as reflected in arts and politics today.

‘Post-truth’ and ‘fake news’ are not new concepts, and tools like selfies, social media or big data can’t be blamed for our weird reality. But maybe they can help us understand it.

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Baby survives after being born with heart outside her body. Photo: The Guardian

Leicester, UK (BBN) - A baby girl, Vanellope Hope Wilkins, survived being born with her heart outside her body, in a first of its kind case reported in Britain.

The doctors revealed to Wilkins’ parents that she was suffering from ectopia cordis, in which heart and stomach grow externally, during a nine-week scan, reports The Guardian.

The parents, identified as 31-year-old Naomi Findlay, and 43-year-old Dean Wilkins, were told that “termination” was the only option.

Three weeks after her premature birth, Vanellope has survived three operations to move her heart inside her chest. The operations occurred at Glenfield Hospital, Leicester.

The couple shared that first 10 minutes of Vanellope’s birth were crucial as they would determine her ability to breathe.

“But when she came out and she came out crying, that was it. The relief fell out of me,” said her mother.

Her father said: “Twenty minutes went by and she was still shouting her head off – it made us so joyful and teary.”

About five in eight million babies are born with this condition with a less than 10% chance of survival.

Branko Mimic, the lead surgeon at the East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre, said: “Cases such as Vanellope’s, where everything else appears essentially normal, are even rarer, and whilst it would seem more hopeful she will do well, it is therefore almost impossible to be confident of this.”

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The woman first fell from the ninth floor of the building and landed on a ledge on the second floor

Yanshou , China (BBN) - A woman suffered a terrifying fall from the 9th floor of a multi-storey hotel in China, only to fall for a second time. Incredibly, she survived the entire ordeal.

On December 7, a guest staying at a hotel in North China's Yanshou county fell from the 9th floor of the building. It's not clear what caused the fall, but the woman landed on a ledge on the second floor, reports NDTV.

Injured but alive, the woman somehow dragged herself to the edge of the ledge.
Then, she fell again.

But luckily for her, a crowd was waiting below, ready to catch her. Police and emergency services waiting on the scene rushed her to the hospital. Her condition was said to be stable, reported CGTN.

The incident was filmed by an onlooker.
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The Ptarmigan could struggle if the frozen ecosystem on which it depends disappears. Photo: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images

Somerset, UK (BBN) - Even though almost half a century has passed, I can still recall in vivid detail the events of a hot, sunny afternoon in August 1970.

My mother and I were visiting Brownsea Island, off the Dorset coast. We entered a dark hide, opened the window and looked out across the lagoon. And there – shining like a beacon – was a Persil-white apparition: my first little egret, reports The Guardian.

Back then, this ghostly member of the heron family was a very rare visitor to Britain. Nowadays, little egrets are so numerous that we hardly give them a second glance. On my local patch, the Avalon Marshes in the heart of Somerset, I have seen up to 60 in a single feeding flock. And, according to the magazine British Birds, there are now more than 1,000 breeding pairs, as far north as the Scottish border.

As it turned out, that little egret was a trailblazer for a host of other herons to cross the Channel and establish themselves as British breeding birds. Today, no fewer than seven species breed within a short cycle ride of my home. They include great white and cattle egrets (the ones we usually see in nature films in Africa, perched on the backs of buffaloes), little bittern, and the latest arrival, the nocturnal night heron, which nested in Britain for the first time in recorded history last year. I also regularly see glossy ibises, while the odd white stork has recently turned up. Both are, like the egrets, visitors from continental Europe. None of these species was here when we moved to Somerset a decade ago.

To put this in perspective, when I saw my first little egret, there were only two species of heron breeding in Britain: the familiar grey heron and the impossibly elusive bittern. Now bitterns are so common that my son George has managed to video them on his smartphone. Part of their success is down to the creation of swaths of wetland habitat on the Avalon Marshes, which this year deservedly won the national lottery award for the best environment project.
But the factor that brought most of these species here is undoubtedly climate change, which is altering our birdlife at a faster rate than at any time in recorded history. For along with those herons and egrets, we are also seeing black-winged stilts, hoopoes and even bee-eaters, a species usually associated with the Mediterranean, yet which has nested in Britain several times during the past decade.
These new arrivals are one of the headline messages in the latest report from the RSPB, The State of the UK’s Birds 2017. And there’s no doubt that the colonisation of so many new species is good news – especially for the growing army of birders who flock to the Somerset Levels. Indeed they have proved such a big attraction that I am now running guided tours.
It’s not just these newcomers that are benefiting from a warmer climate. Earlier springs have encouraged a host of resident species to begin nesting several weeks ahead of schedule. For birds such as the blackbird and robin, which can raise two or more broods of chicks in a good year, this early start can be a real advantage.
But for migrant birds, many of which travel here each spring from sub-Saharan Africa to raise a family, the picture is a lot more complicated. Again, some appear to be responding to change: observations made by keen amateur birders for the British Trust for Ornithology show that swallows now arrive in spring roughly two weeks earlier than they used to in the 1960s – clearly in reaction to a warming world.
Yet as the RSPB report notes, there are major downsides to climate change. Numbers of several species clinging on as British breeding birds are falling rapidly. These include the dotterel, a rare example of a bird where the female takes the upper hand in courtship; the whimbrel, a smaller cousin of the curlew; and the Slavonian grebe, now confined as a breeding bird to a handful of Scottish lochs.
Even the chiffchaff and blackcap, whose numbers have more than doubled since 1970, may struggle to cope if predictions of more extreme warming come to pass.
The eminent German scientist Peter Berthold, who has made a lifelong study of migrating birds, once suggested that the first stages of global warming would lead to a “honeymoon period”, during which migrants will benefit from earlier springs and the greater availability of insect food.
But if temperatures continue to rise inexorably, Berthold has predicted that the resulting droughts, habitat changes and food shortages are likely to bring major population crashes. That is especially true if, as seems highly likely, the Sahara desert – the major obstacle all long-distance migrants need to overcome on their twice-annual journeys – continues to expand.
One of the biggest issues facing both migrants and breeding birds is what scientists call “asynchronous response”. This occurs when different species react to the same change in conditions in different ways. For example, oak moth caterpillars, on which both resident great tits and migrant pied flycatchers feed their chicks, are appearing earlier and earlier each spring.
Great tits are already responding to this change by shifting their own breeding cycle earlier too. But for pied flycatchers, which spend the winter in west Africa, deciding when to head north to breed is usually governed by subtle shifts in day length around the spring equinox.
The likelihood that they will be able to bring forward their departure from Africa and arrival in Britain, so that the hatching of their chicks coincides with the earlier peak of caterpillar availability, is a long shot, to say the least.
Meanwhile, while we may be excited by exotic new species in the south, the picture is a lot less rosy farther north. The RSPB report paints a bleak picture for Scotland, home to the southernmost breeding populations of species normally found in the Arctic.
The snow buntings and ptarmigans nesting on the high tops of the Cairngorm plateau rely on regular snow to create the specialised ecosystem on which they depend. In a warming world, if that snow disappears, then so will they.
I find this frustrating, because more than 20 years ago, in my first book Birds and Weather, I forecasted many of these changes. It seemed obvious to me that if temperatures rose as rapidly as was then being predicted (and has indeed come to pass), then the consequences for birdlife were going to be serious.
Even so, I never imagined that the changes to both our climate and bird distribution would be so rapid, or so extreme. In only a couple of decades, we have seen new arrivals in the south and population declines in the north, together with the continued loss of many farmland birds, for which global warming may be the final factor that tips them over the edge. So given the speed of change in the past quarter century, what differences in our birdlife can we expect by 2040? Again, I think the story of new colonists in the south and departures in the north will continue. I would not be surprised if there were soon a dozen species of long-legged waterbird, including spoonbills, squacco and purple herons, strutting around the Avalon Marshes.
But even in the south, we are likely to lose some familiar birds, as they move north. The latest BTO Atlas survey, from 2007-11, showed that birds such as the willow warbler – by far our commonest summer visitor – have shifted their ranges north and west, and may soon cease to breed in south-east England.
And for my Scottish friends, the losses are likely to outweigh any gains. While nuthatches have now arrived in southern Scotland, and reed warblers are hot on their heels, this hardly compensates for the imminent loss of those specialist birds of the high tops. Nor does it make up for the potential disappearance of other classic Scottish species, such as the common scoter and black-throated diver.
Most worryingly, if the sand eels on which many seabirds feed their chicks continue to shift northwards to cooler seas, then the spectacular seabird colonies of the Scottish islands – aptly described by veteran conservationist Roy Dennis as “our Serengeti” – may disappear too. That would be a tragedy.
In the end, climate change does far more damage than simply shifting the timing of the seasons and making some locations suitable for new species or unsuitable for existing ones. Its most momentous consequence is the way it changes the very nature of delicately balanced ecosystems.
As temperatures continue to rise, familiar habitats will be transformed out of recognition, so that specialist species, which have evolved to be perfectly suited to their particular home, will not be able to adapt rapidly enough to cope.
Conversely, the species that will do well are generalists, able to adjust their feeding and breeding behaviour in response to higher temperatures. I admire gulls, crows and wood pigeons for their ability to live alongside us; but I don’t want to live in a world where they are the only birds I see.
Back in 1995, I ended Birds and Weather with a sentiment that seems more apt than ever today.
Ultimately, we may find that we are powerless against the combination of pressures we have set in motion. Like passengers on a rollercoaster, we can only hope that the ride will eventually come to an end, and that when it does, we and the birds will have survived.
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Would you consider getting a Donald Trump ‘hair tattoo’. Photo: Facebook/XB hair

Taipei, Taiwan (BBN) - US President Donald Trump's hair is arguably as famous as the man himself. The 71-year-old politician's light blonde hair is typically swept back with an elaborate pouf.

And while we honestly cannot imagine too many people would willingly want to style their hair like Mr Trump's, one talented hairstylist from Taiwan recreated the iconic hair-do on a client's head. Except, it's not quite what you think, reports NDTV.

Allen Chen, of XB Hair Salon, prides himself on portrait-inspired "hair tattoos." Earlier this year, he shaved a portrait of the US President on the back of a client's head - including that famous blonde hair. Though Mr Chen's posted pictures and videos of the "hair-raising" tribute on Facebook and Instagram on September 25, they went viral only in the last few days.

Photos posted on XB Hair Salon's Facebook page show Mr Chen consulting a photograph of POTUS to get the details of his face (and mane) just right.

Using a pair of scissors, a razor, trimmer and hair dye as his only tools, Mr Chen manages to recreate a liking of Mr Trump on his client's scalp.
We can't deny the hair (and eyebrows) are totally on point!
A scroll through the Changhua-based salon's official Facebook page shows similar celeb-inspired "hair tattoos." There are portraits of actors Bruce Lee, Marilyn Monroe, cartoon character Mickey Mouse and even Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
Mr Chen can easily add artist to his title of hairstylist.
What do you think of the Trump tress tribute? Let us know in the comments section below!
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A winter sunset over Otley and Wharfedale from the Chevin. Photo: Carey Davies

Norfolk, UK (BBN) - The light that drenches the far side of Wharfedale has the translucence of burning coal, burnishing fields with the illusion of deep warmth.

But it presages the onset of a bitterly cold night; the meagre heat of the winter sun is lost as my surroundings, the Danefield woods on the Chevin escarpment, are plunged into dusk, reports The Guardian.

My run has been prolonged by enthusiasm. Now I feel as exposed as a North Sea swimmer, the heat of my body’s movement the only thing that fends off the searing cold.

Arriving with an Arctic air mass, a stinging wind sweeps from the north, is lifted up by the escarpment, and slices straight through my woefully inadequate clothing. The light on the opposite side of the valley deepens into an orange tauntingly redolent of a late summer evening, but pausing to admire it for too long would genuinely tempt hypothermia. I swerve around people swaddled in down jackets, get my feet tangled around dogs, and generally plough onwards.

I reach a viewpoint I know well: a break in the trees where outcrops of gritstone stand proud of the ridge. The light draped over the glacial contours of Wharfedale and the rooftops of Otley is so striking that the temptation to stop finally proves too much. It would be rude not to.
As I stand still, I can feel the glow of exercise rapidly dim, but my eyes are drawn to something huge emerging from the valley. Maybe 1,000 or more black-headed gulls have flocked together to head for a communal roost.
The light and numbers recast a prosaic species into an entrancing collective spectacle; a slow-spinning mass moving with the languorous flow of a cloud of incense.
The cold may be what has created this sight, a mass huddle for the bitter night ahead, but with rose-gold light glinting on their wings, the birds drift like blown embers in the Arctic air, as if they were sent up from a conflagration.
I watch them until they disappear out of sight, then move urgently on, kindling the flame within until I reach home.
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Photo: The Guardian

Taipei, Taiwan (BBN) - A professor in Taiwan claims to have witnessed the longest ever visible rainbow, clocking in at nearly nine hours, and plans to submit it for a world record.

The rainbow lasted for eight hours and 58 minutes in the mountains around the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, according to Chou Kun-hsuan, a professor at the Chinese Culture University, reports The Guardian.

Chou, along with colleague Liu Ching-huang, scrambled to document the rainbow that appeared on 30 November, mustering students to photograph the arc from every angle. The professors were originally monitoring the rainbow to test a theory that the bands of light descend as time passes.

“It was amazing … It felt like a gift from the sky … It’s so rare,” Chou told the BBC. “When we broke the previous record after passing six hours, I was hardly able to stay seated for lunch.
“I was so excited.”

The professors observed four separate rainbows during the nine-hour period, at one time photographing all in a single frame. The previous day a rainbow near the campus appeared for six hours.
A combination of a seasonal monsoons trapping moist air, a lack of strong winds and a partially cloudy sky allowed for the rainbow to be visible for such a long time. The moisture formed clouds and caused a steady stream of rain, but there was still plenty of sunshine.
Sunlight passing through rain and moisture in the air create the phenomenon, but only when viewed from the correct angle.
Chou plans to apply to Guinness World Records for the world’s longest visible rainbow. The previous record holder was seen for six hours above Sheffield, UK, in 1994.
“With the 10,000 pictures we took in our department alone, and the many more taken by others on campus and people living nearby, I’m confident we can prove to Guinness second by second that this rainbow lasted for nine hours,” Chou said.
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Little terns, black-throated divers are among seabirds that are given greater protection after a stretch of coastline in Cornwall is awarded special status

Cornwall, UK (BBN) - Little terns and black-throated divers are among the seabirds that have been given greater protection after a stretch of coastline in Cornwall was awarded special status to safeguard its wildlife.

The newly designated marine special protected area (SPA), which stretches for 24 miles between Falmouth Bay and St Austell Bay, is home to more than 150,000 rare seabirds, reports The Guardian.

Great northern divers and Eurasian spoonbills are also visitors along with sandwich terns and common terns. All are amber-listed by conservation groups because they have suffered significant losses of numbers and range in the recent past.

The newly designated stretch of land covers an area equivalent to 55,000 football pitches and has been set up to help minimise disturbance to the birds that feed there and who use the Cornish coastal areas as a safe haven during winter. The region is considered to be a bird-watcher’s heaven because rare birds, blown off course during their migration, also make occasional unscheduled stops. These infrequent visitors include the exotic-looking hoopoe, with its long pinkish-brown crest, that every so often gets diverted en route from Africa to northern Europe.

The latest expansion of Britain’s marine special protected areas will make a significant addition to the UK Blue Belt programme, which already protects 23% of UK waters, and which consists of more than 300 sites across land.
Announcing the decision to set up the new protected area, environment minister Thérèse Coffey cited BBC1’s popular environmental series Blue Planet II as a key influence in the ongoing efforts to expand the nation’s Blue Belt. “Like the millions of others watching Blue Planet II, I am only too aware of the importance of protecting our precious marine environment, and the wildlife that relies on healthy and productive seas.”
One of the key reasons for setting up greater wildlife protection for the Falmouth-St Austell coast is to aid the great northern diver, one of the most distinctive winged visitors to our coast. Around 2,500 birds arrive in the UK every winter, with Scotland hosting the largest numbers. However, a small population comes further south to Cornwall, where individuals can be seen elegantly swimming offshore between bouts of diving for fish and shellfish.
In addition to the setting up of the Cornish protected area, a further marine SPA has also been announced in the Irish Sea between the Isle of Man and Anglesey, home to the largest known aggregation of Manx shearwaters. These distinctive birds take their name from their method of flying, in which they take long glides on stiff, straight wings before banking or “shearing” over the water. It is estimated that up to 12,000 Manx shearwaters can be found in the area.
Natural England chairman Andrew Sells said that extending the Blue Belt was a vital measure to protect the UK’s wildlife that would help them “thrive into the future”. “Terns and Manx shearwaters, with their dramatic aerial displays, are a magnificent sight above our seas,” he said.
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Battery cages for chickens were banned in the EU in 2012. Photo: Getty Images

London, UK (BBN) - Some cages for hens provide a "necessary defence" against bird flu, the government's chief vet has said.

In a tweet, Nigel Gibbens said the larger pens, which replaced so-called battery cages in 2012, have welfare benefits and offer more space, reports BBC.

It comes after 10 leading British vets, who believe caging hens is unethical, said his "brazen endorsement" was "extremely disappointing".

They said the restricted space was "seriously detrimental to welfare".
Battery cages for chickens were banned in the EU in 2012. The ruling said that if laying hens were to be held they must be in enriched - also known as colony - cages instead.

The enriched cages provided extra space to nest, scratch and roost and the guidance from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), is that each bird in an enriched cage must have at least 750 square centimetres of space.
The minimum for battery cages was 550 square centimetres.
Despite the banning of battery cages, a number of leading retailers have announced that they are moving towards selling free-range eggs only.
But at the Egg and Poultry Industry Conference in October, Mr Gibbens called this a "regrettable move" and said cages "have a lot going for them".
Criticising him in a group letter to the Times, 10 vets said overcrowding and restricted space were "seriously detrimental to welfare".
"Hens in cages cannot carry out fundamental species-specific behaviours", they added.
The group dismissed his claims about protection against bird flu saying there are other options to manage the threat and urged the chief vet to take a "more progressive position".
Mr Gibbens later defended his view on Twitter and said: "Free range risks disease that is really bad for welfare."
A Defra spokeswoman said: "Enriched cages offer less exposure to the threat of bird flu during an outbreak than free range systems, and provide more floor space and more height than battery cages."
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