10
POPSI Can See You...Can You See Me? The Puerto Rican Parrot has green feathers with black edges, a red forehead and white ovals around the eyes. The underside of its feathers have a slightly different hue with the wings' underside feathers, which can be seen during flight, being brightly blue and the tail's being yellow-green. Sexual dimorphism is not present in this species. Aside from invasive DNA-sexing sexes can only be distinguished by behavioral differences during the breeding season. Puerto Rican Parrots are secondary cavity nesters; they nest in tree trunk cavities that cannot be made by themselves. The species mainly nests in palo colorado trees (Cyrilla racemiflora) with other trees, such as the laurel sabino (Magnolia splendens) and tabonuco (Dacryodes excelsa) used to a lesser extent. Puerto Rican Parrots reach sexual maturity at 4 years of age in the wild and at 3 years in captivity. The species usually mates for life
8
POPSSir Francis Leopold McClintock MacKlintok Island or MacClintok Island ) is an island in Franz Josef Land, Russia. This island is roughly square-shaped and its maximum length is 33 km. Its area is 612 km2 and it is largely glacierized. Its highest point is 521 m. MacKlintok Island is located very close to the west of Hall Island, separated from it by a narrow sound, Proliv Negri. MacKlintok Island was named after Irish explorer of the Arctic, Sir Francis Leopold McClintock.
7
POPSSt Kilda Visit website for lots more - including how to visit, and working holidays with the National trust for Scotland.
6
POPSRussian Gulag Writer Alexander Solzhenitsen Dies At 89
"His intransigence, his ideals and his long, eventful life make of Solzhenitsyn a storybook figure, heir to Dostoyevsky. He belongs to the pantheon of world history. I pay homage to his memory." Born to a single mother in 1918 at Kislovodsk in the Caucasus amid the bloody aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Solzhenitsyn was initially a loyal Communist. But he went on to undermine the regime's moral foundations, his writings energizing dissent at home and in the West. First though he had to enter the living hell of the Gulag, a vast prison system that stretched from the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea to the steppes of Kazakhstan. Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years in the camps in 1945 and was to go on to survive cancer and a KGB assassination attempt. He was released in February 1953, a few weeks before Stalin's death. He spent three more years in internal exile in Kazakhstan, contracted and overcame cancer. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" 1962
5
POPSCity Slickers Turn Tropical Entrepreneurs: An Eco-Adventure
Imagine going after your dream business…on a tropical island. What does it really take to build an island resort? In 2002, four city slickers set out to build their dream business in the Panamanian rainforest: called Tranquilo Bay. All of the buildings at Tranquilo Bay—are constructed from steel, virtually unheard of in that corner of Panama: but they wanted to protect against termites, sea air, and earthquake damage. Jim Kimball and Jay Viola knew nothing about construction before beginning work on the buildings. They learned everything they needed from the Internet during Sunday visits to the mainland. “We built Tranquilo Bay inside the rainforest overlooking the Caribbean Sea and the beautiful Panamanian Jungle. Our central location within the archipelago of Bocas del Toro permits us to explore some of the most biologically diverse areas of Panama and Central America: an archipelago of some 68 tropical islands” http://www.tranquilobay.com/home.htm