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Source:
The National,Thursday June 16th, 2016

CLIMATE change is believed to have caused the extinction of a rodent found on a small island in the Great Barrier Reef. According to Queensland researchers, the species is the first mammal declared extinct due to the worrying global phenomenon. Extensive searches for the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rat-like animal, have failed to find a single specimen from its only known habitat on a small coral cay, just 340m long and 150m wide in the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef and the edge of the Torres Strait Islands.
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WHEN negative circumstances align, accidents happen – that’s what British psychologist James T. Reason asserts with his Swiss Cheese model of accident causation, a model used in the risk analysis and risk management of human systems. Essentially, the model, which has been applied to healthcare, aviation safety, and emergency service organizations, states that a system produces a failure when all of its “holes” momentarily line up.
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COMPILED by official Roman Catholic censors, Index Librorum Prohibitorum – “List of Prohibited Books” – was a catalogue of works considered dangerous to the faith or morals of Catholics. The Index was never a complete catalogue of forbidden reading; rather, it contained only works that the ecclesiastical authority was asked to act on. The first catalogue of banned books to be called an index was published in 1559. Its publication ceased in 1966.
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KARL Landsteiner was an Austrian-born American medical researcher who was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the four basic human blood groups – A, B, O, and AB – which enabled the first successful blood transfusion to be performed in 1907. He was also involved in the discovery of the polio virus, and he helped identify the human blood protein known as the Rh factor.
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PRESIDENT Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that established June 14 as Flag Day in 1916, but it didn’t become official until 1949, after a campaign by Bernard J. Cigrand and the American Flag Day Association. American homes and public buildings across the country display the American flag in observation of the holiday. Other popular events on this day include flag-raising ceremonies, the singing of the national anthem, and the study of flag etiquette and the flag’s origin and meaning.
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QUOTE of the day: Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything. – Muhammad Ali
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