LONDON: A controversial British plan to cull thousands of wild badgers to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis is a “costly distraction” that risks increasing incidences of the disease, wildlife experts said on Saturday.
The mass killing of the furry black and white nocturnal creatures, which have been found to help spread tuberculosis (TB) in cattle, has raised the threat of action by militant animal rights activists.
The move also is opposed by celebrities including Queen guitarist Brian May and veteran nature show presenter David Attenborough.
“We believe the complexities of TB transmission mean that licensed culling risks increasing cattle TB rather than reducing it,” Patrick Bateson, president of the Zoological Society of London, said in a letter to Britain’s Observer newspaper signed by 30 other wildlife experts.
“Even if such increases do not materialize, the government predicts only limited benefits ... We are concerned that badger culling risks becoming a costly distraction from nationwide TB control,” Bateson said.
The disease in England has cost the taxpayer some 500 million pounds ($804 million) in the past decade, and the government says 1 billion pounds will be needed in the next decade to control the disease if no action is taken now.
Britain’s forestry commission says there are about 250,000 adult badgers in the United Kingdom. Their plan calls for culling only in certain areas of England — the counties of Gloucestershire and Somerset — to reduce the badger population there by 70 percent.
Marksmen are set to start the cull soon but details are being kept secret for fear of clashes between farmers determined to protect their livestock and animal rights activists.
Scientists attack planned British badger cull
Scientists attack planned British badger cull
Oracle says data center outage causing issues faced by US TikTok users
WASHINGTON: Oracle on Tuesday said issues faced by US users of social media app TikTok are the result of a temporary weather-related power outage at an Oracle data center, after California Governor Gavin Newsom linked the issues to what he called the suppression of content critical of President Donald Trump.
“Over the weekend, an Oracle data center experienced a temporary weather-related power outage which impacted TikTok,” Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert said in an email.
A powerful winter storm struck much of the US over the weekend.
“The challenges US TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage, which Oracle and TikTok are working to quickly resolve,” Egbert said.
On Monday, Newsom said his office was launching a review to determine if TikTok’s content moderation practices violated state law.
“Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” Newsom’s office had said.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, last week finalized a deal to set up a majority US-owned joint venture known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC that will secure US data, to avert a ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans. The deal was praised by Trump.
The joint venture has denied censorship, saying “it would be inaccurate to report that this is anything but the technical issues we’ve transparently confirmed.”
Each of the joint venture’s three managing investors — cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX — will hold a stake of 15 percent. The deal provides for American and global investors to hold 80.1 percent of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9 percent.
The joint venture said on Tuesday it “made significant progress in recovering our US infrastructure with our US data center partner” but noted that US users may still face some technical issues, including when posting new content.
With more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account, Trump credited the app with helping him win the 2024 election.
Last week’s deal was a milestone for TikTok after years of battles with the US government over Washington’s concerns about risks to national security and privacy under Trump and former President Joe Biden.
