Bora Bora, the Isle of Wight and Malta have one point in common: they belong to eTurbonews’ top 10 most extraordinary islands.

All the islands in the list are very different, ranging from the holiday seaside traditions at Usedom, Germany, to the low rolling hills blanketed in trees of Prince Edward Island, Canada, and the sandy beaches of Gorgona, Colombia.

Malta, described as the crossroads of the Mediterranean, found its way on the list due to its unique history. The article describes the streets of Maltese towns as providing tourists with an eclectic mix of European architecture.

What with the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the knights of St. John, the French, and the British, they have all left their permanent mark on Malta.

It mentions Malta’s old capital city, Mdina, reminiscent of the island’s mediaeval era, where descendants of the noble families, Norman, Sicilian and Spanish, still reside in the noble palaces lining the streets of Mdina.

Moreover, in the summer months the coastal resort towns of Sliema and St Julians, the article says, come alive with holidaymakers and yacht-setters. For a glimpse of the Mediterranean good life, one can take a walk along the café filled promenades.

                         

In 2010 Gucci's Florentine artisans will present their skills in an extraordinary tour that will take them around the Tuscan brand stores all over the world. It's called "Artisan Corner and it is an initiative that will happen  throughout 2010.

The House's most skilled artisans will travel around the world to select Gucci stores, where they will be stationed at custom-built workshops. As they assemble and finish some of Gucci's most iconic handbags, customers can witness first hand the meticulous attention to detail and superb craftsmanship that is involved in the production of every item in Gucci’s leather goods collection.

Current scheduled destinations for the Artisan Corner include: Tokyo, Osaka, Rome and Paris in March and San Francisco, Chicago, Beverly Hills and New York in April.

This upcoming Artisan Corner tour will feature artisans working on various handbags including the Bamboo, New Jackie, New Pelham and G Wave, in addition to small leather goods.

 


Scientists from the NOAA-funded Gulf of Maine Toxicity (GOMTOX) project issued an outlook for a significant regional bloom of a toxic alga that can cause ‘red tides’ in the spring and summer of this year, potentially threatening the New England shellfish industry. 

An abundant seed population in bottom sediments has set the stage for a significant bloom of the toxic alga Alexandrium fundyense.  This organism swims in the water, and divides again and again to form a “bloom” or red tide, but it also produces dormant cells or cysts that fall to the ocean bottom at the end of these blooms.

A cyst survey conducted in late 2009 shows the highest amount of cysts the team has ever measured, more than 60 percent higher than what was observed prior to the historic red tide of 2005.  The cyst bed also appears to have expanded to the south, and thus the 2010 bloom may affect areas such as Massachusetts Bay and Georges Bank sooner than has been the case in past years.

This year’s bloom could be similar to the major red tides of 2005 and 2008, according to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) biologist Don Anderson, principal investigator of the GOMTOX study.  The 2005 bloom shut down shellfish beds from Maine to Martha’s Vineyard (Mass.) for several months and caused an estimated $20 million in losses to the Massachusetts shellfish industry alone.  The 2008 outbreak was similar in scale.

Although the algae in the water pose no direct threat to human beings, the toxins they produce can accumulate in filter-feeding organisms such as mussels and clams— which can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) in humans who consume them. 

In order to protect public health, shellfish beds are closed when toxicities rise above a quarantine level—often during the peak harvesting season.  Due to effective monitoring by state agencies, there have been no illnesses from legally harvested shellfish in recent years—despite some severe blooms during that time period.  There have been, however, several severe poisonings of individuals who ignored closure signs.

WHOI oceanographers Dennis McGillicuddy and Anderson, and North Carolina State University (NCSU) Prof. Ruoying He are several years along in the development of a computer model to predict the intensity and location of blooms of the toxic algae Alexandrium fundyense in the Gulf of Maine. The model is initiated from the cyst abundance maps, and simulates Alexandrium germination, growth and dispersal using each year's winds, sunlight, rainfall, tides, and currents.  

Scientists are reluctant to make a “forecast” of precisely where and when the regional bloom will make landfall because bloom transport depends on weather events that cannot be predicted months in advance.

Coastal exposure to the blooms is worst for scenarios  in which the spring and summer weather is dominated by strong northeast winds, which tend to drive Alexandrium cells toward the New England coast. That occurred last year (2009), when an unusual series of northeast winds in late June and early July led to closure of almost the entire Maine coast to shellfishing.  In contrast, when southwesterlies dominate, the algae tend to stay offshore.

GOMTOX researchers regularly share their field observations and models with more than 80 coastal resource and fisheries managers in six states as well as federal entities like NOAA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration.

Managers believe that a regional-scale, seasonal outlook can be useful in preparing for contingencies. This advanced warning, along with updates closer to and during the red tide season, can help state agencies prepare for monitoring red tides and assessing public health risks, and also give shellfish farmers and fishermen the opportunity to shift the timing of their harvest or postpone plans for seeding of aquaculture beds.  Area restaurants may also benefit from advance warnings by making contingency plans for seafood supplies during the summer.

http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7016

From February the 6th to May the 16th, in MAMAC and Galerie des Ponchettes

The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art MAMAC in Nice presents the  artist Vincent Corpet.

Born in 1958, his first main exhibition is in Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

http://www.mamac-nice.org/

http://vincent-corpet.viabloga.com

From 2nd of febraury to 14th of March 2010.

Fifty talented Cape Cod artists find their inspiration in joyful or poignant memories of people, places and things; in the power of certain stimuli to evoke memories; and in the heartbreak of losing the capacity to remember. You’ll be touched by the stories that inform their artworks.
 
All of their pieces will be available for purchase, with a portion of the proceeds going to Alzheimer’s Services of Cape Cod & the Islands. Tie a string around your finger for this one.

Patti Page, 82,  sang about the "sand dunes and salty air" of Cape Cod in a song recorded more than 50 years ago. Now she's being honored with her own road on the Massachusetts vacation haven.

The town of Barnstable and the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce unveiled Patti Page Way on Friday.

                             

About 30 seats in the Massachusetts Legislature could open up this year as state lawmakers abandon posts they held for years, or even decades, to run for other offices or retire. This will happen especially among the Democrats, almost 20 of them,  for instance Denis E. Guyer, Dalton, Marian Walsh, West Roxbury, Robert Spellane, Worcester .

Causes are different: some are moving to Washington, but some must move away because of corruption, alcohol problems...

Taking into the Republican vote electing Scott Brown to the US Senate, this situation could become challenging for the Democrats as Republicans are hoping to capitalize on Brown’s success.

From 28th February to 2nd of June 2010 in Ferrare

An exhibition dedicated to Aimé Maeght, editor, creator of the Maeght Foundation, linking all great artists like kandinsky, Chagall, Braque, Miro, Giacometti. He launched his firts gallery in Paris in 1945 with an exhibition of Matisse.

The works presented in Ferrare come from the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul and the Maeght family. Drawings, paintings, photos, sculptures, books from the Maeght editions are presented and witness the french artistic life.

http://www.palazzodiamanti.it/index.phtml?id=691


                                                        

At 3GSM Mobile Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan unveiled the 1GOAL campaign, bringing together the mobile industry, the football world, charities and education champions with the aim to ensure that every child in the world has the opportunity to go to school by 2015.

In partnership with the GSMA, the 1GOAL effort is claimed to be the world’s largest cause-related campaign ever undertaken and will use mobile messaging, advertising and other applications to drive support. It aims to sign up millions of people, via a number of mobile response platforms, in an attempt to demonstrate to global leaders and the UN that universal education is a universal demand.

1GOAL is an initiative to mobilise support to hold world leaders to promises made in 2000 via the UN Millennium Development Goals; these included ensuring that all boys and girls complete primary schooling by 2015 and that girls have the opportunity for education at all levels by 2015.

1GOAL launches on April 20 and runs until the World Cup final in South Africa on 11 July. It is run by the Global Campaign for Education and is part of a large global education initiative; the Class of 2015.

Operators serving more than 1 billion mobile users are backing the campaign, including AT&T Wireless, Bharti Airtel, Hutchison 3 Group, MTN, NTT Docomo, Orascom, SingTel, SoftBank Mobile, SKT, VimpelCom and Zain.

High-profile names that have also signed up for 1GOAL include Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president; Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state; Spain’s president Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero; UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown; Sepp Blatter, FIFA President; Portugese footballing legend Eusebio and French World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane.

The Olympique de Marseille, famous football club of Marseilles, is celebrating its 110 years.

Therefore the  "Regards de Provence Foundation " has chosen 110 photos presenting the strongest moments of this legendary football club and has created for this special event a very specific team of 11 artists  from Marseilles celebrating also the OM: Jean-Baptiste Audat, Bernard Briançon, Frédéric Clavère, Luc Dubost, Bruno Guitard, Georges Guye, Piotr Klemensiewicz, Patrick Moquet, Stephan Muntaner, Jean-Jacques Surian et Michel Zevort.

This exhibition will be presented from the 20th of February to the 9th of May.

The "Regards de Provence Foundation " is promoting the culture of Marseilles, Provence and Mediterranean area.

                                            
                                             BenBarek,  Scotti et Andersson    
                                          Collection & copyright Archives OM.