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Malaysian authorities have now gone on record to confirm that Flight 370 was hijacked, which reportedly explains why contact with the passenger jet abruptly ceased a week ago. The Search & Rescue operations now involve 13 countries around the world and over 100 ships, helicopters and airplanes. The costs of this massive operation must easily be running into the millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, a free crowdsourcing platform once used by digital volunteers to search for Genghis Khan’s Tomb and displaced populations in Somalia (video below) has been deployed to search high-resolution satellite imagery for signs of the missing airliner. This is not the first time that crowdsourced satellite imagery analysis has been used to find a missing plane but this is certainly the highest profile operation yet, which may explain why the crowdsourcing platform used for the search (Tomnod) reportedly crashed for over a dozen of hours since…

Agro-silvo-pastoral system of Dehesa in southern Spain (Source: http://www.permaculturevoices.com)

On 9^th February 2014 Prince William, second in line to the British throne, came under fire from conservationists.  Days before he was due to address a conference on illegal wildlife trade, he was spotted with his brother Harry and some other friends hunting wild boar in Spain.  The site of his crime would have looked somewhat similar to the landscape pictured above. On 12^th February, the eve of the London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade, Prince William made a speech calling an end to wildlife crime and the illegal killing and trafficking of the world’ most iconic species.  The media were quick to spot the contradiction and to criticise the Prince for the “unfortunate timing” of his hunting trip.  The critiques remarked that Prince William, who is also President of a charity called United for Wildlife…