This month a team of Canadian and Spanish researchers went on a deep-sea expedition using a remotely operated vehicle at Newfoundland at Canada’s Atlantic coast with a maximum depth of about 3.000 meters and found 11 potentially new species. Among them is the little fella pictured above, a still unidentified purple octopus.

B.I.K.E. is an exploration of the Black Label Bicycle Club and the wider tallbike subculture that has grown up around it. Comprised mainly of artists driven by anti-materialism and a belief that the impending apocalypse will render cars useless and bicycles in power, BLBC battles mainstream consumer culture and rival gangs for its vision of a better tomorrow. The film chronicles the trials of co-director Anthony Howard as he tries to become a member of the club.

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In an industry as large as fashion, it remains difficult to know the conditions of many production facilities. That’s where the labor conditions group Fair Wear Foundation comes in. The Amsterdam-based nonprofit aims to fully expose the manufacturing process with a verification system to ensure that garments are made under sustainable working environments. As a multi-stakeholder initiative, they work to get corporate and textile associations, trade unions and non-governmental associations on board too.

With ten years already under their belt, FWF represents many fashion brands from Acne and Mammut to Cheap Monday and Nudie Jeans. Today the foundation inspects 1,000-plus factories that manufacture garments for 50 labels, helping reassure consumers that, from China to Turkey, fair labor standards are met.

You can download their 2009 annual report here.

Shot over a four year period, Holy Wars follows a danger-seeking Christian missionary and a radical Irish Muslim convert, both of whom believe in an apocalyptic battle, after which their religion will ultimately rule the world.

In Last Train Home, Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan tells the story of a family embarking on an annual tormenting journey along with 200 other million peasant workers to reunite with their distant family, and to revive their love and dignity as China soars as the world’s next super power.

Five days ago, in the northeastern port city of Dalian, China, two oil pipelines exploded, sending flames hundreds of feet into the air and burning for over 15 hours, destroying several structures – the cause of the explosion is under investigation. The damaged pipes released thousands of gallons of oil, which flowed into the nearby harbor and the Yellow Sea. The total amount of oil spilled is still not clear.

Jane Korman’s 89-year-old father Adolek Kohn arrived at Auschwitz in a cattle car over 65 years ago. In 2009, he returned to Auschwitz and other locations in Poland associated with the Holocaust and did a victory dance with his daughter and several of his grandchildren. When Korman first exhibited the videos in Australia, she received quite a bit of criticism.

Many Jewish survivors have reacted gravely to the video, accusing her of disrespect. Yet Korman told Australian daily The Jewish News that “it might be disrespectful, but he [her father] is saying ‘we’re dancing, we should be dancing, we’re celebrating our survival and the generations after me,’ – the generation he’s created. We are affirming our existence.”

What a day: Germany kicks Argentina out of the World Cup with a devastating 4:0 and Arsenal Lodown wins the Borgmann Cup! Sorry Grill, not so royal today.

At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film, having sat undisturbed in an East German archive, was discovered. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, the later discovery of a long-missing reel, inclusive of multiple takes and cameraman staging scenes, complicated earlier readings of the footage.

Nicely executed guerilla poster campaign drawing attention to the BP oil spill in the gulf. Via

By Andre Merilo. See also Part 2. Via

Pictures from day 51 after the explosion.

This June 6th marked the 66th anniversary of the 1944 Allied invasion of France. Several operations were combined to carry out the largest amphibious invasion in history – over 160,000 troops landed on June 6th, assisted by over 5,000 ships, aerial bombardment, gliders and paratroopers.

The Red Shirt political protest in Bangkok, Thailand has entered a new, deadly phase in the past week, with at least 36 of the total 60 deaths occurring in just the last few days. Anti-government protesters have barricaded themselves against government troops and the Thai army has declared certain protest areas to be ‘Live Fire Zones’. A state of emergency is in effect, covering 17 provinces in the country, as protesters have refused orders to leave.

“I thought it would be more interesting if I listed some things that I read and watched in preparation for the making of ‘Eastern Promises’ than just listing a random bunch of things that I like. Among these are The Mark of Cain, by Alix Lambert, … A companion piece to the Russian Criminal Tattoo books, this a very courageous documentary on the tattooing subculture in Russian prisons. I don’t know how it ever got made, but it’s beautiful, scary, and heartbreaking.” David Cronenberg

Last Friday, April 30th, was the 35th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War, and last Tuesday, May 4th, was the 40th anniversary of the shooting of protesting students at Kent State University.

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Say Hello to Mr. Eyjafjallajökull from Iceland – the guy who pulled the plug on Germany’s and Northern Europe’s air traffic.

A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead after launching an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, was revealed today.

After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. Read the whole story.

Collected here are images of the country and conflict over the past month.

La Chureca in Nicaragua is one of the Western worlds biggest open garbage dumps. Even the briefest visit is a considerable challenge. Nevertheless it is home to far over a thousand people. Most deaths on the dump are due to a lung disease, that is known there as ‘lead’. For children growing up around La Chureca, it’s the standard course of events.

Marten Persiel and Xabier Garay‘s Chureca project is a documentary film as well as an active participation in one of Spains most ambitious foreign aid projects to date: the complete clean-up of La Chureca, the construction of recycling facilities and an entire village, including a school, a hospital and community service projects. One of these projects is a skate park, which aims at getting Chureca kids in touch with other young people, whose world doesn’t consist of nothing but trash.

Apart from claiming the lives of hundreds of people and wreaking enormous property damage, Chile’s massive earthquake has likely altered the distribution of the Earth’s overall mass, scientists from NASA say.

As a result, the length of a day is now a little shorter (1.26 microseconds) than it was before Saturday’s magnitude 8.8 earthquake.

A movie about the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky.

In southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, thousands of American, Afghan and British troops entered Marja in the biggest offensive of the war, with the goal of destroying the Taliban’s largest haven.

The picture of the series “War Is Personal”, winner in the category “Contemporary Issues Stories” by Eugene Richards shows Sgt. José Pequeño and his mother. Pequeño suffered a devastating brain injury from a grenade tossed into his Humvee in March 2006 in Iraq. Helped by a grant from National Geographic Magazine, Richards was traveling around the U.S. in 2009 to work on a series of stories mainly about veterans and their families.

Using smuggled footage, this documentary tells the story of the 2007 protests in Burma by thousands of monks.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986, forced the immediate evacuation of more than 116.000 people from that part of the Ukraine, which was subsequently declared unfit for human habitation. In March 2009, photographer Timm Suess spent two days in the Chernobyl zone of exclusion.

Use your mouse to click and drag around the video to change the view. You can also zoom in and out. The video was shot on Sunday, January 17, at 3:53 p.m. EST in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Via

Haiti remains a place of profound need, anguish, desperation and danger, with a few glimmers of hope and slowly growing capabilities to receive and distribute the international aid now flowing in. Sporadic looting, sometimes violent, was met with force by security oficials and ordinary citizens, resulting in a number of further deaths and injuries.

Two days after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck beneath Port-au-Prince, Haiti, some of the massive damage is becoming more apparent. Rescue teams are arriving, aid groups are trying their best to battle huge logistical challenges, bodies are being identified, and some medical care is being given. Rescue teams from all over the world have joined the recovery effort, the Red Cross ventured an estimate of up to 50,000 deaths, as bodies at the local morgues overflowed into the streets.

An interactive portfolio of portraits of world leaders, with audio commentary by photographer Platon. Via

The illicit drug market worldwide has become a $320 billion-per-year industry. As drug-related violence in Mexico appears to continue unabated, new efforts are also being made worldwide in methods of enforcement and treatment of recovering addicts.

How the planet will recover from us. Via

A prisoner is walked into the center of a group of officers and posed by the police so that he is down in front on both knees. The officer who is taking the photograph is wearing a white shirt. In New York City this would mean that he is a supervisor. Via

Max Motors in Butler, Missouri, USA is giving away a free AK-47 when you buy a pick-up truck. Hail America.