daily news

Israeli shelling kills 24 civilians, including two families

2009-01-05T23:11:00.000-08:00

Israel pounded Gaza from the air, sea and ground on the second full day of its ground offensive Monday, with the air force, navy and artillery backing its ground troops and their shelling killing at least 24 Palestinian civilians -- 13 of them children of two families.

A tank shell destroyed a house during fighting in Gaza City's southeastern Zaytoun neighbourhood before dawn, killing 13 members of one family, Assamouni, including the father, mother and eight children aged four to 15, hospital officials said. Ambulances were able to reach the house only after daylight, witnesses said.

A naval shell later also struck a house in western Gaza City's Beach refugee camp Monday morning, killing a father, mother and their five children, the chief of the emergency room of Gaza City's Shifa hospital, Haythem Dababish, told DPA.

In Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza city near the border with Israel, four more civilians died when a tank shell hit a mourning tent set up near the home of a paramedic killed Sunday, the town's hospital said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was due to arrive in Israel late Monday as part of a trip to the Middle East that is to include talks in Cairo, Ramallah and Jerusalem, as international efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution continued amid the heavy fighting.

But keeping up the pressure, Israeli fighter jets meanwhile struck some 30 more targets in the coastal enclave overnight, the military said.

Israeli ground troops, which entered the strip late Saturday under the cover of darkness, have taken control of areas from which Palestinian militants have been firing rockets at southern Israel.

While thus far largely avoiding populated areas, the troops have also encircled Gaza City, under heavy fire, and cut off the north from the south of the strip by taking control of a key east-west road leading from the Karni border crossing, east of the city, toward the coast.

The troop's advance sparked heavy clashes with local Hamas fighters.

Since Israel launched its Operation 'Cast Lead' nine days ago - aimed at curbing seven years of rocket and mortar attacks against its southern towns and villages - more than 520 Palestinians have been killed and at least 2,500 injured.

Hamas, which has kept one Israeli soldier captive in Gaza since June 2005 as a bargaining chip to free Palestinian militants from Israeli prisons, has threatened to use the ground offensive to capture more Israeli soldiers. Israel Radio reported Monday that the Israeli army foiled one such attempt by Hamas fighters the previous day.

At least five Israeli soldiers were moderately injured overnight, Israel Radio reported, and an unknown number of Palestinians. One Israeli soldier was killed and some 31 injured in the fighting Sunday.

Four Israelis have also died by Palestinian rocket attacks since the Israeli operation began Dec 27.

Can India afford to remain frozen in inaction?

2008-12-30T21:48:00.000-08:00

Rajiv Dogra

Finally it is out in the open. The Indian defence minister, A.K. Antony, has said that war with Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai terror attack is not an option. And once again we find ourselves trapped in a dead end.

No one wants a war, especially a war where objectives are unclear and prospects uncertain. We should have learnt this lesson after we lined up our troops along the border like NCC cadets during Operation Parakram, which took place following the attack on the Indian parliament by terrorists Dec 13, 2001. In the end we were both unwilling and unable to cross the Rubicon. After posturing impotently we withdrew.

It is said that wise men keep the threat of an arrow leashed in the quiver, because once you've released it the arrow's potential as a threat is over. But this is exactly what we did when we called our own bluff during Operation Parakram. Now we don't even have a bluff in our quiver.

One wonders therefore what the recent hullabaloo was about.

Even as the terrorists were engaged in mayhem in Mumbai, the prime minister addressed the nation and said: 'We will go after the individuals and organisations and make sure that every perpetrator, organiser and supporter of terror, whatever his affiliation or religion may be, pays a heavy price'.

Since Pakistan will not extract that heavy price, it may be reasonable to assume that India may have had under consideration the option of direct action. Such an action, in the unlikely event that it actually happened, would have been violative of the sovereignty of another country leading possibly to a war.

So, in effect, what we are witnessing now is the formal withdrawal of our notice to make the terrorists pay a heavy price for having killed around 170 people between Nov 26 and 29.

Sadly, when the history of mayhem in Mumbai is written our inaction might be projected as vacillation and a sign that we did not have the stomach for confrontation.

Second, as any mafia don would advise, you must not permit what can only be called 'successful defiance'.

Unfortunately our inertia may be interpreted by the terrorists and their masters as confirmation that we are incapable of retaliation, emboldening them to greater dramatic action.

There was some hope that it might be different this time, that for once we will not be found running where we started from. But we were quick to expose all our cards, a daily flurry of bellicose statements and threatening rhetoric followed. But throughout, there was no sign of any concrete action against the perpetrators of terror or their masters, none at all. It will be hard to find an example elsewhere in the world where after such a wounding strike the nation remains frozen in inaction.

Instead, there were ponderous debates about the degree of instability of the civilian government of Pakistan. Sadly, we ignore the reality of politics in Pakistan. Rarely has any government there been powerful enough to stand up to the army. As Benazir Bhutto was fond of asserting, there are only two political parties in Pakistan - the PPP (Pakistan Peoples Party) and the MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movemment) ; all the rest are the army's creation. What remained unsaid was that even the PPP ended up compromising with the army. The Zardari government is no different, nor any weaker than its predecessors. We will therefore do well by not indulging in worried star gazing on his government's behalf.

In so far as the army is concerned I am reminded of an incident in Karachi. Once at a dinner a young man was introduced to me. He said he had graduated from the Pakistan Naval Academy earlier that day. After I congratulated him, he asked me when the bilateral tensions would cease. I gave him the sunny side response, at which he looked surprised and said, 'What will happen to our pledge then?'

It was an inadvertent slip of tongue by a young man and he moved away quickly. Later I gathered that the pledge he was referring to is taken by every Pakistani military officer on graduation, and it is to avenge the 1971 war leading to the formation of Bangladesh.

With such mental conditioning it will be naïve to expect a change of heart. This should also explain the practised ease with which Pakistan played its cards following the terror strike. As long as the world was watching the horror unfold on TV screens, Pakistan played the role of an anguished neighbour.

Meanwhile it gained time to let global tempers cool. Later when the world leaders came calling, as they did during Operation Parakram, it had its agenda clearly chalked out. It was a mixture of threats and demands as usual. First it declared that it might withdraw its forces from the Afghan border to its eastern frontier, conveying thereby that NATO action against the Taliban could become that much more difficult. A few days later there were attacks, conveniently spread over two days, on a NATO storage depot near Peshawar which destroyed over 200 vehicles.

Meanwhile its propaganda machinery was in an overdrive drumming up the threat of war. First there was a hoax call from our foreign minister to President Zardari. Then, allegations about air incursions by the IAF (Indian Air Force) followed. All these were conveniently timed before or during a visit by Western leaders.

Once again Pakistan has succeeded in temporizing. It is unlikely that it will take any action. And it will be futile to hope that good sense will prevail.

But the fault is ours. After every terror strike Pakistan insists on receiving evidence from India. Each time we fall into the trap. Should it be our responsibility to provide evidence, when all the proof is available in Pakistan? Moreover evidence is never provided to the perpetrators of a crime.

Unfortunately, like a bad rash terrorism will not go away. But the next time we should not wait till we dig up the absolute truth. Broad facts are sufficient in this global age where the focus on an event lasts till the next breaking news. And we shouldn't expect the US to wield the sword on our behalf. The US supports a country only as long as it suits its economic and strategic objectives. Pakistan still scores higher there.

Essentially, we are alone in this battle. The world may sympathize, it may nod in approval if we take action, but it will not come forward to help if we falter. Therefore, let us not engage in knee-jerk rhetoric that takes us to the edge of the abyss. Like dead-ends, they too are dangerous.

(Rajiv Dogra is a former ambassador and the last Indian consul general in Karachi. He can be reached at ambraja@yahoo.co.uk)

why are all terrorists Muslims?

2008-12-20T01:49:00.000-08:00

Sir, why is it that all terrorists are Muslims?' Prajvi Bagga Malhotra, a Class 11 student of Modern School, asked me this question during a discussion about current events. This was a very timely, bold but sensible question and being a Muslim, I was accountable to address the curiosity in the minds of a class of 52 students.

Prajvi isn't the only one to have alluded to the Western media coined statement that all terrorists are Muslims but all Muslims are not terrorists. With so many voices stating that the religion advocates violence, Islam is today under the scanner. Not all of them can be wrong - people judge by what they see and today these terrorists speak and act violently in the name of Islam.

I told Prajvi that the guiding themes of every religion are the same. Islam too has the same theme and ideology as other religions but a few people misled some of its followers in the name of god.

26/11 (Mumbai), Kafeel in Glasgow, Mumbai blasts by the Memons and others in India, the jehadis in Kashmir, 9/11, 7/7 (London), 13/12 (Delhi), 29/10 (Delhi) and the Al Qaeda at a global level - all these make my head go down in shame.

It's so embarrassing that each time a Muslim name is found attached with the inhuman and insane acts of terrorism.

Note that jehad is the most misunderstood and misconstrued concept by our non-Muslim brethren and even Muslims. The true concept of jehad in Islam is not to be against other communities, groups or religions but to be against one's own selfish nature, vices and shortcomings within Muslim society in order to fight evil, injustice, inequity, illiteracy and ignorance. First an individual fights jehad against himself to get cleansed. After that he continues the efforts with his wife, family, locality and the whole community. This is Jehad-e-Akbar, the right meaning of jehad.

Terrorism is a political process and religion or a religious community has nothing to do with it. Neither does any religion teach to kill innocents (that is what the terrorists do) nor are the terrorists the people chosen by that religious community to undertake such ghastly acts on their behalf.

Nevertheless, an average Muslim's fears are hate crimes, difficulty in finding jobs, admissions and residential accommodation, unwanted repercussions, distrust and other such things that always get exacerbated by such incidents. Muslims also fear a backlash like the 1984 Sikh riots against them. Terrorists should not be helped in creating a rift between communities.

The Mumbai attackers did try to create a cleavage between Hindus and Muslims. However, though a tragic incident, it did have a silver lining in that it cut across religious lines and saw people uniting in their horror and outrage.

But leaders of some parties have even begun to think that any criticism of Pakistan would not be relished by this country's Muslims.

I still remember that during the last general elections in India, to appease Muslims the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) boasted of the Lahore bus and improving relations with Pakistan as one of its major achievements. It's so sad that these people still treat Indian Muslims as Pakistan's stooges.

Though all Indians know that a few terrorists do not tarnish a whole community, the government for fear of losing votes will not take the matter up with the Pakistani government seriously and will just resort to rhetoric.

It is quite clear now that Indian politicians of all shades were somehow living under an illusion that if they were to turn harsh against acts of terror, they would alienate the Muslims of this country.

When will they ever realize that by doing so they are clearly reflecting their perverted psyche of labelling all Indian Muslims as pro-Pakistanis, which is the worst abuse for any Indian Muslim.

Going soft on terror will not make Muslims happy as the perpetrators of such acts do not segregate their targets by religion. If the politicians of this country think that by shying away from taking on terrorists directly and by going soft on terror they will get kudos from Muslims, they are sadly mistaken.

The public in general has now had enough of those who exploit religious sentiment in order to gain electoral and political mileage. The recent poll results in Delhi are an indication of that.

The rider is: Let us save Islam from 'the Muslims', Hinduism from 'the Hindus', Christianity from 'the Christians', Judaism from 'the Jews' and Sikhism from 'the Sikhs' and other zealots as religion is a very personal matter and as humans, we are all same.

Over protected politicians

2008-12-17T23:41:00.000-08:00

Are we paying tax for security of our politicians or for development ....... for security of ourselves and family...... for goodwill of infrastructure. ........ ???????????? ????????? ????

Despite the numerous terror strikes in India, the budget of counter-terrorism units has come down this year while the budget for the Special Protection Group, which protects VIPs, has gone up.

Rs 180 crore of the taxpayer's money is being shelled out annually to provide Z-class security to the PM, the Gandhi family, the leader of Opposition and a handful of other VVIP's .

The focus is so squarely on VIP protection that in Delhi alone, 15,000 men of the 60,000-strong Delhi Police are busy protecting around 400 VIPs.

In the 2008-09 the budget for the elite National Security Guards, was actually cut short to Rs 158 crore, from Rs 159 crore the previous year, But the budget for the Special Protection Group, which protects VIPs, went up from Rs 117 crore in 2007-2008 to Rs 180 crore in 2008-09.

Sources say that at least 30 per cent of the VIPs getting top security don't need any and 50 per cent can do with lighter security.

Home Minister P Chidambaram may have refused a Z security cover but his predecessor Shivraj Patil had no qualms about availing it.

There are other politicians who have said no to VVIP security in the past like Left leaders Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury and A B Barbhan, who shunned security, at times choosing to travel in their own cars.

In the next budget hope we can see some good changes ...

Cartoon of the Day

2008-12-16T21:04:00.000-08:00

All terrorists in Mumbai attack identified

2008-12-09T22:46:00.000-08:00

Mumbai, Dec 9 (IANS) All 10 terrorists who struck at Mumbai last month have been identified, police officials said here Tuesday.

Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Rakesh Maria released eight photographs of the terrorists and their identities in the evening.

One picture was not released since the body of the terrorist - involved in the attack at the Taj hotel - was burnt beyond recognition. His name has been given as Umar and his body was thrown down after the gun battle with the National Security Guard (NSG) commandos Nov 27.

The lone terrorist captured alive, Mohammed Ajmal Amir, was initially identified as 'Kasab,' and he quickly became the face of the Mumbai terror attacks.

His associate, now identified as Ismail Khan, was shot dead by the police near Chowpatty in south Mumbai during the early hours of Nov 27.

Ismail Khan's picture and actions were also captured on some closed circuit TVs installed at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) before he escaped with Amir to the nearby Cama and Albless Hospital, then to Metro cinema hall, from there to Nariman Point and finally to Chowpatty.

The three who laid siege at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel were: Bada Abdul Rehaman, Abu Ali and Abu Soheb. The Taj operation was the longest and bloodiest of all at the 13 sites which were attacked during the terror strike.

The duo killed at Nariman House in Colaba, where they laid a bloody siege to a Jewish place of worship, necessitating airdropping of commandos, are identified as Nasir alias Abu Umer and Babar Imaran alias Abu Akasha.

The two terrorists killed in the attack at the Oberoi Trident Hotel have been identified as Fahad Ullah and Abdul Rehaman Chhota.

Further investigations are underway to get the full background details of the nine killed terrorists, their associates and probably local support.

Total terrorists 10 - nine killed, one arrested:

They are: Bada Abdul Rehaman, Abu Ali, Abu Soheb - all involved in the attack at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel in south Mumbai;

Abdul Rehaman Chhota, Fahad Ullah - both involved in the attack on the Oberoi Trident Hotel at Nariman Point;

Ismail Khan - the terrorist involved in the attack at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus along with his associate Mohammed Ajmal Amir, (who was nabbed alive by the police);

Nasir alias Abu Umer and Babar Imaran alias Abu Akasha - involved in the siege at Nariman House at Colaba, where they attacked a Jewish place of worship.

Mumbai under attack

2008-11-29T03:00:00.000-08:00

Late Wednesday night, Mumbai, India found itself the target of a ferocious terrorist attack, and the situation remains unresolved even now, three days later. According to reports, upwards of 60 young men entered Mumbai in small inflatable boats on Wednesday night, carrying bags filled with weapons and ammunition, and spread out to nine locations to begin their attacks. Lobbing grenades and firing their weapons, they entered hotels, a railway station and several other buildings, killing scores and wounding even more. As of this moment, the identity of the attackers has yet to be definitively determined, though there are reports indicating some of the gunmen were Pakistani - at least nine of them have been killed, nine more arrested. As of this writing, there were a reported 151 people killed from 11 different countries - though nearly 100 were Indian. More than 300 injuries have also been reported - those numbers may yet rise as several hostage situations still exist in the city.

Onlookers stand at the site of a bomb blast in Mumbai November 26, 2008. (REUTERS/Stringer)

A gunman walks through the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008. (AP Photo/Mumbai Mirror, Sebastian D'souza)

A man carries a victim of a gun attack away from the scene of an earlier attack at the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

Armed gunmen are seen in the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008. Teams of gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular restaurant, hospitals and a crowded train station in coordinated attacks across India's financial capital, killing people, taking Westerners hostage and leaving parts of the city under siege Thursday, police said.

A reporter talks on her phone as smoke is seen coming from Taj Hotel in Mumbai November 27, 2008. Large plumes of smoke were seen rising from the top of the landmark Taj Hotel in Mumbai on Thursday and heavy firing could be heard, a Reuters witness said. (REUTERS/Arko Datta)
A member of the anti-terrorist squad takes a position during an engagement with suspected militants at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, India, Friday, Nov. 28, 2008. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

Firefighters try to douse a fire at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai November 27, 2008. Indian commandos freed hostages from Mumbai's Taj Mahal hotel on Thursday but battled on with gun-toting Islamist militants.

The body of a terrorist attack victim is brought in an ambulance to the St. Georges Hospital in Mumbai, India, Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008. Dozens of people were still trapped or held captive Thursday.

Employees and guests of the Taj Mahal hotel, site of one of the shootouts with terrorists, are recued by firefighters as fire engulfs the top floor on late November 26, 2008.

Fire engulfs the top floor of the Taj Mahal hotel, site of one of the shootouts with terrorists in Mumbai on late November 26, 2008. (LORENZO TUGNOLI/AFP/Getty Images)

Sharda Janardhan Chitikar, left, is consoled by a relative as she grieves the death of her two children in a terrorist attack while she waits for their bodies outside St. Georges Hospital in Mumbai, India, Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008.

The windows on the first floor of the Taj Mahal hotel shatter after the use of a grenade launcher in Mumbai, India, Friday, Nov. 28, 2008. Explosions and gunfire continued intermittently at the Taj Mahal hotel Friday afternoon, two days after a chain of militant attacks across India's financial center left people dead and the city in panic.

Schoolchildren hold candles during a vigil held in memory of the victims of Wednesday's shootings in Mumbai, in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad November 27, 2008. Elite Indian commandos fought room to room battles with Islamist militants inside two luxury hotels to save scores of people trapped or taken hostage, as the country's prime minister blamed neighbouring countries. (REUTERS/Amit Dave)

A National Security Guard (NSG) commando aims towards a window after an explosion on the fourth floor of the Nariman House where suspected militants are hiding, in Mumbai November 28, 2008. (REUTERS/Punit Paranjpe)

A National Security Guard commando fires at suspected militants believed to be hiding in Nariman House, in Mumbai November 28, 2008. (REUTERS/Peter Keep)

Blackberrys dangerous for cheating husbands

2008-09-20T13:43:00.000-07:00

Cheating husbands can be easily caught by a flirty text message on their Blackberry than a mark of lipstick smudged on their shirt’s collar, says a new study.

According to a survey, since men are rubbish at creating passwords, women can easily follow their partner’s electronic trail of adultery.

The survey of 100 couples found that a quarter of men used the password God or Sex and 15 per cent used 1966 — England’s World Cup winning year.

Another 22 per cent used their mum’s name.

“Three in five women I see now come with evidence,” The Sun quoted divorce lawyer Vanessa Lloyd Platt, as saying.

'Sex doc' busy writing books in jail

2008-09-11T05:21:00.000-07:00

Serving a life term for dabbling in the business of erotica, orthopaedic surgeon Dr L Prakash is busy churning out books on various subjects including a four-volume book on Mahabharata in his prison cell.

Convicted for providing pornographic pictures to websites, the 52-year-old doctor reportedly is busy writing on subjects ranging from science, adventure and his pet subject -- erotica.

Prakash was arrested in December 2001 following a complaint from a youth that he was forced to commit sexual acts with women, which were filmed and later posted on websites hosted by the doctor. He was sentenced in February this year.

G Asokan of Banana Books said that he has already published four books of Prakash -- Glimpses of Vedic Wisdom , Swiss Chocolates , Maybach Maiden , and Tangled Web Beats .

Asokan came to know of Prakash through an advocate S Namonarayanan who was imprisoned in the same jail for three days for unlawful assembly where he read Prakash's books and brought this to the notice of the publishers.

Following this the publishers had a brief meeting with Prakash when he was brought to court last June and clinched the deal.

"We will bring out his six lakh worded Mahabharata in four volumes in October and plan to publish more," he said.

Namonarayanan reportedly told Asokan that the doctor was involved in writing for hours. Recently, the Madras High Court allowed the doctor to have a personal computer.

Tips for the Male Daily Diet

2008-04-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

Just because most men don’t have to watch their girlish figures doesn’t mean that it should be a free-for-all when it comes to what you eat on a daily basis. As you get older, it gets harder and harder to undo bad eating habits so the sooner you take note of the following tips and put them into practice, your daily diet will keep you in the best shape ever.

Note that eating foods with a lot of protein will fill you up more than eating a bunch of carbohydrates. Plus, protein contains less calories, too, so start throwing in lean beef, pork, fish, eggs, nuts, beans and white-meat poultry into your daily meals. When it comes to meals in general, create and stick to a regular daily eating schedule. This will help your body adjust to burning calories and you’ll be more focused throughout the day, not to mention you’ll be less likely to gorge on snacks or suffer from hunger pangs. Eating when you can and/or skipping meals can throw your body off whack, as well as distract you mentally. Do right by your body by treating it to the right foods at the right times.

When you don’t want to deal with starving until your next major meal, you can find comfort in breaking down your eating routine to include several small meals. While it may seem like eating more would cause you to gain weight, in reality, eating smaller portions during breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as snacking on healthy items in between these meals helps you control your appetite and prevents you from overeating in one sitting. This type of eating pattern also boosts your metabolism, which means you’ll be constantly burning calories and will have a lot more energy to spare.

If you’re worried about calories, modify your meals to include more spices and less fattening condiments such as butter, sour cream and mayonnaise. This doesn’t mean you should never use these items but the key is to use them in moderation and in small amounts. No more slathering your foods in layers of butter or mayonnaise. Also try to eat a wider variety of foods to avoid getting bored with your regular meal plans. Try looking up new recipes and test your culinary expertise on the barbeque grill or on the stove. While eating, make sure to stop when you are full - don’t keep consuming food until you’re so full it hurts.

When it comes to your beverages, it’s best to make water the major drink in your life, regardless of where you are or what you’re doing. Cut out the drinks that contain a lot of calories, artificial flavors and caffeine.

As hard as it can be at times avoid the bad habit of being near starvation and then totally binging during your next meal. This can cause your body’s metabolism to slow down, resulting in your body using more of its fat storage. Skipping meals can also lead to unstable insulin and blood sugar levels.

Throwing Your Baby In The Dumpster Is Wrong

2008-04-16T01:48:00.000-07:00

MNS wants job quota for Marathis

2008-04-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

Raking up once again the ‘sons of the soil’ issue, the Raj Thackeray led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) has demanded 80 per cent of the jobs in private companies be reserved for the Marathi speaking habitants.

"Maharashtra Navnirman Kamgar Sena, the workers union floated by MNS, is writing letters to 45,000 industries in Maharashtra asking them to ensure 80 per cent reservation of vacancies for the Marathi residents of the state," party chief coordinator Manoj Chavan told in Mumbai on Wednesday.

He said already letters have been sent to several industries demanding job reservation for the Marathis.

The party has also written to private companies asking them to reserve 80 per cent of the jobs in their companies for the Marathi people failing which they would launch an agitation, Chavan said.

This demand is seen as yet another campaign by the MNS against the north Indians migrants who have settled in Maharashtra.

A Plane Crash Filmed from Inside the Plane | Video

2008-03-18T22:30:00.000-07:00

Look very scary.

I want to live, so I am leaving, says distraught Taslima

2008-03-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

KOLKATA: “I can’t take it any more. I will die if I continue to live like this,” Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen said yesterday in a choked voice as she announced her decision to leave India for medical treatment abroad.
“I am losing my eyesight, my heart is damaged. I have to survive. I am dying like this. I have to immediately get good treatment because I am not even getting cardiologists here,” Nasreen said over the phone from an undisclosed destination in New Delhi where she has been sheltered by the government.
“Parchina, parchina, parchina (I can’t, I can’t, I can’t),” she said, after meeting foreign ministry officials.
For her own safety, the author has been kept incognito for nearly four months in a place near New Delhi while security restrictions were imposed on her movement even in Kolkata before she was forced out of the city last year following protests.
“For seven months now, I am living like this. I cannot live like this any more,” she said.
India’s foreign ministry in mid-February extended her visa but restrictions on her movements continued as she was kept confined in a “safe house” by the government since she was shunted out of Kolkata on November 21.
“I don’t know where I am going right now and when. An airline ticket can be purchased online anytime. But I am finally leaving so that I can survive. Whatever damage has been caused has been caused. I have to get treatment now to just be alive and save the rest of me,” she said.
“I want to come back to Kolkata - my home - if I am allowed and not put in prison like this again. Right now my only concern is to live and get proper medical attention,” said Nasreen who recently spent a few days in New Delhi hospital.
“Stress and hypertension is killing me. There is already a big damage to my heart. I need to save the rest,” she said.
“My world is in Kolkata. I have not been allowed to visit the city and collect my own belongings. I hope my friends in Kolkata would help me since I am not allowed to go there,” she said.
Nasreen was living in Kolkata since 2004 after she was forced to leave Bangladesh.
She earlier said: “I am myself surprised that I am living like this. My only hope is that one day I will be able to return to Kolkata where I have set up a home over the years. But that is like hoping against hope going by the developments.
“I am pretty confused about the government’s objective. What purpose would it serve if I live like this?” she asked.
A section of intellectuals continue to mobilise support for the writer whose fearless expressions on the state of women in Muslim society and the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh antagonised clerics and governments, forcing her to live in exile and under heavy security since the 1990s.
The international community and leading Indian intellectuals are campaigning for Nasreen’s freedom and Indian citizenship for her. But the government has been unmoved so far.
Nasreen, who was recently conferred the Prix Simone de Beauvoir by the French government for her writing, was not allowed to receive the award in person from French President Nicolas Sarkozy when he visited India in January.
West Bengal’s ruling Left Front shunted out Nasreen last year after street violence in Kolkata over her extended stay in India.
Nasreen, who was already living confined in a Kolkata apartment, was taken first to Jaipur and then to New Delhi by the central government and has since been kept in a safe house.
In an earlier interview, the 45-year-old author had said impassionedly: “I am only breathing. I don’t think I am alive like you are. Can anybody live like this? It was beyond my imagination that in a secular democracy like India, such a thing could happen to a writer.”
On November 30, Nasreen had agreed to expunge controversial portions from her autobiography “Dwikhandita” (Split in Two).
Though Jyoti Basu, the patriarch of the state’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), said in December that Nasreen was welcome to return to Kolkata, the Left Front government has chosen to remain silent on her plight, keeping Muslim sentiments in mind.
In a delicate balancing act, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has promised to “shelter” Nasreen but urged her to “refrain from activities and expressions” that may hurt the sentiments of Indian people and harm relations with friendly countries. – Indo-Asian News Service

Is China's Great Wall Visible from Space?

2008-03-14T03:32:00.000-07:00

Though it stretches for some 4,500 miles, the ancient Chinese fortification is not as visible from orbit as modern desert roads

Choose a legend: The Great Wall of China is the one of the few man-made structures visible from orbit. Or, more remarkably, it's the only human artifact on Earth visible from the moon. Both are false, say astronauts and remote-sensing specialists. Although the Great Wall spans some 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers), it's constructed from materials that make it difficult to discern from space.

The unglamorous truth is that the wall is only visible from low orbit under a specific set of weather and lighting conditions. And many other structures that are less spectacular from an earthly vantage point—desert roads, for example—appear more prominent from an orbital perspective.

Misinformation about the barrier's visibility dates back decades. A 1932 Ripley's Believe It or Not! cartoon claimed that the wall is "the mightiest work of man, the only one that would be visible to the human eye from the moon." The belief persisted into the Space Age. Since Neil Armstrong returned from the moon in 1969, he has been repeatedly asked whether he could see it.

His answer was relayed in a recent NASA Johnson Space Center oral history: He saw continents, lakes and splotches of white on blue. But he could not make out any man-made structures from the lunar surface, which averages a distance of 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) from Earth.

So just how visible is the Great Wall from low Earth orbit, at an altitude that begins around 100 miles (160 kilometers) up? Not very. Although sections near Beijing, China's capital, have been restored for tourists, in many areas the structure is crumbling. Where it still stands, the wall's mixture of stone and clay blends into the surrounding land.

"I have spent a lot of time looking at the Earth from space, including numerous flights over China, and I never saw the wall," asserts former NASA astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, who flew on five space shuttle missions from 1985 to 1996. "The problem is that the human eye is most sensitive to contrast, and the color of the wall is not that different from the ground on either side of it."

Hoffman, now an aerospace engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, failed to make out the Egyptian pyramids for the same reason. But he could identify roads, airport runways and irrigation ditches simply because they stood out in their environments.

Some U.S. astronauts, notably Eugene Cernan and Ed Lu, have said they've seen the wall from low orbit. But it tends to show up only in certain lighting conditions. When the sun is low on the horizon, for example, the wall casts extended shadows that make it possible to discern its silhouette.

In 2004 American astronaut Leroy Chiao snapped a photo from the International Space Station of a swath of Inner Mongolia, around 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Beijing, while the sun's angle was favorable. NASA experts later confirmed that the photo appears to show the wall. But Chiao admitted that he wasn't sure what he was seeing from space.

Machines can do a better job. Low-orbit satellites have sensors that can penetrate through haze and clouds, making it easier for them to produce clear images. But, as with the naked eye, identifying the wall is hardly a guarantee.

Moderate-resolution satellites, like the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) two operating Landsat land observation satellites that orbit 438 miles (705 kilometers) above Earth's surface, can typically only pick up the structure under specific weather conditions, says Ronald Beck, program information specialist with the USGS's Land Remote Sensing Program. "We have satellite images where snow covers the fields near the wall and snow has been cleared on the wall, and that allows us to see the wall," Beck says. "The key is contrast."

Often, identifying the rampart in satellite images requires a degree of sleuth work. In populated areas, Beck says, USGS scientists pinpoint sections of the wall by looking for parking lots and pathways. In more remote areas, they may scan for breaks in the vegetation surrounding the structure. But those techniques are hardly foolproof; at many points, the vegetation grows up and over the wall.

For the Chinese, the wall's visibility from space has long been a point of pride. When "taikonaut" Yang Liwei, China's first man in space, returned from the 14-orbit Shenzhou 5 mission in 2003 and admitted to reporters that he had not seen the Great Wall, online forums exploded with disappointment. The Ministry of Education even moved to revise its elementary school textbooks, which had long claimed the ancient barricade was visible.

Since then, a debate has raged in China, with scholars grasping at evidence that might settle the question of how great the wall really is. Chinese Academy of the Sciences Institute of Remote Sensing Application professor Wei Chengjie, who appeared on a national television special devoted to the issue in 2006, says more research is needed. "We need to carry out more tests and improve astronaut training. Some astronauts have said that they didn't see it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. A shuttle passes by so quickly."

In the meantime, however, China's search for clarity is coming up against a modern complication. As the country industrializes and its factories belch out noxious gases, the wall further fades from view. "The biggest problem nowadays is the pall of pollution which exists over much of China," Hoffman says. "It effectively makes it impossible to see almost anything."

IPTV to be tall task for Indian telecom firms

2008-03-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

Mumbai, March 12: Indian telecom firms, seeking to increase revenue and stimulate demand by offering Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services, face hurdles of high costs, low broadband usage and slow speeds, company officials said.

"The interactivity in IPTV opens up a new platform for advertisers, which translates into higher revenues per user for the telecom firms," said Aksh Optifibre's managing director, Kailash Choudhari.

State-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd and Bharat Sanchar Nigam are the only companies which now offer limited IPTV services, or television or video signals over broadband.

Bharti Airtel is expected to roll-out its services shortly, while Reliance Communications Ltd in November announced a $500 million pact with Microsoft Corp for IPTV services in India.

High costs of acquisition

IOL Netcom and Aksh Optifibre are battling high costs as television broadcasters charge telecom companies much more than cable operators for programme feeds.

"We are paying through our nose - paying a big amount to the broadcasters for each territory," said IOL Director A.S.Oberai.

"Our franchisees are finding it difficult to get TV feed at the same rates which they provide to cable operators, with the result it is becoming more expensive for us," said MTNL's Executive Director, J. Gopal.

Broadcasters are looking for minimum subscriber guarantees, officials said. Any shortfall in subscribers has to be made good by the service provider, adding to costs, said Aksh's Choudhari.

Broadcasters "need to be assured of revenues before offering our content," said Ishwar Jha, CEO of Digital Media Convergence Ltd., which distributes content from Zee Entertainment and Zee News to alternate media platforms.

MTNL has now close to 3,000 subscribers in Mumbai and 5,000 on an all-India basis. "We are able to provide 50-60 connections in a day," Gopal said.

IOL and Aksh have tied up with MTNL in Mumbai and Delhi and with BSNL in other areas to provide IPTV services on the state-owned carriers' broadband network.

Low broadband usage

Another big hurdle to popularising IPTV is the low broadband penetration. TRAI figures show India's broadband subscriber base at 3.24 million at the end of January, with less than 1 million new users added between April 2007 and January 2008.

MTNL and BSNL are providing 2 mega bytes per second speed - which is theoretically good enough for video streaming. But, consumers may need a higher bandwidth of 4-8 Mbps for high definition video required to watch video-on-demand and gaming.

"It needs a good feed and last mile connectivity," said Bharti Airtel's vice-president of network services, Shyam Prabhakar Mardikar. Quality of copper also has to be good since India does not have fibre to home connectivity, he said.

Still, companies battle on in hopes of a boost in revenue as well as higher broadband usage in the country.

Strike to Paralyze Indian Airports

2008-03-11T11:38:00.000-07:00

Airport workers across India threatened to strike at midnight on Tuesday, a move that could ground hundreds of commercial flights and leave tens of thousands of passengers stranded.

The threatened strike is over plans to privatize two major airports, but workers are expected to join in at 127 other state-run airports _ nearly every airport in India except New Delhi and Mumbai, the two busiest airports, which are already privately run.

S. R. Santhanam, a leader of the airport workers union, said the decision to launch an open-ended strike starting at midnight Tuesday was made after talks with the government broke down Monday.

'No talks are scheduled unless the government sends a message,' he said, adding that some 15,000 airport workers, including baggage handlers, cleaners and ground staff would go on strike.

The dispute between stems from a government plan to privatize new airports in the southern cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore, a move that union says will endanger the jobs of hundreds of employees.

Airport authorities plan to shift all commercial activity from the cities' old airports to the new ones when they open in coming weeks.

Hyderabad and Bangalore are both large cities that are home to several major multinational corporations as well as scores of thriving information technology companies.

The government plans to use the old airports for disaster management and flights carrying government leaders, aviation ministry spokeswoman Moushmi Chakravarty told The Associated Press.

Chakravarty said the private operators would retain the employees. However, the unions worry that there could be future layoffs.

Subhash Goyal, chairman of the Indian Association of Tour Operators, said any strike could cost the booming aviation sector millions of dollars.

'It will have a tremendous impact on travelers,' he said.

India's airline industry has grown dramatically in recent years as rising incomes and loosened regulations put air travel within reach of millions of new customers.

In the early 1990s, Indian Airlines was the country's single carrier, but Indian authorities opened up the airways and since then about a dozen airlines have opened for business, leading to a heated competition and low prices.

In January India's aviation minister Praful Patel said that Indian carriers were expected to increase their fleet of aircraft from the current 400 to about 2,500 by 2020.

From Mar 31, pay Rs 20 for using any ATM

2008-03-11T05:51:00.000-07:00

NEW DELHI: Customers will have to pay a maximum of Rs 20 for withdrawing cash from an ATM of another bank from March 31, 2008. However, balance inquiries will attract no charge with immediate effect.

The charge for cash withdrawal is only till March 31 next year, after which it will become zero. Aiming to make all ATM usage free from April 2009, the Reserve Bank of India on Monday said banks cannot charge for balance inquiries and capped the fee for cash withdrawals at Rs 20 per transaction, irrespective of the amount and the bank where the customer holds the account.

In a circular issued to all commercial banks, RBI also said that banks cannot charge their own customers for ATM usage, with immediate effect.

This is the first instance of RBI fixing tariff for the use of ATMs. So far, banks fixed such charges on their own. As charges vary from bank to bank, a customer can’t be sure of the amount he will have to pay for using an ATM of a bank other than the one in which he holds an account.

In the wake of the circular, a bank will not be able to charge more than Rs 20 for transactions carried out using the ATM card of another bank.

I am fit to play against South Africa: Sachin

2008-03-09T00:38:00.000-08:00

Sachin Tendulkar on Saturday dispelled concerns that he will not be available for the Test series against South Africa because of fitness related issues, saying he was fully fit to play the series.

"I have played the last match. As far as I am concerned I am fit. I have not said anything before on this. I will certainly play against South Africa. There is no doubt," the champion batsman said.

Tendulkar was named as the captain of the 'Mumbai Indians' team for the forthcoming Indian Premier League to be held from April 18 and also unveiled the logo of the team at a promotional event in Mumbai.

According to news reports, Tendulkar has been advised rest for two weeks by outgoing physiotherapist John Gloster at the end of the tour of Australia.

The first Test against South Africa commences in Chennai on March 26.

Hrithik roshan to pair with hot latino actress Barbara mori

2008-03-08T05:53:00.001-08:00

To be directed by ace director Anurag Basu of Gangster and Metro fame, the movie is to be shot in New Mexico, Las Vegas and Los Angeles in the U.S.A.

The producer and director have reached back India after an extensive search in the U.S.A for the leading lady. For over a month, director Anurag Basu and Rakesh Roshan have been hunting for a suitable actress from Spanish background for their upcoming film,

On their list were popular Latino actresses including Penelope Cruz. Finally they decided on Barbara Mori. She has worked in television and in a few Spanish-Mexican films.

Many girls were considered for the role including Sonam kapoor of Saawariyan fame. But she backed out due to the bold scenes required in the film.

“The girl’s role is extremely bold. Actually, we’ve decided to cast someone international because that’s the personality and profile of the leading lady in my film,” Anurag Basu, who will direct the film, was quoted as saying.

The movie also stars Kangana Raut. She is veteran of Anurag Basu’s hit movies, Gangster and Metro.

First spam felony conviction upheld: no free speech to spam

2008-03-04T00:03:00.000-08:00

Virginia's Supreme Court on Friday upheld the first US felony conviction for spamming. The spammer will serve nine years in prison for sending what authorities believe to be millions of messages over a two-month period in 2003.

Jeremy Jaynes is the man who will make history. A Raleigh, North Carolina, resident who made Spamhaus' top 10 list of spammers, Jaynes was arrested in 2003 even before the CAN SPAM act was passed by Congress. Jaynes was convicted in 2005, but his lawyers appealed the conviction. This past Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld that conviction, but the vote was a narrow 4-3.

The prosecution presented evidence of over 53,000 illegal e-mails that Jaynes sent over just three days during July, 2003, but it is believed that he sent 10 million messages per day between July and August of that year. Though he is a North Carolina resident, Jaynes was charged in Virginia because the AOL servers he used for sending spam were located in Loudoun County, Virginia.

While defending Jaynes, his lawyers attempted to argue that a provision of the Virginia Computer Crimes Act violates constitutional First Amendment rights to "anonymous speech," as well as the interstate commerce clause of the US Constitution. The court rejected these claims due to Jaynes' use of fake e-mail addresses, which breaks the US CAN SPAM law's condition of giving recipients a means of contacting the sender. The court also stated that his peddling of scam products and services excludes him from First Amendment rights. In effect, the court said that you can't scam people and then cry "free speech!" when hooked by the law.

While one might think that Jaynes' case should have been open and shut, Justice Elizabeth Lacy highlighted some of the reasons behind the close 4-3 verdict, along with the potential dangers of vague anti-spam legislation. In her written dissent, Lacy argued that the "unsolicited bulk electronic mail" provision of Virginia's Computer Crimes Act is "unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mail including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."

Still, the court upheld Jaynes' original 2005 sentence of three years in prison for each of the three Virginia Computer Crimes Act code violations for which he was found guilty. For those playing along at home, that's nine years in the pokey.

The lesson? Spam doesn't pay, unless you live outside the US. But that's a story for another day.

Hitachi Introduces 320 GB Mobile SATA HDDs

2008-02-29T08:53:00.001-08:00

Hitachi has announced volume shipment of new 5,400 RPM notebook hard drives with a maximum available capacity of 320GB. These drives are designed to support the multi-tasking needs of consumers and commercial users balancing mobile computing and movies, music and other digital media.

The new drives feature optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) for users requiring increased data security. Apart from these drives’ Serial ATA (SATA) interface provides a fast 3 GB/s data transfer rate, allowing the drive to be used in a wide variety of applications including mainstream computing, portable external storage devices and other computing uses. Seeking to be power-efficient, the drives only consume 1.8W of power when reading and writing and their .55W low power idle means longer battery life for more "unplugged" notebook time and a longer drive life expectancy.

"The Travelstar 5K320 addresses a growing demand for high capacity hard drives, which are at the heart of today’s notebook PCs, external storage devices, gaming consoles and other mobile computing applications," said Larry Swezey, director, Consumer and Commercial HDD, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "And when coupled with our optional Bulk Data Encryption technology, the Travelstar 5K320 offers even greater value to notebook users by helping to guard against data theft."

The Travelstar 5K320 is now shipping worldwide. The enhanced-availability version of the drive is expected to ship in the second quarter of 2008. Pricing for these products is unknown as of now.

Hitachi Introduces 320 GB Mobile SATA HDDs

2008-02-29T08:53:00.000-08:00

Top Bengal Maoist leader in police net

2008-02-25T02:06:00.000-08:00

A top Maoist leader of West Bengal has been arrested by sleuths of the state's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) from a railway station near here, police said Sunday.

Somen, whose real name is Himadri Sen Roy, is the state secretary of Communist Party of India-Maoist, police claimed. He was held Saturday evening and his associate Deba was also arrested simultaneously, said Rajiv Kumar, CID deputy inspector general (operations).

Somen was arrested from Hridaypur railway station in North 24 Parganas district, about 25 km from here. The Maoist leader had tried to break free but was finally captured with the help of local people and tea stall owners.

Police recognised him from his stammering, a speech disorder about which they had prior knowledge.

He would later be produced in Barasat special court, while Deba would be produced in Chandannagore court in Hooghly district.

Somen has been charged with waging war against the state and plotting the killings of several Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leaders and police officers of West Bengal.

A Maoist since the 1970s, the 52-year-old had been on the run for years but has never been arrested before, police said.

'This is a breakthrough in our war against the Maoists,' said Kumar, who led the team that caught Somen.

CID officers said Somen had masterminded the killing of CPI-M leaders Rabi Kar and Mahendra Mahato in Purulia, Barikul officer-in-charge Prabal Sengupta in Bankura and Bandwan Officer-incharge Nilmadhab Das in Purulia.

Reports said he had ordered the murder of CPI-M leader and school headmaster Karamchand Singh in West Midnapore's Belpahari on Feb 22.

Officers said they had received a tip-off that Somen would meet an associate on platform No.2 of Hridaypur railway station.

The Maoist leader arrived at Hridaypur station at around 5 p.m. and began talking to the associate. Immediately, two disguised CID officers approached him and struck up a conversation.

'We wanted to verify his identity. We knew Somen stammered,' an officer said. 'As soon as he began speaking, we knew we had our man.'

The two officers grabbed Somen. His associate Dilip Mandi alias Deba was chased and caught.

According to a report, in a recent article in CPI-Maoist organ Biplabi Yug, which Somen edits, the rebel leader had said his outfit had formed the front line in the Nandigram land war.

'We were in Nandigram right from the beginning,' he wrote. 'We led the movement at every step.... We were in Nandigram, we are in Nandigram and we will continue to remain in Nandigram.'

Somen, who is from Suryanagar in Khardah, North 24-Parganas, joined the Maoist Communist Centre in the '70s and later the People's War Group.

Since the CPI-Maoist was formed a few years ago, Somen has been overseeing its West Bengal operations.

Report: Nissan, Renault to build $1 billion auto plant in India

2008-02-23T07:51:00.000-08:00

Nissan Motor Co. and its affiliate Renault SA will build a $1.1 billion plant in India, Bloomberg News reported today.

The companies have reached an agreement with the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu on the project, they said today in a joint release in Chennai, the state's capital. The plant will have a capacity of 400,000 cars a year.

The factory will also help the companies, which will have equal stakes in the project, to ship cars to overseas markets. "We see India as another export base," Nissan's Executive Vice President Carlos Tavares said in the release.

The automakers are looking for sales growth in emerging markets to make up for stagnating demand in their home countries, and the dollar's decline against the yen, which undermines the value of Nissan's North American earnings.

The India car plant will make its first car by 2010 and will manufacture four models, Nissan spokeswoman Pauline Kee said in an interview in Chennai today.

Man and Wife Argue Over Who's Too Drunk to Drive; Argument Gets Settled the Hard Way

2008-02-23T01:37:00.000-08:00

I believe the fact that the husband ran over his wife shows which on was too drunk, or rather, in this case, drunker.

Thursday, in Merritt Island, Florida, Richard Zubowicz, 45, thought his wife Becky, 44, was too drunk to drive. Never mind himself. So they pulled into a grocery store parking lot to argue. He allegedly pushed his wife to the ground, jumped in the SUV and circled the parking lot.

As his wife was still lying down, he ran over her when he returned to the spot of the argument.

Police later found Becky Zubowicz still pinned beneath the SUV. She remains in critical condition.

Richard Zubowicz remains jailed on charges of drunken driving and and domestic violence.

Stand by your ham, croon pig farmers

2008-02-21T09:55:00.000-08:00

London, February 21: In what they say is a last-ditch attempt to save Britain's pork industry, dozens of pig farmers gathered in London on Thursday aiming for an Internet hit with their song "Stand by your Ham".

The song -- which reworks Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man" with a porcine theme -- is intended to alert the public to a sector that farmers say is being pushed to extinction by greedy supermarket chains and rising feed prices.

"Stand by your ham," runs the chorus. "Sausages, pork and bacon/Help us stay in business/Because our pigs are worth it/Stand by your ham."

With little singing experience but fuelled by enthusiasm and bacon sandwiches, the 20 to 30 farmers hope to rely on affection for traditional British pork products from pies to sausages.

It will be available for download from the weekend from the website www.pigsareworthit.com

"It's a lighthearted way of drawing attention to a very serious issue," Yorkshire pig farmer Richard Longthorp told Reuters by telephone from the recording session.

"If this doesn't stop, then as sure as eggs is eggs, the industry is going to disappear."

The farmers say they lose more than 20 pounds ($39.09) a pig after unprecedented rises in feed prices fuelled by soaring global cereal prices due to higher fuel costs, competition from biofuels, increased demand from Asia and drought in Australia.

The National Pig Association says surveys show consumers are willing to pay more to keep a high-quality British pig farming -- which farmers say puts animal welfare first -- in business. They want politicians to put pressure on retailers.

"Hopefully we will have a couple of stars," said National Pig Association chairman Barney Kay, who penned the alternate words. "I don't think we'll be at the Brits next year but you never know."

Humans married to pups, to ward off evil

2008-02-20T02:01:00.000-08:00

KULUPDANGA: Three boys and two girls were married to puppies in the superstition that it would ward off evil at this remote tribal-dominated village in Jharkhand's Saraikela-Kharswan district on Monday.

Salu Banra, the mother of one of the girls, 15-year-old Puspa, a student of class seven in a government school said, “this is a custom. We set the puppy free after the marriage.”

The upper tooth appearing in either a girl or a boy is considered inauspicious by the Ho tribe which lives in this village. “Marriage to puppies of the opposite gender gets rid of the evil,” said some of the other villagers.

They said that six marriages between puppies and boys and girls had taken place on Sunday.

The pup-human marriage takes place on only two days in a year - the second and third of the month of Maghe. Today was the third of Maghe.

Full grown dogs are not used in the marriages but puppies which are called 'pida panda' (one who drives away evil).

All rituals and customs of a tribal marriage takes place with a priest officiating and guests invited, entertained by songs and dances, the villagers told a PTI correspondent.

Dowry in cash is sought and given. The bride is also given new clothes to wear. Only in case of smearing of sindur (vermillion), it is applied not to the puppies or humans but to a tree known locally as 'renge banam'.

When contacted, SDO Dinesh Prasad said, “this is a tradition. As long as they don't disturb others, we don't interfere.”

An elderly woman belonging to the Ho community, Laxmi Kalundia, said such marriages also demonstrated the fondness for pets and nature.

“Only pet dogs are preferable in such marriages,” she said. The marriage to pups also did not hinder the real marriage in future, she said as husbands and wives accepted this as a part of tribal custom.

The 15-year-old bride said she was happy and hoped to lead a peaceful life free from evil.

Men, please note: 'Smoking, drinking can affect your progeny'

2008-02-20T01:58:00.001-08:00

London (PTI): Science has long been clear that smoking or heavy alcohol consumption causes cancer. But, a new study has found that babies could inherit genetic damage from a father who puffs or drinks too much.

A team of international researchers has found that smoking or drinking alcohol can cause chemical changes in the semen in men and the alterations could be potentially inherited by their progenies and their future generations.

The researchers came to the conclusion after they analysed the effects of smoking and heavy drinking -- both toxic in nature -- on a group of rodents. They gave pregnant female mice daily injections of pesticide vinclozolin during the period when the sex of embryos is determined.

Male offspring had abnormalities, including prostate and sperm development problems, and genetic changes that the researchers found were passed on through four generations when the males were mated with healthy females. The researchers have also identified specific genes involved in the production of sperm that were permanently altered by the exposure to the pesticide.

"In addition to the spermatogenic and prostate abnormalities, trans-generational effects on numerous disease states were observed including tumour development and kidney disease," 'The Daily Telegraph' quoted Dr Matthew Anway of the University of Idaho as saying.

Sharks facing extinction risk: study

2008-02-19T10:26:00.000-08:00

Washington, February 18: Sharks might soon be seen in the official list of animals at global risk of extinction, for a new esearch has shown that they are disappearing from the world's ceans.

The study has shown that many large shark species have declined by more than 50 percent due to increased demand for shark fins and meat, recreational shark fisheries, as well as tuna and wordfish fisheries, where millions of sharks are taken as catch each year.

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) assessed the global status of the sharks.

"As a result of high and mostly unrestricted fishing pressure, any sharks are now considered to be at risk of extinction," said Julia Baum, an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a member of the IUCN's shark specialist group.

"Of particular concern is the scalloped hammerhead shark, an iconic coastal species, which will be listed on the 2008 IUCN Red list as globally 'endangered' due to overfishing and high demand or its valuable fins in the shark fin trade," Baum added.

She further said that fishing for sharks in international waters is unrestricted, and she supports a recently adopted UN esolution calling for immediate shark catch limits as well as a meaningful ban on shark finning.The research conducted by Baum and the late Ransom Myers over the past five years, demonstrated the magnitude of shark declines in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.

All species the researchers looked at had declined by over 50 per cent since the early 1970s.

For many large coastal shark species, the declines were much greater: tiger, scalloped hammerhead, bull and dusky shark opulations have all plummeted by more than 95 per cent.

Baum will speak at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Conference in Boston, which runs from Feb 14 to 18.

She will highlight management measures required to conserve harks at an afternoon press conference on February 17.

Scientists Find 'Devil Toad' Fossil

2008-02-18T23:32:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (AP) - A frog the size of a bowling ball, with heavy armor and teeth, lived among dinosaurs millions of years ago - intimidating enough that scientists who unearthed its fossils dubbed the beast Beelzebufo, or Devil Toad.

But its size - 10 pounds and 16 inches long - isn't the only curiosity. Researchers discovered the creature's bones in Madagascar. Yet it seems to be a close relative of normal-sized frogs who today live half a world away in South America, challenging assumptions about ancient geography.

The discovery, led by paleontologist David Krause at New York's Stony Brook University, was published Monday by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

``This frog, if it has the same habits as its living relatives in South America, was quite voracious,'' Krause said. ``It's even conceivable that it could have taken down some hatchling dinosaurs.''

Krause began finding fragments of abnormally large frog bones in Madagascar, off the coast of Africa, in 1993. They dated back to the late Cretaceous period, roughly 70 million years ago, in an area where Krause also was finding dinosaur and crocodile fossils. But only recently did Krause's team assemble enough frog bones to piece together what the creature would have looked like, and weighed.

The largest living frog, the Goliath frog of West Africa, can reach 7 pounds. But Krause teamed with fossil frog experts from University College London to determine that Beelzebufo isn't related to other African frogs.

It seems to be a relative of South American horned frogs, known scientifically as Ceratophrys. Popular as pets, they're sometimes called pacman frogs for their huge mouths.

Like those modern frogs, Beelzebufo had a wide mouth and powerful jaws, plus teeth. Skull bones were extremely thick, with ridges and grooves characteristic of some type of armor or protective shield.

The name comes from the Greek word for devil, Beelzebub, and Latin for toad, bufo (pronounced boo-foe).

The family link raises a paleontology puzzle: Standard theory for how the continents drifted apart show what is now Madagascar would have been long separated by ocean from South America during Beelzebufo's time. And frogs can't survive long in salt water, Krause noted.

He contends the giant frog provides evidence for competing theories that some bridge still connected the land masses that late in time, perhaps via an Antarctica that was much warmer than today.

2008-02-16T02:40:00.000-08:00

Two gorillas hold each other in an undated handout photo. Leah, the first gorilla ever seen using tools, has secured herself another small place in history by becoming the first gorilla captured on film mating face-to-face, researchers reported on Tuesday

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leah, the first gorilla ever seen using tools, has secured herself another small place in history by becoming the first gorilla captured on film mating face-to-face, researchers reported on Tuesday.

A team from the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany photographed the unusual scene in the Republic of Congo. Although other researchers have reported seeing gorillas in such a human-like position, none had ever been photographed.

"We can't say how common this manner of mating is, but it has never been observed with western gorillas in the forest," said Max-Planck's Thomas Breuer, who photographed the gorilla couple along with colleague Mireille Ndoundou Hockemba.

"It is fascinating to see similarities between gorilla and human sexual behaviour demonstrated by our observation."

The researchers have been studying the group of western gorillas in Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo.

"Understanding the behaviour of our cousins the great apes sheds light on the evolution of behavioural traits in our own species and our ancestors," Breuer added in a statement.

"It is also interesting that this same adult female has been noted for innovative behaviours before."

Writing in the Gorilla Gazette, Breuer and Hockemba said they watched Leah mating with a silverback male named George, who dominates the small group.

"Leah was lying on the ground and George was looking into Leah's eyes," the report reads.

The western lowland gorilla is a critically endangered species, with populations down 60 percent under pressure from human hunters, destruction of their habitat, and health threats such as the Ebola virus, which kills gorillas and humans alike.

Leah made headlines around the world in 2005 when she was seen using a stick to test the depth of a pool of water before wading into it.

Breuer said only a few primates such as bonobos mate in a face-to-face position, known technically as ventro-ventral copulation. Most usually mate while facing in the same direction.

How deep is your love? Korean passion phones know

2008-02-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

Seoul, February 14 : Valentines Day in South Korea means chocolates, romantic dinners and a high-tech mobile phone device that can secretly check the passion in the voice of a lover.

The 'Love Detector' service from mobile operator KTF uses technology that is supposed to analyse voice patterns to see if a lover is speaking honestly and with affection.

"We created this service because we thought people would want to know what others were feeling about them," said Ahn Hee-jung, a KTF official.

Users who speak by pointing their mobile phones at themselves for video conferences can see a 'love meter' bar on the screen of their handset during a conversation.

They later receive an analysis of the conversation delivered through text message that breaks down the amount of affection, surprise, concentration and honesty of the other speaker.

The service costs subscribers a flat fee of 1,500 won ($1.59) a month for unlimited use or can be accessed at 300 won for each call, KTF said.

"The caller is paying the money, so the information is provided only to him or her," said Ahn.

China likes its music on mobile handsets

2008-02-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

Barcelona, February 11: More than a third of mobile phone owners in China, the world's largest mobile market, use their handsets to listen to music, more than in Britain or the United States, a study showed.

Some 34.8 per cent reported they listened to mobile music every month compared with 20 per cent in Spain, 18.9 per cent in Britain and 5.7 per cent in the United States, according to M:Metrics, a research firm that monitors mobile media usage.

M:Metrics, which was founded in 2004, collects data from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The December benchmark study on Chinese usage was the first of its kind, the company said.

It surveyed 5,163 Chinese mobile subscribers aged 13-54 via telephone in seven major cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenyang, Chengdu, Wuhan and Xi'an.

Compared with users in the United States and Europe, Chinese consumers use their phones much less to check on their email or to send photos and videos.

Over 30 per cent in Italy, Spain and Britain use their phones to send or receive photos and videos, and only half as many do so in China.

Users in the United States lead the poll in email usage with 11.6 per cent compared with nine percent in Spain and Britain, but only 2.5 percent in China.

The firm also found that while some 30 percent of those polled owned Nokia handsets, giving the company a substantial lead in the Chinese market, owners of Sony Ericsson handsets were a driving force in using mobile media.

M:Metrics said global handset brands such as Motorola, Nokia and Samsung significantly surpassed native brands such as China Mobile in terms of being used to get mobile content.

"These companies are well positioned in a market where operators are seeking to grow mobile content in preparation for the rollout of 3G networks," the company said.

China is expected to issue 3G licences before the Olympics this year, but some predict licences will not be handed out until 2009, as kinks in its homegrown 3G standard, TD-SCDMA, are smoothed out.

Just like in the European and U.S. markets, 18-34 year-olds are the biggest consumers of mobile content in China, accounting for 64.6 per cent of those who accessed news and information via their mobile browser, M:Metrics said.

Now, charge your mobiles just by walking

2008-02-08T01:20:00.000-08:00

Washington, February 8: University of Michigan scientists have found that a new energy-capturing knee brace has the potential to generate enough electricity from walking to operate a portable GPS locator or to charge a cell phone.

Arthur Kuo, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the university, has revealed that the wearable mechanism works much like regenerative braking charges a battery in some hybrid vehicles.

While regenerative brakes collect the kinetic energy that would otherwise be dissipated as heat when a car slows down, the knee brace harvests the energy lost when a human brakes the knee after swinging the leg forward to take a step.

"There is power to be harvested from various places in the body, and you can use that to generate electricity. The knee is probably the best place. During walking, you dissipate energy in various places, when your foot hits the ground, for example. You have to make up for this by performing work with your muscles," said Kuo, who called the device "a cocktail-napkin idea".

"The body is clever. In a lot of places where it could be dissipating energy, it may actually be storing it and getting it back elastically. Your tendons act like springs. In many places, we're not sure whether the energy is really being dissipated or you're just storing it temporarily. We believe that when you're slowing down the knee at the end of swinging the leg, most of that energy normally is just wasted," Kuo added.

During a study, reported in the journal Science, the scientists tested the knee brace on six men walking leisurely on a treadmill at 2.2 miles per hour. They measured the subjects' respiration to determine how hard they were working.

A control group wore the brace with the generator disengaged to measure how the weight of the 3.5-pound brace affected the wearer.

The study report reveals that in the mode in which the brace is only activated while the knee is braking, the subjects required less than one watt of extra metabolic power for each watt of electricity they generated.

By contrast, says the report, a typical hand-crank generator takes an average of 6.4 watts of metabolic power to generate one watt of electricity because of inefficiencies of muscles and generators.

"We've demonstrated proof of concept. The prototype device is bulky and heavy, and it does affect the wearer just to carry. But the energy generation part itself has very little effect on the wearer, whether it is turned on or not. We hope to improve the device so that it is easier to carry, and to retain the energy-harvesting capabilities," Kuo said.

The authors believe that a lighter version of the knee brace would be helpful to hikers or soldiers who do not have easy access to electricity. They also envision its application in implantable devices such as pacemakers or neurotransmitters, which today require a battery and periodic surgery to replace that battery.

"A future energy harvester might be implanted along with such a device and generate its own power from walking," Kuo said.

Georgia Police Officers Shoot Each Other

2008-02-06T03:34:00.000-08:00

Two off-duty officers from different police departments wounded each other in a gun fight in the middle of a road in an Atlanta suburb, authorities said.

Both officers suffered non-life-threatening wounds, police said. Their conditions were not immediately known on Saturday.

Officer Jay Daily, a five-year veteran of the Duluth Police Department, exchanged multiple gunshots with Fulton County officer Paul Phillips on Friday afternoon, police said.

Daily was in custody Saturday, charged with aggravated assault, Cpl. Illana Spellman of the Gwinnett County police said.

"It's been confirmed that the Duluth police officer was the aggressor in this case," Spellman said.

Phillips, 37, required surgery at Gwinnett Medical Center. A hospital spokesman said Saturday he could not release information about the two officers. He referred questions to Spellman, who did not immediately have an update on their injuries.

"It's been baffling to us why this situation even occurred," said Duluth Police Chief Randy Belcher. "It's an embarrassment to this agency."

Phillips, who was wearing his uniform and in a marked police car, was driving to his home in Gwinnett County, police said. He was flagged down by someone who had seen Daily involved in a physical altercation with a woman in a sport-utility vehicle.

Daily, who lives in the area, was off duty and in civilian clothing but was wearing a bulletproof vest, police said.

Police did not know what relationship Daily had with the woman or what started the confrontation. The woman, who was not identified, later was hospitalized for minor injuries she suffered before the shooting started, police said.

Belcher described Daily as "an outstanding officer" and said he was suspended while the investigation is under way.

Rat nibbles on face of 10-day-old baby

2008-02-02T00:11:00.000-08:00

Dr Suresh Shah, a pediatrician, attends to the baby. He said in such cases there are chances of infection reaching the brain. So he had to take great care of the baby to ensure the infection does not spread

The rodent badly mutilates the infant’s face; eats away nose and parts of the cheek; now, doctors plan to reconstruct the nose

Twenty-three year old Sunita Chavan (name changed) was in for a shock when she saw a rat nibbling at the face of her 10-day-old child on Thursday.

By the time Chavan, who was asleep next to her daughter woke up hearing her scream, the rat had eaten away the nose and parts of her daughter’s cheeks. “I got up and saw a big rat on the face of my child. I raised an alarm. By the time my mother came, the baby was bleeding profusely.” said Chavan.

The child is the first for Chavan, after her marriage a year back. Chavan had come to her parent’s home in a chawl in Matunga, for the delivery. She delivered on January 22 at a private nursing home nearby. As the baby weighed 1.6 kilogrammes at the time of birth, she was kept in the nursing home for three days. According to Chavan, she had finished her afternoon chores when she fell asleep along with the baby. She was in deep sleep when the baby woke up screaming. Chavan and her mother shooed the rat away, and rushed the baby to a hospital in King’s Circle. But doctors there refused to treat the child as the baby’s face was completely covered with blood. “We could not figure out which parts of the face the rat had eaten as the entire face was covered in blood. We kept running from one hospital to another, until she was finally taken care of at Shah Nursing home and Child health centre.” said Sunita’s mother, who did not want to disclose her name.
Doctor Suresh Shah, the pediatrician attending to the baby said, “The child was admitted to the hospital on January 31 at 5.30 pm. I was present in the hospital when she was brought in bleeding profusely. In such cases there are chances of infection reaching the brain, so we had to take great care to ensure the infection does not spread.”

A team of three doctors attended to the baby. Pediatric surgeon Bhalchandra Jaykar and Plastic surgeon Shankar Shriniwas were called in from other hospitals. Dr Shah and they are constantly monitoring the child’s progress. The doctor’s plan to reconstruct the baby’s nose through plastic surgery.

“The child is out of danger, but we had to pay particular attention to the nutrition aspect, as the upper lip is swollen. We also took care of the respiration, since the nose was eaten up.” said Dr Shah.

Kidney Transplant Scam Shocks India

2008-01-31T03:29:00.000-08:00

GURGAON, India (Jan. 30) - The last things Mohammed Salim remembered were the knees pinning him to the ground, the guns pointed at his head, and, finally, the injection that sent him into oblivion.

Police in Gurgaon, India, recently busted an illegal transplant racket that allegedly removed kidneys from up to 500 poor laborers and sold their organs to clients. Here, 33-year-old Mohammed Salim recovers at a hospital Wednesday in Gurgaon after his kidney was stolen.

When he awoke, he was in agonizing pain, uncertain where he was or why he was wearing a hospital gown.

"We have taken your kidney," a masked man calmly explained. "If you tell anyone, we'll shoot you."

Salim was one of the last victims in an organ transplant racket that police believe sold up to 500 kidneys to clients who traveled to India from around the world over the past nine years.

Police say that when they raided the operation's main clinic in this upscale New Delhi suburb last week, they broke up a ring spanning five Indian states and involving at least four doctors, several hospitals, two dozen nurses and paramedics and a car outfitted as a laboratory.

Subsequent raids uncovered a kidney transplant waiting list with 48 names and, in one clinic, five foreigners - three Greeks and two Americans of Indian descent - who authorities believe were waiting for transplants.

Only one doctor has been arrested so far and police are searching for the alleged ringleader, Amit Kumar, who has several aliases and has been accused in past organ transplant schemes elsewhere in India. Authorities believe he's fled the country.

"Due to its scale, we believe more members of the Delhi medical fraternity must have been aware of what was going on," Gurgaon Police Commissioner Mohinder Lal told reporters this week.

There long have been reports of poor Indians illegally selling kidneys, but the transplant racket in Gurgaon is one of the most extensive to come to light - and the first with an element of so-called medical tourism.

The low cost of medical care in India has made it a popular destination for foreigners in need of everything from tummy tucks to heart surgery.

The Gurgaon kidney transplant racket, however, was not the types of operation the medical community wanted in the headlines. The case has shocked the country, sparking debate about medical ethics and organ transplant laws.

Some "donors" were forced onto the operating table at gunpoint, while others were tricked with promises of work, Lal said. There were also some who sold kidneys willingly, usually for between $1,125 to $2,250, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported. The sale of human organs is illegal in India.

Salim, 33, a laborer with five children, said he was lured from his home town a few hours outside New Delhi by a bearded stranger offering a construction job that paid 150 rupees ($3.75) a day, as well as food and lodging. He was told the work would last three months.

"I thought I could earn money and save it for my children," he said from a government hospital in Gurgaon, where he is recovering under police protection.

He was first taken to a two-room house "in the jungle" outside New Delhi where two gunmen held him for six days, he said. Then he was taken to a bungalow in Gurgaon, where armed men took a blood sample at gunpoint.

Salim said he tried to escape, but the doors were locked and within moments, the men were on top of him, sticking him with another needle while he slowly lost consciousness.

When he awoke and learned what happened, Salim thought he was soon to die - he didn't know you could live with one kidney. He lay in a haze of pain and confusion for about a day, when the men, apparently tipped off to the coming raid, told him they had to move him.

Minutes later, police burst into the house and rescued Salim and two other men who also had their kidneys taken. He never received any money, he said.

"I don't know how I will survive," said Salim, whose five children were at the hospital. "I am the only earner in the family and the doctors said I can't do heavy work."

Shakeel Ahmed, 28, was in the hospital bed next to Salim, wincing in pain as he told his story. He is unmarried and has no children, but he is responsible for five nieces and nephews, he said.

"I'm sad, I'm angry. I don't know how I will care for them," Ahmed said, pointing to his elderly parents sitting on the foot of his bed. "Why me?"

Yahoo to cut 1,000 jobs as it reports fall in profits

2008-01-30T04:25:00.000-08:00

Yahoo announced plans to cut 1,000 jobs Tuesday - its largest layoff since the dot-com bust - as the economic slowdown and fierce competition from Google buffeted its Internet advertising business.

The job cuts came as the search firm said its profits fell in its most recent quarter compared to the same period last year, and Chief Executive Jerry Yang said growth would be slow in 2008 as the Sunnyvale company continued to refocus its business.

Yang said he was optimistic about the future. "We are not tinkering around the edges," Yang told analysts Tuesday afternoon. "We are making significant and what we believe are game-changing investments in Yahoo's future."

But his statements led some investors to finally give up on the company's long-promised turnaround.

Yahoo's stock fell 10 percent during after hours trading, after closing at $20.81, up 3 cents in regular trading, and far off its 52-week high of $34.08 at the end of October.

"Basically what Yahoo is saying is, 'Have more patience with us,' when investors have already given them two and a half years to transform their business," said Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co.

Yahoo, founded by Yang and David Filo, was once a high-flying Internet darling, but has struggled in recent years as Google revolutionized the search-advertising business and Yahoo struggled to keep up.

Yang has pledged to refocus Yahoo to better meet the needs of four key groups: regular users, Internet publishers, advertisers and developers.

He said he wants Yahoo to be a "starting point" for people who use the Internet and he has pledged to open up its technology so that it can be a platform for advertisers and developers to reach the hundreds of millions of people who are Yahoo's customers.

Yang has presided over an extensive restructuring and shuttered a number of services, including the 360 blogging platform, Yahoo auctions and Yahoo photos, which was replaced by Flickr.

However, Yang, who assumed the top job in June following the ouster of former Chief Executive Terry Semel, acknowledged Yahoo is facing "head winds" in transforming its business.

The basic problem, said former Yahoo executive Ellen Siminoff, is that far more people are using Google for search.

Siminoff, chief executive of Efficient Frontier, a search-engine marketing company, said an analysis of $450 million spent online by large advertisers last year showed Yahoo is rapidly losing share, despite clear improvements to the software it uses to match advertisements to search results.

Siminoff said Yahoo's share of search advertising dropped 25 percent from the fourth quarter of 2006 to the fourth quarter of 2007. "Advertisers are adding budget and the lion's share of that is going to Google," she said.

According to comScore, 58 percent of Internet searches conducted in the United States in December were done on Google's sites versus 23 percent on Yahoo's sites.

Its most recent quarterly earnings give some sign of its challenges. Yahoo's net income was $206 million, or 15 cents per share, for the quarter that ended Dec. 31, a decrease of 23 percent from the same period one year ago. Sales rose 8 percent year-over-year to $1.83 billion.

Excluding certain costs, sales increased 14 percent to $1.4 billion on earnings of 20 cents per share.

On this basis, analysts had been expecting sales of $1.41 billion and earnings of 20 cents per share, so the quarterly report roughly met expectations.

But Yahoo's outlook of $7.2 billion to $8 billion in revenue for the year and $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion for the first quarter was less than expected.

And the news that Yahoo had renegotiated a lucrative deal with AT&T - and would see annual sales drop up to $200 million as a result - was also disappointing.

"The silver lining is that they have gotten a lot of the near-term big negative issues out of the way," said Jim Friedland, an analyst with Cowen and Company. "They can't have the AT&T contract go away again."

Friedland said Yahoo still faces big long-term challenges. "They are basically competing with Google, which has more resources and better market position," he said.

Yahoo separately announced that Aristotle Balogh, 43, the chief technology officer of Verisign, would be assuming that post at Yahoo. David Filo, who co-founded Yahoo with Jerry Yang in 1995, had been temporarily filling the post following the resignation of Farzad Nazem in June 2007.

Man survives billion-volt lightning strike!

2008-01-28T05:46:00.000-08:00

A British man trounced death after surviving a billion-volt lightning strike on his head.

Darren Milne was hit by a 14,000mph bolt that tossed him to the ground, shredded his shirt and destroyed his trainers.

Darren's wife Vicky rushed to him, and feared that he was dead after seeing blood oozing from an open wound on his head.

But, as she embraced Darren, shouting his name repeatedly, he opened his eyes and cried: "I can hear you."

And the 41-year-old left doctors shocked after making a full recovery in just a week.

"He is very lucky - he could have been boiled alive," The Sun quoted a doctor, as saying.

The lightning struck Darren when he and Vicky were exploring the weird 100ft Hoodoo rock formations at Bryce Canyon, Utah.

"Suddenly a storm blew in and it started to hailstone so I made a snowball out of the stuff. Then I heard this loud crack. I woke up on the ground in a complete daze," he said.

Vicky added: "I thought Darren was dead. There was a smell of burnt flesh and all his hair was singed. When he said 'I can hear you', I cried with relief."

Unsuccessful Robber Shoots Self in Foot

2008-01-26T08:29:00.000-08:00

CHERRYVILLE, N.C. (AP) - Authorities said an unsuccessful robber shot himself in the foot ... by shooting himself in the foot. Police said Kelvin Ethelbert Roberts, 28, botched his plans to rob a Cherryville convenience store by accidentally shooting his right foot.

According to an arrest warrant, Roberts dropped a .45-caliber handgun in front of Gasland USA on Sunday. The gun hit the ground and went off, a bullet striking Roberts in the foot.

Roberts faces several charges that include attempted robbery with a dangerous weapon and possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Police said the handgun had been altered to fire .410 shotgun shells.

Authorities said Roberts was in illegal possession of the gun because of his felony cocaine possession conviction in 2002 in Chautauqua County, New York.

Cherryville is about 40 miles northwest of Charlotte.

China wants 'red' mobile messages, not blue jokes

2008-01-24T00:39:00.001-08:00

Beijing, January 24: Communist Party officials in central China have urged mobile phone-wielding citizens to send rousing "red" text messages instead of blue jokes, but the response has been more derision than revolution.

Nanyang city, in rural Henan province, recently told residents to "mobilise to compose and send healthy, positive, uplifting red text messages," the China Youth Daily reported on Thursday.

"Red sentences occupy the text message culture front!," Party officials urged in a local newspaper, the Youth Daily said.

China's 500 million mobile phone users rank as the world's most avid text message senders and passing ribald jokes and satirical jibes about leaders is a national pastime frowned on by unamused Party officials.

"The broad masses of residents should mobilise ... and fight the vulgar with the healthy," said the announcement.

But many citizens have responded to the campaign with only more catcalls, the China Youth Daily reported.

"Too funny, this itself is a joke," said one message pasted on an Internet site. "You go your noble way and let us go our tasteless way," said another.

Other residents wondered whether officials should be doing more useful things.

"All of you wallow in wine and women and want us to be pure-minded and puritanical," one Nanyang resident told the paper. "It's going a bit far."

Earthquakes provide vital nutrients for microbes

2008-01-23T00:46:00.001-08:00

A new research by scientists at the Stanford University in California has suggested that earthquakes help to keep the microbes present deep in the crust of the Earth alive by providing them vital nutrients.

According to a report in New Scientist, Earth's crust is known to host hardy bacteria even several kilometres below the surface.

These cells have no sun or organic material to sustain them, so they feed off the chemical energy in reactive molecules like hydrogen dissolved in the water seeping out of the rock.

This means that their growth and survival is limited by the flow of nutrients from deeper sources.

Now, a new research by Norman Sleep and Mark Zoback of Stanford University, show that earthquakes could provide these nutrients.

According to the researchers, earthquakes would open up cracks in the crust, releasing pockets of deeper nutrient-rich water and exposing fresh rock that would further drive the chemical reactions that release molecules like hydrogen.

The researchers' calculations show that seismic events would happen regularly enough to ensure a dependable supply of food right across a tectonic plate, sustaining microbial life for billions of years.

This mechanism might also keep microbes supplied with nutrients deep in the single-plate crust of Mars, the report added.

Brain Surgery Lets Woman Enjoy Music

2008-01-22T01:02:00.000-08:00

Now that surgeons have operated on Stacey Gayle's brain, her favorite musician no longer makes her ill. Four years after being diagnosed with epilepsy, Gayle recently underwent brain surgery at Long Island Jewish Medical Center to cure a rare condition known as musicogenic epilepsy.

Gayle, a 25-year-old customer service employee at a bank in Alberta, Canada, was suffering as many as 10 grand mal seizures a day, despite being treated with medications designed to control them. The condition became so bad she eventually had to quit her job and leave the church choir where she sang.

Eighteen months ago, she began to suspect that music by reggae and hip-hop artist Sean Paul was triggering some of her seizures. She recalled being at a barbecue and collapsing when the Jamaican rapper's music started playing, and then remembered having a previous seizure when she heard his music.

Her suspicions were confirmed on a visit to the Long Island medical center last February, when she played Paul's hit "Temperature" on her iPod for doctors. Soon after, she suffered three seizures.

"Being that the seizures could be triggered by the music, this was a very interesting opportunity to study Stacey's brain," said Dr. Ashesh Mehta, the hospital's director of epilepsy surgery.

During the first surgery, doctors implanted more than 100 electrodes in the right side of her brain to pinpoint the abnormal area of her brain.

The surgeons followed that procedure with a second surgery to remove the electrodes, along with parts of her brain suspected of causing the seizures.

"We used the latest techniques, including image guidance, to pinpoint the areas of abnormality, and the operating microscope to perform the procedure during a four-hour operation," Mehta said.

Within three days, the woman was released from the hospital and has not experienced a seizure since.

"I always live each day like it's my last," she said. "I want to show others that life does not end at epilepsy. I know I have what it takes to succeed."

Epidemic Feared - Gays May Spread Deadly Staph Infection to General Population

2008-01-21T02:27:00.000-08:00

Reuters has reported that, "A drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of U.S. hospitals and is being transmitted among gay men during sex, researchers said on Monday.

"They said methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is beginning to appear outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles."

"'Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable,' said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study."

According to the study, at this point, homosexual men are 13 times more likely to contract the potentially deadly, drug-resistant strain of staph infection, but the fear is that, because the infection is spread via skin-to-skin contact, homosexual men may soon spread it to the general population.

Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural issues with Concerned Women for America (CWA), said, "The medical community has known for years that homosexual conduct, especially among males, creates a breeding ground for often deadly disease. In recent years we have seen a profound resurgence in cases of HIV/AIDS, syphilis, rectal gonorrhea and many other STDs among those who call themselves 'gay.'

"The human body is quite callous in how it handles mistreatment and the perversion of its natural functions. When two men mimic the act of heterosexual intercourse with one another, they create an environment, a biological counterfeit, wherein disease can thrive. Unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences.

"In recent years our culture has adopted a laissez faire attitude toward sexual deviancy. Television shows like Will and Grace glorify the homosexual lifestyle while our children are taught in schools that homosexuality is a perfectly healthy, alternative sexual 'orientation.' 'Stay out of our bedrooms!' we're often commanded by militant 'gay' activists.

"Well, now the dangerous and possibly deadly consequence of what occurs in those bedrooms is spilling over into the general population. It's not only frightening, it's infuriating.

"Citizens, especially parents, need to stand up and say, 'No More! We will no longer sit idly by while politically correct cultural elites endanger our children and larger communities through propagandist promotion of this demonstrably deadly lifestyle.'

"Why does it take a potentially deadly staph epidemic for people to acknowledge reality? Will that even do it? Enough is enough!" concluded Barber.

God of War: Chain’s of Olympus Impressions

2008-01-19T10:51:00.000-08:00

Kratos strikes back in what can be best described as a power packed handheld version of one of the most successful franchises and the fears of lost in transition have finally been put to rest. This isn’t a shoddy Big Brother translation like Portable Ops. This is the big brother in his defining moment of glory before GOW III hits the mighty PS3 that is.

The game is a prequel to all of the God of War series that have appeared. It traces the origins of Kratos and his service to the Gods who reside in the Mighty Mount Olympus. The game starts with the Gates of Hades and covers a huge span of authentic places from Greek mythology and is presumed to end at the gates of Tartarus the darkest depths of the underworld where Zeus freed six of his uncles the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed Giants who were to wield some of the most powerful and know weapons in Greek Mythology well.

For Zeus, the Cyclopes forged thunder and lightning, which would become his weapons of choice.

To Hades, the Cyclopes proffered the helmet of darkness, a magical hood that makes its wearer invisible.

For Poseidon, they forged a trident, which would become emblematic of the future god of the sea.

I presume that our beloved Kratos will be the one freeing the six uncles of Zeus, thus aiding the gods win the war that might lead to their demise.

The gameplay is fast, furious and filled with rage. Fans of the series will be pleased to find that Ready at Dawn has left no stone unturned in bringing the joys and sadistic amounts of hack and slash in this handheld version. All throughout the 15 minute demo the action never seemed to slow down. It just kept on increasing with a significant amount of fluidity in the gameplay variety.

All the elements from the series have found near perfect ports, the combos, the high quality cut-scenes, the fabulous visuals, the quick time events, the gargantuan monsters the works in a nutshell. Nowhere across did the “portable” feeling strike me as it was quite evident with other prominent ports. This is the PSP’s best foot forward besides Syphon Filter that has seen a miraculous rebirth on the platform.

One interesting aspect of the game is that the developers have managed to add extra flavor to a sumptuous feast, the powers that Kratos gets in the course of the game are situational. They do not appear as bouts of random generated segments as present in quite a number of games.

The only complaint I would like to carry forward is that the possibility of a PS2 port appearing in the near future, damn I feel like a retard for holding on so long and finally buying the game and then getting to know a PS2 port is coming out in a few months with souped up everything.

Ready at Dawn seems more than ready to take this one to delirious heights. Check it out when this title hits the shelves in March 08.

2,500-year-old 'First Sword under Heaven' discovered in China

2008-01-17T08:09:00.000-08:00

A sword, said to be around 2,500 years old, has been discovered by Chinese archaeologists from an ancient tomb in the eastern province of Jiangxi.

The chief of the excavation team, Xu Changqing, has named the sword the "First Sword under Heaven."

"It is reckoned as the oldest ever excavated in the country," China Daily quoted Changqing, as saying.

The well-preserved 50 centimetre-long sword is black, gold and bright red.

"A dragon pattern was carved on both ends of the scabbard, and the middle part of the scabbard was decorated with two rows of a W-shaped design," Changqing said.

Two other heritage pieces dug out along with the sword from the same tomb have been named "First Mat under Heaven" and "First Fan under Heaven."

At least 1,000 relics have been found in the ancient tomb built in the late Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC) since the excavation work was launched in January last year.

Apple launches Web movie rentals, thin laptop

2008-01-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

San Francisco, January 16 : Apple Inc unveiled a lightweight laptop about three-quarters of an inch thick Tuesday and said it would rent movies over the Web, moving the iPod maker into a very competitive market.

Shares of DVD rental rival Netflix Inc fell 2.5 per cent to $22.20 and Blockbuster Inc, the largest video rental chain, dropped 16 per cent to $2.72.

But Apple shares also fell, by more than 6 per cent to $167.64 in afternoon trading, as investors had expected both developments after widespread speculation.

"There wasn't the 'wow' factor from anything that Apple had to say today," said Michael James, senior trader at regional investment bank Wedbush Morgan in Los Angeles.

Chief Executive Steve Jobs made the announcements at the annual Macworld convention in San Francisco, where last year he showed off the highly anticipated iPhone for the first time, setting a high bar for this year's event.

Apple shares have nearly doubled since last year's Macworld, and in late December topped $200 for the first time.

Jobs said the new aluminum-skinned Macbook Air notebook was the thinnest computer available, at a maximum of 0.76 inches and tapering to just 0.16 inches.

Priced from about $1,800, the Macbook Air bridges the gap between Apple's entry-level and high-end laptops, and analysts voiced concern that it could steal customers away from its more expensive products.

"It's not really clear how many more incremental buyers you can drive, and there could be some cannibalisation," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research.

Macbook laptops have been one of the company's strongest products, with sales rising 37 per cent on the year in the fiscal fourth quarter ended last September.

Apple has enjoyed huge success with its iPod music players and more recently the iPhone, which Jobs said had sold more than 4 million units since its release last June. Jobs showed off new iPhone features such as the ability to display a user's location on a map and a way to customise the main screen with "web clips", or icons linking directly to specific parts of a Web site.

But Apple has struggled to find a big audience for Apple TV, a product designed to be a Mac accessory for watching Internet video on a computer or television and unveiled alongside the iPhone a year ago.

"It's not what people wanted. We learned what people wanted was, movies, movies movies," Jobs said.

A new version of Apple TV will be able to connect to the Internet directly and download TV shows, movies and music through iTunes. Viewers will be able to choose movies directly from their TVs and Apple said viewers could start watching within seconds if they had a fast Internet connection.

Jobs announced deals with major movie studios and several smaller ones to offer movies for rental through iTunes, with new releases costing $3.99 and library titles $2.99. High-definition movies will also be available.

The revamp of Apple TV hardware combined with a broad selection of movie rentals would give Apple an edge over competitors such as Amazon.com Inc, Netflix and Microsoft Corp, Wu said.

News Corp's 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Co, Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros, Viacom Inc's Paramount, General Electric Co's Universal, Sony Corp's Sony Pictures, Lionsgate, MGM and New Line have all signed on to Web rentals, Apple said.

"It's too early to declare that this is going to be a big hit but this is arguably the best offering out there right now," Wu said. "No one has succeeded in this market, not even themselves."

By Scott Hillis

Mom's depression boosts asthma risk in kids

2008-01-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

A new study at the University of Manitoba, Canada, has found that kids whose mothers suffer prolonged depression or anxiety have a higher rate of asthma than their peers, independent of other risk factors for the increasingly common respiratory condition.

The study, led by Anita Kozyrskyj, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Manitoba, Canada, appear in the second issue for January of the American Journal or Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

"Evidence is emerging that exposure to maternal distress in early life plays a causal role in the development of childhood asthma. In a cohort of children born in 1995, we found that maternal distress which persists beyond the postpartum period is associated with an increased risk of asthma at school-age," Dr. Kozyrskyj said.

For the study, Dr. Kozyrskyj's team analysed the medical records of nearly 14,000 children born in Manitoba in 1995 who were continuously registered with Manitoba Health Services until 2003.

They checked to see whether the children had asthma at age seven by analysing records of doctor visits, hospitalisations and medications in the year of their seventh birthday.

They crosschecked this with the mother's medical records, including doctor visits, hospitalisations and medication for depression and anxiety.

And they ranked maternal distress by the duration of treatment: no distress, postpartum distress only, short-term distress and long-term distress.

"Unlike existing studies that have measured maternal stress during the first few years only, the longitudinal nature of our health care study enabled us to characterize maternal distress over time to identify whether it continued," Dr. Kozyrskyj said.

Even after taking into account known risk factors of male gender, maternal asthma, urban location and total health care visits, long-term maternal stress was linked to an increase of nearly a third in the prevalence childhood asthma.

The risk appeared to intensify for children in high-income households or who had more than one sibling.

While the reason these children are at higher risk is not clear, Kozyrskyj said it may be that mothers who are distressed are less likely to breast-feed and more likely to smoke.

However, research has also suggested that depressed mothers are also less likely to interact with their infants.

"Our maternal distress measure captured women who sought health care for their depression and anxiety, and thus, our findings may be limited to more severe depression and anxiety," Dr. Kozyrskyj said.

"We plan to further explore the role of postpartum distress by doing a similar study which will link health care records with public health nurse assessments of depression and anxiety from a provincial postnatal screening program. This will enable us to assess the effects of less severe depression and anxiety during the postpartum period," she added.

Fossil of rodent that weighed as much as a one-tonne truck discovered

2008-01-16T08:01:00.001-08:00

US researchers have discovered a fossil of a rodent in South America, which might be the largest rodent known to have existed.

In a boulder on the southern coast of Uruguay, the 53 centimetre-long skull of the new species, Josephoartigasia monesi, was discovered.

The researchers, based on the age of the rock, estimated that the skull is between two and four million years old.

"This is a remarkable finding because of the size of the animal and the fortunate completeness of the skull," Nature quoted evolutionary biologist Ines Horovitz of the University of California, Los Angeles, as saying. The scientists couldn't access other skeletal measures, such as the length of the limb bones that are traditionally used to estimate the size of an animal, because they found only the skull of the rodent.

However, the research team developed an equation relating skull length to body mass using information from 13 of J. monesi 's closest living relatives.

The calculation gave an estimate of 1,008 kilograms. Adding information from 6 other measures of skull size gave an estimate of 1,211 kilograms, with a likely range of 468 to 2,586 kilograms.

The relatively small grinding teeth in the skull suggested that J. monesi was a member of the Dinomyidae family, which contains just one living example, the pakarana. This rodent lives in South America and weighs roughly 15 kilograms.

The resemblance in molars and premolars suggest the bull-sized J. monesi had a relatively weak jaw and lived on roughly the same diet as its modern-day cousin: soft vegetation and fruit.

Beetle-mania: World's favourite people's car

2008-01-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

PRAYERS ANSWERED... Thousands of Muslims pray outside Al Sounna Mosquee, October 14, 1988, in the Bab el Oued district, Algeria.

ON THE ROAD... An undated picture shows various Volkswagen Beetles participating in a car race some decades ago. German car maker Volkswagen bid goodbye on July 30, 2003 to its legendary Beetle, reputedly the world's most popular car which has been sold more than 21 million times since it was launched nearly 70 years ago.

TROTTING ALONG... A horse hitched to a Volkswagen Beetle makes its way in the streets of Hanover, 25 November 1975, during a day without car traffic.

MASTERPIECE... A visitor of the Motor Show "AAA 98" in Berlin takes a close look at one of the new beetles, October 16, of a special edition displaying Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

FLOWER-POWER... A "New Beetle" painted over and over with roses and daisies is watched by two visitors of the exhibition "The car as a canvas" in the Volkswagen Car museum in Wolfsburg, December 15, 1998.

LOOK-ALIKE... Visiors September 8, 1998 take a look into the cockpit of a stretch-version of the famous Volkswagen "Beetle". The 12-meters "Beetle", was a mere show-car unable to move as it has no engine.

Man opened graves to steal human parts

2008-01-15T01:40:00.000-08:00

A grave-digger allegedly involved in stealing human parts, including skull and bones, to sell them to a drug maker was arrested by police at Ponnani town in the district.

Kunjikilian (63) admitted of having opened up as many as five graves in the dead of the night to collect human parts, police said.

A skull, pieces of bone and other human parts were recovered by police in the search conducted at Kunjikkilian's house close to the graveyard.

When questioned, Kunjikkilian admitted that he used to sell the body parts to a drug making firm in Kochi which used to sell its products as 'wonder cure' for a host of ailments, they said.

Kunjikilian fell into the police net following investigations based on complaints from local people who saw the graves being dug up at Kotathara graveyard in Ponnani. People living in the area had earlier complained of 'mysterious movement' of strangers during the nights.

Dino sex: Mrs. T. rex you've got a lovely daughter

2008-01-15T01:29:00.000-08:00

Teen sex, it turns out, is an issue at least as old as the dinosaurs.

Scientists have found inside the fossilized bones of three different types of dinosaurs the remains of a special type of calcium-rich bone tissue that forms just before egg-laying to enable pregnant female to produce eggshells.

All three pregnant dinosaurs -- the meat-eaters Tyrannosaurus rex and Allosaurus and the plant-eater Tenontosaurus -- were adolescents and had not yet achieved their maximum adult size, according to the scientists.

"It's nice to know when dinosaurs started having sex," University of California at Berkeley paleontologist Sarah Werning, one of the researchers, said in a phone interview.

"It's also nice to be able to compare them to living animals in terms of understanding the timing of major events in their life," Werning added.

Only dinosaurs and birds are known to have produced medullary bone, laid done in the marrow cavity shortly before egg laying. Paleontologists consider birds to be the living descendants of dinosaurs.

"It's actually really common to start reproducing before you're done growing. Most animals do that. Reptiles do that. Medium- and large-sized mammals do that. Whether our parents like it or not, humans do that," Werning said.

But birds do not reproduce before adulthood, Werning said.

"They finish growing completely. And they all do it within about a year. And then they wait months or years before starting to have sex," Werning added.

The scientists found the medullary bone while making thin slices inside the bones of various dinosaurs.

Allosaurus, a bipedal carnivore about 39 feet long, lived about 150 million years ago. Tenontosaurus, a common plant eater about 26 feet long, lived about 115 million years ago. T. rex, a ferocious bipedal predator about 43 feet long, lived at the end of the age of dinosaurs, about 65 million years ago.

The three dinosaurs were all denizens of North America.

Based on growth rings in their bones, the scientists judged that the Tenontosaurus was 8 years old and the Allosaurus was 10 -- both qualifying as early adolescents. The T. rex was 18, still not fully grown, they reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Werning said it is likely that starting reproduction in adolescence made a lot of sense. The life span of these types of dinosaurs was about 25 to 30 years, she said, but they did not achieve full adult stature until about age 20, and there was a lot of adult mortality in this dino-eat-dino world.

That would leave just a handful of years to reproduce and ensure species survival. "If you start reproducing earlier, you have more time and more chances to reproduce," Werning added.

Don't just stand there, think - study says we think with our bodies too

2008-01-14T10:54:00.000-08:00

New research suggests that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies

WHEN YOU READ something confusing, or work a crossword puzzle, or try to remember where you put your keys, what do you do with your body? Do you sit? Do you stand? Do you pace? Do you do anything with your hands? Do you move your eyes in a particular pattern?

Discuss Do you use movement to think better?

How you answer questions like these, it turns out, may determine how long it will take for you to decipher what you're reading, solve your puzzle, or get your keys back.

The brain is often envisioned as something like a computer, and the body as its all-purpose tool. But a growing body of new research suggests that something more collaborative is going on - that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies. A series of studies, the latest published in November, has shown that children can solve math problems better if they are told to use their hands while thinking. Another recent study suggested that stage actors remember their lines better when they are moving. And in one study published last year, subjects asked to move their eyes in a specific pattern while puzzling through a brainteaser were twice as likely to solve it.

The term most often used to describe this new model of mind is "embodied cognition," and its champions believe it will open up entire new avenues for understanding - and enhancing - the abilities of the human mind. Some educators see in it a new paradigm for teaching children, one that privileges movement and simulation over reading, writing, and reciting. Specialists in rehabilitative medicine could potentially use the emerging findings to help patients recover lost skills after a stroke or other brain injury. The greatest impact, however, has been in the field of neuroscience itself, where embodied cognition threatens age-old distinctions - not only between brain and body, but between perceiving and thinking, thinking and acting, even between reason and instinct - on which the traditional idea of the mind has been built.

"It's a revolutionary idea," says Shaun Gallagher, the director of the cognitive science program at the University of Central Florida. "In the embodied view, if you're going to explain cognition it's not enough just to look inside the brain. In any particular instance, what's going on inside the brain in large part may depend on what's going on in the body as a whole, and how that body is situated in its environment."

Or, as the motto of the University of Wisconsin's Laboratory of Embodied Cognition puts it, "Ago ergo cogito": "I act, therefore I think."

The emerging field builds on decades of research into human movement and gesture. Much of the earlier work looked at the role of gestures in communication, asking whether gesture grew out of speech or exploring why people gestured when they were talking on the telephone.

But today, neuroscientists, linguists, and philosophers are making much bolder claims. A few argue that human characteristics like empathy, or concepts like time and space, or even the deep structure of language and some of the most profound principles of mathematics, can ultimately be traced to the idiosyncrasies of the human body. If we didn't walk upright, for example, or weren't warm-blooded, they argue, we might understand these concepts totally differently. The experience of having a body, they argue, is intimately tied to our intelligence.
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"If you want to teach a computer to play chess, or if you want to design a search engine, the old model is OK," says Rolf Pfeifer, director of the artificial intelligence lab at the University of Zurich, "but if you're interested in understanding real intelligence, you have to deal with the body."

. . .

Embodied cognition upends several centuries of thinking about thinking. Rene Descartes, living in an age when steam engines were novelty items, envisioned the brain as a pump that moved "animating fluid" through the body - head-shrinkers through the ages have tended to enlist the high-tech of their day to describe the human cognitive system - but the mind, Descartes argued, was something else entirely, an incorporeal entity that interacted with the body through the pineal gland.

While a few thinkers, most notably the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the 1940s, challenged Descartes' mind-body separation, it remained the dominant model up through the 20th century, though its form evolved with the times. After the development of the modern computer in the years after World War II, a new version of the same model was adopted, with the brain as a computer and the mind as the software that ran on it.

In the 1980s, however, a group of scholars began to contest this approach. Fueled in part by broad disappointment with artificial-intelligence research, they argued that human beings don't really process information the way computers do, by manipulating abstract symbols using formal rules. In 1995, a major biological discovery brought even more enthusiasm to the field. Scientists in Italy discovered "mirror neurons" that respond when we see someone else performing an action - or even when we hear an action described - as if we ourselves were performing the action. By simultaneously playing a role in both acting and thinking, mirror neurons suggested that the two might not be so separate after all.

"You were seeing the same system, namely the motor system, playing a role in communication and cognition," says Arthur Glenberg, a professor of psychology and head of the embodied cognition laboratory at Arizona State University.

This realization has driven much of the recent work looking at how moving and thinking inform and interfere with each other. For example, a pair of studies published in 2006 by Sian Beilock, now an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, and Lauren Holt, one of her former students, examined how people who were good at certain physical activities thought about those activities.

In one study, Beilock and Holt had college hockey players, along with a non-hockey-player control group, read a sentence, sometimes hockey-related, sometimes not. Then the subjects would be shown a picture and asked if it corresponded with the sentence. Hockey players and non-hockey players alike almost invariably answered correctly, but on the hockey-related sentences the response times of the hockey players were significantly faster than the nonplayers. In a second study, the researchers found similar results with football players. According to Beilock, the difference in response time wasn't a matter of knowledge - after all, all of the subjects in the study got the vast majority of the questions right. What it suggested, Beilock argues, is that the athletes' greater store of appropriate physical experiences served as a sort of mental shortcut.
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"People with different types of motor experiences think in different ways," she argues.

These sorts of results aren't simply limited to thinking about sports, or other highly physical activities. A 2003 study by Michael Spivey, a psychology professor at Cornell, and his student Elizabeth Grant, found that people who were given a tricky spatial relations brainteaser exhibited a distinctive and unconscious pattern of eye movements just before they arrived at the answer. The subjects seemed to unconsciously work through the problem by enacting possible solutions with their gaze.

A study published in August by Alejandro Lleras and Laura Thomas, two psychologists at the University of Illinois, built on those results by inducing the eye movements Spivey had discovered. Lleras and Thomas found that doing so greatly improved the rate at which people solved the problem - even though most never figured out that the eye movements had anything to do with it.

"The subjects actually think that the eye-tracking task is very distracting," Lleras says. "They think we're doing this to keep them from solving the problem."

Other studies have looked at non-spatial problems and at memory. Work led by Susan Goldin-Meadow, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, has found that children given arithmetic problems that normally would be too difficult for them are more likely to get the right answer if they're told to gesture while thinking. And studies by Helga Noice, a psychologist at Elmhurst College, and her husband Tony Noice, an actor and director, found that actors have an easier time remembering lines their characters utter while gesturing, or simply moving.

The body, it appears, can subtly shape people's preferences. A study led by John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, found that subjects (all non-Chinese speakers) shown a series of Chinese ideographs while either pushing down or pulling up on a table in front of them will say they prefer the ideographs they saw when pulling upward over the ones they saw while pushing downward. Work by Beilock and Holt found that expert typists, when shown pairs of two-letter combinations and told to pick their favorite, tend to pick the pairs that are easier to type - without being able to explain why they did so.

What's particularly interesting to neuroscientists is the role that movement seems to play even in abstract thinking. Glenberg has done multiple studies looking at the effect of arm movements on language comprehension. In Glenberg's work, subjects were asked to determine whether a string of words on a computer screen made sense. To answer they had to reach toward themselves or away from themselves to press a button.
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What Glenberg has found is that subjects are quicker to answer correctly if the motion in the sentence matches the motion they must make to respond. If the sentence is, for example, "Andy delivered the pizza to you," the subject is quicker to discern the meaning of the sentence if he has to reach toward himself to respond than if he has to reach away. The results are the same if the sentence doesn't describe physical movement at all, but more metaphorical interactions, such as "Liz told you the story," or "Anne delegates the responsibilities to you."

The implication, Glenberg argues, is that "we are really understanding this language, even when it's more abstract, in terms of bodily action."

Some linguists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers go further - arguing that the roots of even the most complex and esoteric aspects of human thought lie in the body. The linguist George Lakoff, of the University of California, Berkeley, along with Rafael Nunez, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, have for several years advanced the argument that much of mathematics, from set theory to trigonometry to the concept of infinity, derives not from immutable properties of the universe but from the evolutionary history of the human brain and body. Our number system, they argue, and our understanding of addition and subtraction emerge from the fact that we are bipedal animals that measure off distances in discrete steps.

"If we had wheels, or moved along the ground on our bellies like snakes," Lakoff argues, "math might be very different."

These ideas have met intense opposition among mathematicians, but also among some cognitive scientists, who believe they reflect an overreaching reading of a promising but still sketchy set of experimental results.

"I think these findings are really fantastic and it's clear that there's a lot of connection between mind and body," says Arthur Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas. He remains skeptical, though, that the roots of higher cognition will be found in something as basic as the way we walk or move our eyes or arms.

"Any time there's a fad in science there's a tendency to say, 'It's all because of this,"' Markman says. "But the thing in psychology is that it's not all anything, otherwise we'd be done figuring it out already."

While embodied cognition remains a young field, some specialists believe that it suggests a rethinking of how we approach education. Angeline Lillard, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, says that one possibility is to take another look at the educational approach that Italian educator Maria Montessori laid out nearly 100 years ago, theories that for decades were ignored by mainstream educators. A key to the Montessori method is the idea that children learn best in a dynamic environment full of motion and the manipulation of physical objects. In Montessori schools, children learn the alphabet by tracing sandpaper letters, they learn math using blocks and cubes, they learn grammar by acting out sentences read to them.

To Lillard, the value of embodied cognition in education is self-evident.

"Our brains evolved to help us function in a dynamic environment, to move through it and find food and escape predators," she says. "It didn't evolve to help us sit in a chair in a classroom and listen to someone and regurgitate information."

24-foot snake staying at Columbus Zoo

2008-01-13T01:25:00.000-08:00

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Fluffy, a 24-foot python billed as the largest snake in captivity, is staying put to lure visitors into the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

The zoo paid $35,000 to the snake's breeder in Oklahoma to keep the reticulated python on permanent display. While on loan last year, the python helped draw 1.53 million visitors, just under the zoo's attendance record of 1.56 million set in 2006, said Pete Fingerhut, the zoo's associate director.

Fluffy is about as long as a moving van and thick as a telephone pole.

Bob Clark, the breeder from Oklahoma City who raised the python from a hatchling, initially resisted the zoo's purchase offer but said he's happy with the outcome.

"I really love that snake; I think it's a special animal," he said. "It's so big and tame and wonderful. But I have to deal with the realities of life like everyone else. I like to have the money, and I know she's got a great place to live there."

The Columbus Zoo doesn't buy animals very often, said Executive Director Jerry Borin. Its animals generally come as exchanges from other zoos or through breeding loans or donations, he said.

Fluffy is on display in a 25-foot enclosure with a pool and a few plants, where he eats two 10-pound rabbits a week. In the wild, pythons native to Asia eat whatever they can catch, starting with mice and lizards when they're small and graduating to pigs and goats. There are a few reports of human victims.

The largest known reticulated python, named for the cross-hatching patterns on their skin, was 32 feet, 9 1/2 inches when killed in 1912 in Indonesia.

Pair Brings Corpse to Store to Cash Check

2008-01-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

Two men wheeled a dead man through the streets in an office chair to a check-cashing store and tried to cash his Social Security check before being arrested on fraud charges, police said.

David J. Dalaia and James O'Hare pushed Virgilio Cintron's body from the Manhattan apartment that O'Hare and Cintron shared to Pay-O-Matic, about a block away, spokesman Paul Browne said witnesses told police.

"The witnesses saw the two pushing the chair with Cintron flopping from side to side and the two individuals propping him up and keeping him from flopping from side to side," Browne said.

The men left Cintron's body outside the store, went inside and tried to cash his $355 check, Browne said. The store's clerk, who knew Cintron, asked the men where he was, and O'Hare told the clerk they would go and get him, Browne said.

A police detective who was having lunch at a restaurant next to the check-cashing store noticed a crowd forming around Cintron's body, and "it's immediately apparent to him that Cintron is dead," Browne said.

The detective called uniformed New York Police Department officers at a nearby precinct. Emergency medical technicians arrived as O'Hare and Dalaia were preparing to wheel Cintron's body into the check-cashing store, Browne said. Police arrested Dalaia and O'Hare there, he said.

Cintron's body was taken to a hospital morgue. The medical examiner's office told police it appeared Cintron, 66, had died of natural causes within the previous 24 hours, Browne said.

"He was deceased in the apartment when he was removed by these two," Browne said.

Dalaia and O'Hare, both 65, were being held by police and faced check fraud charges, Browne said.

A call to a telephone number listed for Cintron at the apartment he shared with O'Hare went unanswered Tuesday evening. Police said they didn't have an address for Dalaia or attorney information for him or O'Hare.

Dog digs up dead best friend

2008-01-11T08:45:00.000-08:00

Oscar was so distraught after his best friend died that he dug him up and put him in his bed.

Oscar, an 18-month-old Lancashire heeler, missed Arthur, the family cat, so much after he died that the dog dug him up and brought him back into the house, according to the UK Web site TimesOnline.

When Oscar’s owner, Robert Bell of Great Manchester woke up the next morning, he discovered the dog curled up beside Arthur’s body in his basket.

The two pets had been constant companions, and Arthur watched over Oscar, Bell said. When Arthur died, Oscar was there as Bell buried his buddy in the garden.

During the middle of the night, Oscar had managed to get out of the cat door, dig up the cat and drag him inside. The dog then licked the cat clean before falling asleep next to his body.

“It must have taken him nearly all night,” Bell said about Oscar.

Arthur is now reburied in a secure grave, and the Bell’s have found Oscar a new friend … a kitten.

A good reason not to bury man's best friend (or its best friend) in your back yard!

Cranberries are wonder drugs for women

2008-01-11T06:16:00.000-08:00

Two glasses of cranberry juice a day can effectively cure bladder infections, ulcers, cavities and viruses in women, says a researcher.

Prof. Itzhak Ofek, a researcher at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine, has revealed that the red beverage has some additional medicinal qualities that can heal urinary tract infections, prevent cavities and lessens the reoccurrence of gastric ulcers in women.

He said that the remarkable healing property stems from a heavy molecule known as non-dialysable material or NDM. It seems to coat some bodily surfaces with Teflon-like efficiency, preventing the infection-causing agents.

"Surprisingly, NDM appears to have no effect on some of the good bacteria in our bodies," said Prof. Ofek.

"We understood that there was something in cranberry juice that doesn't let infections adhere to a woman's bladder. We figured it was a specific inhibitor and proved this to be the case," he added.

Ofek worked with Prof. Ervin Weiss and Prof. Zichria Rones at Hadassah Medical and Dental School to find out how did it prevented cavities. He found that NDM inhibits the flu virus from attaching to cells and prevented experimental flu infections in animal models.

In another study with Dr. Haim Shmuely, a resident physician at the Beilinson Hospital and lecturer at Tel Aviv University, Ofek found that cranberry also reduced two-thirds of the 'unhealthy' bacteria that gripped on to the to gastric cells, leading to ulcers.

"The results were very interesting. Cranberry helped reduce the load of this bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, in the gut. In combination with antibiotics, it reduced repeat ulcers from approximately 15 per cent to about 5 per cent," said Ofek.

However, he said that the study holds true for women only.

"The whole thing with cranberries seems to be female-oriented," he said

According to the researcher further studies investigating berry's healing powers have also found that cranberry NDM can also act as an anti-cancer agent.

Fed Chief Signals Further Rate Cut

2008-01-10T11:03:00.000-08:00

Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, sent a strong signal on Thursday that the central bank will lower interest rates again this month as it attempts to stave off a recession.

Mr. Bernanke said the downturn in the credit and housing markets posed substantial risks to economic health. He predicted that consumer spending and overall growth would slow in 2008.

“We stand ready to take substantive additional action as needed to support growth and to provide adequate insurance against downside risks,” Mr. Bernanke said in a speech in Washington on Thursday.

Calling monetary policy the “Fed’s best tool” for regulating the economy, Mr. Bernanke said that “additional policy easing may well be necessary” to maintain growth levels as consumer spending and home values face a steep decline next year.

His remarks lifted the expectations of investors that Fed officials will lower the overnight lending rate by as much as half a point at their next policy meeting on Jan. 29 and 30. Stocks rallied after the remarks were released, erasing morning losses, but quickly fell back. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down slightly and the Dow Jones industrials showed an increase of 11.30 points, to 12,746.61 at 1:45 p.m.

Investors typically cheer rate cuts, which grease the wheels of the economy by making it easier for banks and businesses to lend to consumers and one another. But Mr. Bernanke’s starkly negative forecast for 2008 may have trumped investors’ short-term hopes by raising the specter of a long-term slowdown in spending.

The chairman focused his remarks on the coming risks to overall growth, a sign that the Fed may be willing to set aside concerns over rising inflation at its next policy meeting.

Mr. Bernanke acknowledged that the Fed was closely monitoring inflation levels and said that a flare-up in prices would reduce its ability to stimulate growth through monetary policy. But he noted that inflation expectations “have remained reasonably well anchored,” and he said that the Fed was “prepared to act in a decisive and timely manner” to maintain economic stability.

Mr. Bernanke cited high oil prices, plummeting home prices and the struggling stock market as factors that “seem likely to weigh on consumer spending as we move into 2008.”

A lackluster employment report in December, which showed the unemployment rate rising by 0.3 percentage points, also appeared to give the chairman pause. He called the report disappointing and noted that the labor market had previously been a source of stability amid a difficult economic situation.

“It would be a mistake to read too much into any one report,” Mr. Bernanke said. “However, should the labor market deteriorate, the risks to consumer spending would rise.”

The Fed has tried to counter the credit squeeze by starting a system of anonymous auctions, which allow banks to borrow money from the government without the stigma of appearing desperate for credit. Mr. Bernanke said the new program, known as the Term Auction Facility, has been successful and “may thus become a useful permanent addition to the Fed’s toolbox,” pending a public vetting.

Aussie teen blames pot for animal thefts

2008-01-09T00:49:00.000-08:00

Darwin, (Australia), January 9: An Australian teenager blamed the influence of marijuana for his decision to steal two crocodiles and a monkey, local media reported Wednesday.

Benjamin Glen Watts, 19, pleaded guilty in court Tuesday to twice breaking into a wildlife park on the outskirts of the tropical city of Darwin last July, Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio reported on its Web site.

Watts said he planned to sell the stolen baby crocodiles and the marmoset but had been unable to find buyers, ABC reported.

Crocodylus Park spokesman Grahame Webb said Wednesday the animals were returned unharmed.

Watts' lawyer told the court his client admitted it was a 'dumb stoner' thing to do and had written to Crocodylus Park to apologise.

Magistrate Greg Cavanagh sentenced Watts to a three-month suspended jail sentence. Watts has been counseled for his marijuana use since the thefts.

A court official was not immediately available for comment.

Japanese new-borns visit relatives as rice bags

2008-01-07T23:47:00.001-08:00

Tokyo, January 8: New-born babies in Japan who can't make it round to visit all their relatives can now send them proxies instead - cuddly bags of rice.

A small rice shop in Fukuoka, southern Japan, has been swamped with orders for 'Dakigokochi' rice-filled bags shaped like a bundled baby and printed with the new-born's face and name.

Each rice bag is tailor-made to weigh as much as the new-born and shaped so the rice fills the bag up. Holding the round-edged bag would feel like holding a real baby.

"Other rice shops sell bags printed with baby photos, but they use regular bags. People say they aren't good for holding," said Naruo Ono, owner of the rice shop, Yoshimiya.

"Rice for small babies would be stuck at the bottom of the bag, and the baby's photo would be scrunched at the top."

It is customary in Japan to give people gifts or money on occasions such as births, and the recipient then responds with other gifts, often worth half the amount they received.

The rice bags have made perfect 'half-return' gifts, Ono said, although relatives face a dilemma once they are done with the cuddling.

"People say they have a hard time opening them up and eating the rice," Ono said.

Becks trusts naked man around Posh!

2008-01-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

London, January 7: David Beckham is so sure of pal Gary Neville, that he would not think anything was fishy if he found him naked around wife Victoria.

The two footballers have been fast friends since their teens, and Becks told the Football Writers' Association bash in London that Neville is one of three people in the world whom he trusts will all his heart.

"They're the three people I'd trust with my wife naked. That's how good they are as friends," The Sun quoted him, as saying.

However, Becks didn't name the other two people who he would trust around his wife even if they didn't have a stitch of clothing on.

Becks is currently in the UK training with former club Manchester United's arch rivals Arsenal during the Major League Soccer close season so he can be fit for a possible England call-up under new manager Fabio Capello.

Former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson has urged Capello to pick Becks for the next international so that the footballer can reach a century of caps for his country.

South Korean warehouse fire kills 40

2008-01-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

SEOUL, South Korea - Fire tore through a refrigeration warehouse under construction in an industrial district south of the capital today, killing 40 people and sending toxic fumes into the air, officials said.

Kim Jung-geun, a local fire official, said no more bodies were expected to be found at the site of the blaze in Icheon about 50 miles south of Seoul.

He said the exact cause of the morning fire was not known, but that workers were injecting urethane foam into basement walls when the fire started.

Kim said explosions heard around the time of the fire were caused by the blaze itself. He also said only one body had been positively identified so far, because the corpses were so badly burned.

Ha Jae-ho, a fire investigator, told YTN that firefighters and rescue officials were searching the wreckage carefully because they feared the building might collapse.

Cable news channel YTN showed black-clad firefighters battling thick black, brown and white smoke, some of it spewing from underground.

An official at Korea 2000, a logistics company that owns the facility, said the building was under construction and was intended for refrigeration purposes.

The official said workers were applying the final touches when the fire broke out. The official requested anonymity, saying company rules prohibit employees from speaking to the media.

Icheon, a crossroads for South Korea's largest highways, is home to Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second-largest manufacture of computer memory chips.

Samsung explores low-cost colour phone to take on Nokia

2008-01-07T09:24:00.000-08:00

Seoul, January 7: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Monday it is considering a low-cost mobile phone worth $40-50 that comes with colour features to fight bigger rival Nokia.

Samsung, the world's No. 2 mobile phone maker in the third quarter of 2007, gained market share last year by offering more medium- and low-cost phones, moving away from its previous focus on premium models.

"We are considering a $40-50 phone, if such a model can be cost-competitive," said a Samsung spokesman. "It targets Nokia in the emerging markets."

Samsung hopes to add the colour feature on the proposed model but was still studying the project's feasibility, he added. "It's going to take some time to decide."

The average selling price of Samsung's mobile phones stood at $151 in the third quarter, compared with the 2006 average of $176. Its market share is estimated at 14 percent or higher in 2007, up from 11.4 per cent in 2006.

Samsung aims to sell 200 million mobile phones in 2008, compared with about 160 million in 2007, a company executive said in November.

As growth in the global handset industry slows, it will be crucial for Samsung to expand its presence in the largely untapped emerging markets.

Nokia, which has larger economies of scale and well-established distribution channels, enjoyed a lead in emerging markets such as India.

In advanced markets such as the United States, mobile phone makers face competition from the iPhone, Apple Inc's first phone.

Samsung seeks to take up to 25 per cent of the global mobile phone market revenue by 2010, compared with about 15 perc ent seen for 2007, Samsung said in late November.

Shares in Samsung fell 3.53 per cent to 520,000 won by 0224 GMT, compared to the wider market's 2 per cent drop.

Fresh Tuna Sells for Record $55,700

2008-01-07T00:11:00.000-08:00

If you have ever wondered how the price of sushi can get so high, this might help explain.

Recently, the world’s largest fish market in Tokyo, Japan had it’s first auction of 2008. At the Tsukiji market about 2,904 bluefin tuna were sold, including one that set the record for most expensive.

A Hong Kong sushi restaurant owner paid a record 55,700 dollars for a huge bluefin tuna that was caught off Japan’s northern region of Aomori.

Japan, who consume about 25% of the all tuna caught, is moving towards limiting bluefin tuna fishing in its own waters in a bid to help protect the species from extinction.

Monkeys 'Pay' for Sex by Grooming

2008-01-06T08:01:00.000-08:00

SINGAPORE (Jan. 6) - Male macaque monkeys pay for sex by grooming females, according to a recent study that suggests the primates may treat sex as a commodity.

"In primate societies, grooming is the underlying fabric of it all," Dr. Michael Gumert, a primatologist at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said in a telephone interview Saturday.

Japanese Macaque monkeys groom each other at Jigokudani Wild Monkey Park in Yamanouchi, Japan.

"It's a sign of friendship and family, and it's also something that can be exchanged for sexual services," Gumert said.

Gumert's findings, reported in New Scientist last week, resulted from a 20-month observation of about 50 long-tailed macaques in a reserve in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.

Gumert found after a male grooms a female, the likelihood that she will engage in sexual activity with the male was about three times more than if the grooming had not occurred.

And as with other commodities, the value of sex is affected by supply and demand factors: A male would spend more time grooming a female if there were fewer females in the vicinity.

"And when the female supply is higher, the male spends less time on grooming ... The mating actually becomes cheaper depending on the market," Gumert said.

Other experts not involved in the study welcomed Gumert's research, saying it was a major effort in systematically studying the interaction of organisms in ways in which an exchange of commodities or services can be observed - a theory known as biological markets.

Dr. Peter Hammerstein, a professor at the Institute for Theoretical Biology at Humboldt University in Berlin and Dr. Ronald Noe, a primatologist at the University of Louis-Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, first proposed the concept of biological markets in 1994.

"It is not a rare phenomenon in nature that males have to make some 'mating effort' in order to get a female's 'permission' to mate," Hammerstein said in an interview, likening the effort to a "fee" that the male pays.

"The interesting result of Dr. Gumert's research on macaque mating is that the mating market seems to have an influence on the amount of this fee," Hammerstein said.

Hammserstein said Gumert's findings indicate the monkeys are capable of adjusting their behavior to "different market conditions."

Gumert completed his fieldwork in February 2005 and first published his findings in the November issue of "Animal Behaviour," a scientific monthly journal.

Anti-missile tests on American Airlines

2008-01-06T07:44:00.001-08:00

DALLAS - Up to three American Airlines jets carrying passengers will be outfitted with anti-missile technology this spring in the latest phase of testing technology to protect commercial planes from attack.

An American Airlines spokesman said Friday that the test will determine how well the anti-missile system holds up under the rigors of flight.

The first Boeing 767-200 will be equipped in April or later, said the airline spokesman, Tim Wagner. American operates that Boeing model mostly between New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles.

American said it is "not in favor" of putting anti-missile systems on commercial planes but agreed to take part in the tests to understand technologies that might be available in the future.

The technology is intended to stop a missile attack by detecting heat given off from the rocket, then firing a laser beam that jams the missile's guidance system.

The device on the belly of the Boeing 767-200 aircraft will be operational but won't be tested on regular flights, Wagner said. The use of a signal to mimic a missile attack has already been tested in the air, Wagner said.

American, the nation's largest carrier, has been working with defense contractor BAE Systems PLC on the project for a couple years. In 2006, BAE installed its hardware on a Boeing 767 that wasn't used to fly paying passengers.

About a year ago, reporters were invited to American's maintenance base in Fort Worth to see a jet outfitted with the laser-jamming device on its belly.

"We are now entering the next phase," Wagner said, which is "to see how the system holds up on an aircraft in real-time conditions — weather, continuous takeoffs and landings, etc. — and to test its maintenance reliability."

Wagner said American is also collecting more information on how the laser-jamming device affects fuel consumption.

Congress has approved funding for anti-missile research partly out of fear that terrorists armed with shoulder-fired weapons could hit jetliners as they take off and land. U.K.-based BAE won a contract from the Homeland Security Department to test its technology.

Fort Worth-based American, a unit of AMR Corp., has said anti-missile defense is best handled by stopping terrorists from getting missiles that could shoot down commercial jets and by improving security around airports.

Anti-missile tests on American Airlines

2008-01-06T07:44:00.000-08:00

Russians rescued after missing for 3 months

2008-01-06T05:43:00.000-08:00

Russian rescuers on Friday saved 11 people stranded for nearly three months in a remote area of the Pacific coast after a fishing trip went wrong, local media reported.

The group had survived by eating flour they scavenged from a deserted military base, hunting for game and burning furniture for fuel and heating, the Vesti-24 television station reported.

Their two boats were damaged in a storm on October 10 during a fishing expedition off the Kamchatka Peninsula.

One vessel was lost and they were unable to repair the second, forcing the group, which included three women, to remain in their makeshift shelter with no way of calling for help.

When their food supplies started to run low, they sent five of their party to seek help. After walking for four days, the five found a military unit which then sent for help.

U.S. military: Iraqi soldier killed U.S. troops

2008-01-05T05:15:00.000-08:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two U.S. soldiers who died last month in Iraq were apparently shot to death by an Iraqi soldier during a combined U.S. and Iraqi Army operation, the U.S. military said.

A man receives treatment at a hospital in Baquba on Saturday after being injured by a roadside bomb.

"For reasons that are as yet unknown, at least one Iraqi Army soldier allegedly opened fire killing Capt. Rowdy Inman and Sgt. Benjamin Portell, both of whom were assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment," the military said in a statement released Saturday.

Three other U.S. soldiers and a civilian interpreter were wounded in the attack, the military said.

The incident happened on December 26 in northern Iraq's Ninewah province as the U.S. Army and the Iraqi Army were working together "to establish a combat outpost," the military said.

"The Iraqi soldier who allegedly opened fire, fled the scene but was identified by other Iraqi Army personnel and was then apprehended," the military said.

When the deaths of Cpt. Inman and Sgt. Portell were announced last month, the military made no mention of how they were killed other than that they died "from wounds received from small-arms fire during operations."

Several roadside bombs killed at least seven and wounded 12 people in Iraq, while five bullet-riddled bodies were found in Baghdad Saturday morning, according to Iraqi officials.

The deadliest attack happened about 50 miles northeast of Baquba in the town of Saadiya when a roadside bomb destroyed a minibus loaded with men, women and children, according to Baquba police. Six people on the bus died and three were hurt, police said.

One civilian died and three were wounded by a roadside bombing in the Othmaniya neighborhood in southwestern Baquba Saturday, police said.

A second bomb exploded nearby just minutes later, wounding two members of Baquba's Awakening Council who arrived to help the first bombing victims, police said.

Awakening Councils predominantly comprise Sunni Muslims and some former militants. Many of the councils have been recruited by the U.S. military's "Concerned Local Citizen's Program" to work against al Qaeda in Iraq.

In recent weeks, al Qaeda in Iraq has launched an aggressive attack campaign against Awakening Councils.

Members of a local Awakening Council found the bodies of five people who were shot to death in southern Baghdad's Dora district Saturday morning, the official said. Their identities were not immediately known, he said.

Oklahoma City mayor puts city on a diet

2008-01-05T02:42:00.000-08:00

OKLAHOMA CITY - With a button-popping spread of cornbread, sausage and gravy, chicken fried steak and pecan pie designated as Oklahoma's official state meal, it's no surprise that Oklahoma City's mayor wants to put the city on a diet. Mick Cornett has challenged the city to shed 1 million pounds as its New Year's resolution.

Prompted in part by his own struggle to lose weight, Cornett wants to end Oklahoma City's dubious distinction as one of America's fattest cities.

"The message of this obesity initiative is that we've got to watch what we eat," Cornett said Thursday. "Exercise is part of it and the city is trying to change into a city that is less sprawling, has more density and is more pedestrian friendly, but you're not really going to take on obesity unless you acknowledge that we eat too much and don't eat the right foods."

As part of the initiative, residents can sign up and track their weight loss on a new Web site, http://www.thiscityisgoingonadiet.com. More than 2,600 people had registered by Thursday. They've lost more than 300 pounds.

Besides a body mass index calculator, the site includes recipes and links to metro-area fitness centers. Plans call for expanding the site to include the opportunity to blog and network with other participants, Cornett said.

"It's always easier if you're doing something hard if you have other people to do it with," he said.

The mayor timed the start of the weight-loss program to the beginning of the new year, when many people begin exercise programs after holiday feasts.

Oklahoma City ranked 15th in a 2007 survey of America's fattest cities conducted by Men's Fitness magazine. The survey examined lifestyle factors in each city, including fast-food restaurants per capita and availability of city parks, gyms and bike paths.

"I can't tell you exactly where you rank in our 2008 survey, but I can tell you that Oklahoma City is in the top 10," magazine spokeswoman Jennifer Krosche said. "That's not good."

The Oklahoma Legislature designated an official state meal in 1988. The menu also includes fried okra, squash, barbecue pork, biscuits, grits, corn, strawberries and black-eyed peas.

Cornett, 49, stands about 5-foot-10 and weighs 183 pounds. He began a personal fitness initiative eight months ago when he weighed 217 pounds.

"I would like to get down to 175, so I've made a goal to lose 8 pounds over 8 weeks," he said.

Carrie Snyder-Renfro, a 44-year-old teacher working out at a fitness center Thursday, said she made a resolution last month to eat healthier and exercise. While she was unaware of the mayor's Web site, she said she would consider signing up.

"Last year I dieted and lost about 10 pounds a month for three months, but I left out a key component," she said, huffing and puffing on an elliptical machine. "I didn't exercise regularly. I ended up losing muscle mass instead of fat, and I ended up gaining almost all of it back.

"Now I'm making it more of a priority to put everything in balance. I have to get the eye of the tiger back."

Cornett wants to make exercise more attractive to residents by increasing the number of bike trails and sidewalks in the sprawling city, where public transportation is minimal, most people are wedded to their cars and outdoor activities for some might be limited to watching a football game.

"In Colorado, you ski, you climb, you run ... something," said Karen Massey, community nutrition coordinator at Integris Baptist Medical Center. "In Oklahoma, we're either involved in competitive sports or we do nothing. We're spectators."

Live like a monk to avoid cancer

2008-01-04T02:18:00.001-08:00

A Living like a monk may have more than spiritual benefits, with a recent study into one of the world's most isolated monastic communities in Greece revealing that such dietary and healthy living habits resulted in lower cancer rates.

The dietary and lifestyle habits of monks on the all-male community in Mount Athos have shown that the regular consumption of olive oil, daily portions of fish, seasonal fruit and vegetables are among the main contributors towards keeping prostate cancer below international averages, data presented by urologist Haralambos Aidonopoulos showed.

'It is not just the Mediterranean diet that helps but generally a diet consisting of old, traditional standards,' Aidonopoulos told DPA.

Aidonopoulos said he had examined hundreds of monks living on Mount Athos since 1994 and found that the incidence of prostate cancer was four times lower than the international average.

The study found that in the last 13 years, there had been 11 reported cases of prostate cancer among the more than 1,500 monks living in the 20 different monasteries in the segregated community in northwest Greece from which women are banned.

Other factors in the same study shown to keep prostate cancer at bay were the stress-free existence of the monks away from women, proper sleep patterns and the lack of air pollution.

The lifestyle habits and traditions of the various monasteries on the peninsula, which the Prince of Wales visits regularly and which are only accessible by boat, have not changed in 1,000 years.

Meals on Mount Athos are simple and do not contain meat, but fish is a regular fare on holidays and feast days such as Christmas and Easter.

The staple foods are bread, olives, vegetables, rice, pasta, soya dishes and fruit. In fact, the monks grow much of what they consume themselves.

Monks usually indulge in a glass of red wine, which is made locally from mountain grapes, with their dinner but on fast days - Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays - they abstain from wine, olive oil and dairy products altogether.

Many of the monastic communities on Mount Athos eat twice a day, and have bread and tea for breakfast and a supper of lentils, salad and fruit, except during the rigorous fasting periods of the Orthodox Church, when some will eat only at midday.

The average day begins with an hour of prayers before dawn and meal times are conducted in silence while one of the monks usually reads a passage from the Bible. The monks normally have to eat at great speed because once the reading is over the meal is officially completed.

The rest of the day is spent doing chores such as cleaning, tending to crops and cooking followed by evening prayers.

Six-year-old Indian boy eyes 100-car 'limbo-skate'

2008-01-04T02:05:00.000-08:00

A six-year-old Indian boy, Aniket Chindak is hoping to enter the record books after 'limbo-skating' under 57 cars in less than a minute.

Aniket has already created an unofficial world record by squeezing himself under a row of 57 four-wheel drive cars in 45 seconds.

With legs split, chest bent forward and chin almost skimming along the road, Aniket is no more than eight inches above the ground when he vanishes under the vehicles in Belgaum, India.

The wonder-kid, who started skating when he was 18-months-old, is now training for four hours a day and plans to break his world record of 57 cars with a 100-car skate in New Delhi.

"I first saw a girl skate under a car on television two years ago and decided to learn how to do it myself. It took three months before I could get my body in the right position," the Daily Record quoted Aniket, as saying."Since then, I have skated under lots of cars and have never hurt myself.

"The hardest thing is to go fast enough before I bend down because that's how you can skate under so many cars at once. I think it will be very difficult for anyone to beat 100 cars," he added.

According to his father, Ramesh, the skating marvel covers 60-miles twice a week in practice and sulks when he is told to finish.

"Aniket was always very flexible but for limbo-skating you need strength as well," Ramesh said. "It took him a while to condition his body to hold the correct position. Now his battle is to get the speed and control for 100 cars.

"He wants to set a world record no one can beat for a long time," he added.

Six-year-old Indian boy eyes 100-car 'limbo-skate'

2008-01-03T02:21:00.000-08:00

London, January 3 : A six-year-old Indian boy, Aniket Chindak is hoping to enter the record books after 'limbo-skating' under 57 cars in less than a minute.

Aniket has already created an unofficial world record by squeezing himself under a row of 57 four-wheel drive cars in 45 seconds.

With legs split, chest bent forward and chin almost skimming along the road, Aniket is no more than eight inches above the ground when he vanishes under the vehicles in Belgaum, India.

The wonder-kid, who started skating when he was 18-months-old, is now training for four hours a day and plans to break his world record of 57 cars with a 100-car skate in New Delhi.

"I first saw a girl skate under a car on television two years ago and decided to learn how to do it myself. It took three months before I could get my body in the right position," the Daily Record quoted Aniket, as saying."Since then, I have skated under lots of cars and have never hurt myself.

"The hardest thing is to go fast enough before I bend down because that's how you can skate under so many cars at once. I think it will be very difficult for anyone to beat 100 cars," he added.

According to his father, Ramesh, the skating marvel covers 60-miles twice a week in practice and sulks when he is told to finish.

"Aniket was always very flexible but for limbo-skating you need strength as well," Ramesh said. "It took him a while to condition his body to hold the correct position. Now his battle is to get the speed and control for 100 cars.

Teen birth figures highlight need for better sex education

2008-01-02T00:50:00.000-08:00

A December report that the nation’s teen birthrate rose for the first time in 15 years lends support to the argument that abstinence-only sex education programs are failing many of America’s young people.

For 2006, Western North Carolina’s teen pregnancy rate among girls 15-19 stayed about the same as it’s been since 2003, about 59.6 per 1,000 women, according to an October report.

That should be good news in light of the rising national rates, but there’s more to the story.

Until 2006, the national birthrate had been dropping since its peak in 1991. Between 2005 and 2006, it grew by 3 percent, from 40.5 per 1,000 in 2005 to 42 per 1,000 in 2006. In 1991, the peak for teen births, there were nearly 62 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 19.

In other words, in Western North Carolina, we’ve held steady for three years just shy of the national peak.

Rep. Fisher’s bill

It’s a shame a bill sponsored by Rep. Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe, that would have required school districts to provide comprehensive sex education classes for students in seventh grade and above failed to make it out of the education committee during the 2007 General Assembly session.

It would have relieved school systems of the obligation to hold public hearings before installing a comprehensive sex education curriculum and of asking parents to consent or refuse to allow their children to participate, though it would have allowed parents to take their children out of sex education classes.

Fisher’s bill can’t be brought up during the short session this year because it failed to pass either the House or the Senate, but Fisher said earlier this week that it’s still being talked about in the Democratic Women’s Caucus and that she intends to introduce it again in 2009.

If the statistical trend continues in the wrong direction, as many experts fear it will, the bill may have a better chance in a couple of years.

More diseases

In addition to an increase in the number of teen births, some key sexually transmitted disease rates are on the rise including syphilis, gonorrhea and Chlamydia.

It’s part of the same phenomenon, said Dr. Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health.

The December report offers a state-by-state breakdown of birthrates. Many of those with the highest birth- rates teach abstinence instead of comprehensive sex education, according to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

As Fisher pointed out when her bill was being considered, despite an abstinence-until-marriage curriculum, research shows that the majority of young people do not wait until they are married to have sex. Sixty-three percent of high school seniors in the state report having had sex, she said.

A study ordered by Congress and released in April found that students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not. They also reported having similar numbers of sexual partners and first having sex at about the same age as other students — about 14.9 years.

In other words, abstinence-only programs don’t work if the goal is to prevent teen pregnancy and disease transmission by preventing teen sex. As a result, teens are having sex without accurate, factual information about the potential consequences of their behavior.

Better to inform

Withholding age-appropriate information about sex from curious young people trying to make sense of their emotions and developing bodies leaves them vulnerable to making uninformed decisions that can alter their lives forever, sometimes tragically.

Many abstinence-only proponents believe it should be up to parents to provide guidance about sex to their teen-agers. While that’s true, for whatever reason, many parents don’t. That leaves many vulnerable young people whose futures are on the line.

If they make bad choices without fully understanding the consequences, not only they, but the larger community, will suffer. Teen-age mothers often don’t complete high school and babies born to them are more likely to be neglected and abused, often perpetuating or setting in motion a cycle of poverty and dependence on services paid for by taxpayers.

Fisher’s bill could help empower young people with age-appropriate information to which they have a right. Here’s hoping it becomes law the next time it’s introduced.

Meanwhile, if you have a teen and you haven’t talked with him or her about sexually transmitted diseases, birth control methods and the financial, emotional and other obligations that accompany parenthood, now, as the New Year begins, would be a good time to have that discussion. If you din’t know where to start, ask a librarian for books and Internet resources that offer guidance.

It may be one of the most important conversations you ever have with your child.

100 ways to lose weight

2008-01-01T10:23:00.000-08:00

By Top Dietitians of the American Dietetic Association for Prevention
Got a diet dilemma? Ask a true diet pro: an RD, or registered dietitian. Her job is turning complex nutrition research into doable plans for real people.

Courtesy of the American Dietetic Association (ADA), we took our readers' eleven toughest diet problems and ran them by some of the top dietitians in the US: RDs who, in addition to their private careers, serve as media spokespersons or heads of specialty practice groups for the ADA.

Here's what they told us, in their own words. These tips are solid gold, learned from successful experience with thousands of clients. Some tips are new. Some you've heard before, but they're repeated because they work. This treasure trove of RD wisdom could change your life-starting today.

I Can Only Handle One Diet Change Right Now. What Should I Do?
1. Add just one fruit or veggie serving daily. Get comfortable with that, then add an extra serving until you reach 8 to 10 a day.

2. Eat at least two servings of a fruit or veggie at every meal.

3. Resolve never to supersize your food portions—unless you want to supersize your clothes.

4. Make eating purposeful, not mindless. Whenever you put food in your mouth, peel it, unwrap it, plate it, and sit. Engage all of the senses in the pleasure of nourishing your body.

5. Start eating a big breakfast. It helps you eat fewer total calories throughout the day.

6. Make sure your plate is half veggies and/or fruit at both lunch and dinner.

Are there Any Easy Tricks to Help Me Cut Calories?
7. Eating out? Halve it, and bag the rest. A typical restaurant entree has 1,000 to 2,000 calories, not even counting the bread, appetizer, beverage, and dessert.

8. When dining out, make it automatic: Order one dessert to share.

9. Use a salad plate instead of a dinner plate.

10. See what you eat. Plate your food instead of eating out of the jar or bag.

11. Eat the low-cal items on your plate first, then graduate. Start with salads, veggies, and broth soups, and eat meats and starches last. By the time you get to them, you'll be full enough to be content with smaller portions of the high-calorie choices.

12. Instead of whole milk, switch to 1 percent. If you drink one 8-oz glass a day, you'll lose 5 lb in a year.

13. Juice has as many calories, ounce for ounce, as soda. Set a limit of one 8-oz glass of fruit juice a day.

14. Get calories from foods you chew, not beverages. Have fresh fruit instead of fruit juice.

15. Keep a food journal. It really works wonders.

16. Follow the Chinese saying: "Eat until you are eight-tenths full."

17. Use mustard instead of mayo.

18. Eat more soup. The noncreamy ones are filling but low-cal.

19. Cut back on or cut out caloric drinks such as soda, sweet tea, lemonade, etc. People have lost weight by making just this one change. If you have a 20-oz bottle of Coca-Cola every day, switch to Diet Coke. You should lose 25 lb in a year.

20. Take your lunch to work.

21. Sit when you eat.

22. Dilute juice with water.

23. Have mostly veggies for lunch.

24. Eat at home.

25. Limit alcohol to weekends.

How Can I Eat More Veggies?
26. Have a V8 or tomato juice instead of a Diet Coke at 3 pm.

27. Doctor your veggies to make them delicious: Dribble maple syrup over carrots, and sprinkle chopped nuts on green beans.

28. Mix three different cans of beans and some diet Italian dressing. Eat this three-bean salad all week.

29. Don't forget that vegetable soup counts as a vegetable.

30. Rediscover the sweet potato.

31. Use prebagged baby spinach everywhere: as "lettuce" in sandwiches, heated in soups, wilted in hot pasta, and added to salads.

32. Spend the extra few dollars to buy vegetables that are already washed and cut up.

33. Really hate veggies? Relax. If you love fruits, eat plenty of them; they are just as healthy (especially colorful ones such as oranges, mangoes, and melons).

34. Keep seven bags of your favorite frozen vegetables on hand. Mix any combination, microwave, and top with your favorite low-fat dressing. Enjoy 3 to 4 cups a day. Makes a great quick dinner.

Can You Give Me a Mantra that will Help Me Stick to My Diet?
35. "The best portion of high-calorie foods is the smallest one. The best portion of vegetables is the largest one. Period."

36. "I'll ride the wave. My cravings will disappear after 10 minutes if I turn my attention elsewhere."

37. "I want to be around to see my grandchildren, so I can forgo a cookie now."

38. "I am a work in progress."

39. "It's more stressful to continue being fat than to stop overeating."

I Eat Healthy, but I'm Overweight. What Mistakes Could I Be Making without Realizing It?
40. Skipping meals. Many healthy eaters "diet by day and binge by night."

41. Don't "graze" yourself fat. You can easily munch 600 calories of pretzels or cereal without realizing it.

42. Eating pasta like crazy. A serving of pasta is 1 cup, but some people routinely eat 4 cups.43. Eating supersize bagels of 400 to 500 calories for snacks.

44. Ignoring "Serving Size" on the Nutrition Facts panel.

45. Snacking on bowls of nuts. Nuts are healthy but dense with calories. Put those bowls away, and use nuts as a garnish instead of a snack.

46. Thinking all energy bars and fruit smoothies are low-cal.

What Can I Eat for a Healthy Low-Cal Dinner if I Don't Want to Cook?
47. A smoothie made with fat-free milk, frozen fruit, and wheat germ.

48. The smallest fast-food burger (with mustard and ketchup, not mayo) and a no-cal beverage. Then at home, have an apple or baby carrots.

49. A peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread with a glass of 1 percent milk and an apple.

50. Precooked chicken strips and microwaved frozen broccoli topped with Parmesan cheese.

51. A healthy frozen entree with a salad and a glass of 1 percent milk.

52. Scramble eggs in a nonstick skillet. Pop some asparagus in the microwave, and add whole wheat toast. If your cholesterol levels are normal, you can have seven eggs a week!

53. A bag of frozen vegetables heated in the microwave, topped with 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese and 2 tablespoons of chopped nuts.

54. Prebagged salad topped with canned tuna, grape tomatoes, shredded reduced-fat cheese, and low-cal Italian dressing.

55. Keep lean sandwich fixings on hand: whole wheat bread, sliced turkey, reduced-fat cheese, tomatoes, mustard with horseradish.

56. Heat up a can of good soup.

57. Cereal, fruit, and fat-free milk makes a good meal anytime.

58. Try a veggie sandwich from Subway.

59. Precut fruit for a salad and add yogurt.

What's Your Best Advice for Avoiding those Extra Holiday Pounds?
60. Don't tell yourself, "It's okay, it's the holidays." That opens the door to 6 weeks of splurging.

61. Remember, EAT before you meet. Have this small meal before you go to any parties: a hardboiled Egg, Apple, and a Thirst quencher (water, seltzer, diet soda, tea).

62. As obvious as it sounds, don't stand near the food at parties. Make the effort, and you'll find you eat less.

63. At a buffet? Eating a little of everything guarantees high calories. Decide on three or four things, only one of which is high in calories. Save that for last so there's less chance of overeating.

64. For the duration of the holidays, wear your snuggest clothes that don't allow much room for expansion. Wearing sweats is out until January.

65. Give it away! After company leaves, give away leftover food to neighbors, doormen, or delivery people, or take it to work the next day.

66. Walk around the mall three times before you start shopping.

67. Make exercise a nonnegotiable priority.

68. Dance to music with your family in your home. One dietitian reported that when she asks her patients to do this, initially they just smile, but once they've done it, they say it is one of the easiest ways to involve the whole family in exercise.

How Can I Control a Raging Sweet Tooth?
69. Once in a while, have a lean, mean salad for lunch or dinner, and save the meal's calories for a full dessert.

70. Are you the kind of person who does better if you make up your mind to do without sweets and just not have them around? Or are you going to do better if you have a limited amount of sweets every day? One RD reported that most of her clients pick the latter and find they can avoid bingeing after a few days.

71. If your family thinks they need a very sweet treat every night, try to strike a balance between offering healthy choices but allowing them some "free will." Compromise with low-fat ice cream and fruit, or sometimes just fruit with a dollop of whipped cream.

72. Try 2 weeks without sweets. It's amazing how your cravings vanish.

73. Eat more fruit. A person who gets enough fruit in his diet doesn't have a raging sweet tooth.

74. Eat your sweets, just eat them smart! Carve out about 150 calories per day for your favorite sweet. That amounts to about an ounce of chocolate, half a modest slice of cake, or 1/2 cup of regular ice cream.

75. Try these smart little sweets: sugar-free hot cocoa, frozen red grapes, fudgsicles, sugar-free gum, Nutri-Grain chocolate fudge twists, Tootsie Rolls, and hard candy.

How Can I Conquer My Downfall: Bingeing at Night?
76. Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The large majority of people who struggle with night eating are those who skip meals or don't eat balanced meals during the day. This is a major setup for overeating at night.

77. Eat your evening meal in the kitchen or dining room, sitting down at the table.

78. Drink cold unsweetened raspberry tea. It tastes great and keeps your mouth busy.

79. Change your nighttime schedule. It will take effort, but it will pay off. You need something that will occupy your mind and hands.

80. If you're eating at night due to emotions, you need to focus on getting in touch with what's going on and taking care of yourself in a way that really works. Find a nonfood method of coping with your stress.

81. Put a sign on the kitchen and refrigerator doors: "Closed after Dinner."

82. Brush your teeth right after dinner to remind you: No more food.

83. Eat without engaging in any other simultaneous activity. No reading, watching TV, or sitting at the computer.

84. Eating late at night won't itself cause weight gain. It's how many calories—not when you eat them—that counts.

How Can I Reap Added Health Benefits from My Dieting?
85. Fat-free isn't always your best bet. Research has found that none of the lycopene or alpha- or beta-carotene that fight cancer and heart disease is absorbed from salads with fat-free dressing. Only slightly more is absorbed with reduced-fat dressing; the most is absorbed with full-fat dressing. But remember, use your dressing in moderate amounts.

86. Skipping breakfast will leave you tired and craving naughty foods by midmorning. To fill up healthfully and tastefully, try this sweet, fruity breakfast full of antioxidants. In a blender, process 1 c nonfat plain or vanilla yogurt, 1 1/3 c frozen strawberries (no added sugar), 1 peeled kiwi, and 1 peeled banana. Pulse until mixture is milkshake consistency. Makes one 2-cup serving; 348 calories and 1.5 fat grams.

87. If you're famished by 4 p.m. and have no alternative but an office vending machine, reach for the nuts—. The same goes if your only choices are what's available in the hotel minibar.

88. Next time you're feeling wiped out in late afternoon, forgo that cup of coffee and reach for a cup of yogurt instead. The combination of protein, carbohydrate, and fat in an 8-ounce serving of low-fat yogurt will give you a sense of fullness and well-being that coffee can't match, as well as some vital nutrients. If you haven't eaten in 3 to 4 hours, your blood glucose levels are probably dropping, so eating a small amount of nutrient-rich food will give your brain and your body a boost.

89. Making just a few changes to your pantry shelves can get you a lot closer to your weight loss goals. Here's what to do: If you use corn and peanut oil, replace it with olive oil. Same goes for breads—go for whole wheat. Trade in those fatty cold cuts like salami and bologna and replace them canned tuna, sliced turkey breast, and lean roast beef. Change from drinking whole milk to fat-free milk or low-fat soy milk. This is hard for a lot of people so try transitioning down to 2 percent and then 1 percent before you go fat-free.

90. Nothing's less appetizing than a crisper drawer full of mushy vegetables. Frozen vegetables store much better, plus they may have greater nutritional value than fresh. Food suppliers typically freeze veggies just a few hours after harvest, locking in the nutrients. Fresh veggies, on the other hand, often spend days in the back of a truck before they reach your supermarket.

91. Worried about the trans-fat content in your peanut butter? Good news: In a test done on Skippy, JIF, Peter Pan, and a supermarket brand, the levels of trans fats per 2-tablespoon serving were far lower than 0.5 gram—low enough that under proposed laws, the brands can legally claim zero trans fats on the label. They also contained only 1 gram more sugar than natural brands—not a significant difference.

Eating Less Isn't Enough—What Exercising Tips Will Help Me Shed Pounds?
92. Overeating is not the result of exercise. Vigorous exercise won't stimulate you to overeat. It's just the opposite. Exercise at any level helps curb your appetite immediately following the workout.

93. When you're exercising, you shouldn't wait for thirst to strike before you take a drink. By the time you feel thirsty, you're already dehydrated. Try this: Drink at least 16 ounces of water, sports drinks, or juices two hours before you exercise. Then drink 8 ounces an hour before and another 4 to 8 ounces every 15 to 20 minutes during your workout. Finish with at least 16 ounces after you're done exercising.

94. Tune in to an audio book while you walk. It'll keep you going longer and looking forward to the next walk—and the next chapter! Check your local library for a great selection. Look for a whodunit; you might walk so far you'll need to take a cab home!

95. Think yoga's too serene to burn calories? Think again. You can burn 250 to 350 calories during an hour-long class (that's as much as you'd burn from an hour of walking)! Plus, you'll improve muscle strength, flexibility, and endurance.

96. Drinking too few can hamper your weight loss efforts. That's because dehydration can slow your metabolism by 3 percent, or about 45 fewer calories burned a day, which in a year could mean weighing 5 pounds more. The key to water isn't how much you drink, it's how frequently you drink it. Small amounts sipped often work better than 8 ounces gulped down at once.

How Can I Manage My Emotional Eating and Get the Support I Need?
97. A registered dietitian (RD) can help you find healthy ways to manage your weight with food. To find one in your area who consults with private clients call (800) 366-1655.

98. The best place to drop pounds may be your own house of worship. Researchers set up healthy eating and exercise programs in 16 Baltimore churches. More than 500 women participated and after a year the most successful lost an average of 20 lb. Weight loss programs based on faith are so successful because there's a built-in community component that people can feel comfortable with.

99. Here's another reason to keep level-headed all the time: Pennsylvania State University research has found that women less able to cope with stress—shown by blood pressure and heart rate elevations—ate twice as many fatty snacks as stress-resistant women did, even after the stress stopped (in this case, 25 minutes of periodic jackhammer-level noise and an unsolvable maze).

100. Sitting at a computer may help you slim down. When researchers at Brown University School of Medicine put 92 people on online weight loss programs for a year, those who received weekly e-mail counseling shed 5 1/2 more pounds than those who got none. Counselors provided weekly feedback on diet and exercise logs, answered questions, and cheered them on. Most major online diet programs offer many of these features.

2007 among 10 warmest years since 1880

2008-01-01T09:40:00.000-08:00

Washington, December 31 : A US agency that focuses on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere has revealed that 2007 was one of the 10 warmest years since 1880.

Preliminary data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) establishes 2007 as the eighth warmest year for the US since national records began in 1895.

The data also suggests that the global surface temperature for 2007 was expected to be fifth warmest since records began in 1880.

The data will be updated in early January to reflect the final three weeks of December, and is not considered final until a full analysis completes next spring.

According to the Environmental News Network, 2007 saw severe to exceptional drought affecting the Southeast and western US. More than three-quarters of the Southeast bore the brunt of drought from mid-summer into December.

Such was the impact of drought that the Governors of at least five South-eastern states, along with California, Oregon, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware, had to declare states of emergency at some point during the year.

Drought and unusual warmth contributed to another extremely active wildfire season, says the report.

The year also saw 15 named storms in the Atlantic Basin-Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Six of such storms developed into hurricanes, including Hurricanes Dean and Felix, which struck Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and Nicaragua, respectively.

Preliminary data also suggests that sea surface temperatures near the equator of the eastern Pacific were below average during by the end of November.

The same conditions are likely to continue into early 2008, according to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.

People on ARVs take more sexual risks - study

2008-01-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

People who have HIV and Aids and who are on anti-retroviral treatment (ART) tend to take greater sexual risks than those who are positive but who are not on treatment.

That's according to a recent study by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) into perceptions and behavioural risk relating to people who are HIV-positive.

The study's findings indicate that HIV-positive people on treatment tend to practise safe sex less frequently compared to those who are not on treatment.

They appear not to view the disease as a threat.

The study was conducted by Vuyiswa Mathambo, a research manager in the Child, Youth, Family and Social Development research programme.

The research was conducted by sampling a group of 104 HIV-positive men and women who had been receiving ART for more than six months and 111 HIV-positive men and women who were not receiving ART at the time of the study.

Most of those surveyed were women aged 26 to 30, unmarried, with a secondary level qualification and unemployed.

People in both groups were asked about their perceptions of the impact of HIV and Aids on the frequency with which they practised safe sex.

The report is published in the HSRC Review.

In terms of the statistics, more people who were in the treatment group viewed Aids as a disease that was no longer life-threatening and reported practising safe sex less often since starting treatment.

Of those interviewed, 84 percent of those in the treatment group said Aids was no longer a threat compared to 76 percent in the non-treatment group.

Sixty-three percent of those in the treatment group practised safe sex compared to 51 percent of those in the non-treatment group.

Mathambo writes that the study's findings showed a need to communicate appropriate HIV-prevention messages to those on treatment as it was still important to practise safe sex.

"ART is known to reduce viral loads, Aids-related illnesses and death and to improve the quality of life of those taking this treatment but concerns have been raised about the perceptions of risk as well as the behaviour of those receiving ART...

"While acknowledging the difficulty of linking risk perception and sexual practices, it was notable that some respondents had sought treatment for STIs (sexually transmitted infections) in both groups in the past two to three months," she says.

Mathambo adds that the study site was located within a hospital founded on a Catholic ethos, meaning that condoms may not have been as readily available.

Meanwhile, a comprehensive study by the Institute of Security Studies says that the politicisation of HIV and Aids has impacted on corruption and accountability.

The study, A Lethal Cocktail by Collette Schulz-Herzenberg, explores the impact of corruption on HIV and Aids prevention and treatment efforts in South Africa.

"It (politicisation) appears to relate indirectly to instances of abuse and corruption on the part of public officials and other individuals by affording a degree of protection."

Mother and daughter give birth four days apart

2007-12-31T02:04:00.000-08:00

London, Decemeber 31 : A mother and daughter have given birth to two beautiful babies - just four days apart.

Amanda Nesling, 41, delivered a 2lb baby boy Curtis Leeroy William White seven weeks early.

And days later, Nesling's 18-year-old daughter Natasha gave birth to Brooke-Ellie.

"We were both surprised at one another's pregnancy and that they would be so close together," the Mirror quoted Natasha, as saying.

Nesling's son, who was due in January, is in a special care baby unit until February.

Five High-Paying Careers in Two Years or Less

2007-12-30T06:23:00.000-08:00

Feel like the absence of a bachelor's degree on your resume is forcing you to settle for a second-rate job? With today's myriad opportunities to earn certificates and associate degrees, you can change your career, your salary, and your life in just a short amount of time.

Check out these five high-paying careers -- no bachelor's degree required!

1. Dental Hygienist

Employment of dental hygienists is projected to grow much faster than average for all occupations through 2014, ranking among the Bureau of Labor Statistics' list of fastest-growing occupations.

To practice in a dental office, hygienists must earn an associate degree or certificate from a school accredited by the American Dental Association Commission of Dental Accreditation. A base of biology, chemistry, and math courses are advised, and program coursework will include clinical, laboratory, and classroom instruction.

Median annual earnings: $58,350.

2. Fashion Designer

In this creative field, an inherent artistic ability and eye for detail, color, balance, and proportion are necessary. Ingenuity is key, as are sewing, pattern-making, and sketching abilities.

Designers usually hold at least a two-year associate degree in fashion design or fine arts. They must be knowledgeable about textiles, ornamentation, fabrics, and fashion trends, and exhibit communication and presentation skills, problem-solving abilities, and the willingness to work occasional long hours and travel to trade and fashion shows.

Median annual earnings: $55,840.

3. Diagnostic Medical Sonographer

Also known as ultrasonographers, diagnostic medical sonographers can specialize in obstetrics and gynecology, abdominal or breast sonography, or neurosonography.

A strong background in math and science is recommended, as associate degree coursework will include anatomy, physics, and physiology. A good bedside manner enables the sonographer to explain complex procedures to patients and reassure those who fear the health matters the testing may reveal.

Median annual earnings: $52,490.

4. Forensic Science Technician

You've seen the TV shows -- these professionals collect and analyze physical evidence and document laboratory methods and findings. Computer skills and attention to detail are crucial as collection and processing of materials must be spot-on to safeguard evidence.

Forensic science technicians should develop a strong base in math and science as preparation for their associate degree, typically earned in applied science or science-related technology. Coursework will include laboratory work and hands-on learning. Once in the field, technicians can choose to specialize in a certain type of analysis or examination.

Median annual earnings: $44,010.

5. Paralegal

Lawyers assume ultimate responsibility for legal work, but they often delegate tasks to paralegals, also called legal assistants. Paralegals help prepare for trials, hearings, and meetings; investigate facts; identify appropriate laws and decisions; and, after analyzing and organizing information, prepare and present reports of their findings.

Most paralegals have an associate degree in paralegal studies, however, intensive certification programs are also available and can often be completed in just a few months.

Median annual earnings: $39,130.

All salaries listed are median annual earnings based on 2004 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

World Saw Weird Weather in 2007

2007-12-29T10:49:00.001-08:00

When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and the weather just got weirder.

January was the warmest first month on record worldwide - 1.53 degrees above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year.

Tornado in Brooklyn: A man removes items from the trunk of his damaged car April 8 after a tornado hit New York, an rare occurrence for the city.
And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.

U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather data. England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit.

It wasn't just the temperature. There were other oddball weather events. A tornado struck New York City in August, inspiring the tabloid headline: "This ain't Kansas!"

In the Middle East, an equally rare cyclone spun up in June, hitting Oman and Iran. Major U.S. lakes shrank; Atlanta had to worry about its drinking water supply. South Africa got its first significant snowfall in 25 years. And on Reunion Island, 400 miles east of Africa, nearly 155 inches of rain fell in three days - a world record for the most rain in 72 hours.

Individual weather extremes can't be attributed to global warming, scientists always say. However, "it's the run of them and the different locations" that have the mark of man-made climate change, said top European climate expert Phil Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia in England.

Worst of all - at least according to climate scientists - the Arctic, which serves as the world's refrigerator, dramatically warmed in 2007, shattering records for the amount of melting ice.

2007 seemed to be the year that climate change shook the thermometers, and those who warned that it was beginning to happen were suddenly honored. Former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar and he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of thousands of scientists. The climate panel, organized by the United Nations, released four major reports in 2007 saying man-made global warming was incontrovertible and an urgent threat to millions of lives.

Through the first 10 months, it was the hottest year recorded on land and the third hottest when ocean temperatures are included.

Smashing records was common, especially in August. At U.S. weather stations, more than 8,000 new heat records were set or tied for specific August dates.

More remarkably that same month, more than 100 all-time temperature records were tied or broken - regardless of the date - either for the highest reading or the warmest low temperature at night. By comparison only 14 all-time low temperatures were set or tied all year long, as of early December, according to records kept by the National Climatic Data Center.

For example, on Aug. 10, the town of Portland, Tenn., reached 102 degrees, tying a record for the hottest it ever had been. On Aug. 16, it hit 103 and Portland had a new all-time record. But that record was broken again the next day when the mercury reached 105.

Daily triple-digit temperatures took a toll on everybody, public safety director George West recalled. The state had 15 heat-related deaths in August.

Portland was far from alone. In Idaho, Chilly Barton Flat wasn't living up to its name. The weather station in central Idaho tied an all-time high of 100 on July 26, Aug. 7, 14 and 19. During 2007, weather stations in 35 states, from Washington to Florida, set or tied all-time heat records in 2007.

Across Europe this past summer, extreme heat waves killed dozens of people.

And it wasn't just the heat. It was the rain. There was either too little or too much.

More than 60 percent of the United States was either abnormally dry or suffering from drought at one point in August. In November, Atlanta's main water source, Lake Lanier, shrank to an all-time low. Lake Okeechobee, crucial to south Florida, hit its lowest level in recorded history in May, exposing muck and debris not seen for decades. Lake Superior, the biggest and deepest of the Great Lakes, dropped to its lowest August and September levels in history.

Los Angeles hit its driest year on record. Lakes fed by the Colorado River and which help supply water for more than 20 million Westerners, were only half full.

Australia, already a dry continent, suffered its worst drought in a century, making global warming an election issue. On the other extreme, record rains fell in China, England and Wales.

Minnesota got the worst of everything: a devastating June and July drought followed by record August rainfall. In one March day, Southern California got torrential downpours, hail, snow and fierce winds. Then in the fall came devastating fires driven by Santa Ana winds.

And yet none of those events worried scientists as much as what was going on in the Arctic in the summer. Sea ice melted not just to record levels, but far beyond the previous melt record. The Northwest Passage was the most navigable it had been in modern times. Russia planted a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, claiming sovereignty.

The ice sheets that cover a portion of Greenland retreated to an all-time low and permafrost in Alaska warmed to record levels.

Meteorologists have chronicled strange weather years for more than a decade, but nothing like 2007. It was such an extreme weather year that the World Meteorological Organization put out a news release chronicling all the records and unusual developments. That was in August with more than 145 sizzling days to go.

Get used to it, scientists said. As man-made climate change continues, the world will experience more extreme weather, bursts of heat, torrential rain and prolonged drought, they said.

"We're having an increasing trend of odd years," said Michael MacCracken, a former top federal climate scientist, now chief scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington. "Pretty soon odd years are going to become the norm."

Last Minute Low-Cost New Year's Bash

2007-12-29T10:24:00.000-08:00

Should you get that sudden urge to throw a swanky 11^th-hour New Year’s gathering, not to worry. You and your guests can rock the night away and glide right into 2008 with these easy breezy tips.

Tune Up the Takeout Forget about slaving in the kitchen. Simply order up an array of nibblies (pizzas, pastas and salads) from your favorite Italian restaurant. Italian is always a crowd-pleaser and tends to be easy on the wallet. If you have the time, put out a buffet of gourmet toppings (grated cheese, sliced olives, etc.), so guests can enhance and customize their selections.

Go Crazy with Cocktails Create a signature drink and give it a fun name like "New Year's Nirvana." Try mixing champagne, ginger ale, and mango juice; serving mixed juice and wine drinks is more cost effective than straight champagne or wine. Be sure to offer yummy non-alcoholic drinks such as mango spritzers for designated drivers and others.

Set the Scene with Silver Deck your home in silver accents. Drag out silver platters, pitchers, and trays to hold food, candles, and other goodies. Hit your local home or drugstore to load up on holiday items-- silver ball ornaments, tinsel, and so on--at heavily discounted after-Christmas sales.

Prepare Party Props Hop on over to the local party store for silver balloons, horn blowers, and confetti to ring in the new year with a smile. Stock up on paper plates, napkins, and utensils in silver, as well.

Make a Mood Light candles all around your home to create a magical midnight mood. Stick with white votives--more affordable than pricey pillar candles, and less messy than drippy tapers. Best to place them out of reach so your guests don't accidentally knock anything over as they get their grooves on!

Load Your Pods No need for a pricey DJ when you live in the age of the MP3 player. Create a fresh mix of tunes to carry you through the night. Get the party started with upbeat cocktail music from the likes of Madeleine Peyroux, Diana Krall, and Harry Connick Jr. Then crank it up with a fresh mix of danceable tracks from Fatboy Slim, Bloc Party, Gwen Stefani, and Ja Rule. Finally, add some mellow mood music for those late-night stragglers: Travis, Thievery Corporation, Aimee Mann, Chris Isaak and Mazzy Star.

Send Kisses and Wishes Send guests off with a bag of treats for an ultra-sweet new year. Fill small silver or white bags with Hershey's Kisses and enclose a tiny handwritten card containing your wish for them for the new year.

Brain shifts to positive thoughts when confronted with death

2007-12-29T02:36:00.000-08:00

Washington, December 29 : A dying individual's mind is ruled by happiness, not fear, for a new study has found that when faced with death, the brain instinctively moves toward happier notions and images.

The findings hold on to the belief that people are emotionally stronger when faced with their own or a loved one's death than they may have ever thought possible.

The study was led by Nathan DeWall, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky and co-researcher Roy Baumeister, of Florida State University.

"It again speaks to how resilient humans are and how this tendency to cope with threats is some sort of indicator of mental health," Live Science quoted DeWall, as saying.

The scientists believe that as humans became aware of death, they also evolved what's been called the 'psychological immune system.'

DeWall said that due to this mechanism, the thoughts and attitudes get inclined towards the positive, no matter how grim the events are.

According to him, this behaviour is normally an unconscious mental shift.

For the study, more than 100 healthy young adult volunteers were made to think about death as a reality. They were also asked to imagine the process of their own death, as well as what it might be like to be dead.

Another group of young adults was asked to think about an unpleasant event, like a trip to the dentist's office, but not death. The participants were then made to undergo standard word tests that tapped into unconscious emotional states.

In one test, participants were give a word stem - 'jo-' for example and asked to complete it to form a word (i.e., 'job', 'jog', 'joy').

The scientists said that the individuals asked to think about death were more prone than the other participants to choose the word 'joy,' as against more neutral or negative words.

During another word test, the researchers offered the participants a word and asked them to pair it with one of two other words. While one of the words was similar to the target word in its meaning, the other word was more emotionally similar.

For example, 'puppy' might be paired with either 'beetle' (another many-legged animal), or 'parade' (not an animal, but fun, enjoyable, as puppies are).

Once more, people who were primed to think about death were much more likely to choose 'parade' over 'beetle' as compared to the other participants.

The researchers said that this suggested them to unconsciously prefer the positive emotion associated with that choice.

"People really don't know that they do this. It's actually very counterintuitive. This picks up on the idea that when people are confronted with their own mortality, these sorts of concepts - positive emotion words become readily accessible to them," said DeWall.

Farm women are at a greater risk of asthma

2007-12-29T02:34:00.000-08:00

Washington, December 29 : Farm women, who are exposed to some commonly used pesticides in farm work are at a greater risk of developing allergic asthma, according to a new study.

Researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said that though a large number of farm women are in contact with pesticides, there's very little information about the potential risks.

"Farm women are an understudied occupational group. More than half the women in our study applied pesticides, but there is very little known about the risks," said Jane Hoppin, Sc.D., lead author of the study.

For the study, the researchers assessed pesticide and other occupational exposures as risk factors for adult-onset asthma in more than 25,000 farmwomen in North Carolina and Iowa. They used self-reports of doctor-diagnosed adult asthma, and divided the women into groups of allergic (atopic) or non-allergic (non-atopic) asthma based on a history of eczema and/or hay fever.

Results showed an average increase of 50 percent in the prevalence of allergic asthma in all farm women who applied or mixed pesticides.

Surprisingly, even though the association with pesticides was higher among women who grew up on farms, these women still had a lower overall risk of having allergic asthma compared to those who did not grow up on farms, due to a protective effect that remains poorly understood.

"Growing up on a farm is such a huge protective effect it's pretty hard to overwhelm it. But about 40 percent of women who work on farms don't report spending their childhoods there. It is likely that the association with pesticides is masked in the general population due to a higher baseline rate of asthma," Dr. Hoppin said.

She also found that most pesticides were associated only with allergic asthma, even though non-allergic asthma is generally more common in adults.

"Asthma is a very heterogeneous disease. This finding suggests that some of the agricultural risk factors for allergic and non-allergic asthma may differ," she said.

The study also showed that some legal but rarely used compounds, such as parathion, were associated with almost a three-fold increase in allergic asthma. But even some commonly used pesticides were associated with a marked increase in allergic asthma prevalence.

Of all the compounds examined, only permethrin, a commonly used insecticide that is used in consumer items such as insect-resistant clothing to anti-malaria bed-nets, was associated with both allergic and non-allergic asthma.

Researchers say that this is the first study to examine pesticides and asthma in farm women, and it points the way for future research to clarify the relationship.

"At the end of the day, you have to remember that we're looking at cross-sectional data, thus we cannot establish a temporal association between pesticide use and asthma," said Dr. Hoppin.

"There is a difference in asthma prevalence between women who did and did not use pesticides but whether it is causal or not remains to be seen," she added.

The study was published in the first issue for January of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.

Big Hollywood divorce

2007-12-28T10:52:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles (E! Online) - Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn are entering a state of divorce.

The Hollywood twosome, who fell in love on the set of the 1990 thriller State of Grace and later married, are seeking a divorce after 11 years of marriage, according to People.

Penn's longtime publicist, Mara Buxbaum, did not provide details on the split.

The 47-year-old actor-director and the 41-year-old Wright began dating about a year after Penn ended his four-year union to Madonna in 1989.

The couple quickly hit it off and moved in together in 1991. They had two children, 16-year-old Dylan Frances and 14-year-old Hopper Jack, and finally tied the knot in 1996.

Penn raised eyebrows in April when he appeared at a Hollywood police station in the wear hours to comfort Eve following her DUI arrest. Police described Penn as simply "a friend" of the rapper-actress and he declined to comment on the visit.

The actor, who has been making headlines in recent years as an outspoken critic of the Bush administration and the Iraq War, won an Academy Award for his stirring performance as a father whose child is murdered in 2003's Mystic River. He also scored Best Actor Oscar nominations for 1995's Dead Man Walking, 1999's Sweet and Lowdown and 2001's I Am Sam.

Aside from Grace, the Dallas-born Wright Penn costarred with her Oscar-winning hubby in 1997's She's So Lovely and 1998's Hurly Burly, and they are reuniting in Barry Levinson's suddenly aptly titled Hollywood satire, What Just Happened?, which will debut at next month's Sundance Film Festival. She has also appeared in two flicks Penn has helmed, 1995's The Crossing Guard and 2001's The Pledge, both starring Jack Nicholson.

The actress, who was previously married for two years to actor Dane Witherspoon, shot to fame playing the titular royal Buttercup in the 1987 hit The Princess Bride. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 1994's Forrest Gump.

Penn's most recent directorial effort, Into The Wild, is currently being lauded by various critics groups as the best film of 2007, so far earning two Golden Globe nods and four Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

The Breakup Test: 5 Questions to Ask Before Giving 'Em the Boot

2007-12-28T10:42:00.000-08:00

Is it better to be the breaker-upper or the dumpee? With so much attention being paid to those poor people dumped every year, no one ever takes time to think about what it's like to be the dumper. Hardly an enviable position, the decision to break up with someone can breed feelings of guilt, paralysis and depression.

To alleviate some of this anxiety, here's a list of 5 questions to ask yourself before you give someone the boot.

Question 1: Has There Been a Major Change in My Life?

Relocation, career change, an illness -- any of these factors can trigger problems in a relationship. If you're stressed out about something, be it a job or family problem, it's all too tempting to generalize these feelings to include your partner. It's very easy to think that if you got out of this relationship you would feel better. In reality, you need to deal with the problem rather than blame it on your partner.

Question 2: What's My Happiness Ratio?

Being blissfully in love with your partner 24/7 is a wonderful concept in theory, but as we all know, real-world relationships rarely live up to these expectations. Many people assume that they have to be 100 percent satisfied with their partners in order to stick with them, but good luck ever finding this perfect scenario!

A better strategy would be to adopt the 80 percent rule. Ask yourself:

Am I satisfied with my partner 80 percent of the time or more? If the answer is yes, then you're working with pretty good odds. If the answer is no, you may want to consider moving on.

Question 3: Is He/She Abusive?

Abusive behavior comes in many forms. There's physical abuse where someone hits, slaps or shoves you. A verbally abusive partner degrades you with harsh words and insults. And the most difficult to identify and pinpoint: psychological abuse. This form of abuse can involve overly controlling behavior, emotional blackmail, and episodes of extreme jealousy. If your partner engages in any of the above behavior, don't just walk -- run from the relationship.

Question 4: Have I Expressed My Frustration?

Many of us think that if our partner was right for us, he/she would be able to understand our needs intuitively without us ever having to communicate. While it would be great if our partners could just read our minds, the truth is that few of us are telepathic.

Good communication is required in every relationship.

So before you give your partner their walking papers, make sure to discuss your doubts and concerns so they have a chance to make it up to you.

Question 5: Am I Willing to Work at It?

Whatever your gripes or complaints, there's one factor that can make or break your union: your mutual desire to work on the relationship. If you're not both committed to improving your quality of life together, there's very little hope for the future.

And remember, actions speak louder than words. If both of you make a concerted effort to work on the relationship and make the necessary changes that are required, there's really no reason to call it quits.

Minn. Child Sticks Screwdriver Into Head, Survives

2007-12-28T01:30:00.000-08:00

An X-ray shows the screwdriver penetrated Teagan Gislason's eye socket, five centimeters into her brain. Doctors removed it after four hours, with virtually no bleeding.

Doctors said Teagan Gislason's vision appears to be fine, and the only remaining mark from the incident is a scar on her eyelid.

A 2-year-old Farmington, Minn. girl stabbed herself in the eye socket with a screwdriver and somehow escaped relatively unharmed, reports CBS station WCCO-TV in Minneapolis.

Teagan Gislason returned home on Christmas Eve after nearly a week at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Gislason's father, Neil Gislason, said she hurt herself near the end of a church service at St. Paul's Lutheran in Cannon Falls, Minn.

"God was watching over her very hard," said Neil Gislason. "I think He saved her for a reason, and I can't wait to see what that reason is."

Gislason was with his three daughters at the church. He said Teagan was getting restless, and went into a room where children have adult supervision during the church service. Teagan somehow found a screwdriver, and a fellow church member saw it sticking out of her left eye socket.

An X-ray shows the screwdriver penetrated Teagan's eye socket, five centimeters into her brain. Doctors removed it after four hours, with virtually no bleeding.

One week later, Teagan is home with her family. Her vision appears to be fine, and the only remaining mark from the incident is a scar on her eyelid.

"She's our Christmas miracle," said Katie Gislason, Teagan's mother.

The family is administering antibiotics to make sure the eye doesn't become infected, and Teagan will still be regularly checked out by doctors to make sure she isn't experiencing any problems with her vision.

Thief Arrested For Stealing Baby Jesus With GPS

2007-12-28T01:26:00.000-08:00

WELLINGTON, Fla. -- Baby Jesus has gone high tech.

Authorities said a baby Jesus stolen from a nativity scene in Wellington is safely back in the manger after it was stolen.

One person was arrested for stealing the figure Wednesday night, which was equipped with a GPS tracking device.

The tracking system was attached in response to previous thefts.

Flirting helps relationships?

2007-12-28T01:05:00.000-08:00

I know that flirting can be a huge source of contempt in relationships. Some guys see their partners flirting with other men and go ballistic. Some women see guys flirting with other women and think he's trying to score.

And while I know that flirting can be a dangerous game if you're playing with the wrong people, I also believe that flirting can be healthy - as long as you're taking the energy you're building and putting it back into your relationship.

So, what can innocent flirting with a co-worker, stranger, or random bartender do to help your relationship? More than you may think.

Flirting Gives You Confidence

A relationship progresses after some time, and both sides fall into the same rut of Friday pizza, Saturday out, and sleepy Sunday. Same old, same old. The message: We're stuck together, we're comfortable together, and we may be perfectly content together.

All well and good, but that does as much for your romantic confidence as having spinach in your teeth. What flirting allows you to do is feel like you're impressing another person and being attractive to another person - without the baggage, stigma, and pressures of the next step. Bringing that sexual and romantic confidence back to your relationship helps you - and strengthens the relationship across the board.

Flirting Keeps You Sharp

Being wanted is one of our most basic needs. Sometimes, when we're in relationships, we don't always get that positive vibe - that we're wanted, needed, and desired.

Every once in a while, flirting can reinforce that primitive need of feeling valued. And that little innocent dialogue with some stranger in a bookstore may be all the kick-start you need to lose a little weight or change up your hair or whatever it is that you want to do to make yourself feel better about yourself. Which has benefits for everyone involved.

Flirting Lets You Build Up Sexual Energy

Some shrinks say it's OK to fantasize about anyone you want and build up a head of steam - as long as you, well, go ahead then and release that pent up energy with your partner.

So in a way, you can use flirting as a kind of foreplay. Build a little frisky tension with the barista, get warmed up, then bring home the dividends. And when you're at home, leave a copy of this list around the house. Think of it as a kind of flirting with your partner - and a fun to-do list.

Flirting Reminds You How Good You Have It

The fun of flirting is that there are no strings attached. Just some good ole banter with jokes, laughs, and some well-timed sexual innuendo. Fun at first. But when you think of the long process that comes after, it makes you realize that what you've got at home is exactly what you want.

I can hear you now: too much flirting can lead to real temptation. Here's what we told Men's Health readers to do when faced with a home-wrecking temptress.

Website to carry new bin Laden tape on Iraq

2007-12-28T00:56:00.000-08:00

Dubai, December 28: An Islamist Web site said on Friday it would carry a new recording from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden about "foiling plots" in Iraq.

The Web site said the 56-minute recording would also be about the Islamic State in Iraq, an al Qaeda-linked group in the country.

It did not say when the video or audio recording, produced by al Qaeda's media arm As-Sahab and entitled "The Path to Foiling Plots in Iraq", would be posted.

Al Qaeda messages have been often released within three days of their announcement on Web sites.

"May God expose the cover-up by Al Jazeera, the channel of the infidels," said the Web site, which is often used to issue messages from al Qaeda.

It was not clear whether this meant bin Laden would speak about a controversy in which his supporters have accused the popular news channel of misrepresenting his comments on Iraq.

Some Islamists have said Al Jazeera misrepresented bin Laden's views by airing excerpts of comments he made in October that insurgents had made mistakes in Iraq because of fanaticism.

While the Iraqi wing of al Qaeda remains at the forefront of many groups fighting U.S. forces and the Shi'ite-led government supported by Washington, its fighters have faced growing opposition in the Sunni areas of Iraq where they operate.

Angered by deadly attacks against Iraqis who fail to follow their hardline interpretation of Islam, Sunni tribes have begun to turn against the al Qaeda militants they once backed.

An increase in U.S. troops, more efficient Iraqi security forces and new neighbourhood patrols organised by mainly Sunni Arab tribes have been credited with a decline in violence and a fall in civilian and U.S. military casualties in the past two months.

Career Do's and Don'ts from 2007

2007-12-27T11:15:00.000-08:00

Stars like Matt Damon, Oprah Winfrey, and Rosie O'Donnell are just a few of the public figures whose actions in 2007 -- good or bad -- offer career lessons for us all.

Whether it was bravely stepping out on "Dancing With the Stars" or getting fired for romancing a subordinate, understanding the six do's and don'ts below can help you move your career forward next year.

DO leverage your strengths. Matt Damon has long been known as a widely talented actor. This year, he built on the strength of his previous two "Bourne" films with his performance in the hugely successful "Bourne Ultimatum," bolstering his status as one of the most successful action-film stars in Hollywood.

"Finding out what you are good at and then working to get better at is a much more efficient use of your time and energy than trying to become a star in an area where you may not have much talent to begin with," says Richard Phillips, founder of Advantage Career Solutions.

DON'T use inappropriate language at work. Radio host Don Imus was fired from his longtime job for racially inflammatory language about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

"In general, steer clear of topics involving sex, drugs, race, and politics. Even if you think a comment is perfectly innocuous, someone else may very well see it differently," says Alexandra Levit, author of "They Don't Teach Corporate in College." "Once people perceive you as crass, sexist, or prejudiced, no amount of hard work in the world will restore your reputation in that organization."

DO acknowledge mistakes and take action to learn from them. After an abuse scandal surfaced at Oprah Winfrey's school for girls in South Africa, the talk-show host accepted responsibility for "inadequate" employee screening. She also traveled to the school to meet with parents and address their concerns.

Andrea Nierenberg, author of "Million Dollar Networking," says, "It takes a strong person to say, 'I was wrong,' and then to take the action to correct the problem. People respect you more and know that we all make mistakes -- yet it is an admirable person who goes the extra mile to quickly correct the mistake and take another action step."

DON'T get personally involved with a subordinate. The Red Cross ousted married CEO Mark Everson for having a personal relationship with one of his employees. The organization said the relationship showed "poor judgment" and damaged his credibility.

"Besides showing poor judgment, it is also unfair to the subordinate, whose career will likely be negatively impacted," says Phillips.

DO step outside your comfort zone. Racecar driver Helio Castroneves took a risk to learn ballroom dancing and perform on TV's "Dancing With the Stars." He backed it up with hard work and won the contest, opening up his career to new possibilities.

"Living in your safety zone year after year can make you stagnant and, well, boring," says Debra Davenport, a master professional mentor and career counselor. "If you're risk-averse, try conquering smaller challenges. Then, expand your horizons as you grow more comfortable. Who knows? You might even start your own business or embark on an entirely new and wonderful career!"

DON'T badmouth people who might be good references. Rosie O'Donnell's embattled tenure on "The View" ended prematurely this year, as her clashes with cohosts Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Barbara Walters were played out in the media.

"Rosie O'Donnell is your typical example of a workplace hothead -- someone who says exactly what they're thinking when they're thinking it regardless of the consequences," says Levit. "If you can't be diplomatic and communicate in a manner that shows that you respect others' points of view, colleagues won't want you around no matter how talented you are. 'The View' continues to offer examples (see last year's Star Jones mention) of how burning your bridges is never a good idea."

Airline glitches top cause of delays

2007-12-27T11:08:00.001-08:00

Flight delays caused by airline glitches are now creating longer passenger slowdowns than congestion in the skies, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The data call into question a long-held notion about air travel delays — that bad weather and heavy air traffic cause the bulk of the waits that passengers endure. The newspaper's analysis shows that airline problems, such as pilot shortages, taking too long to refuel and mechanical breakdowns, are as much at the root of delays as anything else.

TRAVEL COSTS: Higher fares don't deter holiday fliers

Airline issues triggered 23.8 million minutes of delay through October this year, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS). Delays attributed to the congested air-traffic system, the next largest cause, were 23.3 million.

Overall, the number of flights delayed because of congestion was slightly higher. But the average length of delay was longer for airline-caused holdups: 55 minutes compared to 47. That was a first since data have been collected.

"It's symptomatic of an entire system out of control right now," said Darryl Jenkins, an academic and airline consultant.

Jenkins and others say that one of the chief reasons that airlines are causing more delays is that they have cut staffing dramatically to respond to the financial woes encountered after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In recent months, many carriers have begun adding employees, Jenkins said.

Airlines did not dispute the BTS data, but said the system's inability to handle heavy air traffic and bad weather remain the prime causes of delays. For instance, some delays blamed on air carriers were due to weather delays earlier in the day, said David Castelveter, the spokesman for the Air Transport Association.

In recent years, most major carriers reported increases in delays caused by their own problems. Among them was Northwest Airlines, which struggled with labor problems last summer. It had more than 1.9 million minutes of such delays through October, accounting for more than 40% of all of its delays.

Northwest spokesman Roman Blahowski said the carrier may have reported delays differently than others.

The problem was more acute among regional carriers, which typically fly smaller planes under contract for the large airlines.

For example, Atlantic Southeast Airlines, which flies for Delta Air Lines, reported that 49% of its 4.7 million minutes of delay were due to the airline's operating issues. The airline did not have enough pilots to handle an increase in the schedule this year, but has aggressively hired more pilots and expects its delays to drop, said spokeswoman Kate Modolo.

Some delays attributed to regionals were the result of decisions of their major airline partners, said Roger Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association. "Most regional carriers have little say in which flights are delayed or cancelled," Cohen said.

Unions for pilots and flight attendants said that high turnover and low staffing at regional carriers contributed to delay problems.

"It's a direct cause of the poor performance by the airlines," said Capt. John Prater, president of the Air Line Pilots Association.

Airline delays reached record levels this year.

Book argues that Bell stole phone idea (AP)

2007-12-27T11:05:00.000-08:00

A new book claims to have definitive evidence of a long-suspected technological crime — that Alexander Graham Bell stole ideas for the telephone from a rival, Elisha Gray.

In "The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret," journalist Seth Shulman argues that Bell — aided by aggressive lawyers and a corrupt patent examiner — got an improper peek at patent documents Gray had filed, and that Bell was erroneously credited with filing first.

Shulman believes the smoking gun is Bell's lab notebook, which was restricted by Bell's family until 1976, then digitized and made widely available in 1999.

The notebook details the false starts Bell encountered as he and assistant Thomas Watson tried transmitting sound electromagnetically over a wire. Then, after a 12-day gap in 1876 — when Bell went to Washington to sort out patent questions about his work — he suddenly began trying another kind of voice transmitter. That method was the one that proved successful.

As Bell described that new approach, he sketched a diagram of a person speaking into a device. Gray's patent documents, which describe a similar technique, also feature a very similar diagram.

Shulman's book, due out Jan. 7, recounts other elements that have piqued researchers' suspicions. For instance, Bell's transmitter design appears hastily written in the margin of his patent; Bell was nervous about demonstrating his device with Gray present; Bell resisted testifying in an 1878 lawsuit probing this question; and Bell, as if ashamed, quickly distanced himself from the telephone monopoly bearing his name.

Perhaps the most instructive lesson comes when Shulman explores why historical memory has favored Bell and not Gray — nor German inventor Philipp Reis, who beat them both with 1860s telephones that employed a different principle.

One reason is simply that Bell, not Gray, actually demonstrated a phone that transmitted speech. Gray was focused instead on his era's pressing communications challenge: how to send multiple messages simultaneously over the same telegraph wire. As Gray huffed to his attorney, "I should like to see Bell do that with his apparatus."

Woman, Boyfriend Arrested in Murder of 6

2007-12-27T07:25:00.000-08:00

A postal worker worried about an absent colleague came across a horrific scene: six people, likely three generations of the same family, shot to death on their rural property.

Within hours, the family's tragedy only deepened when police arrested the property owners' daughter and her boyfriend, according to a law enforcement official.
A sheriff's deputy cordons off a property near Seattle where six bodies, including those of two children, were found Wednesday. The property owner's daughter and her boyfriend were arrested in connection with the deaths.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the names, said the pair were Michele Anderson, 29, and Joseph McEnroe, 29, her boyfriend.

King County sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said the suspects went to the crime scene after investigators had arrived, were questioned and then arrested. No motive had been determine and investigators had not found a weapon.

The sheriff's office did not release the names of the suspects or the victims, but the owners of the property are Wayne Anderson, 60, and Judy Anderson, 61, according to public records. Multiple media reports said the couple, along with their son, Scott; his wife, Erica; and their two children, Olivia and Nathan, were the victims.

Urquhart would only say the victims were a boy about age 3, a girl about age 6, a man and woman in their 30s and a man and woman in their 50s, and "likely three generations" of one family.

Ben Anderson, who said he was the grandson of Wayne and Judy Anderson, told reporters outside his grandparents' property late Wednesday that money could have been a factor in the deaths.

"She felt she wasn't loved enough and everyone didn't appreciate her and she was pushed out of everyone's life," he said, referring to Michele Anderson.

A message left Wednesday night at a telephone listing for a Michele Anderson in the Carnation area was not immediately returned.

Autopsies have not been performed on the bodies, but the cause of death was apparently gunshots, Urquhart said. The six were likely killed late afternoon or early evening on Christmas Eve, he said.

Authorities are trying to determine why deputies didn't further investigate a 911 hang-up call on Christmas Eve that came from the house. The call ended after about 10 seconds, and the operator reported hearing "a lot of yelling in the background ... sounded more like party noise than angry heated arguing."

Operators twice called back, but both calls went into voice mail. About 30 minutes later, two deputies arrived at the property, but found a locked gate and did not go onto the property. The dispatchers log reported the deputies saying, "gate is locked, unable to gain access."

"They didn't go past it," Urquhart said. "I don't know why yet. That's one of the things we're looking into."

Urquhart said the bodies were found by a co-worker of one of the victims who had come to the house because one of the victims, who works for the U.S. Postal Service, did not report to work.

The bodies were found on a rural property that includes a house and a mobile home at the end of a long dirt road. The property is near this town about 25 miles east of Seattle.

Mark Bennett, a family friend, said the Andersons lived in a house there, and their daughter Michele lived on her parents' property in a mobile home with a male companion.

Bennett said he spoke with Judy and Wayne Anderson on Christmas Eve and tried to call them Christmas Day but could not reach them. He told reporters he came to the property Wednesday morning after seeing the home on television news.

"I didn't want to believe what I heard and saw, so I drove over," he said.

Urquhart declined to say where on the property the victims were found, other than to say they were "not found in the same room." As investigators searched the property, they removed a black pickup truck.

Bennett, who was not the person who found the bodies, said Wayne Anderson is a Boeing Co. engineer and Judy Anderson works for the post office in Carnation.

"It's shocking," said Don Lovett, owner of Pete's Grill and Pub in downtown Carnation. "It's a real small community out here, even being so close to a metropolitan area. We're really familiar with folks out here."

Archaeological site shed light on early Caribbeans

2007-12-27T03:25:00.000-08:00

Archeologists have discovered a major archaeological site in Puerto Rico dating back to 600 AD, that might help to reconstruct the life of the early Caribbean inhabitants.

Found by an Atlanta-area archaeology firm working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the site uncovered the outlines of a very large Taino ball court and ceremonial site.

This was accompanied with human graves, trash mounds, building imprints and a few carved petroglyphs that are among the most intricate and detailed ever discovered in the region.

"Suddenly it went from a very good site to an extraordinary site," said Chris Espenshade, who led a team of local archaeologists and workers from New South Associates of Stone Mountain, Ga. at the dig this past summer and fall.

"Part of what makes it extraordinary is that we have everything here, the midden (refuse) mound, the batey (ceremonial site), the house patterns, the burials and the rock art," he told Cox News Service.

Though Espenshade's team worked through the summer, but only in the past few months unearthed enough to determine the major scope of the site.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime find, as preliminary estimates show the site dates to around 600 A.D.," said David McCullough, a Corps archaeologist.

"The petroglyph carvings are outstanding, with various human-looking faces and bodies. Another remarkable thing is the site is so well preserved. It was covered by the river's flooding and wasn't looted or cleared for farming," he added.

Puerto Rican archaeologists are excited by the find, which will be turned over to the island's government for preservation and future research.

Taino Indians, the original inhabitants of the region, were part of the Arawak people who settled the Caribbean, most likely venturing from the northern coast of South America, their canoes carried by ocean currents onto the string of islands that curve like an arc through the tropical sea.

How sliced bread was born

2007-12-27T03:22:00.000-08:00

It took a mastermind and whole lot of hard work to come up with the world's first bread slicer, making it one of the greatest inventions in the culinary world.

In 1912, jeweller Otto Frederick Rohwedder started with his bright bread idea.

It took him many years, and several unsuccessful models, to devise a machine, which would not only cut the bread into slices, but also would wrap it up to keep it from going stale, reports Live Science.

The revolutionary slicing and wrapping machine was sold by Rohwedder to the Chillicothe Baking Company in 1928. Later that year only, the bread company sold the first loaf of sliced bread.

Thanks to the well-timed invention of the pop-up toaster the pre-cut slices became especially popular. The 1930's marketing campaign of Wonder Bread rose sliced bread's sales to new heights.

Miracle cure for liver fibrosis on the anvil

2007-12-27T03:19:00.000-08:00

Washington, December 27 : A study on mice has shown that fibrosis in the liver can not only be stopped but also reverse some of the cell damage that has already occurred, paving way for the development of a modified protein leading to the first cure for such liver diseases.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, say that their findings may help treat and cure conditions leading to excessive tissue scarring such as viral hepatitis, fatty liver disease, cirrhosis, pulmonary fibrosis, scleroderma and burns.

Earlier, the UC San Diego School of Medicine research team had discovered the cause of the excess fibrous tissue growth causing liver fibrosis and cirrhosis, and also developed a procedure blocking excess scar tissue in mice.

They wanted to develop in future, a therapy that would prevent or stop damage in patients suffering from the excessive scarring related to liver or lung disease or severe burns.

In the current study, Martina Buck, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at UCSD and the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, and Mario Chojkier, M.D., UCSD professor of medicine and liver specialist at the VA, demonstrated that if they blocked a protein linked to overproduction of scar tissue, not only can they stop the progression of fibrosis in mice, but also reverse the earlier damage.

Liver injury like cirrhosis, caused by alcohol, initiates response from hepatic stellate cell (HSC) that gets activated by oxidative stress resulting in large amounts of collagen. Collagen is necessary to heal wounds, but too much collagen leads to scars in tissues.

It was shown in the study that HSC gets activated due to the activation of a protein called RSK, that is critical for the development of liver fibrosis.

The scientists developed an RSK inhibitory peptide to block activation of RSK after establishing that the RSK pathway would be a potential therapeutic target.

They used mice with severe liver fibrosis (similar to the condition in humans with cirrhosis of the liver) induced by chronic treatment with a liver toxin known to cause liver damage.

Mice which continued on the liver toxin were given the RSK-inhibitory peptide which blocked RSK activation and in turn stopped the HSC from proliferating. The peptide also directly activated the caspase or 'executioner' protein, killing the cells producing liver cirrhosis but not the normal cells.

"All control mice had severe liver fibrosis, while all mice that received the RSK-inhibitory peptide had minimal or no liver fibrosis," said Buck.

He explained that the excessive collagen response is blocked by the RSK-inhibitory peptide, but did not have negative effects on the liver.

"The cells continue to do their normal, healing work but their excess proliferation is controlled. Remarkably, the death of HSC may also allow recovery from liver injury and reversal of liver fibrosis," he said.

A similar activation of RSK in activated HSC was discovered in humans with severe liver fibrosis but not in control livers, indicating the importance of this pathway in human liver fibrosis. Liver biopsies from patients with liver fibrosis also showed activated RSK.

The study is an extension of the work in 2001 in the journal Molecular Cell announcing that a team led by Buck had found that a small piece of an important regulatory protein called C/EBP beta was responsible for fibrous tissue growth, or excessive scar tissue following injury or illness.

"Six years ago, we showed a way to prevent or stop the excessive scarring in animal models. Our latest finding proves that we can actually reverse the damage," said Buck.

Almost 800,000 people die from liver cirrhosis each year, and there is currently no treatment for it.

Excessive tissue repair in chronic liver disease induced by viral, toxic, immunologic and metabolic disorders all result in excessive scar tissue, and could benefit from therapy developed from the UCSD researchers' findings.

$286,000 save a man's broken jaw

2007-12-27T03:16:00.000-08:00

Sydney, Decemeber 27 : A 286,000-dollar emergency medical evacuation from Antarctica to Christchurch in New Zealand's South Island had to be carried out in order to save a man who suffered a broken jaw.

The incident, which seemed to be a Christmas brawl, ended with a ski-equipped United States Air Force Hercules making an unscheduled flight from McMurdo Station, near New Zealand's Scott Base, to the South Pole, to pick up the injured man.

The Hercules then flew him back to the ice runway near McMurdo, and a helicopter took him to the nearby medical centre, where it was decided that his injuries were too serious to be treated in Antarctica.

The man was again flown back to the runway, and boarded the Hercules, for the flight to Christchurch.

He was accompanied by a flight nurse and a paramedic during the flight, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

The McMurdo staff was supposed to have a day off for Christmas, but thanks to the evacuation, dozens of support workers had to return to work.

The flight cost was estimated to be around 325,000 NZ dollars - 286,000 US dollars.A spokeswoman at the Christchurch Hospital claimed that a man was admitted on Christmas Day, and was discharged the next day.

The South Pole station is among the most expensive places in the world to visit, and the winter medevacs from the pole cost around 2 million NZ dollars.

Clever parrot with a painter elephant

2007-12-27T03:05:00.000-08:00

A particular parrot and an elephant might look like the rest of their species, but according to their owners the two are the most talented animals on Earth.

'Griffin', the parrot is as clever as a three-year-old child, and 'Hong', the elephant is a fantastic painter.

The parrot can easily understand abstract concepts such as time, place and matter. And the elephant is so good at his painting skills, that he once fooled a roomful of art experts into thinking that his daubs were produced by a human.

The duo are featured in a Five documentary series called 'Extraordinary Animals'. In the first programme Hong, a Thai elephant who creates paintings for tourists is looked at.

Alex Menamid, the caretaker of Hong, said that his paintings have a quality of line and an elegance that is very touching. "His paintings in particular have a quality of line and an elegance that is very touching," The Sun quoted Menamid, as talking about Hong.

Meanwhile, the parrot also impresses the audience with his brilliance in the documentary series. In one of the shows, the African Grey counts the number of times trainer doctor clicks her fingers and answering questions about the size and shape of objects.

Even when the order of questions is varied, Griffin gets the answers right, proving he understands what he is being asked.

Gift Returns

2007-12-26T08:33:00.000-08:00

Don't feel guilty about returning that singing mounted fish your cousin bought you. He might be returning your gift, too. About 40 percent of Americans take back at least one gift after the holidays, says the National Retail Federation.

If you find yourself in line to return a gift this season, you're apt to discover that store policies have become stricter. Restocking fees for opened boxes or missing packaging are increasingly common, and not just for electronics. For example, Sears now
imposes a 15 percent restocking fee for some appliances, tools, and lawn and garden products.

Stores have also become more persnickety about receipts. Last summer, Target changed its policy to allow for two receiptless returns a year of items less than $20. Before that the threshold was $100.

Kmart, Lowe's, and Wal-Mart are among the retailers that now use computer systems to monitor how often customers return items without sales slips. If you bring back too many within a given period, the store might stop accepting them. Some retailers say they're trying to prevent returns of stolen goods.

HAPPY RETURNS

If returning a singing fish is essential to your sanity, follow our tips and the process should go swimmingly.

Check the policy. It's probably on the store's Web site. If not, call the customer-service line or the store. Note that some stores have more generous return policies for goods purchased at holiday time.

Handle with care. Lost tags, missing packaging, or damaged boxes make it less likely you'll get your due. Amazon.com says it won't accept returns of products missing the serial number or UPC square on the box. Best Buy and Circuit City charge a 15 percent restocking fee on some electronic items whether or not you've opened the box. But you should not have to pay a restocking fee if the item was defective when you unwrapped it.

Bring the receipt. Being able to present one makes it more likely that you'll get back the item's full value. Without a receipt, a retailer might credit you with the lowest recent price or simply deny your return altogether. Gift givers should try to include
one whenever possible.

Go to the right place. If the item was purchased by mail order or on the Internet, make sure you send it to the address the retailer specifies. The retailer might also have a location near you that takes mail-order returns. Sears, for instance, accepts Lands' End returns at its stores. But Macy's and Kohl's, which sell online and in stores, don't accept returns by mail if the merchandise was purchased in a store.

Clear your good name. If your return is denied and you don't know why, you may have been incorrectly flagged by a store's computer for committing "return fraud." You might be able to correct the matter by e-mailing the Return Exchange, a company that monitors returns for retailers, at returnactivityreport@thereturnexchange.com.