HriuHriu

Dirtiest City in the World

2010-10-26T13:23:00.000-07:00

The basic criteria for evaluating the environmental pollution of cities are the danger of poisonous substances, the number of striking the population, the impact on the child's body and its development, etc. The most important source of pollution, which poisons people's lives are heavy metals. Focusing on these criteria were selected most polluted cities in the world. Leader in the number of cities - Russia, followed by India, the Philippines, the USA, China, Romania.

Very dirty and dangerous to live in it the city - Chernobyl, where the most common disease among children - a cancer of the thyroid gland. Environment, resulting in the worst nuclear disaster in the history of the planet was contaminated with uranium, plutonium, strontium, heavy metals, radioactive iodine. In second place as a Russian city - Dzerzhinsk, which during the Cold War produced sarin and mustard gas. Third place goes to town Haina (Dominican Republic), the air contains unacceptable amount of lead, which is a source of indoor plant for production of automotive batteries. This is a very densely populated area in which the most common disease - lead poisoning, whose content in the blood of the population is many times the norm. The ten most polluted cities in the world also includes the Zambian city of Kabwe, La Oroya (Peru), Linfyn (China), Maili-Sai (Kyrgyzstan), the Indian town of Ranipet, Russia - Norilsk Ore Dock, Dalnegorsk. In Norilsk winter snow falls black, the cause of which is a huge amount of sulfur and metals in the air. Life expectancy of factory workers for ten years less than the average for Russia.

One of the most polluted cities in the world recognized as Beijing, in an atmosphere which had the highest concentration of nitrogen dioxide and other harmful substances. The main reason - a large number of cars on city streets, as well as the release of chemicals at the plants of neighboring Hebei and Henan. This is a cause very high mortality pekintsev. In two other Chinese cities - Tianjin Linfyn and content in the air of sulfur dioxide and other particles are several times higher than permissible limits. In these cities there are coal mines.

Source of air pollution one of the dirtiest cities in the world - Peru La Oroya are the toxic emissions of the local plant. The air contained in unacceptable concentrations of lead, copper, and zinc. There are frequent acid rains, because of which in the vicinity of the city destroyed all vegetation. Cleaning work at the plant are not held at all. In the Zambian city of Kabwe (fourth of the dirtiest cities in the world), has rich deposits of lead. As a result of development of these deposits, ongoing since 1902, the level of air pollution with heavy metals, mainly lead and cadmium exceed allowable standards four times.

Another two of the dirtiest cities in the world are in India - a city Sukinda and Vapi. In Sukinde source of air pollution - mine, chrome ore, chromium compounds poison the air, and in Vapi industrial plants emit into the air chemical compounds and heavy metals, resulting in a poisoned 71 thousand people.

The list of most polluted cities in the world came as Azerbaijan, Sumgait air is poisoned by wastes of organic chemistry and heavy metals, and even mercury.

According to the results of research conducted by the American Foundation for Blacksmith Institute, Russia leads to the most polluted localities of the world: in the list of the 35 localities 8 are placed on Russian territory. In second place, India (The list includes six Indian cities), followed by the Philippines, the United States, China and Romania.

The experts of the American Fund amounted to a list of 35 cities, of which selected the ten most polluted. The main criteria for getting into top10 become finicky population size, the danger of poisonous substances, the impact on the child's body and its development, etc. According to experts, the main source of pollution, toxic life of 10 million people living in the ten most polluted cities are heavy metals.

Dirtiest city in the world

№	City	Country	Risk group, thousands of people.	Type of pollutants
1	Chernobyl	Ukraine	5 500	Uranium, plutonium, radioactive iodine, cesium 137, strontium and other metals
2	Dzerzhinsk	Russia	300	Chemicals and toxic byproducts from the production of cold-war era chemical agents, including sarin, lewisite, mustard gas, hydrogen cyanide, dioxins and other persistent organic chemicals
3	Hein	Dominican Republic	85	Lead
4	Kabwe	Zambia	250	Lead and cadmium
5	Oroya	Peru	35	Lead, copper, zinc, and sulfur dioxide
6	Linfyn	China	200	Ash particles in the air, carbon monoxide, nitrogen okisid, PM-25, PM-10, sulfur dioxide, arsenic and lead
7	Maili-Sai	Kyrgyzstan	23	Radioactive uranium mine tailings, heavy metals and cyanides
8	Norilsk	Russia	134	Air pollution - particulates including Strontium 90, cesium 137, sulfur dioxide, heavy metals (nickel, copper, cobalt, lead, selenium), nitrogen and carbon monoxide, phenols, hydrogen sulfide
9	Ranipet	India	3 500	Leather wastes containing hexavalent chromium
10	Dalnaia Pristani, Dalnegorsk	Russia	90	Lead, cadmium, mercury and antimony

Woman with Wrong Embryo Gives Birth to a Boy

2009-12-11T13:20:00.000-08:00

A woman who had the wrong embryo implanted by a fertility clinic has given birth to a boy, her family said Friday.
Sean and Carolyn Savage released a statement Friday night saying a "healthy baby boy," whom they plan to give up to his biological parents, was delivered Thursday at St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo. No information about the baby or the circumstances surrounding the delivery was immediately released.
The Savages, of Sylvania, outside Toldeo, had said earlier this week the baby was to be born in the next two weeks via cesarean section.
In the statement, the Savages offered congratulations to the baby's biological parents, Paul and Shannon Morell, of suburban Detroit.
"At this time, we would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations to the Morell family on the birth of their son," the Savages' statement said. "We wish Paul, Shannon, their twin girls and their new baby boy the best, as they move forward with their lives together."
The Savages asked for privacy in the days ahead, saying "Our family is going through a very difficult time."
The Morell family didn't immediately respond Friday to an e-mail seeking comment.
The Savages extended thanks to people around the world for their support and prayers. They thanked medical professionals for their care and treatment throughout the pregnancy and delivery.
The Savages say a fertility clinic outside Ohio transferred the wrong frozen embryo in February. Ten days later, they got a call from a doctor at the clinic saying she was pregnant with someone else's child.
The Savages said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday they never considered terminating the pregnancy or trying to fight for custody.
They have hired attorneys who say they are working to make sure the fertility clinic accepts responsibility.
The Morells, who live in Troy, Mich., found out about the fertility clinic mistake a day after the Savages.
The two couples knew nothing about each other. Shannon Morell feared that the pregnant woman would choose abortion, ending their chance to give their 2-year-old twin girls a sibling.
A few days passed before they learned that the Savages were not only willing to continue with the pregnancy but also to hand over the baby without hesitation.
"This was someone else's child," 40-year-old Carolyn Savage told the AP on Wednesday. "We didn't know who it was. We didn't know if they didn't have children or if this was their last chance for a child."--AssociatedPress

Woman Denied to Give Food to Children

2009-12-11T13:15:00.000-08:00

A WOMAN who lived at a squalid house with 21 malnourished children and five other adults would tease them by denying them food, a court has heard.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, today appeared in the Elizabeth Magistrates Court in Adelaide charged with various counts of criminal neglect, endangering life, causing serious harm and impeding an investigation, AdelaideNow reports.

The court heard that the woman, 34, would make porridge for the children - who were severely undernourished and were at times unable to stand or walk - before teasing them by not letting them eat.

Tarli Costi, prosecuting, said police had found a diary at the home which illustrated the "animosity' the woman felt towards the children.

She alleged two five-year-old twins who lived at the house had been the victims of a recent assault and were suffering life-threatening injuries including hypothermia.--www.news.com.au

The Theory About Dumb People Being Happier

2009-12-11T13:10:00.000-08:00

As the old saying goes, ignorance is bliss.
Think, for instance, about the victims of Bernie Madoff's infamous Ponzi scheme. You can bet your bankroll that those people were a far sight happier before they received the news that their mountains of money had vanished without a trace. In truth, those folks were never as handsomely rich as they believed, but the perception of wealth probably added a comfortable cushion against life's little annoyances. Certainly, in the realm of personal finances, the truth can sting. A study published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs found that people tend to overestimate, rather than underestimate, their creditworthiness. Those who do miscalculate their financial health end up suffering more due to poor money management.
But in both of those scenarios, the problem wasn't so much stupidity as it was a lack of awareness. What you don't know can't hurt you -- that is, until you find out about it. So how about a genuine lack of intelligence? Do smarts come with the added baggage of bad moods? If you know more, are you less able to see the bright side of life?
A 2005 study of intelligence and emotional health conducted at the University of Edinburgh found no correlation between brains and happiness. According to the results, greater intelligence acts as a double-edged sword when it comes to happiness. On the one hand, smarter people are better equipped to provide for themselves; on the other, those same people may strive continually to achieve more and be less satisfied with the status quo. At low-income levels, the issue of resource acquisition may make a greater impact on personal happiness, but the effects aren't long-lasting. Just like the fading bliss of new romance, at some point, the happiness honeymoon ends.
Rather than intelligence, the most salient factor contributing to self-reported happiness in the University of Edinburgh study was quality of life. A bed-ridden genius probably won't have the same amount of life satisfaction as someone of average intelligence who can still get around. Yet, since quality of life is comprised of many external dynamics, such as geography, education and socioeconomic background, that leaves an important question lingering. If happiness is an internal emotion, what type of internal, innate qualities contribute to it?
Where Happiness Comes From
You could probably come up with a list of things that would make you happy. Maybe it entails a promotion at work, a new car or someone to fall in love with. But the fact of the matter is that when it comes to happiness, about half of the equation for attaining it boils down to biology.
The genes we inherit from our parents help determine certain personality traits. Researchers have found that those genetically derived attributes make up about half of our personal happiness quotients. Some people are handed more of a tendency for feeling satisfied with life, while others will naturally yearn for more stimulation. Scientists don't think that there's a single gene responsible for people's happiness; rather, the sum of their parts is what can turn that frown upside down more easily.
To figure out which predisposed personality traits contribute to happiness, psychologists studied nearly 1,000 pairs of twins. The twins' genetic similarities allowed the experts to isolate common inherited characteristics. From there, the psychologists pinpointed low-stress, highly sociable and conscientious individuals as having the widest happiness ranges. You can think of a happiness range in terms of emotional elasticity. Optimistic folks with strong interpersonal relationships may bounce back into shape sooner after difficult events. On the flip side, people who are more pessimistic and antisocial may take longer to recover.
Fortunately, humans aren't hopelessly bound by genetics. There are plenty of ways for the cynics among us to find happiness. And while intelligence doesn't significantly affect intrinsic happiness, it does take a little brain power to alter your mentality to focus on the good. In fact, a relatively new branch of psychology is devoted to understanding how people can train themselves to be happier.
Pioneered by Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, positive psychology concentrates on how positive emotions, such as optimism, gratitude and mindfulness, influence overall happiness and satisfaction. Its logic follows that if people put those attributes into practice, they'll reap the benefits of happiness. Spending time with others, performing acts of kindness and pursuing fulfilling goals, for instance, should foster ultimate joy.
From there, happiness could actually make you smarter. Neurological studies have shown that the sunny emotion promotes broader thinking skills and creativity. Our longevity also profits from all of this good cheer. Relieved from the undue strain that stress produces in our bodies, the happiest people tend to live the longest.
Now that's something to smile about.--health.howstuffworks.com

The People Who Filed Lawsuits Against the Scientific Method

2009-12-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

Scientists study for years to give us advances like computers. Lawyers sue scientists on behalf of people who can't operate computers, earn ten times as much and, in doing so, raise horribly relevant questions about which group is actually smarter. Here we see seven of the worst offenses of law against science:
Flower Power Versus Particle Physics
Walter Wagner enjoyed a lot of media attention a few months ago, bringing a lawsuit against the Large Hadron Collider which he claims will destroy the world. While Wagner repeatedly pointed out that he's a scientist, he failed to mention that he's a botanist, also known as a "plant scientist," in the public circle (and "gay scientist" in the scientific one). Now, while we're sure Wagner knows his way around a tulip, it's important to note that his only recorded experience with nuclear science comes from working in a hospital that performed nuclear medicine and, unless they treated Galactus, that doesn't involve a lot of superstring ultrascience.
Get over yourself, Wagner. Plenty of unqualified smartasses warn the world about the LHC, but they're not suing anyone.
While his website is quick to point out his impressive credentials ("wikipedia science editor"), as well as remind everyone how expensive his particular brand of scientific exploration is going to cost ("We expect to encounter expenses in excess of $100,000 in this action" ), it strangely fails to mention his 2004 indictment for first-degree identity theft and fraud in Hawaii. Also missing from the website: reasonable, non-retarded evidence to support his claims about the collider. Still, Wagner believed he was going to save the world, and if that meant getting totally rich and famous in the process, Wagner was prepared to carry that weight. He truly is a hero.
Or, at least he was: the judge in the Honolulu court he filed the case in had to explain that they don't actually have jurisdiction over Switzerland.
Since Switzerland is pretty clearly not part of this country, that ruling may not surprise you. In fairness, though, Wagner's a flower doctor, so you can't expect him to understand something as complex as geography. You can, however, still donate to Wagner and his cause, in case you either support lunatics or just plain hate real science.
What a Victory Would Imply:
That one man with a lawyer is recognized as a better expert on a field than every expert on the planet in that field put together, with a billion dollar budget, working for over twenty years. Society itself would break down as every skilled worker in the world just gives up and either goes to law school or takes up professionally hurting themselves for money. Think Mad Max meets Jackass with lawsuits instead of gasoline.
Voting Machine Makers Sue to Prevent Testing
Sequoia Voting Systems sued to prevent Princeton computer scientists from studying their voting machines on the grounds that it would damage their business. Which is fair enough, because scientific reports confirming that the machines can't count and often don't turn on probably would. Election clerks ordered the study when they found that the machines had miscounted the number of voters, and since the sole function of the machines is "count the number of voters" that's kind of a serious problem.
Sequoia's ominously-titled "Vice President of Compliance/Quality/Certification" issued this statement: "We will also take appropriate steps to protect against any publication of Sequoia software, its behavior, reports [sic] regarding same or any other infringement of our intellectual property."
That means we're not even allowed to talk about the voting machines and when a "Vice President of Compliance/Quality/Certification" says "appropriate steps" we get a little nervous.
What a Victory Would Imply:
That companies can sell you things and you are legally barred from complaining if they don't work, or even checking if they do. Under this framework Apple could start shipping white-painted rocks in boxes saying "iPod" and you couldn't complain. Not that the Apple fanboys who waited in line for three days to get an iStone would anyway.
Redefining Pi
Since the (evidently) extremely influential Committee on Swamp Lands saw no issue with the new definition, the bill actually had a chance of passing until, thankfully, a mathematician just happened to wander into the building on other business and, after checking the bill out, effectively informed those present that he wouldn't wipe his ass with the bill for fear it would miscount the number of cheeks.
What a Victory Would Imply:
Start with the collapse of Euclidean geometry and spacetime, then work up from there. Basically, Salvador Dali paintings would become still lifes and everything you know would be wrong.
And if you're okay living in a world like that, congrats on being the oldest living-person, Mr. Chairman for the Committee on Swamp Lands.
Homeopath Versus Multiple Nobel Prize Winners
In 1988, noted immunologist Jacques Benveniste got bored with "the respect of his peers" and "scientific credibility" things and published a paper claiming that water retains the memory of useful medicines that had been dissolved in it, even when so diluted that none of the original medicine remained. This line of reasoning is vaguely reminiscent of homeopathologists, aka "those people who don't wash and sell the very expensive water." It appeared in Nature, whose Editors apparently only read as far as his name before hitting the print button.
Benveniste also claimed that this information could be digitized and transmitted by telephone. Let us restate that: He claimed that you could turn a glass of water into useful medicine by calling it on the phone.
Not surprisingly, some scientists had a bit of a problem with this. And by "some" we mean "all," including Nobel Prize winners in physics and medicine Georges Charpak and Francois Jacob. When they pointed out that his claims were a bunch of horseshit (probably in a much more cultured turn of phrase) Benveniste sued them for libel. Despite the fact that every single experiment to replicate his Jesus-like transmogrification of water either failed or were rigged.
Luckily, Mr Benveniste's case was thrown out of court because he filed the wrong type of lawsuit (which we like to interpret as the judge reading the claim and responding, "Oh, no, you need to file this in Pretend Court. We're a real court, we work with science and humans. Have a good one.").
What a Victory Would Imply:
That the universal cure to all your ills already dispenses from your tap (since the sea has, at one point or another, dissolved everything). Any illnesses you may think you're suffering are merely figments of your imagination, and the cure is just a phone call away.
Vitamins Cure AIDS
Vitamins are good for you, but it's not like they can cure AIDS. If you agree with that statement, you could be sued for one and a half million dollars. That's what journalist Ben Goldacre discovered when he called attention to some slightly dodgy behavior by Matthias Rath. Here "slightly dodgy" is defined as "putting out full page ads in South Africa, claiming that AIDS medicines are useless but vitamin pills will cure you, where tens of thousands of people die every month from AIDS".
Why yes, Mr. Rath does own a vitamin company and, while we don't know this information firsthand, we can only speculate that his balls are somewhere in the realm of "super huge." While the case failed, for the entire year it dragged on Mr. Goldacre was barred from even mentioning anything to do with the case. Which, since he's a journalist, kind of made it hard for him to do his job.
What a Victory Would Imply:
When you can be successfully sued for claiming that vitamins don't cure AIDS, it's the end of public communication, since the last count of "things that don't cure AIDS" came in at approximately "everything." If someone can be sued in the face of such a basic fact, we'll have to take up coded sign language just to avoid litigation.
#2.
Suing About Polar Bears Being Endangered
The Center for Biological Diversity counted the number of polar bears left and found that, holy shit, those things are endangered. In a sign of just how legally messed up things are, they're having to sue the government to get the status changed from "threatened" to "endangered." That's right, the scientists whose job it is to track endangered animals still have to bring a court case to get that tracking recorded, and that's not even the worst lawsuit involved.
A countersuit has been filed by the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Iron and Steel Institute and others who clearly have no ulterior motives whatsoever. The countersuit is seeking to not only block the upgrade but to remove the "threatened" status, even though few of their legal statements even address the number of polar bears at all and amount to "Ah, they'll be fine".
They point out that with the cost of gas the way it is, the bears should not be considered "endangered." Our understanding of bear-mating is woefully underdeveloped, but we don't think those things check the price at the pump before deciding whether or not to produce offspring. The companies also complain that Alaska has to deal with special conservation rules that other states don't. The fact that Alaska is the only state that actually has polar bears doesn't really seem relevant to them.
What a Victory Would Imply:
That you don't even have to address the issue of the case. For example, you could beat a murder rap by simply proving conclusively that going to jail for twenty years would significantly damage your ability to make a decent living as a hitman.
#1.
Deep Impact Suit
The Deep Impact mission was an effort by NASA to find out what was inside the comet 9P/Tempel, which they did by slamming a three hundred kilogram copper bullet into it at ten kilometers per second.
Which was awesome, because not nearly enough space missions are directed by Michael Bay. The day after the mission, Russian astrologer Mirana Bai sued NASA for $300 million for "moral suffering." Apparently, making a small hole in a comet no one had ever heard of in its un-holed state had ruined the natural balance of the universe and affected her horoscope.
The thing is, 9P/Tempel doesn't actually appear on the horoscope. Pedantic, we know, but if you're going to go to court based on the magic future-predictions of little spots in the sky, you should make sure that you're actually talking about one. And three $300 million? Is she claiming that the change to her horoscope prevented her from meeting a tall dark stranger? A tall dark stranger with forty winning lottery tickets in his pocket?
What a Victory Would Imply:
When an astrologer is credited with a better understanding of space than NASA, it's time to turn off modern civilization, move everyone back to the caves and start over.--cracked.com

Survey Shows that One in Five US Drivers Write Text Messages While Driving

2009-12-09T11:10:00.000-08:00

Nearly one-in-five U.S. drivers surveyed have read or sent a text message while behind the wheel even though nearly all of the respondents in an AAA survey released on Friday considered it unacceptable.
"The new technologies that help us multitask in our everyday lives and increasingly popular social media sites present a hard-to-resist challenge to the typically safe driver," AAA chief executive Robert Darbelnet said in a statement accompanying the survey commissioned by the AAA Foundation.
"Enacting texting bans for drivers in all 50 states can halt the spread of this dangerous practice among motorists nationwide, and is a key legislative priority for AAA in state capitals," Darbelnet said. The group, which provides emergency road services to its members and lobbies on automobile issues, formerly was known as the American Automobile Association.
The random telephone survey questioned 2,500 U.S. residents 16 and older in April and May.
Although nearly all respondents considered the practice unacceptable, 18 percent said they had sent a text message while driving within a month of being surveyed.
Most data available on texting and driving is anecdotal but the U.S. Transportation Department is seeking more information as pressure grows to ban the practice. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will hold a two-day conference on distracted drivers next week in Washington.
Separately on Friday, 93 percent of 1,000 licensed drivers responding to a survey commissioned by Ford Motor Co supported a nationwide ban on texting while behind the wheel. AAA says surveys of its members also favor a ban, a step that is supported by Ford and other major automakers.
About a dozen states have imposed prohibitions and proposals for a national ban have been introduced in Congress.
The wireless industry -- including cellphone manufacturers, carriers, and some Internet companies represented by the CTIA-Wireless Association -- support state and local efforts to ban texting while driving.-Reuters.com

South Korea Knows the Position of North Korean Nuke Bases

2009-12-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

SOUTH Korea could mount swift and precise attacks on North Korea's nuclear bases should war break out on the peninsula, Seoul's incoming top military officer said today.
General Lee Sang-Eui, named as next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Seoul had a list of major targets its forces would strike first should a conflict erupt.
Nuclear weaponry would pose the greatest threat, he told a parliamentary confirmation hearing, pledging to "mobilise all means available to precisely and swiftly strike'' such bases.
New Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young told his own confirmation hearing last week that Seoul knew where the North was storing its nuclear arsenal.
Mr Kim said Seoul could strike the sites through quick consultations with Washington if North Korea tried to fire a nuclear weapon at the South.
General Lee, quoted by Yonhap news agency, said the North was believed to have up to 40kg of plutonium, enough to build at least six nuclear bombs.
After months of hostility including missile and nuclear tests, Pyongyang began making peace noises to Washington and Seoul in August.
South Korean officials have expressed scepticism about the overtures, saying the hardline communist state has not changed its fundamental attitude.
Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan accused the North last week of developing nuclear weapons to launch an attack on the South and "communise'' the peninsula.-theaustralian.news.com.au

Family Found for the Baby Left on the Doorstep

2009-11-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

SHE was the newborn left on the doorstep of a stranger's home.

Six months after the baby girl affectionately known as Sunday April was abandoned, she now has adoptive parents who have promised whoever her natural mother is that they will "love and take good care of her".

Sunday was discovered by two girls on the veranda of a Dubbo townhouse in April. After a nationwide appeal the natural parents of the baby still haven't come forward.

"We feel blessed to be Sunday's adoptive parents," her new parents told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.

"Our hearts go out to her mum and we appreciate she must have had good reasons to make the decision she did. We want her to know that we will take good care of her daughter.

"Our family is so excited to welcome Sunday into our lives. We love our new daughter very much."

The parents plan to change Sunday's name to give her a normal upbringing away from the spotlight.

They said in the two weeks that she had been with them she had been very healthy and happy and met all her milestones of feeding well and being of a healthy weight.

"She loves to smile and going for walks in her pram," they said. "She is very active and it won't be long before she is crawling."

The Department of Community Services was inundated with well-wishes for the baby but no information about her natural parents came to light.

"We have been very touched by everyone who rang up and wished Sunday well," her parents said.

"As Sunday grows, we will share with her about what happened when she was born, including how so many people helped to try and find her parents and rang to wish her well."

After a child is placed for adoption Community Services supports the family for six months to make sure the child is settling well.

A formal adoption application is then prepared and lodged in the NSW Supreme Court. An adoption order is generally made within a month.

Sunday's new parents are yet to go through this process.---theage.com.au

Do Not Live in These Locations - the Top 8 List

2009-11-22T11:45:00.000-08:00

It’s hurricane season, a time of year when residents in vulnerable areas—like New Orleans—need to hunker down, stock up and prepare for the unforeseen. But there are other places in the world where the dangers are so great that it’s hard to believe anyone is willing to stay put and fight it out with Mother Nature. Here, we have canvassed the globe for 10 places that require fortitude, resourcefulness and a great faith in one’s DIY skills to make it through the year alive.

Verkhoyansk, Russia
On the frigid taiga, 3000 miles east of Moscow, deep in the heart of Siberia, sits Verkhoyansk, the oldest city above the Arctic Circle. For more than three centuries, Russians have continuously resided here, braving endless winters on the banks of the Yana River, which is frozen solid for nine months of the year. Today, approximately 1500 people live here.

Verkhoyansk lays claim to the title of coldest city in the world, the so-called Cold Pole. It's hard to dispute the designation, when you consider that from September to March the city averages fewer than 5 hours of sunlight each day. (In December and January, there is nearly no sunlight.) Winter temperatures there typically fall between minus 60 and minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The low, recorded in the late 19th century, was minus 90.

Nowadays, the city is attempting to attract "extreme tourists," who are drawn by the intense cold. For much of its history, however, Verkhoyansk was a preferred exile destination, used first by the czars, then later by the Soviets. In the 20th century, Verkoyansk's population peaked at 2500 residents.

The Mountain of Fire

Mount Merapi, Indonesia
Even during its most tranquil periods, Mount Merapi, on the island of Java, smolders. Smoke ominously floats from its mouth, 10,000 feet in the sky. "Fire Mountain," as its name translates to English, has erupted about 60 times in the past five centuries, most recently in 2006. Before that, a 1994 eruption sent forth a lethal cloud of scalding hot gas, which burned 60 people to death. In 1930, more than 1000 people died when Merapi spewed lava over 8 square miles around its base, the high death toll being the result of too many people living too close.

In spite of this volatile history, approximately 200,000 villagers reside within 4 miles of the volcano. But Merapi is just one example of Javans tempting fate in the proximity of active volcanoes—it's estimated that 120 million of the island's residents live at the foot of 22 active volcanoes.

Haiti's Perfect Storms

Gonaïves, Haiti
First came tropical storm Fay on August 16. A week later, Hurricane Gustav blew through. Following in quick succession were Hurricanes Hanna and Ike. In the span of just one month, the coastal city of Gonaïves, one of Haiti's five largest cities, found itself on the receiving end of four devastating tropical cyclones. When the last storm passed, Gonaïves had practically been washed out to sea. Much of the city was buried under mud, or submerged in filthy water that stood 12 feet deep in some places. The death toll ran close to 500.

But the storms of August to September 2008 weren't the most deadly in Gonaïves' recent history. In 2004, the city of 104,000 took a severe beating from Hurricane Jeanne. Three thousand Haitians died when the Category 3 storm hit and leveled large swaths of the city.

What makes Gonaïves so susceptible to destruction by hurricane? Aside from its coastal location on the Gulf of Gonâve, smack-dab in the cyclone-inclined Caribbean, Gonaïves rests on a flood plain prone to washing out when inland rivers swell. Furthermore, Haitians rely on wood to make charcoal, their primary source of fuel, and this has led to massive deforestation of the hillsides surrounding the city. As a result, when the rains come, the hills around Gonaïves melt away and mudslides nearly bury the city.

The African Lake of Death

Lake Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo/Rwanda
Lake Kivu, located along the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, is one of Africa's Great Lakes. Deep below the surface of this lake's 2700 square miles, there are 2.3 trillion cubic feet of methane gas, along with 60 cubic miles of carbon dioxide trapped beneath the lake under the pressure of the water and earth. If released from the depths, these gases could spread a cloud of death over the 2 million Africans who make their home in the Lake Kivu basin.

The precedent for this concern stems from a pair of events that occurred in the 1980s at two other African lakes with similar chemical compositions. In 1984, 37 people died around Cameroon's Lake Monoun in a limnic eruption. Three years later, at Lake Nyos, also in Cameroon, 80 cubic meters of CO2 were released from the water. Subsequently, 1700 people died from exposure to the toxic gas. These incidents were apparently caused by volcanic activity below the lakes, which triggered the release of the gas. Similar activity is believed to occur beneath Lake Kivu, causing many to worry that this area is next. A report from the Unated Nations Environmental Program went so far as to call the three bodies "Africa's Killer Lakes," and said Lake Kivu was cause for "serious concern."

The Ephemeral Isles

The Maldives
The Maldives are such a dangerous place that Muhammed Nasheed, upon taking office in 2008, made it one his first items of business as the Maldives' first democratically elected president to announce a plan to create a fund for financing the relocation of the entire population.

The Maldives is a confederation of 1190 islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean. Its highest point of elevation is little more than 6 feet, and, sometime in the not-too-distant future, it is likely to be swallowed whole by rising sea levels. A 2005 assessment by the United States Geological Survey, conducted after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, called the Maldives one of the Earth's youngest land masses, adding that they're not long for life above water. According to the report, the islands "should be considered ephemeral features over geologic time."

By President Nasheed's reckoning, the people of the Maldives would be well-served to find someplace else—India or Sri Lanka were floated as potential refuges—lest they too become ephemeral. Recent events support his decision to invest money earned through tourism in a relocation fund: The 2004 tsunami, which occurred at low tide, swept over the island, leaving 10 percent of the country uninhabitable. Of the Maldives' 300,000 citizens, one-third were left homeless, and more than 80 people died. In 1987, during so-called "king tides," the capital of Malé, an island city covering 1 square mile, was completely inundated. The effects of these disasters were compounded by the mining of the coral reefs that surround the islands, which has made them highly susceptible to sea erosion.

Hurricane Capital of the World

Grand Cayman
The Cayman Islands, a British territory situated 150 miles south of Cuba, are best known as a tropical playground for the champagne and caviar set, who come to the islands for pristine Caribbean beaches, world-class diving, and lax banking regulations. Less alluring is the islands' other reputation as "hurricane capital of the world." According to the tropical-storm-tracking website hurricanecity.com, Grand Cayman, the largest of the three Cayman isles, is hit or brushed by at least one hurricane every 2.16 years, more than any other locale in the Atlantic basin. Since 1871, 64 storms have battered the low-lying limestone formation, often with catastrophic results.

In 2004, Hurricane Ivan, a Category 5 storm with wind speeds approaching 150 miles per hour, dumped a foot of rain on Grand Cayman. A 10-foot storm surge followed, submerging a quarter of the island. An estimated 70 percent of the island's buildings were destroyed, and its 40,000 inhabitants were left without power or clean water for days.

The I-44 Tornado Corridor

Oklahoma City/Tulsa, Oklahoma
More than 1 million people reside along the Interstate 44 corridor that runs between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, the Sooner State's two most populous metropolitan areas. Each spring, as the cool, dry air from the Rocky Mountains glides across the lower plains, and the warm, wet air of the Gulf Coast comes north to meet it, the residents of this precarious stretch, locally called Tornado Alley, settle in for twister season.

Since 1890, more than 120 tornados have struck Oklahoma City and the surrounding area, which currently has a population of approximately 700,000. On May 3, 1999, an outbreak of 70 tornados stretched across Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. Several of the most destructive storms swept through Oklahoma City, destroying 1700 homes and damaging another 6500. Even with modern prediction capabilities and early-warning systems, 40 people died when an F-5 twister tore through Oklahoma City. In addition to the loss of life, this display of natural devastation caused more than $1 billion in damage. Since 1950, the longest the area has gone without a tornado is five years—from 1992 to 1998. (As if making up for lost time, in the 11 months that followed that record lull, 11 tornados hit.) For only three other periods during the last half-century has Oklahoma City gone more than two years without a tornado.

Northeast of Oklahoma City, along the same track that most tornado-producing storms travel, sits Tulsa, which has experienced its own share of devastation at the hands of Tornado Alley's storms. Between 1950 and 2006, 69 tornados spun across Tulsa County—population 590,000—though none proved as deadly as the 1999 storm that hit Oklahoma City. But because of its geography—the city lies along the banks of the Arkansas River and is built atop an extensive series of creeks and their flood plains—Tulsa is particularly vulnerable to the rain that accompanies Oklahoma's severe weather. Major floods in 1974, 1976 and 1984 caused hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage.

China's Creeping Sandbox

Minquin County, China
Trapped between two creeping deserts, the once fertile oasis of Minqin County, in northwest Gansu province, lives on borrowed time. The double whammy of a decade-long drought and the upriver diversion of water from its lifeline, the Shiyang River, have left Minqin to wither into the Tengger desert, which approaches from the southeast, and the Badain Jaran, closing in from the northwest. In total, since 1950, the deserts have swallowed up more than 100 square miles. During that same period, the population there has risen from 860,000 to more than 2 million.

As of 2004, the deserts were approaching at a rate of 10 meters per year. With more than 130 days of wind and dust each year, that rate is unlikely to slow. Faced with rapid desertification, the Chinese government has begun relocating displaced farmers, as arable land has decreased from 360 square miles to fewer than 60.

Cleaning Top 50 Most Polluted Sites in the United States

2009-11-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

The EPA announced that 50 of the most polluted, most hazardous waste sites in the country will be cleaned up, thanks to $582 million in stimulus funds. Each of the sites is heavily contaminated with mining waste, out-of-control landfills, and chemical spillage—just to name a few. As you might recall, Superfund cleanup was one of the green projects included the stimulus--here's how it's going to help.

Waste Site Cleanup

Four of the waste sites, or Superfund sites, are going to get dangerously contaminated soil removed from hundreds of residential lawns, according to the AP.

The stimulus funds are also going to get 180 families access to clean drinking water—after decades of going without. From the AP:

Up to $25 million will connect 180 houses in southeastern North Dakota to public drinking water. Their wells were tainted with arsenic from bait applied to control grasshoppers in the '30s and '40s. The people who live there have been supplied with bottled water since their wells were contaminated.

Yet another project involves the dredging up of contaminated mud from the harbor in Bedford, Massachusetts—a project that was estimated to take 38 years without renewed funding.
In many of the sites, cleanup efforts had already been underway but were halted last year due to a lack of funding. Others still were planning on running out of funding this year, before the stimulus swooped in to clean up the day.

Stumbling Superfund

All this stimulus money going to help Superfund waste sites helps draw attention to another issue: the program is hopelessly underfunded. The tax on hazardous chemicals intended to keep it afloat was cut off by Congress in 1995. Since then, the program's budget has shriveled, and hundreds of hazardous waste sites have been left a mess.

Obama plans to reinstate the tax in 2011, which would generate around $1 billion annually for the program. Perhaps then hazardous waste sites won't have to languish for decades—posing health threats to those who live nearby in the process.---www.treehugger.com

Cheerleading Causes Serious Injuries in the Female Sport

2009-11-14T08:48:00.000-08:00

Cheerleading safety efforts have led to modest reductions in the number of serious injuries in recent years, according to a new report about college and high school sports and cheerleading mishaps.

But cheerleading caused more serious and deadly injuries by far than other female sports during the study period.

Researchers have long known how dangerous cheerleading is, but records were poorly kept until recently. An update to the record-keeping system last year found that between 1982 and 2007, there were 103 fatal, disabling or serious injuries recorded among female high school athletes, with the vast majority (67) occurring in cheerleading. The next most dangerous sports: gymnastics (nine such injuries) and track (seven).

Today, the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released its 26th annual report on the topic. The latest figures are from the 2007-2008 academic year for college and high school sports, male and female. The report defines catastrophic injuries as any severe or fatal injury incurred during participation in the sport.

The new numbers are for the 26-year period from the fall of 1982 through the spring of 2008:

There were 1,116 direct catastrophic injuries in high school (905) and college sports (211).
High school sports were associated with 152 fatalities, 379 non-fatal injuries and 374 serious injuries. College sports accounted for 22 fatalities, 63 non-fatal injuries and 126 serious injuries.
Cheerleading accounted for 65.2 percent of high school and 70.5 percent of college catastrophic injuries among all female sports.

The number of cheerleading injuries fell slightly in the 2007-08 academic year.

"Progress has been slow, but there has been an increased emphasis on cheerleading safety," said the study's author Frederick O. Mueller. "Continued data collection on all types of cheerleading injuries will hopefully show that these safety measures are working to reduce injuries."---www.livescience.com

Beware of Radiation - Ten Most Hazardous Smartphones

2009-11-14T08:40:00.000-08:00

One of the scariest unknown technology risks of this decade is the issue of radiation from cell phones. There’s still an open question about whether long term exposure to these mobile devices will cause damage or disease to human beings.

The Environmental Working Group has a comprehensive new study (download the full report as a PDF) that surveys the scientific research on cellphone heath risks and provides radiation data for most of the current cellphones in use. Here’s how the EWG explained the mission of its study:

We at Environmental Working Group are still using our cell phones, but we also believe that until scientists know much more about cell phone radiation, it’s smart for consumers to buy phones with the lowest emissions. The U.S. government ought to require cell phone companies to label their products’ radiation output so that consumers can do the numbers at the point of sale. It doesn’t, so EWG has created this user-friendly interactive online guide to cell phone emissions, covering over 1,000 phones currently on the market.

The EWG study looks at all mobile phones, but since smartphones are becoming a standard tool for businesses and IT professionals, I’ve drilled down and looked at the list from a smartphone perspective. I’ve broken out the 10 smartphones that produce the most radiation, the 10 that product the least amount of radiation, and a list of the radiation ratings of some of the most popular smartphones that did not make either of those two lists.

When you look at these lists, keep in mind that the EWG has also included some older models that are no longer being sold but are still used by many workers and consumers. Also note that “W/kg” stands for watts per kilogram, a measurement for power density.

The 10 smartphones with the highest radiation

T-Mobile MyTouch 3G (1.55 W/kg)
Blackberry Curve 8330 (1.54 W/kg)
Palm Treo 600 (1.53 W/kg)
T-Mobile Shadow (1.53 W/kg)
Palm Treo 650 (1.51 W/kg)
Blackberry Curve 8300 (1.51 W/kg)
Blackberry Bold 9000 (1.51 W/kg)
Sony Ericsson P910a (1.50 W/kg)
HTC SMT 5800 (1.49 W/kg)
BlackBerry Pearl 8120/8130 (1.48 W/kg)

The T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, an HTC smartphone powered by Google Android that debuted to lots of fanfare this summer, topped the list of the worst radiation offenders. However, other popular smartphones dominated the list as well, especially BlackBerries and Treos. The BlackBerry Curve, the best-selling smartphone on the market in 2009, was a close second on the list, and it was joined in the top 10 by its cousins, the BlackBerry Pearl and the BlackBerry Bold.

The 10 smartphones with lowest radiation

Nokia 9300i (0.21 W/kg)
Nokia 7710 (0.22 W/kg)
T-Mobile MDA Wiza200 (0.28 W/kg)
Samsung Impression SGH-a877 (0.35 W/kg)
Nokia 9300 (0.44 W/kg)
Samsung Propel Pro SGH-i627 (0.47 W/kg)
Samsung Gravity SGH-t459 (0.49 W/kg)
BlackBerry Storm 9530 (0.57 W/kg)
Nokia E90 (0.59 W/kg)
Nokia N96 (0.68 W/kg)

Nokia, with five models in this top 10, and Samsung with three, were clearly the winners in terms of smartphones that emit the least amount of radiation. It’s also interesting to note that although both of these companies produce dozens of different models, neither of them had a single model that made the list of the worst radiation offenders. The surprising member of the low-radiation club was the BlackBerry Storm (RIM’s first touchscreen device) since so many of the other popular BlackBerries were on the high-emitters list.

Other notables, from lowest to highest

HTC Touch Pro (0.91 W/kg)
Palm Pre (0.92 W/kg)
iPhone (0.97 W/kg)
Samsung JACK i637 (1.04 W/kg)
T-Mobile’s Google G1 (1.11 W/kg)
Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220 (1.14 W/kg)
iPhone 3GS (1.19 W/kg)
Samsung BlackJack II SGH-i617 (1.20 W/kg)
Motorola MOTO Q 9m (1.30 W/kg)
iPhone 3G (1.39 W/kg)
BlackBerry Tour 9630 (unknown)

If there’s another phone you’d like to look up, here is the full list. Also, when seriously evaluating any smartphone on any of these lists, make sure you click through and look at the EWG page with the details of the phone’s radiation emissions using different connections and doing different activities. The number listed is the maximum radiation rating, but it can be deceiving in some cases until you look at the whole picture.

For example, the iPhone 3GS has a rating of 1.19 W/kg, which is a middle-of-the-pack rating. However, 1.19 is its maximum radiation level, which only happens when it is connected in UMTS 1900MHz mode. In its other four modes, it averages 0.63 W/kg, which is more consistent with the lower tier of radiation emitters.

Safety tips

As part of the report, the EWG also provided eight safety tips for cellphone users who are concerned about radiation. Here is a quick list of the tips. You can click through to the original list for more detail on each of the items.

Buy a low-radiation phone
Use a headset or speaker
Listen more, talk less
Hold phone away from your body
Choose texting over talking
Poor signal? Stay off the phone
Limit children’s phone use
Skip the “radiation shield”

The EWG also offers a one-page PDF that lists all eight of these tips along with a further explanation of each. IT professionals might consider distributing this PDF to employees who use company cellphones or posting it on the corporate intranet. Of course, you should consult senior management and your legal department before distributing something like this since it involves employee health.

Bottom line

While there isn’t conclusive scientific evidence proving that cellphones cause illnesses or diseases in humans, the EWG report does point to research that has shown links between prolonged cellphone use and brain cancer, salivary gland tumors, migraines and vertigo, and decreased male sperm count (from carrying a cellphone in the pocket).

A lot more research still needs to be done, but in the meantime it makes sense for mobile manufacturers to limit cellphone radiation whenever possible and for users to be aware of which phones produce the most radiation so that they can take steps to limit radiation exposure as a precautionary step.---blogs.techrepublic.com.com

Beware of Jessica Biel in Cyberspace

2009-11-14T08:37:00.000-08:00

Through no fault of her own, actress Jessica Biel is now the most hazardous celebrity on the Internet.

Fans searching online for Biel have a one-in-five chance of hitting a Web site with malware, according to McAfee's third annual report listing Hollywood's most "dangerous" online celebrities.

In general, hunting for Hollywood's in-crowd poses a much greater threat than searching for just about anyone else. For example, President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama ranked No. 34 and No. 39, respectively.

Other unsafe celebrities near the top of the cybersecurity company's list include singer Beyonce at No. 2, former "Friends" star Jennifer Aniston at No. 3, and football hero Tom Brady, who came in at No. 4.

McAfee found that searching for photos, videos, downloads, wallpaper, and screensavers of celebrities who made the list could prove hazardous to the health of your computer.

"Cybercriminals are star watchers too--they latch onto popular celebrities to encourage the download of malicious software in disguise," Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs, said Tuesday in a statement. "Consumers' obsession with celebrity news and culture is harmless in theory, but one bad download can cause a lot of damage to a computer."

Using its SiteAdvisor technology, McAfee compiled the list by hunting for celebrity names that produced the largest number of risky sites and the highest percentage of risk.

Alcohol Banned After Workers Became Unruly

2009-11-14T08:33:00.000-08:00

SPIRITS and full strength beer have been banned on intrastate Qantas flights in Western Australia because drunken mine workers have become too unruly.

New alcohol serving rules came into effect on October 26, removing full strength beer and spirits from offer on all flights within the state.

A Qantas spokeswoman said the new rules were designed to stem the number of drunken passengers on fly-in, fly-out routes to mining towns but would also apply on tourist routes.

"It (the ban) had been escalated by the behaviour of mine workers," the spokeswoman said.

"Corporate companies are fully supportive of it, as are the Flight Attendants Association of Australia (FAAA)."

The airline said the new rules were in line with Qantas intrastate flights in all other states.

But the rules go one step further in WA by banning full strength beer and not just spirits.

The airline stopped short of removing all alcohol, leaving mid-strength beer, light beer and wine on the menu.

Before the ban, Qantas had only served 50ml spirits on Kalgoorlie, Karratha, Mt Isa, Paraburdoo, Newman and Broome flights, the spokeswoman said.

It stopped serving them on other domestic flights in the economy cabin in September last year due to a lack of demand.--- www.news.com.au

A Large Amount of Glucose Killed a Baby

2009-11-14T08:27:00.000-08:00

A premature baby, Poppy Davies, died after being given a ''massive overdose'' of glucose following a series of blunders at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Poppy was transferred to the leading children's hospital in London for specialist care after she was born three months early on Christmas Eve last year, in Basildon, Essex.

But she died after a "domino effect" of mistakes, an inquest was told.

Rebecca Tite, a trainee nurse, who had spent just three weeks in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, set up a machine supplying her with glucose incorrectly, flooding her body with the solution.

The levels of glucose in Poppy's blood rose to 20 times the maximum level they should have been, causing ''devastating effects'' to her body, St Pancras Coroner's Court in central London heard.

The machine that nurses would have preferred to use to give Poppy glucose would have prevented an accidental overdose being given to her, the inquest heard.

But the equipment was not available after being taken away to help threat a five-year-old boy suffering from meningitis who had needed it urgently.

Both Mrs Tite and Claire Kirk, the senior nurse on duty on January 11, the day of the overdose, failed to check the safety clamp on the syringe that was then used to provide glucose.

As as result, instead of being carefully measured, a free flow of glucose entered Poppy's bloodstream and circulated for over an hour.

The nurses then failed to respond to alarms that sounded in the baby's cubicle which could have alerted them to the fatal error, as they were treating her for breathing problems instead.

Doctors eventually tried to save Poppy's life by giving her insulin but she died on February 1.

Coroner Dr Andrew Reid recorded a narrative verdict outlining the circumstances of five-week-old Poppy's death, but said it was a ''tragic accident''.

Police investigated the incident but concluded there were no suspicious circumstances.

Speaking after the inquest, Poppy's father David Daly, a fireplace fitter from Greys, Essex, said he hoped the hospital had learned from its mistakes.

He said: ''It's heartbreaking, but what can you do. You've just got to carry on fighting.''

Poppy's mother, receptionist Karly Davies, was too upset to comment. She wept throughout the inquest and had to leave the court several times because of her distress.

Dr Reid said the errors contributed to a "domino effect" that ultimately caused the death of the little girl, who weighed just 1.63lb (740g) when she died - less than a bag of sugar.

He said: "I have come to the conclusion that this was a tragic accident in the course of her healthcare.

"It reflects a number of features recognised in terms of clinical risk management where there are a number of steps that have not been taken to prevent the outcome occurring.

"A domino effect applies, and the failure of one preventative system leads to another, with the result that, sadly, a fatal overdose of dextrose was given from which Poppy could not recover.

"It is not possible to say on a balance of probability when, after the overdose started, the point of no return was reached.

"This is a very rare occurrence and there is no literature to say what could or should have been done, other than in a child big enough and fit enough, dialysis may be an option."

It is not possible to know if Poppy would have survived had the overdose not been given.

Mrs Tite, who was undertaking a year-long training course in intensive care, said she had over six years' experience of looking after "very sick children", however.

She has now left Great Ormond Street Hospital, telling the inquest: "I found this incident devastating and distressing and was no longer able to continue my placement there."

The hospital has now changed the way it provides glucose to babies to prevent such a tragedy happening again.

No post-mortem examination was carried out on Poppy, but the inquest heard that she died of multiple organ failure following the glucose overdose.

A spokesman for Great Ormond Street Hospital said: “We have apologised to Poppy’s family, conscious of the enormous loss they have suffered. At every stage of the investigation we have sought to keep them informed as the most important people who have to know.

“Our internal investigation has shown that this incident occurred due to human error. No further disciplinary action has been taken.

“Competent, caring and qualified staff made a mistake.”

Policies and procedures have now been amended in the light of Poppy’s death, he added.---www.telegraph.co.uk

Women Want their Cheating Husbands Whipped

2009-11-01T08:31:00.000-08:00

Most Bruneians want husbands who cheat on their wives to be whipped, according to a recent survey in the Muslim-majority country.
The survey, conducted by website brudirect (www.brudirect.com), found 76 percent of 272 respondents said men should be whipped for having affairs while only 55 percent said unfaithful wives should receive the same punishment.
"The result of the survey is an indication of the pent-up feelings that women harbor against irresponsible men," an unnamed social worker from Brunei was quoted as saying on the website.
The oil-rich state of Brunei, located on Borneo Island, has a population of almost 400,000 of which 66 percent are Muslim.---www.reuters.com

When Using a Taser Do Not Shoot in the Chest

2009-11-01T08:13:00.000-08:00

The maker of Taser stun guns has advised law enforcement agencies to avoid hitting suspects in the chest, partly "to minimize controversy." "Taser has long stood by the fact that our technology is not risk free and is often used during violent and dangerous confrontations," Taser International spokesman Steve Tuttle said in a memo referring to an October 12 training bulletin.
"The issuing of a preferred target zone is a prime example of training advice based on best practices and field results to minimize controversy, increase effectiveness and provide enhanced risk management," he said.
A Taser is a weapon that either fires electrified darts or can be pressed directly against a person to stun and immobilize them. The devices with cartridges deploy two probes that may or may not go into the skin, according to the company.
Sudden cardiac arrest, a leading cause of death in the United States, often occurs in the midst of an arrest, Taser International said in the bulletin. If a stun gun is discharged to the chest, a lawsuit likely will follow, charging that police used excessive force, the document said.
Plaintiffs could charge that the electronic control device caused an arrhythmia, or a disruption of the heart's rhythmic beating, the advisory said.
The company advises aiming a Taser at a person's back, pelvic muscles or thigh.
Amnesty International has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Taser, expressing concern on its Web site that the device is being used as a tool of routine force, rather than as an alternative to firearms.
The human rights group says there have been insufficient medical studies on the effects of Tasers, especially their use on potentially at-risk people -- those with medical conditions, people who take prescription medications, people who are mentally ill or those under the influence of narcotics.
Amnesty International has made several recommendations to police departments, including asking law enforcement agencies to suspend using Tasers until thorough studies are done on their effects, or limit their use based on specific policies, to use them only in situations when the alternative would be deadly force and to refrain from using the devices on unarmed suspects who are argumentative or trying to flee a crime scene.
The Pensacola, Florida, Police Department banned the firing of Taser guns by officers from moving vehicles after the death of 17-year-old Victor Steen earlier this month.
Officer Jerald Ard pursued Steen early on the morning of October 3 after spotting him at a vacant construction site. Police said Ard fired his stun gun toward Steen when the teen fled on his bicycle.
Although the Taser bolt missed its target, the teen eventually crashed his bicycle and fell into the path of the police car, according to Pensacola Assistant Police Chief Chip Simmons.
The incident raised questions among some about safety procedures when it comes to using the weapons.---edition.cnn.com

Nokia Fills Lawsuit Against Apple for Patent Infringement

2009-11-01T04:28:00.000-08:00

Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, sued Apple on Thursday, claiming the iPhone violates 10 patents for wireless transmission technologies. The iPhone, which was introduced by Apple in 2007, uses two industry standards for wireless communications, G.S.M. and U.M.T.S., that Nokia developed as part of a consortium of global telecommunications companies. Nokia said it had repeatedly asked Apple to license its patents related to these standards and that Apple had refused.
“By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation,” said Ilkka Rahnasto, vice president for legal and intellectual property at Nokia.
Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, said that the company did not comment on pending litigation.
Patents disputes are standard practice in the world of electronics, especially cellphones, where the products are complex and a lot of money is at stake.
“Sometimes it can take years to figure out if a product infringes on a certain patent,” said Jerry A. Kaufman, the president of Alexander Resources, an Addison, Tex., consulting firm that specializes in telecommunications patents.
Lawsuits are a common negotiating tactic, he added.
Typically, the royalties for essential patent portfolios in cellphones make up 1 percent to 2 percent of the wholesale price. In some cases, the cost can be as much as 5 percent, Mr. Kaufman said. In total, a cellphone maker might spend between 5 percent and 15 percent of the wholesale cost of the phones on licenses for patents. (That figure understates the total cost of intellectual property because many of the chips and other components a manufacturer buys include licenses for technologies they use.)
The potential return to Nokia could be enormous. The wholesale cost to wireless carriers of the iPhone is estimated to average about $600. A 2 percent royalty would represent $12 for each phone sold. In just the most recent quarter, Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones. It has sold more than 34 million total.
Last week, Nokia said its share of the global smartphone market slipped to 35 percent in the third quarter, from 41 percent in the second, as its competitors Apple and Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, gained.
As communications equipment sales decline, manufacturers are looking to be more aggressive in making money from their patent portfolios, said Neil Mawston, an analyst at Strategy Analytics in London. “The intellectual property rights wars are ramping up in the handset industry now,” he said.
Nokia said it had invested more than 40 billion euros ($60 billion) over the last 20 years to develop the two technologies, which it has licensed to 40 leading mobile phone makers. G.S.M. is the most common global standard for wireless communication, and U.M.T.S. is a related standard for fast data communication.
Several other communications companies, including Sony Ericsson and Samsung, also contributed technology to the G.S.M. standards. These firms typically license their patents to each other at no cost, said Roger Entner, a senior vice president for telecommunications research at Nielsen.
Handset makers not part of this group typically pay royalties — but Apple has not. “Apple is a Johnny Come Lately and has not paid its dues to the club,” Mr. Entner said.
Nokia filed the suit in United States District Court in Delaware. Nokia did not specify a dollar amount it was seeking.
An analyst said Nokia’s suit was part of a trend of telecom equipment makers being more litigious. Those makers are increasingly searching for new revenue as wireless markets become saturated and sales begin to stagnate.
“Where there is a hit, there is usually a writ,” said Mr. Mawston of Strategy Analytics.---www.nytimes.com

Less Chances of IVF Success if Women Consume White Wine

2009-11-01T04:21:00.000-08:00

WHITE wine can dramatically reduce the chances of a successful pregnancy for women undergoing IVF, scientists in the US have warned.

Sharing one bottle of wine a week could cut a couple's chances of having a baby by 26 per cent. They also told men to avoid beer to maximise their chances of becoming a father.

A large-scale study of couples in their 30s found that even low levels of alcohol consumption can increase the risk of miscarriage or an embryo not implanting properly in the womb.

White wine had a bigger effect on women's fertility than any other drink, while beer had the worst impact on the quality of men's sperm.

The findings come days after the president of the Royal College of Physicians in the UK warned of the dangers to women's health of "winding down" with a glass of wine.

In the study, researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston in the US asked 2500 couples before their first IVF cycle about the amount and type of alcohol they consumed.

After taking into account factors including age, weight and whether they smoke, they found that women who drank white wine more than once a week had a 24 per cent lower chance of a live birth.

There was a 23 per cent reduced chance of the embryo implanting properly.

The study also found that if both parents drank six units of alcohol a week, the chances of a live birth declined by 26 per cent. Six units is equal to two large glasses of wine, three pints of beer or six shots of spirit.

Dr Brooke Rossi, who presented the findings to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference, said: "In general, women are told they should stop drinking when trying to achieve pregnancy."

Tony Rutherford, the chairman of the British Fertility Society, said the society's guidelines and those from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence stated that women should not drink at all during their pregnancy.

However, US Government guidelines say one or two units a week should not do any harm.---www.news.com.au

Pope Benedict XVI Was Unaware that a Bishop Denied Holocaust

2009-10-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

THE Vatican said today Pope Benedict XVI was unaware that a rebel bishop had denied the existence of Nazi gas chambers before he took the decision to lift his excommunication.

"The pope had not been informed of (Bishop Richard) Williamson's position when he decided to lift his excommunication," Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's spokesman, said.

"We have said 100 times that Williamson's comments are unacceptable," said Mr Lombardi, adding that the matter was now "finished".

Mr Lombardi was reacting to a statement by Stockholm's Roman Catholic bishop who said on Wednesday the Vatican knew that Bishop Williamson had denied the existence of Nazi gas chambers two months before the pope lifted his excommunication.

Bishop Anders Arborelius said on Wednesday that the Vatican had been told of Bishop Williamson's denials which were made to Swedish public television SVT in November 2008 and aired on January 21, 2009.

"I believe there were no gas chambers ... I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers," Bishop Williamson said in the interview.
"There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies," he added.

Bishop Arborelius said that the diocese had sent the content of the interview to the Vatican in November 2008 with the warning that the program would be broadcast in January, 2009. The excommunication was lifted three days after the program went out.

Bishop Williamson was one of four excommunicated bishops that the pope agreed to take back into the Church in January 2009 to try to heal a split with traditionalist Roman Catholics, who rejected the Vatican's liberal reforms of the early 1960s.---www.news.com.au

Police Captured Robbers Who Used a Chopper to Steal Money

2009-10-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

Swedish police said they were holding one suspect after armed robbers used a helicopter to stage a spectacular raid on a cash storage unit on the outskirts of the capital on Wednesday.
The gang landed a helicopter on the roof of a cash storage facility belonging to Anglo-Danish firm G4S in Vastberga, just south of Stockholm, and made their way into the building through a window, police said.
Witnesses reported several explosions.
The gang then loaded up the helicopter and flew off.
"The attackers used helicopters and explosives to enter the premises and they escaped with an unconfirmed amount of money," G4S said in a statement.
"A substantial reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible and recovery of the stolen money."
Police said they were questioning one person suspected of being involved in the heist but that the person had not been charged. They gave no further details.
"It was well-organized, it was well-planned," police spokesman Christian Agdur said at a press conference.
Nobody was injured in the raid though several of the staff at the warehouse were left shaken up, police said. The helicopter was later found abandoned north of the city and police dogs were being used to search the area.
A police helicopter in the Stockholm area had been prevented from taking off in pursuit of the robbers by a suspicious bag close to the aircraft. A chopper had to be called in from Gothenburg, some 400 km (250 miles) away, police said.---news.yahoo.com

People with Unfortunate Names

2009-10-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Just be glad you’re a Smith, a Jones, a Frank, a Dave or a even a Dweezil. Common names may be boring, but at least you’re not bound for a life of teasing, giggling and chattering behind your back. Unless of course, you’ve been cursed with one of these doozies.

Robert Fagot
We weren’t terribly surprised to discover that Robert Fagot needed Chuck Woolery’s help finding a date. Though it’s probably not his job that’s causing his dating problems like he claims in his introduction video on “Love Connection.”

Anurag Dikshit
Go ahead and laugh at Anurag Dikshit as much as you want, he doesn’t care — he’s one of the richest people in the world. Admit it, you’d become a Dikshit for a lot less than a couple of billion.

Sally Mangina
It’s ironic that a woman with Mangina as a surname would take up a profession involving balls. But hey, that’s part of the mangic of Sally Mangina, tennis coach at lllinois Wesleyan University.

Ben Dova
Ben Dova (not to be confused with the similarly named adult film star) is the stage name of Joseph Spah, a successful Vaudeville comedian. Check out Ben in action atop an NYC skyscraper in 1933 — no wires, nets or camera tricks. That’s entertainment!

Dick Payne
In Australia, both men and woman frequently have to deal with Dick Payne. Particularly if they’re hoping to sell their home quickly.

James Niggemeyer
When Dimebag Darrel of Pantera/Damageplan was shot on stage at a Columbus, Ohio nightclub, Caucasian police officer James Niggemeyer was first on the scene.

Kim Twatt & Jonathan Gash
Kim Twatt is the author of “Straight from the Horse’s Mouth.” Jonathan Gash penned “Every Last Cent.” Here’s to hoping that either one will find themselves a sizable audience sometime soon since it’d be supremely cool to see Twatt or Gash in the pages of the New York Times.

Dr. Reinhardt Adolfo Fuck
Meet Dr. Reinhardt Adolfo Fuck — famous Brazilian geologist.

Dr. Richard Chopp
We’ll give you one guess what Dr. Richard Chopp is best known for in the Austin medical community. Yep, Vasectomies. We can’t make this stuff up, folks.

Lucious Pusey
If you’re a college football quarterback, the last thing you want on the line is a Lucious Pusey — since that’d be sack city. Thankfully, this Pusey is now a Seymour.---www.yuppiepunk.org

People Who Feed Wild Monkeys Will be Fined

2009-10-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

The city assembly here on Friday voted to slap fines of up to 10,000 yen on people who repeatedly feed wild Japanese macaques.
The move is designed to help control the monkey population on Mount Minoosan, which ballooned from about 90 in 1959 to roughly 600 with help from tourists wielding fruits and vegetables.
The measure will take effect in April.
Feeding has been discouraged after tourists complained that the emboldened animals had started snatching their food and other belongings.---www.asahi.com

Obesity is the Major Cause of Cancer

2009-10-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

Being fat could become the leading cause of cancer in women in Western countries in the coming years, European researchers said Thursday.
Being overweight or obese accounts for up to 8 percent of cancers in Europe. Experts said that figure is poised to increase substantially as the obesity epidemic continues, and as major causes of cancer, such as smoking and hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women, drop dramatically.
"Obesity is catching up at a rate that makes it possible it could become the biggest attributable cause of cancer in women within the next decade," said Andrew Renehan, a cancer expert at the University of Manchester. Renehan presented his findings to a joint meeting of the European Cancer Organisation and the European Society for Medical Oncology in Berlin on Thursday.
Renehan and colleagues designed a model to estimate the number of cancers that could be blamed on being fat in 30 European countries. In 2002, they calculated that 70,000 cases of cancer out of about 2 million cancer cases were attributable to being overweight or obese. By 2008, the number had jumped to at least 124,000.
Colorectal cancer, breast cancer in menopausal women and endometrial cancer accounted for 65 percent of all cancers linked to being fat. Renehan said that in the U.S., some studies found obesity was responsible for up to 20 percent of cancers.
Experts said the results should help shape future cancer policies across Europe.
"Being overweight or obese is likely to be one of the biggest single causes of cancer after smoking," said Lucy Boyd, an epidemiologist at Cancer Research United Kingdom who was not linked to the research.
Scientists aren't sure why being fat boosts your cancer risk, but suspect it is connected to hormones. As people become fatter, they produce more hormones like estrogen that help tumors grow. People with big bellies also have more acid in their stomachs, which can lead to stomach, intestinal or esophageal cancer.
Still, not all experts said obesity would produce skyrocketing cancer rates in the near future.
"It is not likely (obesity) will have as severe an effect as smoking," said Jan Coebergh, a professor of cancer surveillance at Erasmus University, who has done similar research. Coebergh expected it would take a few decades before rounder Europeans would see a parallel rise in cancer, since the disease often takes years to develop.
Still, scientists called for more measures to fight obesity and the cancers it might cause.
Renehan said new strategies were needed to help people stay slim. "We need to find the biological mechanism to help people find other ways of tackling obesity," he said. "Just telling the population to lose weight obviously hasn't worked."---news.yahoo.com

New Japanese Movie Features A Sex Doll That Comes to Life

2009-10-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

Japan's top filmmaking export, Kore'eda, uses gags sparingly, weaves dark fairy tale
Hirokazu Kore'eda is the most internationally acclaimed Japanese director of his generation, whose films are regularly invited to major world festivals and receive the sort of respectful attention from foreign scholars and critics usually accorded only to dead Golden Age masters.
Starting from his 1995 breakthrough "Maborosi" ("Maboroshi no Hikari"), Kore'eda focused on that core theme of classic humanist cinema: how memory shapes our lives, in both its endurance and absence. In "After Life" ("Wonderful Life," 1998), his most popular film, the newly dead must select one memory they are permitted to take with them into eternity, a search that becomes a source of joy and anguish.
This theme, explored in film after film, raised his stock as a serious auteur — but it eventually began to feel limiting. In his recent films, including his period drama "Hana" ("Hana Yori mo Naho," 2006), his family drama "Still Walking" ("Aruitemo Aruitemo," 2008) and his latest, "Air Doll" ("Kuki Ningyo"), Kore'eda has been exploring a fresh variety of genres and themes, with mixed results.
Screened at the Cannes and Toronto film festivals, "Air Doll" is, despite its story about an inflatable sex doll who comes to life, not pop and certainly not porn. It is instead rather sweet, sad and children's storybookish, as though Kore'eda had prepped with "The Little Match Girl" and "Pinocchio" rather than Ozu and Bresson. Unfortunately, he doesn't imitate the commendable brevity of Hans Christian Anderson and Carlo Collodi: "Air Doll" is about twice as long as it needs to be.
That said, it would be hard to imagine a better actress in the title role than Du-na Bae, who was also superb as the naive-but-gutsy Korean exchange student in the Nobuhiro Yamashita school comedy "Linda, Linda, Linda" (2005). Bae manages the character's transition from lifeless doll to almost-human girl with a sureness and delicacy that is both funny and touching, without descending to the twee. When she is not in the frame, the film deflates into a gray-tinged indie exercise in alienation. When she is present, with those big, staring, watchful eyes, it springs back to life.
Bae is Nozomi, who is owned by Hideo (Itsuji Itao), a pathetic, creepy waiter at a family restaurant. He clothes her, confides in her and, of course, has sex with her. Then one fine morning, she wakes, looks at the big, beautiful world outside and decides she wants to experience it. With hesitant steps, she makes her way through the city, encountering folks as lonely and damaged as Hideo, as well as much that is strange and wonderful, from a child's touch to the blinking lights of a video-rental shop — and the eyes of a shy, handsome clerk, Junichi (Arata). She gets a job there (which may be a black joke on the many cinematically clueless rental-shop clerks) and soon realizes that the humans around her are as empty inside as she is. Perhaps she is not such an anomaly after all.
The story arc from here would seem to be clear: After the usual reverses, Nozomi becomes a "real girl," with Junichi at her side. But Kore'eda, who wrote the script based on a manga by Yoshie Goda, takes the film in a darker, more conflicted direction. Being a doll with a heart, Nozomi learns, is an unhappy, half-way state. She wants to go all the way to full humanity, even if it means pain and death. But who can help her? The broken humans all around her? Not likely. Instead, she goes in search of her maker.
Classic children's stories also venture into the darkness, but they supply a cathartic ending, as does Walt Disney's animated version of "Pinocchio," whose final scenes of death and resurrection can still make me cry as reliably as turning on a faucet. By comparison, "Air Doll" is more depressingly realistic — if still simplistic.
It's tempting to finish here with an easy put-down ("The film runs out of air," etc.), but "Air Doll," if not Kore'eda's best, has a lot in it to admire, from Nozomi's charmingly baffled explorations to a few original, if subdued, comic bits, such as the way Nozomi achieves her first real orgasm.
Strange at first glance, it makes perfect comic sense — and a larger, if often stated, point: There are different strokes for different folks. And different valves, too.---japantimes.co.jp

Man who Stole Gasoline Arrested

2009-10-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

A man was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of attempting to steal gasoline after he unwittingly filled his car's tank with water and the vehicle became stranded shortly afterwards, police said.
Fujio Hirakawa, 56, allegedly stole the liquid from an 18-liter plastic tank in a gardener's workshop in Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, believing it to be gasoline.
But the 56-year-old gardener, who had suffered a similar theft of gasoline from the tank two weeks previously, had deliberately refilled it with water.
On Wednesday morning, the gardener found the tank empty and during a search came across the suspect's car stranded in a wooded area about 200 meters from the workshop, and called the police.
According to the police, Hirakawa has admitted to the allegations, saying he had no money. He is being charged with attempted theft and trespassing.---www.breitbart.com

Man to be Given from 25 to Life for Killing Dog

2009-10-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

A Milpitas man with a long history of violence was sentenced Friday to more than 25 years in prison for beating his former girlfriend's cocker spaniel to death with a hammer, a third strike for Alex Castro.
Castro, 48, begged the court for mercy, saying such a long sentence was too much for killing a dog, but the judge said he could not ignore the violence Castro inflicted in his life, according to the prosecutor.
"I am appreciative that not only did a jury take this case incredibly seriously, as evidenced by their verdict, but also that the judge did," said Deputy District Attorney Kevin Smith. "Despite the defendant's claims he was getting too much time for 'only killing a dog,' he is getting this sentence for the violence in his past."
Castro, a drywall worker, was sentenced to 25 years to life. Because of enhancements to his sentence, the earliest he'd be eligible for parole is 33 years, Smith said.
In an interview for a probation report prepared for the judge, Castro said he believed the most time he should receive for killing Copper in July 2007 was three years, the maximum allowed for felony animal cruelty.
Copper's owner said she was "satisfied" by the verdict.
"The way he did it was horrible," said Joanie Gonzalez, of San Jose, who had owned Copper since he was a puppy. "There was no reason for it; that dog didn't do anything wrong."
Castro's attorney did not return phone calls Friday.
During his trial, Castro denied killing the 10-year-old dog, asserting the small pools of Copper's blood found by investigators stemmed from him moving the dog several times after finding the dog dead near the trailer he shared with Gonzalez at the Main Street Mobile Home and RV park in Milpitas, next to the Ooh La Lodge. Castro said he couldn't decide how to tell Gonzalez her dog was dead, likely hit by a car, and didn't want to see her cry.
Prosecutors successfully sought to have Copper's murder counted as a third strike for Castro because he had two previous violent felonies. In his probation interview, Castro said his first two strikes "are old" and he is not a habitual criminal.
In 1994, Castro and a friend went to pick up a refrigerator at his estranged wife's house and got into a fight with her then-current boyfriend. The two entered without knocking and teamed up for the fight, with his friend standing on the boyfriend's legs while Castro choked him. Castro choked the man until he turned blue and finally stopped when his friend said "Alex, he's almost dead, he's blue," according to the probation report.
In 1982, Castro and his father had been at a bar when Castro grabbed a tire iron from his truck and struck two men his father had been fighting with multiple times.
In addition to the two felony batteries with serious bodily injury and assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm, Castro had 20 misdemeanor convictions, including driving under the influence and driving with a suspended license.
Castro is due back in court Monday for the setting of a trial on charges of soliciting to prevent a witness from testifying in the trial over Copper's death. While in county jail, he managed to have a letter sent to a Milpitas motorcycle club, asking that a key witness in the case, a member of the club, not be allowed to testify in court, testimony that would have included his statements to a friend about killing Copper. That member did testify.
Gonzalez said she was initially torn that Castro was facing such a long sentence. She had just lost her mother, then her dog — and her boyfriend.
"I really didn't think that life was the right sentence for killing an animal," she said. "But as someone said, who knows, it could have a been a child the next time."---www.mercurynews.com

List of the Most Disliked People In the Field of Sports

2009-10-15T09:20:00.000-07:00

No. 1 Michael Vick
NFL
Pct. dislike: 72%
Few things can turn public opinion against you like prison time for financing a dog fighting ring. The good news: With his dislike score based on a single incident, the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback stands a good chance of turning things around with exemplary behavior once reinstated to the league.
No. 2 Manny Ramirez
MLB
Pct. dislike: 57%
This years' steroid suspension was just icing on the cake. Fans have long groaned about Manny's aloofness, inconsistent effort and poor fielding. "Manny being Manny" still works OK as long as he's hitting, but fans outside the home market (recently Boston, now Los Angeles) don't take the liking to him they do to quiet, steady stars like Derek Jeter or Albert Pujols.
No. 3 Alex Rodriguez
MLB
Pct. dislike: 53%
Never mind that the biggest difference between the Yankee championship teams of the late 1990s and the good-but-not-great teams of more recent years has been a dropoff in pitching depth. When you've got the game's biggest contract, fans will make you the scapegoat. Being splashed all over the tabloids for strip club visits, dalliances with Madonna and, most recently, a steroid rap, doesn't help.
No. 4 Terrell Owens
NFL
Pct. dislike: 45%
Talented and controversial, T.O. has come to embody a recent NFL trend of wide receiver as attention-seeking diva. He's already added some juice to the Buffalo Bills image, but few doubt he'll clash with his quarterback soon enough.
No. 5 Kobe Bryant
NBA
Pct. dislike: 42%
Fair or not, fans see the super-talented Bryant as basketball's A-Rod, a phony who focuses on saying the right thing in public.
No. 6 Allen Iverson
NBA
Pct. dislike: 38%
Corn rows and big tattoos bolster a gangsta rap image, even as some in the industry say Iverson isn't the person the public perceives him to be.
No.7 Isiah Thomas
NBA
Pct. dislike: 36%
Generally considered a bit phony and political during his playing days, Thomas' image crashed when he became a basketball executive. Presiding over a train wreck of a Knicks team, and getting hit with a sexual harassment complaint in the process, doesn't endear you to the local fan base. Thomas begins anew this season as head coach at Florida International University.
No. 8 Stephon Marbury
NBA
Pct. dislike: 36%
Exhibit A of Thomas' unsuccessful run in New York, Marbury was told to stay home last season by new Knicks chief Donny Walsh despite a big contract while the team tried to trade him (he eventually landed in Boston).
No. 9 Nick Saban
College Football
Pct. dislike: 35%
Saban took a big publicity hit when, as coach of the Miami Dolphins two years ago, he publicly stated a desire to stay put, then jumped to the University of Alabama.
No. 10 John McEnroe
Tennis
Pct. dislike: 31%
Still active on senior tours and World Team Tennis, the former No. 1 ranked player in the world continues to hear hoots from fans who remember his childish tirades a generation ago.---www.forbes.com

Judge to Warns Lawyer to Dress Appropriately When Visiting the Court

2009-10-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

If you plan to show up in court, it may be best to dress up for the occasion.
A federal judge in Brooklyn, New York on Thursday threw out a complaint by a lawyer alleging a constitutional right to wear jeans and a baseball hat in a courtroom.
Todd Bank, whose office is in Kew Gardens, New York, showed up in a Queens housing court in March 2008 while wearing a button-down shirt, blue jeans, socks, shoes and a baseball hat that read "Operation Desert Storm."
Judge Anne Katz told Bank he was dressed inappropriately, and court clerk Jude Albano told him to take the hat off.
Bank sued both, saying his right to free speech and his liberty to dress as he wishes, which he said are guaranteed under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, allowed him to wear the clothing.
Not so, said U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis.
A courtroom is a "staid environment" where a judge may set reasonable limits on litigants' behavior to enforce "commonly shared mores of courtroom civility," he wrote.
He said the case raised "no serious dispute," lamenting that the office of New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo "has now had to expend resources" defending the matter.
The judge added, however: "When he is not in court, plaintiff is free to express the ideas he wishes to express, and to wear the attire he chooses to wear."
Bank did not immediately return requests for comment. He did not allege discrimination on the basis of the hat's content.---Reuters.com

Japanese Men in their 70s Participate in Bodybuilding Championships

2009-10-15T09:10:00.000-07:00

Most men who reach their 70s are happy to sit back and reflect on their earlier years when they were finer physical specimens.
But Japanese weightlifter Tsutomu Tosuka proves that despite being 74 years old, you are never too old to have a great body.
Tsutomu was crowned champion in the senior category of the Japan Masters Bodybuilding Championships at the weekend.
With his heavily bronzed physique, the Japanese has a body that would be the envy of millions of men more than half his age.
At 74 years old, Tosaka is not your typical bodybuilder. But he is well known in the Japanese bodybuilding circuit for his mastery at such an advanced age.
Unlike most competitors, he didn’t begin bulking up until age 40 when a friend introduced him to the sport. He hasn’t stopped since.
Here, silver-haired Tsutomu flexes his muscles on stage and shows he still has plenty of pecs appeal despite his declining years.
Tsutomu was joined by dozens of other equally toned competitors for the competition in Tokyo on Sunday - the 21st anniversary of the championships.
And he scooped first prize in the over 70s category.
This week statistics revealed that more than a quarter of all women and one fifth of all men living in Japan are over the age of 65.
This has huge implications for the country, which has the second biggest economy in the world.
Many forecasters are predicting a crisis in management over caring for the elderly as more and more Japanese reach retirement age with birth rates declining.
But if Japan wants to stay in shape in the 21st century, its elderly citizens could do a lot worse than take a leaf out of Tsutomu’s weighty book.---www.dailymail.co.uk

Japan Changing Traditional for Medieval

2009-10-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

Aikido, judo, jujitsu, kendo, karate, sumo: Surely Japan has enough martial arts to keep even the most voracious of combat connoisseurs entertained for a lifetime, right? Wrong.
Jay Noyes, a 40-year-old self-described "farmer from Missouri," has recently established his own school for Western martial arts — in Tokyo.
Castle Tintagel, as it's called, is located in the leafy residential district of Mejiro — just up the road from Gakushuin University, where members of the Imperial family are educated. Presumably the local branch of the Security Police has already noticed the presence of fully armored knights wielding longswords, poleaxes, daggers and shields in their midst.
But lest too much alarm ensues: while the armor Noyes and his students use is real — custom-made in mild or stainless steel, chain mail and leather — the weapons are not. "These are made of rattan," Noyes explained, holding up a tape-covered pole about a meter long — a longsword.
"It won't injure you, but it hits with a certain amount of authority," he explained.
Noyes has always been interested in medieval combat. In the United States he was a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, an international, 32,000-member group that studies and reenacts elements of pre-17th-century Western European cultures.
Some of the most popular SCA events are battles, which, Noyes wistfully remembered, can involve "over 2,000 people, all in full armor, fighting — a great melee."
Having moved to Japan in 1991, Noyes first started participating in local SCA events, which were mostly organized out of U.S. military bases.
"I wanted to get them off the bases and get Japanese involved," he recalled, so he formed his own group, Avalon. The group (whose name comes from the fabled island where King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, was forged) now holds medieval feasts, barbecues, camping outings and, of course, combat events.
Castle Tintagel, which Noyes opened last year (it's also got an Arthurian name, being the Cornish stronghold where the legendary king was supposed to have been born), is designed to teach budding combatants the skills they need to take up arms at Avalon combat events.
And thus to the converted Mejiro storeroom, where on a rainy Sunday morning last month, unsuspecting passersby would have been startled to hear sudden cries of "my lord," "yield," "telling blow" and "dead," interspersed with feverish flurries of clangs and thwacks.
"No killing today. We only have three people," the good-humored Noyes said to his charges: Joshua from Canada; Pascal from France; and new, local boy, Suguru.
The day's class was titled "Academy of Chivalry," which meant armored combat and chivalric philosophy. (There are other classes focusing on specific weapons, and others still for more peaceful pastimes, such as calligraphy.) After some quick stretches, the group launched into energetic sword-thrust drills — without wearing any armor.
"Right foot at 45 degrees. Bend your knees. Lower yourself from the ceiling on a string," Noyes said in describing the initial stance.
"The power comes up from the earth," he said, launching his body into a rotating move that ended with a straight thrust of the sword in front of him.
"Right foot rotates forward on your toes. Hip, shoulder, hand, out, hit, good, drop back," he instructed. "The feeling is you're a waiter serving soup. You're a soup server."
Suguru, the newcomer, quickly got the hang of it, and was shortly "serving soup" as though he'd apprenticed at the Ritz.
"I've been doing kendo for 16 years," the stocky 25-year-old said during a break. "The difference is that with Western fighting there are so many more ways to swing the sword — sideways, downward, up. In kendo, it's all straight up and down."
When Suguru is not swinging weapons in real life, he's doing it in cyberspace as a producer at one of Japan's leading game-makers. "When you're designing fighting games you try to guess what it would be like to swing a sword or hold a shield. But when you actually do it, it is very different. I wanted to experience it myself, and wearing the armor too," he explained.
Suguru had to wait till the afternoon to wear the armor, when the lesson had finished and some Avalon members turned up for sparring practice. Like most of Noyes' students, Suguru had ordered his own suit of armor (15th-century style, with a bucket helmet, at a cost of around ¥100,000), but was borrowing Noyes' until it arrived.
"When I get my own gear I'm going to wear it to a friend's wedding," he laughed, as he strapped on the 30-kg kit. "How much fun would that be?"
Well, a little more "fun," perhaps, than the bouts themselves. After pairing off, the helmeted combatants greeted each other with chivalrous "My Lords," sauntered around for a few seconds with surprising agility and then crashed magnetically together in an explosion of swords, shields, breastplates and chain mail.
"There are no judges," Noyes explained over the fracas. "It's a self-judging system. A strike to the head or the body with the kind of force that would have damaged you through chain armor is a 'telling blow' and you have been beaten," he said.
After about 15 seconds or so, somewhere in among the maelstrom of lunges, swipes, blocks and parries, one combatant was struck tellingly and as fast as it all began, the bout ended.
"The idea with Western martial arts is that you should be strong, but you don't need to be all macho about it," Noyes said. "The self-judging aspect actually makes people very polite." It also makes the kind of 2,000-person battles that SCA holds in America possible. "Imagine trying to have 1,000 judges in there at the same time," he said.
Noyes hopes some day to realize battles on that scale in Japan. So far Castle Tintagel has gathered about 45 students, and Avalon has an active mailing list of over 300 — with Japanese accounting for around 90 percent of each group.
As yet, there may not be quite enough combatants to recreate the Battle of Agincourt here in the Land of the Samurai, but it's a start. Let the games begin, my lords!---japantimes.co.jp

Importing Popular Culture

2009-10-14T08:44:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the tension between the two countries, Japanese and Korean pop has developed in isolation. But all that is changing
J-poppers! Turning Japanese is sorry for having treated you for so long as little more than young, dumb starlets who squeal soppy, high-pitched sentiments over painfully crass Casio demo track ditties, designed solely to suck money from the pockets of teens too young to know any better. Little did we know that you pretty, pretty folks (and you really are all so very, very pretty) are at the frontline of a flourishing cultural exchange with your Korean K-pop counterparts.
Not that it's always been this way. Korean-Japanese relations have remained frayed since the second world war, as Japan has never officially apologized for its colonization of the Korean peninsula between 1909 and 1945. As a form of cultural revitalization after its liberation, Korea banned all cultural imports from Japan, and for decades the two countries' pop markets developed largely in isolation from one another, which created the roaring black market pop trade of illegal CD-Rs. (This is not, however, the only instance of people committing crimes for J-pop).
But in October 2004 the Korean government lifted the ban on Japanese cultural imports, and in the five years since, pop exchanges have flourished. When Japanese pop group Arashi turn up in Seoul for a press conference these days, 2,000 screaming fans are waiting for them at the airport. They can easily sell out week-long stints in arena-sized venues in Seoul, despite not speaking a word of Korean.
Even though Japanese labels don't tend to promote their bands as strongly in Korea, artists such as Gackt, Hyde, Namie Amuro, Hikaru Utada and Ayumi Hamasaki have developed considerable Korean followings simply from internet buzz. And the favour has been returned; Korean pop princess BoA took the Japanese pop charts by storm and is always popping up in Tokyo – her most recent appearance being at the MTV awards. The singer has enjoyed a success in Japan she failed to emulate when she had a pop at America. Meanwhile, Korean boyband shapeshifters TVXQ are effectively two bands … going by the moniker TVXQ in Korea and Tohoshinki in Japan, for whom they record special versions of their songs in Japanese.
Of course, back and forth through all of this, it's important to remember that by and large the music in question is absolutely dreadful. But if it's improving cultural relations and making the world a more peaceful, understanding place … who am I to begrudge that?---www.guardian.co.uk

Immigrant Prepared Plot for 9/11 Anniversary

2009-10-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

An Afghan immigrant was on the verge of unleashing a terrorist attack on New York City on the Sept. 11 anniversary but was scared off after drawing suspicion from police, prosecutors said Friday as they provided new details about how far along the plot was.
Najibullah Zazi, 24, was stopped by police on Sept. 10 as he entered the city, and he dropped his plans for an attack once he realized that law enforcement was onto him.
Zazi was sent to New York on Friday by federal marshals to face charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction in a plot law enforcement has said was focused on blowing up commuter trains.
"The evidence suggests a chilling, disturbing sequence of events showing the defendant was intent on making a bomb and being in New York on 9/11, for purposes of perhaps using such items," federal prosecutor Tim Neff told a judge in arguing for Zazi's transfer to New York.
Prosecutors said Zazi received explosives training from al-Qaida in Pakistan and returned to the U.S. bent on building a bomb.
Over the summer, he and three associates went from one beauty-supply store to another in a Denver suburb buying chemicals to make explosives like those that killed dozens of people in transit bombings in London and Madrid, investigators said.
At least three and possibly more of his accomplices remain at large, and investigators have been fanning out across New York in pursuit of suspects. Authorities have also issued a flurry of terrorism warnings for sports complexes, hotels and transit systems.
A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation said associates of Zazi visited Colorado to help him buy the chemicals using stolen credit cards before returning to New York.
Another law enforcement official said that authorities had been especially worried about Zazi's Sept. 10 visit to the city because it coincided with a visit by President Barack Obama. Police considered arresting him right away. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation continues.
Police have been especially active in the neighborhood in Queens where Zazi visited during his New York trip, staying at an apartment with a group of cab drivers and food cart operators he knows.
Zazi ran a coffee cart in Manhattan before moving to Denver this year and getting a job as an airport shuttle driver.
FBI raids beginning Sept. 14 rattled a quiet, predominantly Asian neighborhood in Queens. Muslim men said dozens of FBI agents ransacked their homes and questioned them for hours, sometimes taking DNA samples and prints from their shoes.
Because of frequent visits by police, fewer people have been attending regular services at the Masjid Hazrat Abu Bakr mosque. Zazi had returned there to pray during his brief return trip to the city earlier this month.
The FBI has also been visiting beauty shops and home-improvement stores in Colorado and New York for details about the alleged bomb-making purchases.
Court papers say that during the summer, Zazi and three unidentified associates bought "unusually large quantities" of hydrogen peroxide and acetone — a flammable solvent found in nail-polish remover — from Denver-area beauty supply stores. The products had names such as Ion Sensitive Scalp Developer and Ms. K Liquid 40 Volume.
Zazi also searched the Web site of a Queens home-improvement store for another ingredient needed to make a compound called TATP (triacetone triperoxide), the explosives used by shoe bomber Richard Reid and the terrorists who carried out the London bombings that killed more than 50 people, according to court papers.
Zazi intensified his bomb-making experiments this month, cooking up substances in a Colorado hotel suite he rented on Sept. 6-7 before driving 1,600 miles to New York over the course of about two days. He became aware that law enforcement was onto him when he was stopped entering the city on Sept. 10, causing the plot to unravel.
Neff said Zazi "was in the throes of making a bomb and attempting to perfect his formulation."
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority — which runs New York City's subway system, buses and commuter rails — declined to comment on the revelation of a Sept. 11-timed plot. It reissued a statement from earlier in the week that it has boosted its police presence at "key commuter rail locations" since the terror threat became public.
The plot has also cast the spotlight on the everyday chemicals that are used in hair salons around the country but also can have a more sinister purpose.
Federal agents and police officers in New York visited up to 200 locations a day in the area during the probe, including beauty-supply stores, extended-stay hotels that have rooms with kitchens, hardware stores, truck rental agencies and storage facilities.
Zazi sat expressionless during the Denver court hearing, staring at a decanter on the defense table. He has denied being a terrorist since he was arrested last week.
Zazi "still maintains that he was not part of a terrorist cell," defense attorney Arthur Folsom told The Associated Press on Friday. Folsom also insisted that federal agents who searched Zazi's car and apartment found no trace of explosives.
Ken Deal, chief deputy marshal in Denver, said Zazi was put on a government plane Friday and flown out of southern Denver's Centennial Airport. He was scheduled to appear in federal court Tuesday in Brooklyn on charges that carry a life sentence.
A government request to deny bail laid out a chronology of the alleged scheme, which prosecutors said had been in the works for more than a year.
Security video and receipts show that some of the purchases were made near the Colorado hotel, according to court papers. On Sept. 6 and 7, Zazi checked into a suite at the hotel with a kitchen and a stove, the papers say, and tried to contact an unidentified associate "seeking to correct mixtures of ingredients to make explosives."
"Zazi repeatedly emphasized in the communications that he needed the answers right away," the papers said, adding that each communication was "more urgent than the last."
Beauty supply store employees in New York and the Denver suburbs said authorities had been asking whether anyone had come in buying a lot of hydrogen peroxide or acetone.
At Beauty Supply Warehouse in suburban Denver, Paul Phillips said a co-worker told investigators he had sold chemicals to Zazi. Company President Karan Hoss said the firm turned over security video of a man matching Zazi's description to the FBI. A check of sales found that someone bought a dozen 32-ounce bottles of a hydrogen peroxide product in July. More was purchased in late August, Hoss said.---news.yahoo.com

Florida Organization Welcomes Sex Offenders

2009-10-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

No sign marks Miracle Park, a cluster of one-story yellow buildings surrounding a small church that caters to one of society's most despised demographics: sex offenders.
Since the development opened eight months ago, the minister who runs it has recruited former inmates by distributing brochures in Florida prisons and plugging it in sermons at the lockups. Some 35 sex offenders now live in the complex about three miles from Pahokee, a poor farming community of 6,000 wedged into sugar cane fields of the Everglades.
"Leaving prison or jail soon? ... Do you have special requirements concerning where you can and cannot live? You may have just found the answer to your prayers," reads the pamphlet advertising the privately operated, 24-acre village.
Angry Pahokee residents say they fear for their children's safety. The ex-cons have served time for various charges, including sexual battery on children and molestation.
Some former tenants of the one-time migrant worker camp also have sued, claiming families with children were forced out to make way for the sex offenders.
"There's just too many in one place," said Pahokee Mayor Wayne Whitaker. "It's very, very risky."
Whitaker said he had no idea the offenders at the complex had actually been recruited to live there.
"It's a little unnerving, but our hands are tied," he said.
The village has become a haven for the ex-cons, who face tight restrictions on where they can live. Nationwide, hundreds of ordinances require sex offenders to dwell at least 1,000 feet from anywhere children gather — schools, churches, parks, bus stops.
Elsewhere, narrow housing options have prompted clusters of offenders to live in tents and other makeshift structures, such as the 70 or so who live beneath the bridge that connects Miami and Miami Beach.
"Society sees us as lepers, like rejects," said Louis Aponte, who moved into Miracle Park three months ago from the nearby Glades Correctional Institution after serving almost nine years for attempted sexual battery on a young female family member.
"I don't know where I'd be without it, probably living with my family, but that would be tough," he said.
The neighborhood is the brainchild of Richard Witherow, a minister has been preaching to inmates for about 30 years. Surrounded by nothing but sugar cane fields and country roads, Pahokee seemed the perfect fit for the venture — far enough removed from the voices of dissent, or so Witherow hoped.
Several attempts at establishing a place like Miracle Park elsewhere in Florida failed after local governments kicked him out.
"People get hysterical when you mention sex offenders," Witherow said.
He said Pahokee shouldn't fear his tenants, who pay about $500 a month in rent and work odd jobs around the site if they can't find work elsewhere. Witherow also offers church services and classes on relationships and anger management.
"The ticking time bomb here does not exist," Witherow said.
Jill Levenson, a Lynn University professor in Boca Raton who studies sex offenders, said most of them don't commit new sex crimes. Still, she said it's rare to see a property owner welcoming sex offenders — much less advertising to them.
"There is a fairly small subgroup of sex offenders who seem to be most dangerous, most likely to re-offend, but the majority do not," Levenson said.
Studies on sex offender recidivism rates have produced varied results, from as little as 5 percent re-offending to more than 30 percent, depending on the severity of the original offenses.
Sgt. Mark Jolly, of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Sexual Predator Offender Tracking Unit, said authorities have had no reports of Miracle Park residents committing new crimes. Still, he said, he'd be concerned if he lived nearby.
Pahokee resident Larry Wright, 61, summed up the town's feelings in one word: "Outrage."
"People are just real nervous," he said.
Last month, the Palm Beach County Office of Equal Opportunity determined Witherow, his Matthew 25 Ministries, and the complex's owner, Alston Management Inc., the company Witherow leases from, violated the county's fair housing ordinance by threatening to evict families with children.
A letter sent in December by Alston Management informed tenants in what was then Pelican Lake Village that it was becoming "adults only." Witherow started renting to offenders in January.
"If you have children living or staying in the apartment under the age of 18 years old, you will have to vacate the property," or be evicted, the letter stated.
The Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County and the Florida Equal Justice Center have sued Witherow and Alston on behalf of former residents, claiming they violated county and federal fair housing laws.
Legal aid attorney Shane Weaver said the housing of sex offenders is not the concern. Legally, Miracle Park can exist because it sits in an unincorporated part of Palm Beach County far enough away from where children gather, so it violates no laws.
However, Weaver said: "You can't just target people with children and say, 'Leave.'"
Alston owner Calvin Alston did not return telephone messages from The Associated Press, but Witherow said the letter was a mistake. He said residents were welcome to stay, but the school bus stop had to go.
"That was the only thing that prevented us from having sex offenders here," Witherow said.
Mary Diggs, 69, has lived there since 2002. Her granddaughters lived there, too, with their small children, but they moved out when the offenders moved in.
"They didn't want their children in here," Diggs said.
She's not concerned about the offenders, noting: "They don't seem to bother me in no way."
On a recent Sunday at Miracle Park, Witherow stood behind the church pulpit preaching to about 15 sex offenders.
"The word helps us to keep pure, to live a pure life ... to keep us from sinning," Witherow said. "Hallelujah."
Aponte, 34, the recently released sex offender, bowed his head and closed his eyes, an open Bible on his lap.
He took the microphone and wrapped the service with a prayer.
"Lord help us ... to stop loving things that are not of you," Aponte said. "You see the struggles that each one of us are going through, Father, you see the physical pain, Lord, the mental pain, the emotional pain, Lord, help us Father, because we are weak."---yahoo.com

Five Million Dollar Painting Stolen in Broad Daylight

2009-10-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

THIEVES have stolen a painting by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte in broad daylight from a Brussels museum dedicated to his life and works.

The 1948 nude, entitled Olympia and estimated to be worth up to €3 million ($5.07 million), was stolen by two people, one of them armed.

"Two individuals, one of them Asian - one speaking French, the other English - came into the museum armed with a pistol shortly after it opened" at around 10am local time, curator Andre Garitte said.

"The two men, whose faces weren't covered, forced two or three employees to lie down in the courtyard of the museum," he said. One of the thieves then climbed a glass panel protecting the work from the public and stole it.

A Brussels police spokesman said: "They fled on foot with the painting and left the scene in a car. The investigation is continuing but we have found no trace of the culprits."

The area was being checked for fingerprints, he said.

The museum, in the west of the Belgian capital, is in a house where the painter lived and worked for 24 years, and completed around half of his works.

Apart from paintings, there are about 100 personal objects and documents and can only be visited on request.

The oil painting depicts Magritte's wife Georgette laying with a shell on her stomach and measures 60 by 80 centimetres.---theaustralian.news.com.au

During History Eating Bugs Was Quite Natural

2009-10-02T12:43:00.000-07:00

If you think eating insects is gross, you may be in the cultural minority. Throughout history, people have relished insects as food. Today, many cultures still do.
Ten thousand years ago hunters and gatherers ate bugs to survive. They probably learned what was edible from observing what animals ate, according to Gene DeFoliart, a professor emeritus of entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"Eating insects certainly is an old tradition," he said.
The ancient Romans and Greeks dined on insects. Pliny, the first-century Roman scholar and author of Historia Naturalis, wrote that Roman aristocrats loved to eat beetle larvae reared on flour and wine.
Aristotle, the fourth-century Greek philosopher and scientist, described in his writings the ideal time to harvest cicadas: "The larva of the cicada on attaining full size in the ground becomes a nymph; then it tastes best, before the husk is broken. At first the males are better to eat, but after copulation the females, which are then full of white eggs."
The Old Testament encouraged Christians and Jews to consume locusts, beetles, and grasshoppers. St. John the Baptist is said to have survived on locusts and honey when he lived in the desert.
In the mid-19th century Maj. Howard Egan, a superintendent of the Pony Express in Nevada, observed a Paiute Indian hunt where the quarry was neither bison nor rabbit, but rather the wingless Mormon cricket.
Major Egan later described how the Paiute dug a series of large trenches, covered them with straw, then drove hordes of crickets into the excavated trap. The Indians set the straw on fire, burning the crickets alive.
Paiute women then gathered bushels of the charred bugs and brought them back to camp to make flour for bread—an important seasonal source of protein.
Insect Cuisine
Many types of insects appear on menus today. Bugs remain a traditional food in many cultures across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, DeFoliart said.
In Ghana during the spring rains, winged termites are collected and fried, roasted, or made into bread. In South Africa the insects are eaten with cornmeal porridge.
In China beekeepers are considered virile, because they regularly eat larvae from their beehives.
Gourmands in Japan savor aquatic fly larvae sautéed in sugar and soy sauce. De-winged dragonflies boiled in coconut milk with ginger and garlic are a delicacy in Bali.
Grubs are savored in New Guinea and aboriginal Australia. In Latin America cicadas, fire-roasted tarantulas, and ants are prevalent in traditional dishes. One of the most famous culinary insects, the agave worm, is eaten on tortillas and placed in bottles of mezcal liquor in Mexico.
Cultural Choices
But despite its long tradition—and current favor among at least half of the world's peoples—eating insects is still rare, not to mention taboo, in the United States and Europe.
One reason, DeFoliart said, is that after Europe became agrarian, insects were seen as destroyers of crops rather than a source of food.
"We became invested in livestock, and bugs became the enemy," said David George Gordon, a biologist and the author of The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook.
Manfred Kroger, a professor emeritus of food science at Penn State University in University Park, says what people choose to eat is conditioned by culture.
Many Westerners readily consume shrimp and lobster (which, like insects, are arthropods) along with pork and oysters—foods other cultures reject as dirty.
"We have 200 to 300 staple foods that we pass down from generation to generation—and trying new foods is always a touchy subject," Kroger said.
"Eco Protein"
Kroger is anything but a lone voice in the wilderness when he argues that there are many nutritional benefits to eating insects.
Hamburger, for example, is roughly 18 percent protein and 18 percent fat. Cooked grasshopper, meanwhile, contains up to 60 percent protein with just 6 percent fat. Moreover, like fish, insect fatty acids are unsaturated and thus healthier.
DeFoliart, the Wisconsin entomologist, says that not only are insects nutritious and delicious, they could be an environmentally friendly source of human protein requirements.
"In our preoccupation with cattle, we have denuded the planet of vegetation," DeFoliart said. "Insects are much more efficient in converting biomass to protein."
Insect farming is arguably much more efficient than cattle production. One hundred pounds (45 kilograms) of feed produces 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of beef, while the same amount of feed yields 45 pounds (20 kilograms) of cricket.
Noting the widespread use of pesticides in industrial agriculture, DeFoliart said, "People are poisoning the planet by ridding it of insects, rather than eating insects and keeping artificial chemicals off plants that we eat."---nationalgeographic.com

Cooking the Most Inedible Food

2009-10-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

The infamous cooking show, "Ai no Apron" (Love's Apron), may be off the air but its spirit lives on in the two-hour special "Haneru no Tobira" (The Closing Door; Fuji, Wed., 7 p.m.).
A group of female comedians, including Ai Haruna, Edo Harumi and Asako Ito, compete with one another by whipping up meals for a panel of ikemen (handsome) actors and singers, including Jun Oguri, Hideaki Takizawa and Kenichi Matsuyama.
The main question, according to the show's publicity materials, isn't which cook's food the panel will like best, but which they will find totally inedible. Apparently, some contestants' concoctions are repeatedly rejected. In order to preclude any prejudices the panel may hold about the comedians themselves entering into their judgment of the food, they will not see just who prepared the meal they are consuming. If you think you've got it tough in this recession, think about what it would be like if you had 14 kids. The two-hour reality TV special, "Binbo ni Makeru na! Ni-dan Juni-jo Wakeari Daikazoku Funtoki 3" (Don't Be Defeated by Poverty! Record of Struggles of a Big Family with Two Boys and Twelve Girls 3; TV Tokyo, Thurs., 7:57 p.m.) visits the Watatsu family of Shimane Prefecture for a third time, covering their lives from last March to the end of this summer.
Always finding it difficult to make ends meet, the family is very grateful for the government's stimulus payout, which nets them a little more than ¥300,000 in cash. They use about half the money to pay for school tuition for the eldest boy, who is entering junior high school. About half of the remainder is used to pay delinquent utility bills.
As for the rest, mom and dad disagree sharply on what it should be used for. Their differing opinions lead to a big argument. Speaking of reality shows, one that started here and was picked up and adapted by American producers is "Toshochu" (Run for Money; Fuji, Sat., 7 p.m.), which has an English-language version called "Cha$e" aired on cable TV in the U.S.
The premise is pretty simple. The contestants are charged with locating hidden money drops within a given locality while men in black suits called "hunters" attempt to stop them. When a hunter "tags" a contestant, the contestant is eliminated from the game. If a contestant reaches the "exit point," he or she can keep all the money found.
Past games were held in large urban areas, like Asakusa or Ueno in Tokyo, or Yokohama's Chinatown. This week, however, the game takes places in a "closed environment" that is more like the American version, with added "surprises" and rules that change as the game progresses.---japantimes.co.jp

Charles Manson Follower Dies from Brain Cancer

2009-10-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

Susan Atkins, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson whose remorseless witness stand confession to killing pregnant actress Sharon Tate in 1969 shocked the world, has died. She was 61 and had been suffering from brain cancer.
Atkins' death comes less than a month after a parole board turned down the terminally ill woman's last chance at freedom on Sept. 2. She was brought to the hearing on a gurney and slept through most of it.
California Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said that Atkins died late Thursday night. She had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008, had a leg amputated and was given only a few months to live.
She underwent brain surgery, and in her last months was paralyzed and had difficulty speaking. But she managed to speak briefly at the Sept. 2 hearing, reciting religious verse with the help of her husband, attorney James Whitehouse.
She had been transferred to a skilled nursing facility at the California Central Women's Facility at Chowchilla exactly one year before she died.
Tate, the 26-year-old actress who appeared in the movie "Valley of the Dolls" and was the wife of famed director Roman Polanski, was one of seven murdered in two Los Angeles homes during the Manson cult's bloody rampage in August 1969.
Atkins was the first of the convicted killers to die. Manson and three others involved in the murders — Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and Charles "Tex" Watson — remain imprisoned under life sentences. Thornton said that at the time of Atkins death she had been in prison longer than any woman currently incarcerated in California.
Atkins, who confessed from the witness stand during her trial, had apologized for her acts numerous times over the years. But 40 years after the murders, she learned that few had forgotten or forgiven what she and other members of the cult had done.
Debra Tate, the slain actress's younger sister, told the parole commissioners Sept. 2 that she "will pray for (Atkins') soul when she draws her last breath, but until then I think she should remain in this controlled situation." Debra Tate noted that she would have a 40-year-old nephew if her sister had lived.
Atkins' prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, had spoken out earlier in favor of release, saying the mercy requested was "minuscule" because Atkins was on her deathbed.
Atkins and her co-defendants were originally sentenced to death but their sentences were reduced to life in prison when capital punishment was briefly outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1970s.
During the sensational 10-month trial, Atkins, Manson and co-defendants Krenwinkel and Van Houten maintained their innocence. But once they were convicted, the so-called "Manson girls" confessed in graphic detail.
They tried to absolve Manson, the ex-convict who had gathered a "family" of dropouts and runaways to a ranch outside Los Angeles, where he cast himself as the Messiah and led them in an aberrant lifestyle fueled by drugs and communal sex.
Watson had a separate trial and was convicted.
One night in August 1969, Manson dispatched Atkins and others to a wealthy residential section of Los Angeles, telling them, as they recalled, to "do something witchy."
They went to the home of Tate and her husband. He was not home, but Tate, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant, and four others were killed. "Pigs" was scrawled on a door in blood.
The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife were found stabbed to death in their home across town. "Helter Skelter" was written in blood on the refrigerator.
"I was stoned, man, stoned on acid," Atkins testified during the trial's penalty phase.
"I don't know how many times I stabbed (Tate) and I don't know why I stabbed her," she said. "She kept begging and pleading and begging and pleading and I got sick of listening to it, so I stabbed her."
She said she felt "no guilt for what I've done. It was right then and I still believe it was right." Asked how it could be right to kill, she replied in a dreamy voice, "How can it not be right when it's done with love?"
The matronly, gray-haired Atkins who appeared before a parole board in 2000 cut a far different figure than that of the cocky young defendant some 30 years earlier.
"I don't have to just make amends to the victims and families," she said softly. "I have to make amends to society. I sinned against God and everything this country stands for." She said she had found redemption in Christianity.
The last words she spoke in public at the September hearing were to say in unison with her husband: "My God is an amazing God."
She spent 37 years in the California Institution for Women at Frontera. When she fell ill, she was moved to a medical unit at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. She died there.
Susan Denise Atkins was born May 7, 1948, in the Los Angeles suburb of San Gabriel. Her mother was stricken with cancer and died when she was 15. Her father, reportedly an alcoholic, sent her and her brother to live with relatives.
While still in her teens, she ran away to San Francisco where she wound up dancing in a topless bar and using drugs. She moved into a commune in the Haight Ashbury district and it was there that she met Manson.
He gave her a cult name, Sadie Mae Glutz, and, when she became pregnant by a "family" member, he helped deliver the baby boy, naming it Zezozoze Zadfrack. His whereabouts are unknown.
The Manson slayings remained unsolved for three months, until Atkins confessed to a cellmate following her arrest on an unrelated charge. Police found Manson and other cult members living in a ranch commune in Death Valley, outside Los Angeles.
Besides Tate, their other victims were celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, filmmaker Voityck Frykowski and Steven Parent, a friend of Tate's caretaker; and grocery owners Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Atkins also was convicted with Manson of still another murder, of musician Gary Hinman, in July 1969.
Atkins married twice while in prison. Her first husband, Donald Lee Laisure, purported to be an eccentric Texas millionaire. They quickly divorced. Whitehouse, her second husband, is a Harvard Law School graduate and had recently served as one of her attorneys.---yahoo.com

Business Table Manners Become Popular in Japan

2009-09-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

'Kaiseki' mistress reminds business types how to mind table manners
How to enter a room with bamboo mats, where to place chopsticks, what not to wear — these are just some of the essential rules of etiquette young professionals are learning from Michiko Noguchi, a veteran restaurant mistress whose seminars on table manners are growing in popularity. "I first thought of running the seminar because I saw that young people these days don't know how to serve and entertain guests at formal business dinners," said Noguchi, the deputy manager at Soujuan, which serves "kaiseki ryori" (traditional Japanese multicourse dinners) at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku.
Noguchi began her seminars on "settai" (courtesy or entertainment) earlier this year. The courses, aimed at young businesspeople but attended by people of varying ages and occupations, are conducted in groups of about 20 in a Japanese-style room over a typical kaiseki dinner. They have become so popular that Noguchi had to add more sessions to the ones held in January and March.
At a two-hour seminar on Sept. 15, 22 slightly nervous people sat at a long table to learn how to maneuver plates, pour drinks and eat without making too much noise.
"Chopsticks must always be placed on the chopstick holder, and bowls must always be held in one hand when you're eating. There are so many people these days who eat from bowls without lifting them," Noguchi said afterward, noting that basic etiquette was traditionally taught at home.
The participants also were taught how to slide themselves on to cushions, place folded wet towels on the table with the crease away from the body, and the order in which to eat various dishes.
According to Noguchi, who has 30 years' experience serving in such restaurants, young professionals often slip up when suddenly called upon to organize and host formal dinners with business clients.
"Young people no longer get taken out by their superiors to go drinking or such things, so they don't have any chances to learn how to serve guests. But when they are suddenly told to go and entertain guests, they panic and run around," said Noguchi, who is in her 50s.
"Their outfits are inappropriate, they worry about there not being enough drinks and they are constantly popping out to talk on the phone," she added.
According to hotel spokeswoman Soo Youn Jung, the seminars have been a hit with both sexes and are generating waiting lists after spreading by word of mouth and the media.
"Some people come more than once to try out their table manners with changing seasonal menus, and some are sent by their firms to learn etiquette," she said.
The seminar began by defining the position of "kamiza," the seat of honor, followed by instructions on how to hold, lift and place chopsticks and bowls using various areas of the hand in a graceful fashion.
The technique is simple yet crucial, Noguchi told the participants, and at the end of the meal she checked to make sure their chopsticks were only dirty up to 5 cm from the tip.
The kamiza position isn't as simple as it seems, either. Although it is basically the seat furthest away from the door, if there is a window view or a hanging picture to admire, the guest should sit in a position where he or she can enjoy it, Noguchi said.
After a quiet start, the participants gradually loosened up with the help of alcohol, and asked questions about what to do when the sake is too hot to hold and the best time to distribute gifts to the guests.
Although the seminars are intended to give tips on how to host formal dinner parties, the etiquette tips can prove useful to anyone, said a civil servant in his late 20s who was at the seminar.
"In my job there are no opportunities to have business dinners, but I came along because I was curious, and I think it is useful to learn these manners anyway," said the civil servant, who only gave his last name of Yamauchi.
"The things I learned today were really basic, but if you don't know them it's embarrassing," he said.
The details of Japanese etiquette may seem alien and unnecessary to many foreigners, but the formality has a spiritual element and reflects the host's wish for the guests to enjoy themselves, Noguchi said.
"There is a major spiritual element to entertaining guests," she said, explaining that the concept of settai originates from Chinese Buddhism, where entertainment took place among monks and between monks and believers.
"When you're entertaining, you have to know how to behave respectfully toward your seniors, and traditionally people offered meals as well as other entertainment, such as traditional dance showcases. That has now developed into such forms as taking people out to play golf, or to one-night stays in hot spring baths."
Practicality is the next priority after grace, Noguchi told the participants, teaching them tricks that could be useful in minor emergencies, such as not being able to take the lid off a soup bowl. She showed them how, if you press lightly on either side of the bowl, the lid will come off easily.
Noguchi said you should not hesitate to use your fingers when eating lobster or crab, to tuck your napkin into your trousers to stop it from falling off your lap, or to replace the lid on a hot dish if you want to enjoy your drink first.
"After all, you're not taking exams, you just need to look smart," she said as the seminar drew to a close.
"I want you, not just the guests, to enjoy the dinner," she added.
Noguchi's advice went beyond the dinner table, including how to preview the restaurant layout before the day, how to order a taxi to send the guest home, and how not to wear lace-up shoes because you could be left behind at the entrance trying to tie them.
To make the atmosphere of the seminar more relaxing, a more intimate setting may be in the works for future sessions, Noguchi said.
"I'm considering holding smaller sessions of 4 or 5 friends, so they can talk to each other, and I can tailor the seminar to their needs," she said.
Noguchi added that foreigners would be welcome, although the seminar will be conducted in Japanese as there are too many terms that would be difficult to translate accurately into English.
You'll have to reserve in advance for the next settai seminar, which is on Jan. 19, 2010. The fee is ¥10,000 for two hours, meal and drinks included. Of the 22 places, 14 were already filled as of Sept. 16.---japantimes.co.jp

Buddhist Temple Filed Lawsuit Against the Construction of Skyscraper

2009-09-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

Sensoji, the Buddhist temple in Tokyo's Asakusa district, and a group of local residents filed a lawsuit Thursday in a bid to bring the just-started construction of a skyscraper in the neighborhood to a halt.
In the lawsuit filed with the Tokyo District Court, the plantiffs are seeking the cancellation of approval by the Tokyo metropolitan government of the construction of a 133-meter-high, 37-story condominium being built several hundred meters west of the temple, a popular tourist spot.
"If systems regarding urban development are abused to allow haphazard construction of large-scale buildings, it would cause a rapid change in the atmosphere of the town and impair the temple's dignity," Sensoji said in a statement.
The plaintiffs said they are not opposed to the construction of the condominium itself, but are trying to nullify a type of permission the metropolitan government gave to the condo project.
They said they believe high-rise buildings should not be built by applying for this type of permission, which can ease existing rules on the height and floor-area ratio of buildings.
The condo construction, planned by Towa Real Estate Development Co. and undertaken by Fujita Corp., began earlier this month. It is scheduled to finish in 2012.---www.breitbart.com

Boy Used Replica Pistol to Rob a Video Store

2009-09-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

HE looks just like any other young boy buying a loaf of bread for mum.
But, just minutes before, this 10-year-old allegedly used a replica pistol to hold up a video store as his 14-year-old accomplice waited outside - their getaway car a scooter.
The pair are part of gangs of kiddie-thugs, some as young as nine, who are running rampant in the Hunter Valley town of Muswellbrook, terrorising the community with frequent acts of violence and crime.
Business owners told The Daily Telegraph they felt under siege from the youth gangs and said the children consider themselves untouchable due to their young age.
In Tuesday's video store robbery, the boy allegedly threatened to kill the store clerk, 18, if she told anyone.
After allegedly making off with a small amount of cash, the boy was caught on a security camera in a shop just 200m away, calmly buying groceries with the money he had stolen. He and his alleged accomplice were questioned by police, but were released "pending further inquiries". Video-shop owners Daniel and Renae Smith said the brazen daylight robbery typified the attitude of troublesome youth unafraid of police.
"It's unbelievable how young these kids are," Mr Smith said. "I mean, their getaway vehicle was a scooter." The couple, who also own a nearby newsagency, have been broken into twice in a month and store windows were often smashed.
They said the boy and others in his gang were well-known in the area for their frequent shoplifting raids.
"We're getting quotes today for CCTV cameras and we're putting extra staff on so we always have two people in the shop," Ms Smith said.
"But unless there's a tougher stance from police there's only so much you can do - these kids know they'll just get a slap on the wrist."
Muswellbrook pizza store manager Bronwyn Jordan has lost count of the number of windows that have had to be replaced after youths destroyed them with bricks and rocks.
She said gangs of up to 10 children, usually under the age of 16, caused trouble most days.
"They stand there calling you filthy names that no kid that age should know," she said.
"It's uncontrollable - they need to have consequences for what they do. They can't just be allowed to think 'I'm under 15 so I'll be let go'."
Hunter Valley area commander Superintendent Des Organ said that police officers had not detected any increase in juvenile crime.---www.dailytelegraph.com.au

A Lot of Women in Japan are Aged over 65

2009-09-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

A record one in four women in Japan is aged 65 or over, latest official figures showed Monday, highlighting fears of a looming demographic crisis in the world's number two economy.
Of Japan's female population as of September 15, 25.4 percent were aged 65 or over, topping 25 percent for the first time since comparable data began in 1950, according to the internal affairs ministry.
Men and women combined, Japan had a record 28.98 million elderly people, up by 800,000 from a year earlier.
The latest figures demonstrating Japan's rapidly ageing population come with authorities struggling to find ways to boost the low birth rate.
Japan has one of the world's oldest populations, with many young people putting off starting a family because of the burden on their lifestyles and careers.
The new government has promised to start allowances for families with small children. Japan's fertility rate was 1.37 children per woman in 2008, well below more than two percent needed to maintain the population of 127 million.---www.channelnewsasia.com

Alcoholics More Likely to Commit Suicide

2009-09-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

About 40 percent of reformed alcoholics wanted to commit suicide in the past, and about 20 percent actually tried to do so, according to a survey by a national suicide prevention center.
The center conducted a comprehensive survey on former alcoholics between April and June this year. The percentage of former alcoholics who had wanted to commit suicide was about double that of other respondents. According to a survey on attitudes among the general public conducted by the Cabinet Office carried last year, 19 percent of respondents said they had wanted to commit suicide at some point.
A staff member of the center said: "It was confirmed that excess drinking was one of the risk factors of suicide. It's important to support these people as a measure for preventing suicide."
The survey was conducted on 5,422 members of Zennihon Danshu Renmei (Zendanren), a national self-help organization for people who try to recover from alcohol addiction. It was conducted through an anonymous questionnaire and 4,625 people, or 85 percent, answered. They consisted of 4,067 men, 521 women and 37 people who did not reveal their gender. The average age of the respondents was 60, and 57 percent of them have been members of the organization for more than five years.
According to the survey, 1,878 people, or 41 percent, answered they had seriously thought about committing suicide. Twenty-three percent answered they had planned their suicide and 20 percent answered they had actually taken action. Nearly 70 percent of those who gave such answers said the experiences occurred before they joined the organization.
Masato Akazawa, a researcher who was in charge of the survey, listed several reasons that alcohol addiction raises the suicide risk:
-- Alcohol addiction leads to unemployment and separation from family.
-- Alcohol abuse leads to or exacerbates depression.
-- Alcohol use clouds judgment and lowers inhibitions against impulsive action.
"It is important to acknowledge that alcohol itself is a problem. Excess drinking has bad effects not only on one's body but also one's mental health," Akazawa said.
He said that drinking to the extent the habit becomes detrimental to daily life is a sign of alcoholism.
"In that case, it is necessary to visit a medical institution exclusively for alcoholics or consult Alcoholics Anonymous," he said.
According to the Healthy Japan 21 basic guidelines for health measures set by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, the maximum recommended amount of pure alcohol is 20 milliliters a day, which is equivalent to about 180 milliliters of sake or 500 milliliters of beer.---www.yomiuri.co.jp

A Lot of People are Unaware of Twitter

2009-09-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

The other week I was at a prospective client and the conversation moved onto Twitter. One of the marketing team chipped in: "I think Twitter is REALLY SAD!" Then warming to her theme, "people who use Twitter should just GET A LIFE! They need to go outside a bit more!" Duly noted. I'll try and leave the cave once in a while.
But in all seriousness, it's by no means an isolated opinion. Instead, it's an extreme illustration of the biggest problem Twitter faces.
Outside of geeks and navel gazing media types like myself, most people - and indeed most marketers - still don't get what it's there for. Hence you still hear opinions along the lines of 'people just use it to post what they had for breakfast' (yep, that old chestnut is alive and well).
This fundamental problem Twitter faces is illustrated in the latest of a series of Harris polls conducted for LinkedIn. Two thirds of US consumers (69%) said they didn't know enough about it. Meanwhile when it came to marketers, 21% predicted it wouldn't become mainstream while 17% said it was 'already over.' This echoes a separate poll by Ragan Communications which found that most marketers considered Twitter 'a fad.'
As an aside only 8% of marketers in the Harris Poll thought Twitter was an effective promo tool. Well yes. Despite the attempts of people like pay per post service Izea to tell us otherwise, Twitter is not a good place to blast out product info (there are some exceptions - for example Dell). It is a good place to engage with customers and take your brand temperature though.
So while, according to the leaked documents published on TechCrunch, Twitter wants to become the 'pulse of the planet' it won't really reach that destination until it provides a cogent illustration of some of the things it is good for. The example published on its blog of the bakery that sends out fresh bread tweets is a start.
And I've posted before on the parallels between Twitter and the next big thing of 2007/8 - Second Life. Some comparisons are valid, some not. But one that does ring true is that the majority of the Second Life = 'Sadville' crowd was made up of people who'd never been there, or had visited once never to return.
Twitter doesn't necessarily need to become the next Facebook to thrive. The fact that it is weighted towards people who are otherwise active in social media and journalists gives it an importance beyond its numbers. But if it does want to move in this direction, it could do better than to take note of this stat from Facebook about the top applications.
According to Inside Facebook, one of the fastest growing apps is one ('We're Related') that allows families to share images and video with each other. With the fastest growing group on Facebook being older (and I'd argue more mainstream, less early adopter) consumers, Facebook has given them a clear need: Keep in touch with loved ones half way across the country or world.
That's a need that Twitter still has a way to answer. - www.socialmediatoday.com

Man Had Steroids in His Underpants

2009-09-19T02:15:00.000-07:00

A MAN has been caught trying to smuggle about 7,000 illegal steroid tablets into Australia in his underwear.
Customs officers at Melbourne Airport stopped the man, who arrived on a flight from Bangkok, when they suspected he was concealing something inside his clothing.
A search revealed about 7,000 tablets, believed to be Dianabol, concealed in four snap-lock plastic bags inside his underwear.
Officers also found a 100ml bottle labelled "Finexol" and 100 "Trenabolone Acetate" tablets.
A 23-year-old New Zealand man has been charged with smuggling prohibited imports and is due to face the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on September 17.
The maximum penalty for the offence is five years jail and/or a $110,000 fine.---www.news.com.au

World's Cleanest Place Found

2009-09-18T02:04:00.000-07:00

The air quality at Cape Grim in Tasmania is officially the best on the planet - a world away from the grime and filth of Linfen in China. Photographer Angela Palmer set out to capture the essence of both places
In March, I dreamed that I went to the most polluted place in the world and then to the cleanest. In the dream, I wore identical white outfits, which were then exhibited side by side in a stark white gallery. When I awoke, I resolved to enact my dream. It seemed like madness: I was preparing for my final show at the Royal College of Art in London and was intending to show work based on CT scans of an ancient Egyptian mummy. But the sense of "mission" was overwhelming. I jettisoned my original plans: this was to be it.
Research into the world's most polluted place pointed to Linfen, a city 485 miles (780km) south-west of Beijing, lying in a bowl in Shanxi province's coal-mining region. Linfen was named by the World Bank last year as having the worst air quality on earth. It features alongside Chernobyl in the Blacksmith Institute's list of the 10 most polluted places in the world and tops the list of most polluted cities compiled by China's own state environmental protection authority.
In contrast, Cape Grim, at the north-western tip of Tasmania, lays claim to both the cleanest air and water in the planet, largely due to the Roaring Forties, the winds that sweep in over the Southern Ocean. It is home to the Australian government's baseline air pollution station, whose unique "Air Library" collects samples as a "pure air" yardstick for scientists worldwide. I wanted to bring back this clean air - as well as the filthy air - and quickly these plans began to preoccupy me.
Fresh air must surely be the most precious commodity of the future. Unlike the world's land and water, air cannot be owned - there are no borders to confine it. Yet we knowingly infect it and in doing so infect our neighbours across continents. To try to gauge the difference between the two places, I left on my adventure with two pre-evacuated glass flasks donated by the Australian government to collect the air, a personal air pump to amass particulates on filters, and canisters to bring back water samples. In addition, there were two white linen shirts, white jeans and white cotton shoes, from Zara and Marks & Spencer, outfits which would act as blank manuscripts on which the air of each place would inscribe itself.
I reached Linfen to find the sun shining - darkness hadn't descended at noon as was claimed in some reports. No one was even wearing a mask. Were they oblivious to the poisons they were ingesting? Despite the many citizens suffering from respiratory diseases, lead poisoning and disorders caused by high levels of arsenic in more than half of the city's well water, there was no discernible sign of crisis or discontent. When I asked about pollution, people simply shrugged their shoulders, as if the question were pointless.
In the streets, men were playing Go at makeshift tables, young and old shop staff were throwing themselves into a highly skilled game of shuttlecock football, children were skipping and men and women were busily kneading great wads of dough. The place throbbed with life. The streets, the walls and the oil drum "cookers" were caked in layers of filth and grime, and from time to time, great wafts of odour, like rotten eggs, would roll over everything. At night I left my hotel window propped open in order to run my air pump filter to collect the particulates. As I lay in bed, I thought of the chemicals, the unseen enemy, filling my room.
After four days in Linfen, I set off for Cape Grim in Tasmania. Here the rubble and diggers and filth were replaced with Constable-style landscapes. The trees were the height of Linfen's tower blocks. Great stretches of beach lay empty, with only the occasional footprint in the sand to suggest any trace of human life. An hour's driving was only finally interrupted by a sign advertising bottled water: "Cape Grim, Home of the Purest Air and Water on Earth, Jim's Plains."
After I had captured the air from Cape Grim in my flask, I tried to talk to the locals in Smithton, the nearest town, a 20-minute drive away. I had hoped to document the parallel lives of people living in such different atmospheric conditions, but while my pristine clothes and air filters remained unblemished, so did the pages of my notebook. The Tasmanian reserve was daunting. Barely a soul was in the street. People were tucked away in their houses behind net curtains. Picket fences surrounded properties. Perfectly manicured gardens were adorned with plastic swans. I began to feel lonely, and, as the days passed, to yearn for the sense of community that had been so electrifying in the streets of Linfen.---www.guardian.co.uk

Women in Their 40s Drink More Alcohol than Earlier

2009-09-18T01:59:00.000-07:00

Women in their 40s are drinking far more alcohol than previous generations and regularly turn to a glass of wine to help them cope with the stress of modern life.
According to a survey, half of middle-aged women believe they drink more than their mothers did at their age and some are so worried about the amount they drink they are constantly trying to cut down.
Alcohol consumption has doubled since the 1950s, largely because drinking among women has become much more socially acceptable, and the cost of buying alcohol is 65 per cent cheaper than 30 years ago.
However, the survey revealed that it is not just the 'ladette' generation of British women who are regularly indulging in alcohol.
Women in their 40s and 50s admit to regularly opening a bottle of wine to consume with dinner at home during the week.
Woman & Home magazine questioned around 3,000 women - aged between 35 and 60 - to try to establish how their drinking habits have changed compared with the previous generation.
Almost half revealed that their mothers rarely drank, save for special occasions, with a quarter admitting that their mother never drank at all at their age.
In comparison, one in ten of the women questioned admitted having a drink every day and a third said they enjoyed alcohol a few times a week. Most - nearly 80 per cent - drank wine at home, with almost half - 46 per cent - admitting to drinking on their own.
Earlier this week the Daily Mail revealed that drinking too much alcohol, coupled with indulging in an inactive lifestyle, can be a factor in the development of breast cancer.
Experts at the World Cancer Research Fund said cutting down on drinking, coupled with maintaining a healthy weight, could help reduce the diagnosis of the disease among middle-aged women by as much as 40 per cent.
Alcohol consumption is also blamed for a dramatic rise in cases of cancer of the mouth, tongue, lip and throat which have also increased by a quarter among women in their 40s in the past decade.
The survey revealed that around a third of women said they didn't feel they needed a reason to have a drink, but most said they turned to alcohol to help them relax after a stressful day or to celebrate a special occasion.
Researchers point to the fact that single mothers or divorced women are more likely than in the past to open a bottle of wine at the end of a busy day at work or with the children.
One in four women said they had been so concerned about one of their female friends' drinking habits they had confronted them about their intake, while a fifth admitted they sometimes worried about their own drinking and were constantly trying to cut down.
Sue James, editorial director of Woman & Home, said: 'Much has been said about teenagers and the "ladette" culture for binge-drinking alcohol, but the amount of drinking done by the core of the female population - the 40-something woman - has rather been overlooked.
'Our survey shows that these women are aware that they are drinking far more than their own mother's generation ever did and that they are concerned about the impact it will have, not only on their health, but on that of their friends and family as well.
Professor Ian Gilmore, who is president of the Royal College of Physicians and chairs the UK Alcohol Health Alliance, said: 'This survey further demonstrates that it is not just youngsters binge-drinking who are having problems with alcohol - the biggest rise in drinking is among middle-aged people.'---www.dailymail.co.uk

Twelve Germiest Places in Our Lifetime

2009-09-18T01:53:00.000-07:00

Could your purse be making you sick? Health magazine on lurking viruses
Sure, there are outbreaks of microbes and viruses across the country, but some of these germs are lurking where you least expect them. Health magazine senior editor Frances Largeman-Roth pinpoints the 12 germiest places you’re likely to encounter during an average day and devises ways for you to keep clean. After all, the fight is in your hands. Literally. Eighty percent of infections are spread through hand contact. So wash up, people, and get ready to wage a bit of germ warfare of your own:
1. Your kitchen sink
Kitchen sinks are dirtier than most bathrooms. There are typically more than 500,000 bacteria per square inch in the drain alone. Plus your sponge, basin and faucet handles are crawling with bacteria as well.
Reduce the risk: Clean your kitchen counters and sink with an antibacterial product after preparing or cleansing food, especially raw fruits and vegetables, which carry lots of potential pathogens like salmonella, campylobacter and E. coli. Wash your hands as well with warm, soapy water for 20 seconds (long enough to sing “Happy Birthday”). Sanitize sponges by running them through the dishwasher’s drying cycle, which will kill 99.9 percent of bacteria on them. As for the sink, clean it twice a week with a solution of one tablespoon of chlorine bleach and one quart of water. Scrub the basin, the pour solution down the drain.
2. Airplane bathrooms
It may not be a shock that there are a huge number of germs in most public bathrooms, but experts agree the cramped and overused ones on airplanes are the worst. There are often traces of E. coli or fecal bacteria on the faucets and door handles because it’s hard to wash hands in the tiny sinks. And the volcanic flush of the commode tends to spew particles into the air, coating the floor and walls with whatever had been swirling around in it.
Reduce the risk: Toilet seats are surprisingly clean, but use the paper cover when available. After using the toilet, wash and dry your hands thoroughly, and use a paper towel to handle the toilet seat, lid, tap and doorknob. Put the lid down before you flush. If there’s no lid, turn your back to the toilet while flushing and beat a hasty retreat.
3. A load of wet laundry
Any time you transfer underwear from the washer to the dryer, you’re getting E. coli on your hands. Just one soiled undergarment can spread bacteria to the whole load and machine.
Reduce the risk: Run your washer at 150 degrees (you can check the temperature of your washing-machine water with a candy thermometer) and wash whites with bleach (not the color-safe type; it doesn’t pack the same punch), which kills 99.9 percent of bugs. Transfer wet laundry to the dryer quickly so germs don’t multiply, wash underwear separately (there’s about a gram of feces in every pair of dirty underwear) and dry for at least 45 minutes. Wash your hands after laundering.
4. Public drinking fountains
Drinking fountains are bound to be germy, but school fountains are the worst, with anywhere from 62,000 to 2.7 million bacteria per square inch on the spigot.
Reduce the risk: Send your child to school with plenty of their own beverages and tell them to wash their hands throughout the day.
5. Shopping cart handles
Saliva, bacteria and fecal matter are just a few of the substances found on shopping cart handles. Cart handles rank high on the yuck scale because they’re handled by dozens of people every day and, of course, raw food carries nasty pathogens.
Reduce the risk: Many stores have dispensers with disinfectant wipes near the carts. If your store doesn’t, bring your own wipes and give the handle a quick swab. Or carry along a cart cover like the Grip-Guard or Healthy Handle.
6. ATM buttons
If you’re not careful, you might pick up more than quick cash from your local ATM. These buttons have more gunk on them than most public-bathroom doorknobs! ATMs aren’t frequently cleaned, and are regularly touched — a perfect combination for a lot of germs.
Reduce the risk: Carry an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with you and rub it on hands after visits. Also be sure to do it after you handle paper money, which actually carries quite a few germs, too.
7. Your handbag
Recent studies found that most women’s purses had tens of thousands of bacteria on the bottom and a few were overrun with millions. Another study found bugs like pseudomonas (which can cause eye infections) and skin-infection-causing staphylococcus bacteria, as well as salmonella and E. coli.
Reduce the risk: Instead of slinging your bag on the floor, hang it on a hook whenever possible — especially in public bathrooms — and keep your bag off the kitchen counter. Stick with leather or vinyl purses, which are typically cleaner than cloth.
8. Playgrounds
There’s just no way to put this delicately: Children tend to ooze bodily fluids and then spread them around. When researchers sampled playgrounds, they found blood, mucus, saliva and urine. Pair those findings with the fact that children put their fingers in their mouths and noses more than the rest of us, and it’s easy to understand why Junior (and maybe his mom or dad) has the sniffles.
Reduce the risk: Carry alcohol wipes or hand-sanitizing gel in your purse, and clean everybody’s hands a couple of times during a park visit, especially before snacking. Pick warm sunny days for outdoor play: The sun’s ultraviolet light is actually a very effective disinfectant. Most bugs won’t survive long on surfaces that are hot and dry.
9. Mats and machines at health clubs
Antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus has been found on yoga mats and cardio and resistance machines. At high schools, antibiotic-resistant-staph infections have been transmitted through wrestling mats. The same thing could happen at health clubs.
Reduce the risk: Wipe down machines with antibacterial wipes before working out. Bring your own yoga mat or cover a loaner with your towel. Shower after a workout and soap up your skin to rinse off any bacteria you may have been exposed to, as thorough washing gets rid of antibiotic-resistant staph.
10. Your bathtub
Shocking, but true: The place you go to get clean is quite dirty. A recent study found staphylococcus bacteria, a common cause of serious skin infections, in 26 percent of the tubs tested, as compared with just 6 percent of garbage cans. Tubs typically had more than 100,000 bacteria per square inch! You’re washing germs and viruses off your body and the tub is a fairly moist environment, so bacteria can grow.
Reduce the risk: Once a week, apply a disinfecting cleaner to the tub and actually scrub. Then you need to wash the germs down the drain with water and dry the tub with a clean towel. If you leave the tub wet, germs are more likely to survive. If someone who uses the tub has a skin infection, scrub it afterward with a solution of two tablespoons bleach in one quart of water.
11. Your office phone
This is enough to make you dial 911: Office phones often have more than 25,000 germs per square inch, and your desk, computer keyboard and mouse aren’t far behind. Phones, including cell phones, can be pretty gross because they get coated with germs from your mouth and hands.
Reduce the risk: Simply cleaning your desk, phone and keyboard with a disinfecting wipe once in the middle of the day will kill 99.99 percent of the bacteria and viruses.
12. The hotel-room remote control
What’s the first thing you do when you settle in at a hotel? You grab the remote control and switch on the TV — you, and the hundreds of other guests who’ve stayed there. How dirty is it? A recent study tested various surfaces for the cold virus after a group of sick people had stayed overnight and found the virus on the remote, door handles, light switches, pens and faucet handles.
Reduce the risk: Clean the remote control, phone, clock radio, door handles and light switches with germicidal wipes.---www.msnbc.msn.com

Transsexual Killer Allowed to be Transferred to Women's Prison

2009-09-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

A transsexual killer jailed for trying to rape a woman is to be moved to a women's prison - to protect his human rights.
He will now be housed with hundreds of female inmates after he claimed that serving his sentence in a men's jail was violating his right to live as a woman.
The High Court ruling comes despite a Parole Board warning that he still poses a risk of sex offending.
It also emerged that women at the jail where he will be sent are not expected to be told his identity or that he was convicted of attempted rape.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw had previously refused to move the 27-year-old killer, whose identity has been concealed by a High Court order, but was over-ruled by Deputy Judge David Elvin QC.
The move will leave the taxpayer facing an extra cost of up to £85,000 a year to keep him in the women's prison, as he will initially be kept in segregation.
That bill will be on top of his publicly-funded legal aid costs, which sources said could reach £50,000.
The killer's lawyers told the High Court he was 'a woman trapped inside a man's body'.
They said it was unfair for him to be kept in a male jail, where he was only allowed to dress in women's clothing when alone in his cell, and he was banned from wearing anything more than 'subtle' make-up.
He has begun hormone treatment to appear more feminine, and has developed breasts and adopted a female name.
But doctors refuse to go ahead with sex-change surgery until he has lived as a woman for at least two years, which his lawyers said he could not do in a men's jail.
The prisoner was jailed for manslaughter in 2001 after he admitted strangling his boyfriend with a pair of tights after the older man refused to pay for a private sex-change operation.
He was given a five-year jail term but was released on licence in late 2002. Five days later he attempted to rape a female shop assistant in Manchester when he was living in a women's bail hostel.
He received an automatic 'two strikes' life term for that attack. In his next jail, he began £200-a-month hormone treatment. The Ministry of Justice refused to reveal if the treatment was publicly-funded.
Lawyer Phillippa Kaufmann said the killer's crimes were all linked to a desperation to become a woman.
Referring to the prisoner as a woman, she said: 'She lives as a woman amongst men on a vulnerable prisoners' unit and she can't wear what she wants or more than subtle make-up. They are an important statement of her femaleness.'
At an earlier hearing, he told the court: 'The Prison Service seems to have confused attitudes about all this. They will not consider me as a female until I have my penis removed .. . Yet they resist moving me to the female estate which would enable the surgery to be arranged.'
He added: 'No-one can take my female status away from me. Till the day I die I will be a woman. All that remains is surgery.'
Judge Elvin said he had shown an 'obsessive preoccupation' with becoming a woman.
He added: 'I declare her continued detention in a male prison is in breach of her rights under Article 8 [the right to private and family life] under the European Convention on Human Rights.'
A Prison Service spokesman an appeal was being considered.
The Legal Services Commission refused to say how much had been spent on legal aid in the case.
A spokesman said: 'The LSC cannot differentiate between applicants for legal aid on the grounds that a decision to grant funding may be unpopular in a particular case.'---www.dailymail.co.uk

The Ten Germiest Places in Public

2009-09-17T06:30:00.000-07:00

If you've used an elevator, shared a pen or grabbed a snack from a vending machine today, more than likely you've already come into contact with illness-causing germs. In fact, some of the dirtiest places in public are seemingly innocent, yet because they're used often and rarely cleaned, they harbor a host of potential pathogens.
According to researchers at the University of Arizona, who tested over 800 public surfaces in four U.S. cities, one out of every five surfaces in places like shopping centers, offices, day care centers and airports are contaminated.
Bodily Fluids, Fecal Matter and Protein
Along with testing the samples for the presence of protein (which is a general indicator of hygiene) and fecal matter, the researchers measured levels of three biochemical markers that could contain illness-causing substances. These included:
• Hemoglobin: Indicates the presence of blood
• Alpha-amylase: Indicates the presence of mucus, saliva and/or urine
• Urea: Indicates the presence of urine
Out of all the samples, the places that carried the most germs were children's playgrounds. A full 44 percent of playground surfaces tested positive for bodily fluids.
"Really, I'm never going to go on a swing in a children's playground again," said microbiologist Chuck Gerba, one of the study's researchers.
The Top 10 Germiest Public Places
Playgrounds are not the only public places that call for a good hand-washing after using them. Following are the top 10 germiest places the researchers found (germs are able to survive on these surfaces anywhere from just a few hours to a few weeks).
1. Playgrounds
2. Bus rails/armrests
3. Public bathrooms
4. Shopping cart handles
5. Escalator handrails
6. Chair armrests
7. Vending machine buttons
8. Shared pens
9. Public telephones
10. Elevator buttons
Germs Easily Transferred Onto Personal Items and Into Homes
After finding the dirtiest places, the researchers set out to find how easily germs are transferred from one spot to another. They artificially contaminated surfaces with an invisible fluorescent dye then tracked the dye's path over the course of several hours.
People commonly picked up the fake "germs" from doorknobs, telephones and other surfaces, and they spread quickly to people's faces, hair, desktops, pens, computer keyboards and other personal items.
From there, the germs spread to people's cars and into their homes, ending up on kitchen appliances, faucets and remote controls.
"The houses lit up like Christmas trees," said Dr. Kelly Reynolds, the study's lead author.
How to Keep as Germ-Free as Possible
Considering that Americans touch about 300 different surfaces every 30 minutes, it's pretty much impossible to avoid all germs. However, there are ways to dramatically reduce your risk of spreading, and getting sick from, these pesky invaders.
First and foremost, wash your hands often. This means before you eat and prepare food, after you come home from the office, the supermarket or just about any public place and, of course, after using the restroom.
"The best defense in the world is hand-washing, which people get tired of doing," Gerba said.
The researchers also recommended routinely disinfecting frequently touched surfaces both at home and in the office. Wiping down appliance handles, computer keyboards, doorknobs, light switches, etc., is an excellent way to help reduce the spread of disease, and we highly recommend the PerfectClean OfficePure Pack for doing so.
Unlike ordinary cleaning rags that simply push dirt around, PerfectClean's revolutionary ultramicrofiber construction enables them to reach deep into microscopic crevices (NO other cleaning tool available even comes close!) and remove everything in their path, including biological contaminants too small to see with the naked eye. Even better, the terry cloths that come in the PerfectClean OfficePure Pack are ideal to carry with you, and can be used without cleaning agents or even water, and are still incredibly effective.
So remember, while germs are all around us no matte how "clean" we are, you can go a long way toward keeping yourself and your family safe from germs by washing your hands and wiping down commonly touched surfaces regularly.---www.sixwise.com

The Most Polluted Places on the Planet

2009-09-17T06:28:00.000-07:00

10. Dzerzhinsk, Russia
A center of Cold War chemical manufacturing, the city’s 300,000 residents have one of the lowest life expectancies in the world thanks to waste injected directly into the ground. “Average life expectancy is roughly 45 years,” Robinson (of the Blacksmith Institute) says. “Fifteen to 20 years less than the Russian average and about half a Westerner’s.”
9. Kabwe, Zambia
The second largest city in this southern African country was home to one of the world’s largest lead smelters until 1987. As a result, the entire city is contaminated with the heavy metal, which can cause brain and nerve damage in children and fetuses. “Measurements of children’s blood levels of lead average over 50 micrograms per deciliter and some were over 100,” Fuller (from the Blacksmith Institute) says. “For every 10 points above 10 micrograms per deciliter [(the U.S. Centers for Disease Control standard for treatment)] that your blood level goes up, your IQ drops.”
8. La Oroya, Peru
Although this is one of the smallest communities on the list (population 35,000) it is also one of the most heavily polluted due to lead, copper and zinc mining by U.S.-based Doe Run mining company.
7. Linfen, China
A city in the heart of China’s coal region in Shanxi Province, its three million inhabitants choke on dust and drink arsenic that leaches from the fossil fuel. In addition, extreme pollution makes visibility difficult.
6. Norilsk, Russia
This city above the Arctic Circle contains the world’s largest metal smelting complex and, therefore, some of the world’s worst smog. “There is so much pollution going into the air from this place that there is no living piece of grass or shrub within 30 kilometers of the city,” Fuller says. “Contamination [with heavy metals] has been found as much as 60 kilometers away.”

5. Sukinda, India
Home to one of the world’s largest chromite mines—used to make steel stainless, among other things—and 2.6 million people, the waters of this valley contain carcinogenic hexavalent chromium compounds courtesy of 30 million tons of waste rock lining the Brahmani River. “Hexavalent chromium is very toxic and very mobile,” notes David Hanrahan, Blacksmith’s London-based director of global programs.
4. Tianying, China
The center of Chinese lead production, this town of 160,000 qualifies as one of the eight most polluted areas in the country, according to the Chinese government. Lead concentrations in the air and soil are 8.5 to 10 times above national health standards and lead dusts local crops at levels 24 times higher than such health standards.
3. Vapi, India
This town at the end of India’s industrial belt in the state of Gujarat houses the dumped remnant waste of more than 1,000 manufacturers, including petrochemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals. “The companies treat wastewater and get most of the muck out,” Hanrahan says. “But there’s nowhere to put the muck, so it ends up getting dumped.”
2. Sumqayit, Azerbaijan
Yet another heir to the toxic legacy of Soviet industry, the city of 275,000 souls bears heavy metal, oil and chemical contamination from its days as a center of chemical production. As a result, local Azeris suffer cancer rates 22 to 51 percent higher than their countrymen and their children suffer from a host of genetic defects ranging from mental retardation to bone diseases.
1. Chernobyl, Ukraine
The fallout from the world’s worst nuclear power accident continues to accumulate, affecting as many as 5.5 million people and leading to a sharp rise in thyroid cancer. The incident has also blighted the economic prospects of surrounding areas and nations due to their agricultural heritage.---www.listverse.com

Unsafe Places in the U.S. According to Palkovitz and Latshaw

2009-09-17T04:44:00.000-07:00

The following is a guest post by Collin Palkovitz and Jason Latshaw of Elany Arts, creators of an iPhone app called LETHAL that tells you what dangerous things are lurking just around the corner, or in any given location in the United States.
We scoured government databases and academic publications to find crime rates, disease rates, disaster occurrences, and deadly wildlife ranges. We then compiled our findings into one centralized database that pulls those stats, combines the score into four categories, and gives you an overall “LETHAL Index” for hundreds of locations.
The research for this project was both captivating and terrifying. It was fascinating to learn about the different dangers that various locations pose. Below are the most dangerous locations in each of our four categories.
Wildlife
We were all surprised to discover the location in the United States with the greatest number of deadly animals.
One might think that somewhere in Alaska with polar bears, grizzly bears, AND great white sharks would take the prize, but no. (Even though the possibility of meeting up with all three of those fearsome beasts does make Alaska pretty exciting. But you’ll read later what keeps Alaska from being all around completely awesome.)
Or maybe the Everglades, the only place in the world where crocodiles and alligators are both native (in addition to bears, panthers, and poisonous snakes! Seriously, think about that, they’re one tiger away from being able to say “Oh my!”)? But again, no. The Everglades aren’t it either.
Instead, welcome to Mobile, Alabama, the home of 19 – yes, nineteen - deadly animal species. It’s like the Baskin Robbins of blood-thirsty predators. Whether you are on the land or the sea, something here can kill you. The sheer number of creatures you have to watch out for is impressive. A day at the beach near Mobile may sound pleasant, but you should be prepared to wind up fleeing the shark infested waters only to find yourself in a land crawling with more kinds of poisonous snakes and spiders than anywhere else in the country.
But I’m sure you’re wondering what the most BORING place is when it comes to Wildlife? I know we were. Well, if you don’t like the idea of being offed by something that you thought was lower on the food chain, make immediate plans to move to North or South Dakota or Nebraska. There, the only thing you’d have to watch out for would be a couple of lame standbys that are just about everywhere else, too – Dogs, Hornets, Black Widow Spiders, and Mosquitoes. Yawn!
Crime
When it comes to crime in the U.S. you may think that New York or Los Angeles sound like scary places, but compared to Detroit and St. Louis, those cities are delightful locations for Sunday-school picnics.
St. Louis and Detroit battle it out for the title of “Which City is More Likely to Annihilate You With Its Crime,” and quite honestly this contest is going into extra innings with no end in sight.
St. Louis comes out of the gate and scores some quick points because of its insanely high violent crime rate – 2,480 violent crimes per 100,000 citizens. But the Motor City comes right back – nearly tying the match with its own hefty rate of 2419 per 100,000.
Maybe the Lions went 0-16 because they couldn't focus on the game – they were too busy looking over their shoulders to make sure they weren't going to get mugged or killed!
Speaking of getting killed, if you do decide to ignore the fear of being mugged, stabbed, or beaten and decide to brave these Midtown Detroit streets, you run the risk of being one of many yearly murder victims there – people are killed at the gaudy rate of 61 per every 100,000 citizens. When you realize that the national rate is a mere 7, you see how dangerous this area is.
But before you fall out of your chair and start hyperventilating know this: Downtown St. Louis has that rate beat – by a mile – because 93 out of every 100,00 are murdered there. All of a sudden, Midtown Detroit might be looking safe. But it isn’t.
Because St. Louis has one thing going for it in the crime department ¬– at least when it comes to Forcible Rape, it’s not Midtown Detroit.
We’ll let you know just how bad Midtown Detroit is in the rape department, but first a discussion about the stats we found for rape in the US: When we were doing our research, we were horrified by Juneau, Alaska. I don’t know what they’re drinking there, but 102.3 out of every 100,000 people are getting raped in the land of “Whatever It Is People Do In Juneau,” Since the US average is a mere 33.1, clearly they have a serious problem. (And actually, it’s kind of widespread to the whole state of Alaska! That place has an unbelievably high rate of 76 – that’s for the state on average. Sarah Palin, what in the world is going on up there?).
Truly it can’t get worse than Juneau, right? Wrong. Sleepy little beach communities Ocean City, Maryland and Key West, Florida made a baffling and troublesome attempt to hang with the major cities by weighing in with rates of 123.3 and 127.3, respectively. Think about that for a second. If you had a NFL Football game in Ocean City, Maryland, about 127 people in that crowd would be raped that year, on average. What’s going on, Ocean City? Considering that New York City’s Rape rate is a mere 13 per 100,000, one has to wonder if NBC should move the Special Victim’s Unit to Ocean City, Maryland! Benson and Stabler, head to the Shore!
Actually, no. If we’re going to be calling Benson and Stabler anywhere, it should be to Midtown Detroit. While we were scandalized and terrified by Key West, Ocean City, and Jeneau – we were absolutely left in a state of disbelief by Midtown Detroits numbers. 181 rapes per 100,000 people. Yes, 181. Just about six times the national average.
So it looks like Midtown Detroit is more likely to rape you while Downtown St. Louis will more likely just kill you. We can’t pick a winner. But we know two areas we’ll be avoiding for the near future. (This would be the time to point out that both Detroit and St. Louis have areas that are very safe and lovely. But really, don’t go to Midtown or Downtown without body armor and some pepper spray.)
Disasters
We were shocked to learn which location ranked the highest for disasters. Memphis, TN!
As it turns out, this unsuspecting town sits in the path of tornadoes and is located in an area geologically prone to earthquakes, floods, and landslides. There is also significant potential for wildfires in this area. In addition to natural disasters, motor vehicle deaths, accidental firearm deaths, and suicides are all above average.
But if you’re headed to the nation's capital, you might want to follow Obama’s lead and drive in a bullet proof SUV, because Washington DC has the most gun related deaths per year – by far. A full 21% more deaths than the runner up in this inglorious category, New Orleans.
And if you’re feeling a little down, you may want to steer clear of Montana. There’s something about all that ranching and wheat farming that must make you want to just up and end it all, because Montana has the worst suicide rate in the nation. 22 out of every 100,000 Montanians (I have no idea if they’re called that or not, but what’s the alternative really… Montanites?) kill themselves every year.
Disease
San Diego takes the cake (ew, what kind of cake would that be? Pro tip: don’t eat it) for the most disease-ridden location in the United States. It is a good thing that cancer, heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer’s are non-communicable; otherwise the entire city would have to be quarantined.
But it’s a city on the other side of the continent that takes the unfortunate status of being the “AIDS capital of America.” That would be Baltimore, with 37.7 AIDS related deaths per 100,000 citizens. Its sister city Washington DC isn’t much better off in that department at 37.1. Compare that to a mere 3.7 AIDS deaths per 100,000 in Oakland, California or the very impressive virtual ZERO in Salt Lake City, Utah and you’ll see that Baltimore and DC have to change something up.---www.neatorama.com

Top 15 Most Dangerous Cities in United States

2009-09-17T04:38:00.000-07:00

Don't end up on the wrong side of the tracks in these troubled places.
In March 2008, Kwame Kilpatrick was charged with eight felonies, including perjury and obstruction of justice. In August, he violated his bail agreement and was thrown in jail. His actions were deplorable for anybody, but Kilpatrick was no Average Joe--he was the mayor of Detroit.
Unfortunately for the Motor City, Kilpatrick, 38, is just one ripple in the area's sea of crime. Detroit is the worst offender on our list of America's most dangerous cities, thanks to a staggering rate of 1,220 violent crimes committed per 100,000 people.
"Detroit has, historically, been one of the more violent cities in the U.S.," says Megan Wolfram, an analyst at iJet Intelligent Risk Systems, a Maryland-based risk-assessment firm. "They have a number of local crime syndicates there--a number of small gangs who tend to compete over territory."
No. 15 Philadelphia, Pa.
Population: 3,880,695
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 709
No. 14 Charlotte, N.C.
Population: 1,635,133
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 721
No. 13 West Palm Beach, Fla.
Population: 1,283,806
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 726
No. 12 Baton Rouge, La.
Population: 770,283
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 728
No. 11 New Orleans, La.
Population: 1,026,639
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 773
No. 10 Baltimore, Md.
Population: 2,652,974
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 791
No. 9 Nashville, Tenn.
Population: 1,492,983
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 817
No. 8 Charleston, S.C.
Population: 616,999
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 824
No. 7 Little Rock, Ark.
Population: 659,776
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 831
No. 6 Orlando, Fla.
Population: 2,020,346
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 845
No. 5 Stockton, Calif.
Population: 684,406
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 885
No. 4 Las Vegas, Nev.
Population: 1,834,533
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 887
No. 3. Miami, Fla.
Population: 2,401,971
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 988
No. 2 Memphis, Tenn.
Population: 1,295,670
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 1,218
No. 1 Detroit, Mich.
Population: 1,951,186
Violent Crimes per 100,000: 1,220-----www.forbes.com

The Most Dangerous Airports on the Globe

2009-09-17T04:24:00.000-07:00

Princess Juliana International Airport (Saint Martin)
Princess Juliana International Airport serves Saint Maarten, the Dutch part of the island of Saint Martin. It is the second busiest airport in the Eastern Caribbean. The airport is famous for its short landing strip — only 2,180 metres/7,152 ft, which is barely enough for heavy jets. Because of this, the planes approach the island flying extremely low, right over Maho Beach. Countless photos of large jets flying at 10--20 m/30-60 ft over relaxing tourists at the beach have been dismissed as fakes many times, but are nevertheless real. For this reason as well it has become a favourite for planespotters. Despite the difficulties in approach, there has been no records of major aviation incidents at the airport.
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport (Saba)
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport is the only airport on the Caribbean island of Saba, in the Netherlands Antilles. It is well known among experienced fliers for the way in which airplanes must approach or take off from the airport.

Yrausquin Airport covers a relatively large portion of the small island of Saba. Some aviation experts are of the general opinion that the airport is one of the most dangerous in the world, despite the fact that no major tragedies have happened at the facility. The airport's sole runway is marked with an X at each end, to indicate to commercial pilots that the airport is closed for commercial aviation.

The danger arises from the airport's physical position. It is flanked on one side by high hills, and on the other side and at both ends of the runway by cliffs dropping into the sea. This creates the possibility that an airplane might overshoot the runway during landing or takeoff and end up in the sea or on the cliffs.
Courchevel (France)
Courchevel is the name of a ski area located in the French Alps, the largest linked ski area in the world. It's airport has a certain degree of infamy in the aviation industry as home to a relatively short runway, with a length of 525 m (1,722 ft) and a gradient of 18.5%. It's so short that you have to land on an inclined strip to slow down and take off on a decline to pick up enough speed.

Who gets to land here? Well, Pierce Brosnan made the short list. This was the airport used in the opening seen of Tomorrow Never Dies. For the rest of us, private plane, helicopter, or charter are the only ways to go, and your pilot is going to need some serious training before he or she is allowed to land at CVF.
Gustaf III Airport (St. Bart)
Gustaf III Airport also known as Saint Barthélemy Airport is a public use airport located in the village of St. Jean on the Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy. Both the airport and the island's main town of Gustavia are named for King Gustav III of Sweden, under whom Sweden obtained the island from France in 1785 (it was sold back to France in 1878). The airport is served by small regional commercial aircraft and charters. Most visiting aircraft carry fewer than twenty passengers, such as the Twin Otter, a common sight around Saint Barth and throughout the northern West Indies. The short airstrip is at the base of a gentle slope ending directly on the beach. The arrival descent is extremely steep over the hilltop traffic circle and departing planes fly right over the heads of sunbathers (although small signs advise sunbathers not to lie directly at the end of the runway).
Barra International Airport (Barra)
Barra Airport is the only airport in the world where planes land on the beach. BRR is situated in on the wide beach of Traigh Mhor, on Barra island, in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. If you want to fly here commercially you will want to book with British Airways, which flies to Barra from Glasgow and Benbecula.

The airport is literally washed away by the tide once a day, and if you arrive on a late afternoon flight, you may notice a couple of cars in the parking lot with their lights on, which provides pilots some added visibility, since the airport is naturally lit. Needless to say you probably don't want to hang out at Barra Airport beach, unless you are a aviation junkie, in which case Barra Airport has a fool proof system, as sign that reads: "Keep off the beach. When the windsock is flying and the airport is active."
Madeira Airport (Madeira)
Madeira Airport also known as Funchal Airport and Santa Catarina Airport, is an international airport located near Funchal, Madeira. The airport controls national and international air traffic of the island of Madeira.

The airport was once infamous for its short runway which, surrounded by high mountains and the ocean, made it a tricky landing for even the most experienced of pilots. The original runway was only 1,400 metres in length, but was extended by 400 metres after the TAP Air Portugal Flight 425 incident of 1977 and subsequently rebuilt in 2003, almost doubling the size of the runway, building it out over the ocean. Instead of using landfill, the extension was built on a series of 180 columns, each being about 70m tall.

For the enlargement of the new runway the Funchal Airport has won the Outstanding Structures Award, given by International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE). The Outstanding Structures Award is considered to be the "Oscar" for engineering structures in Portugal.
Lukla Airport (Nepal)
A huge mountain on one end, a thousand meter drop on the other. And it's at 2900 meters elevation, so you don't exactly have full power.

Lukla Airport is a small airport in the Town of Lukla in eastern Nepal. In January 2008, the government of Nepal announced that the airport would be renamed in honor of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, who passed away on January 11, 2008. The airport is quite popular as Lukla is the place where most people start their trek to climb Mount Everest.---www.oddee.com

The Most Dirtiest Places in Your Dwelling

2009-09-16T06:05:00.000-07:00

Your home may look clean and tidy but is it really clean? I guess not. About 10 million tiny lumps of grit, dead skin, rubber and ash lurk in every cubic meter of air and if the bacteria are kept warm and well-fed (which they usually are), the happy souls increase in number by splitting in half. They do this every 20 minutes, so in just half an hours, a single bacterium produces 100 million copies of itself. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that your home is infested with a lot (like A LOT) of uninvited guest…
Let’s look at where these ‘friendly’ creatures live in your home.
1) The Bathroom
An average toilet contains less bacteria than the kitchen sink. Surprising but true. But do you also know that every time you flush, a cloud of 10 billion bacteria and viruses is sent up into the air? Tips: Have your toilet seat cover down when you flushSo you think brushing makes your teeth whiter, your gum healthier and overall cleaner? You might want to think twice after knowing this. Your toothbrush is one of the dirtiest things in your house. Imagine all the bacteria that lingers in your bathroom, they are stuck on your toothbrush because it’s a good place to hang out; it is damp and the bristles are really good at catching and keeping those bacteria.
We also have some wingless insects called the silverfish dwell and grow in wet places such as your bathtub and sinks. Looks like you’re not having your bath alone…
2) The Carpet
Do you know that the carpet that you walk on, play board games on and have some action on is five times filthier than a busy street in Washington DC? Moths lay their eggs in the wool and these eggs batch into larvae. And if you have your four legged friend staying with you as well, chances are, your carpet is double the dirtiness. Yes, the flea stays on your cats or dogs but their eggs... they dropped into the carpet. And underneath the carpet, there are nestling called the “woolly bears”. All these tiny creatures will slowly eat up your carpet and leaves holes. And now you wonder why your back itches when you wake up from your nap on the carpet?
3) The Kitchen
The sponges that you use to clean your plates and cups aren’t that clean, they contain about 50 million bacteria each.
4) The Plant
Red spider mites live on house plants and feed on the leaves.
5) The Wood
Woodworm which is the larvae of tiny beetles lives among tiny holes in your wood flooring and when they grow (yes, your expensive wood is what they feed on) they grow into adult beetles.
6) The Workplace
What do we have here besides the bookworms that live in books and paper mould that grows on papers… the computer! An average pc has 400 times more bacteria than the toilet! The main causes of germs and bacteria are crumbs and other small pieces of food that drop onto the keys while workers eat at their desks. Not only that, imagine all the things your fingers has touched before typing on those keys. Euuwww
7) The Bed
Human skin flakes make up 80 percent of the dusk in beds and carpets. House dust mites feed on these skin flakes. So if your dead skin is their food, then your bed is their dining table. Up to 10 million dust mites share your bed every night.
- Scarier fact: The average house dust mite poos 20 times a day. About 10 percent of the weight of a two-year-old mattress is made up of dead mites and literally their shit.
Well, just because you don’t see them, doesn’t mean they are not there… Sleep tight!---smaknews.com

The Killer of a 21-month-old Stepson Jailed for 5 Years

2009-09-16T05:57:00.000-07:00

A soldier was jailed for five years today for killing his 21-month-old stepson after he lost his temper while changing the child's nappy.
Shaun Thompson, 25, had denied the murder of Kieran Edwards for two years but today he changed his plea to guilty to manslaughter when he appeared in court.
Thompson, of Market Drayton, Shropshire, admitted the manslaughter of Kieran when he appeared at Stafford Crown Court.
Rachel Brand, QC, prosecuting, said the soldier had met Kieran's mother when his regiment moved to Tern Hill barracks in Shropshire, in late 2005.
Eighteen months later, on Sunday June 24, 2007, Kieran had bumped his head after falling on to tiles at the couple's home, but doctors later established that the accident had nothing to do with his death.
Ms Brand said that the defendant was left alone to care for Kieran at about 7pm on June 24 while his wife went out with a friend.
Medical experts later said that Kieran must have been subjected to shaking or a traumatic event that day, which had caused swelling and bleeding around his brain.
His stepfather initially denied that anything violent had happened to the boy, but changed his account after his arrest on suspicion of murder in May 2008.
Thompson, a member of the Royal Anglian Regiment who has served in Iraq, had denied playing any part in the death of Kieran for two years.
But when he appeared in court today he denied murder but pleaded guilty to the boy's manslaughter.
Ms Brand said the Crown Prosecution Serivce accepted the defendant's plea.
Thompson had admitted killing the youngster after he lost his temper when the child started ‘messing about’ while he was trying to change his nappy.
Ms Brand said Kieran died in hospital three days after suffering a substantial brain injury at his home in June 2007.
Ms Brand told the court: 'We are of the opinion that the right thing to do in this case would be to accept the guilty plea to manslaughter and not to proceed to trial on the murder charge.'
Defence QC Mark George, mitigating, submitted that Kieran had died as a result of a loss of self-control.
'It was two years after Kieran died before the defendant finally acknowledged that he - and he alone - was responsible for the injuries that caused Kieran's death,' Mr George said.
But Mr George added: 'The evidence in this case is that Mr Thompson was a good father to Kieran - this is not a case where this little boy has been abused by a man who is not his father.
'Kieran died as a result of a sudden loss of temper by the defendant - who did not intend to cause really serious harm, let alone any injury causing the child to die.'
Thompson, who has been in the Army for eight years, will now be discharged because of his conviction.---www.dailymail.co.uk

Ten Worst and Best Cities in the World

2009-09-16T05:39:00.000-07:00

Of course, no one wants to waste their time and money traveling to a crummy destination. In an effort to help you steer clear of those crummy destinations, Road Junky put together a list of what they consider to be the 10 worst cities in the world to visit. In no particular order, they are:

• Mumbai
• Dubai
• Liverpool & Manchester
• Any American Suburb
• Guatemala City
• Sao Paulo
• Beijing
• Singapore
• Milan
• Cancun
Weird. I always wanted to visit Bombay (or Mumbai, as it's now called). And Ember seems to be having a great time in Beijing, so I guess the list is colored by Road Junky's perceptions -- which is, of course, totally acceptable. Personally, I hope I never make it back to Harare. Or Bulawayo. So depressing.
Rather than simply mention the dregs and not point out the shining stars of world travel, here's Travel + Leisure's list of what they consider to be the 10 best cities in the world to visit. In no particular order, they are:
• Florence
• Rome
• Bangkok
• Sydney
• Chiang Mai, Thailand
• Cape Town
• Buenos Aires
• New York
• Beirut*
• San Francisco
I've spent several weeks in Cape Town, and if I could retire this weekend, I'd move there and start a weekly "What's Going On About Town" newspaper. I love that place. In my opinion, other great cities to travel to include Amsterdam (easy to navigate); Cairo (Culture! History!); and Key West (F-U-N).
Nevertheless, if you think T+L's list stinks, check out Cool Town Studios for their regional run-down of the world's best cities to visit or peep National Geographic Traveler's Top Urban Places.---www.gadling.com

Sex Scene in GTA Closed

2009-09-08T23:43:00.000-07:00

ONE of the most bizarre chapters in video game history has finally ended with a $23 million settlement.
The Grand Theft Auto "Hot Coffee" case came to a close this week as games company Take-Two Interactive struck a $US20 million out-of-court deal.
The company was the subject of a class-action suit by its shareholders over an infamous interactive sex scene in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Discovery of the scene in 2005 led to widespread controversy, reclassification of the game to Adults Only and a massive drop in Take-Two's share price.
The twist was that the scene was never meant to be seen by the public. It had been developed and then removed from the game's storyline – but not entirely from the game's code.
Hackers found a way to "unlock" the scene shortly after the game's release.
The scene showed the game's main character having sex with women and let players control some of the on-screen movements.
It was dubbed "Hot Coffee" after the women's invitation to come inside for a "cup of coffee".
Take-Two also agreed to implement changes in its corporate policies.
"We are pleased to have reached this settlement, which represents another important step forward for the company," said Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick.---www.news.com.au

Schoolgirl Hoped to Lose Virginity Prior to the End of the World Caused by LHC

2009-09-08T23:39:00.000-07:00

A teenage girl agreed to have under-age sex because she wanted to lose her virginity before the Large Hadron Collider caused the end of the world, it has been reported.
The girl, who is aged between 13 and 15, had heard rumours that particle accelerator under the Franco-Swiss border would bring about Armageddon when it was switched on last September.
At the time leading scientists including Prof Stephen Hawking were forced to deny claims that the £4.4bn accelerator would generate a black hole capable of swallowing up the earth.
In the event the collider kicked into life peacefully, although it has since been beset by technological problems.
But police in Brisbane, Australia believe that the teenage girl was so scared by the doomsday speculation that she agreed to have under-age sex with a boy in their school lavatories.
Her fears came to light after their sex acts were filmed by another boy at the school, with the footage circulated among pupils via their mobile phones.
Police have launched an investigation under child pornography laws, although The Courier-Mail newspaper reported that they did not expect to bring any charges.
Constructed by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the collider has been built at depths ranging from 170ft to 600ft near the institution's headquarters in Geneva.
The aim of the experiment is to recreate the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang – the birth of the universe – and provide vital clues to the building blocks of life.
It will track the spray of particles thrown out by collisions in a search for the elusive Higgs Boson, a theoretical entity that supposedly lends weight, or mass, to the elementary particles.
In June, engineers announced that it would be run flat out throughout the year – rather than shutting down over winter – to make up for lost time caused by its lengthy switch-off.---www.telegraph.co.uk

Muslim Woman Faces Trial Because She Wore Pants

2009-09-07T05:59:00.001-07:00

Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein will face trial Sept. 7 for wearing trousers in violation of government decency statutes derived from Sharia law. If convicted, she faces 40 lashes and a fine.
But it's the Sudanese government, not Husein who wants the trial to go away.
"This is a turning point. We have a woman who has put the government on the spot," said Abdullahi An-Na'im, an Islamic law expert from Sudan who teaches at Emory University Law School. "They can't try her, and they can't not try her."
Hussein and 12 other women were arrested by the country's public order police in July for wearing pants at a Khartoum reception hall. Most of the women accepted the punishment of 10 lashes and a $100 fine.
Hussein, 43, worked for the United Nations at the time, and could have claimed diplomatic immunity from prosecution, but refused, seeing her arrest as a chance to challenge laws she said were anti-Islamic.
"I want to change this law, because hitting is not human," Hussein told the BBC in July. "It doesn't match Sharia."
Limited Sharia law was introduced in Sudan in 1983, and expanded in 1989 when current president Omar al-Bashir seized power and declared Sudan an Islamic republic. But Sudan is a vast country where 30% of the population is non-Muslim, and Sharia enforcement began waning in the late 1990s. The country's 2005 constitution refers to Sharia as a source for national law.
The Khartoum government is reluctant to remove Sharia legislation for fear of angering religious conservatives and seeming to appease Western critics, said An-Na'im. Al-Bashir, however, has an International Criminal Court warrant out for his arrest and the government is eager to avoid a public relations headache; critics say he postponed the trial to search for a face-saving move.
The case has provoked international condemnation, as well as protests in Khartoum. Sudan's embassy in Washington, D.C., did not return phone calls seeking comment.
"Just by forcing Muslims to look in the mirror, and to see how absurd it is that their religion is being presented as a religion that requires something like this, is important." said An-Na'im. "She's doing the whole Muslim world a favor."---www.usatoday.com

Man Charged After Spotted with 300kg of Kava

2009-09-07T05:56:00.000-07:00

A MAN has been found with almost 300kg of kava in his car in the Northern Territory.
Police said Pine Creek police were conducting traffic duties when they stopped a man in his vehicle yesterday afternoon.
When they inspected his car they found a number of garbage bags containing kava in the back seat and rear of the vehicle.
"Police found a total of 294kg of kava divided into 14,700 individual deal bags in the man's car," NT Police said in a statement today.
"It is estimated it to have a street value of $294,000."
Superintendent of the Northern Operational Service Division Helen Braam said it was another example of an organised drug trafficking network aimed at exploiting people in remote communities.
"Police will continue to target these people who deliberately pray on vulnerable people in communities," Supt Braam said.
A 28-year-old man is due to appear in Darwin Magistrates Court tomorrow on drug possession charges. He has been remanded in custody at the Katherine Watch house.---www.theaustralian.news.com.au

Facebook Warns About Purchasing Friends

2009-09-07T05:52:00.000-07:00

FACEBOOK has warned that members who buy "friends" from a local online marketing company could face banishment from the social network.
Brisbane company uSocial is offering to sell friends on Facebook in batches of 1000 to 10,000 for prices from $197 to $1297.
The company caused a stir earlier this year with a similar offer to users of popular micro-blogging service Twitter seeking to increase their number of followers.
Facebook today fired back against uSocial and issued a reminder that it was against its terms of service for a user to access an account belonging to someone else or to share a password.
"It's our understanding that uSocial logs in as a user and manipulates their account," Facebook said.
"This is a violation of our terms by uSocial and any user who participates in their programs.
"Thus, we'd caution any customer of their service that their account and investment is in jeopardy.
"If we find a user has violated our terms we may take action against them, including permanently disabling their account."
On its website, uSocial said "the simple fact is that with a large following on Facebook, you have an instant and targeted group of people you can contact and promote whatever it is you want to promote".
uSocial chief executive Leon Hill said Facebook was "an extremely effective marketing tool".
The only problem is that it can be extremely difficult to achieve such a following, which is where we come in. --- www.news.com.au

Ten Most Dangerous Professions in the United States

2009-09-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

The good news: Fewer people are dying on the job in the United States.
The bad news: Workplace safety experts say the decline in fatalities was due in part to lower employment nationwide, particularly in the construction and manufacturing industries. (Construction-related deaths, still the highest among any profession on an absolute basis, dropped to 1,178 from 1,239.) Improved safety standards have helped stanch the bleeding, too, they say.
No. 10 Police Sheriffs and Patrol Officers
Deaths per 100,000 workers: 21.4
Total deaths: 143
What they do: Police pursue and apprehend criminals. A large proportion of their time is spent writing reports and maintaining records of incidents. Most police officers patrol their jurisdictions and investigate any suspicious activity they notice.
Dangers: In addition to the obvious dangers of confrontations with criminals, police officers and detectives must always be alert and prepared to deal with a variety of other threatening situations. Many law enforcement officers witness death and suffering resulting from accidents and criminal behavior. In addition to the physical rigors of the job, a career in law enforcement could take a toll on their private lives.
No. 9 Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors
Deaths per 100,000 workers: 22.8
Total deaths: 18
What they do: There are two basic types of collector: Operators use heavy machinery to move construction materials around factories or construction sites. Laborers typically handle materials manually and feed material into machines.
Dangers: Some work is done at great heights, occasionally in extreme weather. Workers are often exposed to fumes and hazardous materials that can affect their respiratory systems. Safety has increased over the years thanks to improvements in equipment.
No. 8 Drivers (truckers and salespeople)
Deaths per 100,000 workers: 26.2
Total deaths: 908
What they do: Travel the nation's roads to deliver goods and make sales calls.
Dangers: On an absolute basis (as opposed to a per capita basis), highway fatalities are the No. 1 killer of people on the job. The majority of accidents stem from tired drivers veering off the road, rather than multi-car accidents.
No. 7 Electrical Power Line Installers and Repairers
Deaths per 100,000 workers: 29.1
Total deaths: 30
What they do: Install and repair lines and polls that deliver electrical power to homes and businesses.
Dangers: Power lines are typically located higher up than phone and cable lines. Dangers include both slip and falls from high altitude and electrocution risk from high voltage lines.
No. 6 Roofers
Deaths per 100,000 workers: 29.4
Total deaths: 79
What they do: Repair and install roofs for commercial and residential buildings, usually working with tar, asphalt or gravel.
Dangers: The most common causes of injury or death are slip and falls from roofs, ladders or scaffolds. Heat-related illness can also occur on hot days.
No. 5 Farmers and Ranchers
Deaths per 100,000 workers: 38.4
Total deaths: 285
What they do: Owners or leasers of farmland who grow and cultivate crops or livestock.
Dangers: Many farmers' duties include operating heavy machinery, the biggest sources of hazards on the job.
No. 4 Iron and Steel Workers
Deaths per 100,000 workers: 45.5
Total deaths: 40
What they do: Place iron or steel girders, columns and other construction materials to form buildings, bridges and other structures.
Dangers: Most work at great heights, with the greatest cause of injury or death coming from falls. The majority wear harnesses and most job sites provide safety nets.
No. 3 Pilots and Flight Engineers
Deaths per 100,000 workers: 66.7
Total deaths 82
What they do: Pilots and co-pilots fly planes and helicopters for transporting passengers or cargo, or for crop dusting, seed spreading or other tasks. Flight engineers assist pilots by monitoring instruments.
Dangers: Full crashes are relatively rare. Conditions and risks are most acute for test pilots, who check equipment for new, experimental plans, and crop dusters, who are exposed to toxins and sometimes lack a regular landing strip. Helicopter pilots often engage in dangerous rescue.
No. 2 Loggers
Deaths per 100,000 workers: 86.4
Total deaths: 76
What they do: Cut down trees with hand-held power chain saws or mobile felling machines. They use tree harvesters to fell the trees, shear the limbs off tees, cut logs, drive tractors and transport logs from the felling site in the woods to the log landing area. They also operate grapple loaders, which lift and load logs into trucks.
Dangers: Highly concentrated in Alaska and Maine, loggers are susceptible to high winds, falling branches and hidden roots or vines that present great risks around chain saws and other heavy equipment.
No. 1 Fishers and related workers
Deaths per 100,000 workers: 111.8
Total deaths: 38
What they do: Work on commercial boats. Fishers catch fish and other aquatic animals to sell as food, animal feed, bait and other uses.
Dangers: Commercial fishers work in all kinds of weather, often hundreds of miles from shore with no help readily available. Crew members risk falling on slippery decks, which can result in serious injuries or even going overboard. There are also potential hazards of malfunctioning fishing gear and becoming entangled in large nets.
Source: forbes. com

Ten Most Dangerous Destinations on the Planet

2009-08-31T06:04:00.000-07:00

People are opting for more unforgettable holidays but some countries can be risky even for the most adventurous travelers.
Forbes.com has compiled a list of the most dangerous destinations. The list is not endorsed by Reuters.
1. Somalia
This Horn of Africa country has been in the grip of warlords for the last decade, fighting for control of drug and weapon trafficking rights. Risks include military clashes, kidnapping, landmines and pirates.
2. Iraq
Military action, collateral damage, insurgency and suicide bombings are daily occurrences in the country. Security experts say unstable areas include Baghdad and stretch from Tikrit in the north to Hillah in the south and from Mandali in the east to Ramadi in the west.
3. Afghanistan
Even though the ruling Taliban regime was officially ousted in Afghanistan in 2001, attacks from those still loyal to it and to al Qaeda continue. Military personnel and civilians are killed by improvised explosive devices daily.
4. Haiti
Sharing the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with top vacation destination Dominican Republic, Haiti, the western hemisphere's poorest country, is plagued by civil unrest, police corruption and readily available firearms.
5. Pakistan
The country, which borders Afghanistan, suffers from ongoing geopolitical turmoil. Bomb attacks and rioting between Shia and Sunni Muslim communities are a threat. In December 2007, opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated during a suicide bombing after months of strife over delayed elections.
6. Sudan
Despite a peace agreement in 2005, areas of extreme danger due to battles between government troops and militias and local insurgent groups dot the country. Areas to avoid completely include the western region of Darfur, Ethiopian and Eritrean border regions and all of southern Sudan.
7. Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
A civil war that formally ended in 2003 still affects the country. As Rwandan and Ugandan troops pulled out of DRC towards the end of the war, rival militias have been fighting each other to fill the power vacuum this created. Crime is rampant in major cities and security conditions can fluctuate drastically even within minor distances.
8. Lebanon
Culminating in the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, Lebanon is split by pro- and anti-Syrian forces vying for control of the government. Other risks include military battles in the south with neighboring Israel and civil unrest.
9. Zimbabwe
Anti-western sentiment prominently expressed by officials, out-of-control inflation and oppression employed by the government to silence dissenting voices are common in Zimbabwe.
10. Palestinian Territories
The region is caught in a brutal tug-of-war between pro-Fatah and pro-Hamas factions. Political and military battles with Israel, especially in the Gaza Strip, have made the security situation in this territory very unstable. Poverty and chronic violence add to the instability.
Source: reuters. com

Ten Dangerous Foods to Eat

2009-08-29T04:10:00.000-07:00

Reaching for a glass of milk or fresh produce may seem like a healthy choice. But before you pat yourself on the back, take heed: These and other food pyramid mainstays can turn harmful at the drop of a recall. Read on to see if your favorite snack or drink has made serial appearances on the Food and Drug Administration’s Most Unwanted list.

1. Milk
2007 marked the year of the Chinese milk scandal—a tragic case in which contaminated milk produced in China was responsible for killing at least six of the region’s children. The culprit: toxic levels of melamine, a chemical substance with a high nitrogen content that was added to diluted milk to fool quality-control equipment into believing that nitrogen from protein was present at normal levels. Globally, the deception hit hard as well; authorities from Australia and Asia to Europe and the U.S. withdrew infant formulas, coffee, tea, candies, soup, cheese, biscuits, premade desserts, and chocolate made from the tainted dairy product.
Since the harrowing incident, milk has continued to appear on the Food and Drug Administration’s recall list. Just this month, a national supplier of instant nonfat dry milk was responsible for multiple recalls by brands that utilized its salmonella-plagued product. Foods that contain the instant dry milk run the gamut, from hot chocolate mixes and protein drink powders to seasoned popcorn and cake mixes.

2. Red Tomatoes
In 2004, salmonella-infected Roma tomatoes caused multistate illnesses, and last summer the FDA again issued a code red after hundreds of people nationwide became ill and even hospitalized. Though the FDA deemed cherry, grape, and vine tomatoes to be safe, many Americans still abstained; even fast-food chains like McDonald’s erred on the side of caution, pulling tomatoes from their burgers even though no salmonella had been detected in its supply.3.

3. Beef
The UK has long dealt with mad cow disease, and in February 2008, the U.S. experienced a related scare after a video by the Humane Society depicted a California-based plant preparing “downer” cattle for slaughter. Though meat from nonambulatory cows puts consumers at a higher risk of contracting E. coli, salmonella, and mad cow disease—and is banned under federal law from entering the food supply—employees at the slaughterhouse were shown using inhumane practices to force weak cows to stand so they would pass inspection. In the wake of the leaked video, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recalled 143 million pounds of frozen beef. Between 2006 and 2008, there were more than 20 beef recalls in the U.S., with the most recent recall taking place in June: Right before the Fourth of July, the USDA launched a massive recall of E. coli–affected beef from a global producer.

4. Canned Soup
In 2004, a major canned-soup manufacturer issued recalls in seven states after metal fragments were detected in its New England clam chowder. Three years later, in 2007, another big-brand soup label notified retailers in 24 states that its Baked Potato with Cheddar & Bacon Bits might also contain hard plastic bits. Eek.

5. Bagged Spinach
Undoubtedly a superfood, packed with a multitude of nourishing vitamins, spinach, when purchased in the convenient prepackaged, salad-ready fashion, may be more harmful than it is healthful: Since 2006, when spinach contaminated with E. coli bacteria killed three people and shook consumer confidence in leafy green veggies, Popeye’s go-to snack has continued to be plagued by recalls. The most recent occurred in April, when a warning was issued for salmonella-infected spinach sold in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota.

6. Smoked Salmon
Salmon, lauded for its healthful omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins, and protein, isn’t without its risks as well. When shopping for the seafood favorite, your best bet is to buy fresh, not packaged and presliced. Over the past five years, the latter has repeatedly been recalled for containing listeria, bacteria that induces flulike symptoms and increases the risk of miscarriage and stillbirth in pregnant women.

7. Alfalfa Sprouts
Sprouts provide the perfect garnish to a tuna or veggie-packed sandwich, but they are often harbingers of bacteria. The latest recall occurred in April 2009, and the FDA investigation is ongoing. So far six states, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia, have associated illness with salmonella-contaminated sprouts, and more than 30 cases of illness have sprouted.

8. Nuts
A snacker’s favorite, these allergens have seen ongoing callbacks. Pistachios have been making headlines recently (in March of this year, a million pounds of the nut were recalled, due to salmonella poisoning), but almonds and peanuts are the biggest offenders. The year 2004 was a particularly rough one for almonds after a nationwide supplier reported salmonella, leading tons of brands to recall their product (10 states were affected and more than 20 illnesses were reported). Peanuts, another miscreant, also experienced a major setback when, in January, the Peanut Corporation of America recalled salmonella-contaminated peanuts it had produced over the past six months. Since then, at least eight people have died and more than 500 peanut-induced illnesses across 40-plus states have been reported. Overall, more than 400 products—everything from peanut butter sandwich crackers to nutritional bars—have been pulled from store shelves.

9. Bottled Water
A study released by the government’s General Accounting Office this month revealed that regulation of bottled water (under the FDA's Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) is less strict than the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of tap water (under the Safe Drinking Water Act). Seems that swigging Brita-filtered water from a Nalgene container is a purer way to get your daily H2O requirement than store-bought liquids. During the past five years, several bottled-water recalls have taken place: In 2006, multiple labels were found to contain dangerous levels of bromate (a carcinogen); in 2007, popular mint-flavored waters were found to harbor stomach fluesque B. cereus bacteria; and in 2008, another major brand reported a diluted form of a food-cleaning compound in its product (that same year, a second nationally distributed brand was also recalled because of customer complaints about a strange smell).

10. Cantaloupe
In 2008, contaminated cantaloupes from a Honduran grower and packer resulted in multiple brands issuing recalls of its product. The salmonella-ridden fruit caused illnesses across the U.S. and Canada, and it’s estimated that 15 to 20 people were hospitalized. In May, another cantaloupe recall took place, albeit on a far smaller scale; cantaloupes distributed to nationwide store chain locations in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia tested positive for salmonella.

Dishonorable Mention: Carrot Juice
Though the incidence of food-borne botulism (a rare, life-threatening paralytic illness caused by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum) is extremely low, in 2006 a U.S.-based distributor’s bottles of carrot juice became contaminated by the bacteria, causing the FDA to issue a countrywide recall of the product, which was also sold in Canada, Mexico, and Hong Kong. The warning did not come soon enough for some, however—four people in the U.S. were reported hospitalized with respiratory failure and descending paralysis from the carrot concoction, with two similar cases reported in Canada. Even with the aid of a doctor-administered botulinum antitoxin, full recovery from botulism often takes months—a large price to pay for trying to drink healthfully.
Source: elle. com

Ten Dangerous Foods People Consume While Driving

2009-08-28T07:03:00.000-07:00

Insurance.com has come up with a list of the 10 most dangerous things eat behind the wheel. Seriously. Topping the list is the one thing we’ve all shoved into our faces during the morning commute.
Before we get to that, though, we should explain why Insurance.com thought this was important enough to investigate. Hagerty Classic Insurance, the folks who let you cover that ‘57 Chevrolet Bel Air or 1935 Dusenberg SJ in your garage, ran an applicant through the DMV. It discovered the guy had a restraining order barring him from having food within his reach while driving. Apparently the guy had been in several accidents while stuffing his maw.
Wait, it gets better (and by that we mean infuriatingly worse). Insurance.com decided to draw up a list of things you absolutely, positively should not sip, slurp, chomp or chew behind the wheel. Here from the home office in Cleveland are the ” The 10 Most Dangerous Foods to Eat While Driving”.
It should be said this is by no means scientific; it’s a rundown of things actuaries don’t think you ought to have in your hand (or mouth) when driving. That said, the list is more frightening than the repair bill we got when our Jag needed a transmission rebuild.
1. Coffee. It’s hot. It can spill. That’s bad. That said, we’re guilty of this. So are you. Admit it.
2. Hot soup. It’s hot. It can spill. That’s bad.
3. Tacos. Very messy.
4. Chili. It’s hot. It can spill. That’s bad. And it’s very messy.
5. Hamburgers. Greasy hands and a steering wheel do not mix.
6. Barbecued food. Um, that should go without saying.
7. Fried chicken. You think burgers are greasy?
8. Jelly or cream-filled donuts. Ever bitten into one and not had it squirt all over the place?
9. Soft drinks. Big threat of spillage, says Insurance.com, and unacceptable risk of “fizz up your nose.” Huh?
10. Chocolate. It melts on your fingers, which makes a mess on the steering wheel.
Allow us to make a special shout out here to item number two: Soup. Soup? Are you kidding? Who in their right mind thinks it’s OK to eat soup while driving a two-ton projectile? And who the hell is trying to spoon chili down their gullet in traffic? Good lord, people. It’s a CAR. Do not take that call from Joe in accounting, do not try to read that Brad Pitt cover story in Wired and do not try to munch a freakin’ taco. Just DRIVE.
Soup? To quote the great Tom Wolfe, “It’s enough to make the Fool Killer hang his head in shame at the missed opportunities.”
Source: wired. com

Psychologist Sent Letters With Sexual Content to Inmate

2009-08-26T03:36:00.000-07:00

A JUVENILE Justice worker has been banned from practising psychology after sending a sexually explicit letter and pictures of herself to a young prisoner in her charge.

In making the decision, a New South Wales professional tribunal rejected the woman’s explanation that the pictures may have come from social networking sites, finding instead she had “failed to maintain professional boundaries” with the detainee.

“We have the oral evidence of the (woman), which for the most part was so far-fetched that it could not, on any view, be accepted as the truth,” the Psychologists Tribunal said in its ruling.

The woman, who cannot be named because it could identify her son, first started treating the teenager at a juvenile detention centre in July 2006, where she “inappropriately conducted counselling sessions… during shower/lockdown time”.

She had repeated “personal and intimate” telephone conversations with the boy and was found at the doorway to his cell while the lights were off. Later she used pseudonyms to stay in contact, with the then 18-year-old prisoner writing back addressing her as “Roxy Page” and “Sarah Miller” at a third party’s address.

During hearings the woman was confronted with evidence including one photograph - not of a sexual nature – of her posing with her son.

The woman said she was so protective of her son she would never send a photo of him to “anyone in a correctional facility” or give out a picture to anyone who was not family.

“The other thing is that people have all this new technology at the moment with Facebook and Bebo and MySpace,” she said. “Who's to say that someone didn't get a photo of me off one of those Internet sites? I know my niece and my nephew have MySpace and Bebo and all that kind of stuff.”

The tribunal was not satisfied with her explanation and barred her from working as a psychologist for three years, after which she will have to reapply for registration.
Source: news. com. au

Peru Gang "Kindly" Attacked Australian Tourist

2009-08-25T06:52:00.000-07:00

An Australian tourist robbed at gunpoint during a frightening roadside ambush in Peru said his attackers were "kind".
Sydney musician Tom Dundas, 27, was among 12 tourists robbed in Peru's Cusco region.
Mr Dundas said the heavily armed attackers looked like mercenaries, but behaved more like nervous teenagers
"They kept saying the whole time, 'we're not going to hurt you'. They were kind," Mr Dundas said.
The Pantiacolla tour group had been on their way to the pristine Manu National Park when three masked goons built a heavy wall of rocks across the narrow access road, forcing the bus to a grinding halt.
Then, wielding pistols, a semi-automatic weapon and a long knife, the attackers stormed the bus and bashed the driver around the head before sealing his eyes closed with masking tape.
They ushered each tourist out of the bus, one by one, and demanded they hand over cash, cameras and other valuables
"They held a gun to our faces and forced us to hand it over," Mr Dundas said.
Having stripped the terrified travellers of their loot, the attackers forced each of them to kneel in a ditch where they taped their hands behind their backs. Despite the bravado, the trio seemed nervous.
"They were shaking and they kept saying the whole time 'don't worry, we're not going to hurt you'", Mr Dundas said.
Although their faces were covered, the group guessed the Spanish-speaking trio were probably only 18 years old.
When the tourists signalled the tape around their wrists was too tight, they loosened it and even gave one man a soft bag to rest his head on.
"They were kind, they were trying to look after us."
Mr Dundas, who had been visiting the renowned nature reserve after a friend's wedding in the area, was stunned nonetheless.
"We were shocked," he said.
"It was a little bit tense but we were all able to have a laugh about it afterwards.
"He managed to stash his cameras beside his bus seat, which meant he only gave away some cash and his wristwatch.
"I was pretty lucky," he said.
The drama unfolded in the Tres Cruces area of the Cusco region, nearly 600km southeast of Lima.
A spokeswoman for Pantiacolla, one of only eight tour operators authorised to enter the World Heritage listed site, said such attacks were rare.
The Paucartambo police are investigating and the Australian consulate has been notified
Source: news. com. au

Most Dangerous Locations for Journalists

2009-08-24T01:28:00.000-07:00

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is again marking World Press Freedom Day, Monday, May 3, by naming the World’s Worst Places to Be a Journalist. The list of 10 places represents the full range of current threats to press freedom.

At the top of the list is Iraq, where 25 journalists have died since the U.S.-led war began in March 2003. A brutal crackdown launched last year in Cuba by Fidel Castro’s government has left an unprecedented 29 journalists behind bars, serving lengthy prison terms of up to 27 years. Last year saw the biggest blow to Zimbabwe’s beleaguered press when authorities closed the country’s only remaining independent daily. CPJ also placed Turkmenistan, Bangladesh, China, Eritrea, Haiti, the West Bank and Gaza, and Russia on the list of Worst Places to Be a Journalist.

"In all of these places, reporting the news is an act of courage and conviction," said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. "Journalism is essential in helping all of us understand the events that shape our lives, and our need and desire for information cannot be eliminated by violence and repression."

IRAQ

More than a year after the war in Iraq began, the country remains the most dangerous place in the world to work as a journalist. Twenty-five journalists have been killed in action in Iraq since March 2003. Twelve have been killed in 2004 alone—all of them Iraqis.

Postwar Iraq is fraught with risks for reporters: Banditry, gunfire, and bombings are common. Insurgents have added a new threat by systematically targeting foreigners, including journalists, and Iraqis who work for them. At least six Iraqi media workers have been murdered, and several more have received threats. Armed groups have abducted some eight journalists in 2004, though all have been released.

U.S. forces pose an additional threat to working journalists: at least seven—and possibly as many as nine—journalists have been killed by gunfire from U.S. forces. Other journalists—mostly Arab or Iraqi—have been detained and suffered mistreatment at the hands of U.S. forces.

CUBA

The arrest and long-term imprisonment of 29 journalists in 2003 has decimated Cuba’s fledgling independent press. A year after the government of President Fidel Castro Ruz launched a massive crackdown against the press and the political opposition, the imprisoned journalists and their families are harassed and exposed to humiliating prison conditions and psychological torture. They have denounced inadequate medical attention, have been placed in solitary confinement, and have complained about receiving foul-smelling and rotten food. The journalists, who are held in maximum-security facilities, went on hunger strikes several times to demand better conditions. Those journalists who were not imprisoned continue to face routine police intimidation and harassment and are careful about what they write. They say they have been visited by state security officials and issued warnings to stop writing or face the consequences.

ZIMBABWE

For the last four years, Zimbabwe’s government has pursued a relentless crackdown on the private press through harassment, censorship, and restrictive legislation. Last year saw the biggest blow to press freedom yet, with authorities closing the Daily News, Zimbabwe’s only independent daily and the country’s most popular paper. The country’s Media and Information Commission (MIC), whose board is government-appointed, refused to register the newspaper despite two court orders to do so. And in February 2004, the Zimbabwean Supreme Court upheld legislation requiring journalists and media outlets to be licensed by the MIC, making it a criminal act to practice journalism without government approval. Those who fail to register face fines and up to two years’ imprisonment.

Zimbabwean officials have proven particularly sensitive to coverage of political unrest and the country’s severe economic problems. Journalists who reported on pro-democracy rallies were arrested by police and attacked by ruling party supporters. Last year, authorities deported the last foreign reporter based in Zimbabwe, the U.K. Guardian‘s Andrew Meldrum, whom officials called an "undesirable inhabitant."

TURKMENISTAN

Because political dissent is not tolerated by Turkmenistan’s totalitarian regime, independent journalism is practically non-existent. President-for-life and self-proclaimed "father of all Turkmen," Saparmurat Niyazov, maintains strict control over all newspapers, radio, and television stations by personally appointing editors, and his office approves news reports before they are published or broadcast.

One of the only independent media outlets that penetrates this system of control is the reporting broadcast from abroad by the Turkmen service of the U.S. government–funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). And again this year, RFE/RL was subjected to intense official harassment. In September 2003, National Security Service (MNB) agents detained an RFE/RL stringer based in the capital, Ashgabat, for two days, threatened him with 20 years in prison for betraying his country, and injected him multiple times with an unknown substance. More recently, in February 2004, MNB agents arrested two RFE/RL freelancers after one smuggled 800 copies of his banned novel into Turkmenistan. Both were released from prison in March after CPJ and other press freedom groups protested. However, the journalists still face charges of slander and instigating social, ethnic, and religious hatred and have been pressured to sever all ties with RFE/RL.

BANGLADESH

Crime, corruption, and lawlessness make Bangladesh the most violent country for journalists in Asia. Reporters routinely face threats, harassment, and often brutally violent physical attacks in retaliation for their reporting. Despite promises from government officials to apprehend those responsible for assaults, the majority of attacks on journalists go unpunished. Deep political divisions in the country and within the journalism community also contribute to the climate of fear.

CPJ has documented dozens of violent attacks against Bangladeshi journalists during the last decade, including the murders of seven journalists in the last eight years. Journalists working outside the capital, Dhaka, are particularly vulnerable. Veteran journalist Manik Saha was killed in January 2004 in the southwestern city of Khulna when unidentified assailants threw a homemade bomb at him. In December 2003, a group of thugs affiliated with the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party tried to kill Shafiul Haque Mithu in the southwestern town of Pirojpur after he wrote a series of articles exposing local officials’ abuse of power.

CHINA

During the last year, the newly installed government of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao has escalated an assault on the burgeoning independent-minded media in China. Authorities have arrested high-profile editors, closed publications, and imposed news blackouts on politically sensitive events.

The crackdown reached an apex in early 2004, when officials arrested three popular and respected editors from the pioneering Southern Metropolis News for alleged corruption. The charges came after the paper published a series of reports on the resurgence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, local police violence, and other sensitive topics. Chinese journalists have called the arrests the "darkest moment" in 20 years of media reform in China.

Forty-one journalists are now imprisoned in China, making it the world’s leading jailer of journalists for the fifth year in a row. Independent writers and commentators on the Internet are particularly targeted for prosecution. The arrest of prominent and outspoken commentator Du Daobin in late 2003 sent a clear message to all Internet writers that free expression online will not be tolerated.

ERITREA

Eritrea has been Africa’s foremost jailer of journalists since September 2001, when the government banned the entire private press and detained independent reporters. Seventeen journalists are now in secret jails across the tiny Red Sea nation, almost all of them held incommunicado. President Isaias Afewerki and top government officials have accused independent journalists of espionage, spreading disinformation, and "endangering national unity." Authorities continue to insist that the private press also operated without proper licenses, and that independent journalists routinely evaded the compulsory National Service Program. Despite these allegations, no formal charges have been brought against any of the journalists, and the government has given no indication that it intends to prosecute them. The ruling party has a firm grip on the state media, whose employees are censored and also practice self-censorship. Afewerki has been unfazed by persistent international denunciation of his human rights record and continues to dismiss foreign critics as enemies of Eritrea.

HAITI

Press freedom conditions have seriously deteriorated in Haiti since September 2003, when the murder of a notorious gang leader sparked nationwide violence. From January to March 2004, journalists became targets during the uprising that led to the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on February 29. While hostility against Haitian journalists is common, foreign correspondents were also attacked while covering the two-month rebellion. In March, a Spanish television correspondent was killed and a U.S. photographer was wounded by gunfire. Several radio stations were torched around the country. Investigations into the 2000 and 2001 murders of two prominent Haitian journalists have shown no progress. The Haitian judicial system’s failure to prosecute these crimes has perpetuated a climate of impunity, forcing dozens of journalists to go into exile or seek political asylum.

THE WEST BANK AND GAZA

The West Bank and Gaza Strip remains one of the most unpredictable and potentially dangerous assignments for journalists. At least three journalists have been killed there since April 2003—each by Israeli army gunfire. Israeli troops often harass or attack Palestinian journalists, and Israeli authorities enforce tough restrictions on their freedom of movement. Palestinian journalists are vulnerable to the increasing lawlessness in the Occupied Territories.

Palestinian militias and armed groups have frequently threatened and assaulted reporters and in some cases have ransacked news offices. In 2003 and 2004, Palestinian gunmen raided two television news offices and a newspaper in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, attacked a correspondent on the street in Gaza, and assaulted a reporter in Ramallah.
Source: cpj. org

In Future Tourists May Have Sex With Robots

2009-08-22T00:12:00.000-07:00

IT sounds like science fiction, but robot bar staff, hotel rooms that change colour, cruise ships as big as aircraft carriers and even robot sex are part of the future for travellers, a tourism conference has been told.
Tourism futurologist Ian Yeoman, from New Zealand's University of Wellington, gave an preview of what the world could be like in 2050, shaped by global warming, an older population, food, water and jet fuel supply problems and technological advances.
Dr Yeoman said the future may see a more controlled society with a return to mass tourism spawning a range of new indoor tourism products.
Indoor artificial ski centres, circuses, zoos, golf courses and recreated landscapes, as well as giant cruise ships, could be among the new attractions.
As costs for basics such as electricity and food increased, tourism operators could turn to robots as cheap labour, Dr Yeoman said.
Robot waiters at cocktail bars, remote-controlled camera-carrying guard dogs in hotel lobbies and self-cleaning hotel rooms were all likely, Dr Yeoman said.
"Robotics will become important, because you're going to have labour shortages in the future,'' he said.
"You'll have some sort of interaction in terms of robots doing certain types of mundane activities.''
Even robot "prostitutes'' that would not pass on diseases such as HIV could make an appearance, he said..
"But you're talking about extreme futures,'' he said.
Dr Yeoman said technology would also revolutionise hotel bedrooms, with beds that sensed a guest's comfort needs and chemical wallpaper that could change colour to suit a guest's mood.
Of course, special pills could override a traveller's need for sleep.
"If you look at some of the research from the US army research centre, what they do at the moment, when soldiers go into battle, they're given sleep deprivation tablets,'' he said.
"To a certain extent you could replicate that into travel and tourism, taking a tablet to do a 24-hour experience.''
Source: newstin. com

Homosexuals Assaulted and Executed in Iraq

2009-08-21T05:06:00.001-07:00

Hundreds of gay men have been tortured and killed in Iraq in recent months, some by the nation's security forces, Human Rights Watch said Interviews with doctors indicate hundreds of men had been killed, but the exact number was unclear because of the stigma associated with homosexuality in Iraq, the New York-based watchdog group said in its report.
"Iraq's leaders are supposed to defend all Iraqis, not abandon them to armed agents of hate," said Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. "Turning a blind eye to torture and murder threatens the rights and life of every Iraqi."
Four victims who spoke to CNN gave accounts of the attacks, which they say have intensified in the past few months.
"In 2004, militias and unknown groups started to go after the gays ... but the peak was six months ago," said Qaisar, who uses a pseudonym for fear of reprisal. "It has become wide scale war against gays in Iraq."
Iraqi officials acknowledged that the nation's culture stigmatizes homosexuality, but said the government does not condone such attacks. Authorities are unable to provide homosexuals with special protection, said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.
According to Human Rights Watch, which is urging a government crackdown, attackers target people on the streets or storm homes, where they conduct interrogations and demand names of suspected gay men. Many end up in hospitals and morgues, the organization said, basing its conclusion on reports from doctors.
Men have been threatened with "honor killings" by relatives worried that their "unmanly behavior" will ruin the family's reputation, Human Rights Watch said.
Killings, kidnappings and torture of those suspected of homosexual conduct have intensified in areas such as the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, the watchdog said.
"The Shiite people started this war and especially what happened in Sadr City," Qaisar said, adding that his sister-in-law had warned him against going to the area.
Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which is active in Sadr City, has joined in the attacks and defends its actions as a way to stop the "feminization" of Iraqi men, the report said.
"We have testimony that indicates that the nation's security forces are taking part in the attacks," Long said.
The group interviewed more than 50 people who gave accounts of abuses, beatings and stops at security checkpoints, he said.
"When the gay killings started and when they started go(ing) after them at checkpoints ... we started to change our look," said Basim, who also used a pseudonym.
"These killings point to the continuing and lethal failure of Iraq's post-occupation authorities to establish the rule of law and protect their citizens," said Rasha Moumneh, Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch.
A provision from the Saddam Hussein era endorses crimes committed "with honorable motives," according to the organization.
The government spokesman said the provision was popular during the Saddam era, but is not used today. He added that there is a push to educate police about human rights.
Attacks against civilians, including homosexuals, are not allowed, al-Dabbagh said.
Source: cnn. com

Five Most Dangerous Nations on the Planet

2009-08-20T01:55:00.001-07:00

Drugs, murders, human trafficking, and terrorism are all indicators of violence in our world, with its presence more heavily noted in some countries than others. People live in fear and delinquents do not value human life where crime is prevalent; a common element of their daily lives. Forthcoming is a list numerating the most dangerous countries (not at war) on our planet and the reasons behind it, in correlation with statistics on NationMaster.com. You wouldn't want to be caught dead living there, literally.

5. Russia. In this crime-ridden, ex-Soviet state, no longer does the government stuff their Armani suits with rubles, but the vandals and gangsters. The Russian mafia runs amuck, there are more gangsters than police, and a Russian is assassinated every 18 minutes, averaging 84 murders per day in a nation of 143 million. The nucleus of Russian crime is stationed in the Republic of Chechnya, a region within Russia just north of Georgia. Prostitution, drug trafficking, and underground restaurants are arbitrarily controlled by the Chechens. Foreigners are kidnapped more frequently due to the higher ransom allocated. Crimes towards include but are not limited to: pick pocketing wallets, cell phones, cameras, cash, and physical assaults. From superpower to Third World country, think tanks are beginning to speculate if communism really was the cure for Russia.

4. Venezuela. Political tension and a widening gap between the high and low classes (the middle class is thinning tremendously) are to blame for this country's ridiculously high crime rates. Homicide has skyrocketed by 67% since Hugo Chavez took office in 1999. It has one of the highest gun-related deaths in the world, categorizing it as one of the most dangerous nations in Latin America and the world. Corrupt law enforcement does not do much to keep civil order, as many policemen themselves are delinquents in uniform. This causes victim citizens to take orders into their own hands. Hitmen can be hired for as little as $20. People are shot and killed for petty reasons such as dirty looks and insults. Murders in Venezuela average 5 per day in a nation of 25.6 million.
3. Jamaica. This island country has a bad reputation for crime ever since the rise of tourism, especially in its capital, Kingston. Gangs and politics are the cause for most civil break outs and manifestations which quickly can escalate to shootings. An average of 5 murders per day in a small nation of 2.6 million is tremendously high. Crimes usually occur in the poorer sectors of big cities, though that does not confine it. Corruption and the wide-spread illegal drug trade contribute to the increasing numbers of assaults, robberies, and murders. The Jamaican law enforcement is weak and ineffective and the lower class has thing, stringy ties with family units, combining to create the resort to violence and theft. The first thing people usually see when they tune into the news at night, are reports of deaths.

2. South Africa. The rich class in South Africa has moved into gated communities, creating a schism between classes and evidently races, one which was theoretically abolished during the apartheid. It is ranked first in rapes per capita amongst the whole world and has a notorious record for car hijacking. The problem is so severe, that women are allowed to speed through red lights to avoid being car hijacked, or worse. One of its capitals, Johannesburg, is the most dangerous, with almost all middle-class and high-class families carrying weapons merely for protection. Peter Murgatroyd, resident of Cape Town, says "As a 30 year old born in SA spending most of my life here, I have stab wounds in my back, a few times I've had a gun shoved in my face, my car and house broken several times and I purchased another 'security' product this week. Enough said." South Africa averages 50 murders a day in a nation of 47 million.

1. Colombia. Infamous for its guerillas, illegal cocaine "industry", and corrupt government, no wonder Colombia ranks as "The Most Dangerous Country in the World". Bombings targeting civilians are common and terrorism is a way of life for most citizens who have grown accustomed to the chaos. It has a high rating for kidnappings with ransoms, with businesspeople, tourists, journalists, and scientists being frequent targets, though no one is actually excluded from kidnappings. Hot spots include ATMs, taxis, restaurants, and simply walking down the street. Those who try to resist robberies usually get shot and killed. Bogota, Baranquilla, Cartagena, and Medellin are statistically categorized as the most dangerous cities, with Medellin holding the title of the Drug Capital and "Most Dangerous City in the World." With 11 murders a day in a city of merely 2 million, its murder rates is quintupled that of New York City. In recent years, murders rates in Colombia have dropped, but not enough to pass the title to South Africa. Though what was previously mentioned may be misinformation, as critics have accused President Uribe of manipulating the crime date, making Colombia seem safer than it really is. What is behind all the heinous crimes? An expanding drug market and a plethora of terrorist groups, and a government that does nothing about it. Colombia averages 47 murders a day in a nation of 45 million, giving it the crown of "Most Dangerous".
Source: associatedcontent. com

Depression Associated with Anti-social Behavior

2009-08-19T00:56:00.000-07:00

Past behavior is generally considered to be a good predictor of future behavior, but new research indicates that may not be the case in the development of depression, particularly among adolescent girls.
University of Washington social scientists tracked first- and second-graders for seven years and found that anti-social behavior among girls and anxiety among both sexes predicted depression in early adolescence. Surprisingly, early signs of depression were not predictive of adolescent depression.
"Anti-social behavior has typically been viewed as a big problem among boys, so it tends to be ignored among girls. Boys with early anti-social behavior typically go on to show more anti-social behavior while girls may turn inward with symptoms, morphing into other mental health problems such as depression eating disorders, anxiety and suicidal behavior during adolescence ," said James Mazza, a UW professor of educational psychology and lead author of the new study. He is currently serving as the past president of the American Association of Suicidology.
"When all the risk factors were analyzed, anti-social behavior and anxiety were the most predictive of later depression. It just may be that they are more prevalent in the early elementary school years than depression." He noted that depression and anxiety share a number of symptoms.
Mazza said that early adolescence is when the first episode of depression typically occurs and that's when it has been noted that gender difference occur, with more girls than boys experiencing depressive symptoms. Children can be assessed at 6 and 7 years of age, but depression is not often recognized or diagnosed until the middle school years.
Children in this study were drawn from a larger project looking at the risks for health and behavior problems. That project was conducted by the university's Social Development Research Group, with which Mazza is affiliated. More than 800 children participated in the depression study. Eighty-one percent were white and 54 percent were boys.
Data were collected annually from the children and their parents and teachers when the children were in the first or second grade. The children filled out surveys that measured their levels of depression, anxiety and anti-social behavior, as well as other measures that were not investigated in this study. Parents and teachers filled out questionnaires about the children's anti-social behavior and social competency, which measured such things as the youngsters' abilities to understand other people's feeling, to make new friends and resolve conflicts. Teachers also rated each child's academic performance. In addition, parents filled out questionnaires concerning family and marital conflict, family stress and parental depression.
"One finding from this study that is a mind-grabber is that young children can identify themselves as being anxious and depressed," said Mazza. "When they had scores that were elevated we were a bit surprised because we thought they would say, 'My life is fun and I play a lot.' But they are able to understand and report feeling depressed or anxious, and tell us so. This suggests giving health surveys in early elementary school is a good idea and we should talk to kids in the first and second grades because they can give us valuable information."
Source: eurekalert. org

Another Top Ten List of Most Dangerous Countries

2009-08-18T02:49:00.001-07:00

Venezuela
Ok, Chávez won't start any world wars. But think of his disruptive reach around the hemisphere, his support for the FARC, and his cultivation of ties to Russia, China and the Middle East and its clear this is the one guy who is most likely to disrupt lives in Latin America for the foreseeable future.
Iraq and Saudi Arabia (Tie)
The final chapter has not been written in Iraq. Saddam may not have posed the threat Bush ascribed to him, but the fragmentation of this country (particularly in Kurdistan) could be massively destabilizing in the region and create real problems with Turkey, Iran, and Russia. The Saudis support terror, their succession picture is murky, they are likely to be one of the first to respond to Iranian nukes with a program of their own, and they pull key levers in OPEC. Hard not to include them, too.
8. The European Union
Europe should be a force for stability in the world. But an EU without an effective foreign policy mechanism, without the ability to shoulder its share of the military burden associated with keeping the world safe, with a faltering Euro and with too many new members is a big void where the world needs strength. Sometimes the greatest threat comes from those who could take action to preserve stability but who do not.
Nigeria and Congo (Tie)
Nigeria is the biggest country on a continent that is increasingly important to the world for oil and other resources. It is a major player in the global energy scene. And it faces multiple threats both internally and from a truly scary neighborhood. Congo is the site of the world's most deadly conflict of the past decade and both a metaphor and hub for the kind of regional fracturing that make instability in Africa one of the things most worrying to U.S. and European military commanders.
Israel and Palestine (Tie)
This is a dangerous place, for sure. Hostile or ill-considered moves by either party can trigger regional instability that would impact global energy markets and draw the attention of every major world power. The only reason this festering wound is ranked so low: everyone is so accustomed to it that it is more likely than not to have very narrow consequences even if it heats to a boil for extended periods.
Iran
Iran could be an important regional force for stability. But for the near term that looks pretty unlikely. Meanwhile, if the Iranian nuclear program triggers a regional arms race that may not mean state-on-state thermonuclear disaster (deterrence probably still works for most states) but it vastly increases the likelihood that some nuke ends up in the hands of some non-state (or allegedly non-state) actor.
Pakistan
Pakistan is just barely a functioning state in the pieces of the country where the government has some control. As for the rest of the place? There are pieces that never bought into the idea of the Pakistani nation. So take that, add nukes, add the impact on India and Afghanistan, add al Qaeda and the Taliban, add the country as a petri dish and a symbol for radical Islam and it's still the place with the biggest potential to blow up into something very messy for the world in the next several years.
China
I do not believe China is a military threat to the U.S. or to anyone now or at any time in the near future. Rather they are on top of this list for the same reason that the number one country is: the most dangerous countries are the ones with the most power. They flex their muscle ... economic, political, or military... and they have the biggest impact. Or, as in the case of China, if they don't ... if they remain the reluctant great power ... and don't assume a role in the international system proportionate to their power, it will throw the system out of balance. (For example: if Iran's nuclear program is a threat and China could make a difference in containing it but doesn't ... they become a contributor to the threat.) Further, they've got internal struggles that could have them focused inward for a long time ... some, with the Uighurs say, that could have them caught up in a struggle with the Islamic world that could next spread into Central Asia (a development that worries me a great deal.)
The United States
I generally believe the U.S. is a force for good in the world and I am inclined to believe that is the objective of the current administration. But there is no denying that the one country who has most aggressively reached out to touch the world militarily in the past decade is the Untied States. Further, and more importantly, following the logic in the EU and China mentions above...no one has more power than the United States. That means no one can do more damage with a mistake or even with inaction. Also: as in the case of China and the EU, our economic missteps punish the planet and there is very little evidence to suggest we've taken the steps we need to avoid another meltdown of the 2008-2009 variety. Ask yourself: What has harmed more people on the planet, terrorist brutality or Wall Street venality?

Binge Drinking Among Young Women has Reached Epidemic Proportions

2009-04-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

The number of women and girls arrested for being drunk and disorderly has leapt tenfold in parts of Britain over the past five years.

The shocking increase in drunken loutishness by 'ladettes' - up more than 50 per cent across the country overall - is being blamed by police leaders on the Government's controversial 24-hour licensing reforms.

Alcohol campaigners warned that women who follow the example of male binge-drinkers were creating a time-bomb of serious health problems, including soaring rates of liver disease.

The figures - and demands for urgent action from senior police - will add to pressure on Gordon Brown, who raised campaigners' hopes by ordering a review of the licensing reforms when he became Prime Minister last year, but then dashed them by opting to leave the new laws as they were.

Figures requested from police forces across England and Wales under the Freedom of Information Act by Channel 4 News Online reveal dramatic increases in numbers of women arrested for drunk and disorderly offences.

The most dramatic surge was in the West Midlands which experienced a 1,138 per cent increase from 59 arrests in 2003-4 to 731 in 2007-8.

Mike Craik, Chief Constable of Northumbria Police, where drunk and disorderly arrests among women have risen from 1,414 to 2,101 in the past five years, told Channel 4 there was a 'clear need' for tough action, particularly to tackle under-age drinking.

A recent survey of hospital admissions across Britain found that alcohol-related cases were up 25 per cent in two years, and had risen four-fold in the worstaffected areas.

The data was not included in the Government's recent review of the impact of the new laws, which claimed the burden on the NHS was 'stable'.

Women are less able to metabolise alcohol in the body and suffer more extreme health effects than men who drink similar amounts.

Medical experts warn that binge drinking among young women has reached epidemic roportions, with some in their 20s and 30s suffering liver conditions which doctors expect tosee among far older, hardened drinkers.

Women aged 35 to 44 are seven times more likely to die from chronic liver disease than they were 30 years ago.