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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seattle, January 30: A federal judge ruled Tuesday to extend the U.S. government's antitrust oversight of Microsoft Corp for two more years, but stopped short of granting a five-year extension sought by states accusing the company of continuing monopolistic behavior.

District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she will extend the government's oversight of Microsoft until November 12, 2009, two years after its original expiration date, due to delays by Microsoft in filing technical documents to software licensees.

The consent decree settled the landmark U.S. antitrust case against Microsoft in 2002. The decree covers the company's ties to computer makers, how its software works with other types of software and enforcement to ensure it does not repeat past practices.

The consent decree's expiration had been temporarily pushed back until Jan. 31 while Kollar-Kotelly considered the motion filed by 10 states to extend government oversight of Microsoft.

The states, which include California and New York, wanted the decree extended until 2012, arguing that Microsoft would again use its market dominance to crush competitors once the decree expired.

Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her opinion that the extension should not be seen as a "sanction" against Microsoft, but she said the delays in documentation meant the objectives of the settlement had not been fully achieved.

She also left open the possibility that the decree could be extended in the future and said there are mechanisms in place to reexamine the decree in the fall of 2009.

"We will continue to comply fully with the consent decree," Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said in a statement. "We built Windows Vista in compliance with these rules, and we will continue to adhere to the decree's requirements."

Prior to the ruling, shares of Microsoft closed down 12 cents at $32.60 on the Nasdaq.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ender's Game", the classic science fiction novel about a boy military genius who is trained through war games to fight aliens, is finally becoming a game itself.

Under a deal announced on Tuesday, Chair Entertainment, the game studio behind the recent hit "Undertow", will develop titles based on Orson Scott Card's book.

The novel, with its probing of the line between reality and games, has long been eyed by video game fans as a rich source of material for the medium.

Chair plans to make several titles based on the book, with the first one slated to be a downloadable game that should be available in 2009.

Card said he decided to move ahead with an "Ender's Game" video game after years of wrangling to make a feature film bore no fruit.

"There is going to be a universe of 'Ender's Game' games, hopefully. But that's like someone starting a restaurant and thinking about opening 100 franchises all over the country," Card told Reuters.

"Let's make this one work first," Card said.

The first game will focus on the Battle Room, the elite military academy where Ender hones his strategic and tactical skills and that provided some of the most memorable scenes in the book.

Based in Provo, Utah, privately held Chair enjoyed success with "Undertow", a downloadable game for Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 console that pits teams of players against each other in a fast-paced underwater battle.

"The really cool thing about 'Ender's Game' is that there's lots of potential for lots of types of gameplay. We wanted to initially create the Battle Room, that's really what jumped out to me as a gamer that I really wanted to play," said Chair's creative director Donald Mustard.

"We have not fully designed the game yet. I think that the game will play very much what we've all imagined the Battle School is, a cross between 'Call of Duty' with zero-g with hardcore strategy elements more like a sports game," Mustard said, referring to a popular military shooting game.

It is the latest collaboration for Card and Chair, which is making a game based on Card's recent novel "Empire".

He has no memory, no one knows who he is and he has $1 million in medical bills.

Friday night, police in Kissimmee were trying to solve the mystery of a man hurt in a traffic accident. In his lucid moments, he's told his doctors in Spanish, he thinks he's from Mexico and was born in December, 1939. That would make him 68 years old.

"After about 18 years, I can't think of any other traffic related homicide investigation that we've had where we had anybody who wasn't identified," said Lt. John Lewis of the Kissimmee Police Department.

No one has reported a missing man matching his description. If he's homeless, no local police officers or social workers recognize him.

Kissimmee police plan to fingerprint the John Doe.

It was last November 19, just after 6:00pm. The victim was standing on the median of East Vine Street. As he went to cross the westbound lanes near Michigan Avenue he was struck by a 20-year-old woman driving a Jeep.

No charges were filed against the driver. The accident report only lists him as unknown.

A private investigator the hospital hired has not been able to trace his relatives through any tattoos or other physical characteristics. He does have one outstanding feature; he has two silver teeth.

"Thank god he's still alive, but we'd still like to know who he is," said Lewis.

A giant carnival mask representing Pope Benedict XVI is paraded during the Viareggio annual carnival on January 20 in Italy.

The carnival of Viareggio is considered to be among the most renowned carnival celebrations both in Italy and Europe. It is characterised mainly by the parade of floats and masks, usually made of paper-pulp, depicting caricatures of well-known personalities such as politicians, showmen and sportsmen.



Giant carnival masks representing Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi (left) holding the mask of his political adversary, former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, and Berlusconi holding Prodi's mask in turn, are paraded through the streets of Viareggio during the traditional carnival parade on January 20.



A giant carnival float depicting US President George W. Bush as a monkey inside a cage is paraded through the streets of Viareggio during the traditionnal carnival parade on January 20.



A giant carnival mask representing US presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton holding US President George W. Bush by the ear is paraded through the streets of Viareggio during the traditional carnival parade on January 20.



Italian comedian Beppe Grillo waves at the people on January 20 during the traditional carnival parade in Viareggio.



A giant carnival mask representing French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a monkey inside a cage holding a heart with the picture of girlfriend Carla Bruni is paraded through the streets of Viareggio during the traditional carnival parade on January 20.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Researchers in Germany have discovered that a protein found in semen makes HIV 100,000 times more virulent than it is alone - thus helping to explain why more than 80 per cent of human-immunodeficiency-virus (HIV) infections are transmitted via sexual intercourse.

The team of German scientists had initially set out to determine whether semen contained factors that inhibit the HIV infection, according to the report published in the journal Cell.

But surprisingly, the HIV/AIDS researchers in Hanover and Ulm, Germany, found that fragments of prostatic acidic phosphatase isolated from human semen form tiny fibres known as amyloid fibrils, which they call Semen-derived Enhancer of Virus Infection or SEVI.

Those fibrils capture HIV particles and help them to penetrate target cells, thereby increasing the infection rate by up to several orders of magnitude.

"We were not expecting to find an enhancer, and we were even more surprised about the strength," says report co-author Frank Kirchhoff, a virologist at the University of Ulm Clinic in Germany.

"Most enhancers have maybe a two or three-fold effect, but here the effect was amazing. More than 50-fold and, under certain conditions, more than 100,000-fold," Kirchhoff says.

Wolf-Georg Forssmann of VIRO PharmaCeuticals GmbH & Co KG and Hanover Medical School says the fibrils act like a ferry, picking up the viruses and then bringing them to the cell.

Researchers injected both the naked virus and SEVI-treated HIV into the tails of rats that had been given human immune system cells.

The HIV with the semen component was five times more effective at transmitting the virus.

In situations where low levels of the virus are transferred - as during intercourse - Kirchhoff says, SEVI can make HIV up to 100,000 times more likely to spread when compared with the virus alone.

In an editorial accompanying the article, postdoctoral fellow Nadia Roan, along with Warner Greene, a senior investigator at the University of California, San Francisco's Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, writes:

"If SEVI truly increases the real-world heterosexual spread of HIV by several orders of magnitude, then negating the activity of this factor could conceivably diminish these frequencies to levels that might virtually eliminate semen-driven HIV transmission."

HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, has infected 60 million people worldwide (causing 25 million deaths) since it was discovered in humans in 1981.

The transmission rate from intravaginal sexual intercourse is estimated at one in every 200 to 2,000 acts. In Africa, 60 percent of new infections are in women who have had sex with HIV-positive men.

San Francisco, January 28: There's never been a laptop as skinny as the new MacBook Air from Apple. At its thinnest, it measures just about four millimetres.

'When you first see MacBook Air, it's hard to believe it's a high-performance notebook with a full-size keyboard and display,' gushed Apple CEO Steve Jobs while presenting the new laptop at the keynote speech of the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. 'But it is.'

The excitement at the Moscone Centre was also sparked in typically reserved observers like Michael Gartenberg, research director at the US market research firm Jupiter Research: 'This will become the object of lust for all tech fans this year,' Gartenberg said.

In advance of the MacWorld Expo, the chatter on many websites was focused on a potential combination of the iPhone and a normal laptop - more or less a retooling of the 'Newton' PDA concept that Apple phased out 10 years ago. The MacBook Air is instead a full-value laptop with a robust aluminium casing with a 13-inch display and a full sized keyboard.

During his presentation, Steve Jobs compared the MacBook Air, which costs about $1,700, with the Vaio TZ series from Sony.

'The thinnest part of the Vaio is the thickest part of the MacBook Air,' the Apple CEO told the cheering crowd. What he didn't mention in his comparison is that unlike the MacBook Air, the Sony laptops come with a DVD burner, a modem, and an integrated UMTS module.

With an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 1.6 or 1.8 gigahertz (GHz) of processing power, Apple has certainly sent its new laptop out into the world with a significantly stronger CPU than the Japanese devices against which it is competing.

The standard model contains a 1.8 inch hard drive offering 80 gigabytes (GB) of storage space. Users willing to hand out another $900 can upgrade to a 64 GB Flash hard drive. Flash memory works more quickly than a hard drive and consumes less power. The battery in the MacBook Air lasts five hours when working with a traditional hard drive.

The second major MacWorld Expo announcement centred on a second attempt at the 'digital home' market, as well as launching an online video rental service. To facilitate all of this entertainment, Apple introduced an improved version of its 'Apple TV' TV set-top box. It will enable HD video films to be rented from the Internet without having to connect with a computer.

Steve Jobs gained the support of all significant Hollywood studios for the 'iTunes Video Rentals' platform. In the US, DVD-quality films will cost $3 or $4 for a rental limited to 30 days. High definition (HD) films will cost $1 extra.

'This is going to turn the video industry inside out the same way the iTunes store changed the music industry,' says Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg. Ross Rubin from the market research institute NPD disagrees, seeing Sony and Microsoft as enjoying the better start position: 'Both of those Apple competitors have already placed their Trojan Horses in the living room through the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360.' Each game console is capable of downloading HD content online.

It's unclear how the Apple movie rental model will work outside the US. Jobs indicated plans to launch the service in Europe 'later this year'.

WAUKESHA, Wis. — Nikol Hasler doesn't recommend the "pull and pray" method of birth control. She says you should not have sex on nature trails because of bugs and Sasquatch. And if you hate your body as a teen, just wait.

The 28-year-old mother of three speaks from experience, and her video podcast, the "Midwest Teen Sex Show," is attracting thousands of viewers.

The product of a teen pregnancy, Hasler spent years in foster care and went to five high schools before graduating. She got pregnant just before her freshman year in college and dropped out after one semester. She was living in a homeless shelter when she gave birth to her first child.

Now Hasler uses her experiences to talk to teens about such topics as "The First Time," "The Older Boyfriend" and "Female Masturbation" on the online video series that started this summer.

"It's cathartic for me. It's a way for me to finally turn what was once something very negative about my life into something very positive," she said.

With co-creator and director Guy Clark, Hasler and actress Britney Barber use humorous skits (such as teens applying for a fornication license) to get their message across. Much of the advice comes from the no-nonsense Hasler talking directly to the camera.

There have been a dozen episodes so far, each about three to five minutes long. The topics vary.

On the first time: "Don't expect too much the first time. That's what the second time is for. Practice makes perfect and you're going to need a lot of practice."

On birth control: "Personally, I think any girl over the age of 8 should be on the pill. If you're old enough to bleed, you're old enough to be a statistic. It may have side effects, but so does pregnancy."

Hasler said she exaggerates about 95 percent of the time. (For the record, if she had an 8-year-old daughter, she would not place her on birth control.) She wants to make people think.

"When hearing a joke that makes you squirm ... that causes you to examine that part of the joke in yourself and brings it forward and makes you think about it even more," she said.

The show's target audience—teens, young adults and their parents—is responding. The show has 65,000 subscribers through iTunes and other podcast subscription services, Clark said. It's regularly ranked in iTunes' top 10 health podcasts, and its Web site averages 4,000 unique hits a day.

Hasler's biography on the Web site labels her a "former expert practitioner of teen promiscuity." She does reveal in an episode about birth control that two of her three children weren't planned.

The show's Web site stresses that "all advice given is simply opinion and should not be taken as fact." The intent is to provide a forum for the discussion of teen sexuality, its creators say.

"Part of what's translated into this show is my own desire to kind of shake kids and say, "If somebody had come around and said, 'Come on, these ideas are completely wrong,' then I would have been listening more," she said.

Microbiologists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have achieved a major breakthrough in uncovering a biological 'gateway' that anthrax uses to enter healthy cells.

The researchers say that anthrax spores enter the cell through a receptor called Mac-1, which sits on the surface of certain cells.

This is the first time that a team of researchers has shown exactly how the bacteria get inside cells. Previous studies had focused on what happens after anthrax spores enter the body and wreak havoc.

UAB microbiologists insist that unravelling this biological gateway is a milestone in the ongoing efforts to protect humans from bio-terrorism and biological warfare. This discovery may pave the way for new drugs and vaccines to fight or prevent anthrax infection, besides advancing the understanding of bacterial infection, they add.

"We know anthrax infection can occur in wild and domestic animals, but in humans this disease is extremely rare and very dangerous. It is a bio-weapon," said John Kearney, a professor in the UAB Department of Microbiology, and co-author on the study.

"This study reveals the biological paradigm that makes the anthrax spore clever enough to target the Mac-1 receptor, and use this entry point to boost its lethality," he added.

During the course of study, the researchers worked under strict bio-safe conditions to infect cultures of cells and laboratory-bred mice with a strain of anthrax.

Upon having a look at the infection rates, and making other observations, the researchers became convinced that anthrax relies on Mac-1 to do its damage inside healthy cells.

"By showing how anthrax spores recognize Mac-1 receptors, this discovery points toward a precise entry point which B. anthracis uses to proliferate and trigger lethal consequences," said Claudia Oliva and Melissa Swiecki, both researchers in the UAB Department of Microbiology, and co-lead authors on the study.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, has been published in the online version of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These electric multi-purpose vehicles manufactured by Chinese based Li Shi Guang Ming Automobile Design Co., Ltd. are on display for the opening day of the North American International Auto Show, Saturday, January 19, 2008 in Detroit.



The Toyota Venza is introduced at the North American International Auto Show Monday, January 14, 2008 in Detroit.


The Lincoln MKT concept is introduced at the North American International Auto Show, Monday, January 14, 2008 in Detroit. The vehicle, which is partially made of plastic bottles and polyester waste, underscores Ford's hope to commercialize greener materials and appeal to more environmentally-minded drivers.


Chrysler introduces the Jeep Renegade concept vehicle at the North American International Auto Show Monday, January 14, 2008 in Detroit.


The Mazda Taiki concept is displayed at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Tuesday, January 15, 2008.


The Fisker Karma, a luxury plug-in car, is displayed at the North American International Auto Show Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008 in Detroit.


Chrysler introduces the ecoVoyager concept vehicle at the North American International Auto Show Monday, Jan. 14, 2008 in Detroit.


Chrysler introduces Dodge ZEO concept vehicle at the North American International Auto Show Monday, January 14, 2008 in Detroit.


The Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, driven by NASCAR racer Jeff Gordon, is introduced at GM Style event Saturday, January 12, 2008 in Detroit as recording artist Kid Rock performs in the background.


The Audi R8 V12 TDI concept is introduced at the North American International Auto Show Sunday, January 13, 2008 in Detroit.

People love to find things on Mars. Sometimes it's a face, and sometimes it's a really happy face. Other times it's pyramids or even DNA.

This time, it's Bigfoot.

The Mars exploration rover, Spirit, took this picture in late 2007. Launched in June, 2003, Spirit is a solar-powered explorer that is walking along the surface of Mars to see what we can learn about its geological history. Its non-evil robot twin, Opportunity, set down on the other side of the planet to do the same thing.

But so far only Spirit has seen a Tusken Raider or Bigfoot or Xenu or whoever that is walking around.

Take a look for yourself.



Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University



Pulled back to show it in context. Click image to see full-size original. Spirit was perched near the western edge of Home Plate when it used its panoramic camera (Pancam) to take the images used in this view. This view combines separate images taken through Pancam filters centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers, 535 nanometers and 432 nanometers and is presented in a false-color stretch to bring out subtle color differences in the scene. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

Or it could just be a rock.

But expect any number of people to cite it as proof of life on Mars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Vietnamese woman searching for her father worked at his home in Taiwan for seven months without realising who he was before the relationship came to light, her father and police said Tuesday.

Tran Thi Kham, 40, travelled to Taiwan in 2005 hoping to find her biological father, who fell in love with her Vietnamese mother in Hong Kong in 1967, police said.

Tran's mother became pregnant but was forced to return home for family reasons. She died two months after giving birth to Tran, leaving the baby an engraved gold ring and a photo of her Taiwanese father, who did not know she existed.

Giving his reaction to the meeting, Tran's father, Tsai Han-chao, told the local TVBS cable news channel: "Life's ups and downs are just like television drama. How could I have ever dreamed that she is my daughter? I can't stop crying when we were finally united."

Tran was hired by Tsai in Taipei county to look after his paralysed wife and was reassigned by an agency to a family on the offshore Kinmen island seven months later, after the woman died.

After arriving in Kinmen, Tran realised that she had left a bag containing her father's ring and photo in her ex-employer's home and asked the local police for help, the police in Kinmen said.

When Tsai opened the bag, he immediately recognised the items he had given his girlfriend.

He wasted no time flying to Kinmen for a tearful meeting with his daughter.

"This is incredible and really touching to see the father and daughter get together after all these years," said policeman Ku Ker-ya.

Ku told AFP that DNA testing had confirmed Tran's parentage and she returned to Vietnam last week to deal with legal documents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

London, January 23: A Victoria Cross, Britain's highest military honour, awarded to Sergeant Joseph Brennan for his exploits during the 1857 uprising in India has been put up for sale for 99,000 pounds (about $190,000) and is likely to be bought by an Australian collector.

The medal was put up for sale last week by Chris Dixon, a trader in Bridlington, Yorkshire. He is also offering a United States of America Congressional Medal of Honor from the American Civil War for 5,600 pounds.

The citation of the Victoria Cross awarded to Brennan said it was given 'for marked gallantry at the assault of Jhansi on April 3, 1858, in bringing up two guns of the Hyderabad Contingent, manned by natives, laying each under a heavy fire from the walls and directing them so accurately as to compel the enemy to abandon his battery'.

Brennan, who was born near Truro in Cornwall in 1836, joined the Royal Artillery aged 17 as a clerk. He landed in India in August 1857 and the following year formed part of Sir Hugh Rose's Central India Field Force which set out to eliminate those who were viewed in Britain as 'rebels and mutineers' in Jhansi and Gwalior and threatened British counter-insurgency operations further north.

Rare medal

The medal was on show at the weekend at the York Coin, Medal and Stamp Fair at the York Racecourse. It was accompanied by his original soldier's book, with a waxed cover and tied together by string, showing his allowances and clothing and detailing the ups and downs of his military career.

There is also a copy of a photograph of Brennan, who died in 1872 from pneumonia just a year after marrying, wearing his medal and a programme of a show for the benefit of his widow and orphans.

Dixon said: 'These items are very rarely seen in public. Both medals are the highest decoration awarded by Great Britain and by the Congress in the US. On average, approximately five Victoria Cross awards will come on the market per year and likewise the Medal of Honor. So, as you will appreciate, I am delighted to be handling both of them at the same time.'

He told the local media that he hoped to conclude a deal with an Australian collector. According to him, the medal was 'probably the cheapest VC in the world' since the average price quoted in the antique medals circles was 150,000 to 160,000 pounds.

The same Australia collector was reported to be interested in buying the United States Congressional Medal of Honor from the American Civil War, awarded to Private J. Davis in the 1860s for capturing an enemy flag after a skirmish.

* A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for approximately sixty-nine years.



* 1 out of every 4 kids in the USA is overweight.



* 41% of women apply body or hand moisturizer a minimum three times a day.



* 75-90% of primary physician visits are due to stress.



* A Russian man who wore a beard during the time of Peter the Great had to pay a special tax.



* A blink lasts approximately 0.3 seconds.



* A ear trumpet was used before the hearing aid was invented by people who had difficulty hearing.



* A fetus develops fingerprints at eighteen weeks.



* A fetus starts to develop fingerprints at the age of eight weeks.



* A fetus that is four months old, will becomes startled and turn away if a light is flashed on the mother's stomach.



* A headache and inflammatory pain can be reduced by eating 20 tart cherries.



* A human embryo is smaller than a grain of rice at four weeks old.
* A kiss for one minute can burn 26.



* A little under one quarter of the people in the world are vegetarians.



* A person infected with the SARS virus, has a 95-98% chance of recovery.



* A person who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day will on average lose two teeth every ten years.



* A person will burn 7 percent more calories if they walk on hard dirt compared to pavement.



* A sneeze can travel as fast as one hundred miles per hour.



* A study concludes that kids who snore do poorly in school.



* A study indicates that smokers are likely to die on average six and a half years earlier than non-smokers.



* A women from Berlin Germany has had 3,110 gallstones taken out of her gall bladder.



* A world record 328 pound ovarian cyst was removed from a woman in Galveston, Texas, in 1905.



* A yawn usually lasts for approximately six seconds.



* About twenty-five percent of the population sneeze when they are exposed to light.



* According to the American Institute of Stress, job stress approximately costs the U.S. industry over $300 billion dollars per year.



* After twenty-seven years, Betty Rubble made her debut as a Flintstones Vitamin in 1996.



* Air is passed through the nose at a speed of 100 miles per hour when a person sneezes.



* Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar were both epileptic.



* An adult esophagus can range from 10 to 14 inches in length and is one inch in diameter.



* An average adult produces about half a litre of flatulent gas per day, resulting in an average of about fourteen occurrences of flatulence a day.



* Approximately 1-2 calorie are burned a minute while watching T.V.



* Approximately 25,000 workers died during the building of the Panama Canal and approximately 20,000 of them contracted malaria and yellow fever.



* Asthma affects one in fifteen children under the age of eighteen.
* At least 7% of all health care costs in the United States are attributed to smoking.



* At one time it was thought that the heart controlled a person's emotions, Babies that are exposed to cats and dogs in their first year of life have a lower chance of developing allergies when they grow older.



* Babies' eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.



* Being lactose intolerant can cause chronic flatulence.



* Between 12%-15% of the population is left-handed.



* Between 1997-2002, there was an increase of 228% in cosmetic procedures in the United States.



* Bile produced by the liver is responsible for making your feces a brownish, green colour.



* Brain damage will only occur if a fever goes above 107.6 degrees farenheit.



* By walking an extra 20 minutes every day, an average person will burn off seven pounds of body fat in an year.



* Carbon monoxide can kill a person in less than 15 minutes.



* Children grow faster in the springtime than any other season during the year.

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SANTIAGO (AFP) - An 81-year old man in the small Chilean village of Angol shocked his grieving relatives by waking up in his coffin at his own wake, local media said on Sunday.

When Feliberto Carrasco's family members discovered his body limp and cold, they were convinced that the octogenarian's hour had come, so they immediately called a funeral home, not a doctor.

Carrasco was dressed in his finest suit for the wake, and his relatives gathered to bid him a final farewell.

"I couldn't believe it. I thought I must be mistaken, and I shut my eyes," Carrasco's nephew Pedro told the daily Ultimas Noticias.

"When I opened them again, my uncle was looking at me. I started to cry and ran to get something to open up the coffin to get him out."

The man who "rose from the dead" said he was not in any pain, and only asked for a glass of water.

Local radio also surprised listeners by announcing a correction to Carrasco's death announcement, saying the news had been premature.

1. Revenge on a dirty roommate - using a hairdryer blow flour or powder under their door to give everything an awesome white coat...

2. Revenge on a neighbor - write a nasty message on your target's lawn in weed killer, they'll never get rid of the bald patches...

3. Revenge on anyone who doesn't live with you - put gelatin down your target's toilet, in a few days it'll get solid...

4. When your roommate goes away, water his/her carpet and sow mustard and cress seeds for a lush shag pile...

5. Revenge on a neighbor - replace weed killer with plant food - they'll curse their green fingers...

6. Float unwrapped chocolate bars and toilet paper in your neighbor's pool...

7. Get as many alarm clocks as possible, set them for different times throughout the night and hide them on your roommate's room...

8. Fill your coworker's umbrella or coat hood with hole-punch waster, or even better four for a sudden blizzard...

9. Take your friend's bike, get a ladder and raise it over a lamppost so that it passes through the whole in the middle of the bike frame. Hide and witness their frustration...

10. Take your boyfriend's favorite clubbing shirt and use an ultraviolet pen and write what's on your mind, under any black light your message will appear...

11. Revenge on golfers - put dog crap in golf holes...

12. Make up elaborate flyers for a wild party at your enemy's home and wait for the guests to arrive...

13. Place a singles ad with your ex's phone number in newspapers and websites...

14. Subscribe your enemy to every form of junk mail you can lay your hands on, the more embarrassing the better...

15. Subscribe your ex to all sorts of weird sex magazines but send them to his neighbor's...

1. FACT ONE: It Came From Japan Producer J.J. Abrams took his son to a toy store in Japan and saw rows and rows of Godzilla toys. Feeling that the U.S. lacked a giant monster of its own, he decided to a make his own creature feature that would be filmed entirely through the point-of-view of the people on the ground, running for their lives.


2. FACT TWO: "Felicity" Fans Are in for a Shock Abrams picked his childhood friend Matt Reeves to direct the film. Together, they created Felicity, a show about young New Yorkers looking for love. But while the most exciting moment on that show was the time Keri Russell cut her hair, in this movie the entire city gets hacked to pieces.


3. FACT THREE: This Poster Doesn't Lie As a kid, Abrams loved Escape From New York. But he felt cheated that the image of the Statue of Liberty's head lying in the street on the movie's poster wasn't actually in the film. Abrams finally got to see it on the big screen in the teaser trailer that appeared before Transformers last summer.


4. FACT FOUR: They Never Meant to Call It That To keep the movie a secret, the project was given the codename "Cloverfield," after a street near Abrams' office. The filmmakers had planned to release the movie as Greyshot, the name of a key Central Park location. But the temporary title spread through the internet so quickly that crew decided to keep it.


5. FACT FIVE: Will There Be Anyone Left for a Sequel? In the exclusive clip below, Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth (Odette Yustman) run to catch the last helicopter out of Manhattan. Do they make it? We're not telling. But Director Matt Reeves has stated that if they do a sequel, it might take place during the same monster attack, but seen from another camera.

WELL-PROTECTED... A model displays a design made out of condoms during a fashion event in downtown Kuala Lumpur. Organisers claim that the fashion event, in which local designers showcase creations made out of condoms as part of HIV awareness, is the first of its kind to be held in Muslim-majority Malaysia.



CAUGHT IN THE ACT... French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his model-turned-singer girlfriend Carla Bruni ride a felucca, a traditional Egyptian sail boat, on the River Nile in Luxor December 26, 2007.


MAKING A SPLASH... A man dives into the Tiber river from Rome's Cavour bridge during the New Year Day's tradition, January 1, 2008.


COLOURS OF PROTEST... People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals(PETA) activists, displaying painted bodies to the colours of M&Ms candies, hold a protest in front of M&M's World store on Broadway in New York. PETA activists held the protest accusing candy-giant Mars, of funding painful and deadly tests on animals in its candy research.


BIRD FLU BLUES... Indian health officials hold a chick prior to culling birds at the village of Margram, some 240 kms north of the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, January 16, 2008.


ITS THE LARGEST!.. Japan's electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial unveils the prototype model of the world's largest 150-inch sized plasma display panel (PDP) TV, measuring 3.31m in width and 1.87m in height, at the company's Amagasaki PDP plant in Hyogo prefecture, western Japan January 8, 2008.


WED-LOCKED: Newly elected African National Congress (ANC) President Jacob Zuma (R) attends his wedding ceremony, January 5, 2007, some 400 kilometres north of Durban. Zuma married his fourth wife and mother of his youngest children in a ceremony at his homestead.


MOHARRAM MOURNING... Muslims mourn during a Moharram procession in Ahmedabad on Thursday.


HEAR US OUT... Hijras - eunuchs - dance during a show as part of a protest in Siliguri, January 8, 2008. A non-governmental organisation run by the hijras, is demanding the right of entry for the hijras into the neighboring state of Sikkim which is denied by the Sikkim Government.



FISHY AUCTION... Fishmongers check the quality of meat on large tuna fish at this year's first trading day at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, January 5, 2008. A 276kg tuna was traded at 6.07 million yen (55,700 USD) at the wholesale market auction.


RAW BITE... Can Iraqi soldier eats a freshly killed rabbit as troops show their warfare skills during a ceremony marking the first anniversary of authority transfer to Iraqi forces in the Shiite Shrine city of Najaf, January 10, 2008.