LONDON: Birds nested early, spring flowers bloomed before time and ice cream vans reported an unexpected rise in sales as England and Wales enjoyed the sunniest February since records began.

The Met Office confirmed on Friday that there were 106.1 hours of sun over the last four weeks, beating the previous record of 94.4 hours set in 1970. Despite one or two cold snaps, it has also been milder than usual.

Between December and February, the mean temperature was 4.8 Celsius (40.6 Fahrenheit), 1.1 degrees above the long-term average.

Wildlife experts say the sunny, mild weather has brought an early taste of spring for many and sent birds into a flap. "Many birds may have settled into their nests uncharacteristically early," said Claire Ferry, a spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

The Woodland Trust said there were reports of frogspawn, butterflies and ladybirds appearing earlier than usual. The first tadpoles of the season were spotted on January 24 in Devon, while newts were recorded in Cheshire and Somerset.

Spring flowers such as daffodils, snowdrops and primroses popped up early, while hawthorn hedges came into leaf weeks well ahead of time.

Ice cream sellers at seaside resorts across the country said trade was well up for the time of year, with day-trippers making the most of the sunshine.

Spring does not officially start until the vernal equinox on March 20. Dr Nigel Taylor, curator at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in southwest London, said the milder weather made it harder to plan because plants are flowering early.

"There is no winter any more," he said in a newspaper interview earlier this month.


"Despite a cold snap before Christmas, it is nothing like years ago when I was younger."

After all that sunshine, February will end on a more familiar note with strong wind and rain in many areas and warnings of gales in parts of Scotland.

Iraq War Veteran, 26, Wins $1 Million On Scratch-Off Lottery Ticket In Washington State

A 26-year-old Iraq war veteran bought four scratch-off lottery tickets at a convenience store after an evening workout and wound up winning $1 million.

Wayne Leyde, who served two tours in Iraq with the Army, bought his winning Millionaire II ticket Tuesday night at a Zip Trip in Mead, about 10 miles northeast of Spokane.

Leyde said he had trouble sleeping after scraping away the gray metallic cover on one of his tickets to reveal the winning numbers.

The former active-duty soldier said he's thought of 50 people he should give money to and about 10,000 ways to spend it _ but that if anyone should benefit from his windfall, it's his parents, with whom he lives in the Mount Spokane area.

Leyde is currently enlisted in the National Guard and works as a personal banker for Wells Fargo.

Watch it & keep thinkin..

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

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

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

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

A UK man is facing jail after he emailed pictures of his lover to everyone in her address book when he found out she was flirting with other men.

Stephen Hailes, 48, had been in an "internet romance" with Karen Parker, 36, after the pair met in a chat room last August, the Daily Mail reported.

She learned of his action when her friends contacted her and asked her why she had sent them naked photographs of herself.

During the romance Parker, a married mother-of-two, sent a series of nude pictures of herself to Hailes, a former tree surgeon.

Hailes became angry after he hacked into Parker's email account and discovered she was flirting with other men.

To get revenge he forwarded the lurid pictures to all the contacts in her email address book, a court heard.

Hailes, who never met Parker in person, has pled guilty to sending indecent images by a public communication network in Cheltenham Magistrates' Court, the Daily Mail reported.

"She was a married woman but she sent unsolicited photographs of herself naked to the defendant," prosecutor Sharon Jomaa said in court.

"When the defendant noticed that Mrs Parker was contacting other men over the internet and meeting them, he became jealous and eventually accessed her Hotmail and forwarded the photographs.

"She learned of his action when her friends contacted her and asked her why she had sent them naked photographs of herself.

"In police interview the defendant said that he wanted her husband to realise what sort of woman his wife was."

Hailes said he only meant to send the photos to Parker's husband and had accidently clicked the wrong button.

Outside the hearing Hailes told the Daily Mail he felt unfairly treated.

"I can't believe what's happened," he said.

"I really liked her and thought we may have something special together.

"It's such a shame it's ended like this.

"I don't see why I could go to prison for sending these rude pictures of her, when she made the rude pictures and sent them in the first place.

"She gave me the ammunition.

"It was a silly mistake. I was jealous and upset, but I honestly never meant to hurt anyone."

Hailes, of Matson, Gloucester, will be sentenced on March 19 with the magistrate warning he could face jail time for the crime.

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - A newborn baby girl survived an ignoble birth after slipping down the toilet bowl of a moving Indian train onto the tracks when a pregnant woman unexpectedly gave birth while relieving herself on Tuesday.

"My delivery was so sudden," said the Bhuri Kalbi, the mother of the infant, born two months prematurely. "I did not even realize that my child had slipped from the hole in the toilet."

Kalbi, a 33-year-old woman from a village in Rajasthan, fainted on the toilet seat after the birth for a few minutes before waking up and alerting her family.

"They stopped the train and ran on the tracks to find the baby," she said, speaking from her hospital bed in the western city of Ahmedabad.

Railway staff at a nearby station were alerted and soon found the newborn girl lying uninjured on pebbles by the track. She is now in intensive care because of her premature birth, doctors said.

Most toilets on Indian trains are filthy chutes emptying directly onto the tracks.

(Reporting by Rupam Jain Nair; Editing by Jonathan Allen and Sugita Katyal)

Designers from Singapore have come up with a concept mouse that can use the heat generated by a laptop to power itself.

The DORmino mouse works by placing an oversize mousepad under a laptop which then collects the extra heat and turns it into electricity using silicon nanowires. The electricity is then sent to the mouse, resting on a different part of the pad, via an induction coil. This mousepad can be rolled up when not in use for easy transportation.

The mouse itself is an ordinary wireless mouse with the exception that it doesn’t ever need to be recharged. One of the more interesting features is a “touch screen scroller” which lets you scroll by moving your finger up and down a sensor on the mouse where an ordinary scroll wheel might be.

DORmino is pretty far-fetched, but is certainly feasible with today’s technology. However, it would probably be a bit expensive as all of this technology isn’t cheap. Either way, we love to see new eco-friendly innovations such as this. Diagram of how the DORmino works after the jump.

By Nate Anderson

Five hundred top members of the music business gathered today in New York to hear that "music 1.0 is dead." Ted Cohen, a former EMI exec who used the phrase, opened the Digital Music Forum East by pleading with the industry to be wildly creative with new business models but not to "be desperate" during this transitional period. But what is music transitioning to? No one seemed quite sure, except to say that it won't look much like the music business of the last several decades.

Consider the statements that were made today without controversy:

* DRM on purchased music is dead
* A utility pricing model or flat-rate fee for music might be the way to go
* Ad-supported streaming music sites like iMeem are legitimate players
* Indie music accounts for upwards of 30 percent of music sales
* Napster isn't losing $70 million per quarter (and is breaking even)
* The music business is a bastion of creativity and experimentation

Only a few years ago, none of those statements would have been true, but perhaps none is more striking than the last. Panelists from every sector of the digital media marketplace were in agreement that the major labels, under the pressure of eroding profits, have been forced to become experimental in their business dealings and to do deals that would have been deemed too risky only months before.

Just within the last year, we've seen an array of experiments that include ad-supported streaming, "album cards" from labels like Sony BMG, and allowing Amazon to offer MP3s from all four majors. Some labels even allow user-generated content to make use of their music in return for a revenue share from sites like YouTube—unthinkable a few years ago to a business wedded to control over its music and marketing. YouTube's Glenn Otis Brown says that the labels now have less of a "standoff mentality" and are ready to deal.

That innovation has been paying off. Interscope now rakes in 40 percent of its total revenues from digital sales, while Sony BMG makes 30 percent (in the US), but this hasn't been nearly enough to offset the loss in revenue from plummeting CD sales. While the majors once held all the cards when it came to licensing music (and they used their power to negotiate revenue splits on the order of 85/15), they aren't quite so powerful any more. In fact, several audience members and panelists even questioned whether major music labels brought much to the table besides their back catalogs.

Who needs a label?

Ted Mico, the head of digital strategy at Interscope, defended the majors by saying that "anyone who has spent an hour or a day listening to demos understands the labels' place in the food chain"; that is, labels provide both filtering and then marketing of music. Without their help, promising artists would be lost in a sea of noise and would be almost impossible for music lovers to discover.

This attitude was deconstructed during the very next panel, where the CEO of social music recommendation site iLike pointed out that labels, in fact, don't actually need to spend their time listening to demos; customers have already done it for them. Social networking sites like MySpace show that it works. Do music labels still need expensive A&R staff when they can simply listen to works of any band with over 50,000 MySpace friends? The message, in other words, was "Music 2.0, welcome to Web 2.0."

The contrast between these two ways of looking at the world—one rooted in a more elitist and expensive model, the other open to the "wisdom of crowds" and its democratic ideals—underscored a broader theme that emerged from the first day of the conference: the music business is a complicated place. Internecine warfare was the order of the day, so much so that the disagreements from one panel of music luminaries drew an impassioned plea for the infighting to end.

David Del Beccaro, the president of Music Choice, laid out a clear case for change and for labels to focus more on building long-term partners than on short-term advances and profits, but he sees the music industry's fundamental transformation as taking ten to twenty years to complete. In a business changing this quickly, that could mean death.

Greg Scholl, boss of indie label The Orchard, pointed out that the music business is not just four companies, and that indie music's market share is now approaching one-third... and it's growing. Indies have also been more open, historically, to experiments such as selling music without DRM. If the major labels take more than a decade to turn the ship around, they risk running a ghost ship with little in its cargo hold but a valuable back catalog. The indies could instead become the place for fresh new music and even for established artists who want more control (we saw that last year with Paul McCartney, John Fogerty, and James Taylor, for instance).

But no one quite knows how it will all shake out at this point. As Sony BMG's Thomas Hesse put it, "the next big thing is a dozen things." That's a scary thought to labels that pursued only one thing—the sale of recorded music on pieces of plastic—for decades.

Surgeons and robotics experts at the University of Calgary have developed neuroArm, a robot which is capable of performing brain surgery within the powerful magnet of an MRI.

Being able to work within such a powerful magnetic field is a first for robots. Most brain surgeries are performed with their assistance, but so far no robot has been able to go within an MRI. Not only can it go inside, but this robot is also guided by the detailed images the MRI creates.

The neuroArm is a huge advance for medical technology and robotics. Innovations like this will translate into more lives saved and much better surgery results seeing as robots are much less prone to mistakes than their human counterparts. More photos after the jump.

AdSense users are up for some "I Agree" clicking in the near future, if they want to continue using Google’s service, as one of the general changes in the terms and conditions is looming around the corner. The development of the Internet, Web 2.0 alongside it, is constantly demanding new technologies and services to be pushed up front by every company in order to keep up with the times and trends.

The upcoming changes are Google’s way of making sure that there’s no
legal ambiguity between any aspects of the AdSense program, and furthermore to assure that every possible aspect of the projects in development is already covered when they hit the Web.

Two broad categories will be targeted by the new rules and regulations. The first has the future products and features at its core, and this comes right as the DoubleClick acquisition will finally receive the big OK from the European Union regulators, the last to have second thoughts about the non-monopolistic approach to advertising that Google is hinting at. Upcoming ad formats and mediums are the ones pointed at, such as Gadget Ads, which offers the option to deliver the Mountain View-based company’s money-making content offline.

The changes to this section aren’t grand in design, just re-writes of the old terms and conditions designed to cover the possibility that future products be priced, paid or managed differently than the current ones, Julie Beckmann, AdSense Publisher Support, writes in a post on the Google AdSense Blog.

Category number two includes the troublesome privacy requirements, an area Google has always had problems with. Just last week, the EU Article 29 Working Party announced that Search Engines have to shorten the time the cookies are active, among other things. Right in the heels of this decision, the announcement about the update to the terms and conditions comes as a natural next step. Publishers will be obliged to notify their users about all the data-collecting beacons and cookies delivered in the ad-serving process, Beckman points out.

The changes don’t limit to those mentioned above and the whole process is long and tiring. However, reviewing the updated information is a must for AdSense publishers, if they are to keep using the product and services abiding the law. There's no need to skim through the modifications though, the date until they have to be accepted (or not) is the 25th of May.

A Kolkata woman displays her wrinkled hands, caused by drinking arsenic-contaminated water.

EACH day about 100 million people are being poisoned with one of the deadliest substances known. In India and Bangladesh, China and Southeast Asia, even in countries such as Australia, the silent tragedy of arsenic poisoning continues to unfold.


Arsenic is not merely a favourite resort of medieval or Victorian murderers and crime novelists. It causes cancer of the skin, lung, bladder, kidney, liver and uterus, is implicated in several skin diseases, nerve disorders, diabetes, lung disease and heart disease, and is suspected of causing birth defects, liver and blood disorders. In South Asia, women and girls who contract the symptoms are often expelled from their families, inflicting social and personal tragedy as well.

Arsenic poisoning for the most part results from human activity and is therefore preventable. In the case of Bangladesh and West Bengal, the source is chiefly the millions of household tube wells that aid agencies caused to be dug, so families could avoid polluted surface water by obtaining ostensibly clean well water.

This arsenic is geogenic: silt eroded from the Himalayas is high in arsenic which, through the millenniums, has accumulated in the sediments of the Gangetic Delta from which these wells supply household water for drinking, cooking and growing vegetables.

An estimated 70 million people are exposed to arsenic in India and Bangladesh alone, part of what must surely rate as the worst case of mass poisoning in history. Other countries with similar geologies, such as Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, are also affected, though global awareness about these is lower.

The human toll of death and sickness from arsenic is unknown but certainly runs into the millions. The US National Research Council estimates that drinking a litre of water containing 50 micrograms of arsenic a day will cause 13 deaths out of every 1000 people. Often household wells have many times this level.

In countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina the main sources of arsenic are anthropogenic: the hundreds of thousands of century-old livestock dips scattered across the landscape and the residues from former goldmining tailings that leach arsenic into surface and groundwater. Old railway lines, treated timber plants, cotton farms and certain factory sites also contribute a toxic legacy on which suburbia often innocently sprawls.

Many Australian scientists have worked on different aspects of the arsenic problem and AusAID has run programs to provide safer water in several countries. In some cases the answer may be as simple as a rainwater tank. But for all the efforts of Australians and international agencies the problem remains intractable, only pecked away at the edges.

A recent development with some promise is the discovery by Megharaj Mallavarapu of the Co-operative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment and University of South Australia of a naturally occurring soil bacterium that oxidises the highly toxic arsenite to much less toxic arsenate. Megh says the microbe can be used not only to remediate badly contaminated soils but possibly also incorporated into a filter to cleanse household water from affected wells.

Other researchers, such as Ging Khoe at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, have devised different kinds of water filters using physical or chemical techniques. The CRC CARE team has also mapped the spread of arsenic through the Bangladeshi food chain.

Another important approach to the problem is one in which Australians are experienced and well qualified: catchment management. By planning and managing surface water better, there is scope to clean up contaminated surface water, which would reduce household dependency on toxic wells. There is also scope to reduce the arsenic content of the food supply by not irrigating with groundwater.

From these examples it is abundantly clear that Australians have the ideas and scientific capability to overcome this human crisis. What is missing is the large-scale vision to pull all these elements into a cohesive program. When Howard Florey developed penicillin as a useable drug, when Frank Fenner took on the task of banishing smallpox from the world and when Fred Hollows tackled eye disease in Australia and Africa, it required vision.

In the case of the world's worst poisoning episode, the vision to tackle and terminate it through a comprehensive scientific and aid program so far has not been forthcoming.

If Australia aspires to show leadership and to put its scientific skills to work to benefit humanity on the large scale, this is a task worthy of our mettle and within our capabilities and resources.

There is no shortage of electronics in Disney’s fall lineup of toys as the holiday toy season swings into action. Among the offerings are the Mix Max 2.0, a personal video and music player with a 2.8-inch screen.

It’s a camera definitely manufactures for tiny hands and intense eyes. It is sufficiently easy to use—once you install the software PC and endeavor around with the features. Young kids would definitely require parent’s support to get going. Not a out of the box thing, but the guidance and controls could be more helpful and instructive for first-time recording editors.

The bounteous entertainer of this camera is the High School Musical software that comes with it, allowing kids to create scenes with audio content from the crazy-popular Disney movie, and add and withdraw scenes and stills from the example flick using a storyboard. Similar code for Pirates of the Caribbean and Cinderella is acquirable for $14.99 each.

Depending on the ages and the interest level in recording of your children, the $100 maybe better rather than spending on an inexpensive recording cam that will allow them to research with filmmaking and base editing. Of course, that effectuation Troy, Gabriella, and the full High School Musical gathering module be nowhere to be found.

ROYAL OAK, Mich. (AP) - A community theater group in Royal Oak is lifting the lid on its latest fundraising plans. The Detroit Free Press reports toilet seats ornately decorated by artists will be auctioned March 20 to raise money for Stagecrafters.

A public preview is Wednesday at the Baldwin Theatre.

A production of "Urinetown: The Musical" starts next month, and the group wanted an appropriately irreverent fundraiser.

The seats' names include "Royal Flush," for one with playing cards, and "Bottom of the 9th," for another with Detroit Tiger stripes.

Development Director Lesley Phillips says most of the seats are functional.

"Urinetown" is a Tony-winning Broadway musical about a town where people have to pay to go to the bathroom.

Please spare 3 minutes to read

Dear Brothers & Sisters


I am one of the large numbers of Muslims who were hurt by Nike's ad which shows Muslims prostrating to a woman in one of their brand jeans. I will remind you of what the Company Nike did to Muslims when they portray the name of Allah on one of their sports shoes.

The Result was that Malaysia ,Indonesia and the Gulf states including Saudi Arabia stopped importing Nike products. If you look carefully you will find That it was after that incident that Nike began to report earnings less than expected on the Wall Street which caused their stock price to tumble.

The stock price has not Recovered yet. Check it for yourselves.

One of the dangers of dieting is the ‘diet mentality‘. The constant need to weigh, measure, count and account for food that most dieters feel can become an obsession with food that comes close to that experienced by someone with an eating disorder. Is it possible to lose weight without becoming obsessed with food?

Dr. David Katz, author of “The Way to Eat”, suggests a better way.
While it’s important to balance the calories you eat with the calories you burn, he says, it’s not necessary to obsess about food by counting every calorie. Instead, he suggests, focus on eating well for your health and permanent weight loss will follow.

Dr. Katz’s suggestions include replacing highly processed foods which contain added sugar, fat, starch and salt with more wholesome foods with short ingredient lists. Avoid foods with added ‘flavor enhancers’ like monosodium glutamate and high fructose corn syrup which tend to stimulate the appetite and make you want to eat even more.

Instead, focus on healthier alternatives within food groups. That’s far easier to do than you’d think. A simple change in your diet like replacing the light cream in your coffee with low-fat milk can save you 50 calories per cup. If you drink a lot of coffee, that could add up to a substantial lowering in your overall daily calorie intake - with the added bonus of giving you all the calcium and vitamin D you usually get with less than half the fat.

But, you say, you just can’t drink your coffee with skim milk? That’s fine, too. We all have little luxuries that we think we can’t live without. Take a few minutes to analyze your diet and figure out which things you just can’t give up - then make adjustments in other areas to account for them. Can’t live without cream in your coffee? Skip the muffin you usually have with it, or replace the butter you use on it with a low-fat margarine substitute. Eating healthy is about choices - not obsession.

Here are some other suggestions to help you stop obsessing about calories and start eating healthier:

1. Toss out sugared breakfast cereals in favor of a whole-grain cereal that has little or no added sugar and drop a few berries into your bowl
instead.

2. Switch to an all natural, no additive peanut butter instead of a highly processed one that contains added sugar and oils for stabilization.

3. Keep a baggie of dried fruit in your desk drawer for a
high-potassium pick-me-up at mid-morning. You’ll be far less inclined to overeat at lunch - and you won’t find yourself yawning at 11 A.M.

Excellent Tips from Maddock Douglas - well-known leader in cutting-edge market research.

1. Take a warm bath.
2. Go for a drive with the windows open.
3. Order Chinese food and eat it with chopsticks.
4. Call a random phone number — ask a stranger.
5. Ask a child.
6. Create an idea that would get you fired.
7. Paint your bedroom.
8. Consult tarot cards.
9. Gargle.
10. Play football.
11. Sing a show tune on a crowded elevator.
12. How would your favorite uncle solve the problem?
13. Doodle.
14. Do a crossword puzzle.
15. Pray for a little help.
16. Ask the most creative person you know.
17. Ask the least creative person you know.
18. Run.
19. Ask your local postal worker.
20. Ice skate.
21. Take a shower with your clothes on.
22. Ask yourself, “What rhymes with orange?”
23. Talk to your favorite cheerleader about the idea.
24. Breathe slowly.
25. Flip a coin.
26. Mow the lawn.
27. What is the simplest solution?
28. Do 20 quick push-ups.
29. Go shopping!
30. Write the alphabet backwards.
31. Build a fort in your office.
32. How would an ant solve the problem?
33. Create a silly solution that rhymes.
34. Make paper airplanes.
35. Use three wishes to solve your challenge.
36. Browse through a bookstore.
37. Take a survey.
38. Make a sculpture with mashed potatoes.
39. Fish.
40. Go to Vegas, play a lot of craps.
41. Daydream.
42. How would you solve it with an infinite budget?
43. Write out the problem with your opposite hand.
44. Sing the National Anthem with a cockney accent.
45. Eat dinner.
46. Change your brand of coffee.
47. Wash dishes.
48. Find the solution in the clouds.
49. Swing.
50. Take a nap at your desk.
51. Go bowling.
52. Spin in your chair shouting: “WHOOPEE!”
53. Eat a snow cone.
54. Contort your face in a strange and unusual ways.
55. High-five yourself.
56. Go camping.
57. Take Spot for a walk.
58. Massage your scalp for 10 minutes.
59. Play musical chairs.
60. Go for a walk in the rain.
61. Pick up something with your toes.
62. Communicate.
63. Stand on your head.
64. Stand on someone else’s head.
65. Go for a drive.
66. Call a psychic hotline, laugh at their predictions.
67. Caffeine.
68. More caffeine.
69. Imagine explaining the idea at an awards banquet.
70. Make a prank phone call.
71. Think about it before you go to sleep.
72. Call mom, she can fix anything.
73. When in doubt, resort to duct tape.
74. Watch slasher movies to boost your creative confidence.
75. Fly a kite.
76. Shake up a can of pop and open it.
77. Go for a walk.
78. Draw a picture of it.
79. Pretend to snorkel.
80. Think like a child.
81. Walk outside and wave to a stranger.
82. Look at the person’s paper next to you.
83. Climb a tree.
84. Find a new word in the dictionary.
85. Take an ice cream break.
86. Make a daisy chain.
87. Dance a polka.
88. Play in a toy store.
89. Just don’t think about it.
90. Jump on a treadmill.
91. Alphabetize your refrigeratables.
92. Pretend like it doesn’t matter.
93. Paint with your fingers.
94. Clean your toilet.
95. Lose yourself in your favorite music.
96. Watch old black & white reruns.
97. Listen to bees.
98. Walk in a grocery store – notice clever solutions.
99. Rake the leaves in your yard.
100. Sit outside and count the stars.

Indore, February 25: In an attempt to break the existing world record, Indore hosted one of its largest tea parties on Sunday.

Almost 40,000 people participated in the event that was organised by the daily Dainik Bhaskar daily.

The fund-raising event was organised to support a participatory movement, where citizens will take up plans, resources and implementation.

"The tea party is an attempt to break the world record of having the largest tea party in the world. The idea is that the whole town should come together and not only make a world record, but also by doing so, realise what all they can do if they come together," said Aniel Mahajan, the head of Dainik Bhaskar, Madhya Pradesh.

Japan held the previous Guinness World Record of hosting a tea party for about 15,000 people attending a tea party.

Guinness records' officials said Indore event was set to bag a world record.

"I am really confident that you broke a Guinness World Record. The previous record had 14778 participants in Japan. And, as you can see here, at this fantastic event, more than 40,000 people," said Francesca D'Asdia, Adjudication Executive, Guinness World Record.

For making the 'Largest Tea Party' a success, almost 980 volunteers made 5000 litres of tea with 2500 litres of milk and water. About 250 kilograms of tea dust and sugar was used in making the tea.

RABAT, Morocco, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- A Moroccan engineer has been sentenced to three years behind bars and a $1,300 fine for creating a fake Facebook entry for a member of the royal family.

Fouad Mourtada was convicted of "villainous practices" and stealing the identity of Crown Prince Moulay Rachid. Rachid is the brother of the king.

A letter of apology on a Web site supporting Mourtada said he has "the greatest respect" for the prince, the BBC reported. Relatives say the 26-year-old told them he was beaten after his arrest.

Since Mourtada's arrest, the number of Rachid Facebook entries has grown to at least four, The New York Times reported. But their creators are believed to be outside Morocco and out of reach of the country's legal system.

The English are so smart. Not only do they have those great accents, but they ask the pressing questions, like, "Does J-Lo REALLY need to sell pictures of her twins for $6 million?" Why, Goddamn, I was just going to make a joke about the cannibalistic nature of celebrity culture. But now that I think that about it, maybe J. Lo doesn't actually REALLY need those six million dollars.

British People points out that Jennifer Lopez is quite rich already, as is her husband. And yet they still want more money. I'm in disbelief.

The UK might have given us Adam Smith, but America is where capitalism flowered, and later figured out a way to sell said flowers. Even in the 18th century, we were all about the Benjamins. You know, because Benjamin Franklin was alive back then and now he's on the $100 bill.

Most Americans would sell pictures of their babies if they could. It's just that most babies look like potatoes and weren't surgically removed from a once toned stomach.

And along with being capitalists, Americans are exhibitionists. Social networking started here. A friend of mine recently gave birth to twin boys, and her baby pictures were up on Facebook on her sons' actual birthday. And by the by, these boys had the biggest baby balls I have ever seen; I've seen smaller balls on full grown men. Too bad this friend wasn't famous; that would have been a great People spread.

So of course Jennifer Lopez is selling her baby pictures for as much as she can get. Money for privacy invasion is the American dream.

Internet data collection is a delicate issue with the search engines and regulators everywhere, the classical example of one pulling against the other. With the users being left in the middle, it cannot go on any longer, so yesterday, European
data privacy regulators ruled that even search engines based outside the Old Continent must comply with the EU rules on how private data and preferences are stored.

It’s final for Europeans, they must consent to having their Internet address and search history collected and also are entitled to query the search engines in order to verify the information apply. The full report from the Article 29 Working Party related to the issue is said to be released somewhere around April this year.

"Search engines fall under the EU data protection directive if there are controllers collecting users' IP addresses or search history information, and therefore have to comply with relevant provisions," said the group of national regulators from each EU nation, according to the Associated Press. They had to address his aspect of Internet life because search engines have grown to be more than a simple tool, up to the point to which they are "a daily routine for an ever-growing number of citizens."

Out of the three major players in search, only Yahoo! had no comment. Google once again said that it would welcome the report and try to comply with it, in its attempt to work with privacy and consumer advocates and EU regulators, in order to improve privacy online for all of its users.

Microsoft wanted to underline that by removing the IP address from the list of data collected, all of the information would make it anonymous. Germany’s member on the Article 29 team, Peter Scharr said last December that the IP should be regarded as personal information.

With a USB keychain drive and a little forethought, you can carry a personalized computer everywhere and leave your laptop at home.
A notebook PC is a handy thing to have, but lugging one around everywhere you go can be downright inconvenient. Fortunately, there's a solution that fits right in your pocket: The ubiquitous USB flash drive, often called a keychain or thumb drive.

With the right device and software, you can plug your flash drive into a computer at an Internet cafe, hotel business center, or elsewhere, and have all the tools and files you need to do your work--complete with your own personal launch menu. Sure, you can use online applications like Google Docs or Zoho Office (see Life Without Desktop Software for more on these), but a flash drive lets you carry a much wider variety of the applications, utilities, and other fun doodads you've come to depend on.

Here's everything you need, from hardware to software and beyond, to get going in the world of pocket computing.

Harness the Right Hardware

To get the most out of portable computing, you need a good flash drive. Here are some things to consider:

Take a drive on the reading edge. The faster your flash drive, the more smoothly programs will run. When shopping for a drive, look at the specs and try to find one with a read rate of 15 mbps (megabits per second; in megabytes, 1.9 MBps) or faster. If you already have a flash drive, you can test its speed with a free utility like HDTach for Windows.


Look for high-speed USB. A USB 2.0 flash drive will perform much better than USB 1.x. Make sure the drive you buy specifies USB 2.0 or "high-speed USB."

U3 or not U3? Some flash drives (notably those from SanDisk) are labeled "U3," meaning they use a proprietary format to create applications for USB drives. Such drives usually come with a built-in pop-up program launcher called LaunchPad and a few programs, or they at least link to a Web page for downloading and installing free and for-pay U3 applications. SanDisk claims that only U3-compatible programs will run on such a drive, but I had no problem running U3 and non-U3 programs side by side on the same memory stick. (However, don't expect your non-U3 apps to show up on the U3 launch menu.)

With so many portable applications available from a variety of free sources these days, you don't necessarily have to get a U3-equipped drive. If you do have one, you can either take advantage of the LaunchPad feature and its various apps, or you can find utilities for removing U3 LaunchPad software from SanDisk drives and from non-SanDisk drives. And if you change your mind about such removal, SanDisk has a free tool for getting it back.

Intex has introduced its IN 2020, a user-friendly mobile phone that claims a long-life battery with a stand-by time of 25 days, and non-stop conversation for up to seven and a half hours.

The phone is, of course, targeted at those who spend long hours on their mobile making and receiving calls. Intex claims the IN 2020 is possibly the first mobile phone in the market with such a high battery capacity. Possibly a corollary of this feature is that users don't have to charge the phone on an everyday basis. Also included are features like a blacklist facility and a phone book memory of 500 numbers.


There's also a unique feature called "Make your song your ring tone", wherein users can record up to two songs in five minutes, making those songs their ring tones. The phone comes with pre-loaded sing tones from Tips Industries' Top 20 songs listing, eight games, and twin language support to allow menu display and messaging in Hindi as well as English.

An enthusiastic Shailendra Jha, business manager (Mobile Phones) of Intex, said at the launch that with the price of the phone, they hope to strike the right chord with both mid- and lower-end consumer segments, which form approximately 60 to 70 percent of the entire mobile phone market across rural and urban areas of the country.

The Bar-shaped IN 2020 is available in Suave Red-Black and Orange-Black combos, and retails for under Rs 2,000.

Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca.


The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.

They were arrested following a request of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

The mutaween enforce Saudi Arabia's conservative brand of Islam, Wahhabism.

Earlier in the month, the authorities enforced a ban on the sale of red roses and other symbols used in many countries to mark Valentine's Day.

The ban is partly because of the connection with a "pagan Christian holiday", and also because the festival itself is seen as encouraging relations between the sexes outside marriage, punishable by law in the kingdom.

The Prosecution and Investigation Commission said it had received reports of such "bad" behaviour by 57 young men at a number of shopping centres in the holy city of Mecca, the Saudi Gazette said.

The guardians of some of the men defended their actions, however, saying they would regularly get together at the weekend to have fun without ever violating laws governing the segregation of the sexes, it added.

Doritos Heat variety are one of those that contain small amounts of trace alcohol

Furious Muslims have heavily criticised Walkers crisps after it emerged that certain varieties of the manufacturer's products contain trace elements of alcohol.

Some crisp types use minute amounts of alcohol as a chemical agent to extract certain flavours.

The report in Asian newspaper Eastern Eye, highlights concerns raised by shopkeeper Besharat Rehman, who owns a halal supermarket in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

Mr Rehman told the paper: "A customer informed us that Sensations Thai Sweet Chilli and Doritos Chilli Heat Wave are not on Walkers' alcohol-free list. Our suppliers were unaware of this.

"Even if it is a trace amount of alcohol, Walkers should make it clear on the packaging so that the customer can make an informed choice.

"I feel frustrated and angry. I have let my customers down simply because such a big company like Walkers is not sensitive to Muslim needs.

"Many of them were my daughter's favourite crisps. As soon as I found out about the alcohol in them, I called home to ask my wife to throw out all the packets.”

Shuja Shafi, who chairs the food standards committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that he intended to investigate. "Certainly we would find it very offensive to have eaten food with alcohol."

Masood Khawaja, of the Halal Food Authority, said that this was not the first time the issue had been raised with Walkers.

"They should have looked into the matter and solved it instead of hiding behind labelling regulations. It does not matter what percentage of alcohol is involved.

"Besides Muslims, there are a lot of teetotal people who would not like to consume alcohol in any form. As far as possible we try and lobby for halal symbols on popular products like Kellogg's cereals.

"But we have always told Muslims to check the contents list even if a product is marked suitable for vegetarians. But to not mention it on the packaging is unfair.”

However, a spokesperson for Walkers said that trace amounts of alcohol in crisps or bread are believed to be permissible for Muslims.

"We do not add alcohol to our products. However, ethyl alcohol may be present in trace amounts in a very small number of our flavours.

"It is used as a carrying agent for flavourings, and is found in many common food and drink products.

"Foods like bread can also contain the same or higher trace amounts due to fermentation. "We are aware of the concerns from some Muslim consumers about the appropriateness of specific ingredients. We take the concerns of our consumers extremely seriously.

"In previous assessments by Muslim scholars, foods and drinks that contain trace amounts of ethyl alcohol have been confirmed as permissible for Muslim consumption because of both the fact that the ingredient does not bear its original qualities and does not change the taste, colour or smell of the product, and its very low level."

Tokyo, February 23:Japan launched an experimental communications satellite Saturday as part of an ambitious space programme that could help ensure super high-speed Internet access in remote parts of Japan and elsewhere in Asia.

The H-2A rocket carrying the 2.7 tonne "KIZUNA" (WINDS) communications satellite took off into over the tiny island of Tanegashima, about 1,000 km south of Tokyo, at 5.55 p.m. (0855 GMT).

The launch had been briefly delayed after a ship strayed into restricted waters.

The KIZUNA, equipped with three antennas targetting Japan, Southeast Asia and the Pacific regions, is referred to as the Wideband InterNetworking engineering test and Demonstration Satellite or WINDS.

The geostationary satellite will be used to conduct experiments on large-volume, high-speed data communications on remote mountains and islands with little Internet access.

Japan's scientists say the 52.2 billion yen ($490 million) launch of WINDS will help the country build one of the world's most advanced information and telecommunications networks.

The launch comes 12 years after the project started, due mainly to technical glitches involving launch vehicles.

"The WINDS will help develop a society with no digital divide where everyone can enjoy high-speed communications equally no matter where they live," said an official at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Space-based Internet access through Japan's domestically built satellite could also be used in various fields including "remote medicine," which allows patients in remote areas to receive sophisticated treatment from doctors in urban cities.

High-speed Internet access would play a key role in ensuring communications between a disaster-stricken area and rescue authorities in the event of major natural disasters such as earthquakes, JAXA officials said.

"The infrastructure on the ground may not withstand a major earthquake, and remote areas may not have any access to optic-fibre networks, one official said.

"In such cases, the satellite will play a great role."

The satellite could also help in communications with other countries, the official said.

"Data can be sent to Asian countries through WINDS faster than most other means," he said.

But some experts cast doubt on the usefulness of the project.

"About 95 percent of households in Japan are capable of having broadband Internet access. So, why now?", a communications expert told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Saturday's satellite launch is part of a bold space programme, which sent the nation's first lunar probe into orbit around the moon last September.

Keen to compete with its Asian rivals, China and India, in space exploration projects, the Japanese space agency has said it hopes to send astronauts to the moon by 2025, although Japan has not yet attempted manned space flight.

Japan's space programme was in tatters in the late 1990s after two unsuccessful launches of a previous rocket, the H-2.

Disaster followed in 2003 when Japan had to destroy an H-2A rocket carrying two spy satellites minutes after launch as it veered off course.

San Francisco, February 23: For all the hubbub about emerging markets and developing economies in China and India, chip maker Intel has found a new market in its own back yard for its first new microprocessor design in years.

The world's largest computer chip maker is readying the processor, code-named Diamondville, for introduction toward the middle of this year. It is initially targeted at super-compact, mobile PCs costing around $250. And it will cost far less than the processors that Intel typically sells to PC makers.

"At the beginning, we said let's see what is the opportunity in the emerging markets," said Mooly Eden, who heads up Intel Corp's Mobile Platforms Group, in an interview. "Now, I wouldn't be surprised if at least 50 percent of the Netbooks would be sold in mature markets."

Netbook is the internal name Intel gave to the diminutive design, but PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc will give the portable PC their own names. Eden expects big PC makers to design and sell the portable PCs using the new Intel processor.

And Intel also expects to sell lots of these new chips, which for now have the internal place-holder name of Fred. Intel will soon announce a new brand name for the processor.

"I believe the number in 2011 will be well above 50 million," Eden said, referring to market research estimates on the number of Netbook-type PCs such as the Eee PC that will be sold.

The Netbook is around the same size as the Asus Eee PC, which has been a runaway success. Dean McCarron, an analyst at Mercury Research, said the Eee PC, which uses the Linux operating system instead of Windows, sold 350,000 units in the fourth quarter.

"Immediately, that attracted the attention of a whole raft of competitors," McCarron said. "There's a design frenzy going on right now in that space."

Intel's Eden said that, typically, the Netbook would have a screen of 7 inches to 10 inches diagonally and a clam-shell design, like a regular notebook. He is careful to distinguish between what Intel calls the Mobile Internet Device, or MID, which you carry on you, and the Netbook, which can easily fit in a purse or shoulder bag.

"Time and again in our industry, when someone comes out with a very low-cost device, it immediately gets taken up across the industry," said Roger Kay, an analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates.

Low cost is not low money

But just because it is low cost, does not mean Diamondville is low money for Intel, which is accustomed to company-wide gross margins of 50 percent to 60 percent -- a very high figure for a manufacturer.

"They get 2,500 of those suckers out of each wafer," said Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood. "Literally, they could sell them for $10 a pop and still make money."

Uday Marty, an Intel marketing director, said that Intel's own research turned up a number of segments for the Netbook, including education and a notebook for kids. What sets the Netbook apart from more expensive, full-featured laptops is content consumption.

It is best for playing music, streaming videos over the WiFi connection, text-messaging, video-chat, surfing the Web, updating personal blogs and the like, Marty said, who declined comment on Intel's planned pricing for Diamondville.

"It's really the perfect intersection of process technology, manufacturing, design and market opportunity," Marty said of Diamondville and the notebook PC, and ultimately, slim desktops, the chip will power. "I'm not worried from a margin dollar perspective."

Diamondville's die size is less than 25 square millimeters, or about a 10th of Intel's higher-performing microprocessors such as the low-cost Celeron chip.

"By moving to a smaller die size, you can actually have your margins increase, even as the average selling price of a PC is declining," McCarron added.

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

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

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

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

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

In his early twenties, when many referred to George Best as the fifth Beatle, the world was his oyster. With his bright eyes, flowing locks, designer shirts, a Jaguar E-type in the garage, and skills that have seldom been seen on English football pitches since, Best epitomised the hedonistic 60s and a break with the bleak austerity of the post-war years. In those days he was on about US$295 a week - more than what Bobby Moore, England's World Cup-winning captain, earned.

According to an article in the London Times last November, inflation over the last 40 years stood at 1257 percent. Going by that figure, you might have expected today's top English Premier League footballers to be earning in the region of $3500, still significantly more than your average office worker. Think again. The average pro takes home $41,000 a week, after factoring in win bonuses and other performance-related incentives.

The big boys, though, are on a different plane. Chelsea's John Terry negotiated a new contract last year which made him the richest player in the league's history, with a weekly wage of $264,000. Eight others made over $196,000, while the likes of Fernando Torres at Liverpool and Didier Drogba at Chelsea had to make do with a mere $176,000. The numbers are similar for the top stars on the continent, such as Ronaldinho and Kaka. It's a measure of how far football has come in the new commercial age that no one needs to look enviously across the pond at US sports.

Tom Brady, who recently came very close to taking American Football's New England Patriots through a perfect season, signed a six-year deal worth $60 million in May 2005. His greatest rival, Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts, earns more, but the seven-year contract worth $99.2 million Manning inked in March 2004 only puts him in the same ballpark as Terry.

On Wednesday, cricket entered that salary stratosphere, with the sort of rewards that former Indian cricketers who earned little over $6 for a Test match back in the 60s wouldn't have dared dream of. The Chennai franchise's bid for Mahendra Singh Dhoni didn't just surprise the other seven teams, it also blew the lid off the cricket economy.

Even today, a Test match appearance fetches an Indian player just over $5900, and the Indian Premier League's player auction may just have some reassessing the worth of their international careers. Adam Gilchrist has already bid adieu to international cricket, and Shane Bond has seen his contract with New Zealand torn up so he can play for the Indian Cricket League, the rival competition that's treated like a leper by the establishment. Even Darren Lehmann, who retired recently, is talking of a comeback so he can take a healthy nest egg with him into the Adelaide sunset.

The only difference between the cricketers and these others is, the latter really have to earn the big bucks. The American Football season lasts just over 20 weeks (if you make it to the Superbowl), and the likes of Brady and Manning are targeted for the worst treatment by behemoths on the opposing defense. The same goes for footballers like Liverpool's Steven Gerrard, who runs up to 13km during the course of a game. If you factor in England internationals and friendly games, Gerrard plays more than 60 matches in a season that lasts ten months. In the process, he would likely have inspired the defeat of a dominant Internazionale of Milan, and pitted his skills against Aresenal and Manchester United in games of the greatest possible intensity.

or six weeks of IPL work, Dhoni will bank $1.5 million, marginally more than Gerrard makes in the same period. All Dhoni has to do is play 16 games for cricket's version of the Harlem Globetrotters. Not even its most passionate backer will say that Twenty20 is the ultimate test of a cricketer's skill, the game's answer to a Milan derby or the Patriots v the Colts. That remains Test cricket. Outwitting Australia at the WACA or defying India on a turning track in Delhi - these remain the game's most arduous assignments. Miscuing a six over midwicket on designer flatbeds in a hit-and-miss format doesn't even compare.

The IPL's stated aim is to encourage people to take up sport, and promote young cricketers. Presumably, they also want to attract the sort of fanatical support that acts as an invisible 12th man for teams like Liverpool. But with many players not attached to their local franchises, it's hard to see how that will happen. Why on earth is Manoj Tiwary playing for Delhi, Rohit Sharma for Hyderabad and Robin Uthappa for Mumbai? In football, players choose their clubs. Torres turned down many to come to Liverpool, while Kaka stays on at Milan despite everyone else drooling over his talent. That makes it easier for fans to embrace non-local players, safe in the knowledge that the new icon isn't just some mercenary out to make a quick buck.

The sort of money thrown at young players in the IPL - is Tiwary really worth twice as much as Michael Hussey, even if Hussey only plays half the season? - should also make us wary.

American Football offers the greatest cautionary tale of too much, too soon. A few years ago, Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons was the most exciting quarterbacking talent around, the future of the league, and in possession of a contract worth $130 million over 10 years. These days he languishes in a penitentiary in Kansas, after a federal investigation exposed his involvement with Bad Newz Kennels, a pit-bull fighting and gambling syndicate. No one should expect young sportsmen to be role models, but you also don't want them to end up like Vick, or Best, who died an alcoholic a couple of years ago.

All Dhoni has to do is play 16 games for cricket's version of the Harlem Globetrotters. Not even its most passionate backer will say that Twenty20 is the ultimate test of a cricketer's skill. That remains Test cricket

Perhaps the last word should go to Stephen Jay Gould, one of the great scientists of our age, who fell in love with sport in an era where excess wasn't the common denominator. "No one can reach personal perfection in a complex world filled with distraction," he wrote about his great idol, Joe DiMaggio. "He played every aspect of baseball with a fluid beauty in minimal motion, a spare elegance that made even his rare swinging strikeouts look beautiful ... a fierce pride that led him to retire the moment his skills began to erode."

Hopefully, we'll be able to say that one day about some of those who have clambered aboard the IPL gravy train.

According to Finnpanel 1,6 million Finns (older than 9 years) have a radio on their cell phone. You might say "that´s not much", but that is actually 36 % of the finnish population (in 2005 the figure was 17 %).

Other figures from the newlu released research say 16 % use the radio on their cell phone weekly. I was little suprised about that radio usage was most popular for kids under 15 years of age and when at the same time 60 % of 15-24 years old have a radio on their cell phone.

Well what does this mean? You propably know the song "Video killed the radio star"? Excellent song! Maybe we will have a new song "Cell phone resurrected the radio star :-)



* Finnpanel is owned by TNS Gallup Oy and A.C. Nielsen Finland Oy and is specialized in panel research focusing on Television and Radio Audience Measurement. The original research press release (in finnish). More about Finland (Wikipedia) or NokiaLand.

A new Yahoo service called "Buzz" that's set to launch later this month. Widely understood as the competitor to Digg, the popular user rating site; it is a buzz tracker for news items picked not only by user voting (like Digg, Propeller, Reddit, et al), but also for items people are searching for both on Yahoo and on the company's publisher network.

A subject's buzz score is the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. The data is collected from Yahoo! search log files. The Yahoo! Buzz Index counts the total number of people searching for specific subjects.Weekly leaders are the subjects with the greatest average buzz score for a given week.

By combining with the search results, Yahoo surely would have a great upper hand on other rating services. But then all other players are already established; so going should be tough. According to Valleywag, the release date is set for February 26th, which falls on a Tuesday.

Buzz, built under the direction of VP Tapan Bhat, will begin with a limited number of publishers -- about 100 -- and will rank stories based on popular search results and user voting. By summer, Buzz will open to the entire Yahoo Publisher Network. In other words, if you let Yahoo sell ads on your site, it will allow your stories to appear on Buzz. Word is Yahoo plans to launch the site on buzz.yahoo.com, which currently tracks popular search results.

On Public Display :
In a first for New York, newly-minted Oscar statuettes were showcased in the window of Times Square Studios. A line of Oscar statuettes was seen at the “Meet The Oscars” display, designed for the public to see and touch the statuettes used during the awards ceremony in Los Angeles.


Golden Knight :
The Oscar statuette depicts a knight, holding a crusader’s sword, standing on a reel of film. The film reel features five spokes, signifying the five original branches of the Academy — actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers.

Polished & Buffed :
The Oscars are cast, molded, polished and buffed by R S Owens and Company, the Chicago awards specialty company retained by the Academy since 1982 to make the statuette. The process takes three to four weeks to cast 50 statuettes.

London, February 22: Famous and brilliant individuals in the fields of science, politics and the arts, such as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson and Mozart, accomplished success through autism, according to a leading psychiatrist.

Speaking at a meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Academic Psychiatry conference, Prof. Michael Fitzgerald, professor of psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin, said that the relationship between creativity and the psychiatric disorder was not a myth, arguing that the characteristics linked to autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) were the same as those associated with creative genius.

He argued that the link between ASDs, creativity and genius were caused by common genetic causes.

"Psychiatric disorders can also have positive dimensions. I'm arguing that the genes for autism/Asperger's and creativity are essentially the same. We don't know which genes they are yet or how many there are, but we are talking about multiple genes of a small effect. Every case is unique because people have varying numbers of the genes involved," the Telegraph quoted Prof. Fitzgerald as saying.

"These (genes) produce people who are highly focused, don't fit into the school system, and who often have poor social relationships and eye contact. They can be quite paranoid and oppositional, and usually highly moral and ethical.

"They can persist with a topic for 20 to 30 years without being distracted by what other people think. And they can produce in one lifetime the work of three or four other people," he added.

He explained that traits such as a need to be dominant and up to the mark and autistic repetitiveness were key to the success of politicians such as Charles de Gaulle, who famously said "I am France", US President Thomas Jefferson and Enoch Powell.

Case histories

Prof. Fitzgerald also used case histories from the biographies of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein to show how these famous scientists had displayed all the characteristics of Asperger's syndrome.

He also illustrated the link between musician Kurt Cobain's childhood Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and his later creativity.

Prof. Fitzgerald reached his conclusion after comparing the characteristics of around 1,600 people he has diagnosed with ASDs and the known biographical details of famous people.

He said Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had demonstrated how many with Asperger's traits could work for long periods on topics without taking note of others' views.

Prof. Fitzgerald's book Genius Genes: How Asperger Talents Changed the World was published at the end of last year.

Counter-view

"It is important to avoid stereotypes of people with autism as geniuses or otherwise, as everyone has individual character traits, strengths and needs," Amanda Batten, of the National Autistic Society, said.

"These might include attention to detail and the ability to pursue something for long periods of time. However, an apparent ability in some areas may lead people to underestimate the challenges individuals face in other parts of their lives," she added.

Can you figure out the famous song this man is singing before the halfway point?

Double Trouble … the two-faced kitten

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) - A hunger for carnitas nearly led to some carnage after a Fontana man was robbed of a bag of tacos at gunpoint. Police Sergeant Jeff Decker said the 35-year-old victim had just bought about $20 in tacos from a street-corner stand Sunday night and was bicycling home when the suspect confronted him and said ``Give me your tacos.''

Decker said the suspect grabbed the bag of food, punched the victim in the face and began to flee.

When the victim demanded his tacos back, the suspect pointed what appeared to be a handgun at the man and threatened to kill him before running away.

YBOR CITY, Fla. (AP) - A southwest Florida church issued a challenge for its married members this past Sunday: Hanky panky every day. Relevant Church head pastor Paul Wirth says the 50 percent divorce rate was the catalyst for The 30-Day Sex Challenge.

``And that's no different for people who attend church,'' Wirth said. ``Sometimes life gets in the way. Our jobs get in the way.''

Oh, and the flip side of the challenge? No rolling in the sheets for the unwed.

Church member Tim Jones and his fiancee agreed to take on the challenge, though he acknowledges it'll be a tough month. But he added: ``I think it's worth trying to find out other things about each other.''

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

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

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

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

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

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (Wireless Flash) -- If you're looking for a better job, you'd better fake it -- your resume, that is.

That's the word from southern California-based resume expert Derek Johnson, who runs fakeresume.com.

He says human resources types are looking for the slightest excuse to throw your resume in the trash, but a little embellishing can convince them to give it a second look.

As he puts it, "Human resources staffers don't hire people, they hire problem solvers," so he recommends peppering your resume with bogus statistics like "instituted a policy that reduced spending by 28 percent."

The stats may not be true, but Johnson says they're "hard to prove, especially if you worked for a private company." Plus, he adds, they're more eye-catching than generic terms like "goal oriented" or "self starter."

But resume lying can only go so far. Johnson says it's okay to claim experience in various types of computer software to get the job but "you better run out and buy a "For Dummies" book if you want to keep it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyone Hungry? Six Strange Ready-to-Eat Canned Foods
The world is buying more and more food all the time. One hundred years ago it was being cooked by the family over the course of a day for some meals. Now we simply go to the store and buy canned or frozen food.

Here are 6 of the strangest canned foods you can find being distributed at your local supermarket. I left out food meant for animals as that is completely different.

1. France - Canned Duck Fat

This is a product that doesn't get much attention in the United States food markets. Canned duck fat is actually a rather rare treat for people in France. For 67.5 oz of duck fat you can expect to pay around $60. We usually cut the fat off of our meat which makes this a very weird canned food.




2. Sweden - Canned Cheeseburger


This delicious cheeseburger originates from Sweden. It is strange simply because of the pieces used to make the cheeseburger. I would be worried about the quality of the bread, cheese, and meat after getting this shipped across seas. For the price of $6 you can get a cheeseburger in a can, or you can head over to McDonalds and get 6 of them for the same price.




3. New Zealand - Canned Tongue

New Zealand lamb tongues are definitely something that is not seen in many American grocery stores. However in New Zealand this is a great delicacy that is a very common item at a dinner table. The prices range depending on the brand, expect to pay around $5 for this can of tongues.




4. Korea - Canned Silkworm Pupae

These silkworm pupae are very popular snacks in and around Korea. They are prepared simply by stewing and seasoning them. You can get these at just about any supermarket or gas station in Korea as they are to them as something like peanuts are to us. Silkworm pupae are generally a cheaper food, you can pick up a can like this for around $4.



5. Scandinavia - Canned Reindeer

This delicacy is actually very healthy for you compared to other red meats. Since reindeer are raised on a farm on diets of moss and lichen these animals have only a 2 percent fat content. Due to the time and costs in farming these animals you will have to dish out close to $30 for a can of this arctic delicacy.



6. Thailand - Canned Scorpion

Scorpions are a delicacy in most of Thailand. These are already cooked and they can be eaten whole without risk of poison from their venom. There are thousands of different species of scorpions and you can eat a good percentage of them. Expect to pay around $6 for a can of scorpions.

Most of these are delicacies from other countries that are available in the United States as well. They are all eaten without disease however they may not look that appetizing to us. Next time you go to the supermarket look at all the different kinds of canned food you see. Did I miss anything?

An 88-year-old Spanish Civil War veteran has had a bullet removed from his shoulder - after almost seven decades.

Faustino Olivera is recovering in hospital in Barbastro, in northern Spain, after doctors performed surgery to remove a painful lump from his left shoulder.

They were astonished when they extracted a bullet fired from a Mauser 98, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Mr Olivera remembers the moment he was shot during the Battle of the Ebro.

"We were holed up near a farmhouse when at 2pm on Nov 11, 1938, I took a shot," he recalled.

Conscripted to Gen Francisco Franco's Nationalist troops when he was 18, he was sent to the front where two months later he suffered the injury during an attack by Republicans.

"I was lying on my side in a pit formed by rocks where we had taken up a position to defend ourselves," he told Diario del AltoAragon, a newspaper.

He said that he had first felt a lump two years ago but had thought it was a cyst. It was not until it started growing and became painful that doctors decided to treat it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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