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:rolleyes: There is always one...
Cambodia Saved from Tsunami by Astrologer?
Mon Jan 3, 9:15 AM ET Oddly Enough - Reuters
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Reuters) - Former Cambodian king Norodom Sihanouk says an astrologer warned him that an "ultra-catastrophic cataclysm" would strike, but that his country would be spared if proper rituals were conducted.
"My wife and I decided to spend several thousand dollars to organize these ceremonies so our country and our people could be spared such a catastrophe," Sihanouk, who abdicated last year, wrote on his Web site at www.norodomsihanouk.info.
Cambodia was unscathed by the 30-foot tsunami waves generated by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake under the sea off Indonesia's Sumatra island on Dec.26. The waves rolled through the Indian Ocean, devastating coastal communities and killing more than 126,000 people.
Sihanouk offered his deepest condolences to the families of the dead and said he would give "a very humble and extremely modest" contribution of $15,000 to international relief efforts for each of the stricken countries.
Indonesia was the worst hit along with Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ke_cambodia_dc)
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Tortoise Adopts Stray Hippo at Sanctuary
NAIROBI (Reuters) - A 120-year-old giant tortoise living in a Kenyan sanctuary has become inseparable from a baby hippo rescued by game wardens, officials said on Thursday.
The year-old hippo calf christened Owen was rescued last month, suffering from dehydration after being separated from his herd in a river that drains into the Indian Ocean.
"When we released Owen into the enclosure, he lumbered to the tortoise which has a dark gray color similar to grown up hippos," Sabine Baer, rehabilitation and ecosystems manager at the park, told Reuters.
She said the hippo's chances of survival in another herd were very slim, predicting that a dominant male would have killed him.
However, Owen's relationship with the Aldabran tortoise named Mzee, Swahili for old man, may end soon. The sanctuary plans to place Owen with Cleo, a lonely female hippo.
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...kenya_hippo_dc)
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It's a Boy as China Marks 1.3 Billionth Person
BEIJING (Reuters) - China named the first baby born at a Beijing hospital Thursday as the 1.3 billionth person of the world's most populous nation, more than two decades after a one-child policy was introduced to keep its numbers in check.
China's population exploded after the late Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong exhorted the people to multiply in the 1950s to make the country strong. But China put the brakes on growth with the tough one-child rule and is now worried about finding jobs for the masses and caring for the elderly.
The baby boy was born at 12:02 a.m. at the Beijing Hospital of Gynecology and Obstetrics and weighed 3.66 kg (eight lb).
"I am the happiest guy in the world and my boy will be blessed all his life," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the newborn's father, 37-year-old Air China employee Zhang Tong, as saying.
But the birth was not such good news for China's family planners.
"1.3 billion is a vast number. It will put great pressure on the economy, society, resources and the environment," the China Daily quoted Wang Guoqiang, deputy director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, as saying.
Demographers credited the government's one-child policy for delaying China's population hitting the 1.3 billion mark.
ACCUSATIONS OF FORCED ABORTIONS
But in a rare admission of official flaws, the China Daily said the one-child policy may have gone wrong at times.
"Admittedly, the family planning policy has gone awry in some places," it said in an editorial said without elaborating. "But the policy should continue to be endorsed."
Human rights groups have accused overzealous Chinese family planners of forcing women to abort, in some case in the ninth month of pregnancy, or undergo hysterectomies.
A hefty fine is slapped on urban residents with more than one child. Rural folk and members of ethnic minority groups can have a maximum of two children.
While the rules have helped China curb its birth rate from more than 33 births per 1,000 population in 1970 to less than eight per 1,000 per year three decades later, the country faces new demographic challenges over how to support an aging population.
Demographers say the most immediate issue is not how to support China's graying masses -- which they point out won't hit numbers comparable to Europe's until about 2020 -- but how to employ them.
China is expected to add eight million to its population each year, the U.N. Population Fund says, and has no plans to ease the one-child policy despite concerns of low urban birth rates.
The rules on family size have also created a gender imbalance, with about 117 boys for 100 girls, as a cultural preference for sons prompts couples, usually in rural areas, to abort girls.
The birth rate is highest in the largely rural, impoverished west, while it is lowest in booming Shanghai.
"The government has to deal with the unbalanced structure of the population that is still very large," demographer Zhai Zhenwu said.
At the end of 2003, the total world population stood at 6.27 billion people, according to the World Bank (news - web sites).
India, the world's second-most populous nation, has just over 1 billion people and could overtake China by 2035 if current trends continue, according to India's census office.
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp..._population_dc)
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DEATH TOLL NOW 159,000
The number of people killed in the tsunami disaster has soared to 159,445.
The increase comes after Indonesia announced that its death toll had jumped by almost 20,000 people to 113,306.
But with more than tens of thousands still missing, the total is expected to continue climbing.
The increase comes as Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw arrived in Phuket to see the extent of the devastation in Thailand.
Mr Straw said the number of Britons confirmed dead was now 49, with 391 "very likely" victims. Most of them perished in Thailand.
...
(http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0...278957,00.html)
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Anyone from Houston?
And the Fattest City Is...
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Houston tops a U.S. magazine's annual fattest cities list for the fourth time in five years, with four other Texas cities waddling into the top 25.
Fast food restaurants -- Houston has twice the national per capita average -- are partly to blame for the dishonor, Men's Fitness editor-in-chief Neal Boulton said.
"Americans ... work long hours, don't take vacations, and when you're faced with the worst nutritional choices, you indulge in those," he said.
High humidity, poor air quality and some of the nation's longest commute times also helped Texas' most populous city unseat Detroit, the 2004 heavyweight champion, the magazine said.
Houston Mayor Bill White, who has worked with a major grocer to promote healthy food and the city's public schools superintendent to improve lunch menus, called the survey "mostly voodoo and fraud."
"On the other hand, it calls attention to real issues the mayor is trying to address," his spokesman, Frank Michel, said.
The magazine said it looked at factors such as the number and types of restaurants, park space, air quality, weather and the number of health clubs.
Philadelphia, Detroit, Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago followed Houston on the seventh edition of the fat list. Texas cities Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth and El Paso were in the top 14, which Boulton said was no surprise.
"It's pure big indulgence, just living big, and that's part of the culture," said Boulton.
Seattle ranked as the fittest city, followed by Honolulu, Hawaii, Colorado Springs, Colorado, San Francisco and Denver.
Austin was the only Texas city on the fit list. The state capital ranked 19th out of 25.
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e_fatcities_dc)
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Never fool with this guy's stomach, I guess:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6789190/
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Only in America ;)
Man auctions ad space on forehead
A 20-year-old US man is selling advertising space on his forehead to the highest bidder on website eBay.
Andrew Fisher, from Omaha, Nebraska, said he would have a non-permanent logo or brand name tattooed on his head for 30 days.
"The way I see it I'm selling something I already own; after 30 days I get it back," he told the BBC Today programme.
Mr Fisher has received 39 bids so far, with the largest bid currently at more than $322 (£171).
"The winner will be able to send me a tattoo or have me go to a tattoo parlour and get a temporary ink tattoo on my forehead and this will be something they choose, a company name or domain name, perhaps their logo," he told the Radio 4 programme.
On the online auction, Mr Fisher describes himself as an "average American Joe, give or take".
His sales pitch adds: "Take advantage of this radical advertising campaign and become a part of history."
Mr Fisher said that while he would accept any brand name or logo, "I wouldn't go around with a swastika or anything racial".
He added: "I wouldn't go around with 666, the mark of the beast.
"Other than that I wouldn't promote anything socially unacceptable such as adult websites or stores."
He said he would use the money to pay college - he is planning to study graphic design.
The entrepreneur said his mother was initially surprised by his decision but following all the media attention she felt he was "thinking outside the box".
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4161413.stm)
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Stay thin by sleeping more?
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A study has found that people who sleep less tend to be fat, and experts said it's time to find if more sleep will fight obesity.
"We've put so much emphasis on diet and exercise that we've failed to recognize the value of good sleep," said Fred Turek, a physician at Northwestern University.
"In fact society emphasizes just the opposite," in work places where billed hours are crucial and long work days are common, he added.
Monday's study from Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk covered 1,000 people and found that total sleep time decreased as body mass index -- a measure of weight based on height -- increased.
Men slept an average of 27 minutes less than women and overweight and obese patients slept less than patients with normal weights, it said. In general the fatter subjects slept about 1.8 hours a week less than those with normal weights.
"Americans experience insufficient sleep and corpulent bodies. Clinicians are aware of the burden of obesity on patients," the study said.
AN EXTRA 20 MINUTES
"Our findings suggest that major extensions of sleep time may not be necessary, as an extra 20 minutes of sleep per night seems to be associated with a lower body mass index," it added.
"We caution that this study does not establish a cause-and-effect relationship between restricted sleep and obesity (but) investigations demonstrating success in weight loss via extensions of sleep would help greatly to establish such a relationship."
The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine (news - web sites) along with an editorial by Turek and Northwestern colleague Joseph Bass commenting on it and related research.
In an interview with Reuters, Turek said some studies have shown sleep deprivation causes declines in an appetite suppressing protein hormone called leptin, and increases in another hormone that causes a craving for food. In addition neuropeptides in the brain governing sleep and obesity appear to overlap, he said.
"It is now critical to determine the importance of lack of sufficient sleep during the early formative years in putting our youth on a trajectory toward obesity ... a trajectory that could be altered if sleep loss is indeed playing a role in this epidemic," the editorial said.
Obesity has been rising dramatically in developed countries and reached epidemic levels in the United States, it added, leading to a variety of health problems.
"In recent years, a new and unexpected 'obesity villain' has emerged, first from laboratory studies and now ... in population-based studies: insufficient sleep," it said.
"However, while there is a growing awareness among some sleep, metabolic, cardiovascular, and diabetes researchers that insufficient sleep could be leading to a cascade of disorders, few in the general medicine profession or in the lay public have yet made the connection
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e_health_sleep)
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http://www.asiantsunamivideos.com/videos/
I posted this in the Random Thought topic as well ... it's an assortment of short video clips of the tsunami :(
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Windows worm travels with Tetris
The version of Tetris is recognisable and just as playable
Users are being warned about a Windows virus that poses as the hugely popular Tetris game.
The Cellery worm installs a playable version of the classic falling blocks game on PCs that it has infected.
While users play the game, the worm spends its time using the machine to search for new victims to infect on nearby networks.
The risk of infection by Cellery is thought to be very low as few copies of the worm have been found in the wild.
Protect yourself
The Cellery worm does not spread via e-mail like many other viruses. Instead it browses computer networks for PCs that have not shut off all the insecure ways they connect to other machines.
When it infects a machine, Cellery installs a version of Tetris that users can play. As the game starts up the worm also starts a music file to accompany it.
At the same time the virus starts scouring networks for other vulnerable machines.
The virus does no damage to machines but could heavily infected networks could slow down as scanning traffic builds. Productivity may suffer too if users spend time playing Tetris.
PCs running Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP could be vulnerable to the worm.
"If your company has a culture of allowing games to be played in the office, your staff may believe this is simply a new game that has been installed - rather than something that should cause concern," said Graham Cluley, spokesman for anti-virus firm Sophos.
So far the number of people infected by Cellery is thought to be very small and the risks of further infection is very low.
Sophos urged users and companies to update their anti-virus software to keep themselves protected.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4170903.stm)
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Judge Rejects School Board Evolution Stand
ATLANTA (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered a Georgia school district to remove stickers challenging the theory of evolution from its textbooks on the grounds that they violated the U.S. Constitution.
In a ruling issued in Atlanta, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said Cobb County's school board had violated the constitutional ban on the separation of church and state when it put the disclaimers on biology books in 2002.
The stickers read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
"We are pleased. The law was pretty clear," said Maggie Garrett, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), which sued the board on behalf of a group of parents who were opposed to the disclaimers.
The ACLU argued that the school board had demonstrated a clear bias about the material, effectively pushing the teaching of creationism and discriminating against non-Christians and followers of a number of other religions.
Creationism refers to the belief that life was created by God. Evolution, which is accepted by most scientists, contends that life developed from more primitive forms and was dictated by natural selection.
The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) ruled in 1987 that creationism could not be taught in public schools alongside evolution.
The Georgia school board, which introduced the stickers at the behest of hundreds of parents, many of them religious conservatives, contended that the stickers only advised students to keep an open mind.
The board's lawyer was not immediately available for comment on Thursday.
The federal ruling came about two months after the re-election of President Bush (news - web sites), who won the overwhelming support of religious conservatives with his stands against gay marriage and abortion.
The Cobb County case also evoked memories of the 1925 "Monkey Trial" of John Scopes, a Tennessee biology teacher who was found guilty of illegally teaching evolution.
(http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...n_evolution_dc)
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US military pondered love not war
The US military investigated building a "gay bomb", which would make enemy soldiers "sexually irresistible" to each other, government papers say.
Other weapons that never saw the light of day include one to make soldiers obvious by their bad breath.
The US defence department considered various non-lethal chemicals meant to disrupt enemy discipline and morale.
The 1994 plans were for a six-year project costing $7.5m, but they were never pursued.
The US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called "harassing, annoying and 'bad guy'-identifying chemicals".
The plans were obtained under the US Freedom of Information by the Sunshine Project, a group which monitors research into chemical and biological weapons.
The plan for a so-called "love bomb" envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among troops, causing what the military called a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.
Scientists also reportedly considered a "sting me/attack me" chemical weapon to attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats towards enemy troops.
A substance to make the skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight was also pondered.
Another idea was to develop a chemical causing "severe and lasting halitosis", so that enemy forces would be obvious even when they tried to blend in with civilians.
In a variation on that idea, researchers pondered a "Who? Me?" bomb, which would simulate flatulence in enemy ranks.
Indeed, a "Who? Me?" device had been under consideration since 1945, the government papers say.
However, researchers concluded that the premise for such a device was fatally flawed because "people in many areas of the world do not find faecal odour offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis".
Captain Dan McSweeney of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at the Pentagon said the defence department receives "literally hundreds" of project ideas, but that "none of the systems described in that [1994] proposal have been developed".
He told the BBC: "It's important to point out that only those proposals which are deemed appropriate, based on stringent human effects, legal, and international treaty reviews are considered fordevelopment or acquisition."
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4174519.stm)
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i heard about this yesterday on public radio - why oh why isn't this done more? :) what a lovely planet this could be...civilized warfare...
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Woman jailed for haunting house
An Austrian man who came to believe his estate was haunted has found relief after a court jailed the ghost. Echoing footsteps in hallways and slamming doors late at night had made the owner increasingly jittery.
He called in the police, who captured a 42-year-old Polish woman on video, masquerading as a ghost over a period of weeks, making mysterious noises.
She was jailed for four months. Her husband was employed by the owner, and some unexplained grievance haunted her.
She was convicted on nuisance charges, Austrian television reported.
But it was unclear what had motivated her to begin her campaign of ghostly disquiet at her husband's employer's property.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4178533.stm)
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