19.3.05

US troops shoot Iraqi general dead: police. 16/03/2005. ABC News Online

US troops shoot Iraqi general dead: police. 16/03/2005. ABC News Online: "The deputy commander of the Iraqi army in western Al-Anbar province was shot dead by US troops at a checkpoint Tuesday night, a police officer said.

'The US forces opened fire at 8:00 pm on Brigadier General Ismail Swayed al-Obeid, who had left his base in Baghdadi to head home,' police Captain Amin al-Hitti said.

'They spotted him on the road after the curfew, which goes into effect at 6pm,' the officer said in Baghdadi, 185 kilometres west of the capital."

End Of The Snow On Mount Kilimanjaro

Sky News : End Of The Snow On Mount Kilimanjaro: "The snow-capped summit of Mount Kilimanjaro has melted away to reveal the tip of the African peak for the first time in 11,000 years.

The glaciers and snow which kept the summit white have almost completely disappeared.

Although scientists had predicted the melt would happen, it is 15 years sooner than they had predicted."

18.3.05

Yahoo! News - Filmmakers Hawk New 3-D Technology

Yahoo! News - Filmmakers Hawk New 3-D Technology: "LAS VEGAS - After a brief incarnation in the early 1950s and a short-lived revival in the 1980s, 3-D movies are now getting serious consideration among filmmakers who want to send images leaping off the movie screen and into the audience.

'Star Wars' creator George Lucas and 'Titanic' director James Cameron were among those promoting a new digital alteration that converts two-dimensional movies into 3-D.

Theatergoers still have to wear those familiar cardboard glasses with red-and-blue cellophane, although backers of the new technology say it doesn't cause the eyestrain common with past 3-D efforts.

Lucas said he hopes eventually to release all six of his 'Star Wars' movies in 3-D format that can be shown in regular moviehouses, not specialty theaters such as IMAX."

TheNewOrleansChannel.com - Entertainment - Stolen Top Hat Returned To Guitarist Slash

TheNewOrleansChannel.com - Entertainment - Stolen Top Hat Returned To Guitarist Slash: "LOS ANGELES -- Slash has his top hat back -- four weeks after it was stolen from a limo after the Grammys.

AP
Slash
The metal guitarist said the Los Angeles Police Department recovered it.

Slash said it was 'a trip' to go sit in a room at the police station and they came in with the hat in a box so he could identify it."

17.3.05

BBC NEWS | Europe | Revolutionary bike 'too quiet'

BBC NEWS | Europe | Revolutionary bike 'too quiet': "The world's first purpose-built hydrogen-powered bike could be fitted with an artificial 'vroom' because of worries its silence might be dangerous.

A prototype of the motorbike, which could cost more than $8,300 (�4,500), was unveiled in London on Tuesday.

The problem with the 'fuel cell' bike, which produces no polluting emissions, is that it is too quiet."

16.3.05

India hopes to wean citizens from gold

India hopes to wean citizens from gold: "MUMBAI, India The Indian government is placing a long-range wager that an increasingly prosperous population can be coaxed to part - at least physically - with its boundless hoards of gold.
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A policy floated recently would allow Indians to buy virtual, or 'paper,' gold in denominations as low as $2, instead of investing in necklaces, bangles and coins. It is a step, analysts say, toward bringing millions of poor Indians into the banking system and unlocking the untapped investment potential of more than $200 billion worth of privately held gold in India.
Indians are the world's biggest gold consumers, with more than half the country's savings tied up in physical assets. Particularly among the very poorest, Indians are prone to spending much of their income to acquire the metal, locking up their assets in the resulting hoards."

Boston.com / News / Local / Study faults treatment of juvenile offenders

Boston.com / News / Local / Study faults treatment of juvenile offenders: "Tough-on-crime laws that have made it easier to try juvenile offenders as adults have resulted in thousands of youths being sent to prison for nonviolent crimes, increasing the likelihood they will commit more serious crimes upon release, according to a national study to be released today at Northeastern University."

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Hitler 'tested small atom bomb'

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Hitler 'tested small atom bomb': "A German historian has claimed in a new book presented on Monday that Nazi scientists successfully tested a tactical nuclear weapon in the last months of World War II."

15.3.05

New Scientist Breaking News - Why it is hard to share the wealth

New Scientist Breaking News - Why it is hard to share the wealth: "The rich are getting richer while the poor remain poor. If you doubt it, ponder these numbers from the US, a country widely considered meritocratic, where talent and hard work are thought to be enough to propel anyone through the ranks of the rich. In 1979, the top 1% of the US population earned, on average, 33.1 times as much as the lowest 20%. In 2000, this multiplier had grown to 88.5. If inequality is growing in the US, what does this mean for other countries?"

13.3.05

New Scientist Features - Psychedelic medicine: Mind bending, health giving

New Scientist Features - Psychedelic medicine: Mind bending, health giving: "JOHN HALPERN clearly remembers what made him change his mind about psychedelic drugs. It was the early 1990s and the young medical student at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York, was getting frustrated that he could not do more to help the alcoholics and addicts in his care. He sounded off to an older psychiatrist, who mentioned that LSD and related drugs had once been considered promising treatments for addiction. 'I was so fascinated that I did all this research,' Halpern recalls. 'I was reading all these papers from the 60s and going, whoa, wait a minute! How come nobody's talking about this?'

More than a decade later, Halpern is now an associate director of substance abuse research at Harvard University's McLean Hospital and is at the forefront of a revival of research into psychedelic medicine. He recently received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to give late-stage cancer patients the psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy. He is also laying the groundwork for testing LSD as a treatment for dreaded super-migraines known as cluster headaches.

And Halpern is not alone. Clinical trials of psychedelic drugs are planned or under way at numerous centres around the world for conditions ranging from anxiety to alcoholism. It may not be long before doctors are legally prescribing hallucinogens for the first time in decades. 'There are medicines here that have been overlooked, that are fundamentally valuable,' says Halpern."

BBC NEWS | Europe | French court bans Christ advert

BBC NEWS | Europe | French court bans Christ advert: "France's Catholic Church has won a court injunction to ban a clothing advertisement based on Leonardo da Vinci's Christ's Last Supper."

Mass extinction comes every 62 million years, UC physicists discover

Mass extinction comes every 62 million years, UC physicists discover: "With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years."