Health News Article | Reuters.com

Health News Article | Reuters.com: "Sex, cryptic crosswords and a good run could help ward off dementia and other degenerative conditions by stimulating new brain cells, an Australian researcher said on Thursday."

Panic in Pakistan, World Next? :: Bull! Not bull :: The bull market is dead! Long live the bull market!

Panic in Pakistan, World Next? :: Bull! Not bull :: The bull market is dead! Long live the bull market!: "An article in the Pakistan Daily Times states that now that the market has peaked, a consensus has emerged in Pakistan that the KSE was the most manipulated stock market in the world, a gamblers' house rather than a place for investment. In a familiar echo of the NASDAQ bust of 2000, investors criticized big brokerage houses for not serving the interests of small shareholders. According to the article, up to 98% of investors are illiterate and totally dependant on the trends exhibited by large investors rather than calculating the risk factor on their own. Needless to say, the last place illiterate investors belong are in a speculative market, yet that is precisely the type of activity that attracts the uneducated masses, leading to just such a mania. "

CNN.com - MIT developing $100 laptops for children - Apr 4, 2005

CNN.com - MIT developing $100 laptops for children - Apr 4, 2005: "(AP) -- In a rural Cambodian village where the homes lack electricity, the nighttime darkness is pierced by the glow from laptops that children bring from school.

The students were equipped with notebook computers by a foundation run by MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and his wife Elaine.

'When the kids bring them home and open them up, it's the brightest light source in the home,' said Negroponte. 'Parents love it.'

Negroponte and some MIT colleagues are hard at work on a project they hope will brighten the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions of developing world kids."

Yahoo! News - Root cause: French maths student sets world record

Yahoo! News - Root cause: French maths student sets world record: "PARIS (AFP) - A 24-year-old French student claimed a world record after he became the first person to figure out the 13th root of a 200-digit number by mental arithmetic alone.
Alexis Lemaire, who is studying for a master's degree in computer studies at the University of Reims, eastern France, took 48 minutes and 51 seconds to arrive at the 16-figure answer."

Google Satellite Maps

Google Blog: "Now when you type an address into Google Maps, you can click the 'Satellite' link and see a view of the area. You can zoom, move the view by dragging, and even resize the window just like the normal 'Maps' view"

Herald Sun: Judas to tell his story [31mar05]

Herald Sun: Judas to tell his story [31mar05]: "ABOUT 2000 years after the Gospel according to Judas sowed discord among early Christians, a Swiss foundation is translating the controversial text named after the apostle, said to have betrayed Jesus."

New Hampshire Gazette I National News I Bush - Nazi Link Confirmed

New Hampshire Gazette I National News I Bush - Nazi Link Confirmed: "WASHINGTON - After 60 years of inattention and even denial by the U.S. media, newly-uncovered government documents in The National Archives and Library of Congress reveal that Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Nazi war machine from 1926 until 1942, when Congress took aggressive action against Bush and his 'enemy national' partners.

The documents also show that Bush and his colleagues, according to reports from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and FBI, tried to conceal their financial alliance with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, a steel and coal baron who, beginning in the mid-1920s, personally funded Adolf Hitler's rise to power by the subversion of democratic principle and German law.

Furthermore, the declassified records demonstrate that Bush and his associates, who included E. Roland Harriman, younger brother of American icon W. Averell Harriman, and George Herbert Walker, President Bush's maternal great-grandfather, continued their dealings with the German industrial baron for nearly eight months after the U.S. entered the war.

No Story?

For six decades these historical facts have gone unreported by the mainstream U.S. media. The essential facts have appeared on the Internet and in relatively obscure books, but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes. This story has also escaped the attention of 'official' Bush biographers, Presidential historians and publishers of U.S. history books covering World War II and its aftermath."

Steve Quayle News Alerts

Steve Quayle News Alerts: "According to the method, when two or more planets, Sun and the Moon get aligned more or less in line (0 to 180 degree) with the earth it could affect the angular momentum of the earth and decrease the speed of rotation of the earth which could trigger an earthquake.

But in order to trigger an earthquake in one particular place, two conditions should be taken into consideration, said Venkatanathan. One is the distance of the planetary configurations and two the directions of force acting at the possible epicenter.

Venkatanathan also clarified that by analysing the earthquakes that had occurred over the last 100 years, it was inferred that there was a role of planetary configurations in triggering earthquakes.

He added that the team had earlier predicted possibility of earthquake occurrences at 27 places, among which Assam was one, and presented a report at the International Conference of 'Hazards 2004' held at National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad.

He said the success of the prediction rate achieved so far was around 75 to 80 per cent within a time-frame of plus or minus three to four days.

Rajeshwara Rao said, 'we are in the process of refining the technique so as to achieve a better success rate for which we should have a network of inputs from various international research organisations. For this to happen there was a need for large-scale funding, which could be done through the Government. He said with these things in mind, the department had already submitted a proposal to the Tamilnadu government to establish a Centre for Earthquake and Natural Hazards Studies (CENHAS)."

The Telegraph - Calcutta : Nation

hennai, Dec. 14: Patterns in the distant skies do have a link with tumults deep down in earth.

In the wake of the confusion over the recent quake alert in Upper Assam, researchers in Madras University’s department of applied geology today said planetary configurations could be “definitive means of earthquake prediction”. The researchers, led by N. Rajeshwar Rao and N. Venkatanathan, claimed that based on planetary alignments, tremors could be predicted “with fair accuracy” at least a month in advance.

It was Venkatanathan’s paper on this topic at a conference in Hyderabad that had triggered the alert, making thousands of Upper Assam residents camp outdoors at night two days ago.

Rao and Venkatanathan today told The Telegraph that in 1974, US astrophysicist John Gribbin had explained this concept in his book The Jupiter Effect. Gribbin, they pointed out, had said that when two or more planets “aligned more or less in line with the earth”, the latter was “caught in the middle of a huge gravity struggle between the Sun and the planets, especially the giant planet, Jupiter”.

Three planets — Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — were not taken into consideration as they were farthest from the earth.

The Telegraph - Calcutta : Nation

The Telegraph - Calcutta : NationN.Venkatanathan - Chennai, Dec. 26: As India mourned, a group of people at Madras University’s Applied Geology department could barely hide their glee.

December 26, Sumatra, 03.54 degrees latitude and 097.17 degrees longitude — a team of seismologists led by Dr N. Rajeshwara Rao and N. Venkatanathan had predicted. The forecast was near perfect.
Flaunting the relevant information downloaded from the site of the World Data Center for Seismology, Denver, Venkatanathan said the data put out by the US Geological Survey read: “December 26, 2004, off the West Coast of Northern Sumatra, 03.298 degrees latitude and 095.779 degrees longitude.”

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'One huge US jail'

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'One huge US jail': "Kabul was a grim, monastic place in the days of the Taliban; today it's a chaotic gathering point for every kind of prospector and carpetbagger. Foreign bidders vying for billions of dollars of telecoms, irrigation and construction contracts have sparked a property boom that has forced up rental prices in the Afghan capital to match those in London, Tokyo and Manhattan. Four years ago, the Ministry of Vice and Virtue in Kabul was a tool of the Taliban inquisition, a drab office building where heretics were locked up for such crimes as humming a popular love song. Now it's owned by an American entrepreneur who hopes its bitter associations won't scare away his new friends.

Outside Kabul, Afghanistan is bleaker, its provinces more inaccessible and lawless, than it was under the Taliban. If anyone leaves town, they do so in convoys. Afghanistan is a place where it is easy for people to disappear and perilous for anyone to investigate their fate. Even a seasoned aid agency such as M�d�cins Sans Fronti�res was forced to quit after five staff members were murdered last June. Only the 17,000-strong US forces, with their all-terrain Humvees and Apache attack helicopters, have the run of the land, and they have used the haze of fear and uncertainty that has engulfed the country to advance a draconian phase in the war against terror. Afghanistan has become the new Guant�namo Bay."

Yahoo! News - "Super volcano" could dwarf Indonesia's earthquake catastrophes: expert

Yahoo! News - "Super volcano" could dwarf Indonesia's earthquake catastrophes: expert: "SYDNEY (AFP) - As Indonesians struggled to recover from the second deadly earthquake to strike them in three months, an Australian expert warned the country faced the prospect of a 'super volcano' eruption that would dwarf all previous catastrophes.
Professor Ray Cas of Monash University's School of Geosciences said the world's biggest super volcano was Lake Toba, on Indonesia's island of Sumatra, site of both the recent massive earthquakes."

News

News: "Most Europeans, including almost all British citizens, will need a visa to visit America later this year after the US Congress said that there was little chance of postponing a deadline for the introduction of biometric passports.

The EU has asked for more time to meet new American standards under which travellers will be able to enter the US without visas only if they hold a passport with a digitalised photo stored on a chip."

Telegraph | News | Jesus might have been homosexual, says the first openly gay bishop

Telegraph | News | Jesus might have been homosexual, says the first openly gay bishop: "The first openly gay Anglican bishop has sparked outrage for suggesting that Jesus might have been homosexual.

The Rt Rev Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church of the United States, said that Jesus was an unmarried, 'non-traditional man' who did not uphold family values, 'travelled with a bunch of men' and enjoyed an especially close relationship with one of his disciples."