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Friday, August 6, 2010
Zardari to meet UK PM today
Updated at: 0846 PST, Friday, August 06, 2010 LONDON: President Asif Ali Zardari will hold a formal meeting with UK Prime Minister David Cameron today (Friday), Geo News reported. 10-Downing Street spokesman in London deemed the meeting between two leaders will prove to strengthen Pak-UK ties coupled with bringing stability and prosperity in Pakistan. Spokesman said the meeting would also discuss the biggest human crisis wreaked by floods in Pakistan, war on terrorism and bilateral trade relations between two countries. President Zardari is scheduled to hold separate meetings with UK’s Education and Foreign Secretaries. Zardari will also meet two representatives of Tori Party namely Sajid Javed and Abdul Rehman Chishty. However, Pakistani origin members Labour Party refused to meet President Zardari. Meanwhile, Cameron’s ruling party has sent denial over change in PM’s assertion regarding Pakistan, which stated that Pakistan was responsible for exporting terrorists into neighbouring countries. It may be mentioned that Chairperson Conservative Party and Pakistani origin lady Saeeda Warsi in her article defended PM’s anti-Pakistan statement. |
Imran Khan sees people's revolution looming
Updated at: 0947 PST, Friday, August 06, 2010 DALLAS: The chairman of Pakistan Tehrike Insaf has said today that president Zardari was enjoying on the people’s money. In the hotel in London in which he would stay during his tour of Europe, the rent of his room for one day is Rs 2 million, he said. Besides, another hefty amount of Rs.6 million is being spent on the ceremony to induct his son Bilawal Bhutto in Pakistan’s politics. He was addressing a fund raising mass gathering organized by Tehrike Insaf local chapter in American city of Dallas. He said that our country was undergoing a very critical situation and we are responsible for that, becuase the biggest criminal was no one else but the president of Pakistan himself, who has also employed a team of crooks and criminals in the cabinet and has imposed upon the people. He opined that the honorable nations under such tyranny conditions always agitate. However, under a persistent fear people refrain from entering politics. Pakistan politicians should deter of the point at which the nation starts revolution. |
241 ballerinas set pointe standing world record
Updated at: 0953 PST, Friday, August 06, 2010 NEW YORK: Hundreds of ballerinas of all ages gathered on Monday, in Central Park, New York, to set a new world record for standing on pointe. Led by a desire to leave their mark on the world of ballet dancing, 241 ballerinas from New York’s dance school attempted to set a new Guinness world record, by standing on pointe simultaneously. Most of them heard about the challenge online, and decided to “make history through dance” with other fellow ballerinas. At the signal of Craig Salstein, a soloist with the American Ballet Theater, the ballerinas attempted to stand on their toes. 230 of them managed to maintain their pose for 1 minute and 7 seconds, thus beating the old record set last year by 220 other ballerinas. |
Scientists uncover 95 genes linked to high cholesterol
Updated at: 0918 PST, Friday, August 06, 2010 LONDON: Scientists have cracked the genetic secrets of high cholesterol, paving the way for new drugs to beat heart disease. Britain's biggest killer, heart disease affects 2.5million people and claims more than 250 lives each day. The amount of artery-clogging cholesterol and other fats in the blood greatly affects the odds of heart attacks and other problems, but until now, little was known about the genes that control their levels. More than 100 researchers from 17 countries, including the UK, studied the DNA of more than 100,000 people of European ancestry. This flagged up 95 genetic changes linked to blood fats, or lipids, and heart disease, the journal Nature reports. Further experiments showed that many of the genes also contribute to heart problems in other ethnic groups from around the world. Working out exactly how these genes raise or lower cholesterol and other harmful fats could lead to new drugs that could benefit millions. Although statins are widely used to lower cholesterol, side-effects lead to many stopping taking them, and some doctors say that while the drugs benefit men, there is scant evidence they ward off heart disease in women. Researcher Dr Christopher O'Donnell, of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in the US, said: 'The new findings point us to specific genetic signposts that allow us to understand why many people from all walks of life have abnormal levels of cholesterol and other blood lipids that lead to heart disease. 'What's really exciting about this work is that we are moving from discovery to understanding brand new information about how genes alter the lipids that lead to heart disease.' Francis Collins, one of the world's leading geneticists, said: 'Genetic studies that survey a wide variety of human populations are a powerful tool for identifying hereditary factors in health and disease. 'These results help refine our course for preventing and treating heart disease, a health problem that affects millions.' Professor Peter Weissberg, of the British Heart Foundation, said that although much more work was needed to understand what the genes do and how they work together, such research is crucial in beating heart disease. He added: 'Although this is just the first step down a long road, the good news is that the more we understand about cholesterol regulation, the more likely it is that new drugs will be developed to prevent heart disease.'In Britain, there are around 230,000 heart attacks a year - the equivalent of one every two minutes. Around a third are fatal. Statins are prescribed to six million Britons judged to be significant risk of a heart attack or stroke, but there have been calls for everyone over the age of 50 to receive them. It is argued that wider access could save hundreds of thousands of lives while also saving the NHS billions a year. |
24ct gold plated tricycle created for brats
Updated at: 0936 PST, Friday, August 06, 2010 ZURICH: Wisa Gloria has the monopoly in manufacturing three-wheelers in the scenic land of Switzerland. The classic Wisa Gloria three-wheeler or tricycle has remained the same for ages and still flaunts the bright red color. However, Wisa Gloria has exchanged the bright red color for a solid 24 carat body wrapping for the three-wheeler for a one-off version of the classic tricycle. Sure to be a collector’s item, this tricycle is one hell of a bling creation for the spoilt brat. |
Toll hits 87 as 4 more killed in Karachi
Updated at: 0541 PST, Friday, August 06, 2010 KARACHI: With a military operation looming in the anarchy-ridden Karachi, daily life started returning to normalcy on Thursday; however, four more people were killed, taking the death toll to 87 since Monday, Geo News reported. Three days after Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM)’s MPA Raza Haider’s murder, tension still prevailed in some areas, particularly Qasba Colony, Aligarh Colony, Bukhari Colony, Banaras, Kati Pahari, Peerabad, Mominabad and Orangi Town. By and large, complete calm was witnessed and no major incidents were reported as public and private life started returning to normalcy. However, pickup driver Mehmood Yaqoob, 35, was shot dead in Faqir Colony in the Mominabad police precincts. The victim was said to be a resident of Orangi Town, and police registered FIR No 514/10 against unidentified culprits. Similarly, Allah Wasayo, 35, was gunned down near Khyber Masjid in the Paposh Nagar police precincts. The culprits took the victim’s mobile phone and Rs 1,500 cash before escaping. Separately, a middle-aged man was fired at in Yousaf Goth, Orangi Town. Iqbal Market SHO Haji Liaquat said the unidentified victim had sustained an injury to his abdomen and was taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where he breathed his last. In another incident, a body in a gunny bag body was found in a taxi near the Saba Cinema in the New Karachi locality. However, there was a dispute over jurisdiction between the Surjani, New Karachi Industrial Area and Ayub Goth police. Incidents of firing and arson were also reported from different parts of the city. Miscreants set ablaze the furniture market in the Sultanabad locality after resorting to indiscriminate firing. Fire tenders reached the site after almost an hour since they were delayed due to intense firing in the area. Around 20 shops were completely burnt before the fire could be brought under control. In Buffer Zone, a dozen carpet and garments shops were damaged in Iran Shopping Centre, while a roadside hotel was also set ablaze. In Orangi Town, a wood store was torched in Sector 111/2, while three houses in Raees Amrohi Colony; intense firing was also reported in various parts of the town. Separately, a teashop was torched in the Shadman locality, while a container trailer in Liaquatabad; three other shops and more than 12 pushcarts were also burnt in separate localities. Due to fear, sparse traffic was witnessed on the roads, while thin attendance at educational institutions and government and private offices. Most areas of Orangi Town remained tense as the town echoed with intense firing all day. On the other hand, police carried out search operations in various parts of Gulistan-e-Jauhar to rescue an alleged MQM activist who was abducted by unidentified people; however, the law enforcers could not recover the man. Meanwhile, citizens in different localities were faced with difficulties due to closure of markets, shops and petrol and CNG stations, as well as lack of transportation on the city’s roads; however, some shops and petrol and CNG stations remained opened to sell petrol, diesel and CNG at double prices. |
Zardari urges world for aid to flood affectees
Updated at: 0627 PST, Friday, August 06, 2010 LONDON: President Asif Ali Zardari has urged the international community to extend substantial assistance for the flood victims of Pakistan. He was talking to British Home Secretary Theresa May who called on him Thursday. Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, Secretary to the President Malik Asif Hayat and other senior government officials also attended the meeting. President Zardari thanked the 10-Downing Street for extending financial assistance of five million pounds and said keeping in view the magnitude of floods and devastation caused by the natural calamity, more international support was required on emergency basis. While discussing visas’ issue, the president said in the context of difficulties being faced by Pakistanis in obtaining UK visas, there was a need to streamline the process particularly for students and businessmen. May assured Zardari of getting in touch with relevant authorities in Pakistan to address the visa issues. Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the UK Wajid Shamsul Hassan proposed for signing a bilateral agreement for abolishing visas on diplomatic and official passports. May appreciated Pakistan’s efforts in fight against terrorism and the sacrifices laid by the people of Pakistan and the security forces in combating terrorism in the region. Zardari emphasised the need of international support in the field of economic development particularly for creating employment opportunities for the youth. He also called for supporting Pakistan for enhancing trade by providing access to Pakistani goods in international markets, like the European Union. |
Wanna Stop Global Warming? Eat Bugs.
Arnold van Huis, an entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, is convinced that the solution to cooling our planet’s ever-warming climate is to put humanity on a diet.
Atkins? South Beach? Jenny Craig?
Try "The Firefly Fast," "The Caterpillar Cleanse," or "The Stinkbug Slimdown."
Those names are jokes, but the theory is van Huis's, and he’s not making fun. In fact, no less a body than theU.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is formally considering his proposal.
The cultivation of livestock such as cows, pigs and sheep accounts for two-thirds of the world's farmland and generates 20 percent of all greenhouse gases, reports The Guardian.
"There is a meat crisis," van Huis told the Guardian. "The world population will grow from six billion now to nine billion by 2050 and we know people are consuming more meat. Twenty years ago the average was 20kg, it is now 50kg, and will be 80kg in 20 years. If we continue like this we will need another Earth."
The climate killer in a meat diet is methane.
Emitted mostly by cows—yes, that’s via burps and farts—the gas is 23 times more harmful for the ozone layer than carbon dioxide.
But a world with less methane isn't the only value of an insect diet.
According to the Guardian:
The insects also produce 300 times less nitrous oxide, also a warming gas, and much less ammonia, a pollutant produced by pig and poultry farming.
For his part, van Huis is fairly realistic about getting the Western world to cannonball onto the bug bandwagon.
"Most of the world already eats insects,” van Huis told the Guardian, referring to the fact that 80 percent of nations dine on at least some form of bug. "It is only in the western world that we don't. Psychologically we have a problem with it. I don't know why, as we eat shrimps, which are very comparable."
Google plans to drop Wave
-- Google is pulling the plug on Google Wave.
Google intended the messaging program, launched in 2009, to be a near-replacement for e-mail, which it said had grown tired.
But on Wednesday, the company announced that it is shuttering the project by the end of the year because it didn't have traction with consumers.
"Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked," Urs Hölzle, a Google senior vice president, writes on the company's official blog.
"We don't plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects."
The post does not say how many people signed up for or used Google Wave.
The code for some of Wave's innovative features -- like instant messages that were sent letter-by-letter as a person typed -- has been made available to the public and could be incorporated into future projects, Google says.
The service aimed to combine all elements of online communication -- instant messages, e-mail, Twitter feeds, etc. -- into a single "wave."
But from the start, Google says, engineers at the company were unsure how the product would be perceived by real Internet users.
"We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren't quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication," the company's blog says.
Many people who tried Wave found the service to be complicated and confusing.
Google Wave was created by two Danish brothers, Jens and Lars Rasmussen, who also were the brains behind the more-successful Google Maps.
In interviews with CNN in 2009, the brothers said their goal with Wave was not only to create an outstanding product that would change the nature of online communication but to prove that innovation is still possible at a massive corporation like Google.
Their aim was to make Google Wave completely new -- and therefore risky.
"I do believe that you can achieve more if you're willing to take risks," Lars Rasmussen said at the time.
"There's almost a total correlation between the amount of risk you're willing to take and then the amount of stuff you then potentially can get done."
Wednesday's blog post from Google acknowledges their hard work and lauds them for making advancements in computer science.
"Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science," the post says.
"We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider Web."
Maybe next time, more people will use it.
FBI to Wikipedia: Remove our seal
(CNN) -- The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has threatened Wikipedia with legal action if the online encyclopedia doesn't remove the FBI's seal from its site.
The seal is featured in an encyclopedia entry about the FBI.
Wikipedia isn't backing down, however. The online encyclopedia -- which is run by a nonprofit group and is edited by the public -- sent a chiding letter to the FBI, explaining why, in its view, the FBI is off its legal rocker.
"In short, then, we are compelled as a matter of law and principle to deny your demand for removal of the FBI Seal from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons," the Wikimedia Foundation's general counsel, Mike Godwin, wrote in a letter to the FBI, which was posted online by the New York Times.
"We are in contact with outside counsel in this matter, and we are prepared to argue our view in court."
The whimsically written letter from Wikipedia says the FBI's reading of relevant law is both "idiosyncratic" and "more importantly, incorrect." It also notes that the FBI's seal appears on other websites, including in an online entry from Encyclopedia Britannica.
In a letter dated July 22, and also posted online by the Times, the FBI told Wikipedia it must remove the bureau's seal because the FBI had not approved use of the image.
"The FBI has not authorized use of the FBI seal on Wikipedia," the letter says. "The inclusion of a high quality graphic of the FBI seal on Wikipedia is particularly problematic, because it facilitates both deliberate and unwitting" copying and reprinting of the seal's image.
The FBI's deputy general counsel, David Larson, cities a particular law that says duplicating an official "insignia" is illegal without permission.
But Wikipedia strikes back on that point, saying the FBI redacted the most important part of that U.S. code, which defines an insignia as "any badge, identification card, or other insignia."
"Badges and identification cards are physical manifestations that may be used by a possessor to invoke the authority of the federal government. An encyclopedia article is not," Wikipedia's letter says. "The use of the image on Wikipedia is not for the purpose of deception or falsely to represent anyone as an agent of the federal government."
The Wikipedia letter also adds:
"Even if it could be proved that someone, somewhere, found a way to use a Wikipedia article illustration to facilitate a fraudulent representation, that would not render the illustration itself unlawful under the statute."
It's unclear if this tussle -- which has already made its way into aWikipedia entry on the FBI's seal -- will be taken to court. For now, the tech press is weighing in, often with amazement.
On the blog BoingBoing, Rob Beschizza writes that this is a no-win situation for the FBI.
"The part that's hard to understand is why the FBI would seek to abuse the law in such petulant fashion," he writes, "knowing that it will be subject to public ridicule for its actions."
The magazine Vanity Fair posted the FBI's seal on its website in a symbol of jest. And, as the blog Geekosystem says, an editor on the site aggregator Reddit jokes that maybe the FBI got Wikipedia confused with WikiLeaks -- the site that's been causing a stir lately over leaked war documents.
Cindy Cohn, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the New York Times, which first reported this story, that she found the whole ordeal to be "silly" and "troubling."
World’s first sand hotel
LONDON: The world’s first sand-hotel is open for business on Weymouth beach, Dorset, in England. The 1000 tone-of-sand structure was built in a week by a team of 4 sand-sculptors. The sand hotel has no roof, so you have a clear view of the star-filled night sky, no toilets and is not recommended for those that hate getting sand between their toes. For an offbeat experience like spending a night at the wonderful sand-hotel, you only have to pay $21. |
Junk food spurring allergies
LONDON: Britain is facing a spike in allergies and illnesses across the country -- courtesy junk food, says a new study. Evidence suggests, according to experts, that “industrialised” Western diets high in red meat, sugar and fat lowered the numbers of healthy bacteria in our guts. Absence of these microbes harms the immune system, causing asthma, eczema and other allergies in children. They found that African children who were eating food similar to the diet of the earliest farmers thousands of years ago had a far lower proportion of microbes associated with obesity in adults and far more fatty acids known to protect against inflammation. “The diet of Burkina Faso children is low in fat and animal protein and rich in starch, fibre and plant polysaccharides, and predominantly vegetarian,” The Daily Mail quoted Dr Paolo Lionetti as saying. “All food resources are completely produced locally, cultivated and harvested nearby the village by women. Although the intake of animal protein is very low, sometimes they eat a small amount of chicken and termites,” he added. Lindsey McManus, of Allergy U.K., said, “There is some evidence that probiotics in the gut are effective at boosting the immune system, especially in children with eczema and that they can protect against allergies.” |