‘Astrophysicists have found a star-like object with a surface temperature just one tenth that of the Sun.
The cold object is known as a brown dwarf: a “failed” star that never achieved the mass required to begin nuclear fusion reactions in its core.
This one – called J0034-00 – is thought to have a surface temperature of just 600-700 Kelvin (up to 430C/800F).
It is the coldest solitary brown dwarf ever seen, according to the British team that discovered it.
This find further tests the boundary between high-mass gas planets and the smallest brown dwarfs. ‘
‘The American interrogator was afraid. Of what and why, he couldn’t say. He was riding the L train in Chicago, and his throat was closing.
In Iraq, when Tony Lagouranis interrogated suspects, fear was his friend, his weapon. He saw it seep, dark and shameful, through the crotch of a man’s pants as a dog closed in, barking. He smelled it in prisoners’ sweat, a smoky odor, like a pot of lentils burning. He had touched fear, too, felt it in their fingers, their chilled skin trembling. [..]
“I tortured people,” said Lagouranis, 37, who was a military intelligence specialist in Iraq from January 2004 until January 2005. “You have to twist your mind up so much to justify doing that.” [..]
For Lagouranis, problems include “a creeping anxiety” on the train, he said. The 45-minute ride to Chicago’s O’Hare airport “kills me.” He feels as if he can’t get out “until they let me out.” Lagouranis’s voice was boyish, but his face was gray. The evening deepened his 5 o’clock shadow and the puffy smudges under his eyes.’
‘President Vladimir Putin yesterday declared that a new arms race and cold war with the west had begun and announced that Russia would retaliate against US missile defence plans in Europe by pointing its missiles at European cities. [..]
On missile defence, Mr Putin said that if the Bush administration installed elements of a missile shield in eastern Europe, Russia would retaliate by training nuclear missiles on European targets. Russia has not specifically aimed its missiles at Europe since the end of the cold war but, asked if it might do so again if the US missile shield went ahead, Mr Putin said: “Of course we are returning to those times. It is clear that if a part of the US nuclear capability turns up in Europe, and, in the opinion of our military specialists will threaten us, then we are forced to take corresponding steps in response.”
“What will those steps be? Naturally, we will have to have new targets in Europe.”‘
This is a video from the MTV movie awards, with a comedian making fun of Paris Hilton whilst the whole audience laughs. Paris doesn’t look too happy.
(3.7meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘China unveiled its first national program aimed at combating global warming on Monday, but it’s modest in scope and offers few firm targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The 62-page report said China is taking steps toward improving energy efficiency over 2005 levels by as much as 20 per cent by the year 2010. It said a top priority was to tackle China’s own environmental problems.
China’s top economic planner said the country will not submit to any outside targets and won’t let its industrial development be hampered by any fight in the West against global warming.
“The consequences of restricting the development of developing nations will be much more serious than the consequences of global warming,” said Ma Kai, the minister heading the National Development and Reform Commission.’
‘A family living in a public toilet in Morocco have spent seven years requesting more hygienic accommodation.
Their pleas fell on deaf ears, and Aze Adine Ould Baja has had to endure the ignominy of having “Sidi toilets” as the official address on his identity papers.
Desperate to do something about their plight, Mr Baja and his wife Khadija Makbout recently went to a local newspaper with their story. [..]
But a few days later the local authorities moved in to block up the toilet’s entrance with cement and concrete.
Mr Baja, his wife and three children now find themselves barred from the only home they had.’
‘The 26-year-old heiress, a symbol of privilege and American celebrity culture, was booked into a Los Angeles County jail early on Monday, a day ahead of her court-ordered deadline, to begin serving a three-week sentence for violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case.
She surrendered to authorities in downtown Los Angeles hours after making a surprise appearance at the MTV Movie Awards, and was transferred to the Century Regional Detention Facility in nearby Lynwood, the county sheriff’s department said.
Once there, she was fingerprinted, photographed and issued an ID wristband, orange-colored jail clothing and toiletries, said sheriff’s department Sgt. Diane Hecht in a statement.’
Followup to Paris Hilton gets 45 days in jail.
A compilation of various funny happenings in soccer.
(11.7meg Windows media)
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‘A condemned inmate wants to leave them laughing.
Patrick Knight is collecting jokes and will pick the funniest one for his last statement before he is set to die June 26 for shooting his neighbors, Walter and Mary Werner, to death almost 16 years ago outside Amarillo.
Randall County Sheriff Joel Richardson thinks the whole idea is insensitive. “This tells you a little bit about the guy’s character, anyway,” said Richardson, who was chief deputy at the time of the Werners’ killings and plans to witness Knight’s execution. [..]
Knight acknowledges there’s nothing funny about his execution. [..]
“I’m not trying to say I don’t care what’s going on. I’m about to die. I’m not going to sit here and whine and cry and moan and everything like that when I’m facing the punishment I’ve been given.
“I’m not asking for money. I’m not asking for pen pals or anything like that. All I’m asking for is jokes,” Knight said.’
‘No-rules culture – where teachers gave alcohol to teenagers and students turned up to class drunk and had sex on school camps – has been exposed at a private school in Melbourne’s wealthy eastern suburbs.
A Victorian tribunal has declared Alia College, in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn, was a school with an “anarchistic nature” where “anything is allowed and no one is prepared to take responsibility”. [..]
“There was evidence that some teachers had become concerned that students were having sex together and drinking alcohol at school camps,” it said.
“There was other evidence that a teacher had complained that students were coming to afternoon classes drunk, as another teacher was supplying them with alcohol at school. Morgan’s evidence about the provision by the school of alcohol to students was extraordinary. He appears to have done nothing to discipline any teacher for providing alcohol to students. Alcohol was said to be available to students at school functions.”‘
‘The legal front of the US government’s “war on terror” suffered a stunning reversal Monday when military judges threw out prosecution charges against a Canadian-born foot-soldier for Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s ex-driver.
The surprise rulings regarding Toronto native Omar Ahmed Khadr, 20, and Yemeni-born Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 36, threatened to torpedo the government’s pursuit of Guantanamo Bay terror suspects through new-look military tribunals.
In both cases, the judges found that they had no jurisdiction to proceed with trials as neither Khadr nor Hamdan had been classified as “unlawful enemy combatants” as required by a 2006 act of Congress.
Murder and other charges levied against Khadr were dismissed by Colonel Peter Brownback. Late in the evening, Navy Captain Keith Allred threw out charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism against Hamdan.’
‘A grim-faced George AuClair Jr. wandered his 25-acre patch of desert looking every inch the broken man.
“I’m ashamed of what happened here, but you can’t lie about it,” said the Torres Martinez tribal member. “You have to own up when you do wrong.”
Not far away, bulldozers piled up mountains of junk from AuClair’s illegal dump, a dump so toxic it has been declared a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. He now faces millions of dollars in fines. [..]
AuClair’s biggest mistake was burning thousands of toxic wooden grape stakes.
“How could we have known grape stakes were treated with arsenic and chromium?” he asked. “There was no sign saying, ‘This is hazardous to your health.’ ”
And he insists his own health wasn’t damaged.
“I lost my hair, but I think that was a thyroid problem,” he said, “and I get headaches, but that could be anything.”‘
‘A gay gang that allegedly raped victims lured on the internet, drugged them and infected them with the AIDS virus has shocked the Netherlands and raised questions over its liberal sex culture.
A date rape drug known as “Easy Lay” and ecstasy were allegedly involved.
Health Minister Ab Klink called the case “horrible”, as the press splashed the news across its front pages today.
The matter came to light yesterday, when police said they had arrested three men two weeks ago after four victims, men aged 25 to 50, accused them of rape and premeditated bodily harm. [..]
The three suspects – one of whom is a male nurse – were said to have raped the men, and even injected some of them with a mix of their contaminated blood.’
‘Brian Conant stood alongside his fellow National Guardsmen during a training session about eight years ago in Hawaii. He was wearing a heavy chemical warfare suit lined with charcoal.
“Any time I expelled gas in the suit, I realized nobody could smell it,” Conant, 48, says. “It was amazing.”
According to the American College of Gastroenterology, 58 million Americans suffer from one or more medical disorders that cause excessive gas. To treat it, doctors usually recommend a change in diet. Sometimes they recommend medication, such as Gas-X or Bean-O, which alters the bacteria that may be causing the foul odor. But with Conant’s invention, the Flatulence Deodorizer, also known as Flat-D, there is an alternative way to limit the embarrassment.
The long, narrow washable pad, lined thinly with charcoal, absorbs chemicals, including hydrogen sulfide, a byproduct of the bacteria that causes odorous gas. The pad, at $12.95, curves with the contour of the body, and one size fits most.’
‘It was just six inches.
That was what made the difference at 4:40 a.m. yesterday as Gilberto Cantu, a truck driver from Texas, approached the New Jersey entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel in his big rig, loaded with bathtubs, toilets and plumbing fixtures. The truck was 13 feet 6 inches high. The tunnel has a height limit of 13 feet. Six inches can make a big difference.
Mr. Cantu drove the entire 1.5 miles of the tunnel from Weehawken, N.J., to Manhattan, tearing his way under the Hudson River in the tunnel’s center tube and peeling back the roof of his tractor-trailer as if it were a tin can. No one was injured, but an undetermined number of decorative tunnel ceiling tiles were ripped off.’
‘Sometimes I have some challenging ideas, or crazy like some other people would say. This time I thought about our cat who is the whole day out, returning sometimes hungry sometimes not, sometimes with traces of fights, sometimes he stay also the night out.
When he finally returns, I wonder where he was and what he did during his day. This brought me to the idea to equip the cat with a camera. The plan was to put a little camera around his neck which takes every few minutes a picture. After he is returning, the camera would show his day.’
The images are here.
‘Four people billed a health insurance company for 20 brain operations that were never performed on them, sometimes for the same person on multiple occasions, authorities said.
One 36-year-old man from New York City claimed nine brain surgeries for himself, along with his wife and two sons, receiving reimbursements from New York-based Group Health Incorporated totaling $142,268, federal investigators said Friday.
GHI paid out more than $300,000 in reimbursements to all four defendants, based on the claims.’
‘A 26-year-old woman from Johnstown stands to face several charges for a spree Thursday involving a hammer, several broken windows and a small poodle.
Kathie Mercado started out her afternoon at her sister’s mother-in-law’s house in the 200 block of Tartan Drive in Johnstown.
She is said to have hurled the mother-in-law’s poodle at the window twice in an attempt to break the window, according to Johnstown Police Chief Reggie Mayes.
Mercado was unsuccessful, so she moved on to a hammer and began breaking several of the windows at the ground level and the basement. In the process, she suffered cuts to her arms and hands.
After breaking those windows, Mercado moved to a home across the street, where she broke out several of the windows there. No one was home at the time and Mayes said he doesn’t think Mercado knew the people who lived there.
“We are still not sure why she did it,” Mayes said. “She was very unstable.”‘
‘Council meetings in Reus could take a turn for the bizarre after the northern Spanish town voted in a councillor who promised to turn up dressed as Elvis Presley and wants to turn the square into a nudist pool.
Ariel Santamaria, a former postman, stood for a small independent party dressed in full Elvis regalia complete with sideburns and won enough votes last weekend to take a council seat.
It remains to be seen how other parties will take his proposals for Reus, a town of 100,000 people near Barcelona.
His platform included plans to paint the town hall pink, plant marijuana in the parks and give the town police global positioning systems to find people who might need a light while rolling a joint.’
‘A suspected burglar in Miami was found dangling from a large ventilation fan after he apparently stepped on the on switch while his body was inside the machine and killed himself, according to police.
Miami investigators said a “known burglar” in the area was found dead in the powerful fan at the Maranatha Used Clothing store Thursday when the store opened up for business.
A witness said an employee of the store noticed feet dangling from the fan and called police.’
‘It began with a line of plastic bags ghosting the surface, followed by an ugly tangle of junk: nets and ropes and bottles, motor-oil jugs and cracked bath toys, a mangled tarp. Tires. A traffic cone. Moore could not believe his eyes. Out here in this desolate place, the water was a stew of plastic crap. It was as though someone had taken the pristine seascape of his youth and swapped it for a landfill.
How did all the plastic end up here? How did this trash tsunami begin? What did it mean? If the questions seemed overwhelming, Moore would soon learn that the answers were even more so, and that his discovery had dire implications for human–and planetary–health. As Alguita glided through the area that scientists now refer to as the “Eastern Garbage Patch,” Moore realized that the trail of plastic went on for hundreds of miles. Depressed and stunned, he sailed for a week through bobbing, toxic debris trapped in a purgatory of circling currents. To his horror, he had stumbled across the 21st-century Leviathan. It had no head, no tail. Just an endless body.’
‘Jackass star Johnny Knoxville is being sued by for £5.3million by an actor who had his penis clamped in a mousetrap for a stunt.
Perry Caravello says he was severely injured when the trap crushed his manhood as he appeared on a radio talkshow with Knoxville.
He claims Knoxville promised to pay him £5million for agreeing to the prank.
Mr Caravello has filed legal documents in a US court alleging fraud and negligence. He says he was further humiliated when footage of the stunt was videotaped and posted on the Internet without his permission.’
This kid paints better than I can. :) With his fingers no less.
(6.8meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘Police in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, are investigating claims that an eight-year-old boy has killed in cold blood three babies — including his eight-month-old sister and nine-month-old cousin.
The case came to light when a mother could not find her six-month-old daughter after leaving her asleep at a school in Musahari village. After a police search the child’s body was found buried nearby.
A few hours later, Amarjeet Sada, who police claim suffers from psychiatric disorders, apparently admitted that he had strangled her and led villagers to the spot where he had disposed of the body.’
‘A U.S. scientist and a small band of believers are planning a journey to the Canadian Arctic for what they call “the greatest geological expedition in history.”
Are they searching for Arctic oil reserves? Documenting evidence of climate change?
Not quite. They’re looking for a fog-shrouded hole in the Arctic Ocean that leads — they say — to the centre of the Earth, where an unknown civilization is lurking inside the hollow core of the planet.
This time next year, Kentucky based physicist and futurist Brooks Agnew hopes to board the commercially owned Russian icebreaker Yamal in the port of Murmansk, and to sail into the polar sea just beyond Canada’s Arctic islands. [..]
Mr. Agnew is the latest in a long line of people to peddle the nutty, yet persistent, theory that humans live on the surface of a hollow planet, in which two undiscovered openings, near the North and South poles, connect the outer Earth with an interior realm.’
‘A Newcastle family claim they have been forced from two homes by thugs who have targeted them over their ginger hair.
Kevin and Barbara Chapman say they and their four children, aged between 10 and 13, have endured years of taunts, smashed windows and violence. [..]
Son Kevin, 11, said he was recently punched in a street attack. Newcastle Council is “discussing the situation”. [..]
Mr Chapman said: “The abuse we get is unbelievable. It started more than three years ago, when the kids started getting bullied by lads over the colour of their hair.
“They’ve been punched and kicked and thrown over a hedge. Every time they go out these gangs get to them.”
He added that the family now wanted to move again.’
It seems a bit stupid to be claiming this is an alternative energy source, ’cause thermodynamics dictate you’ll be putting more energy into the system than you can recover from the combustion. But, it’s a neat little trick anyway. :)
see it here »
