Pirates die strangely after taking Iranian ship

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: The Russian frigate Neustrashimy, which was sent to the coast of Somalia this week after a Ukrainian ship carrying arms, including 33 T-72 tanks, was also hijacked by Somali pirates Picture: AP ‘Our sources say it contains chemicals, dangerous chemicals’ A tense standoff has developed in waters off Somalia over an Iranian merchant ship laden with a mysterious cargo that was hijacked by pirates. Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died. Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.” The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels. … About 22000 ships a year pass through the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden, where regional instability and “no-questions-asked” ransom payments have led to a dramatic rise in attacks on vessels by heavily armed Somali raiders in speedboats. The Iran Deyanat was sailing in those waters on August 21, past the Horn of Africa and about 80 nautical miles southeast of Yemen, when it was boarded by about 40 pirates armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. They were alleged members of a crime syndicate said to be based at Eyl, a small fishing village in northern Somalia. The ship is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRISL, a state-owned company run by the Iranian military. According to the US Treasury Department, the IRISL regularly falsifies shipping documents to hide the identity of end users, uses generic terms to describe shipments and operates under various covers to circumvent United Nations sanctions. The ship set sail from Nanjing, China, at the end of July. According to its manifest, it was heading for Rotterdam where it would unload 42500 tons of iron ore and “industrial products” purchased by a German client. At Eyl, the ship was secured by more pirates — about 50 on board, and another 50 on shore. But within days those who had boarded the ship developed mysterious health trouble.  This was also confirmed by Hassan Allore Osman, minister of minerals and oil in Puntland, an autonomous region of Somalia. He headed a delegation sent to Eyl when news of the toxic cargo and illnesses surfaced. He told one news publication, The Long War Journal, that during the six days he had negotiated with the pirates, a number of them had become sick and died. “That ship is unusual,” he was quoted as saying. “It is not carrying a normal shipment.” The pirates did reveal that they had tried to inspect the ship’s cargo containers when some of them fell sick — but the containers were locked. … – thetimes

World’s tallest man to become daddy

The world’s tallest person, 2.36m-tall Bao Xishun (R) of China and his pregant wife Xia Shujuan are seen at their home in Zunhua, north China’s Hebei province on September 26, 2008. The couple got married last year, and Xia Shujuan is pregnant now and is expected to give birth around the upcoming national holiday. – 5d6d

Good luck. He’s a really good guy from what I’ve read.

Putin Rears His Head Over Alaska Airspace! flash game

This dumb little game cracked me up. It is pretty dumb to make an enemy of Russia as Bush has been doing. Vote Obama (… since we can’t have Nader, Kucinich, etc.)

‘Super hot’ chilli kills chef

Andrew Lee of West Yorkshire, England has become the first person(?) to die from super hot chillis. He was in perfect health and had just passed a medical exam at work.

Andrew Lee, 33, challenged his girlfriend’s brother to a contest on September 19 to see who could make and eat the hottest sauce, London’s The Times reported.The forklift driver from Edlington, West Yorkshire in England, made a tomato sauce with red chillies grown by his father, but after eating it suffered intense discomfort and itching. Mr Lee went to bed and asked his girlfriend, Samantha Bailey, to scratch his back until he fell asleep. When she woke in the morning he was dead, possibly after suffering a heart attack, The Guardian said. Paramedics were called to the home but were unable to revive Lee, who was lying on the floor, The Telegraph reported. …

“Andrew just ate the chillies with a plate of Dolmio sauce. It was not a proper meal because he had already eaten lamb chops and potato mash after work,” she said. “He apparently got into bed at 2.30am and started scratching all over. His girlfriend … woke up and he had gone. It is incredible. Who would have thought he could have died from eating chilli sauce?” She said a post-mortem showed no heart problems. – smh

Freighter destroyed over Pacific

Europe’s “Jules Verne” space freighter has destroyed itself in a controlled burn-up over the southern Pacific.

The 13.5-tonne cargo ship had completed a six-month mission to the space station and was packed with the orbiting platform’s rubbish. Two engine firings were required to slow the freighter sufficiently to pull it into the atmosphere. The European and US space agencies had chase planes in the air to try to capture the fireball on video.

Astronauts on the space station reported seeing the light from the falling freighter. “Everything went correctly, nominally, smoothly. … Most of the vehicle was expected to burn up in the descent; only fragments should have made it down to the ocean water. Computer modelling of the re-entry had put the impact time at 1346 GMT. – bbc

Man accused of posing as Dodger on field

A man faces criminal charges for allegedly stealing a uniform from Dodger Stadium and posing as one of the team’s players.

Ronald Higgins pleaded not guilty to several charges Friday, including burglary and trespassing. The 47-year-old Higgins was arrested Wednesday morning after a security guard found him walking on the field in a Dodgers uniform and holding a glove with two balls. Higgins allegedly identified himself as a Dodgers player, but the guard recognized him from an earlier incident and called police. Prosecutors say Higgins’ clothes were later found in the bat boys’ locker room. It was not immediately clear where he got the uniform. If convicted, Higgins could spend nearly four years in state prison. -myway

In my world impersonating an officer might get you prison, say, if you shot someone while doing it… but impersonating a Dodger? Perhaps a psychiatric evaluation and some help. Four years in prison for being obsessed with an American dream? Let the man play. Who knows, he may be good.

Oldest Man Turns 113, Aims for More

The world’s oldest man celebrated his 113th birthday Thursday in southern Japan, telling reporters he wants to live another five years. Tomoji Tanabe, who was born Sept. 18, 1895, received birthday gifts, flowers and $1,000 cash from the mayor of his hometown of Miyakonojo, on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu.

Tanabe told reporters he wants to live “another five years or so,” according to city spokesman Akihide Yokoyama. That was a slight downgrade from last year, when he said he wanted to live “for infinity.” – aol

When 113 you reach, look as good you will not, hmm.

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Does Sarah Palin Drink Syrah Palin?

Democrats watching the presidential campaign may find it hard to swallow a glass of the syrah Palin. The organic red wine, pronounced “pay-LEEN sih-rah,” comes from a small winery in northern Chile.

According to distributor North Berkeley Imports’ Web site, the vintner’s name “describes a ball that was used in an ancient game played by the Mapuche, a group of people indigenous to central Chile.” – aol

Melamine found in Cadbury goods

The recall affects mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia

Preliminary tests have found melamine in Cadbury’s Chinese-made chocolates, the company says.

At least 50,000 Chinese babies have fallen ill and four been killed by milk tainted with the industrial chemical.

Cadbury had earlier recalled 11 chocolate types from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia because of fears of contamination.

It remains unclear how much melamine was in the recalled products, a Cadbury spokesman told the BBC.

“It’s early days, as these are preliminary findings from the tests,” the spokesman said.

Click here to see a map of countries affected

He emphasised that the only goods affected were those made in the company’s Beijing factory, and not those produced in the UK or elsewhere. China’s reputation for food safety has nosedived … – bbc

Bees Can Count

Honeybees are clever little creatures. They can form abstract concepts, such as symmetry versus asymmetry, and they use symbolic language — the celebrated waggle dance — to direct their hivemates to flower patches. New reports suggest that they can also communicate across species, and can count — up to a point.

With colleagues, Songkun Su of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and Shaowu Zhang of the Australian National University in Canberra managed to overcome the apian impulse to kill intruders and cultivated the first mixed-species colonies, made up of European honeybees, Apis mellifera, and Asiatic honeybees, A. cerana. The researchers confirmed that the two species have their own dialects: foraging in identical environments, the bees signaled the distance to a food source with dances of different durations.

Remarkably, despite the communication barrier, A. cerana decoded A. mellifera’s dance and found the food.

Also at the Australian National University, Marie Dacke and Mandyam V. Srinivasan trained European honeybees to pass a particular number of colored stripes in a tunnel to get a food reward, which was placed by a stripe. When they removed the food, the bees still returned to the same stripe.

Next, they mixed things up on the bees: they varied the spacing of the stripes, and even replaced stripes with unfamiliar markers. The insects consistently passed the same number of markers to approach the former reward site, demonstrating that they could count, up to four.

The studies burnish the impressive list of honeybees’ known cognitive abilities, all achieved with a brain the size of a sand grain. – livesci

Image: A honey bee brain:

The Honeybee, Apis mellifera has been studied extensively with respect to its sensory and neural capacities in navigation, communication, visual and olfactory learning and memory processing. The Honeybee Standard Brain Atlas is calculated from 20 individual bee brain images that were immuno-stained, imaged as whole-mounts with the confocal microscope, and segmented along the borderlines of 22 neuropils. After correcting for global size and positioning differences, an average label image was created by repeated application of an intensity-based non-rigid registration algorithm. A three-dimensional surface model was reconstructed from this. Early applications of the Honeybee Standard Brain demonstrate the mapping procedure of individual electrophysiologically-recorded and intracellularly-stained olfactory interneurons. A detailed digital Atlas of the Honeybee antennal lobe is available and will be integrated into the Virtual Atlas of the Honeybee Brain. – link