Beheading planned in Saudi sorcery case

A Lebanese man charged with sorcery and sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia is scheduled to be beheaded on Friday, the man’s lawyer said Wednesday.

May El Khansa, the attorney for Ali Hussain Sibat, told CNN that she and Sibat’s family were informed about the upcoming execution. She said she heard from a source in Saudi Arabia with knowledge of the case and the proceedings that Saudi authorities “will carry out the execution.”

The Saudi Ministry of Justice could not immediately be reached for comment on the matter.

El Khansa said she has appealed to Lebanon’s prime minister, Saad Hariri, and president, Michel Suleiman, to stop the execution. Amnesty International, the human rights group, has called on Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah to block it as well.

TV presenter gets death sentence for ‘sorcery’

Sibat is the former host of a popular call-in show that aired on Beirut-based satellite TV channel “Sheherazade.” According to his lawyer, Sibat would predict the future on his show and give out advice to his audience.

El Khansa told CNN her client was arrested by Saudi Arabia’s religious police (known as the Mutawa’een) and charged with sorcery while visiting the country in May 2008. Sibat was in Saudi Arabia to perform the Islamic religious pilgrimage known as Umra.

Sibat was then put on trial, and in November 2009, a court in the Saudi city of Medina found him guilty and sentenced him to death.

According to El Khansa, Sibat appealed the verdict. The case was taken up by the Court of Appeal in the Saudi city of Mecca on the grounds that the initial verdict was “premature.”

El Khansa tells CNN that the Mecca appeals court then sent the case back to the original court for reconsideration, stipulating that all charges made against Sibat needed to be verified and that he should be given a chance to repent.

On March 10, judges in Medina upheld their initial verdict, meaning Sibat is once again sentenced to be executed.

“The Medina court refused the sentence of the appeals court,” said El Khansa, adding her client will appeal the verdict once more.

via Lawyer: Beheading planned in Saudi sorcery case – CNN.com.

First sustainable cat food to go on sale this year

The two companies will sell foods using Marine Stewardship Council-certified fish, which is caught sustainably without threatening further dwindling stocks.

Mark Johnson, of manufacturer Mars Petcare, told the Guardian people were increasingly aware of the importance of sustainability.

“The End of the Line film [a documentary about overfishing] has had a big impact,” said Johnson, the company’s UK general manager.

“We are now the first pet company to make a commitment to sustainable fish, and we hope that will act as a catalyst for the whole industry.”

The move is in response to rising demand for sustainable fish. Co-operative recently banned threatened species from its own brand products while Marks & Spencer became the first high street chain to sign up to WWF’s new seafood charter.

The UK’s eight million pet owners buy 1.5 million tonnes of food a year and globally there are an estimated 750 million pets who consume 20 million tonnes annually.

The MSC-certified fish will be available in Whiskas and Sheba brands to all European consumers by Christmas.

Environmental groups welcomed the news. Jason Clay of WWF said: “There is no quick fix to this problem but when companies as influential as Mars take a leadership role, it is great news for the world’s oceans.”

via First sustainable cat food to go on sale this year – Telegraph.

‘Monster bug’ attaches itself to submarine

A bizarre-looking giant crustacean has been found after it latched onto a submarine deep underwater and was dragged to the surface, according to reports.

Images of the 75cm creature — which has been identified as an exceptionally large isopod — have caused a stir online after they were posted on the social media website Reddit.

A user of the website claimed to have received the images from a contractor who worked with him at a sub-sea survey company.

“Recently this beast came up attached to one of our ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicle) … it latched onto the ROV at roughly 8,500 feet (2600m) depth.

“The ship he was operating from (and therefore location) is unknown, so I can’t tell you what part of the Earth this beast was living.”

The user’s vague description of the origin of the photo has sparked concerns it may be just an April Fools’ Day joke, but experts claim it appears to be legitimate.

“I’ve seen the pictures, and they are real, and they really do get that big,” Craig McClain, assistant director of science for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North Carolina, told MSNBC.

“It’s an isopod … It’s like the [woodlice] that you find in your garden. It’s the same group of animals.”

McClaim said he had also recently received the same images from a researcher who had been working in the Gulf of Mexico.

“It’s definitely not an April Fools’ joke,” he said.

The isopod, which usually only grows to 60cm in length, is a scavenger that feeds on dead whales, fish and squid and lives in deep ocean waters.

The species was discovered over 100 years ago by French zoologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards.

via ‘Monster bug’ attaches itself to submarine.

More on the giant isopod here.

A giant isopod may be one of approximately nine species of large isopods (crustaceans related to the shrimp and crabs) in the genus Bathynomus. They are thought to be abundant in cold, deep waters of the Atlantic. Bathynomus giganteus, the species upon which the generitype is based, is the largest known isopod and is the one most often referred to by the common name “giant isopod”.

French zoologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards was the first to describe the genus in 1879 after fishing a juvenile male B. giganteus from the Gulf of Mexico; this was an exciting discovery for both scientists and the public, as at the time the idea of a lifeless or “azoic” deep ocean had only recently been refuted by the work of Sir Charles Wyville Thomson and others. Females were not recovered until 1891.

Giant isopods are of little interest to most commercial fisheries owing to the typical paucity of catches and because ensnared isopods are usually scavenged beyond marketability before they are recovered. However, in Northern Taiwan and other areas, they are not uncommon at seaside restaurants, served boiled and bisected with a clean lateral slice. The white meat, similar to crab or lobster in texture, is then easily removed. The few specimens caught in the Americas with baited traps are sometimes seen in public aquaria.

Runaway star may have spawned the solar system

A single runaway star that escaped its family — not the usual close-knit stellar clan — may have spawned solar system, say planetary scientists.

Meteorites that contain bits of rock called calcium -aluminium-rich inclusions suggest that the solar system may have formed very quickly from the ashes of other stars.

That’s because the inclusions formed with the radioactive isotope aluminium-26, which is forged inside stars tens of times as massive as the sun and decays with a halflife of only 720,000 years.

But, a team, led by Vincent Tatischeff of the National Center for Scientific Research in France, claim that a massive star cluster would have been have been so hot that most of the Al-26 would have decayed before planets could congeal. Instead, the scientists say that the solar system sprang from a solitary star’s ashes, which could have cooled more quickly, the ‘New Scientist’ reported.

And, to account for the amount of Al-26 observed in meteorites, the star would still have had to be massive, meaning it probably formed in a clutch of other stars, say the planetary scientist.

via Runaway star may have spawned the solar system.

Of all the luck: Denard Span hits his own mother with foul ball

It seemed strange enough that a foul ball hit by Denard Span(notes) would fly into the stands and hit a woman who was wearing his jersey from the Twins.

Then we found out the woman was Span’s mother.

In what can only be described as a freak occurrence, the Minnesota outfielder found himself feeling about as bad as a son can possibly feel after he fouled off a pitch from the Yankees’ Phil Hughes(notes) into his mother’s chest.

Luckily, it turned out that his mother suffered only some soreness and not something more serious.

From the Associated Press:

“Wanda Wilson was sitting in the box seats near the third-base dugout when her son hit a foul liner leading off the game against the New York Yankees.

“Span sprinted to his mom and stayed while paramedics treated her. The game was delayed for a few minutes and she was taken to first aid. Span returned to the plate and struck out on the next pitch.”

Span stayed in the game for another at-bat, then left in the top of the third after telling the Twins that he wasn’t mentally into the game. He then spent some time with his mother, who had relocated to a different seat after being checked out at the ballpark’s first aid station.

Really, you can’t help but feel pretty bad for one of baseball’s nicest guys. He began his day by tweeting his excitement over playing the Yankees “in front of my family and friends in my hometown” of Tampa and then ended up inadvertently hitting his mother with a baseball.

Thankfully, all was well that ended well.

via Of all the luck: Denard Span hits his own mother with foul ball – Big League Stew – MLB Blog – Yahoo! Sports.

April Fools Day Pranks for 2010

Post April fools day stories you find here in a comment!

Google has made a name for itself as one of the more proactive pranksters in the business world. Every year on April 1, the company tries to punk its followers with a new prank.

Past pranks

The naughtiness stems back to 2000, when Google claimed that its “MentalPlex” could read your mind through your computer screen, allowing users to conduct searches on sheer brain power.

“With MentalPlex, you just project a mental picture of what you want to find,” explained Google, in its 2000 posting, accompanied by a hypnotic spiral.

Last year, Google claimed its site was featuring the world’s first 3D browser, but this was just another case of April Fool’s bunk.

The strange tradition of April Fools’ mass media pranks goes back to 1957, when the BBC broadcast a weird and untrue television segment about Swiss farmers harvesting spaghetti from trees.

Naturally, many of the viewers mistakenly thought the BBC story was real. – cnn.com

Here are a few 2010 pranks from Google:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/different-kind-of-company-name.html

http://www.google.com/googlereader/reader-advantage.html

Below are the pick of this year’s crop, from a urine-powered “compost accelerator” to a floating hotel for football fans and a crab that walks forwards (including *absolutely genuine* video footage). …

B&Q to harness power of urine in new natural compost accelerator

A new natural compost accelerator powered by human urine it to be trialed by B&Q at its New Malden store tomorrow.

The product, called Wee&Q, comprises a one litre bottle of urine collected from the store’s plumbing system. Each bottle costs 10p.

A member of B&Q’s green team said: “Urine is one of the best compost accelerators there is, but not everyone is happy to spend a penny on their heap as their garden may be overlooked.”

Lavatories from which urine is being used will be clearly marked and customers can use traditional lavatories if they think their urine may not be suitable for composting.

Straightforward Crab Discovered

The fishing community has been rocked with the news that a Cornish fisherman has discovered a crab that walks straightforward rather than the usual sideways.

Mario Perry, a fisherman for Seafood & Eat It, a fresh crab supplier for Waitrose, first found the unusual crustacean while walking his dog along the beach at Newlyn, Cornwall.

Richard Corner, Director of Seafood & Eat It, said “My brother Neville and I have been working with crab for over 10 years, and have never seen anything like this. Mario, our fisherman, is now a local celebrity. We’re hoping that the research we have under way with Waitrose will help us put this new, straightforward crab on the Cornish foodie map along with cream teas and pasties.”

Quentin Clark, Seafood Buying Manager for Waitrose, said: “The exciting thing about this crab is that is has a competitive advantage: it can move faster and is much more agile than usual for a crab. We know from experience that this means it should have a firmer, tastier flesh, which is very exciting for us as a retailer.”

Click here to see the video of the remarkable discovery.

Couple saved from last-minute hitch with first-ever Windows Live Messenger wedding

A couple whose wedding plans were jeopardised when their vicar was held up on a slow-moving train resorted to modern technology to conduct their vows in the first-ever Windows Live Messenger wedding.

Following frantic calls with the vicar, the couple – who were determined not to postpone their wedding – borrowed a laptop and used Messenger to exchange their wedding vows via a live video call link-up with the vicar.

Newly-wed Andrew Moon said: “We’ve both been saving and planning for our wedding for over a year, so when we learnt that the vicar couldn’t make it on time, our hearts just sank. Someone jokingly suggested doing it over email instead and the idea just evolved from there.

His relieved bride, Honey, added: “The whole ceremony took about ten minutes in total so was really quick and easy. It’s a day that we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.”

Exhausted polar bear washed up on Isle of Mull

An RSPB Officer got the fright of his life when he came across a polar bear while conducting a routine wildlife survey on the Isle of Mull.

Dave Sexton said: “At first I felt sure it was dead, but then I realised it was still breathing. Scarily, it opened its eyes as we got next to it, but didn’t show any other signs of moving. We grabbed a few photos and went off to get help.”

On his return an hour later, Dave was amazed to find that the bear had disappeared. “We couldn’t find any trace of it. Luckily we have the photos, or I doubt that anyone would believe us. Having spent many years protecting threatened wildlife, I just hope this polar bear is going to be OK.”

Islanders are now searching for the missing bear, which is thought to have drifted across to the island on an ice floe. The public have been warned not to approach the bear if they see it, as it may be hungry after its long journey.

2000 Guineas horse race to be renamed 2331 euros by EU bureaucrats

The European Union has stunned the horse racing world by insisting the first two Classics of the turf flat season, the StanJames.com 1000 and 2000 Guineas, adhere to current EU law – and change their name from the Guineas to the Euros.

Citing obscure EU currency legislation, Austrian MEP Lari Polof has called for the races to be renamed the 1165 and 2331 euros, the ancient coins’ equivalent in euro currency, to “re-standardise the currency to prevent confusion among EU citizens”.

StanJames.com spokesperson Charlie McCann said, “This has thrown preparations for the race into complete disarray and both the Newmarket executive and ourselves are livid at this latest petty EU bureaucracy.

“This ludicrous decision will mean that race commentators Ian Bartlett and Simon Holt will need to be on their toes during the race just in case the exchange rate alters as the leaders enter the dip. It is possible that the race formerly known as the 2000 Guineas will start as the 2331 euros but finish as the 2335 euros.”

Diet Cola Bottle is world’s first negative calorie sweet

The Diet Cola Bottle, the world’s first ever calorie negative sweet, is to hit Pic n’ Mix stands today.

The sweet, which burns more calories when eating and digesting than the sweet actually contains, was developed by Woolworths.co.uk and nutritional expert Professor A. Prilfoolius.

Each sweet contains seven calories, 50 per cent less than the original. Energy expended on chewing and digestion uses nine calories, meaning each sweet effectively contains minus two calories per bottle. Eating 100g of Diet Cola Bottles can clock up minus 140 calories.

Matthew Jacques, Head of brand at Woolworths.co.uk, says “The Diet Cola Bottle looks almost identical and tastes equally as good as the original cola bottle, but without the calories.”

Hotel website launches overflow rooms to keep world cup fans afloat

The increased demand for accommodation in South Africa over the World Cup period has seen a range of floating, ‘overflow’ hotel rooms launched off the coast as the country prepares for a deluge of fans.

New ‘pontrooms’ which will be able to accommodate up to 1,500 football fans, are reached by boat and serviced from the mainland by an amphibious “front desk”.

The rooms, to be launched by Hotels.com and Flotilla Hotels, range from the five-star Ile Flottante Suites, which come equipped with a four-poster bed and Jacuzzi., to three-star glass bottomed rooms and two-star Lilypads offering “basic raft accommodation.”

At an extra cost, guests who wish to see matches in different locations can be ‘tugged’ along the coast to ensure they are moored in the most convenient locations at all times.

Lego to sand down sharp-edged blocks under EU health and safety laws

Lego has been forced to redesign all its bricks so that they come with rounded edges under new EU health and safety rules, which come into force today.

Staff at the Legoland park were this morning sanding down the edges of all models to avoid anyone hurting themselves.

Joel Whybrew, a 22-year-old model builder at the park, said: “I was a bit unsure at first but having shaved down this model crocodile it looks a lot better with smooth edges.

“Most animals have smooth skins so I guess it is quite silly to have models which are rough to the touch. Now children visiting Legoland in Windsor can stroke a crocodile – you can’t do that in the zoo.”

Kent moves three miles closer to France

An underwater chasm that extends the boundary of Kent three miles towards France has been discovered, making the county closer to the continent than previously thought.

Using ancient boundary maps unearthed by Visit Kent, a team of experts using hi-tech sonar equipment and local divers were able to locate a chasm extending from the southern coast of the county, effectively extending the border towards France by an additional three miles.

Visit Kent is now staking a claim on the new land, and is currently liaising with the Land Registry to register the additional coastline.

The new boundary line, dubbed the Poisson D’Avril line in honour of the man who discovered it – Professor D’Avril, from the Kent Seismology Department – will be honoured in an opening ceremony due to take place today in the Channel.

Lava-cooked food

The Hotel and Restaurant Holt in Iceland has invited guests to have dinner surrounding the newest active volcano on Fimmvorduhals in Iceland.

While the crew travelled over glaciers in jeeps to get to the hot location and prepare the dinner on hot lava, the guests flew in on a helicopter. They landed on a glacier and their dinner was already prepared on the new lava field.

The guests were greeted with champagne before dining on fish soup, grilled lobster, monkfish and chicken breast.

All the food was cooked on the lava by Hotel Holt’s staff. Altogether, four chefs were responsible for the dinner.

- Telegraph

…

Reddit ( http://www.reddit.com/ ) is making everyone an admin today.  After you’re logged in, look next to your name and click “Turn Admin On”.
YouTube has a “text only” version of videos that “saves $1 per second” of bandwidth

StarBucks has two new drink sizes: Plenta — 128oz, Micra — 2 oz

Kodak is announcing “aromatography” after breakthroughs in “Neuro-Optic-Nasal-Sense Imaging”

Microsoft, Ford team on electric car software

Microsoft will expand its Hohm consumer energy management software to work with Ford Motor Company electric cars, the two companies announced Wednesday.

With Hohm, future owners of Ford’s electric vehicles will be able to determine when the best times will be to recharge their vehicles at home, executives from the two companies said at a press conference in New York.

As consumers start using electric and hybrid electric vehicles en masse, electric companies will experience surges of power demand in the evenings when people come home from work and plug in their automobiles for recharging, explained Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, via satellite.

“The demand placed on the energy grid will be momentous,” Ballmer said. “Addressing the challenge of how that demand is managed in a smart and affordable way is absolutely going to be critical. And information technology will be an essential part of supporting the energy ecosystem.”

The two companies pledged to work with utilities and municipal power companies so the software can determine when the most affordable times will be for consumers to recharge their vehicles.

According to a survey from Accenture, 42 percent of consumers are considering purchasing electric or hybrid electric vehicles. Ford plans to introduce five electric or hybrid vehicles for the North American and European markets by 2013. Already, Ford and Mercury offer four hybrids and Lincoln will introduce a new hybrid later this year.

Hohm is a Microsoft service that analyzes home electricity usage, suggesting changes for power savings.

Ford already collaborates with Microsoft for its Sync in-car technology, which allows personal electronics such as MP3 players and mobile phones to be controlled by voice recognition. Sync is based on Microsoft’s Windows Embedded Auto platform

Currently, over 2 million Ford vehicles use Sync, said Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally at the press conference.

via Microsoft, Ford team on electric car software – BusinessWeek.

Depressed? Fearful? It might help to worry, too

A new study of brain activity in depressed and anxious people indicates that some of the ill effects of depression are modified – for better or for worse – by anxiety.

The study, in the journal Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, looked at depression and two types of anxiety: anxious arousal, the fearful vigilance that sometimes turns into panic; and anxious apprehension, better known as worry.

The researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) at the Beckman Institute’s Biomedical Imaging Center to look at brain activity in subjects who were depressed and not anxious, anxious but not depressed, or who exhibited varying degrees of depression and one or both types of anxiety.

“Although we think of depression and anxiety as separate things, they often co-occur,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Gregory A. Miller, who led the research with Illinois psychology professor Wendy Heller. “In a national study of the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, three-quarters of those diagnosed with major depression had at least one other diagnosis. In many cases, those with depression also had anxiety, and vice versa.”

Previous studies have generally focused on people who were depressed or anxious, Miller said. Or they looked at both depression and anxiety, but lumped all types of anxiety together.

Miller and Heller have long argued that the anxiety of chronic worriers is distinct from the panic or fearful vigilance that characterizes anxious arousal.

In an earlier fMRI study, they found that the two types of anxiety produce very different patterns of activity in the brain. Anxious arousal lights up a region of the right inferior temporal lobe (just behind the ear). Worry, on the other hand, activates a region in the left frontal lobe that is linked to speech production.

(Other research has found that depression, by itself, activates a region in the right frontal lobe.)

In the new study, brain scans were done while participants performed a task that involved naming the colors of words that had negative, positive, or neutral meanings. This allowed the researchers to observe which brain regions were activated in response to emotional words.

The researchers found that the fMRI signature of the brain of a worried and depressed person doing the emotional word task was very different from that of a vigilant or panicky depressed person.

“The combination of depression and anxiety, and which type of anxiety, give you different brain results,” Miller said.

Perhaps most surprisingly, anxious arousal (vigilance, fear, panic) enhanced activity in that part of the right frontal lobe that is also active in depression, but only when a person’s level of anxious apprehension, or worry, was low. Neural activity in a region of the left frontal lobe, an area known to be involved in speech production, was higher in the depressed and worried-but-not-fearful subjects.

Despite their depression, the worriers also did better on the emotional word task than those depressives who were fearful or vigilant. The worriers were better able to ignore the meaning of negative words and focus on the task, which was to identify the color – not the emotional content – of the words.

These results suggest that fearful vigilance sometimes heightens the brain activity associated with depression, whereas worry may actually counter it, thus reducing some of the negative effects of depression and fear, Miller said.

“It could be that having a particular type of anxiety will help processing in one part of the brain while at the same time hurting processing in another part of the brain,” he said. “Sometimes worry is a good thing to do. Maybe it will get you to plan better. Maybe it will help you to focus better. There could be an up-side to these things.”

via Depressed? Fearful? It might help to worry, too.

A Second Big Bang in Geneva?

Champagne bottles were popped Tuesday in Geneva where the largest science machine ever built finally began to smash subatomic particles together. After 16 years—and an accident that crippled the machine a year and a half ago—the Large Hadron Collider successfully smashed two beams of protons at the astounding energy of 3.5 trillion electron volts apiece. This act produced temperatures not seen since the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billions years ago.

via Michio Kaku: A Second Big Bang in Geneva? – WSJ.com.

Palladium is up!

Remember that tip I gave you? I just checked and I’ve made $3139.00 so far buying palladium.

One oz of palladium is up to $479.50 today. This is strange because historically it should be going DOWN in March, not up. I think it will hit $500 or higher.

I may start selling my coins to friends so they can get in on the action.