A new virus is threatening PCs via emails which infect PCs without the user having to open an attachment.
The user will not even be warned this is happening, the only message that appears is “loading”.
The email automatically downloads malicious software into your computer from elsewhere the moment a user clicks to open it.
The mails themselves are not infected and thus will not “set off’ many web-security defense packages.
Security experts say that the development is “particularly dangerous”.
“This sort of spam also affects cautious users which would never open an unknown attachment or link,” say security experts Eleven Research Team.
Previous generations of email-borne viruses and trojans required users to click on an attachment – often an office document such as a PDF.
The new emails – dubbed “drive-by emails” – have been detected “in the wild” by computer researchers Eleven Research Team.
“This drive-by spam automatically downloads malware when the e-mail is opened in the e-mail client,” says Eleven Research Team.
“Previous malware e-mails required the user to click on a link or open an attachment for the PC to be infected.
“The new generation of e-mail-borne malware consists of HTML e-mails which automatically downloads malware when the e-mail is opened.
“This is similar to so-called drive-by downloads which infect a PC by opening an infected website in the browser.”
The current wave of emails arrives with the title “Banking Security Update”.
To stay safe, Eleven Research Team advises switching all security settings in email software to maximum, and updating your browser to the latest version so it’s protected against malicious software.
In a newly revealed testimony, Frances Bean Cobain, Kurt Cobain’s daughter, accused her mother Courtney Love of causing the death of their family pets.
Frances Bean Cobain, 19, filed a restraining order against Courtney Love in LA superior court in December 2009 after they got into a physical fight.
Backed by evidence from her male nanny and others the judge granted Frances Bean Cobain’s request, as well as ordering Courtney Love stay away from her daughter’s pet dog Uncle Fester.
In sworn testimony uncovered by The Fix, Frances Bean Cobain claimed her mother lived on drugs, was a conspiracy theorist and said the singer’s hoarding caused the death of their family cat and dog.
In addition, she accused her mother of taking her to a confrontation at her ex-boyfriend James Barber’s house.
Frances Bean Cobain said: “(Courtney Love) has taken drugs for as long as I can remember.
“She basically exists now on…Xanax, Adderall, Sonata and Abilify, sugar and cigarettes.
“She rarely eats… She often falls asleep in her bed while she is smoking, and I am constantly worried that she will start a fire (which she has done at least three times) that will threaten our lives.”
In a newly revealed testimony, Frances Bean Cobain, Kurt Cobain’s daughter, accused her mother Courtney Love of causing the death of their family pets
Frances Bean Cobain said her mother’s chaotic behavior was the reason for the death of two family pets.
The teenager said her cat died after getting entangled in piles of Etsy fabrics, boxes of paperwork, trash and other possessions, while a dog died after swallowing a pile of Love’s pills.
There were plenty of other alleged instances that had driven the aspiring artist to despair.
In one incident she said her mother dragged her to James Barber’s house when she was 17, and that she sat in a taxi while her mother had a volcanic confrontation with her then boyfriend.
Frances Bean Cobain said: “She took me in a taxi to his house in the middle of the night, and from outside the house, in her bare feet, she screamed at him, threw rocks at the house, and threatened to burn his house down.
“His children were inside the house, but that did not stop my mother.”
Finally, Frances Bean Cobain also slammed her mother’s constant claims of people stealing money from them.
She said: “My mother is obsessed with uncovering fraud and spends much of her day raging about the fraud that has been perpetrated on her and on me.
“She incessantly rages about her many theories relating to the supposed incidences of <<fraud>>.
“She slams doors, breaks things, stomps around the hotel or apartment and spends hours on the phone, yelling.”
Frances Bean Cobain told the court Courtney Love had even threatened to jump off a balcony while she was watching.
Ultimately Courtney Love was ordered to stay away from Frances, Uncle Fester, her paternal grandmother Wendy O’Connor and aunt Kimberly Cobain.
The latter pair was made temporary co-guardians.
The testimony was revealed when Courtney Love talked to addiction website The Fix about her struggle to stay sober, the cost of fame and her relationship with Frances.
The original interview has been extended into e-book, “Courtney Comes Clean” by Maer Roshan.
Courtney Love bizarrely credits taking highly addictive hard drug crack cocaine for making her better at complex mathematics in the new publication.
The singer said: “The strange thing is, while the crack screwed me up in a lot of ways, it improved me in certain others.
“I’ve never been good with numbers, but when I was on crack I could do math really, really well. I became a f****** whiz at calculus.”
Courtney Love was married to Frances’ legendary Nirvana musician father Kurt Cobain from February 1992 until his suicidal death in April 1994.
They reportedly bonded over drug taking sessions.
Frances Bean Cobain has been taking charge of her life recently, buying a new $1.8 million Hollywood Hills home last October, and getting engaged to rocker Isaiah Silva that same month.
In August 2010 Frances Bean Cobain became a millionaire overnight when she inherited a trust fund set up in her name following her father’s death.
An artwork thought to be the earliest replica of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has been discovered at Madrid’s Prado Museum.
Prado Museum said it did not realize its significance until a recent restoration revealed hidden layers.
The artwork features the same female figure, but had been covered over with black paint and varnish.
The painting is thought to have been created by one of Leonardo’s students alongside the 16th century original.
There are dozens of surviving Mona Lisa replicas from the 16th and 17th centuries – when, as a new US exhibition illustrates, copying famous artworks was a thriving business.
The Art Newspaper, which reported the discovery, said the “sensational find will transform our understanding of the world’s most famous picture”.
The original painting, which currently hangs at the Louvre in Paris, is obscured by several layers of old, cracked varnish.
The Art Newspaper said the removal of the black paint on the replica had revealed "the fine details of the delicate Tuscan landscape", which mirrors the background of Leonardo's masterpiece
However, cleaning and restoration is thought to be too risky because the painting is fragile.
The Art Newspaper said the removal of the black paint on the replica had revealed “the fine details of the delicate Tuscan landscape”, which mirrors the background of Leonardo’s masterpiece.
Martin Bailey, who reported on the discovery for the paper, said: “You see Lisa’s eyes, which are quite enticing, and her enigmatic smile. It actually makes her look much younger.”
In fact, the new painting has led experts to speculate that the woman who sat for the Renaissance Masterpiece was in her early 20s – much younger than the Louvre’s original appears to show.
As the replica remained hidden for so long under the overpaint, experts had believed it was painted long after Leonardo’s death.
But after using x-rays to analyze the original drawings underneath, conservators have concluded the work was carried out at the same time as Leonardo’s original.
Prado Museum presented its findings at a conference on Leonardo da Vinci at London’s National Gallery.
There is still some restoration to complete on the painting but, once it is finished, it will be exhibited at the Louvre in March, allowing visitors to compare the two works.
Egyptian authorities declared three days of national mourning after at least 74 people died in clashes between rival football fans in the city of Port Said.
Hundreds more were injured as fans invaded the pitch after a match between top-tier clubs al-Masry and al-Ahly.
Emergency meetings of the cabinet and parliament have been called.
Protest marches are being planned for Thursday against the police’s inability to contain the violence.
Funerals are expected to be held after noon prayers in Port Said.
All Egyptian premier-league matches have been postponed indefinitely.
One al-Ahly fan said that fans will march from the club headquarters in Cairo to the Interior Ministry.
“People are angry at the regime more than anything else… People are really angry, you could see the rage in their eyes,” Mohammed Abdel Hamid said.
Egyptian authorities declared three days of national mourning after at least 74 people died in clashes between rival football fans in the city of Port Said
Hundreds gathered at Cairo’s main railway station to receive the injured and the first bodies arriving from Port Said, with some chanting slogans against military rule.
“Everyone was beating us. They were beating us from inside and outside, with fireworks, stones, metal bars, and some had knives, I swear,” one fan told a private TV station.
Army units were deployed in Port Said and joined police patrols around morgues and hospitals, but most streets had no police presence.
The army has set up checkpoints at entrances to the city.
Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of Egypt’s ruling army council, went to an airbase near Cairo to meet al-Ahly players who were flown back from Port Said on a military aircraft.
“This will not bring Egypt down… These incidents happen anywhere in the world. We will not let those behind it go,” he said, according to the Associated Press news agency.
It is the biggest disaster in the country’s football history, said the Egyptian deputy health minister.
“This is unfortunate and deeply saddening,” Hesham Sheiha told state television, adding that many people died in a stampede as people tried to leave the stadium.
Some of the dead were security officers, AP quoted a morgue official as saying.
It appears some fans had taken knives into the stadium.
The lack of the usual level of security in the stadium might have contributed to the clashes.
Police in Egypt have been keeping a much lower profile since last year’s popular protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak from power.
Egyptian fans are notoriously violent, says our correspondent, particularly supporters of al-Ahly known as the Ultras.
They have been heavily implicated in confronting the police during recent political protests, our correspondent adds. There is speculation that the security forces may have had an interest in taking on al-Ahly supporters.
Wednesday’s violence broke out at the end of the match, which, unusually, Port Said club al-Masry won 3-1.
Witnesses said the atmosphere had been tense throughout the match – since an al-Ahly fan raised a banner insulting supporters of the home team.
As the match ended, their fans flooded onto the pitch attacking al-Ahly players and fans.
A small group of riot police tried to protect the players, but were overwhelmed.
Part of the stadium was set on fire.
According to officials, most of the deaths were caused by concussions, deep cuts to the heads and suffocation from the stampede.
“This is not football. This is a war and people are dying in front of us,” al-Ahly player Mohamed Abo Treika said.
“I cannot believe these things happened randomly, I don’t think so, it was arranged,” said Al-Ahly official Hanan Zeini.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood – which has emerged as Egypt’s biggest party in recent elections – blamed supporters of ousted President Hosni Mubarak for the violence.
“The events in Port Said are planned and are a message from the remnants of the former regime,” Muslim Brotherhood lawmaker Essam al-Erian said.
He went on by saying that the army and police wanted to silence critics demanding an end to the state of emergency in the country.
In Cairo, another match was halted by the referee after news of the Port Said violence.
It prompted fans to set parts of the stadium on fire, though no casualties were reported and the fire was quickly extinguished.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter issued a statement, expressing his shock over the Port Said incident.
“This is a black day for football. Such a catastrophic situation is unimaginable and should not happen,” he said.
Recordings of the conversations between Air Force One and the White House communications office immediately after President John F. Kennedy assassination were made public this week.
One of the calls was between a White House radio operator who had to inform the Secretary of State that the President had been killed and that there was a new leader of the United States.
Another one was recorded between Vicepresident Lyndon Johnson and JFK’s mother was made by on board Air Force One just minutes after he was sworn in. The call reveals how he and his wife Lady Bird tried to console the Kennedy matriarch who was on the ground.
“I wish to God there was something that I could do and I wanted to tell you that we were grieving with you,” LBJ is recorded saying to Rose Kennedy.
“Thanks a mill- thank you very much, thank you very much. I know, I know you loved Jack, and he loved you,” Rose Kennedy responded.
All calls made on presidential plane are put through by a White House switchboard operator, which has a system in place to automatically tape the calls.
Mrs. Johnson is also recorded on the tapes, which captured the activity on the flight from Dallas, Texas to Washington on November 22, 1963, though part of her comments are cut off my an interjection by Rose Kennedy.
“Mrs. Kennedy, we feel like we just had-“Mrs. Johnson said.
“Yes, alright,” Mrs. Kennedy interjected.
“We are glad that the nation had your son as long as it did,” Mrs. Johnson continued.
“Yes, well thank you, Lady Bird. Thank you very much, goodbye!” Rose Kennedy said quickly.
Recordings of the conversations between Air Force One and the White House communications office immediately after President John F. Kennedy assassination were made public this week
The Johnsons called Rose Kennedy at home at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, about 30 minutes after they took off from Dallas’ Love Field Airport.
While the conversation was extremely brief, the plane ride was a busy one as President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in just minutes before the flight took off.
In the air, LBJ was preparing the speech he was going to give once the plane landed just over two hours later.
Conspiracy theorists have been known to obsess over every detail surrounding the assassination of JFK, and are likely going to find fault with the fact that the 42 minutes of tape are only just being released now.
The tapes were found after the death of JFK’s top military aide Army General Chester “Ted” Clifton Jr., when his family found the recordings.
They sold his copy to a historical documents dealer, who then gave a copy to the National Archives.
Also included in the tapes is the moment when a White House operator tell the news to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who was on a flight headed to Japan with several other cabinet members at the time.
“Kennedy apparently shot in the head,” said the unidentified radio operator.
“He fell face down in back seat of his car, blood was on his head, Mrs. Kennedy cried <<Oh no>> and tried to hold up his head.”
Another frantic notification call was included on the newly-released tape, this time of a military aide trying to look for his superior, General Curtis LeMay, who was often at odds with JFK.
General Curtis LeMay’s assistant called the White House call center and wanted desperately to be connected to his boss.
“General LeMay is in a C 140. … He’s inbound. His code name is Grandson. And I wanna talk to him. … If you can’t work him now, it’s gonna be too late, because he’ll be on the ground in a half-hour,” the aide said.
The urgency in the aide’s call will likely prompt some sinister speculation, though it is also easy to assume that he simply wanted to get the news of the assassination to his boss quickly.
The tapes confirm that, like Secretary of State Dean Rusk and several other cabinet members, Curtis LeMay was on various flights at the time.
The tapes of the calls from Air Force One come shortly after the Kennedy Library released some of the recordings from JFK’s last days in office.
While speaking to an aide three days before his death, then-President John F. Kennedy unknowingly refers to the day which would end up being his funeral as “a tough day”.
The conversation arises while his aides are attempting to sort out his schedule, which was expected to be very busy when he returned from his Dallas trip.
One of the meetings they were trying to schedule was with General Nasution of Indonesia.
“I will see him, when is here here? Monday?,” JFK says.
A staffer responds: “Monday and Tuesday.”
“Well that’s a tough day,” JFK remarks.
“It’s a hell of a day Mr. President. He’ll be coming back here though, I understand on Friday because I offered to entertain at dinner.”
The tapes also revealed JFK’s thoughts on the nearing 1964 election, a tender moment with his children, and conflicting reports about the ongoing operation in Vietnam.
At least 73 supporters have been killed in clashes between rival fans following a football match in the Egyptian city of Port Said.
The supporters have been killed when fans invaded the pitch after a match between top-tier clubs Masry and al-Ahly on Wednesday.
It is feared the death toll could rise as about 1,000 people have been injured.
It is the biggest disaster in the country’s football history, said the Egyptian deputy health minister.
“This is unfortunate and deeply saddening,” Hesham Sheiha told state television.
Some of the dead were security officers, the Associated Press news agency quoted a morgue official as saying.
It appears some fans had taken knives into the stadium.
The lack of the usual level of security in the stadium might have contributed to the clashes.
At least 73 supporters have been killed in clashes between rival fans following a football match in the Egyptian city of Port Said
Police in Egypt have been keeping a much lower profile since last year’s popular protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak from power.
Egyptian fans are notoriously violent, particularly supporters of al-Ahly known as the Ultras.
They have been heavily implicated in the political confrontations recently, our correspondent adds.
Wednesday’s violence broke out at the end of the match, which, unusually, Port Said side Masry won 3-1.
As match ended, their fans flooded onto the pitch attacking Ahly players and fans.
A small group of riot police tried to protect the players, but were overwhelmed.
Part of the stadium was set on fire.
Helicopters are being sent to Port Said to transport injured fans.
“This is not football. This is a war and people are dying in front of us,” al-Ahly player Mohamed Abo Treika said.
All premier-league matches have been cancelled and the newly-elected Egyptian parliament is to hold an emergency session on Thursday, state TV has announced.
A research team from Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, suggests that women who take certain ulcer drugs have a small increased risk of hip fractures in later life, particularly if they smoke.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, found a link between long-term use of proton pump inhibitors and bone fractures in smokers.
Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are used to treat heartburn, reflux and ulcers.
The research tracked almost 80,000 nurses in the US aged between 30 and 55.
They were followed up in later life to see how many had developed hip fractures after the menopause.
A research team from Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, suggests that women who take certain ulcer drugs have a small increased risk of hip fractures in later life, particularly if they smoke
The researchers found that smokers or ex-smokers taking proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) had a 50% increased risk of hip fracture compared with women not taking the medication.
The experts wrote in the British Medical Journal: “Chronic use of PPIs is associated with increased risk of hip fracture, particularly among women with a history of smoking.”
Commenting on the study, Dr. John Stevenson, who sits on the medical advisory council of the British Menopause Society, said it had been suspected for some years that proton pump inhibitors increased the risk of hip fracture.
“This large study confirms that suspicion. However, the absolute risk is small, with the drugs causing an additional five hip fractures per 10,000 women per year.
“Women should not be put off using proton pump inhibitors if they are needed, but these results provide yet another reason not to smoke.”
About one million packets of Pfizer contraceptive pills are being recalled in the US, as they might not prevent pregnancy.
The pharmaceutical company Pfizer said a “packaging error” meant the doses were not correct.
Pfizer said the tablets did not pose any health dangers, but there was a risk of “unintended pregnancy”.
The company is advising women affected to use non-hormonal forms of contraception immediately.
About one million packets of Pfizer contraceptive pills are being recalled in the US, as they might not prevent pregnancy
Fourteen lots of Lo/Ovral-28 tablets and 14 lots of Norgestrel and ethinyl estradiol tablets have been recalled. The lot numbers have been published on Pfizer’s website.
Throughout the month women would take 21 tablets containing active ingredients and seven which were inert.
The correct dose is essential for preventing pregnancy, however, the drug maker said: “The daily regimen for these oral contraceptives may be incorrect and could leave women without adequate contraception, and at risk for unintended pregnancy.”
Women affected have been advised to tell their doctor and return the tablets to their pharmacy.
Exercise has beneficial influence on over 180 genes, including those that repair DNA and suppress tumor growth, and this might lead to prevention or delay of prostate cancer progression, a recent study shows.
The findings of the new study will be presented on Friday at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in San Francisco. These data should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
“There are many reasons to exercise. Here’s yet another great reason to exercise and it may offer a prostate cancer-specific benefit,” said June Chan, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, and urology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Prostate genes from 70 men with low-risk prostate cancer were compared to normal prostate genes from 70 men by Professor Chan’s team.
Researchers discovered a great difference between the expression of the genes in men who did sustained and moderate to hard activities, such as jogging, tennis or swimming for at least three hours a week, compared with genes in men who did less exercise.
Tumor-suppressor genes associated with breast cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2 and the genes involved in DNA repair were highly expressed in men who did brisk exercise.
An energetic exercise results in benefits for breast cancer and colon cancer patients too.
However, the study was small and the results need to be confirmed by a larger survey on men who are undergoing active surveillance, and men with recurrence of their prostate cancer.
“If confirmed, the results suggest that vigorous physical activity might offer protection against prostate cancer progression,” Professor Chan said.
“This is an interesting, hypothesis-generating study that will require further testing and perhaps opens doors to exercise as part of future prostate cancer treatment, but it’s too soon to tell,” said Dr. Anthony D’Amico, chief of radiation oncology, prostate cancer expert from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Walking in a brisk pace or running several times a week might prevent the death from prostate cancer.
The beneficial effect of exercise in prostate cancer progression was emphasized by another two studies published last year.
Men with prostate cancer who did 3 or more hours a week of brisk exercises had a 60% lower risk of death from prostate cancer, and around 50% lower risk of death from all illnesses, in contrast with the men who did less than one hour per week of energetic physical activity. These results were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in February 2011.
Also the men who walked at 3 miles (4.82 km) per hour or faster had about half the risk of cancer progression of the men who walked at two miles (3.21 km) per hour or less, showed a study published in Cancer Research in the May 2011.
“These studies suggested that some form of cardiopulmonary exercise might offer specific benefits for prostate cancer. However, the molecular mechanisms by which physical activity exerts this effect on prostate cancer remains unknown, ” Professor Chan said.
Advertising Standards Authority(ASA) in UK has announced a ban on the magazine advertisement for L’Oreal’s Revitalift Repair 10 in which Rachel Weisz appeared with perfectly smooth skin.
In fact, the image of the 41-year-old Oscar winning actress, who married Daniel Craig last year, had been digitally enhanced or airbrushed to even out her complexion.
ASA ruled the image “misleadingly exaggerated” the performance of the product.
The decision has been welcomed by Lib-Dem MP Jo Swinson, who is campaigning against the use of airbrushing and unrealistic images of beauty in advertising.
Rachel Weisz is not the first renowned beauty to have her image digitally enhanced to give a false impression of the benefits of using popular beauty products.
An advertisement for an Olay anti-aging product featuring Twiggy was banned in 2009. Last year L’Oreal advertisements featuring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington were banned on the grounds they were misleading.
MP Jo Swinson, who is co-founder of the Campaign for Body Confidence, said: “The beauty and advertising industries need to stop ripping off consumers with dishonest images.
“The banning of this advert, along with the previous ASA rulings banning heavily retouched ads featuring Twiggy, Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington, should act as a wake-up call.
“Thankfully the advertising regulator has again acknowledged the fraudulent nature of excessive retouching.”
ASA banned magazine advertisement for L’Oreal’s Revitalift Repair 10 in which Rachel Weisz appeared with perfectly smooth skin
Jo Swinson said there was sound medical evidence that faked images cause harm.
“The Royal College of Psychiatrists has spoken out about the harmful influence of the media on body image and has highlighted the airbrushing and digital enhancement used to portray physical perfection as an area of concern,” she said.
“There needs to be much more diversity in advertising – different skin colors, body shapes, sizes and ages. Studies show that people want to see more authenticity from brands. Images can be aspirational without being faked.”
The fact that the image has been digitally manipulated is at odds with the actress’s stated view that performers should do away with artificial help to prolong their youth. It is not known whether she approved the changes.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar magazine in 2009, Jo Swinson called for a ban on Botox for actors, saying: “Acting is all about expression; why would you want to iron out a frown?”
In the same interview Jo Swinson mentioned that English women were much less worried about their physical appearance than those in the US.
The marketing for L’Oreal’s Revitalift range claims it makes the skin feel firmer, toned, and suppler. The ASA did not challenge these, however it was unhappy that the actress’s image was used to substantiate the claims that the “Skin looks smoother” and “Complexion looks more even”.
L’Oreal defended the way the image of the actress had been manipulated.
The company said: “The ad sought to represent Rachel Weisz as favorably as possible and therefore every effort had gone into ensuring the most flattering set-up.
“Rachel Weisz had been professionally styled and made-up and then lit and shot by a professional photographer in a studio setting.
“The photo was shot using a lot of light in order to make the picture more flattering and to reduce the appearance of imperfections in the ensuing image by giving the image a soft focus and lower resolution.”
L’Oreal admitted the image had been subsequently retouched.
The ASA said: “We considered that the image had been altered in a way that substantially changed her complexion to make it appear smoother and more even.
“We therefore concluded that the image in the ad misleadingly exaggerated the performance of the product.”
Manrico Giampedroni was the last person to be rescued from Italy’s shipwrecked Costa Concordia after 36 hours and he said he pounded on a wall with a frying pan to alert rescuers.
Manrico Giampedroni, the ship’s purser, waited 36 hours before being rescued from the belly of the ship.
The man has been released from hospital in Grosseto, Italy, where he was treated for injuries.
Manrico Giampedroni, 57, described falling through a door into the ship’s restaurant as he tried to save passengers.
“I remember ending up in the Milan restaurant… A door opened suddenly and I fell in,” he said, describing being trapped in the room as tables and chairs moved in the water.
“To get the rescuers’ attention, I used a pan to make some noise. From the windows, I could see the rescue teams and I tried to scream. When I saw the first fireman I embraced him. Those guys were incredible. In three hours I was out of there.”
Manrico Giampedroni was the last person to be rescued from Italy's shipwrecked Costa Concordia after 36 hours and he said he pounded on a wall with a frying pan to alert rescuers
The Costa Concordia ran aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio on 13 January, when the captain deviated from his planned route and struck a reef, creating a huge gash.
Some 4,200 passengers and crew were on board when the vessel capsized. A total of 17 bodies have been recovered and 16 others are missing but presumed dead.
On Tuesday civil protection officials called off the search for the missing in the submerged part of the ship because of safety concerns.
But they added that the search would continue where possible in the sections of the ship above water, in the waters nearby and along the coastline.
The ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest while his actions are being investigated.
Francesco Schettino is accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning ship before all passengers were evacuated. He denies the allegations.
Manrico Giampedroni said his experience had not put him off returning to work on cruise liners.
“As soon as I can, what I want more than anything, is to go back to work for Costa Cruises,” Manrico Giampedroni said.
The incredible pictures of an isolated Amazon tribe are the most detailed ever recorded of a previously uncontacted Indian tribe in the remote forests of Peru.
The pictures are taken in Manú National Park, south-eastern Peru, and show the daily life of a family from the Mashco-Piro tribe.
Campaign group Survival International has released images of the Mashco-Piro tribe, which lives near the Manú National Park.
The Mashco-Piro tribe is known to inhabit the park, but sightings of them have increased in recent months.
The tribe has had little if any peaceful contact with the outside world.
The Mashco-Piro is one of around just 100 known uncontacted tribes. They live a traditional life in the Peruvian forests and have little or no outside contact with the world.
Families within the tribes fashion tools from wood and other materials, including the teeth of animals.
In these pictures, the adults and children are wearing decorative loops around their wrists, knees and ankles – some of which can be used to carry tools.
The adult female is also wearing a form of skirt which is believed to be made from pulped tree bark fibres.
The danger of attempting to establish contact with tribes who choose to remain isolated has recently been confirmed after the death of an indigenous Matsigenka man.
Survival blames the change on gas and oil projects and illegal logging in the area, pushing the tribe into new lands.
The message that the Mashco-Piro tribe seems to be sending, however, is that they want to be left alone.
The Mashco-Piro is one of around just 100 known uncontacted tribes and its members live a traditional life in the Peruvian forests and have little or no outside contact with the world
“There’s been increasing conflict and violence against outsiders that are on their ancestral land,” Survival’s Peru campaigner Rebecca Spooner said.
That violence has included arrows being fired at tourists in passing boats, and a warning arrow – with no tip – being recently fired at a Manú park ranger.
Most recently, members of the tribe fired a lethal arrow at Nicolas “Shaco” Flores – a member of a different tribe who had been attempting to make formal contact with the Mashco-Piro for some two decades.
Nicolás “Shaco” Flores was shot in the heart by an arrow near the national park as he was leaving food and gifts for a small group of Mashco-Piro Indians – something he had been doing for the last 20 years.
An account of the attack by anthropologist Glenn Shepard underlines the fact that the tribe is fearful of forming ties with the world around them.
Glenn Shephard told Anthropology News: “Shaco’s death is a tragedy: he was kind, courageous and a knowledgeable man.
“He believed he was helping the Mashco-Piro. And yet in this tragic incident, the Mashco-Piro has once again expressed their adamant desire to be left alone.”
Clan members have also been blamed for a bow-and-arrow attack which left a forest ranger wounded in October.
One of the images was taken by a bird watcher in August. The other two were taken by Spanish archaeologist Diego Cortijo on November 16, six days before Flores was killed.
Diego Cortijo, a member of the Spanish Geographical Society, was visiting Nicolás “Shaco” Flores on an expedition in search of petroglyphs and said clan members appeared across the river, calling for him by name.
Nicolás “Shaco” Flores was able to communicate with the Mashco-Piro because he spoke two related dialects and had provided the clan with machetes and cooking pots.
The Mashco-Piro tribe is believed to number in the hundreds and lives in the park bordering Diamante, a community of around 200 people.
The clan that appeared along the river is believed to number around 60, including some 25 adults, according to Carlos Soria – a professor at Lima’s Catholic University.
Diego Cortijo said: “It seemed like they wanted to draw a bit of attention, which is a bit strange because I know that on other occasions they had attacked people.
“It seemed they didn’t want us to go near them, but I also know that the only thing that they wanted was machetes and cooking pots.”
It was at a respectful distance of 120 m that Diego Cortijo snapped pictures of the tribe using a telescope mounted on a camera, capturing the most detailed images ever taken of such “uncontacted” tribes, many of whom are detailed at a site of the same name.
Carlos Soria said: “The place where they are seen is one of heavy transit of river cargo and tourist passage, and so the potential for more violent encounters remains high.”
The Mashco-Piro are one of around 15 uncontacted tribes in Peru which together amount to an estimated 15,000 people living in jungles east of the Andes.
State authorities issued a directive in August barring boats from going ashore in the area.
But enforcing it has been difficult as there are few trained and willing local officials.
Rebecca Spooner suggested that the evident increase in violence could be abated by preserving the local tribes’ traditional lands.
“We’re asking the Peruvian government to do more to protect that land, which should be set aside for the uncontacted groups,” she said.
Researchers from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Columbia University Medical Center say that drinking just a single can of diet fizzy drink every day can increase the risk of a heart attack or stroke.
The study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, has suggested that just a couple of daily cans of the supposedly “healthier” carbonated drinks, such as lemonade or cola, can raise the risk of liver damage, as well as potentially causing diabetes and heart damage.
Researchers claim those who drink diet soft drinks are 43% more likely to have heart attacks, vascular disease or strokes than those who have none.
Previous analysis of soft drinks has shown that the soft drinks, which have a substantial amount of artificial sweeteners, can cause liver disease similar to that caused by chronic alcoholism.
“Diet” fizzy drinks are marketed as a healthy option in comparison to “full fat” alternatives as they have fewer calories.
Researchers claim those who drink diet soft drinks are 43 percent more likely to have heart attacks, vascular disease or strokes than those who have none
But their genuine health benefits remain unclear, with some research suggesting they trigger people’s appetites even more.
The U.S. research team studied the soft drink and diet soft drink consumption of 2,564 study participants over a 10-year period – along with their risk of stroke, heart attack and vascular death.
The researchers found those who drank diet soft drinks every day were 43% more likely to have suffered a “vascular” or blood vessel event than those who drank none, after allowing for pre-existing vascular conditions such as metabolic syndrome, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Dr. Hannah Gardener said: “Our results suggest a potential association between daily diet soft drink consumption and vascular outcomes.
“The mechanisms by which soft drinks may affect vascular events are unclear.”
She added, however, that the mechanisms by which soft drinks may affect “vascular events” are not clear, and that more research was needed into the subject before significant conclusions could be drawn about the health consequences of soft drink consumption.
Diet soft drinks often contain artificial sweeteners like aspartame, which has been linked to other health problems such as cancer.
Irish artist Frank Buckley decided to express his anger about the property boom and bust by building a house from more than a billion Euros of decommissioned notes.
In the lobby of the Glass House, an empty office building that stands as a relic to Ireland’s cataclysmic property bust, money is changing hands between an old woman and a 15-year-old girl.
“Go off there and get a couple of sweets for yourself,” says the woman, as she hands over a block of €50,000 ($65,000) notes.
“I should have brought my handbag in here, I could have made a fortune,” she jokes.
The money, which forms a pulped brick of shredded notes, is part of an art installation – and home – built by unemployed Dublin-based artist Frank Buckley.
Frank Buckley has invited strangers into the space in the hope that it will inspire debate on the state of Irish national debt and the meaning of currency.
Like many of his friends and acquaintances, Frank Buckley fell victim to Ireland’s economic crisis. At the height of the property boom, he bought a house on cheap credit.
Irish artist Frank Buckley decided to express his anger about the property boom and bust by building a house from more than a billion Euros of decommissioned notes
The artist wanted a place where he and his two children could live together with his wife, who had recently moved from Zimbabwe with four children of her own.
“I borrowed all that money, which was very much encouraged,” Frank Buckley says.
“I take responsibility for it but it was very easy for me to do.
“We were in this bubble, confidence was high, we were untouchable and within the space of two or three weeks it just took its toll.”
Frank Buckley had no fixed income and within months of buying the house found he couldn’t meet his mortgage repayments.
Under the financial strain, his marriage broke down and he moved into the shed at the back of the house as bailiffs came to take his furniture away.
His friends and acquaintances struggled too and a close friend, a property developer who had lost everything he owned, took his own life.
Staring at a stack of decommissioned notes he had acquired from a friend to use as confetti at his wedding ceremony he started questioning its real value.
“I thought, <<God, this is what this paper is doing to us?>>” he says.
Frank Buckley decided to create art that would bring the absurdity of the Irish economic situation to light and made paintings from the shredded notes and coins which he exhibited towards the end of last year.
Then the idea came to him to build a house.
“I was sitting outside the Glass House building waiting for a friend of mine to come out and I thought, <<Wouldn’t this be fantastic, to do a structure inside the building with the shredded notes?>>” he says.
The artist rang the building’s agent who had seen a review of his most recent exhibition and forwarded him to the owner who was immediately keen.
The mint agreed to supply him with more bricks of decommissioned notes. There was a vast amount of paperwork involved but mint officials were very accommodating and took care of it.
They have given the money to Frank Buckley on a loan basis and will dispose of it when he is finished.
Frank Buckley had never built a house before. “I got a hammer and nails and my brother brought down a generator and plugged it in. I had a light and I started from there,” he says.
The house is constructed from sheets of plywood and frames donated by a local DIY shop.
The outside walls are built from stacked bricks while inside, the shredded Euros are used to plaster the walls and carpet the floor. It has a double glazed window, a high security front door and a toilet.
Frank Buckley now lives in the house during the week, returning to the shed in his family’s back garden at the weekend.
Since he opened it to the public on Monday the house has received more than 300 visitors and he has been overwhelmed by the positive reaction to it.
But despite the success of the installation he is still struck daily by the poignancy of the Irish economic situation and recalls the reaction of his young visitor as she handled the block of useless notes.
“The girl said, <<If I could use this as money, I would get out of this country.>>” Frank Buckley says.
Scientists at University of California Berkeley have demonstrated a striking method to reconstruct words, based on the brain waves of patients thinking of those words.
The method, reported in PLoS Biology, relies on gathering electrical signals directly from patients’ brains.
Based on signals from listening patients, a computer model was used to reconstruct the sounds of words that patients were thinking of.
The technique may in future help comatose and locked-in patients communicate.
Several approaches have in recent years suggested that scientists are closing in on methods to tap into our very thoughts.
In a 2011 study, participants with electrodes in direct brain contact were able to move a cursor on a screen by simply thinking of vowel sounds.
A technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to track blood flow in the brain has shown promise for identifying which words or ideas someone may be thinking about.
By studying patterns of blood flow related to particular images, Jack Gallant’s group at the University of California Berkeley showed in September that patterns can be used to guess images being thought of – recreating “movies in the mind”.
Now, Brian Pasley of the University of California Berkeley and a team of colleagues have taken that “stimulus reconstruction” work one step further.
“This is inspired by a lot of Jack’s work,” Dr. Brian Pasley said. “One question was… how far can we get in the auditory system by taking a very similar modelling approach?”
The team focused on an area of the brain called the superior temporal gyrus, or STG.
This broad region is not just part of the hearing apparatus but one of the “higher-order” brain regions that help us make linguistic sense of the sounds we hear.
The team monitored the STG brain waves of 15 patients who were undergoing surgery for epilepsy or tumours, while playing audio of a number of different speakers reciting words and sentences.
The trick is disentangling the chaos of electrical signals that the audio brought about in the patients’ STG regions.
To do that, the team employed a computer model that helped map out which parts of the brain were firing at what rate, when different frequencies of sound were played.
With the help of that model, when patients were presented with words to think about, the team was able to guess which word the participants had chosen.
The scientists at UC Berkeley were even able to reconstruct some of the words, turning the brain waves they saw back into sound on the basis of what the computer model suggested those waves meant
The scientists were even able to reconstruct some of the words, turning the brain waves they saw back into sound on the basis of what the computer model suggested those waves meant.
“There’s a two-pronged nature of this work – one is the basic science of how the brain does things,” said Robert Knight of UC Berkeley, senior author of the study.
“From a prosthetic view, people who have speech disorders… could possibly have a prosthetic device when they can’t speak but they can imagine what they want to say,” Prof. Robert Knight explained.
“The patients are giving us this data, so it’d be nice if we gave something back to them eventually.”
The authors caution that the thought-translation idea is still to be vastly improved before such prosthetics become a reality.
But the benefits of such devices could be transformative, said Mindy McCumber, a speech therapist at Florida Hospital in Orlando.
“As a therapist, I can see potential implications for the restoration of communication for a wide range of disorders,” she said.
“The development of direct neuro-control over virtual or physical devices would revolutionise ‘augmentative and alternative communication’, and improve quality of life immensely for those who suffer from impaired communication skills or means.”
Kristen Bell had a special guest at her last summer birthday party, her favorite animal, a sloth.
The actress appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” with home video footage from her 31st birthday party, disclosing an unusual and cute side of her.
“Tomorrow at 4pm you can see the sensitive madness that is the inside of my brain,” she had tweeted the day before.
She told Ellen that her fiancé, Dax Shepard, told her she would receive for turning 31 a present “no one else will ever get in their life time“.
Then, when the day came she could not control her emotions. Dax Shepard arranged for a sloth to visit her on her birthday.
“The day of my birthday, we’re sitting in the living room and I hear a knock at the door. He says, ‘Your present is here. Why don’t you go grab the dogs and go in the back room?’… I had no context for knowing what it was, but I grabbed the dogs and walk into the back room of the house and I was immediately overcome and I thought, ‘There’s a sloth near. There’s a sloth here; it’s close; it’s going to happen,'” Kristen Bell said.
“And I didn’t know how to process that, because my entire life had been waiting for this moment,” she added.
It was all too much and she curled up on her bed and wept.
“I was sitting on my bed, knowing that my sloth is here, and I start to have a full-fledged panic attack. I don’t know how to compete with all this emotion so I just kind of crawl up on the bed and I’m crying so hard,” she said.
” Dax knocks on the door and he has a video camera and he’s like, “Surprise! I want you to come out into the … are you alright?”
“And he sees me basically fetal on the bed.”
“You’re supposed to see the sloth, and I’m supposed to film you but you haven’t even seen it yet,” Dax said to her.
“I knew it, I don’t know why. I knew it. I’m so excited,” she replied.
"I've been obsessed with sloths for as long as I can remember. They must be my spirit animal or something," said Kristen Bell.
Then Kristen Bell said she had much fun and joy meeting the jolly mammal, a female sloth.
Sloths are relatives of armadillos and anteaters.
“I was having a birthday party later that evening and they had set up a little habitat. Its a little jungle gym and she just hung out on the jungle gym for like three hours,” she said.
Sloths are Kristen’s great passion. “I’ve been obsessed with sloths for as long as I can remember. They must be my spirit animal or something. There’s nothing cuter than a baby sloth … OK, maybe a slow Loris. Maybe. On a good day, ” she told The Insider earlier in January 2012.
Kristen Bell, born on July 18, 1980, made her Broadway debut in 2001 as Becky Thatcher in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. She appeared in a lead role in the Spartan. She is known for the role in television series Veronica Mars (2004-2007). She has received a Satellite Award and Saturn Award.
At least 60 deaths are reported in eastern and central Europe due to freezing conditions caused by a cold snap over the last days.
Low temperatures, forcing some countries to deploy the army and set up emergency shelters, is set to continue to Friday, according to forecasters.
Most of the people – at least 30, mostly homeless – have died in Ukraine. Deaths have also been reported in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, among others.
Temperatures plunged to -20C (-4F) on Monday.
Health officials in Ukraine say nearly 24,000 people have sought refuge in some 1,590 shelters over the past three days.
More than 600 people have sought treatment for frostbite and hypothermia during this time.
The authorities say they are planning to set up 150 more centres, as heavy snow was forecast in the region on Wednesday.
The death toll in Poland over recent days rose to 21 on Tuesday. The Interior Affairs Ministry said some had suffered carbon monoxide poisoning from faulty heaters, according to the Associated Press news agency.
Poland had been having a relatively mild winter, until temperatures dropped last Friday from just below freezing to -26C (-15F).
Malgorzata Wozniak of Poland’s interior ministry said elderly people and the homeless were among the dead, AP reports.
Troops in Romania were deployed last week to rescue those stranded in cars by blizzards
Polish forecasters have warned that temperatures could fall further during the week, to below -20C during the day and -30C at night.
At least eight people have died in Romania and five in Bulgaria.
Troops in Romania were deployed last week to rescue those stranded in cars by blizzards.
In Serbia, police reported that the snowy conditions had led to the deaths of a woman and two elderly men. Two other men, in their 70’s, are believed to be missing in the south of the country.
Reports say there were also deaths in Lithuania, Bosnia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Elisabetta Canalis, George Clooney’s ex-girlfriend, has confirmed she has started a surprise romance with Jackass daredevil Steve-O.
Elisabetta Canalis, 33, confirmed the rumors as she leaned in for a kiss with Steve-O, 37, after having lunch together in Hollywood yesterday.
A day earlier they seemed coy and would not answer questions about their relationship status in a video posted on TMZ.
But Elisabetta Canalis and Steve-O certainly weren’t shy about showing their affection yesterday.
Elisabetta Canalis, who was dressed in a white maxi-dress, sat on Steve-O’s lap and at one point grabbed his backside.
Insiders say Steve-O’s sense of humor won her over.
“Steve makes Elisabetta laugh, and that’s her weakness,” a source tells Radar Online.
“That was her favorite thing about George Clooney-he was always cracking her up and playing practical jokes on her.”
The source adds: “Ever since Steve-O got sober, he’s very sensitive and introspective, so Elisabetta is getting the best of both worlds.
“They’re not serious yet, but they are definitely hanging out, and hooking up. They are trying to stay under the radar, so they mostly hang out at her place and watch movies and order in. But they also hit some low key restaurants around her neighborhood too.”
Elisabetta Canalis, 33, confirmed the rumors as she leaned in for a kiss with Steve-O, 37, after having lunch together in Hollywood yesterday
For nearly two years the Italian TV star Elisabetta Canalis was in the enviable position of dating one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors, George Clooney, 50.
But in June 2011, Elisabetta Canalis and George Clooney announced they had split. George Clooney is now dating former wrestler Stacey Keibler.
Steve-O – the London-born former stuntman whose real name is Steven Glover – is well-known for being part of the outrageous Jackass cast that made a name for themselves on MTV.
In March 2008, Steve-O was placed on 72-hour psychiatric hold after friends worried that he was a danger to himself.
His controversial stunts include lighting his head on fire, swallowing live goldfish and trying to vomit them up alive.
Both Elisabetta Canalis and Steve-O have competed in the US TV series, Dancing With the Stars.
Kim Kardashian posted a series of photos to her Twitter account to show her new hairdo after dyeing her locks a lighter shade.
Kim Kardashian, 31, was shooting a campaign for the Kardashian Kollection lingerie line, and she made sure she was the perfect advert for the range as she posed for her Twitter snaps in nothing but a coral colored bra.
The reality star amped up the sex appeal by posting a photo of herself wearing just the underwear, with the caption: “Photo shoot fresh! All about corals for spring swimwear.”
Kim Kardashian then sent an almost identical but slightly less revealing snap of herself in an untied fluffy white bathrobe, with her hair partially covering her cleavage.
The second shot was accompanied by the words: “Last shot of the day! On set of our Kardashian Kollection for Sears shoot!”
But while Kim Kardashian’s Twitter followers would have been focused on her ample curves, the businesswoman was more interested in her new hair color.
Kim Kardashian was shooting a campaign for the Kardashian Kollection lingerie line and she posed for her Twitter snaps in nothing but a coral colored bra
Shortly after the photo shoot, Kim Kardashian posted yet another photo to the social networking site.
Kim Kardashian’s assets were again clear for all to see, but the star simply asked her fans what they thought about her new hue.
The reality star wrote: “I dyed my hair lighter yesterday! I’m loving it! New hair color=new beginnings for me You like?”
But it hasn’t all been fun and photo shoots for Kim Kardashian after the star recently had to deal with a trespasser on her property, it has been reported.
According to TMZ, a stranger appeared at her Beverly Hills mansion over the weekend with several suitcases and requested to stay in her home.
TMZ claims it was told by a source that police officers were called to the house and the man in question told them he had a job interview lined up with the reality star.
The man was reportedly given a trespassing warning by the police, who then allegedly drove him back to the airport so that he could book a flight home.
Kim Kardashian was also using her famous curves to promote her latest venture earlier in the day, after she posed topless with her sisters Khloe and Kourtney in a campaign for their denim line.
The three sisters can be seen intertwined while wearing nothing but their range of jeans, another strand of the Kardashian Kollection for Sears.
Kim Kardashian was also using her famous curves to promote her latest venture earlier in the day, after she posed topless with her sisters Khloe and Kourtney in a campaign for their denim line
Kim Kardashian posted the racy image to her website and wrote: “Kourt, Khloe and I decided to go natural for our Kardashian Kollection denim shoot with Nick Saglimbeni and pose in only our favorite jeans! What do you think of the pic? I think it’s such a beautiful shot and Khloe and Kourtney both look so stunning! Xo”
They unveiled a campaign for the line last week, which saw each of them sporting a pair of jeans named after them, along with identical fitted white shirts.
However the reality stars then decided to generate further buzz for their denim line by releasing the new image, which shows them protecting their modesty with their arms as they pout seductively for the camera.
Insurance companies tend to apply greater prices on the car insurance policies for low-income people, a study published by the Consumer Federation of America shows.
“Lower-Income Households and the Auto Insurance Marketplace: Challenges and Opportunities” is the report wrote by Stephen Brobeck and J. Robert Hunter. They reviewed the literature from academics and regulators and added new findings from their research.
The cost of car insurance can be a heavier burden than the cost of the car, in certain cases. And this leads to economic implications, the authors say.
“There is much academic research that clearly shows that if you have ready access to a car, it dramatically improves your economic opportunities. The release of the report is just the beginning of our initiative to try to inform the country, particularly state regulators, who can do a great deal to mitigate the problems,” said Stephen Brobeck, executive director at the Consumer Federation of America.
The legislation prevents insurance companies to establish premiums on income base, but they have the possibility to take in consideration the driver’s education, occupation, home address, and credit rating.
According to the Consumer Federation of America, these data can replace the information on income and until now there were no studies on what impact has this combination of factors on the poor persons.
“We think education, occupation and credit scores are surrogates for income. Occupations that have no driving risk affiliated with them but do have lower incomes tend to pay more, so it raises serious questions,” said J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance at the group.
“In some areas, many responsible lower-income drivers are required to spend more than $1,000 a year for liability coverage that is often unfairly priced and provides no real insurance protection to them,” said Stephen Brobeck.
Around 14% of the car owners drive without insurance, according to an estimation made by the Insurance Research Council in 2007. In people with low or moderate income the rate is probably double, said J. Robert Hunter.
Car insurance premiums tend to be more expensive for poor people.
Car insurance cost represents a big part taken from the income for low-income workers, who regularly need to drive to work. As a consequence around 20% of car owners who earn $37,000 or less annually do not have car insurance, the authors say.
Generally homeowners pay less than persons who do not own their homes. People with low education, with less skilled occupations also have to pay more. For them premiums are 40% higher, according to a 2006 study cited in the report. The prices also rise when it comes to drivers with a flawed or a thin credit history, or to persons who had a coverage with lower limits on bodily injury.
The price of the insurance policy generally reflects the price of the car, but even a very used car, a jalopy can cost $700 to $1,000 per year, says the report. The median national cost is $835, but it weighs a lot for poor people.
The study also found that some insurers were charging more for policies with less coverage, which, they said, is likely to disproportionately affect lower-income households since they may be more likely to buy those policies.
“Some companies charge more for the basic limits for the state than they would for higher limits for the exact same driver. It’s like going into a store and saying, ‘I want a box of cereal,’ and the big box is much cheaper than the little box,” J. Robert Hunter said.
This kind of tendency also hurts poor people because they are more likely to buy the minimum coverage policies.
With only one exception, New Hampshire, car insurance is mandatory across the United States.
“The big problem is that mandatory coverage is so expensive, often costing over $1,000 in urban areas that it prevents them from buying a car,” said Stephen Brobeck.
The states have to ameliorate the access to low-cost car insurance, since California is the only state with a strong low-rate coverage program, the report says.
“The states are cracking down on the uninsured. If they are going to do that, they have a responsibility to ensure that lower income people can afford to drive,” said Stephen Brobeck.
The number of miles driven is considered a factor that diminishes the risk of accidents and it may reduce premiums, but it has an improper importance in the insurance industry’s classification system, says the report.
“Poor people, we know from the data, they spend a lot less on gas, which means they are driving less. So if insurers more fully reflected miles driven in pricing, it would lower the rate for poorer people,” said J. Robert Hunter.
In California, drivers who own a vehicle worth less than $20,000 and who have incomes of less than $27,000 to $55,000 (depending on family size) and who have driven at least three years with a clean record can qualify for minimal liability coverage at relatively low rates.
The annual premium for drivers in the program was $358, the report says. This also happens to be the highest premium the program charges in all of California. The average annual premium in Los Angeles was $802.
Also lowering the minimum amount of liability insurance that lower-income households are required to purchase was proposed by the authors.
J. Robert Hunter suggested to the Federal Insurance Office to collect more data regarding the car insurance cost for low-income persons.
Italian rescue teams have abandoned their search for bodies inside the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia after conditions underwater deteriorated.
“We have definitively stopped the underwater search inside the ship,” a spokesman for the fire brigade on Giglio island said.
Fifteen people are still missing after the ship ran aground off Italy on 13 January with the loss of 17 lives.
Work to recover the capsized vessel may take up to 10 months.
Italy’s civil protection agency, which has been overseeing rescue efforts, said it had contacted the families of the missing, and the foreign embassies involved, to explain its decision.
Emergency crews would continue to inspect the part of the ship that is above the water line and use specialist equipment to check whether there could be any corpses on the sea bed, it said.
Italian rescue teams have abandoned their search for bodies inside the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia after conditions underwater deteriorated
Divers have described tricky conditions inside the ship, with corridors cluttered with furniture and turbid waters.
Dives has been limited to a maximum of 50 minutes, making it difficult to penetrate far into the vessel.
Work to pump out more than 2,300 tons of fuel from the ship has been hampered by bad weather.
The operation to move the ship itself cannot safely begin until the fuel is removed.
The 114,500-ton Costa Concordia cruise ship ran aground on rocks with more than 4,200 people on board.
Costa Concordia was holed by a rock after being steered by its captain to within 150 metres (yards) of the tiny island of Giglio.
Captain Francesco Schettino is under house arrest in his home town of Meta di Sorrento, near Naples, while his actions are investigated.
Francesco Schettino is accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning ship before all passengers were evacuated. He denies the allegations.
Costa Crociere, which is part of the world’s largest cruise ship operator Carnival Group, has offered uninjured passengers 11,000 euros ($14,500) each in compensation, on condition that they drop any legal action.
However, a consumer group and two US law firms are filing a class-action lawsuit in the US, demanding at least $160,000 for each passenger on the ship.
Opera singer Camilla Williams, the first black woman to appear in a leading role with a major US opera company, has died in Indiana at 92.
Camilla Williams had been suffering from cancer, according to Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she became the first black professor of voice.
The opera singer made her debut in May 1946 in the title role of Madam Butterfly with the New York City Opera.
Camilla Williams also became a strong advocate for civil rights.
“It’s impossible to overstate how important that was for the music scene in New York, for African-American singers, and for American singers,” Paul F. Driscoll, the editor-in-chief of Opera News, told the Washington Post.
Opera singer Camilla Williams, the first black woman to appear in a leading role with a major US opera company, has died in Indiana at 92
Camilla Williams’ debut performance came nearly nine years before Marian Anderson became the first African-American singer to appear at New York’s more prestigious Metropolitan Opera.
A New York Times review of Camilla Williams at the time, said the singer displayed “a vividness and subtlety unmatched by any other artist who has assayed the part here in many a year”.
In 1947 Camilla Williams performed the role of Mimi in Puccini’s La Boheme and in 1948 she sang the title role of Verdi’s Aida.
In 1951 Camilla Williams sang the title female role in first complete recording of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
A lifetime member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Camilla Williams performed in her hometown of Danville, Virginia in 1963, to raise funds to free jailed civil rights demonstrators.
Camilla Williams also sang the national anthem before 200,000 people at the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, immediately before Martin Luther King gave his famous I Have a Dream speech.
In 1950, the opera singer married defense lawyer Charles Beavers, whose clients included civil rights leader Malcolm X.
After Charles Beavers’ death in 1970, Camilla Williams stepped away from opera in 1971 and began teaching before eventually retiring in 1997.
Her autobiography – “The Life of Camilla Williams, African American Classical Singer and Diva” – was published last year.
Dalisha Adams, a young mother from Brooklyn, has been arrested after she abandoned her two daughters aged just 3 and 5 on the street with only a few extra diapers.
Dalisha Adams, a 26-year-old security officer, was picked up by police on Sunday night after leaving her children in the cold near housing projects in Brooklyn around 3:00 p.m.
Two women came across the two girls and stayed with them until police arrived.
Though the two girls were bundled up warm wearing hooded down coats and Ugg boots, they seemed shaken up and very confused as to why they were abandoned near Bayview Housing Projects on Shore Parkway in Brooklyn, according to the New York Daily News.
The Bay View Houses are about a mile-and-a-half from the Breukelen Houses, where Dalisha Adams lives with her daughters and their 8-year-old sister, Dinasty, from another relationship, who was with relatives when the incident happened.
A neighbor of Dalisha Adams claims she often heard the mother screaming at her children.
The woman, who did not want to be identified, told the New York Daily News: “She was always yelling at the kids, <<Shut the f*** up>>.
“One day, I heard her curse out the little baby, “I’ll punch you in the f***ing face.”
The woman also said she heard more shouting on Sunday shortly before the girls were abandoned.
“A kid was crying. She was saying, <<Stop crying, shut the f*** up. I’m gonna get you out of here>>,” she said.
The two little girls aged just 3 and 5 have been abandoned by their mother on the street with only a few extra diapers
Other neighbors said the girls were always well dressed and clean but a resident of the housing project they lived at told the Daily News she would often shout and curse at them and pull on their arms.
The older daughter, who said her name was Domini, told the Daily News her younger sister was called Dioni and they lived in a blue house with flowers in front of it on 53rd street, but she did not know which borough of New York it was.
The girl also said her mother’s name was Dalisha and she drove a white car.
Five-year-old Domini told a photographer: “Mommy just left us on the sidewalk and drove away.”
The children showed no signs of physical abuse but were taken to Brookdale University Hospital for observation.
Just after 10:00 p.m. on Sunday night, police arrived at Dalisha Adams’ house and opened the door with a crow bar, but she was not at home.
Dalisha Adams was arrested after police matched the girls’ identity with photo records from Administration for Children’s Services, where the children are currently in custody.
The mother was charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a minor, police said.
Police were alerted to the abandoned girls by an elderly couple who found them standing at a busy intersection with the diapers in their arms as cars zoomed by them.
Dalisha Adams was arrested after police matched the girls' identity with photo records from Administration for Children’s Services, where the children are currently in custody
The children’s grandmother, Bertha Davia, said it was all a misunderstanding and is asking ACS to place them in her care.
Bertha Davia, 52, told Eyewitness News that she lives in the complex next to where the children were left and the mother must have intended to leave her children in her care.
The grandmother said she is furious her daughter never told her the children were coming and only realized what had happened when she saw their picture on the news.
“She left them on the corner here. I live all the way over there. And they was roaming the hallways and all that. Why would she do that to my grandkids? For what reason?”
Although Bertha Davia is angry over the incident, she said she does not believe the two girls were abandoned on a street corner and it was just a big misunderstanding.
Michelle Davis, 43, from Brooklyn, told the Daily News: “They were wandering up and down the sidewalk for a while, just playing by themselves.
“It’s horrible. How could you leave your own children out there? They’re babies and you just leave them out there like that?”
The police said both children were in good condition after being checked over in hospital and were now in the care of the ACS, who did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
A large debate has sparked among public health advocates in US after the pharmaceutical company Gilead has applied to the FDA to market its HIV treatment medication Truvada as a HIV prevention pill.
Gilead wants to be able to market Truvada (tenofovir+emtricitabine), which is currently used as a HIV treatment, as a preventative pill to uninfected individuals, reports California Watch.
If the product will be approved, it would be the first of its kind.
The move has sparked debate among public health advocates who argue that the wide availability of the drug would discourage safe sex and would, in fact, increase the incidence of HIV.
“I believe that this could be catastrophic in terms of HIV prevention,” said Michael Weinstein, president the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, based in Los Angeles.
There are nearly 42,000 Californians living with HIV as of June 2011.
Michael Weinstein told California Watch that as an HIV treatment, he thinks Truvada is a “fabulous drug – it’s one pill once a day, and it has a low side-effect burden,” which include nausea, vomiting and weight loss.
Gilead wants to be able to market Truvada (tenofovir+emtricitabine), which is currently used as a HIV treatment, as a preventative pill to uninfected individuals
This new pharmaceutical prevention approach to HIV and AIDS is known in scientific circles as “pre-exposure prophylaxis”, or PrEP, and it involves taking the antiretroviral medications on a daily basis.
Clinical trials supported by the National Institutes of Health have shown that when taken daily, Truvada, a blue oval pill, reduced the risk for contracting HIV by between 44% among gay men in four countries and 73% by heterosexual couples in Uganda and Kenya.
Overall, these studies have generated enthusiasm among many medical researchers, reports California Watch.
Truvada is considered to be “an incredible achievement, a wonderful new tool that could be available to people who need additional protection against the acquisition of HIV”, according to Veronica Miller, executive director of The Forum for Collaborative HIV Research and a visiting professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
But Michael Weinstein said he’s not yet convinced by the research, and he wouldn’t want to see future mass marketing of the drug discourage gay men – the risk group most seriously affected by HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – from using condoms based on “the false belief that they are protected by this”, when there’s a possibility that those taking the medication still could contract the disease.
Some HIV and AIDS awareness organizations say that while they wouldn’t want to see Truvada trump other forms of prevention, they are hopeful that the drug will help reach high-risk individuals.
“It comes down to choices,” said David Evans, director of research advocacy at Project Inform, a San Francisco organization focused on improving the health of people with HIV.
“For those who are high at risk, we want them to know that there is something new and a better option available to them.”
Nevertheless, David Evans said he shares some of the drug critics’ concerns. “We don’t want to see people give up safe sex practices,” he said.
The Annals of the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research noted that the drug had performed well in clinical trials; the safety risk is relatively low; and as a result, doctors can currently prescribe the drug for prevention off-label. However, those who use the drug could develop resistance to it, and if they don’t use it daily, the risk for contracting HIV increases, the forum said.
Other drug companies, including ViiV Healthcare, also are planning studies to sell similar prevention drugs, but given the number of clinical trials performed or under way on Truvada, Gilead’s product is likely to be the first to make it to market.
Gilead did not respond to requests for comment from California Watch.
European Union has decided to spend 3 million Euros to research “the potential of insects as an alternative source of protein”.
EU says that research projects will be selected during this year.
Food experts agree that insects would probably have to be disguised for European audiences, so the insect “food” could be used as an additive in burgers and other fast food.
The UN’s Food Standards Authority says of the research: “While insects have not traditionally been used for food in the UK or elsewhere in the European Union, it is estimated that about 2.5 billion people across the world have diets that routinely include insects.
“While many insects are regarded as pests, the UN’s Food and Agriculture authority is interested in promoting edible insects as a highly sustainable source of nutrition.”
Some worms contain three times as much protein as beef per ounce, while four crickets have as much calcium as a glass of milk.
Daniel Creedon, a chef who serves ants, locusts and bees in honey at the London Archipelago restaurant, said: “If insects start coming into the food chain they are probably going to have to be disguised.
“Food producers will probably get away with describing it as animal based proteins. Not many people will buy a locust burger.”
Website Treehugger said: “It is not hard to imagine the development of an insect-based food additive that enriches burger and nugget protein levels.
“Burgers with processed insect meal could be sold by chains under claims such as <<higher in protein>>, <<healthier fats>> and <<eco-burger>>.”
European Union has decided to spend 3 million Euros to research “the potential of insects as an alternative source of protein”
80% of countries on Earth already eat insects, and more than 2,000 insect species are often eaten by human beings.
Unlike conventional livestock, insects and bugs need little space and can be bred in sealed buildings under natural light where they live off waste, paper and algae.
The idea has previously been backed by the UN and EU as a way to tackle food shortages.
Some academics believe that the expense and environmental cost of raising livestock means that insect-eating will be inevitable – and it has been claimed that by the end of this decade, insect-eating will be widespread.
Prof. Marcel Dicke from Wageningen University in the Netherlands said: “The most important thing is getting people prepared, getting used to the idea. Because from 2020 onwards, there won’t be much of a choice for us.”
An estimated 2,000 insect species are consumed around the world, and people do not just eat insects, they relish them as delicacies. In Africa, caterpillars and winged termites are fried and eaten as roadside snacks (after wings, legs, and bristles are removed, of course), and often considered tastier than meat. Grasshoppers and bee larvae seasoned with soy sauce are favorites in Japan, where pricey canned insects are also available. Papua New Guinea is known for its nutty-flavored sago grubs (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus papuanus or R. bilineatus), beetle larvae that inhabit dead sago palm trees and are honored at annual festivals.
Insects often contain more protein, fat, and carbohydrates than equal amounts of beef or fish, and a higher energy value than soybeans, maize, beef, fish, lentils, or other beans. According to a 2004 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, caterpillars of many species are rich in potassium, calcium, magnesium, zinc, and iron, as well as B-vitamins. In some African regions, children fight malnutrition by eating flour made out of dried caterpillars. Pregnant and nursing women as well as anemic people also eat caterpillar species high in protein, calcium, and iron.
