Hans Feldmeier, a German pensioner who received a tin of American lard 64 years ago in an aid package, has only just tasted it, after discovering that it is still edible.
“I just didn’t want to throw it away,” said Hans Feldmeier.
Hans Feldmeier, 87, tasted the lard along with scientists in a lab.
Food safety experts in Rostock, his home town on Germany’s Baltic coast, said the pig fat was still safe to eat.
Hans Feldmeier, a German pensioner who received a tin of American lard 64 years ago in an aid package, has only just tasted it, after discovering that it is still edible
Hans Feldmeier, now a retired pharmacist, was a student in 1948 when the US was running a huge aid programme to rebuild war-ravaged Germany. He kept the tin of lard for emergencies.
He decided to get the lard tested because of the debate about expiry dates and food safety.
A food expert, Frerk Feldhusen, said the lard was rather gritty and tasteless and hard to dissolve, though quite edible. Hans Feldmeier provided some black bread to go with it.
The red, white and blue tin of Swift’s Bland Lard bore no expiry date.
Frerk Feldhusen said the test result might make some consumers think twice before discarding food immediately after the expiry date.
Two people have been shot dead by police and more than 400 injured in protests across Egypt sparked by the deaths of 74 people after a football match.
The two killed were shot by police trying to disperse angry crowds in the city of Suez, medical officials said.
In the capital Cairo, thousands of protesters remained on the streets following a day of clashes with police.
Thousands marched to the interior ministry, where security forces fired tear gas to keep them back.
Earlier, the Egyptian prime minister announced the sackings of several senior officials.
Funerals of some of the 74 victims took place in Port Said, where the football match had taken place on Wednesday.
The deaths came when fans invaded the pitch after a fixture between top Cairo club al-Ahly and the Port Said side al-Masry.
As night fell in Cairo, several thousand demonstrators remained in the streets around the interior ministry, witnesses said.
Two people have been shot dead by police and more than 400 injured in protests across Egypt sparked by the deaths of 74 people after a football match
In Suez, health official Mohammed Lasheen said two people had been shot dead early on Friday.
A witness quoted by Reuters said: “Protesters are trying to break into the Suez police station and police are now firing live ammunition.”
Throughout Thursday, al-Ahly supporters gathered outside the club’s stadium in Cairo. A series of protest marches moved towards Tahrir Square, and then on to the ministry of interior.
Some chanted slogans against Egypt’s military rulers, while others threw stones.
“Our army must choose between the military council and the revolutionaries,” they chanted.
Police fired tear gas to keep the thousands of protesters away from the ministry, which is protected by concrete barricades.
Motorcycles ferried the injured from the scene as ambulances were often unable to get through.
At one point, ambulances intervened to rescue riot police whose vehicle mistakenly turned into a street full of protesters, Reuters reported.
Egyptian state news agency Mena quoted a health ministry official as saying 388 protesters were injured. Most of them were suffering from tear gas inhalation as well as bruises and broken bones from rocks.
A section of Al-Ahly supporters known as the “ultras” played a prominent role in last year’s street protests which led to the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.
The ultras believe they were targeted for their support for the revolution over the past year.
They accuse the police of deliberately allowing al-Masry fans to attack them.
“It’s like war, you can’t believe it. What happened yesterday [Wednesday] was war, it’s not football. To kill without any feeling… is not normal,” said former al-Ahly player Hani Seddik.
There were also protests in Port Said, Associated Press news agency reported.
Earlier on Thursday, parliament met in emergency session, beginning with a minute’s silence.
Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri told MPs the head of Egypt’s football association had been sacked and the board dissolved, with its members referred to prosecutors for questioning.
Port Said’s director of security and the head of investigations were suspended and are now in custody, Kamal al-Ganzouri said.
The government has come under renewed attack over its handling, both of the football game, and of the way it is handling the transition to democracy, our correspondent says.
The president of al-Ahly, Hamid Hamdy, said his club would not take part in league games.
“I hope that the world understands the position of al-Ahly club, that we are going through a very difficult time as a result of all of those martyrs that we lost yesterday,” he told a news conference.
“People should feel that there is a tragedy and a disaster which has happened in Egyptian sports, and for al-Ahly.”
Police in Egypt have been keeping a much lower profile since last year’s popular protests.
The Muslim Brotherhood – which has emerged as Egypt’s biggest party in recent elections – blamed ex-President Mubarak’s supporters for the violence.
A “supergiant” crustacean has been found lurking 7 km down in the waters of the Kermadec Trench off New Zealand.
The crustacean – called a supergiant – is a type of amphipod, which are normally around 2-3 cm long.
These creatures were more than 10 times bigger: the largest found measured in at 34 cm.
Alan Jamieson, from the University of Aberdeen’s Oceanlab, said: “It’s a bit like finding a foot-long cockroach.”
“I stopped and thought: <<What on Earth was that?>>. This amphipod was far bigger than I ever thought possible.”
The strange beasts were found using a large metal trap, which had been equipped with a camera, housed in sapphire glass to keep it safe from the high pressures of the deep sea.
The crustacean - called a supergiant - is a type of amphipod, which are normally around 2-3 cm long
Seven specimens were caught in the trap and nine were captured on film by the team from the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland, and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), in New Zealand.
The largest specimen brought back up to the ship measured 28cm in length, while the biggest spotted on camera was 34cm-long.
Amphipods have been found living in large numbers at the very bottom of ocean trenches, deep, narrow valleys in the sea floor that can plunge down to nearly 11 km.
The creatures are small, but extremely active, and seem to thrive in this place where the pressure is one thousand times greater than at sea level.
The name “supergiant” was first coined after large specimens were caught in the 1980’s off the coast of Hawaii.
They have been since being seen in the Antarctic, where they grew up to 10 cm, but these are now dwarfed by this latest find.
Dr. Ashley Rowden, from Niwa, said: “It just goes to show that the more you look, the more you find.
“For such a large and conspicuous animal to go unnoticed for so long is just testament to how little we know about life in New Zealand’s most deep and unique habitat.”
Over the last few years, scientists have been surprised by the life that is found in ocean trenches.
These deep-sea spots were once thought to be barren; too dark, cold and with too much pressure for anything to survive.
But researchers have found a wealth of life in the deepest of the deep.
As well as swarms of amphipods, they have uncovered shrimp-like creatures called isopods and snailfish that live 7,700 m down.
A huge Burmese python was caught by rangers in Everglades, Florida, before it could lay eggs containing the 59 super-predators inside her.
The image was taken in 2009 but the problem is a very pressing one in 2012. Nothing and no one is safe when these marauding foreign invaders emerge from the fetid swamp that has become their home.
Super- pythons like this one- are causing mayhem in the Everglades where they are decimating native species, numbers of raccoons, opossums, bobcats and other mammals.
With no natural predators scientists fear the pythons are disrupting the food chain and upset the Everglades’ delicate environmental balance in ways difficult to predict.
Many of them were originally pets that were turned loose by their owners when they got too big to manage.
Others are believed to be descendents of domestic pythons that escaped from pet shops during Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
A huge Burmese python was caught by rangers in Everglades, Florida, before it could lay eggs containing the 59 super-predators inside her
A recent study, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that sightings of medium-size mammals are down dramatically – as much as 99%, in some cases – in areas where pythons and other large, non-native constrictor snakes live wild.
Tens of thousands of Burmese pythons, which are native to Southeast Asia, are thought to inhabit the Everglades, where they thrive in the warm, humid climate.
The National Park Service says 1,825 Burmese pythons have been caught in and around Everglades National Park since 2000.
Among the largest captured was a 156-pound, 16.4-foot one caught last month.
In 2010, Florida banned private ownership of Burmese pythons. Earlier this month, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a federal ban on the import of Burmese pythons and three other snakes.
BURMESE PYTHON
Burmese pythons can grow to be 26 feet long and more than 200 pounds.
Pythons are not venomous. Instead, they kill their prey by locking it in their jaws, which boast powerful, backward-facing teeth, then crushing it in their coils. They then swallow it whole.
Their success is due to their ability to gorge on huge meals – and then go without food for months.
After a big kill, the snake’s insides remodel themselves to cope with such a feast. Their heart grows in size to produce more blood for digestion, extra stomach acid is produced and the intestines rearrange themselves.
Astronomers from European Southern Observatory (ESO) have found a planet which is one of the best candidates for life ever found by telescopes on Earth.
The newly discovered planet is rocky, like Earth, and orbits its sun within the “habitable zone”, where temperatures are just right for liquid water to exist on the planet’s surface.
The temperature on the surface could be close to Earth’s.
“This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it,” study leader Guillem Anglada-Escudé said.
The planet was detected using data from the European Southern Observatory’s telescopes, which was analyzed to look for “wobbles” in a star’s motion caused the gravitational “tug” of planets orbiting it.
The new planet has a mass around 4.5 times the Earth, and orbits a star called GJ 667C, 22 light years from Earth – just next door, in galactic terms.
Astronomers from European Southern Observatory in La Silla Paranal, Chile, South America, have found a planet which is one of the best candidates for life ever found by telescopes on Earth
The new planet absorbs around the same amount of light as our planet.
“This was expected to be a rather unlikely star to host planets. Yet there they are, around a very nearby, metal-poor example of the most common type of star in our galaxy” said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC.
“The planet is around one star in a triple-star system. The other stars are pretty far away, but they would look pretty nice in the sky.
“The detection of this planet, this nearby and this soon, implies that our galaxy must be teeming with billions of potentially habitable rocky planets.”
“With the advent of a new generation of instruments, researchers will be able to survey many M dwarf stars for similar planets and eventually look for signatures of life in one of these worlds,” said Guillem Anglada-Escudé.
The host star is a member of a system with three stars – the other two are orange dwarf planets.
The star has a different chemical makeup than our Sun, with a much lower abundance of elements heavier than helium, such as iron, carbon, and silicon. This discovery indicates that potentially habitable planets can occur in a greater variety of environments than previously believed.
GJ 667C had previously been observed to have a large planet orbiting close to its star, although this finding was never published.
This planet orbits so close to the star that it would be too hot for liquid water. The new study started with the aim of obtaining the orbital parameters of this super-Earth.
But in addition to this first candidate, the research team found the clear signal of the new planet GJ 667C.
The team found that the system might also contain a gas-giant planet and an additional super-Earth.
However, further observations are needed to confirm these two possibilities.
Nelson Mandela’s personal chef presents some of the statesman’s favorite meals in a cookbook she has launched in South Africa.
Xoliswa Ndoyiya’s book includes more than 62 recipes for the simple traditional dishes that Nelson Mandela most enjoys.
Xoliswa Ndoyiya has cooked for the Mandela family for more than 20 years.
Her book is one of the few South African cookbooks to include traditional African recipes.
Speaking at the launch, Nelson Mandela’s great-grandson Luvuyo Mandela described Xoliswa Ndoyiya, known as “Xoli”, as the family’s best kept secret.
“UMam’Xoli was more than someone who prepared meals… she was a parent,” he said.
“Ukutya Kwasekhaya [home cooking] – Tastes from Nelson Mandela’s Kitchen”, includes recipes for chicken soup, umqusho (maize and beans) and umsila wenkomo (oxtail stew).
Xoliswa Ndoyiya's book includes more than 62 recipes for the simple traditional dishes that Nelson Mandela most enjoys
Xoliswa Ndoyiya, 49, sees food as a way of strengthening bonds between families and also preserving special memories.
“Tata [Nelson] Mandela has told me that every time I make umphokoqo [sour milk] for him, he remembers his mother cooking this dish for him with love,” she writes in her book.
Her husband was killed in the clashes between Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in the early 1990s.
Shortly after that, Xoliswa Ndoyiya was introduced to Nelson Mandela who was looking for a chef at the time.
She began working for him in 1992, two years before Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected president.
Nelson Mandela, 93, retired from public life in 2004.
Today, Nelson Mandela spends most of his time with his family in his home village of Qunu, in the Eastern Cape and Johannesburg.
Hepatic Chemosat Delivery System was used to treat the first patients at the European Institute of Oncology (Instituto Europeo di Oncologia – IEO), Milan, Italy, announced Delcath System.
Two patients with inoperable liver-dominant metastases from ocular melanoma and gastric cancer were treated with the Generation One version of Chemosat system, and there were no procedure-related complications.
“The Chemosat system represents an important advancement in treatment options for cancers in the liver, which have significantly poorer survival rates compared to cancers that have spread predominantly to other organs. We believe this technology will help fill an important gap in the treatment of multiple tumor types in the liver because of its demonstrated ability to deliver concentrated doses of chemotherapeutic agent directly to the liver while helping to minimize systemic exposure. We are pleased to be the first center in Europe to begin offering this treatment to patients and look forward to exploring its potential with Delcath,” said Dr. Alessandro Testori, surgical oncologist and director of the Division of Melanoma and Skin-Muscle Sarcoma at the IEO.
Chemosat is a medical device that delivers chemotherapeutic drug directly to the liver. Pictures shows liver metastasis from a carcinoid tumor.
Chemosat is a medical device that utilizes chemosaturation technology.
This procedure supplies high doses of chemotherapeutic drugs directly to the liver and minimize the exposure of other organs to the drug. It can be repeated since it is a minimally invasive procedure.
Chemosat received CE Mark in April 2011 as a Class III medical device with an indication for the percutaneous intra-arterial administration of a chemotherapeutic agent (melphalan hydrochloride) to the liver.
“Since obtaining our CE Mark, Delcath has been committed to supporting the technology in the substantial international liver cancer market. These cases represent the first uses of Chemosat outside of a clinical trial—an exciting milestone for Delcath. There is no greater endorsement for Chemosat than to have the first European patients treated at an organization as prestigious as the IEO. We are delighted that the procedures were successfully performed, and look forward to continued collaborative progress with the IEO and the opportunity to open additional Chemosat treatment centers across Europe,” said Eamonn P. Hobbs, president and CEO of Delcath.
The Generation Two version of Chemosat is under review for CE Mark approval by the Notified Body.
On February 15, 2012 the IEO and Delcath will host a joint-press conference, at the IEO, and an update on patient status will be presented.
The cases were treated as part of the initial launch and training agreement with the IEO.
Chemosat is an investigational product in the United States and is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The authors of a new study say women’s sex drives gradually ebb over time while a man’s stays at around the same level.
In fact, on a desirability scale, women’s yearnings decreased steadily with every passing month of a relationship, making it possible to gauge a woman’s sex drive just by looking at a union’s duration.
The study, published last month by the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, goes some way to addressing a subject area that is relatively unchartered and yet – as many a couple may attest to – is believed to form a key part of relationships.
170 men’s and women’s desire levels were monitored and rated on the Female Sexual Function Index. Participants, all in heterosexual relationships ranging from one month to nine years in length, were all undergraduates at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, where the author’s lead researcher, Sarah Murray, is based.
Ranging from 1.2 to 6.0, the scale quantifies sex drive so accurately that Sarah Murray and her research partner Robin Milhausen found “specifically, for each additional month women in this study were in a relationship with their partner, their sexual desire decreased by 0.02 on the Female Sexual Function Index”.
The findings were indicative enough to lead the authors to believe that relationship duration is a better predictor of sexual desire than satisfaction in bed or overall relationship health, reports Live Science.
The study contradicts some beliefs that both men’s and women’s sex drives decline over the months and years.
Instead, a sustained desire by men is thought to be driven by the evolutionary need for men to produce offspring while women turn their focus to child-rearing, says Live Science.
While hormone levels may play a role in both men’s and women’s desirability levels, the author cautions over-exaggerating their importance rather than acknowledging the place of “satisfying, loving relationships” and having “time to feel relaxed, playful and sexy”, according to the science site.
The findings are hoped to help couples address different needs when it comes to the bedroom – and may make Sarah Murray’s valuation that “when an individual has had sex with their partner over the course of many, many years, it takes creativity and openness to keep things fresh and exciting,” ring even truer.
Sarah Murray says it is “crucial” to put effort into keeping things “fun and interesting” in the bedroom.
There is one word of warning over the results, however, Sarah Murray told the site: “Men may be less inclined to admit that they have low desire as this is considered against male gender norms and masculinity.”
First Lady Michelle Obama was challenged to a push-up contest on Ellen DeGeneres show during her California tour for promoting her health agenda.
The challenge began when Ellen DeGeneres asked Michelle Obama on her show: “How many push-ups can you do? Because I like to do a push-up.”
“I don’t know I can do some – can you? I know you’ve got these back issues,” Michelle Obama teased.
Ellen DeGeneres then stood up and took off her jacket, and a smiling Michelle Obama, who has completed push-ups with Archbishop Desmond Tutu stood up ready to take on the challenge.
They started doing the push-ups on the studio floor with the audience counting along – Michelle Obama completed an impressive 25.
“I thought it wouldn’t be good to show off the first lady so I stopped,” quipped Ellen DeGeneres after quitting.
“I thought this looks bad that I’m going to beat her. I’m 54 and you’re 48.”
First Lady Michelle Obama was challenged to a push-up contest on Ellen DeGeneres show during her California tour for promoting her health agenda
During the show, Michelle Obama also revealed some bedroom secrets regarding husband Barack.
He doesn’t pick up his socks.
“He thinks he’s neat but he has people who help him. I’m like it’s not you that’s neat. It’s the people who pick up your socks. Those are the neat people,” Michelle Obama told Ellen DeGeneres.
Michelle Obama also joined Ellen DeGeneres in a boogie for the benefit of the audience.
The First Lady has spent the last few days in California, promoting her health agenda and making high-profile TV appearances.
On Tuesday night Michelle Obama told Jay Leno: “I can’t sing.” She claimed that her husband was in the habit of serenading her.
Earlier on Wednesday Michelle Obama spoke in a vacant store in Inglewood which is set to refurbished as a health food store.
The First Lady praised efforts to improve public health, saying: “We’re not just making this generation healthy. We’re making the next, and the next and the next.”
The day before, she revealed that the President loves to serenade her by singing songs from Al Green, Marvin Gaye and other R&B greats.
“He does have a beautiful voice, and he sings to me all the time,” Michelle Obama told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show.
Barack Obama gained attention in January for breaking out a bar of an Al Green song during a fundraiser at the Apollo Theater in New York City.
But he also sings Marvin Gaye and even “a little Stevie”. That’s Stevie Wonder, for the uninitiated.
“He likes the classics,” Michelle Obama explained.
However, Michelle Obama’s appraisal of Republican front-runner Mitt Romney’s choir voice was a little less generous.
Mitt Romney surprised supporters in Florida with an off-pitch version of “America the Beautiful” on Monday, and Jay Leno asked Michelle Obama for her opinion.
“It’s beautiful,” she said after a pregnant pause, with a laugh and raised eyebrows.
“And it is America’s song, and it’s a song that’s meant to be sung by every American,” the First Lady said in a taped appearance for the NBC show.
Jay Leno told her: “That is right, regardless of political affiliation.”
Michelle Obama also cajoled Jay Leno into nibbling on apples, sweet potato fries and a pizza made with eggplant, green peppers and zucchini, breaking his long-held aversion for all-things-healthy in his diet.
Jay Leno once told a magazine he hadn’t eaten a vegetable since 1969, and he insisted he tasted his last apple in 1984. That didn’t dissuade the First Lady, who’s promoting her “Let’s Move!” campaign to get kids excited about fitness and healthy eating habits.
Earlier, Michelle Obama poked at him in a Twitter post, hinting she’d “get Jay to eat some veggies” on the NBC show. He did.
“That does smell very good. I assume this is sausage-pepperoni,” the comedian quipped as he eyed the pizza made with a whole-wheat crust.
Michelle Obama convinced Jay Leno to dip an apple in honey made from beehives in the White House garden: “It will help it go down easier,” she assured him.
“White House honey? That sounds bad,” Jay Leno told her.
“You know, with a different president that could mean a whole different thing, <<a little White House honey>>.”
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.
