Present - Predictions

[ZIKPHYSICS]

May 2004 through the Present - Predictions

April 7, 2008 -
Mobile phones will overtake asbestos and smoking as a leading public
health danger, a top neurosurgeon says. Research by Canberra
Hospital’s Vini Khurana found that in the next four years, the full
impact of brain tumours caused by mobile phones would be revealed. "It
is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health
ramifications than asbestos and smoking, and directly concerns all of
us, particularly the younger generation." In the paper they said that
industry and governments needed to take immediate steps to reduce the
impact of mobile phone radiation. “There is a significant and
increasing body of evidence – to date at least eight comprehensive
clinical studies internationally and one long-term meta-analysis – for
a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours.” The
addition use of accessories, such as some hands-free kits, could have
a bigger impact than just having a mobile phone. “Bluetooth devices
and unshielded headsets can convert the user's head into an effective,
potentially self-harming antenna.”

Visitors from the future due this year - Two Russian mathematicians
have caused a stir in the normally staid world of theoretical physics.
They have not only proposed a mechanism for time travel, but they have
given it a timetable as well. The pair has been speculating on what
might happen when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is switched on. The
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is expected to
commission the LHC in May 2008. It will smash protons together at
speeds previously unobtainable. Each proton will have the same kinetic
energy as a flying mosquito, but that energy will be concentrated into
one a trillionth of a mosquito's volume. Collisions like this can do
very strange things to the fabric of the universe known as space-time.
Space-time can bend and distort into loops that physicists call
"closed time-like curves," known to sci-fi fans as "wormholes in space-
time" or just "wormholes." In the same way as two points on opposite
ends of a piece of paper can be brought together by folding the paper
in half, so a wormhole can provide shortcuts between distant points in
space-time. It is these wormholes that Aref'eva and Volovich suggest
may be produced by the LHC. If, and it is a big "if," such wormholes
are created, we are still a long way from building a time machine.
Firstly, these mini-wormholes will only be big enough to allow sub-
atomic particles through. Secondly, they will have the tendency to
close up. Thirdly, we have no way to manipulate the mouths of the
wormhole to act like a time machine. But that does not mean that a
future civilization will not have the technology to do these things
from their end. Hence, if these wormholes are created by the LHC later
this year, it could present our distant decedents the earliest
opportunity to come and say hello. But many physicists are unimpressed
with the idea of time travel. It appears to break the law of
causality. This law states that cause must precede effect. There are
paradoxes inherent in time travel. The classic example is the question
of what would happen if you went back in time and murdered your
grandfather before one of your parents was conceived, so preventing
your own birth, so you did not travel back in time, so your
grandfather lives … Professor Stephen Hawking is a noted time travel
skeptic. In 1992 he suggested that the laws of physics would conspire
against time travel. His "chronology protection conjecture" says that
creating wormholes that allow time travel will give rise to physical
phenomena that act to block the wormholes. The Russian scientists'
work is highly speculative. We simply do not know enough about the
fine structure of space-time to predict with any certain what will
happen when the LHC is switched on. But with experiments planned to
look at some of the most fundamental questions in physics, the next
few years will be very interesting, wormholes or not.

Scientists have created part-human, part-animal hybrid embryos for the
first time in the United Kingdom. The embryos survived for up to three
days. The Catholic Church describes it as "monstrous". But medical
bodies and patient groups say such research is vital for our
understanding of disease. They argue that the work could pave the way
for new treatments for conditions such as Parkinson's and
Alzheimer's.

Seeds of some genetically modified crops can endure in soil for at
least 10 years, scientists have discovered. Researchers in Sweden
examined a field planted with experimental oilseed rape a decade ago,
and found transgenic specimens were still growing there. This was
despite intensive efforts in the intervening years to remove seeds. No
GM crop has been found to endure so long; and critics say it shows
that genetically modified organisms cannot be contained once released.
After the trial of herbicide-resistant GM rape, the Swedish Board of
Agriculture sprayed the field intensively with chemicals that should
have killed all the remaining plants. And for two years, inspectors
looked specifically for volunteer plants and killed them. This is much
more effort than would usually be deployed on a normal farmer's field.
But even so, 15 plants had sprung up 10 years later carrying the genes
that scientists had originally inserted into their experimental rape
variety to make them resistant to the herbicide glufosinate. Non-GM
varieties were used in the 10-year-old study as well, and some of
these had also survived. Rapeseed - often known by its Canadian name
canola - is the fourth most commonly grown GM crop in the world, after
soya beans, maize and cotton. "We should assume that GM organisms
cannot be confined, and ask instead what will become of them when they
escape."

March 2008 -
Plants and animals that depend on each other are more likely to
survive when a threat to their collective existence is present, a
recent study has concluded.

A dolphin guided two stranded whales to safety after human attempts to
keep the animals off a beach failed, a conservation official has said.
"I've never heard of anything like this before, it was amazing." The
dolphin, named Moko, and known for playing with people in the water at
Mahia beach on the east coast of the North Island, appeared and guided
the whales to safety after apparently communicating with them. "I was
not aware dolphins could communicate with pygmy sperm whales, but
something happened that allowed Moko to guide those two whales to
safety."

The stuff of science-fiction movies is just around the bend, according
to General Motors, with fully automated, self-driving cars expected to
be on the road within the next 10 years.

Dead hearts beat again - In experiments that would make Dr
Frankenstein jealous, US scientists have coaxed recycled hearts taken
from animal cadavers into beating in the laboratory after reseeding
them with live cells.

A saliva test that can identify specific markers of breast cancer is
in development in the U.S. and could provide an easy and early
diagnosis of the disease, researchers say.

Cloned animals may often be born deformed and die young but
scientists, who have looked at every aspect of their biology to try to
explain why, can find no evidence that it would be dangerous to eat
them. None of the more than 700 studies reviewed in detail showed any
evidence to suggest that milk or organ or muscle tissue from cloned
animals could harm someone who ate it, the US Food and Drug
Administration said in its final report on the subject.

UK regulators have given scientists the green light to create human-
animal embryos for research.

A US team say it has created embryos that are clones of two men - a
step towards patient-specific stem cells.

A type of algae found in oceans, lakes and wet soil could be used to
create a new, faster generation of computer chips. Marine diatoms, a
unicellular algae, build their hard, patterned cell walls with
microscopic lines of silica — a compound related to silicon, which is
a key material for constructing computer chips and semiconductors. "If
we can genetically control that process, we would have a whole new way
of performing the nanofabrication used to make computer chips."
Diatoms could vastly increase chip speed because they are capable of
producing lines much smaller than what is capable with current
technology.

Synthetic Life - Scientists have built the first synthetic genome by
stringing together 147 pages of letters representing the building
blocks of DNA. The researchers used yeast to stitch together four long
strands of DNA into the genome of a bacterium called Mycoplasma
genitalium. The first synthetic life could be just months away - if it
hasn't been created already. With the new ability to sequence a
genome, scientists can begin to custom-design organisms, essentially
creating biological robots that can produce from scratch chemicals
humans can use. Biofuels like ethanol, for example. Synthetic
biologists' ambitious goal is to arrange those letters to create never-
before-seen organisms that will do their bidding. "Once this becomes
routine, it allows us to build whatever genome we want. You can design
a genome to incorporate a particular chemical process to change what
the cells are eating and what the cells are making. You can make
robotic cells." Synthetic biologists are also planning to scale up
from the simplest organisms to the most complex: human beings. The
first bacterial genome was sequenced in 1995 and was followed by the
landmark sequencing of the human genome in 2001. Based on that
trajectory, a synthetic human genome - which could be used in human
cloning research - could be created by 2014. But before researchers
can do that level of synthetic biology, scientists will need to
automate their methods.

Self-healing rubber - A material that is able to self-repair even when
it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers. The as-
yet-unnamed material - a form of artificial rubber - is made from
vegetable oil and a component of urine. The substance produces
surfaces when cut that retain a strong chemical attraction to each
other. Pieces of the material join together again as if never parted
without the need for glue or a special treatment. This remarkable
property comes from careful engineering of the molecules in the
material. One obvious use is for self-healing seals. Puncture a seal
in a compression joint with a nail, and the hole would automatically
repair itself.

Killer robots 'a threat to humanity'- Increasingly autonomous, gun-
totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands
of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert
on artificial intelligence says.

Multiple reports of UFO-like sightings in Texas in January - Residents
of a Texas farming community were buzzing over reported sightings of
what many believe is a UFO.

Games are becoming increasingly important in education and could be
useful for teaching a range of skills. Organisations such as the US
armed forces already use online gaming as a recruitment tool.
America's Army introduces players to the "seven Army Core Values" and
now claims to be one of "the most popular computer games in the
world". The US space agency is exploring the possibility of developing
a massively multiplayer online game. The virtual world would be aimed
at students and would "simulate real Nasa engineering and science
missions". Nasa believes the game would help find the next generation
of scientists and engineers needed to fulfil its "vision for space
exploration".

The coming "Very Great U.S. Depression"? - International experts
foresee collapse of U.S. economy - We are entering a period for which
there is no historic precedent. Any comparisons with previous
situations in our modern economy are invalid. We are not experiencing
a "remake" of the 1929 crisis nor a repetition of the 1970s oil crises
or 1987 stock market crisis. What we will have, instead, is truly a
global momentous threat - a true turning point affecting the entire
planet and questioning the very foundations of the international
system upon which the world was organized in the last decades. A
European report emphasizes that it is, first and foremost, in the
United States where this historic happening is taking an unprecedented
shape. Although this crucial event is global, it will be the beginning
of an economic 'decoupling' between the U.S. and the rest of the
world. However, non 'decoupled' economies will be dragged down the
U.S. negative spiral. Three reports from three different sources, all
well regarded, all point to a disastrous fall-out from our monetary
moves. "The end of the third quarter of 2008 (thus late September, a
mere six months from now) will be marked by a new tipping point in the
unfolding of the global systemic crisis...The collapse of U.S. real
economy means the virtual freeze of the American economic machinery:
private and public bankruptcies in large numbers, companies and public
services closing down."

February 2008 -
Self-powered fabrics - Scientists in the US have developed novel brush-
like fibres that generate electrical energy from movement. Weaving
them into a material could allow designers to create "smart" clothes
which harness body movement to power portable electronic gadgets. The
materials could be used in tents or other structures to harness wind
energy. The technology could also find a use in healthcare.

Energy generating knee brace - US and Canadian scientists have built a
novel device that effortlessly harvests energy from human movements.
The adapted knee brace can generate enough energy to power a mobile
phone for 30 minutes from one minute of walking. The first people to
benefit could be amputees who are being fitted with increasingly
sophisticated prosthetics. Using a series of gears, the knee brace
assists the hamstring in slowing the body just before the foot hits
the ground, whilst simultaneously generating electricity. Tests of the
1.6kg device produced an average of 5 watts of electricity from a slow
walk. The knee brace is the latest development in a field known as
"energy harvesting". The field seeks to develop devices and mechanisms
to recover otherwise-wasted energy and convert it into useful
electrical energy. "We're pretty effective batteries. In our fat we
store the equivalent of about a 1,000kg battery." A light weight, slim-
line version of the knee brace is "about 18 months away, so it's not
science fiction far in the future stuff."

5-seat car that runs on air - An engineer has promised that within a
year he will start selling a car that runs on compressed air,
producing no emissions at all. It will be driven by compressed air
stored in carbon-fibre tanks built into the chassis. The tanks can be
filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes - much quicker
than a battery car. The designers say on long journeys the car will do
the equivalent of 120mpg. Tata is the only big firm they'll license to
sell the car - and they are limited to India. For the rest of the
world they hope to persuade hundreds of investors to set up their own
factories, making the car from 80% locally-sourced materials.

Underwater car - a Swiss company says it has created the world's first
truly submersible car - and it's a convertible. It will be unveiled at
next month's Geneva Auto Show. "sQuba'' can fly underwater at a depth
of 10 metres. "We always want to do cars that are outrageous, which
nobody has done before. So we thought, let's make a car dive. For
safety reasons we have built the vehicle as an open car so that the
occupants can get out quickly in an emergency." (photo)

Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a
leading US inventor has predicted. Humanity is on the brink of
advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to
make them more intelligent. Machines and humans will eventually merge
through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and
health. "We're already a human machine civilisation, we use our
technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be
a further extension of that." Nanobots will "make us smarter, remember
things better and automatically go into full emergent virtual reality
environments through the nervous system".

Blue roses - The Japanese company that created the world's first
genetically modified blue roses will start selling them next year in
Japan. "As its price may be a bit high, we are targeting demand for
luxurious cut flowers, such as for gifts." The exact price and
commercial name for the blue rose have not been decided. The company
is growing the rose experimentally in Australia and the United States
to get approval for sales, but no timing has been set for commercial
launches there. It created the flowers by implanting the gene that
leads to the synthesis of the blue pigment Delphinidin in pansies. The
pigment does not exist naturally in roses.

Pacific floating rubbish dump 'bigger than U.S.' - the world's largest
rubbish dump, or the Pacific plastic soup, is starting to alarm
scientists with its ever-growing size and possible impact on human
health. It is a vast area of plastic debris and other flotsam drifting
in the northern Pacific Ocean, held there by swirling ocean currents.
The "patch" is in fact two massive, linked areas of circulating
rubbish. The waste forms in what are called tropical gyres - areas
where the oceans slowly circulate due to extreme high pressure systems
and where there is little wind. Although the boundaries change, it
stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California,
across the northern Pacific to near the coast of Japan. "It is endless
for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United
States." There are about 100 million tonnes of plastic circulating in
the northern Pacific - or about 2.5% of all plastic items made since
1950. About 20% of the junk is thought to come from marine craft,
while the rest originates from countries around the Pacific like
Mexico and China.

January 2008 -
January 2008 -
The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull
and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the US. "We are no
longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live
in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join
us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said. A delegation
of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and
said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with
the federal government of the US, some of them more than 150 years
old. Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South
Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. The new country would issue
its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-
free - provided residents renounce their US citizenship.

Morgan Stanley has issued a full recession alert for the US economy,
warning of a sharp slowdown in business investment and a "perfect
storm" for consumers as the housing slump spreads. The credit crunch
has started to inflict serious damage on US companies. "Slipping sales
and tightening credit are pushing companies into liquidation mode,
especially in motor vehicles." The foreclosure rate on residential
mortgages has reached a 19-year high of 5.59% in the third quarter,
while the glut of unsold properties will lead to a 40% crash in
housing construction. Like Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers, the
bank no longer believes Asia and Europe will be able to come to the
rescue as America slows. US demand is likely to contract by 1pc each
quarter for the first nine months of 2008, but the picture could be
far worse if the Federal Reserve fails to slash rates fast enough.
Morgan Stanley is the first major Wall Street bank to warn that it is
may now be too late to stop a recession, though most have shifted to
an ultra-cautious stance in recent weeks. The collapse of the US
commercial paper market has now continued for seventeen weeks,
suggesting a "fundamental deleveraging of the banking system."

A forecast made by Denmark-based Saxo Bank - chaos will take a grip on
the world in 2008. Oil prices will skyrocket to 175 dollars per
barrel, the Chinese market will collapse by 40 percent, whereas the
U.S. will suffer a 25-percent setback. All this will happen because of
the mortgage crisis in the USA which already slows down the U.S.
economy. The bank has its forecast on the new U.S. president too. The
bank predicts that Ron Paul, the Texan Republican, will take the
office in 2008.

With more and more species threatened with extinction by the flood
that is today’s global economic juggernaut, we may be the first
generation in human history that literally must act like Noah — to
save the last pairs of a wide range of species. Unlike Noah, though,
we’re also the ones causing The Flood, as more and more forests,
fisheries, rivers and fertile soils are gobbled up for development.
The world is rightly focused on climate change. But if we don’t have a
strategy for reducing global carbon emissions and preserving
biodiversity, we could end up in a very bad place, like in a crazy
rush into corn ethanol, and palm oil for biodiesel, without enough
regard for their effect on the natural world. “If we don’t plan well,
we could find ourselves with a healthy climate on a dead planet.” For
so many years, we have been taught that life is a trade-off: healthy
people with lots of jobs or healthy forests with lots of gibbons — you
can’t have both. But the truth is you have to have both. If you don’t,
you’ll eventually end up with neither, and then it will be too late
even for Noah.

Nature already feeling climate impact - "A hell of a lot of species
are in big trouble."

Wild salmon extinct in a decade - Parasitic sea lice found in salmon
farms are driving nearby populations of wild salmon toward local
extinction.

Artifical blood vessels - Scientists are nearer the creation of tiny
artificial blood vessels after growing miniscule tubes out of stem
cells.

Cocaine vaccine - Two U.S. researchers are working on a cocaine
vaccine they hope will become the first-ever medication to treat
people hooked on the drug.

Russian Railways want tiny robots to replace humans in difficult
maintenance work, and they want Russian-made androids that can dance
and talk. They have bought eight Russian robots for testing. Seven are
35-centimetres high, and the eighth is 1.4 metres tall and weighs 70
kilograms. The plan is to "build special robot models that can replace
humans in particularly difficult work for railways." The robots can
inspect parts of trains that are difficult for humans to access.

Futuristic jet packs could be sold to the masses as early as next
year, with a company already taking orders for "personal flying
machines". Jet Pack International in the US is planning to release a
$226,060 jet pack next year which could travel 16km without
refuelling. “We are developing a consumer model… our dream is to make
this affordable to the average person. Everyone wants things to evolve
to the point of The Jetsons, and I think it could. I could see
(consumers) flying from work to home, within a certain limit.”

Human evolution is speeding up - Contrary to conventional wisdom,
which holds that human evolution has slowed to a crawl or even stopped
in modern humans, research analysis suggested that the process of
natural selection has sped up. The world's residents are increasingly
genetically diverse thanks to the rapidly accelerating pace of human
evolution. The huge explosion in our numbers in the past 40,000 years,
since Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa to other continents, has
resulted in a much faster pace of evolution compared to the previous
six million years. The pace of change has increased 100-fold in modern
times compared to our distant past, and most notably since the Ice
Age, 10,000 years ago, and has led to increasing diversification
between the races. "We are more different genetically from people
living 5,000 years ago than they were different from Neanderthals."
"The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution
in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic
responses to diet and disease." "Human races are evolving away from
each other. Genes are evolving fast in Europe, Asia and Africa, but
almost all of these are unique to their continent of origin. We are
getting less alike, not merging into a single, mixed humanity."

November 26, 2007 -
Astronomers may have unwittingly hastened the end of the Universe by
simply looking at it, according to a theory reported in the latest
edition of New Scientist. The novel idea is being aired by two US
physicists, who attack the notion that the universe, believed to have
been created in the "Big Bang'' some 13.7 billion years ago, will go
on, well, forever. In fact, the poor old cosmos is in a rather
delicate state, they say. Until recently, a common idea was that the
energy unleashed in the Big Bang happened when a "false vacuum'' - a
bubble of high energy with repulsive gravity - broke down into a safe,
zero-energy "ordinary'' vacuum. But recent evidence has emerged that
places a cosmic question-mark over this cosy thought. For one thing,
cosmologists have discovered that the Universe is still expanding.
And, they believe, a strange, yet-to-be-detected form of energy called
dark energy pervades the universe, which would explain why the sum of
all the visible sources of energy fall way short of what should be out
there. Dark energy, goes the thinking, is a result of the Big Bang and
is accelerating the universe's expansion. If so, the universe is not
in a nice, stable zero-vacuum state but simply another "false vacuum''
state that may abruptly decay again - and with cataclysmic
consequences. The energy shift from the decay would destroy everything
in the universe, "wiping the slate clean". The good news is: the
longer the universe survives, the better the chance that it will
mature into a stable state. We are just beyond the crucial switching
point. The bad news is: the quantum effect, a truly weird aspect of
physics that says whenever we observe or measure something, we reset
its clock. Measurements of light from supernovae in 1998 that provided
the first evidence of dark energy may have reset the decay clock of
the "false vacuum'' back to zero, back before the switching point and
to a time when the risk of catastrophic decay was greater than now.
"Incredible as it seems, our detection of the dark energy may have
reduced the life expectancy of the universe. We may have snatched away
the possibility of long-term survival for our universe and made it
more likely it will decay." The claim is contested by other
astrophysicists: "The fact that we are still here means this can't
have happened yet."

Babies watching social interaction reach out approvingly to
individuals who help others but shun bullies who obstruct someone
trying to complete a task. The ability to size people up quickly based
on the way they treat each other is an essential skill for adults. But
this is the first study to conclude that pre-verbal infants are able
to make similar judgements and act on them. The experiments at Yale
University, involving tots aged six and 10 months, also suggest that
this capacity is a survival skill acquired through evolution and may
serve as the foundation for moral thought and action.

The Federal Reserve expects economic growth to slow sharply next year,
and policy makers there are worried that even this forecast may prove
too optimistic.

The chances of a global "growth recession", where world growth dips to
below 2 per cent, are about one in three next year, according to
economists at Germany's biggest bank Deutsche Bank.

Human skin cells have been reprogrammed by two groups of scientists to
mimic embryonic stem cells with the potential to become any tissue in
the body. The breakthrough promises a plentiful new source of cells
for use in research into new treatments for many diseases. Until now
only cells taken from embryos were thought to have an unlimited
capacity to become any of the 220 types of cell in the human body.
Crucially, it could mean that such research is no longer dependent on
using cells from human embryos, which has proved highly controversial.
"It is relatively easy to grow an entire plant from a small cutting,
something that seems inconceivable in humans. Yet this study brings us
tantalisingly close to using skin cells to grow many different types
of human tissues."

The Internet is nearing capacity - Increasing internet access and new
capacity-intensive uses like streaming, interactive videos and shared
music files are pushing the system toward gridlock, a U.S. study
warns.

Climatologists may have the explanation for Typhoon “Mina” (Mitag)
swinging away from the Bicol Region of the Philippines last weekend,
but to Bicolanos, the answer was simple enough: Mina veered because of
the power of prayer. For more than 48 hours, as Mina threatened the
region with its center winds of 175 kilometers per hour, radio
stations in Sorsogon City were swamped with text messages urging
people to pray hard so that the howler would spare their province and
the region. The typhoon was hardly moving last Friday but late that
night, “surprisingly, it changed direction.” Bicolanos then began
praying the typhoon would not cause too much damage in the provinces
of Aurora and Isabela, which were next to face Mina’s fury. Sorsogon's
Governor said prayers had long been proven to be a powerful tool in
warding off evil and calamities.

November 19, 2007 -
Plants genetically engineered to make fish oils offer a new approach
to improving diet, say UK scientists. Experiments have proved that
crops containing genes from marine organisms are able to produce omega
3 fatty acids normally found in oily fish. Adding the oil to animal
feed would create omega 3-rich meat, milk and eggs. Concerns over
dwindling fish stocks and marine pollution led researchers to seek an
alternative source of long chain omega 3 fatty acids.

Scientists say they may be on the brink of translating the thoughts of
a man who can no longer speak into words after a pioneering
experiment. Electrodes have been implanted in the brain of a man who
has been "locked in" - conscious but paralysed - since a car crash
eight years ago. Now, New Scientist magazine reports, they are to use
the signals he generates to create speech software. "There is a huge
difference between a technique like this, which is able to pick up
signals the subject wants to be picked up, and being able to delve
deep into the mind. It's very exciting that we are starting to be able
to translate some basic thoughts, but we are lot further away from a
universal mind reading machine than some people hoped - or feared - we
may be five years ago."

At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded
themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are
threatening to commit suicide if police intervene. They are thought to
have taken food and fuel supplies in with them and Russian television
pictures from the scene showed smoke or steam coming out of a hole in
the snow-covered ravine where it was built. They say: "The church is
doing a bad job, the end of the world is coming soon and we are all
saving ourselves". Media reports said the cult members believed the
world would end sometime in May next year. Police expected them to
emerge when their supplies ran out. After decades of state-enforced
atheism under Soviet rule, many Russians and other ex-Soviet nationals
have come under the influence of homegrown and foreign sects. Many
Russians have refused new passports and taxpayers' personal
identification numbers, saying the figures contained “satanic”
combinations of numbers.

Lexacat's Guide to the Doom - "And crawling on the planet's face, Some
insects called the human race.... Lost in time and lost in space and
meaning."

The Smartest Futurist On Earth - If legendary inventor Ray Kurzweil is
right, the future will be a lot brighter - and weirder - than you
think. In a couple of decades we'll have cell-sized, brain-enhancing
robots circulating through our bloodstream and we'll be able to upload
a person's consciousness into a computer. Kurzweil invented the
flatbed scanner, the first true electric piano, and large-vocabulary
speech-recognition software. The magic that has enabled all his
innovations has been the science of pattern recognition. After half a
lifetime studying trends in technological change, he believes he's
found a pattern that allows him to see into the future with a high
degree of accuracy. The secret is something he calls the Law of
Accelerating Returns, and the basic idea is that the power of
technology is expanding at an exponential rate. Mankind is on the cusp
of a radically accelerating era of change unlike anything we have ever
seen, he says, and almost more extreme than we can imagine. And if
you're a Baby Boomer with the right fitness plan (for Kurzweil that
involves over 200 supplement pills a day plus intravenous treatments
once a week), you may just live long enough to live forever. By the
time a child born today graduates from college, Kurzweil believes,
poverty, disease, and reliance on fossil fuels should be a thing of
the past. Most of us (even most of his fellow scientists) fail to see
the world changing exponentially because we are "stuck in the
intuitive linear view." By 2027, he predicts, computers will surpass
humans in intelligence; by 2045 or so, we will reach the Singularity,
a moment when technology is advancing so rapidly that "strictly
biological" humans will be unable to comprehend it. "We are the
species that goes beyond our potential," he says. "Merging with our
technology is the next stage in our evolution."

--------------------- ------ November 12, 2007 -
Banks worldwide may lose as much as $400 billion from subprime
mortgages, as at least one in four of the risky home loans go into
default.

The chip industry's unrelenting quest to build smaller, faster
microchips has taken another step forward. Chip-maker Intel has
launched a range of processors, known as Penryn, which will power the
next generation of PCs. The tiny chips contain a novel material and
have features just 45 nanometres (billionths of a metre) wide. The PC
processor in the line-up of 16 chips packs 820 million of the tiny
switches into an area little bigger than a postage stamp. "Had we used
the same transistors that we used in our chips 15 to 20 years ago, the
chip would be about the size of a two-storey building."

UFOs - A group of former pilots and government officials has called on
the US government to re-open an investigation into claims of UFO
sightings. Project Blue Book, run by the US Air Force, was stopped in
the late 1960s. The group, which includes former military officers
from seven countries, all say they have seen a UFO or have conducted
research into the phenomenon. The group say the apparent sightings of
hovering orbs, glowing lights and high-speed spacecraft are a national
security concern and should no longer be dismissed.

Invisible Submarines - Scientists are already making progress in
developing real-world invisibility cloaks. Now, Navy-funded Duke
University researchers are applying some of the same concepts to
sound. One day, perhaps, it could make a sub invisible to sonar
signals - and impossible to spot. The key to both projects are
metamaterials - composites than can be structured to let
electromagnetic waves flow around them, rather than reflecting those
those waves back. "In two dimensions, acoustic waves behave like
electromagnetic waves" in a way that would "allow someone to build an
acoustic cloaking device," theoretically. But it wouldn't work three
dimensions, "so presumably such a cloak would only hide a submarine
from another submarine at the same depth, not one that was sending
sonar upward or downward."

The personal computer's role in Japanese homes is diminishing, as its
once-awesome monopoly on processing power is encroached by gadgets
such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced
internet-connected game consoles and digital video recorders with
terabytes of memory. Japan's PC market is already shrinking, leading
analysts to wonder whether Japan will become the first major market to
see a decline in personal computer use some 25 years after it
revolutionized household electronics — and whether this could be the
picture of things to come in other countries. Overall PC shipments in
Japan have fallen for five consecutive quarters, the first ever drawn-
out decline in PC sales in a key market. The trend shows no signs of
letting up. "In Japan, kids now grow up using mobile phones, not PCs.
The future of PCs isn't bright." Though sales in the United States are
slowing too, Asia is a key growth area, with second-quarter sales
jumping 21.9 per cent this year. More than 50 per cent of Japanese
send e-mail and browse the internet from their mobile phones. The
slide has made PC manufacturers desperate to maintain their presence
in Japanese homes. Recent desktop PCs look more like audiovisual
equipment — or even colourful art objects — than computers. Sony
Corp.'s desktop computers have folded up to become clocks, and its
latest version even hangs on the wall. Laptops in a new Sony line are
adorned with illustrations from hip designers like ZAnPon. Sony's
latest PCs come with a powerful program that can take photos and video
clips, and automatically edit them into a slideshow set to music.

October 29, 2007 -
Bigfoot? - a photograph taken by a hunter in Pennsylvania has
reignited debate over the existence of Bigfoot. The hunter claims to
have taken the pictures using a camera hung from a tree with an
automatic trigger. (photo)

Massive rise in Europe GM crops - The area planted with genetically
modified crops in Europe has grown by 77% since last year.

New nerves grown from stem cells taken from a patient's fat could be
available by 2011, say researchers.

A simple blood test to predict Alzheimer's may be just two years away
after a breakthrough by Australian researchers that drastically
improves disease detection.

Birth defects in Chinese infants have soared nearly 40% since 2001, a
government report said, and officials linked the rise to China's
worsening environmental degradation.

Silverware and cups are being made from potatoes and corn.

Car toilet - If you're stuck in traffic when Mother Nature calls,
Japan's Kaneko Sangyo Co has developed the loo for you. The
manufacturer of plastic car accessories has a new portable toilet for
cars. “The commode will come in handy during major disasters such as
earthquakes or when you are caught in a traffic jam.” Drivers simply
assemble the cardboard toilet bowl, fit a water-absorbent sheet inside
and draw a curtain around. The product is small enough to fit inside a
suitcase. Prospective customers will have to hang on until November
15, when the firm begins selling the new product online.

Super-strong body armor in sight - A new type of carbon fibre,
developed at the University of Cambridge, could be woven into super-
strong body armor for the military and law enforcement. The
researchers say their material is already several times stronger,
tougher and stiffer than fibres currently used to make protective
armour. The lightweight fibre, made up of millions of tiny carbon
nanotubes, is starting to reveal exciting properties. Carbon nanotubes
are hollow cylinders of carbon just one atom thick. The new material
could also find applications in the area of hi-tech "smart" clothing,
bomb-proof refuse bins, flexible solar panels, and, eventually, as a
replacement for copper wire in transmitting electrical power and
signals.

U.S. Air Force advanced technologies will enable them to own the
weather. The Pentagon's top meteorologists believe the United States
will be ready to fight - and win - a weather war. A study, titled
"Weather As A Force Multiplier: Owning The Weather In 2025," envisions
future generals having at their disposal an impressive weather-control
arsenal for tactical operations. These weapons would include unmanned
stealth aircraft that could seed clouds above massing troops with fine
particles of heat-absorbing carbon. This next-generation cloud-seeding
technique would, in turn, produce localized flooding and create mud,
which has been the bane of all of history's armies. Airborne lasers
would cause lightning to discharge over the airframes of attack and
surveillance aircraft. Other lasers would fire at fog banks, clearing
a temporary flight path to high-value targets, such as command posts.
In addition, still more powerful microwave transmitters would heat the
ionosphere, altering its reflective properties in ways that would
disrupt communications among enemy field commanders. They estimate
that by 2015 supercomputer and atmosphere-monitoring technologies will
have advanced to the point where military planners will know exactly
what sort of weather to expect over an operations area throughout the
course of a campaign lasting several weeks. The great leap forward,
however, is expected to occur between 2015 and 2025, spurred on
largely by a growing global population that will put increasing
pressure on the worldwide food and drinkable water supplies. "These
pressures [will] prompt governments and/or other organizations who are
able to capitalize on the technological advances of the previous 20
years to pursue a highly accurate and reasonably precise weather-
modification capability." "Our vision is that by 2025 the military
could influence the weather on a mesoscale [theater-wide] or
microscale [immediate local area] to achieve operational
capabilities." (this is an article from 1997)

October 15, 2007 -
Fiery image of Pope John Paul? - Believers say they have snapped the
image of the late Pope John Paul II in a bonfire. The fiery figure,
being hailed as Pope John Paul II making an appearance beyond the
grave, was spotted during a ceremony in Poland to mark the second
anniversary of his death. The pictures were being broadcast
continuously on Italian TV and also posted on religious websites.
(photo)

Humans will be marrying robots by 2050 an artificial intelligence
researcher has claimed. Robots will become so human-like in
appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in
love with them, have sex with them and even marry them. Psychologists
have identified roughly a dozen basic reasons why people fall in love,
and almost all of them could apply to human-robot relationships. "For
instance, one thing that prompts people to fall in love are
similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is
programmable. Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is
if they know the other person likes them, and that's programmable
too." A researcher said Massachusetts would be the first jurisdiction
to legalise human-robot marriage. "Massachusetts is more liberal than
most other jurisdictions in the United States and has been at the
forefront of same-sex marriage. There's also a lot of high-tech
research there." "If you ask me if every human will want to marry a
robot, my answer is probably not. But will there be a subset of
people?"

E.T. - An ambitious project to search for signs of extraterrestrial
intelligence in outer space began on Thursday with the activation of a
new radio telescope array in California.

SELF-COOLING CLOTHES may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but
for one Japanese company they are not only good business but a way to
help the environment. Shirts and jackets made by Kuchou-fuku -
literally “air-conditioned clothes” - keep the wearer comfortable even
in sweltering heat while using one-50th of the energy of a small air
conditioner. “Until now, air-conditioning implied cooling the entire
room. Now, we can cool just the body." Two small fans sewn into the
back of each garment and powered by a pocket-sized rechargeable
battery pack circulate air across the wearer's skin, evaporating
perspiration and keeping temperatures down. Because the fans puff out
the garments with air, they give wearers a deceptively portly look.

October 8, 2007 -
Online worlds to be Artifical Intelligence incubators - Artificial
intelligences could soon be living and learning inside online worlds
such as Second Life. Researchers at Novamente have created software
that learns by controlling avatars in virtual worlds. Initially the
AIs will be embodied in pets that will get smarter by interacting with
the avatars controlled by their human owners. Novamente said it
eventually aimed to create more sophisticated avatars such as talking
parrots and even babies. "Robots have a lot of disadvantages, we have
not solved all the problems of getting them to move around and see the
world. It's a lot more practical to control virtual robots in
simulated worlds than real robots."

Robot nurses - If you grow old in Japan, expect to be served food by a
robot, ride a voice-recognition wheelchair or even possibly hire a
nurse in a robotic suit, all examples of cutting-edge technology to
care for the country's rapidly greying population.

Drone aircraft - The U.S. is preparing to use unmanned drone airplanes
for surveillance of Manitoba, Canada's border with Minnesota and North
Dakota.

New life form created - A DNA researcher "has built a synthetic
chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the
creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth." The new
species is made from an artificial chromosome constructed by a team of
20 leading scientists. The chromosome is transplanted into a living
host cell where it then takes control of the cell, effectively
changing it into a different species. So the life form itself isn’t
completely 100% artificial, per se, but since its genetic makeup is
based on an artificially created DNA structure that controls the cell,
it can be categorized as man-made since DNA is the building block from
which all life is created and maintained. With it, bacteria could be
created to soak up carbon dioxide, which could help in the fight
against global warming. Most people would agree that’s a good thing.
New life-saving drugs could also be artificially created — a good
thing as well. However, artificially-created bacteria could also be
used to make things like biological weapons. The sky’s the limit,
actually, as they have created a "chassis on which you could build
almost anything." While intentions seem benevolent at this point,
something that might make people a bit nervous is that the creator has
applied to patent the synthetic bacterium. The idea that something
that can be used to create just about anything else can be legally
owned and controlled by a single human being is terrifying at best.

One in seven adults is reluctant to have children and one in four puts
off planning for the future because of world troubles, according to a
survey. For 70% of people terrorism is their greatest fear.
Immigration concerns worried 58% of people, with 38% saying they had
fears over climate change and 23% fearing a natural disaster.

September 18, 2007 -
Strangling heat and gases emanating from the earth and sea, not
asteroids, most likely caused several ancient mass extinctions. In
most cases, the earth itself appears to have become life's worst enemy
in a previously unimagined way. And current human activities may be
putting the biosphere at risk once again. Five times in the past 500
million years most of the world's life-forms have simply ceased to
exist. A new type of evidence reveals that the earth itself can, and
probably did, exterminate its own inhabitants. A massive extinction at
the end of the Paleocene began when atmospheric CO2 was just under
1,000 parts per million (ppm). Today with CO2 around 385 ppm, it seems
we are still safe. But with atmospheric carbon climbing at an annual
rate of 2 ppm and expected to accelerate to 3 ppm, levels could
approach 900 ppm by the end of the next century and conditions that
bring about the beginnings of ocean anoxia may be in place. So we have
about 200 years before WE go extinct, unless we change our ways.

Space junk threatens lives - Human security and technologies - from
cell phones to weather forecasts - are more at risk than ever from
anti-satellite weapons and space junk, new research says. An anti-
satellite test by China in January, and increased US opposition to
restrictions on space weapons, were cited as two main global threats.
30 nations now have the ability to shoot down satellites. "If we don't
keep space as a sanctuary...once an arms race begins in space, all
those satellites become very vulnerable...You wouldn't be able to have
cell phones, Blackberries, pagers, the kind of television you have
now." The number of objects in Earth orbit have increased steadily;
today there are an estimated 35 million pieces of space debris. 90
percent of 13,000 orbiting objects that are large enough to damage or
destroy a spacecraft are space debris.

'Non-sticky' chewing gum - British researchers say they have cracked a
sticky problem which scientists have been chewing over for years by
inventing gum which is easily removable from shoes, pavements and
hair.

Near- and far-sighted people and others with astigmatism or cataracts
may soon be able to throw away their glasses for good thanks to a new
artificial lens. The new Acrysol Toric intraocular lens is surgically
implanted, its tacky nature allowing it to adhere directly to the eye
capsule. Not only can it be used to correct minor eye problems, it
also corrects more serious astigmatism, which results in distorted
vision, or even cataracts.

September 10, 2007 -
A person's entire life could one day be recorded by a network of
intelligent sensors, according to a senior scientist. By 2057, there
could be at least 1 million devices for every UK resident. "More
aggressive" calculations suggest there could be 20 million sensors per
person. A 2002 study calculated there were around 4.2 million CCTV
cameras in the UK, one for every 14 people. Predicted advances in
storage and cameras coupled with decreasing costs would allow this
explosion. But the amount of personal data that could be collected
would lead to difficult ethical dilemmas. "Maybe the first time you
know you are pregnant is when a targeted piece of advertising comes
through on your computer screen offering you some baby clothes because
somehow the smart toilet, or some other aspect of your environment,
leaked that information." Already some researchers at Microsoft,
Hewlett Packard and MIT have developed devices that record a person's
every move. An MIT researcher is already recording his son's life. "We
imagine by 2057 our motorways, rivers and coastal defences, farms,
businesses, homes and neighbourhoods and bodies will all be highly
instrumented...We have some real choices that we can make over the
next few years about how much we benefit from all this
information...or how much it presents some sort of dark future for
us." Advances in technology and a more complete understanding of
physics would lead to a new breed of devices that are "too small to
see, that permeate your body, permeate the space in which we exist,
record everything, know everything about you, transmit your reputation
wherever you go...These kinds of things will be possible, whether we
permit them, and which societies will permit them and which will not,
and how this will polarise things remains completely unplottable."

Did the great flood of Noah's generation really occur thousands of
years ago? A team on board the "Mediterranean Explorer" recently
headed to the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey, the site where
historians believe the great biblical flood occurred. They believe
they have found evidence to substantiate what is written in the Bible.
"We found that indeed a flood happened around that time. From core
samples, we see that a flood broke through the natural barrier
separating the Mediterranean Sea and the freshwater Black Sea,
bringing with it seashells that only grow in a marine environment.
There was no doubt that it was a fast flood - one that covered an
expanse four times the size of Israel. It might not have been Noah, as
it is written in the Bible, but we believe people in that region had
to build boats in order to save their animals from drowning. We think
that the ones who survived were fishermen - they already had the
boats."

It sounds like science fiction, but a molecular probe has been
developed that can illuminate cancer cells by setting them aglow.

Despite daunting challenges posed by global warming, water, energy,
unemployment and terrorism, the world faces a brighter future with
fewer wars. "Although great human tragedies like Iraq and Darfur
dominate the news, the vast majority of the world is living in peace,
conflicts actually decreased over the past decade," said the 2007
State of the Future report published by a global think tank. The
number of African conflicts fell from a peak of 16 in 2002 to five in
2005 and that the number of refugees around the world is falling. HIV/
AIDS in Africa has begun to level off and could begin to actually
decrease over the next few years although it continues to spread
rapidly in Eastern Europe and in Central and South Asia. Among other
global bright spots, the report cited higher life expectancy, lower
infant mortality, increased literacy and increases in gross domestic
products per capita and in the number of Internet users. But it warned
that unless key trans-national challenges, including the gap between
rich and poor, new or remerging diseases and organised crime, are met,
"the future could be bleak, marred by lack of water and arable land,
mass migrations, turbulent climates, economic chaos and other
disasters". Two percent of people own 50 percent of the world's
wealth, while the poorest 50 percent own only one percent. The income
of the richest 225 people in the world equals that of the poorest 2.7
billion or 40 percent of the global population.

U.S. CEOs earn in a day what workers make in a year - Chief executive
officers of big U.S. companies earned roughly as much each day last
year as the average American production worker did in 12 months.

August 28, 2007 -
The risk of massive defaults on subprime mortgages and heavy debts now
poses a bigger threat to U.S. economic prosperity than terrorism, a
panel of US business economists says.

Healing a broken heart - A 15-year-old girl has become the first
Canadian to have an artificial heart removed after her own heart
healed itself.

Potato-powered walkman on the way - Japanese technological giant Sony,
hoping to be eco-friendly, has developed a prototype battery cell that
generates electricity from carbohydrates and sugar. The test cells had
achieved output of 50 milliwatts, enough to play music on a Walkman.
In a demonstration, a Sony employee poured a sugary sports drink to
power a music player and speakers. Sugar batteries will biodegrade and
the source material can be found in plants around the world.

A"Spider-man" suit allowing wearers to scale vertical walls could one
day be a reality, according to a study. Natural technology used by
spiders and geckos could help a human climb the side of a building or
hang upside down from a roof. A real Spiderman suit must demonstrate
three properties. Firstly, and most obviously, it must be able to
demonstrate strong adhesive properties. Secondly, the suit must be
able to detach easily from a surface after it has stuck. Thirdly, the
suit must, to some degree, be able to clean itself. The latter
requirement is considered important because dirt particles could get
in the way, interfering with the adhesive properties of the suit.
There are many interesting applications for adhesive suits, in areas
ranging from space exploration to defence. The work could also aid the
design of gloves and shoes for window cleaners working on tall
skyscrapers. But people would probably suffer from muscle fatigue if
they tried to stick to a wall for many hours.

August 20, 2007 -
A school uniform maker in England is considering adding satellite
tracking devices to its clothing range so parents will always know
where their children are.

Interactive furniture that changes colour depending on who sits on it
is put on show by Japanese researchers. On display at the Siggraph
show, the Fuwapica table and chairs use sensors embedded in the table-
top to work out the colour of items placed upon it. The colour of the
stools then change to match the colour of whatever has been placed on
the sensitive table-top. Sensors in the stools also work out the
weight of anyone sat on them - heavier people are treated to darker
shades. The colours are also made to pulse lighter and darker at about
the same tempo of human breathing in a bid to make the stools seem
more life-like. Placing many objects on the table-top makes the system
mix and merge colours to match the shades seen in the collection of
artefacts. The designers suggest that people can change the colour of
the chairs to match their mood. The Fuwapica furniture draws on the
country's ancient notions that gods inhabit every manmade artefact, be
it chopsticks, dishes or tables. The designers say that instead of
furniture being inert and silent, it should be given a chance to
interact with the people that use it.

Paper battery - U.S. researchers say they have invented a super
lightweight, flexible, biodegradable battery in the form of a piece of
paper.

August 6, 2007 -
Let couples design their children, says top ethicist. Couples should
be able to design the characteristics of children - including
personality traits - during IVF treatment. Couples seeking IVF should
have the right to give their future-child “greater opportunities”
through genetic manipulation. An IVF clinic in Sydney had offered
couples the choice of their future child’s sex, but that choice is now
banned in Australia. Determining a child’s hair and eye colour through
genetic manipulation is still possible.

Now that cigarette smoke no longer masks the smell of body odour and
stale beer, British pubs are beginning to pump sweeter smells into
their establishments. Some pubs are testing pumping in perfume smells
of leather, freshly cut grass and ocean breeze fragrance in its
premises since a ban on smoking in enclosed public space began in
England on July 1. A nightclub chain has already started pumping scent
onto dance floors, which are also covered by the ban.

July 30, 2007 -
Possible Attack on the U.S. Within Ninety Days - A veteran Israeli
Intelligence expert said in recent media interviews that his sources
on terror plots directed at the United States indicate that multiple
attacks on our homeland are in the final stages of preparation. "It
could happen as soon as tomorrow, or it could happen in the next few
months...What they’re going to do is hit six, seven or eight cities
simultaneously to show sophistication and really hit the public. This
time...it will not only be big cities. They’re going to try to hit
rural America."

HUMAN TAGGING - Legislators in the Indonesian province of Papua are
debating whether to approve a bill allowing microchips to be implanted
in people with HIV. The measure has been put forward as a way of
preventing the spread of HIV in the Indonesian province. But the move
is facing stiff opposition from health workers. About 2.4% of Papuans
are known to be carrying the virus, and infection rates in the
province are estimated to be 15 times the national average. Microchips
could provide a means of tracking people who continued to infect
others. As well as calling for the introduction of microchips, the
bill also suggests mandatory testing of every resident in Papua.
Parliamentarians are reported to have discussed tattooing those found
to be carrying the virus. Papua's Aids commission has rejected the
bill. It said it was not involved in the drafting process and that the
proposals were illogical and inhuman. Marking out anyone carrying the
virus, it said, would contravene their human rights.

In Kenya a self-proclaimed prophet resurfaced in the country and
called for national repentance to avert what he termed as a massive
earthquake that is set to hit Nairobi and its environs. He claimed God
had revealed to him in a dream that a massive earthquake would bring
down buildings in the capital city and leave an unknown number of
people dead or injured. “I have seen buildings tumbling down, people
being pulled out of rubble and helicopters hovering around in search
of survivors.” But in a quick rebuttal, the Catholic Archbishop warned
Kenyans against apocalyptic messages. And geological experts have down-
played chances of recent tremors in Kenya and Tanzania leading to a
major earthquake. The tremors' epicentre has been traced to volcanic
activity on Mt Ol donyo Lengai.

July 23, 2007 -
Scientists have genetically modified goats to make a drug in their
milk that protects against deadly nerve agents such as sarin and VX.
These poisons are known collectively as organophosphates - a group of
chemicals that also includes some pesticides used in farming.
Researchers inserted DNA for making the human form of
butyrylcholinesterase into a "vector" molecule. This vector is then
introduced into a goat embryo. This allows the human gene to be
incorporated into the goat's DNA sequence. The resulting female
animals, all healthy, produced large quantities of
butyrylcholinesterase in their milk. The high yields are partly down
to "control elements" - stretches of DNA added, along with the human
gene, to the vector molecule. These control elements regulate how much
of the enzyme the goat produces and ensure that most of it is produced
in the milk, rather than in other tissues. The commercial name given
to the butyrylcholinesterase enzyme is Protexia. Protexia was more
effective than the combination of the drugs atropine and 2-PAM
currently carried by soldiers for protection against nerve agents.
"Those (older) drugs get cleared from the blood very rapidly. Even if
the soldier were to survive, they would have very severe neurological
damage. With Protexia, you would survive and be able to go back on the
battlefield." The product is still several years from entering use; it
needs to pass a safety trial and seek approvals from the US
government.

A dead humpback whale with a tongue swollen to the size of a small car
has been found on the rocky shores of Admiralty Island in southeast
Alaska. Scientists believe that a collision forced air into the male
humpback's tongue and caused it to swell. A ship could be responsible
for the death of the 40-foot (12-meter) whale, which was found last
week. "It is certainly possible that it was a ship strike, but that's
still inconclusive." (photo)

A low-cost $100 laptop, designed for children in developing countries,
has finally gone into mass production.

The remarkable adhesive abilities of geckos and mussels have been
combined to create "geckel" glue.

July 16, 2007 -
GIANT BADGERS - The Iraqi port city of Basra, already prey to a nasty
turf war between rival militia factions, has now been gripped by a
scary rumour – giant badgers are stalking the streets by night, eating
humans. The animals were allegedly released into the area by British
forces. Local farmers have caught and killed several of the beasts,
but this has done nothing to dispel the rumour. Iraqi scientists have
attempted to calm things down. However, the story has spread like
wildfire in the streets of the city and the villages round about.
Others say the animals are not a new post-war arrival in the region.
“These animals appeared before the fall of the regime in 1986. They
are known as Al-Ghirayri and locally as Al-Girta. Talk that this
animal was brought by the British forces is incorrect and
unscientific.” Not everybody is convinced. “I believe this animal
appeared following a raid to the region by the British forces.” Locals
are quick to blame the British troops for almost any calamity that
befalls the area – including an apparent plague of vicious badgers
with long claws and powerful jaws. The animals are thought to be a
kind of honey badger – melivora capensis – which can be fierce but are
not usually dangerous to humans unless provoked. “They are native to
the region but rare in Iraq. They're nocturnal carnivores with a
fearsome reputation, but they don't stalk humans and carry them back
to their lair.” Cell phone video of the badgers circulating in Basra
shows a stocky skunk-like animal with long front claws. “It is the
size of a dog but his head is like a monkey. It runs so quickly.” The
honey badger, or ratel, is known as a brave predator capable of
killing a cobra. It weighs up to 14kg. “I saw it three days ago at
night attacking animals. It even ate a cow. It tore the cow up piece
by piece. I tried to shoot it with my gun but it ran away into the
orchards."

The US could approve cloned animals for use as food in two to three
years, according to experts. But cloned meat is unlikely to appear on
supermarket shelves in Britain or elsewhere in Europe anytime soon.
Following a five year study, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
issued a draft ruling last year that meat and milk from cloned animals
was safe for human consumption. However, researchers said there needed
to be more research on some of the stillbirths and abnormalities which
are more common in cloned animals compared to those born naturally.
The efficiency of the cloning process remains a key issue in the
viability of commercialisation. Early attempts at cloning produced
very few viable clones; most of the animals died during gestation or
shortly after birth.

HYDROGEN CARS - could be in production within 5 years. A relatively
quick-and-easy answer to foreign oil dependence and automotive
greenhouse gas emissions is circling the grounds every day at Orlando
International Airport in Florida, according to a top Ford Motor Co.
official.

WALLS YOU CAN WALK THROUGH - Architects and engineers from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology have designed a building with
walls made from water.

A new project known as Galaxy Zoo is calling on members of the public
to log on to its website and help classify one million galaxies. The
hope is that about 30,000 people might take part in a project that
could help reveal whether our existing models of the Universe are
correct. Computers users undergo a three-minute online tutorial and
are then allocated a series of images and asked to decide whether each
one shows a spiral or an elliptical galaxy. If it's a spiral galaxy,
they're asked to decide which way it appears to be rotating. "These
images were taken by a robotic telescope and processed automatically,
so the odds are that when you log on, that first galaxy you see will
be one that no human has seen before." "Some people have argued that
galaxies are rotating all in agreement with each other, not randomly
as we'd expect. We want people to classify the galaxies according to
which way they're rotating and I'll be able to go and see if there's
anything bizarre going on. If there are any patterns that we're not
expecting, it could really turn up some surprises."

July 9, 2007 -
Science can finally prove what Buddhists have sworn by for centuries -
meditation really does sharpen and clear the brain. Tests by
researchers have revealed that as people go further into a deep
meditative state, their brain rhythms shift into a pattern of focus.
This supports long-standing beliefs that the practice can improve
concentration levels and alertness in daily activities. Meditation was
developed more than 2500 years ago as a way to explore consciousness
and a discipline to help people achieve a more beneficial state of
mind.

A first-in-the-world robotic 'family' rescue system, inspired by
recent terrorist acts and earthquake activity worldwide, aims to
reduce the number of human casualties experienced by search and rescue
teams when attempting to recover victims. "Often rescue is delayed by
many critical hours until a search team arrives." Urban search and
rescue comprises a three-tier system affectionately referred to as the
"grandmother, mother and daughter" components, each with distinct
responsibilities. The multi-terrain grandmother acts as a platform to
launch the mother as a base station. The mother then releases numerous
disposable daughters, armed with microphones, heat sensors, carbon
dioxide detectors and motion detectors. The daughters have the ability
to burrow and crawl through narrow crevices at the disaster site. Once
the daughter detects a trapped person, it sends a "found" signal to
the mother, which then uses its own GPS system, along with information
of the last known position of the daughter, to give the grandmother a
set of "best guesses" for the location of trapped victims. "The
daughter robots are innovative in that they are completely disposable.
No attempt will be made to recover these." (photo)

Syria threatens Israeli War over Golan Heights - Syria has made a
threat of war with Israel, demanding that the Golan Heights be handed
over by August or September. An unnamed Syrian official told the New
York Sun, “Syria passed repeated messages to the U.S. that we demand
the return of the Golan either through negotiations or through war. If
the Golan is not in our hands by August or September, we will be
poised to launch resistance, including raids and attacks against
Jewish positions (in the Golan Heights).” On Monday, the Syrian
government also urged Syrians to leave Lebanon “ahead of an expected
military ‘eruption’ expected to take place next week.”

The United States could deploy a system to protect an area ranging
from Washington to Boston from sea-based cruise-missile attacks within
14 months at a cost of "several billion dollars," a top Lockheed
Martin Corp. executive said. The technologies needed to track,
identify and destroy any such missiles launched from ships off the
U.S. coastline already existed or were under development. "It just
requires a will to do it." Subsonic cruise missiles are not difficult
to destroy. But it is essential to track them quickly, as they can
reach a target within 11 minutes, and to destroy them over water to
avoid damage from the debris. Short-range cruise missiles are easy to
hide, relatively cheap, and can carry a variety of warheads such as
biological or chemical weapons, according to some experts. Lockheed
had high hopes for its $148 million High Altitude Airship program, for
airships priced at just under $40 million apiece that can hover and
monitor a 500-square-mile area for about two months. But the
Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency cut the program's budget sharply in
fiscal year 2007 and requested no funding at all for 2008. Lockheed
convinced lawmakers to reinstate the 2007 funds, and there is an
amendment to provide a small sum in 2008, but the program's outlook is
grim at this point. Tens of thousands of cruise missiles are available
globally and 20 countries can build them. Cruise missiles were first
fired at U.S. troops during the war in Iraq. But the United States
itself, with 12,000 miles of coastline, provides ample targets for
extremist groups, especially since cruise missiles can be easily be
stowed inside a standard cargo container. The U.S. military has plans
to protect troops, ships and overseas bases from cruise missile
attacks, but it has no plan and no budget to protect the U.S.
coastline.

Consumers will see the beginnings of a serious global oil and gas
shortage within two years, the International Energy Agency warned
Monday.

July 2, 2007 -
You are needed on Tuesday, July 17 to sit and 'Fire the Grid' -
positive words of hope, love and desire for change will power this one
hour "plan which will allow us to more fully connect to the earth grid
and begin the healing of this planet. Together we will reset Mother
Earth with a bio-electric "SURGE OF LOVE" from humanity. When we sit
in meditation simultaneously and fire the Grid for one hour, we will
unite the globe and connect all the regions of the earth
simultaneously. In the process, we will unite our souls in love,
peace, harmony and collective cooperation for a better world for our
people, today and in the future."

Armed robots - RoboCops and robot soldiers got a little closer to
reality this week as a maker of floor-cleaning automatons teamed up
with a stun-gun manufacturer to arm track-wheeled 'bots for the police
and the Pentagon. By adding Taser weapons to robots it already makes
for the military, iRobot Corporation says it hopes to give soldiers
and law enforcement a defensive, non-lethal tool. The system isn't
entirely unprecedented. Foster-Miller Incorporated already offers a
version of its track-wheeled Talon robot that can be fitted with a
Taser with laser-dot aiming capability. "It is not the first step in
that direction, but I think at some point toward the end of the next
decade, you're going to start seeing RoboCops, or a Terminator. We may
see autonomous robots capable of inflicting lethal force."

Russia's first robot cop is now patrolling the streets of the Urals
city of Perm. The prototype of a robot built at a Moscow institute is
so far the only one of its kind in the country. With a shape somewhere
between a bomb and an egg, the robot bears no resemblance to its two-
legged, gun-blazing cousin in the Hollywood Robocop films. But at
250kg, a height of 180cm and a form specially designed to make him
almost impossible to manhandle, this robot is no pushover. The machine
boasts five cameras, a help button for passersby, and the ability to
issue simple instructions, such as asking someone drinking alcohol on
the street to take their booze indoors.

SCOTLAND - A new hospital being built at Larbert in Stirlingshire will
be the first in the UK to use a fleet of robots to transport goods and
equipment. The robots will run along separate corridors and use
magnetic strips or infra red to find their way around. The technology
is similar to that already used in car plants and can be found in
hospitals in France and Japan. Hospital porters will still be needed
to transport patients, while the robots free them from arduous or
dirty tasks. "Lots of materials require to get to the right place at
the right time. Dirty materials, linens and so on require to be taken
away and its a huge logistic exercise." Work on the new hospital is
expected to be completed by December 2009.

The world's fastest commercial supercomputer has been launched by
computer giant IBM. Blue Gene/P is three times more potent than the
current fastest machine, also built by IBM. The latest number cruncher
is capable of operating at so called "petaflop" speeds - the
equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second. It is
approximately 100,000 times more powerful than a PC. The first machine
has been bought by the US government and will be installed at the
Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois later
this year. Two further machines are planned for US laboratories and a
fourth has been bought by the UK Science and Technology Facilities
Council. The ultra powerful machines will be used for complex
simulations to study everything from particle physics to
nanotechnology.

Symptoms of mental retardation and autism have been reversed for the
first time in laboratory mice. US scientists created mice that showed
symptoms of Fragile X Syndrome - a leading cause of mental retardation
and autism in humans. They then reversed symptoms of the condition by
inhibiting the action of an enzyme in the brain. Analysis showed that
not only were structural abnormalities in connections between brain
cells righted, proper electrical communication was restored between
the cells.

A massive underground facility has been built in Russia. Hidden inside
Yamantau mountain in the Beloretsk area of the southern Urals, the
project involved the creation of a huge complex, served by a railroad,
a highway, and thousands of workers. This is a huge underground city.
It is believed to be large enough to house 60,000 persons, with a
special air filtration system designed to withstand a nuclear,
chemical or biological attack. Enough food and water is believed to be
stored at the site to sustain the entire underground population for
months on end. Even if many Russian cities are destroyed, the military
and political elite sheltered inside the mountain could survive. Is
this a "doomsday" shelter? Did the Hopi go underground to survive a
catastrophe event thousands of years earlier? Should we be going
underground also?"

June 25, 2007 -
The conditions which led up to the Great Depression of the 1930s and
the Asian crises in the 1990s are reflected in the current
environment. The risk of a 1930s-style economic slump has been
heightened by "euphoric" markets tapping cheap global credit, one of
the world's pre-eminent financial institutions has said. The BIS, the
central bankers' bank, pointed to a confluence of worrying signs,
citing mass issuance of new-fangled credit instruments, soaring levels
of household debt, extreme appetite for risk shown by investors, and
entrenched imbalances in the world currency system. China may have
repeated the disastrous errors made by Japan in the 1980s when Tokyo
let rip with excess liquidity. "The Chinese economy seems to be
demonstrating very similar, disquieting symptoms." It said China's
growth was "unstable, unbalanced, unco-ordinated and unsustainable."

Is global warming a galactic phenomenon? - temperatures have been seen
to rise on virtually all the planets in our system. This seems quite
apart from any local phenomenon like greenhouse gases etc. Here are
some changes being watched by scientists:
* A growth of dark spots on Pluto.
* Reporting of auroras on Saturn.
* Reporting of Uranus and Neptune polar shifts, and the abrupt large-
scale growth of Uranus' magnetosphere intensity.
* A change in light intensity and light spot dynamics on Neptune.
* The doubling of the magnetic field intensity on Jupiter (based upon
1992 data), and a series of new states and processes observed on this
planet as an aftermath of a series of explosions in July 1994 [caused
by "Comet" SL-9]. The appearance of large auroral anomalies and a
change of the Jupiter - Io system of currents.
* A series of Martian atmosphere transformations increasing its
biosphere quality. In particularly, a cloudy growth in the equator
area and an unusual growth of ozone concentration.
* A first stage atmosphere generation on the Moon, where a growing
natrium atmosphere is detected that reaches 9,000 km in height.
* Significant physical, chemical and optical changes observed on
Venus; an inversion of dark and light spots detected for the first
time, and a sharp decrease of sulfur-containing gases in its
atmosphere.

June 18, 2007 -
Native American leaders are speaking out forcefully about the danger
of climate change. Members of six tribes recently gathered near the
Baker River in New Hampshire's White Mountains for a sacred ceremony
honoring "Earth Mother." Talking Hawk pointed to the river's tea-
colored water as proof that the overwhelming amount of pollution
humans have produced has caused changes around the globe. "It's August
color. It's not normal. Earth Mother is fighting back - not only from
the four winds but also from underneath. Scientists call it global
warming. We call it Earth Mother getting angry." In California,
Minnesota, New Mexico, and elsewhere, tribes have used some of their
casino profits to start alternative or renewable energy projects,
including biomass-fueled power plants. "American Natives have been
telling us all along that this was going to happen to the earth. They
were telling us hundreds of years ago that what we were doing (to the
environment) would come back and haunt us. They have been proven
right." Talking Hawk prayed for those who would suffer from natural
disasters ahead. "Think of the people who will die in the cleansing of
Earth Mother, all around the world," he said. "Think of their
spirits."

Using genetic modifications, researchers at Oregon State University
have created full-grown trees no taller than a green thumb. Working
with poplar trees, the scientists created smaller versions that were
from about five to 10 centimetres tall after two years of growth.
Shorter trees created by traditional cross-breeding are already widely
used in fruit tree orchards, as they make harvesting easier and more
cost effective. The researchers suggest that the genetically modified
trees would be unlikely to spread as they would have a hard time
competing for sunshine with the taller normal or wild trees.

The European Space Agency is looking for people who would like to go
on a pretend trip to Mars — for about a year and a half. The 520-day
experiment involves a crew of six living in sealed modules at the
Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow. Weightlessness and
radiation are not included, but the simulated out-of-planet experience
offers isolation, confinement, crowding, lack of privacy, high
workload, boredom with available food, and limited communication with
family, friends and mission control. While a monetary amount is not
specified, the agency says anyone successfully completing the entire
study will "receive fixed compensation that is in line with
international standards for participation in clinical studies."
Applications, from serious candidates only, are being accepted until
Sept. 30. The mission is expected to begin as early as May 2008.

June 11, 2007 -
Robot Teddy Bear - The US military is developing a robot with a teddy
bear-style head to help carry injured soldiers away from the
battlefield. The Battlefield Extraction Assist Robot (BEAR) can scoop
up even the heaviest of casualties and transport them over long
distances over rough terrain. The "friendly appearance" of the robot
is designed to put the wounded at ease. The 6ft tall Bear can cross
bumpy ground without toppling thanks to a combination of gyroscopes
and computer controlled motors to maintain balance. The Bear is
controlled remotely and has cameras and microphones through which an
operator sees and hears. It is expected to be ready for testing within
five years. (photo)

Scientists have created a material that lets damaged plastic objects
repair themselves in a manner similar to the way in which living
things heal. The material uses a web of channels akin to fine blood
vessels to transport a repairing liquid beneath the surface or skin of
the object. When the epoxy resin top layer sustains damage, the fluid
oozes to the surface and reacts with catalysts in the damaged skin to
repair the cracks.

Big-foot - Authorities in India will investigate claims by terrified
villagers that "bigfoot"-type hairy giants are roaming the jungles of
the remote northeast. The creatures have apparently been spoken of,
and occasionally spotted, for years, but a rise in the number of
sightings over the past month has prompted authorities to look into
the matter further. The bizarre sightings have reportedly been made in
the Garo hills area of Meghalaya state, close to the borders with
Bangladesh and Bhutan. Villagers have dubbed the mysterious creatures
"Mande Burung", or Jungle Man. One local farmer claimed he had seen an
entire family of the creatures - possibly a lowland relative of the
Himalayan Yeti, or perhaps a distant cousin of the North American
bigfoot known as Sasquatch, or Australia's Yowie. "The sight was
frightening: two adults and two smaller ones, huge and bulky, furry.
Their heads looked as if they were wearing caps, and their colour was
blackish-brown." The four "monsters" were about 30 to 40m away from
him as he looked for firewood in a forest area. "The four of them
quietly vanished into the undergrowth." Such claims are treated
sceptically by scientists because of lack of solid physical proof, but
there are scientists and researchers who believe they could exist.
Some of the more intrepid villagers have begun their own
investigation, venturing into the forest in the hopes of spotting the
hairy creatures.

During the Middle Ages the stars, planets and celestial events exerted
a strong influence over people’s beliefs and lives. Unusual weather
patterns were often thought to be ill omens. In Constantinople, the
spring of 1453 was particularly ominous, with unseasonably heavy rains
and hailstorms. As Mehmet II laid siege to Istanbul in 1453, he had
the numerical advantage, with over 80,000 troops under his command,
compared to the less than 10,000 of Constantine XI. However, the city
had the strongest fortifications found anywhere in the world at the
time. After centuries of repelling attacks from Arabs, Avars,
Persians, Bulgars and Russians, only the army of the Fourth Crusade in
1204 had ever managed to breach the walls. Even though they were
vastly outnumbered, the Byzantines felt confident that yet another
assault could be repelled. What they could not have known was that
half a world away, a volcanic eruption of Kuwae in the South Pacific
had upset the climate worldwide. Scientists suspect that the fallout
from the eruption caused the weather disturbances that took place
during the siege of the city. A widely believed legend of the time
stated that the city would never fall unless the moon itself gave a
sign. On May 22 the moon did give a sign as it went into an almost
four-hour-long eclipse, with only a small, crescent-shaped sliver of
light shining. Surely the besieged Byzantines would have seen this as
an omen signaling their downfall, while the Ottomans would have seen
it as an indicator of their imminent victory. Even more unusual
weather occurred a few days later while the Byzantines held a
religious procession through the city, hoping for divine intervention.
The procession was halted due to unseasonable downpours and pelting
hail. The next day the city was engulfed in a dense fog. Mehmet II
took advantage of the fog and had his troops light fires in front of
every tent, which cast an eerie red glow across the already frightened
city. The firelight reflecting off the low-lying clouds made the
citizens fear that the city was on fire. The climatic events of the
previous days seriously eroded the morale of the city defenders. On
May 29, Mehmet II launched a series of attacks and within four hours
one of the city gates was breached and the battle for the city was in
the hands of the Ottomans. Scientists theorize that the volcanic
fallout was probably responsible for the eerie weather in
Constantinople that fateful spring. As the volcanic cloud, with its
high sulfur content, spread across the world, it surely would have
darkened the skies above the city. The unseasonably cold temperatures
and heavy rains can also be attributed to the cloud of dust particles
from half a world away. Through a combination of the superb strategic
planning of Mehmet II and unpredictable weather patterns, the downfall
of the Byzantine Empire was at hand.

June 4, 2007 -
Low-fat milk cows - New Zealand scientists say they've achieved a
world first by breeding cows that naturally produce low-fat milk. The
herd is the offspring of a cow named Marge, who was born with a
genetic quirk said to make her milk much lower in fat than other cows.
Enough cows have been bred to show the trait could be inherited. It is
believed only Marge and two of her offspring have the trait so far. It
is estimated that the milk won't hit supermarket shelves for another
five to 10 years.

Talking paper - Digital paper that can speak to you has been created
by scientists. Researchers from Mid Sweden University have constructed
an interactive paper billboard that emits recorded sound in response
to a user's touch. The team envisages that the technology could be
used by advertisers, and in the future, it might even be employed for
product packaging. "One interesting idea would be to use it on
cigarette packaging, so instead of having a written message warning
you of danger to your health, you would have a spoken one."

Film-thin, bendable video display - In the race for ever-thinner
displays for TVs, cellphones and other gadgets, Sony may have
developed one to beat them all - a razor-thin display that bends like
paper while showing full-colour video.

Infra-red grills for backyard barbecues - For a quarter-century, chefs
at pricey steakhouses have been searing meat on burners that cook with
infrared energy. Now affordable high-temperature technology may be
coming to a backyard barbecue near you.

Dutch researchers are trying to grow pork meat in a laboratory with
the goal of feeding millions without the need to raise and slaughter
animals. “We're trying to make meat without having to kill animals."
Although it is in its early stages, the idea is to replace harvesting
meat from livestock with a process that eliminates the need for animal
feed, transport, land use and the methane expelled by animals, which
all hurt the environment. “Keeping animals just to eat them is in fact
not so good for the environment. Animals need to grow, and animals
produce many things that you do not eat.” Asked whether people would
be repulsed by lab-grown meat, the researchers believe there would be
enough demand, as much of what people eat today is already extensively
processed, from the feed that animals consume, to the conditions under
which they are raised, and the preparation of meat after slaughter. “I
can imagine that some people will have problems with it. People might
think it is artificial. But some people might not realise that some
part of the meat they eat is artificial.” Research is also under way
in the US, including one experiment funded by NASA to see whether meat
can be grown for astronauts during long space missions. But it will
take years before meat grown in labs and eventually factories reaches
supermarket shelves. And so far, the team has managed to grow only
thin layers of cells that bear no resemblance to pork chops. Under the
process, researchers first isolate muscle stem cells, which have the
ability to grow and multiply into muscle cells. Then they stimulate
the cells to develop, give them nutrients and exercise them with
electric current to build bulk. After perfecting that process,
scientists will then need to figure out how to layer tissues to add
more bulk, since meat grown in petri dishes lacks the blood vessels
needed to deliver nutrients through thick muscle fibres. And then
there is the question of fat, to add flavour.

May 21, 2007 -
Environmental activists are building a replica of Noah's Ark on Mount
Ararat - where the biblical vessel is said to have landed after the
great flood - in an appeal for action on global warming. The ark will
be revealed in a ceremony on May 31, a day after Greenpeace activists
climb the mountain and call on world leaders to take action to tackle
climate change. "Climate change is real, it's happening now and unless
world leaders take urgent, decisive and far-reaching action, the next
decades will see human misery on a scale not experienced in modern
times. Those leaders have a mandate from the people ... to massively
cut greenhouse gas emissions and to do it now." (photo)

A new report has reviewed controversial scientific evidence that
religious or spiritual prayer can boost a believer's emotional and
physical wellbeing. "Irrespective of whether scientists seek to
attribute the benefits of prayer to the relaxation response, placebo
or positive emotions, the most common reason people turn to prayer is
their belief in a divine being that transcends the natural universe
and hears and responds to prayer."

Hundreds of devotees are flocking to see a "sweating" statue of a
Hindu deity in Nepal. The sweating is seen as a bad omen that usually
precedes disasters or crises for the royal family. The centuries-old
statue of Bhimeshwor - the Hindu god of trade and commerce - has been
perspiring since Saturday evening, drawing hundreds to a temple 70km
east of Kathmandu. The idol sweated just before a royal massacre in
2001, when an apparently drunken crown prince went on a shooting
rampage that killed nine royals, including the king and queen. Local
media also said the idol broke into a sweat prior to a massive
earthquake in 1934, as well as during massive street protests last
year that saw the current king, Gyanendra, forced to relinquish direct
rule.

Britain risks becoming 'Orwellian society' - An increase in closed-
circuit television cameras risks turning Britain into an Orwellian
society. "If it's in our villages, are we really moving towards an
Orwellian situation with cameras on every street corner?" There are an
estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain – one for every 14
people. Every person is caught on camera about 300 times each day. DNA
is taken from anyone arrested even if they are not charged. Britain's
DNA database is the largest in the world, with 3.6 million samples.
Britain is becoming a "surveillance society" where cameras, credit
card analysis and travel movements are used to track people's lives
minute by minute.

Human animal hybrid embryos - United Kingdom Ministers have bowed to
pressure to allow the creation of human animal hybrid embryos for
research. Hybrid embryos will only be allowed for research into
serious disease and scientists will require a licence. The draft bill
allows the creation of human embryos that have been physically mixed
with one or more animal cells. However, true animal-animal hybrids,
made by the fusion of sperm and eggs, remain outlawed. And in all
cases it would be illegal to allow embryos to grow for more than 14
days or be implanted into a womb. Opponents questioned the ethics of
using human cells in this way. "This is a highly controversial and
terrifying proposal, which has little justification in science and
even less in ethics. Endorsement by the UK government will elicit
horror in Europe and right across the wider world."

Iraq faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation, a
highly respected UK foreign policy think tank says. Its report says
the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in many
parts of the country. It warns there is not one war but many local
civil wars, and urges a major change in US and British strategy, such
as consulting Iraq's neighbours more. The break-up of Iraq is becoming
increasingly likely. In large parts of the country, the Iraqi
government is powerless, as rival factions struggle for local
supremacy. The paper accuses each of Iraq's major neighbouring states
- Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - of having reasons "for seeing the
instability there continue, and each uses different methods to
influence developments". The American security surge is moving
violence to different areas, but is not overcoming it.

Hair loss in humans might not be irreversible, suggest scientists who
have helped create new hair cells on the skin of mice.

All-in-one appliance powered by sound - It sounds like a great idea: a
stove, fridge and electrical source all rolled into one appliance and
running on biomass fuel such as wood. And sound waves are at the heart
of the device. Thermoacoustics is the generation of sound waves by
unevenly heating gas. As the hotter, expanded gas travels to the
cooler areas, pressure sound waves are generated that in turn can be
used to power mechanical devices. The process can also be reversed in
refrigeration units: The sound waves can be used to power a pump to
extract heat. The technology, which has been known for centuries, has
been used in such advanced technology as power sources and cooling
units for spacecraft and satellites. The aim of the consortium of
universities behind the project is to mass produce the appliances
within five years.

A device for predicting the onset of labour weeks in advance - The
Prediction of Labour Onset (Polo) tool uses electrical signals in the
womb to determine the date of birth. It could predict childbirth up to
two weeks in advance. Developers hope it will prevent mothers who
wrongly believe they are in labour being admitted to hospital.

MAY 14, 2007 -
Scientists have developed an artificial plastic blood which could act
as a substitute in emergencies. The creation could be a huge advantage
in war zones. The artificial blood is light to carry, does not need to
be kept cool and can be kept for longer. The new blood is made up of
plastic molecules that have an iron atom at their core, like
haemoglobin, that can carry oxygen through the body.

Scientists have developed a vaccine to curb high blood pressure, an
advance over pills that cause side effects. They have successfully
tested the vaccine on people and plan to stage further tests with an
improved formula, hoping to market the product within five years. The
injection uses a protein found in limpets, a common shellfish, to
attack angiotensin, a hormone produced by the liver which raises blood
pressure by narrowing arteries. The vaccine would require just three
injections with a booster every six months.

Beware Nigerian money order/open a bank account/work-at-home scams -
More than 75% of people told by Australian police that they were the
victims of an overseas investment scam ignored the advice and kept
sending money. Queensland victims had lost at least $18 million, but
worse, the majority continued losing money after being told by police
they were the victims of scams. The Queensland figures were estimated
to be one-fifth of the national loss to such scams. "76% continued to
send millions of dollars after we told them they were participating in
a scam." "We're contacting them out of the blue, if you like, and
we're taking their dreams (of great wealth) and turning them into
nightmares." Many of the victims were well-educated, including
doctors, lawyers, engineers and professors. None of the victims had
received any money. Many had attempted suicide, lost their wealth,
lost friends, become estranged from their family, deceived partners,
suffered divorce, or committed criminal offences to obtain more
money.

More than a quarter of young adults in the United States are leading a
drive away from traditional wired landline telephones, cutting the
cord in favour of cellphones, U.S. government research suggests. About
one in four Americans ranging in age from 18 to 24 have cellphones
only, as do 29 per cent of people ages 25 through 29. Just 2 per cent
of those 65 or older only have a cellphone. "All those wireless adults
are missed" in marketing and opinion surveys that rely on randomized
phone calls to households with wired phones. Government and private
polling organizations are left unable to collect data including for
health surveys.

April 30, 2007 -
Smart Etch-A-Sketch? - A motion-sensitive laptop which can be
controlled much like a Nintendo Wii remote is under development. The
tablet PC laptop has been adapted to respond to a user when moving the
machine up or down, side to side, or forwards and backwards. It is
hoped the BT Balance system can help people with disabilities or the
elderly, for whom using a keyboard or mouse can be difficult. "PCs are
still very complicated. We are interested in the older user who is
slightly fearful of this technology. The PC, monitor and mouse puts
them off." The system can be used to read through books or documents,
turning pages with a simple flip of the monitor. (photo)

Computers with wireless internet should not be placed on children's
laps, says the head of the government's committee on mobile phone
safety research. Children should keep a safe distance from the
embedded antennas. "If you put a laptop straight on your lap and are
using wi-fi, you could be around two centimetres from the transmitter,
and receiving comparable exposure to that from a mobile phone...Since
we advise that children should be discouraged from using mobile
phones, we should also discourage children from placing their laptop
on their lap when they are using wi-fi. "

Scientists 'reverse' memory loss - Mental stimulation and some drugs
could help people with degenerative brain diseases regain memory, a
study finds.

The flip of a switch could become all it takes to get a good night's
sleep, according to a study. Researchers have found a way to stimulate
the slow waves typical of deep sleep by sending a harmless magnetic
signal through the skulls of sleeping volunteers. They said it could
one day be used to help treat insomnia and for power naps where people
would get the benefit of a full night's of sleep in just a few hours.

Koalas are likely to be extinct in urban areas within 20 years, and
humans are largely to blame. The marsupials were being killed off by
cars, dogs and a dwindling habitat. "If we don't wake up to ourselves
and local councils don't wake up to themselves and we stop looking at
the almighty dollar and look at the animals around us, we are going to
lose our animal icons in 20 years. There's no ifs, or buts, but
when."

Researchers 'shocked' at Agent Orange contamination in Vietnam - The
dangerous herbicide Agent Orange is still contaminating soil and fish
in Vietnam at an alarming rate. Contamination levels in the area of Da
Nang, a large coastal city in central Vietnam, were found to be 300 to
400 times higher than what is considered acceptable. If these levels
were present in North America, action would be taken immediately.

New toys read brain waves - Engineers at NeuroSky Inc. have big plans
for brain wave-reading toys and video games. They say a simple Darth
Vader game — a relatively crude biofeedback device cloaked in gimmicky
garb — portends the coming of more sophisticated devices that could
revolutionize the way people play. Video games could be made more
mentally stimulating and realistic. It could even enable players to
control video game characters or avatars in virtual worlds with
nothing but their thoughts. Adding biofeedback to Tiger Woods PGA
Tour, for instance, could mean that only those players who muster Zen-
like concentration could nail a putt. Toys with the most basic brain
wave-reading technology are scheduled to debut later this year.

April 24, 2007 -
ROBOTS - Scientists have expressed concern about the use of autonomous
decision-making robots, particularly for military use. Autonomous
robots are able to make decisions without human intervention. At a
simple level, these can include robot vacuum cleaners that "decide"
for themselves when to move from room to room or to head back to a
base station to recharge. As they become more common, these machines
could also have negative impacts on areas such as surveillance and
elderly care, the roboticists warn. Samsung has developed a robotic
sentry to guard the border between North and South Korea. It is
equipped with two cameras and a machine gun. There could be more
problems when robots moved from military to civil duties. "I can
imagine a future where it is much cheaper to dump old people in big
hospitals where machines care for them." Robots are already being used
in countries like Japan to take simple measurements, such as heart
rate, from elderly patients. Robots could one day demand the same
citizen's rights as humans, including housing and even "robo-
healthcare".

Tiny "smart" devices that can be borne on the wind like dust particles
could be carried in space probes to explore other planets, UK
engineers say. The devices would consist of a computer chip covered by
a plastic sheath that can change shape when a voltage is applied,
enabling it to be steered. Computer chips of the size and
sophistication required to meet the challenge already exist. Smart
dust could be packed into the nose cones of planetary probes and then
released into the atmospheres of planets, where they would be carried
on the wind. For a planet like Mars, smart dust particles would each
have to be the size of a grain of sand. The particles could use
wireless networking to form swarms. "We envisage that most of the
particles can only talk to their nearest neighbours but a few can
communicate at much longer distances. In our simulations, we have
shown that a swarm of 50 dust particles can organise themselves into a
star formation, even in turbulent wind." The ability to fly in
formation would allow the processing of data to be spread, or
"distributed" between all the chips, and a collective signal to be
beamed back to a "mothership". Many other applications have been
proposed for smart dust. One idea is to use particles to gather
information on battlefields. Another idea involves mixing the
particles into concrete to internally monitor the health of buildings
and bridges.

Tiny robots powered by living muscle have been created by scientists.
The devices were formed by "growing" rat cells on microscopic silicon
chips - growing muscle tissue onto tiny robotic skeletons. Less than a
millimetre long, the miniscule robots can move themselves without any
external source of power. The work is a dramatic example of the
marriage of biotechnology with the tiny world of nanotechnology. Under
a microscope, you can see the tiny, two-footed "bio-bots" crawl
around.

A surgical robot that provides magnetic resonance images of the brain
has been introduced in Calgary, Canada, where researchers called it a
"milestone in medical technology."

British scientists are planning to see whether a Star Trek-style
deflector shield could be built to protect astronauts from radiation.
Magnetic shields could be deployed around spacecraft and on the
surfaces of planets to deflect harmful energised particles. There are
a variety of risks facing future space explorers, not least of which
is the cancer-causing radiation encountered when missions venture
beyond the protective magnetic envelope, or magnetosphere, which
shields the Earth against these energetic particles. Several
countries' space agencies have announced their intentions to resume
human exploration of the Solar System.

Chameleon clothes - An international group of researchers is working
on a way to mass produce a technology that could lead to clothes that
display video or change colour by pressing a button.

Inventors have created a soap infused with caffeine which helps users
wake up in the morning. The soap, called Shower Shock, supplies the
caffeine equivalent of two cups of coffee per wash, with the stimulant
absorbed naturally through the skin.

Beijing's female poplar trees are to receive "sex change operations"
to stop them from producing flying pollen that has worsened allergy
and asthma problems. While there are 300,000 poplar trees in China's
capital, only some "female" trees are being injected with a "sex
change" substance. The experiment aims to change their nature so no
pollen will be produced, Hospitals in Beijing have received increasing
numbers of patients who suffer from asthma or allergies after inhaling
the pollen, which blankets the city in a snowfall of white fluff. It
is not China's first attempt to alter nature. The parched country also
routinely seeds clouds to create rainfall, and state media has
announced that meteorologists had created artificial snow in Tibet for
the first time.

The world's first cloned dog will be mated with the world's second dog
clone, in an experiment to see whether they can reproduce normally.

Fat-fighting baby formula - Plans to add a hormone which suppresses
hunger to baby formula and other foods is unlikely to work say
experts. University of Buckingham researchers are looking at adding
leptin to formula milk to curb future over-eating. But experts said
the work was "wildly optimistic science fiction" and questioned
testing leptin on babies. Babies fed with formula grow more quickly
than breast-fed babies, and they have a higher risk of obesity as
adults. Scientists have already carried out a study where leptin was
given to pregnant rats, leading to a lifelong impact on their
offspring's propensity to obesity. Even those fed a fat-laden diet
stayed slim, while offspring from untreated rats gained weight and
developed diabetes. "The supplemented milks are simply adding
something back that was originally present - breast milk contains
leptin and formula feeds don't." "The concept that adding something to
a food that could permanently alter brain development is exciting but
at the same time so scary that it would mean a wholly new approach
about how such treatments can be tested and approved for use."

Kryptonite is no longer just the stuff of fiction feared by caped
superheroes. A new mineral matching its unique chemistry - as
described in the film Superman Returns - has been identified in a mine
in Serbia. The mineral's chemical formula is sodium lithium boron
silicate hydroxide. "The new mineral does not contain fluorine (which
it does in the film) and is white rather than green but, in all other
respects, the chemistry matches that for the rock containing
kryptonite." The mineral cannot be called kryptonite under
international nomenclature rules because it has nothing to do with
krypton - a real element in the Periodic Table that takes the form of
a gas. Instead, it will be formally named Jadarite (Jadar is the name
of the place where the Serbian mine is located).

April 9, 2007 -
The virtual elimination of large sharks from coastal waters off the US
eastern seaboard has disturbed the marine ecosystem. The massive over-
fishing of the largest predatory sharks in the coastal waters of the
Atlantic over the past 30 years has led to an explosion in the ray,
skate and small shark species that they prey on, with devastating
effects for one of the organisms at the bottom of the food chain.
"Large sharks have been functionally eliminated from the east coast of
the US, meaning that they can no longer perform their ecosystem role
as top predators. With fewer sharks around, the species they prey upon
- like cownose rays - have increased in numbers, and in turn, hordes
of cownose rays dining on bay scallops have wiped the scallops out.''
Several of the larger shark species in the northwest Atlantic are
verging on extinction. From 1970 to 2005 the numbers of scalloped
hammerhead and tiger sharks appear to have declined by more than 97
percent, while populations of bull, dusky and smooth hammerhead sharks
could be down as much as 99 percent. The growing demand for shark fins
and shark meat, particularly in Asia, has led to the rapid escalation
in shark-fishing.

Full body regeneration could become a reality in about 50 years -
While carrying out an unrelated experiment on immunity, a research
team noticed a strain of mice that rapidly closed holes punched in
their ears without any scarring. The holes were punched to identify
mice more easily over time. The lab is now trying to identify how the
healing takes place, and identify the genes involved in the trait. If
researchers can harness the approach and apply it to humans then full
body regeneration could become a reality in about 50 years.

Metal memory - Crumpled kitchen foil that lays flat for reuse. Bent
bumpers that straighten overnight. Dents in car doors that disappear
when heated with a hairdryer. These and other physical feats may
become possible with a new technique.

Remote-controlled pigeons - developments in brain implant technology
have already seen scientists using hair-thin electrodes to guide the
movements of fish, rats, mice and monkeys in research that is mostly
driven by military and intelligence interests. Now a team at the Robot
Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University of
Science and Technology has reported that it could send signals to
implanted electrodes so they could remotely command birds to fly right
or left or up or down. The remote control bird experiment follows on
from one by the same team in which white mice with implanted micro
electrodes were guided in response to the way parts of their brains
were electrically stimulated. The US navy hopes one day to use such
implants to exploit sharks’ natural ability to sense delicate
electrical gradients and follow chemical trails left by a vessel.
Swimming in a ship’s wake, a remote-controlled shark could track an
enemy vessel’s movements without being noticed, and under its own
power.

Interesting links -
The Transformation of the Solar System - the recent large-scale events
happening in the Solar System.

Jupiter's Dance - the influence of sunspots on earthquake activity;
the Mayan cycle and the orbits of the planets; conjunctions that will
take place on December 21, 2012.

Doomsday theories reflecting that the Earth will be hit by an asteroid
causing global distruction. They are based on Biblical prophecies
reflecting 'A Sign in the Heavens'.

End Days Prophecies by -
Saint Malachy (1094-1148), Saint Hildegard (12th Century), Bishop
Christianos Ageda (12th Century), Abbot Werdin D'Orante (12th
Century), John of Vitiguerro (13th Century), Johannes Friede
(1204-1257), St. Vincent Ferrer (14th Century), John of the Cleft Rock
(14th Century), Maria Laach Monastery (16th Century), Venerable
Bartholomew Holzhauser (17th Century), Venerable Mary of Agreda (17th
Century), Sister Marianne de Jesus Torres (17th Century), The Ecstatic
of Tours (19th Century), Pope Pius IX (1878).

March 28, 2007 -
Spirits in the Indonesia mud volcano? - mud started gushing from the
ground nearly 10 months ago when a shaft probing for natural gas
pierced a pressurized aquifer about 9,000 feet underground. Since then
about 1 billion cubic feet of mud has spread across two square miles.
The mud has buried 12 villages and 20 factories, inundating roads and
rice fields and displacing 15,000 people. It is still flowing, at more
than 3.5 million cubic feet a day, and no one can say when it might
stop. Indonesian engineers are dropping chains of concrete balls into
the mud volcano, hoping to stop the mud flow. Local soothsayers say
spirits who lived in the crater will be angry after being hit by the
giant concrete balls. “The mud explosion happened because the spirits
in the crater are angry. The insertion of the balls will only spark
more anger. The soothsayers have already said there will be a new and
much bigger burst."

The Cassini spacecraft has photographed a bizarre geometrical figure
encircling Saturn's north pole: a hexagon. NASA scientists say they've
never seen anything like it on any other planet. It is twice as wide
as Earth. First observed by the Voyager spacecraft in the 1980s, the
hexagon has been sighted anew by the Cassini probe. The hexagon could
be a distant cousin of Earth's polar vortex, but while Earth's vortex
is a circle, Saturn's may be molded into a hexagon by some strange
pattern of atmospheric waves. "Saturn's thick atmosphere where
circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the
LAST place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric
figure." (photo)

Cybercrime is such a massive business that it will soon rival the
illegal drug trade in revenue. This dire prediction from an expert
with security software maker McAfee comes as online conmen still find
easy prey in careless Internet users. As companies get smart about
computer security and build solid defences from invaders, hackers turn
their attention to consumers. Well-funded underground criminal
organizations are creating malicious programs that can infect
thousands of computers at a time. The most common online slip-up is
responding to fraudulent e-mails, known as phishing attacks.

The UK government has failed to fund adequate research into potential
risks posed by developing nanotechnology, a report by leading advisors
has warned. As well as not spotting possible harmful effects, the UK
risks losing its world lead in nanoscience. At its most basic level,
nanotechnology involves manipulating molecules and even atoms to make
novel materials. Precision engineering exploits the unusual electrical
and optical properties that operate at small scales. It is estimated
that the industry could be worth $1 trillion by 2015. Not enough has
been done to understand the possible environmental and health effects.
"More targeted research to reduce the uncertainties around the health
and environmental effects of nanomaterials must be funded - especially
in light of the growing number of products on the market containing
these manufactured ultra-small materials." Some potential uses for
nanotechnology are: Scratch-proof coated windows that clean themselves
with UV, fabrics coated to resist stains and control temperature,
intelligent clothing measuring pulse and respiration, nano-particle
paint, thermo-chromic glass to regulate light, and carbon nanotube
fuel cells to power electronics and vehicles.

IBM scientists in California unveiled a super-speed prototype optical
transceiver chipset capable of downloading a full-length high-
definition (HD) feature film in just a single second.

Oxford University researchers have created a new "biofuel cell" that
generates electricity from ordinary air spiked with small amounts of
hydrogen.

A hi-tech gel could be used instead of major surgery to treat chronic
lower back pain, according to a study. The gel contains tiny particles
which swell and stiffen when injected into a damaged area. Tests on
animals showed it was able to repair the discs that provide a cushion
between the bones of the spine.

Scientists are developing a dipstick test to help people quickly spot
if food is spoiled and could poison them. In under five minutes the
dipsticks can check for the presence of chemicals emitted by disease-
causing bacteria. Tests for specific bacteria that cause food
poisoning generally require expensive, complicated kit and take hours
or even days to give a result.

Humans could live longer in the future - and steaks and chicken
fillets could help it happen. Scientists believe by altering the atoms
in food, our lifespan could be increased. The idea of altering atoms
has already been tested in laboratory worms, which were fed nutrients
containing natural isotopes. Isotopes are variants of atoms. Their
weights differ according to the number of neutrons they hold. The life
spans of the worms were reported to have lengthened by ten per cent.
Isotopes used in animal feed would allow them to be passed onto humans
in meat products such as steaks and chicken fillets. A recent study
showed how proteins, fatty acids, and DNA nucleic acid components
could be strengthened with isotopes. "It is a highly novel idea. It
remains to be seen whether it can be the source of practicable
therapies, but it is a prospect that certainly cannot be ruled out."
Preliminary data indicate that this approach can potentially increase
lifespan without adverse side effects. If this is borne out by further
experiments, the implications are profound."

March 21, 2007 -
Australian researchers are making dresses from fermented fabric, using
bacteria to grow slimy dresses from wine and beer. "We're looking to
provoke some discussion about future fashions, about the possibility
of other material we can use instead of our normal cottons and silks."
To ferment fabrics, they deliberately let vats of wine go off to
produce cellulose, a rubbery layer. To get the shape of a dress, they
lift the layers of slimy cellulose off and lay them over an inflatable
mannequin. After each dress has been completed, they deflate the
mannequin and remove it, leaving the dress intact. "It's the bacteria
that are weaving all these fibres together." Other alcoholic drinks
can be used to ferment fabrics. "As long as we have alcohol, these
bacteria will do their job." The dresses have to be kept wet or they
become like tissue paper and can tear if the fabric is too thin. The
dresses are currently made from pieces of cellulose joined together,
but one day the team hopes they can make the bacteria ferment seamless
garments.

Advanced textiles that record data about the wearer could soon be used
by US soldiers. The smart fabrics would monitor how they cope during
combat situations. The fabric gathers information on heart beat, skin
temperature, posture, activity and breathing rate when against the
skin. The fabric could also be used by athletes to hone their
performance by measuring how they react in training. A bio-harness (a
length of fabric worn around the chest) and a shoe pod (a smart
insole) are both made of a patented textile that has the sensors woven
into it. Once paired with electronics to store and broadcast data,
this fabric can record physiological information. The bioharness could
also be used on subjects undergoing drug tests to see how their body
reacts to a new medicine.

Computer game graphics could soon be much more realistic thanks to
research at the University of Saarland, Germany. At a tech-fair, a
team from the university demonstrated a lighting technique, known as
ray-tracing, using relatively low-powered processors. Before now, many
powerful computers were needed to generate the life-like images this
technique can produce. But the scientists have shown they can achieve
the effect using custom-made chips or a high-end PC graphics card.

Radio frequency tags could take over from barcodes - European citizens
are getting the chance to shape policy on smart tags. The European
Commission is setting up a group made up of citizens, scientists, data
protection experts and businesses to discuss how the tags should be
used. Radio Frequency Identification tags store data about the objects
they are attached to, and are already used by some firms and
supermarkets. Smart radio tags typically unite a small chunk of
computer memory with a radio transmitter. Businesses see huge
advantages to labelling goods with these tags as they will streamline
delivery networks and help manage stocks on shelves. While businesses
using RFID tags to mark such things as shipping containers may not
have to think about consumers, others will have to take consumers into
account. German retail giant Metro, which had run trials, found that
shoppers deactivated any tags on the goods they had bought at the
checkout.

Vehicles may soon be swapping information about road conditions to
warn drivers about jams and dangers. A German research project
envisions a peer-to-peer network for vehicles on a road passing data
back and forth. Cars or bikes experiencing problems would pass data
that would ripple down the chain of vehicles behind them. Information
would be conveyed to drivers via a dashboard screen or through a
mobile phone headset. As well as giving information about dangers,
drivers could also ask the SmartWeb system for information about
traffic jams, speed traps, parking availability and other problems in
natural language. Starting a query would kick off a web search for the
area a car was travelling through which would generate requests to
vehicles ahead or nearby.

A genetically-engineered mosquito 'could fight malaria' - A
genetically-engineered mosquito has been created that is resistant to
malaria and is better able to survive than disease-carrying insects.
Each year malaria makes 300 million people ill and causes a million
deaths around the world.

Some of the world's major rivers are reaching crisis point because of
dams, shipping, pollution and climate change, according to the
environment group WWF. "The world is facing a massive freshwater
crisis, which has the potential to be every bit as devastating as
climate change." Governments should see water as an issue of national
security. Five of the "top 10" rivers are in Asia, such as the
Yangtse, Mekong, and Ganges, though Europe's Danube and North
America's Rio Grande are also included. World Water Day is March 22.

March 14, 2007 -
Violent crime is on the rise in big cities across America, with some
experiencing a triple-digit jump in homicides and other violence since
2004.

The number of computer malware detections in 2006 was up 172% from
2005. This alarming trend is set to continue, because, although
massive infections caused by a single virus have practically
disappeared, complex multiple malware variants now silently infect the
computers of millions of naive users still using conventional – and
now outdated – anti-virus technologies. “Most users have a false sense
of security, believing that there are no dangerous threats. In actual
fact, there is now more malware than ever. PandaLabs detected the same
amount of malware last year as in the previous fifteen years
combined.” According to PandaLabs, spam rates will continue to be high
this year, since people are still buying what is advertised in the e-
mails.

Aan artificial vein for use in patients with circulation problems is
being developed. The device, which encourages blood to flow in its
natural spiralling fashion, has produced highly promising results in
clinical trials. In theory, the spiraling pattern should help reduce
wear and tear, clean away blockages, and cut the risk that the vein
will get clogged up. The developers hope it will offer surgeons
carrying out bypass operations an alternative to relying on blood
vessels taken from the patient's body. A reliable artificial vein
would be a "terrific improvement". It is hoped it could be made
available to patients within a year.

The world's population is poised to reach 9.2 billion in 2050, with
growth mainly in the developing nations and the elderly becoming the
dominant age-group.

MARCH 7, 2007 -
Researchers are developing a tooth implant which automatically
releases medicine - Forgetting to take medicine may be a thing of the
past as researchers close in on creating an artificial tooth which
automatically releases medicine. The Intellidrug device is small
enough to fit inside two artificial molars in the jaw. When the system
is triggered by the electrical timing mechanism, a valve opens and
allows a controlled amount of the solution to flow into the mouth
where it is absorbed into the body. Researchers also believe it will
benefit patients, such as those with diabetes and high blood pressure,
who need doses in the night. If human trials prove successful, the
device could be available in 2010.

Gamers offered thought-controlled computers - It sounds more like an
invention from a 1950s sci-fi comic but an Australian start-up is out
to convince the world its new thought-detecting headset is no sideshow
alley trick. The company's headset, known as Project Epoc, is able to
detect electrical activity in the brain – or electroencephalogram
(EEG) – and translate this into meaningful data for a computer to read
and respond to. It could significantly change the way humans interact
with computers.

An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is
being drawn up by South Korea. The Robot Ethics Charter will cover
standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in
2007. "The government plans to set ethical guidelines concerning the
roles and functions of robots, as robots are expected to develop
strong intelligence in the near future." A recent government report
forecast that robots would routinely carry out surgery by 2018. The
Ministry of Information and Communication has also predicted that
every South Korean household will have a robot by between 2015 and
2020. "Imagine if some people treat androids as if the machines were
their wives...Others may get addicted to interacting with them just as
many internet users get hooked to the cyberworld."

Chicken-eating cow - When 48 chickens went missing in a month from a
remote West Bengal village, everyone blamed the neighborhood dogs. But
the owner eventually solved the puzzle when he caught his cow - a
sacred animal for the Hindu family - gobbling up several of them at
night. "We were shocked to see our calf eating chickens alive. Instead
of the dogs, we watched in horror as the calf, whom we had fondly
named Lal, sneak to the coop and grab the little ones with the
precision of a jungle cat." Local television pictures showed the cow
grabbing and eating a chicken in seconds and a vet confirmed the case.
"We think lack of vital minerals in the body is causing this
behaviour. We have taken a look and have asked doctors to look into
the case immediately. This strange behaviour is possible in some
exceptional cases." "The local vets said the cow was probably
suffering from a disease but others said Lal was a tiger in his
previous birth."

February 21, 2007 -
People across China are celebrating the arrival of the Lunar New Year,
China's most important festival which is seen as particularly
auspicious this year. The year of the pig is supposed to bring good
luck and prosperity. And this time it is a golden (fire) pig year -
The Year of the Golden Pig occurs once every 60 years. Some
soothsayers warn that the pig can also bring turbulence, and warn of a
rise in natural disasters and conflict in 2007.

Brain scans have been developed which it is claimed can predict what a
person is about to do. Scientists were able to "read minds" using
sophisticated functional magnetic imaging and computer programs. Such
techniques could be used to help people who are paralysed - there are
already some steps being taken towards helping people using computer-
assisted prosthetic devices linked to computers. But this research
might also allow abstract thoughts and intentions to be read. It may
even be possible to carry out instructions such as "send email" simply
by thinking them - with a scanner picking up the wish and translating
it in a way that the computer can act on. "We shouldn't go overboard
about the power of these technologies at the moment. But what you can
be absolutely sure of is that these will continue to roll out and we
will have more and more ability to probe people's intentions, minds,
background thoughts, hopes and emotions."

It may be possible to read a person's personality through their eyes,
Swedish researchers have said. They have detected patterns which show
warm-heartedness and trust or neuroticism and impulsiveness. "It seems
that the old aphorism that 'the eyes are the window to the soul' has
some genetic basis." Security services could one day use the technique
to analyse people. Airports, including Heathrow, Manchester and
Gatwick are already testing iris scanning to identify people - but are
not to check personality traits.

Real game characters 'next year' - video games which feature human
faces as they actually look are two years away - or less, say
developers.

Scientists are developing the next generation of robot-driven cars and
predict they could be shuttling humans around by the year 2030. The
first wave of intelligent robot cars, capable of understanding and
reacting to the world around them, will be tested this November. "We
believe this technology will affect all of us. It is going to have
enormous significance for people who can't drive because of
disabilities or because they are ill or impaired." Robot-driven
vehicles would likely be deployed in war zones before they are seen in
everyday civilian environments. "I think they'll be on the battlefield
by around 2015."

US navy warned of 'suicide drones' - Iran has built "suicide" drones
capable of attacking US naval ships and forcing them to leave Gulf
waters.

A set of newly released internal British Ministry of Defence documents
gives a fascinating insight into the military's interest in UFOs. They
tell the story of the MoD's decision to investigate the threat they
might pose and whether alien military technology could be used in the
defence of the realm. They also reveal the conflicting attitudes to
the subject and the lengths that officials went to in order to keep
the project secret. The three-year Project Condign report analysed
more than 10,000 possible UFO sightings collected over several decades
- many from military personnel. "Russian, former Soviet republics and
Chinese authorities have made a co-ordinated effort to understand the
unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) topic. Several aircraft have been
destroyed and at least four pilots have been killed 'chasing UFOs'."
Project Condign's baffling conclusion - that UAPs are real, but are
caused by strange plasmas which are on the fringes of scientific
understanding.

February 7, 2007 -
Heat-beaming weapon ready by 2010 - The US Defence Department unveiled
what it called a revolutionary heat-beaming weapon that could be used
to control mobs or repel foes in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan.
The so-called Active Denial System creates an intense burning
sensation causing people to run for cover, but no lasting harm. The
weapon, mounted on a Humvee vehicle, uses a large rectangular dish
antenna to direct an invisible beam toward a target. It includes a
high-voltage power unit and beam-generating equipment and is effective
at more than 500 metres. At a distance of several football fields, the
sensation from the exposure was like a blast from a very hot oven, too
painful to bear without scrambling for cover. The burning sensation is
achieved by high-power energy waves that heat the skin to 54 degrees
Celsius. The pain ended as soon as the target jumped from the line of
fire.

Criminals controlling millions of personal computers are threatening
the internet's future, experts have warned. Up to a quarter of
computers on the net may be used by cyber criminals in so-called
botnets. "It's as bad as you can imagine, it puts the whole internet
at risk." Of the 600 million computers currently on the internet,
between 100 and 150 million are already part of these botnets. About
50% of all pirated Windows programs come with Trojans pre-installed on
them.
Overnight on the 6th of February, hackers using zombie computers
linked in botnets overwhelmed at least three of the 13 computers that
help manage global computer traffic, in ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT
ATTACKS AGAINST THE INTERNET since 2002. Experts said the unusually
powerful attacks lasted as long as 12 hours but passed largely
unnoticed by most computer users, a testament to the resiliency of the
internet. Behind the scenes, computer scientists around the world
raced to cope with enormous volumes of data that threatened to
saturate some of the internet’s most vital pipelines. The hackers
appeared to disguise their origin, but vast amounts of rogue data in
the attacks were traced to South Korea.

Leading U.S. commentators have warned that America is facing grave
threats from a "crash" resulting from the country's huge entitlements
bill while the rising level of consumer debt supporting the economy is
a volcano "waiting to explode". "There is a great crash coming," Many
people are relying on credit to fund basic day-to-day purchases. "If
there is going to be a housing downturn it's just going to be pretty
disastrous for many families right now. The savings rate is close to
zero. The best business to be in right now is renting out storage
space. People store purchases that they don't have room for in their
homes." In America the consumer has been driving economic growth in
recent years but at the expense of economic security in the future.

Artificially intelligent homes for Alzheimer's patients are coming -
Scientists in Toronto are developing an artificial intelligence system
that would help people with Alzheimer's disease or other cognitive
impairments live safely at home.

Soft-bodied robots soon - Forget the humanoid Asimo and Roomba, the
roaming vacuum. The next generation of robots will be soft-bodied,
providing more flexibility than their stiff-jointed cousins, according
to researchers at TuftsUniversity.

January 17, 2006 -
Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate
change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats
to humankind. As a result, the group has moved the minute hand on its
famous "Doomsday Clock" two minutes closer to midnight. The time now
stands at five minutes to the hour. Not since the darkest days of the
Cold War has the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists felt the need to
place the minute hand so close to midnight. The worries include Iran's
nuclear ambitions, North Korea's detonation of an atomic bomb, the
presence of 26,000 launch-ready weapons by America and Russia, and the
inability to secure and halt the international trafficking of nuclear
materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Growing
global nuclear instability has led humanity to the brink of a "Second
Nuclear Age," the group concluded, and the threat posed by climate
change is second only to that posed by nuclear weapons. A less
immediate threat, but included in the assessment, is the one posed by
emerging life science technologies, such as synthetic biology and
genetic modification.

Is it time to panic? The short answer is, maybe. The National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration announced last week that 2006 was the
warmest year ever for the United States and pointed to global warming
- at least some of it man-made - as a contributing factor. Even more
worrisome: the past nine years are among the hottest 25 on record, a
streak "unprecedented in the historical record." This year's bizarre
weather patterns - torrential rain in the Northwest, springlike
temperatures along the eastern seaboard, and repeated blizzards in the
Rockies - aren't entirely understood. Meteorologists say an El Niño -
a periodic warm patch in the Pacific - is largely to blame, but the
mysterious weather phenomenon isn't acting alone. Cherry blossoms,
typically a harbinger of spring, have been found budding in
Washington, D.C. And in New York City, another record was broken - the
latest date Central Park has gone without snowfall during any one
winter was January 4, a record set back in 1878. As of last week, New
Yorkers were still waiting for the white stuff. Europe is similarly
balmy. Winters like this one could become more common. January might
be the new April.

Nearly half the people in 60 countries believe that their children
will inherit a less secure world, marking a sharp deterioration in the
global mood in a year, a poll shows. Forty-eight per cent of people
questioned in the Gallup International survey believe the next
generation will live in a world that is a a lot less or a little less
secure. The same poll one year ago showed that the optimists (35 per
cent) outstripped the pessimists (30 per cent) in the worldwide
sample. Europeans and Americans continue to head the ranks of the
doomsayers. The poll was marked by a sharp deterioration in the mood
in the Middle East, where 46 per cent now have little hope of a safe
world for the future generation, compared to just 30 per cent in the
poll published in January 2006. Hope in embattled Iraq has plummeted -
just 36 per cent of Iraqis hold faith in a safer world for their
children against 61 per cent last year. By contrast, global levels of
confidence in economic prosperity for the next generation were holding
up, with 62 per cent expecting similar or better levels of wealth.

Scientists are looking at whether an appetite-suppressing chewing gum
could be used to tackle obesity. They are developing a drug based on a
natural gut hormone that mimics the body's "feeling full" response. An
injectible treatment could be available in five to eight years, but
the long-term goal is to produce a form that can be absorbed in the
mouth. One in five adults are obese, but that could rise to one in
three by 2010. Treatment would aim at cutting food intake by 5% to 10%
initially, and thereafter maintain control over appetite with a small
reduction of about 1%.

Canadian scientists believe they are getting closer to an alternative
to chemotherapy, an alternative that would not carry debilitating side-
effects such as nausea and extreme fatigue.

UK scientists have developed genetically modified chickens capable of
laying eggs containing proteins needed to make cancer-fighting drugs.
The breakthrough has been announced by the same research centre that
created the cloned sheep, Dolly. The work could lead to a range of
drugs that are cheaper and easier to make. "The idea of producing the
proteins involved in treatments in flocks of laying hens means they
can produce in bulk, they can produce cheaply and indeed the raw
material for this production system is quite literally chicken feed."
Roslin has bred some 500 modified birds. But it could be another five
years before patient trials get the go-ahead and 10 years until a
medicine is fully developed, the Roslin Institute cautioned. A number
of GM animals are now being used as drug factories - in the milk of
genetically modified sheep, goats, cows and rabbits. The work at
Roslin shows it is now possible to also use chickens as
"biofactories". "Once you've made the transgenic birds, then it's very
easy; once you've got the gene in, then you can breed up hundreds of
birds from one cockerel - because they can be bred with hundreds of
hens and you can collect an egg a day and have hundreds of chicks in
no time."

3-D television without the dorky red-and-green glasses may reach
consumers as early as five years from now.

Predicting trends is, well, unpredictable. If you are tempted to make
predictions about the future at this time of year, consider keeping
them to yourselves. History can so easily make a fool of you. All of
the predictions here, made in the past century, appeared in reputable
newspapers or magazines.

January 10, 2007 -
AIR pollution has killed 3600 people in just a month in the Iranian
capital Tehran, an official said, describing the city's environmental
situation as a "collective suicide". The deaths were caused by heart
attacks brought on by the air pollution and smog was responsible for
80 per cent of the fatal heart problems that month in Tehran, one of
the world's most polluted cities. Carbon monoxide from car exhausts is
blamed for the majority of deaths in Tehran, which has 1.3 million
ageing cars with poor fuel efficiency. With pump prices merely at 11.5
cents a litre, streets are crammed with cars, with terrible traffic
jams in rush hours. The pollution problem becomes particularly acute
during winter when a lack of wind and the cold air means that great
clouds of smog sit on the city for days on end.

CHINA will sink under the weight of its own rubbish within 13 years as
millions of rural dwellers migrate to more affluent urban areas.
"China's urban areas will generate the maximum amount of garbage its
cities can handle in another 13 years." By 2020 the nation's garbage
pile would reach 400 million tonnes, the weight of the world's entire
load in 1997. The rising tide of waste would render large tracts of
land useless, cause air, surface and water pollution through toxic
emissions, and spark "explosions".

The world is facing rising risks of climate change, pandemics, oil
shocks and terrorism, according to a new study released in Geneva on
Wednesday. The "Global Risks 2007" report said that many core global
risks had worsened over the last year, despite growing awareness of
their potential impacts. It warned of "a growing disconnect" between
the power of global risks to cause major systemic disruption and the
world's ability to mitigate them. According to the report, climate
change is now "one of the defining challenges of the 21st century." It
said climate change could cause severe storms, water shortages or
rising sea levels, which would have an impact "far beyond the
environment." "Ineffective mitigation of climate change will almost
certainly be a factor in major interstate and civil wars within the
next 50 years."

LIVING ON THE EDGE - About 40 per cent of Canadians are shrugging off
tax penalties and are pulling money from their registered retirement
savings plans early to invest in homes, pay down debt and cover living
expenses, a Scotiabank survey suggests. Many investors are dipping
into their retirement savings without considering the consequences.

A U.S. communications company is trying to build a fibre-optic network
all the way into people's homes, a development that they hope will
plug consumers directly into the wired world. Verizon expects 85 per
cent of their customers to be connected to the network by optical
fibre directly to their homes. Since 2005, Verizon has been spending
billions of dollars laying the new fibre network in neighbourhoods
across the United States. Verizon already has invested in FiOS TV, a
fibre-to-the-premises telecommunications service that pulls broadcast
TV, the internet and other media together in one platform.

January 1, 2007 -
Bad omens? Four people suffered an ominous start to the Year of the
Boar when they were attacked in the street - by wild boars. At about 4
p.m. on Monday, a wild boar hit a 56-year-old woman on a street near
Yawatahama Summary Court in Yawatahama, Japan. She was taken to
hospital with mild injuries. Investigators found three more people
also suffered minor injuries after being attacked by wild boars nearby
at almost the same time. Local police suspect that several different
wild boars attacked the four, noting that their descriptions of the
animals were different. The attacks occurred in a residential area
about 200 meters away from a mountain.

Doorway-like devices that trim excess weight, smart diapers and
customized body parts are among the technologies that will transform
medicine in the years ahead, a U.S. researcher predicts.

Outlawed experiments may get second kife in virtual world -
Psychological experiments stopped 40 years ago because of the ethical
concerns could be conducted now in the safer environment of
cyberspace, according to researchers at University College of London.

Robots could one day demand the same citizen's rights as humans,
according to a study by the British government. If granted, countries
would be obliged to provide social benefits including housing and even
"robo-healthcare", the report says. The paper says a "monumental
shift" could occur if robots develop to the point where they can
reproduce, improve themselves or develop artificial intelligence. The
research suggests that at some point in the next 20 to 50 years robots
could be granted rights. The predictions are contained in nearly 250
papers that look ahead at developments over the next 50 years. Other
papers, or "scans", examine the future of space flight and methods to
dramatically lengthen life spans. The papers look forward at emerging
trends in science, health and technology. The scans explore a diverse
range of areas from the future of the gulf stream and the economic
rise of India, to developments in nanotechnology and the threat posed
by HIV/Aids.

------------------------------
December 13, 2006 -
NEW BASKETBALL UNIFORMS KEEP SCORE, TALLY FOULS - Basketball vests
with luminescent displays that show key game information including
which players are close to fouling out are being tested in Australia.

CHRISTMAS ATTACK LIKELY, BRITAIN'S HOME SECRETARY WARNS - Britain's
top security official is warning that it is highly likely militants
will try to mount an attack in the country over the holiday season.

Mice kept in the deep freeze for 15 years have fathered healthy
offspring, scientists reveal.

Early Alzheimer's skin test hope - Scientists believe it may be
possible to develop a quick, painless skin test for Alzheimer's
disease.

There are now more overweight people in the world than hungry ones,
experts say.

Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a
flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by
the BBC suggests. Disturbing video footage of post-mortem examinations
on dismembered tiny bodies raises serious questions about what
happened to them. Ukraine has become the self-styled stem cell capital
of the world. There is a trade in stem cells from aborted foetuses,
amid unproven claims they can help fight many diseases. But now there
are claims that stem cells are also being harvested from live babies.
The BBC has spoken to mothers from the city of Kharkiv who say they
gave birth to healthy babies, only to have them taken by maternity
staff. A senior British forensic pathologist says he is very concerned
to see bodies in pieces - as that is not standard post-mortem
practice. It could possibly be a result of harvesting stem cells from
bone marrow.

December 6, 2006 -
Risk of a U.S. recession in 2007 is growing, one of Canada's leading
bond rating agencies warned Wednesday — a risk it said most economists
are underestimating. A model developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York is now predicting an almost 40 per cent chance of the U.S.
economy sliding into recession within the next 12 months. The model
uses the U.S. Treasury yield curve as a main predictor of recession.
Normally, the curve slopes gently upward — signifying that short-term
bond yields are lower than long-term yields. But since mid-July, the
yield curve has been inverted, and its downward slope is becoming
steeper. "A negatively sloped [inverted] yield curve preceded every
U.S. recession since the mid-1960s." The inverted curve hasn't
received the attention it deserved. "After some initial reports, when
the yield curve first inverted in the summer, most observers seem to
have moved on, as the potentially worrying yield curve signal seems at
odds with the ongoing economic expansion." But the persistence of the
inverted curve "strengthens its predictive power" and the yield curve
is a leading indicator that looks a year ahead rather than at current
conditions.

Man to be living on the Moon from 2024 - Human beings are to go back
to the Moon within the next 15 years and this time they will stay,
according to ambitious plans to establish a lunar base announced by
Nasa. The first manned mission to Earth’s satellite in two generations
will blast off by 2020 to start work on an outpost. The station will
operate chiefly as a science laboratory preparing for manned missions
to Mars, developing and testing survival technology and serving as a
staging post for flights to the Red Planet. The hope is that funds
made available by the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2010
and the completion of the International Space Station could be
diverted to the lunar base, and that other nations will also invest.
One attractive site is the Shackleton Crater, close to the south pole,
which is almost permanently sunlit. It is also thought to hold
deposits of oxygen and hydrogen, which could be extracted to provide
the station with resources that would not then have to be ferried from
Earth. Before astronauts make the trip, Nasa will first explore the
Moon further with robotic missions to scout suitable landing sites.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is scheduled to be launched in 2008
to survey the lunar surface, and robotic landers are planned for 2010
and beyond.

The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all
household wealth. The poorer half of the world's population own barely
1% of global wealth. Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America,
Europe and some countries in the Asia Pacific region, such as Japan
and Australia. These countries account for 90% of household wealth.
Some citizens of the rich countries have more debt than assets -
making them among the poorest in the world in terms of household
wealth. However, they are presumably better off in terms of what they
consume than many people in developing countries. Why does it matter?
Because wealth serves as insurance against times when income tends to
fall, such as unemployment, sickness or old age.

A race to change the world - We have forty-four years to create a
completely different world. Climate experts largely agree that by 2050
we should be aiming to generate around half - or less - of the
greenhouse emissions we were producing back in 1990. Solving the
intertwined problems of climate change, over-consumption and
inequitable allocation of resources is arguably the most complex and
difficult problem the world has ever faced. The good news is that, as
a mounting pile of reports continue to conclude, responding to that
challenge is not impossible. But the longer we delay rising to that
challenge, the harder it will be to succeed.

------------
November 29, 2006 -
WISCONSIN - WHITE BUFFALO KILLED BY LIGHTNING - Lightning on Sunday
night struck and killed two buffalo cows and three buffalo calves,
including a white buffalo on a farm south of Janesville. The white
calf's mother was walking around and grunting, so the owner followed
her up the hill where he found the five dead buffalo with burn marks
laying near a tree. He thinks it was one lightning strike that hit all
five and the nearby tree. The farm became a destination for thousands
of visitors after Miracle, a female white buffalo, was born there on
Aug. 20, 1994. White buffalo are EXTREMELY RARE and are said to
fulfill a Native American legend foretelling peace. Miracle died in
2004 and is now stuffed in the gift shop. A male white buffalo was
born on the farm Aug. 25 this year. "How many times in a lifetime does
lighting strike?" the owner had said after the second birth. Earlier
this year, lightning struck a couple of his Scottish Highlander cows,
but it had never happened to any of his buffalo. He said they figured
they'd better "call it in and get it on the news wire" so people
wanting to visit the white buffalo wouldn't be surprised. "I suppose
it's going to be a great loss to a lot of people." "It's just
coincidence, I guess, that lightning struck twice," he said. "He
(Miracle's Second Chance) was born in a storm and died in a storm."

Nations representing half the world’s population signed a long-
awaited, $12.8 billion pact for a nuclear fusion reactor that could
revolutionise global energy use for future generations.

Scientists at a US weapons laboratory say they have trained bees to
sniff out explosives in a project they say could have far-reaching
applications for US homeland security and the Iraq war.

Mobile phones are closer to becoming smart wallets. The tags inside
phones could have personal information stored in them and so could act
as car keys, money, tickets and travel cards.

A smart system that can recognise and label the content in photos and
videos is being developed by researchers. They believe it will help
people to organise, find and share the mass of multimedia data being
generated by cameras, camcorders and phones. The system, which runs on
PCs, uses image technology and knowledge analysis tools to scan images
looking for collections of pixels that make up recognisable shapes,
such as people or faces. Currently, tags for pictures and films need
to be added manually, and as the multimedia data we generate increases
apace, this can be time-consuming.

Elephants seem to recognize themselves in a mirror, a trait that has
sofar only been shown in humans, chimpanzees and dolphins, suggests a
U.S. study.

Humpback whales have a type of brain cell seen only in humans, the
great apes, and other cetaceans such as dolphins. This might mean such
whales are more intelligent than they have been given credit for, and
suggests the basis for complex brains either evolved more than once,
or has gone unused by most species of animals, the researchers said.
The finding may help explain some of the behaviours seen in whales,
such as intricate communication skills, the formation of alliances,
cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage.

MEDICINE - A team of American doctors has begun interviewing potential
recipients for what they hope will be the world's first successful
womb transplant.

November 8, 2006 -
Did a clairvoyant help U.S. commandos ferret Saddam Hussein out of his
hiding place in Iraq three years ago? Israeli-born celebrity psychic
Uri Geller says the power of the paranormal led US troops to the
fugitive Iraqi ex-dictator. “A soldier walked over to a rock, lifted
it and then found a trap-door and found him in there. Well, I know
that that soldier walked over to that rock because he got information
from a 'remote viewer' from the United States.”

The U.S. government conducted a series of secret war games in 1999
that anticipated an invasion of Iraq would require 400,000 troops and
even then chaos might ensue. In its "Desert Crossing" games, 70
military, diplomatic and intelligence officials assumed the high troop
levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of
other security needs. "The Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests
we would have ended up with a failed state, even with 400,000 troops
on the ground." There are currently about 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq,
down from a peak of about 160,000 in January.

The world's energy supply is heading for crisis, the International
Energy Agency warns, predicting "skyrocketing prices or more frequent
blackouts" unless urgent action was taken. They called on governments
to build more nuclear power stations to help cut greenhouse gas
emissions and also take steps to reduce the growth in demand for
energy. It predicted that global energy needs will surge by 53 per
cent over the next 25 years and that crude oil prices could exceed
$100 a barrel by 2030. "We are on course for an energy system that
will evolve from crisis to crisis. That may mean skyrocketing prices,
or more frequent blackouts. "On current trends, we are on course for a
dirty, expensive and unsustainable energy future. In response, urgent
government action is required. The key word is urgent."

'Designer humans' - An Australian senator has written to federal MPs
warning that medical advances from stem cell research are years away
and consequences could include designer humans. He said politicians
were being rushed into enacting laws before there had been enough time
to fully appreciate the implications. He said an impression had been
created that it would be a relatively simple matter to use stem cells
to cure major diseases, while the reality was that there were very
basic hurdles to be overcome with one expert saying treatments were
still 75 years away. He believes that a ban on cloning humans from the
research would be broken as inevitably some scientists would not be
able to resist temptation.

UK scientists have applied for permission to create embryos by fusing
human DNA with cow eggs. The hybrid human-bovine embryos would be used
for stem cell research and would not be allowed to develop for more
than a few days. But critics say it is unethical and potentially
dangerous. The resulting embryo would be 99.9% human; the only bovine
element would be DNA outside the nucleus of the cell. It would,
though, technically be a chimera - part-human, part-animal. "In this
kind of procedure, you are mixing at a very intimate level animal eggs
and human chromosomes, and you may begin to undermine the whole
distinction between humans and animals."

November 1, 2006 -
'Only 50 years left' for sea fish - "This century is the last century
of wild seafood". There will be virtually no fish or other seafood
from the oceans by the middle of the century if current trends
continue, scientists conclude. Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-
third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating. "The
way we use the oceans is that we hope and assume there will always be
another species to exploit after we've completely gone through the
last one..there is a finite number of stocks; we have gone through one-
third, and we are going to get through the rest." Zones of
biodiversity loss also tended to see more beach closures, more blooms
of potentially harmful algae, and more coastal flooding.

The US is seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours
and allies, with Britons saying US President George W. Bush poses a
greater danger than North Korea's Kim Jong-il, and only Osama bin
Laden is more feared.

Terrorism 'more local than global' - Australian security experts are
increasingly sceptical of the US-led "war on terrorism", which they
say inflates the global threat and ignores the local roots of
religious violence.

Robotic suit - A British Columbia company says it is two years away
from producing a robotic suit that could help paraplegics and stroke
victims to walk again.

EO-1 is a new breed of satellite that can think for itself. "We
programmed it to notice things that change (like the plume of a
volcano) and take appropriate action". EO-1 can re-organize its own
priorities to study volcanic eruptions, flash-floods, forest fires,
disintegrating sea-ice—in short, anything unexpected. Is this real
intelligence? "Absolutely." EO-1 passes the basic test: "If you put
the system in a box and look at it from the outside, without knowing
how the decisions are made, would you say the system is intelligent?"
And now the intelligence is growing. "We're teaching EO-1 to use
sensors on other satellites." Together, ground stations and satellites
form a web of sensors, or a "sensorweb," with EO-1 at the center,
gathering data and taking action.

October 18, 2006 -
Climate change is one of the biggest menaces facing humankind and
threatens to breed terrorism, war and the collapse of civilisation, a
global health expert said. Inequality over access to resources, such
as water and food, breeds desperation and resentment, potentially
sparking terrorism and war worldwide as people compete for scarce
resources.

Failing to fight global warming now will cost trillions of dollars by
the end of the century, even without counting biodiversity loss or
unpredictable events like the Gulf Stream shutting down, a study says.

Electronically tagging passengers at airports could help the fight
against terrorism, scientists have said. The prototype technology is
to be tested at an airport in Hungary, and could, if successful,
become a reality "in two years". The project still needs to overcome
some hurdles, such as finding a way of ensuring the tags cannot be
switched between passengers or removed without notification. The tags
could aid security by allowing airports to track the movement patterns
of passengers deemed to be suspicious and prevent them from entering
restricted areas. It could also aid airports by helping evacuation in
case of a fire, rapidly locating children, and finding passengers who
are late to arrive at the gate.

Scientists have developed biodegradable liquids that can stop bleeding
in open wounds within seconds.

Up to 30 new countries could have the capability to build a nuclear
weapon, on top of the eight declared current nuclear powers, the head
of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned.

October 4, 2006 -
Fish egg - Biologists at the University of Manchester want help in
cracking their "miracle" discovery of three fish inside a sealed egg.
The group found the duck egg in a small pond on a field trip to the
French Alps and noticed something moving inside it. When they cracked
open the shell, three live minnows were inside. They have enlisted the
help of other experts, but despite their extensive combined knowledge,
the biologists admit they are "baffled". (photo)

Europe's declining birthrate risks leaving too few young people to
fill the ranks of the armed forces over the next 20 years, forcing
nations to downsize their armies, develop more automated weapons or
outsource military tasks, according to a report.

Could the sneezy, runny-eyed misery of hay fever one day be a thing of
the past? Scientists are reporting encouraging results from early
tests of a vaccine they hope will give long-lasting relief from this
seasonal scourge.

New Drug May Reverse Age-Linked Vision Loss - A new drug not only
prevents vision loss linked to age-related macular degeneration, it
also improves sight for as long as two years in patients afflicted
with the disorder, two new studies show.

Beaming people through space as they did in Star Trek may be a long
wayoff, but physicists in Denmark may have brought it a step closer
toreality, managing to teleport information between two different
objects for the first time.

September 27, 2006 -
THE FACE ON MARS - The European Mars Express Orbiter has taken the
most detailed 3-D images ever of the Cydonia region of the planet,
site of the famous "face on Mars." The face was first seen in 1976
when the American Viking 1 orbiter spotted it. Since then the face has
been the source of speculation and theories about artificial
structures, even civilizations, on Mars. The Mars Express image
confirms what astronomers have been saying since the Viking image was
released: the apparent eyes, nose and mouth are a trick of light and
shadow. Another feature captured by Mars Express, however, threatened
to rekindle talk of human faces on the red planet. Another hill close
to the "face on Mars" is distinctly "skull-shaped," the European Space
Agency says.

The world's first specially bred hypoallergenic cats have gone on sale
in the US, with a price tag of $3,950.

Roll-up laptop screens and e-newspapers may be a step closer,
according to scientists. A Cambridge team has developed metal
structures that can morph from flat screens into tubes and other
shapes. They say in the future the structures could form the basis for
electronic displays that could be rolled-up and placed in a bag or
pocket. The scientists believe the material could also be used for re-
usable packaging, roll-up keyboards and self-erecting temporary
shelters. The principle behind the shape-shifters is manipulating the
stress within the structure. Because these structures are produced
from one sheet of metal, they are quick and cheap to produce, and
light and easy to carry around.

Over 700 technology experts were asked to evaluate an assortment of
scenarios in an attempt to determine potential trends for the year
2020. The highly speculative scenarios presented to respondents are
all vaguely reminiscent of various themes commonly found in
contemporary science fiction. From artificial intelligences dominating
humanity to disgruntled Luddites engaging in violence, the poll looks
more like an abandoned script than a serious exploration of the
future.

'Tower of Babel' technology nears - The problem of compatibility
between wireless devices is being addressed at an international
conference this week. Scientists will be discussing what has been
dubbed "Tower of Babel" technology - software that can converge
different wireless gadgets into a single device. The aim for Software
Defined Radio (SDR) is to be able to translate and understand any kind
of radio wave signal, such as 3G or wi-fi. Researchers say SDR gadgets
could become commonplace in five to 10 years.

September 20, 2006 -
The most detailed survey of religion in the US found Americans hold
four different images of God - authoritarian, benevolent, critical or
distant - and these views are more powerful indicators of their
political, social and moral attitudes than traditional categories such
as Protestant, Catholic or Evangelical. Nearly a third of Americans,
31.4 per cent, believe in an authoritarian God, angry at earthly sin
and willing to inflict divine retribution - including tsunamis and
hurricanes. At the other end of the scale is the distant God, seen by
24.4 per cent as a faceless cosmic force that launched the world but
leaves it alone. The benevolent God, popular in the US midwest among
mainstream Protestants, Catholics and Jews, is one that sets absolute
standards for humans, but is also forgiving - engaged but not so
angry. "If I know your image of God, I can tell all kind of things
about you. It's a central part of your world view."

Botox treatment to rid yourself of unsightly wrinkles may be
addictive, research has found. People need to keep having jabs
otherwise the effects of the treatment - which paralyses the muscles -
rapidly wears off. Regular Botox users seemed to have a greater
concern about the ageing process, and their inability to control it.

In the not-too-distant future, you may be able to slather on a lotion
that both protects your skin from cancer and gives you a tanned look
at the same time.

Australia faces a dementia epidemic before 2050, according to a new
report.

A video projector that is the size of a sugar cube has been created by
researchers. The miniature device could be used to project images from
mobile phones, PDAs or laptops. Unlike standard imaging devices, the
device could project images onto curved surfaces, such as a dome,
which might give it some niche applications.

3D television could be in homes within three years, according to a
European research consortium. The technology is already in place for
3D TV and cinema to become commonplace. However holographic television
is at least 10 years away. Holographic 3D would be the ultimate
viewing experience. "For example, take a football game. Viewers would
be able to look at a TV that will be like a coffee table and see small-
scale real football players made up from light running around on that
table."

Wind power will be a major contributor to man's future energy needs,
with the potential to provide more than a third of the world's
electricity by 2050.

September 13, 2006 -
A patient in a vegetative state can communicate just through using her
thoughts, according to research. A UK/Belgian team studied a 23-year-
old woman who had suffered a severe brain injury in a road accident,
which left her apparently unable to communicate. By scanning her
brain, they discovered she could understand spoken commands and even
imagine playing tennis. When the scientists compared her brain
activity to that of healthy patients, who had been asked to carry out
the same task, they discovered the patterns were "indistinguishable".
This was a single case and people should not assume all patients in a
vegetative state were consciously aware.

Food allergies may be almost eradicated in 10 years, according to
scientists.

The world will be "doomed" to years of violence in the Middle East if
there is no big effort by 2007 to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, Jordan's King Abdullah warns. Describing himself as "one of
the most optimistic people you'll come across," the king said for the
first time he was becoming pessimistic about the region. By 2007, if
we don't see something that reassures all of us – the international
community, the Israelis, the Arabs and the Palestinians – then I think
we are doomed to another decade or decades of violence between
Israelis and Arabs, which affects everybody." King Abdullah expressed
disappointment that people around the world "in a way just don't care
anymore".

DOOMSDAY? Religion believes that the end of world is heralded by
unnatural weather. So does the recent change in the climate with
floods in the desert, snow in summer and overflowing rivers forebode
disaster? According to some Muslim religious leaders 'qayamat' or the
end of the world is at our doorstep. Hindus believe that we are now
approaching the end of Kalyug, which is the final and most negative of
the four cycles that the world goes through. Some sects within
Christianity also believe that Judgment Day or the end of world is
heralded by unnatural weather. Scientists have said that its because
we are not looking after the world that weather is going against us
and we should be caring for the environment and doing some thing
constructive about it.

September 6, 2006 -
When is a cloud not a cloud? Perhaps when it behaves so strangely -
even to the point of attacking people - that it becomes a truly
puzzling manifestation. There's more unexplained strangeness in our
skies other than UFOs. For generations, eyewitnesses have reported
absolutely weird and astonishing activities or attributes from
ordinary and sometimes not-so-ordinary looking clouds. Some of these
reports were even recorded in prestigious scientific journals.

MICHIGAN - Who, or what, flattened these crops? Dozens of acres of
sorghum are flattened, and no one knows how or why the corn-like plant
was damaged on a farm just south of Hastings. But neighbors say it had
to have happened Monday night. Rows and rows of sorghum were flattened
- not snapped - laying on the ground in UNUSUAL patterns. "This is a
huge area. I've never seen anything like it. I've seen like 'Signs,'
but I've never really seen crop circles unless it's been in a book or
in a special or something. It's freaky." There was rain in Barry
County Monday night, but no damage - no hail or other unusual weather.
"There was no thunder and lightning. It was a light steady rain, I
don't remember any wind." Even if there had been wind, the patterns in
the field are multi-directional. "The grass is going this way and then
this way. How would a wind do that, even if it were [moving] in a
circular motion, and it doesn't." It's a crop mystery in Barry County
that no one can explain, but locals do agree this could not have been
done by hand. "It doesn't look like somebody came out here and damaged
it. I mean it would take a lot of work to damage this much field and
you definitely couldn't do it in one night." (photos)

Telephone telepathy, the spooky feeling that tells you when someone is
going to phone, really exists. Parapsychologist Dr Rupert Sheldrake
insists the phenomenon is far more than just coincidence. In tests, 45
per cent of volunteers correctly “guessed” which of four randomly
picked callers were about to phone them. Repeated hundreds of times,
the odds against this happening were “1000 billion to one."

August 23, 2006 -
War on terror 'could last 50 years' - the Federal Treasurer of
Australia has warned that they should brace for a war on terror that
could exceed the previous 50 years of the cold war.

CHEMICALS sitting in anyone's bathroom at home could be used to make
an easily smuggled bomb that would badly damage a passenger jet, a
danger experts have been warning about for years.

CUBA BRACED FOR ATTACK BY U.S., BUT U.S. CALLED INVASION TALK
'ABSURD'. Former revolutionaries promised to keep fighting for Cuba as
the island beefed up security, saying it feared a U.S. attack during
Fidel Castro's health crisis.

The increase in childhood obesity is being caused by addiction to
"toxic", sugar-filled manufactured foods, a US researcher has claimed.
High-sugar, low-fibre diets cause hormone imbalances. These then mean
children overeat. 'Adult' diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, are being
seen in children. Food manufacturing practices have created a "toxic
environment" that "doomed" children to being overweight. Too much
fructose [fruit sugar] and too little fibre in foods both act to boost
insulin levels. Insulin acts on the brain to encourage eating by
blocking signals that travel from the body's fat stores to the brain
and by stimulating a pleasurable dopamine "rush" after eating. Food
processing had changed over the last 30 years, with sugar being added
to a wide variety of foods that never used to have it, and fibre being
removed from many foods to create "essentially addictive" foods.

August 2, 2006 -
Women will have to wait up to another 150 years for equal wages to
their male counterparts, according to research published in a British
newspaper, The Times. The gap in pay between men and women had been
narrowing for the past 30 years, but has now started to become static.
The report found that even women who worked full-time and did not take
career breaks would still earn 12 per cent less than their male
counterparts after 10 years, due to discrimination and ineffective
government policies.

Civil war is the most likely outcome in Iraq, Britain's outgoing
ambassador warns in a confidential memo. He predicted the break-up of
Iraq along ethnic lines. He did also say that "the position is not
hopeless" - but said Iraq would remain "messy and difficult" for the
next five to 10 years. "The prospect of a low intensity civil war and
a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than
a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy. Even
the lowered expectation of President Bush for Iraq - a government that
can sustain itself, defend itself and govern itself and is an ally in
the war on terror - must remain in doubt." "The next six months are
crucial" - an assessment which is shared by the coalition's military
commanders. A BBC correspondent said "it is a devastating official
assessment of the prospects for a peaceful Iraq, and stands in stark
contrast to the public rhetoric". Senior military sources told the BBC
it was "make or break" time. The Americans are sending thousands of
extra troops to Baghdad, starting next week.

Pesticides in pop - In India, samples of Coca-Cola and Pepsi products
are showing even worse levels of pesticides than in a previous study.
The Centre for Science and Environment said their investigations
revealed that the drinks contain harmful residues, posing a health
risk. Samples from 12 states showed that Pepsi products contained 30
times more pesticides than found in 2003. Coke samples had 25 times
the amount of pesticides found three years ago. India has purity tests
for bottled water, but does not have any purity standards for soft
drinks.

Smog will hit baby boomers' hearts hard - Smog-related premature
deaths among seniors could increase by about 80 per cent over the next
20 years, Ontario doctors warn.

July 26, 2006 -
A company that blasted the first space tourists into orbit is offering
future clients the chance to do a space walk. Space Adventures say the
optional excursion will cost $15m (£8m) on top of the $20m cost for
the flight. For that, private space explorers will get a 1.5 hour
accompanied extra-vehicular-activity outside the International Space
Station. "One and a half hours in about one orbit of the earth so
they'd see the entire planet." Although no one has signed up for a
space walk yet, Space Adventures has a "number of potential clients"
who could blast off in 2007 or 2008. The following year, the firm plan
to go one stage further and launch the first commercial trip around
the moon. The flight will cost an estimated $100 million.

The world's poorest nations are at a "critical moment of transition"
and could fall even further behind, the UN warns. The 50 least
developed countries, most of which are in Africa, lack the means to
compete in a rapidly globalising world. "There are 600 million people
in these countries. They have to develop and we have to help them.
It's a moral, ethical, economic and political issue."

Iran's president warns of a dangerous, brewing Middle East storm - he
called on the international community to take action to prevent it. He
warns that the conflict could spread throughout the region. Iran has a
growing relationship with Tajikistan. Tajikistan played an important
role when Washington went to war with Afghanistan. But recently
Tajikistan began turning towards Iran and Russia. Moscow has a
permanent military base here now, and Tehran is one of the largest
investors.
The Saudi king has pledged $1.5bn financial support to Lebanon and he
also warns Israel's attacks could trigger a regional war.

Lebanon is investigating reports from doctors that Israel has used
weapons in its 15-day-old bombardment of southern Lebanon that have
caused WOUNDS THEY HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE. Killed by Israeli air
raids, the Lebanese dead are blackened and charred in a way local
doctors, who have lived through years of civil war and Israeli
occupation, say they have not seen before. The bodies of some victims
were "black as shoes, so they are definitely using chemical weapons.
They are all black but their hair and skin is intact so they are not
really burnt. It is something else. If you burnt someone with petrol
their hair would burn and their skin would burn down to the bone."
Television footage shows some bodies blackened the way described
above. No one knows what killed them. "We are seeing abnormal burns,
different from wars we've seen in the past. The corpses of these
victims are SHRINKING TO HALF THEIR NORMAL SIZE. You think it is the
corpse of a child at first but it turns out to be a grown man. We've
never seen anything like it but what the causes are I don't want to
speculate. We have no scientific answer."

GlaxoSmithKline believes it has a vaccine for the deadly H5N1 bird flu
that may be capable of mass production by 2007.

July 19, 2006 -
Scientists say silk fibres could be used to repair severed nerves,
possibly even helping patients with damaged spinal cords.

A chip the size of a grain of rice that can store 100 pages of text
and swaps data via wireless has been developed by Hewlett-Packard. The
tiny chip is small enough to embed in almost any object. The chip
could be used to ensure drugs have not been counterfeited, used on
patient wristbands in hospitals to log all the treatment a patient has
received, or used on postcards to add sounds or video. It could also
be used to identify drugs and spot fake pharmaceuticals. Because the
chips are so small and easy to make they could be embedded in
documents as they were printed, stuck to any surface, or made into a
book of self-adhesive dots. All the components to make the chip,
including modem, antenna, microprocessor and memory, can be fabricated
as a single unit, helping to keep unit costs low. HP speculates that
once in production the devices could cost as little as one dollar
each. No battery is needed because devices reading data from the chip
will provide power by induction. The device is currently at least two
years away from being a finished product.

An inflatable spacecraft that could form the basis of a future space
hotel has blasted into space. The folded experimental module launched
from Siberia on a converted Russian intercontinental ballistic
missile. The first Genesis craft is 4.5m (15ft) long and has a
diameter of 2.4m (8ft), one-third of the size of a full-scale craft.
It is built around a rigid central core and two solid bulkheads. The
inflatable walls are composed of a range of materials including
Kevlar, often used in bullet-proof vests, and a fibrous textile called
Vectran. The walls are designed to be airtight and tough, to withstand
the impact of space debris and small meteorites. The module contains
living inhabitants, including cockroaches and Mexican jumping bean
moths. Two more launches are planned within the next 12 months.

An unidentified flying object has appeared over the Yeysk Spit
(Krasnodar region of Russia). Inexplicable phenomena have occurred in
Krasnodar Territory before, for instance, circles in fields that were
allegedly not made by humans. But now a Russian Center TV station
claims it has irrefutable evidence of non-human activity as a
professional cameraman has recorded the appearance of the UFO over
Yeysk. The video recording lasts for 53 seconds. The tape shows a disc-
shaped object moving above the sea at a distance of about four
kilometers from the shore. Then a flash appears in the centre and a
point of light separates and moves into the skies along a bow-shaped
trajectory. (photo)

In the future planes are likely to be made of plastic. "All future
planes will be made out of composites", because it does not corrode.
The new 787 Dreamliner plane - which is expected to make its first
flight next year - is already being constructed using carbon fibre-
reinforced plastic composites.

French President Jacques Chirac warns that mankind faces an inferno
unless the world tackles climate change seriously. "We cannot talk
about energy security while there is no progress on climate change.
Mankind is dancing on the edge of a volcano. Emergency signs are going
up right across our planet. Such phenomena are the first pre-cursory
signs of even bigger disasters which could lead to millions of
refugees fleeing hostile environmental conditions."

July 12, 2006 -
A new scientific breakthrough may lead to women in future being able
to produce sperm. Scientists in England have turned stem cells from an
embryo into sperm which are capable of producing offspring. The
advance, when developed further, could help men with certain types of
infertility to become fertile and even one day could enable a lesbian
couple to have children that genetically would be their own. The
experiment used embryo cells to produce seven baby mice, six of whom
lived into adulthood, although the survivors suffered adverse events
of the kind seen in cloning experiments.

Tobacco is on course to kill a billion people this century - 10 times
the toll it exacted in the 20th century - if current trends continue.

People can live long, happy lives without consuming large amounts of
the Earth's resources, a survey suggests. The 178-nation "Happy Planet
Index" lists the south Pacific island of Vanuatu as the happiest
nation on the planet. The index is based on consumption levels, life
expectancy and happiness, rather than national economic wealth
measurements. The U.S. comes in at 150th.

July 5, 2006 -
An Air Force installation in Colorado Springs and one near Denver are
operating with heightened security. The Cheyenne Mountain Air Station,
which houses NORAD, is now at "Bravo-Plus". “Bravo-Plus” is slightly
higher than a medium threat level. The Cheyenne Mountain Air Station
And Buckley Air Force Base are among four installations in the country
at the higher alert level ordered last week. Space Command would not
comment on the reason for the security increase. The order also
affects Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Patrick air force
base in Florida.

A tiny ultrasound device could help people regrow teeth, researchers
at the University of Alberta say. The prototype device offers a way to
reform human dental tissue for the first time. The treatment, called
low-intensity pulsed ultrasound, massages the gums to stimulate jaws,
encourage growth in the roots of teeth and aid healing in dental
tissue. The therapy regenerates the inner part of the tooth, but not
the enamel. A version that is ready for patients is expected within
two years.

Bionic future may be closer to reality - UK scientists have developed
technology that enables artificial limbs to be directly attached to a
human skeleton. Currently, artificial limbs are fixed or strapped to
an amputee's stump. The work paves the way for bionic limbs which are
controlled by the central nervous system. The technology could be
widely used for thumb and forefingers in a few years, and upper and
lower limb replacements using this method could be in place in five
years .

Over the years, many unexplained happenings were experienced by the
staff and volunteers at the Valentown Museum in Victor, New York.
Footsteps and voices coming from locked rooms, inside a glass display
case magazine pages turning by themselves, suitcases moving underfoot,
a shadowy figure passing right through a closed door, spontaneous
tinkling of an old-fashioned bell hanging on the General Store entry
door and the binging of its security sensor counterpart when the door
never opened, a white shadowy presence in a neighboring house, a man
dressed in period clothing appearing in either the front or rear
windows depending on whether one is coming or going, oil lanterns
swaying, lights turning on and off on their own - all are just a few
of the accounts documented. Watch the video which captured a walking
ghost.

Expect glacial meltdowns to trigger volcanic eruptions, tsunamis,
geologists are predicting. The forecasts from some quarters are
dramatic - not only will the earth shake, it will spit fire. A number
of geologists say glacial melting due to climate change will unleash
pent-up pressures in the Earth's crust, causing extreme geological
events such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. "Not only
has this happened several times throughout Earth's history, (but) the
evidence suggests it is happening again." "When you melt glacial
ice... you've decreased the load on the crust and so you've decreased
the pressure holding the volcanic conduits closed."

June 21, 2006 -
Russia is to build the world's first floating nuclear plant, designed
to provide power for remote areas. The plant will be built at an
Arctic site where atomic submarines are made. Work is expected to
start next year on two nuclear reactors and the 144m (475ft) platform
for them, despite environmentalists' concerns. Besides the Arctic,
Russian authorities were looking at 11 other possible sites for such
reactors, and they said that customers from abroad are already
interested in the technology. Opponents say that floating nuclear
plants are "absolutely unsafe - inherently so". "There are risks of
the unit itself sinking, there are risks in towing the units to where
they need to be."

North Korea is reportedly getting ready to test a new long-range
ballistic missile that could reach the United States, setting off
alarm bells in Washington and Tokyo.

Oil prices could triple if the row over Iran's nuclear programme
escalates into conflict, warns the Saudi government.

Climate change will have a massive impact on business and the bottom
line of insurers, according to a report from Lloyds of London. The
report warns that the insurance industry has not taken the shifting
weather patterns seriously enough. The report warns the industry to
expect more extreme storms over a broader area, rising seas and
FLOODING IN ALMOST EVERY COASTAL CITY IN THE WORLD. Changing rain and
snow patterns are also becoming less predictable and there is a risk
of more landslides. With the evidence suggesting that climate change
is now taking place faster than first thought — the study warns that
the industry can no longer base decisions on historical patterns. It
said that the trend of rising seas driven by shrinking glaciers was
probably irreversible, unpredictable and "likely to result in sudden
periods of catastrophic melting". "Even small rises in sea levels are
likely to create severe economic and demographic problems, since large
populations are concentrated near present sea level." The report warns
that extreme windstorms will continue. "Climate change is likely to
bring us all an even more uncertain future. If we do not take action
now to understand the risks and their impact, the changing climate
could kill us."

Strange days have reached Ny-Alesund, Europe's most northerly research
station. Perched at the very edge of the continent, in Svalbard,
Norway, a mere 1,000km from the North Pole, the center's international
scientists have been experiencing weather that is becoming
increasingly unpredictable. The archipelago was balmy and calm at the
end of April, when it should should still have been gripped by ice and
screaming winds. In May, waters in the Kongsfjorden - the long strip
of water that pokes eastwards into mainland Svalbard at Ny-Alesund -
were now 2 degrees C warmer than they used to be a few years ago. Two
degrees may seem a modest rise, but the effects are profound -
"Normally, the temperature in the fjord would be close to freezing.
This winter the cooling of the water has probably never been close
enough to produce an ice cover." All the other fjords on this normally
ice-locked coastline have remained open, thanks to the startling
warming of their waters. "Now the whole [food] chain is changing and
we have no idea what the consequences will be." In the case of
Greenland, previous estimates of the rate of melting of Greenland's
glaciers have been too low and too optimistic in assuming it would
take centuries to heat and melt its massive ice shield. The marches to
the sea of these great glaciers are being accelerated. Places will
become increasingly vulnerable to massive sea surges sweeping over
their strained ocean defenses. Already the world's coral reefs and
islands are suffering, swamped by rising waters and battered by
storms. This is the danger Earth now faces: the overturning of our
climate system, from its relatively stable, moderate status to one in
which we have recreated the climate of the Cretaceous era, when there
were crocodiles at the poles and the planet cooked.

June 14, 2006 -
Lake Voui on Vanuatu's island of Ambae turned bright red almost
overnight, puzzling locals and overseas experts alike. No one knows
just when the lake turned red from its previously blue-green water,
but villagers, who consider it sacred, discovered the colour change on
May 21. "We don't have any records of it turning red before, but there
are legends, stories of the old people, of the water turning red, then
black." According to the legends, having the water turning to "blood
means war". As of yet there is no scientific explanation. While
volcanoes do spew out iron-rich ash, "oxidation requires oxygen". "You
don't get a lot of oxygen in a volcano." Chlorine and sulfur from the
volcano may have somehow reacted with iron in the lake, but the
chemistry required is "all a bit tricky". (photo)

U.S. 'biggest global peace threat" - the worldwide reputation of the
U.S. continues to suffer over its prosecution of the "war on terror".
People in European and Muslim countries see U.S. policy in Iraq as a
bigger threat to world peace than Iran's nuclear program, a survey has
shown. Support for U.S. President George W Bush and his "war on
terror" has dropped dramatically worldwide. Goodwill created by U.S.
aid for nations hit by the 2004 tsunami has also faded since last
year. The survey questioned 17,000 people in 15 countries, including
the U.S. The survey found concern over bird flu was largely confined
to Asia, while two-thirds of people surveyed in each country said they
were worried by global warming.

AUSTRALIA - Dome-shaped houses constructed to survive extreme weather
like cyclones will sprout across Australia within five years, experts
predict.

The number of severe heat waves across the U.S., lasting four days or
longer, has tripled in the last 50 years, experts say. The number of
90 degree days in Montana already has increased from a handful every
summer a couple of generations ago to nearly 30 today. In Holland, the
once-normal and predictable staging of long-distance skating
competitions along that nation's canal system has become rare as the
waterways seldom freeze over long enough in winter. As sea levels rise
from melting glaciers and ice caps, millions living along low-lying
coastal areas will be forced to flee inland, abandoning their former
way of life. Civilization as we know it is going to change.

June 7, 2006 -
"The sixth day of the sixth month of 2006 has come and gone with
nothing more terrible than the usual acts of God - tornadoes, floods,
earthquakes, and hurricanes somewhere in the world. To the
disappointment of the literalists, no significant catastrophic event
occurred to make one believe that the "End of Days" is nigh."

The future Apocalypse - a summary of what has been predicted.

Betting on the End of the World - What used to be Nostradamus and a
few other Doomsday prophets' domain recently became the latest craze
in the betting industry. Forecasts on natural disasters such as a
comet hitting the planet on May 25 are proliferating around the world.
These "warnings" are usually based on the interpretation of known
prophecies or "psychic disclosures" coming from other planets, like in
the case of the comet predicted to be arriving on May 25th and
expected to cause the worst tsunami ever experienced by mankind.

How close are we to the End of the World? - the ‘Rapture Index’, a
scientifically-grounded scale which combines world events and Bible
prophecy to measure our proximity to the end of the world, recently
hit an all-time high of 182. According to its inventor, who likens it
to a “Dow Jones Industrial Average of End Time activity,” any reading
over 145 means “Fasten your seat belt.” Many believe that the
unusually high number of natural disasters which have struck the earth
since the turn of the millennium are something of a prelude to the
biggest bang since the Big Bang.

May 31, 2006 -
With 06/06/06 looming (June 6, 2006), authorities in some cities are
worrying that prophecy theorists or hate groups might read something
ominous into the date and use it as an excuse to stir tension. Some
expectant mothers are making birthing appointments to ensure they
avoid the date. Twentieth Century Fox's remake of "The Omen" and Ann
Coulter's book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," will both come
out June 6. The number 666 is used to refer to the Beast — the
Antichrist — in the Bible's Book of Revelations. "Humanity and
individuals are attracted to numbers during times of great
transformation." When former President Ronald Reagan and his wife
Nancy retired to their last home in the Bel Air district of Los
Angeles in 1989, they forced officials to change their address from
666 to 668 St. Cloud Road. No word on whether the former president,
whose full name was Ronald Wilson Reagan, was bothered by the number
of letters in each of his first, middle and last names.

The development of new materials could see items such as invisibility
cloaks, a key weapon in the trickery of Harry Potter and countless
science fiction plots, become a reality within five years.

A new behavior prediction tool by a media psychology firm is
forecasting a landslide victory for former Democratic Vice President
Al Gore in the 2008 presidential election should he run for office -
but it says if Sen. Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nod, any
potential Republican challenger will emerge victorious. Should Al Gore
decide not to seek the 2008 nomination, “our results suggest that a
potentially successful Democratic nominee may be lurking in the
entertainment industry."

CHINA - Experts say that unless action is taken quickly, billions of
tons of untreated industrial and agricultural waste and sewage are
likely to kill what remains of Yangtze river's plant and wildlife
species within five years. The Yangtze, China's longest river, is
"cancerous" with pollution from untreated agricultural and industrial
waste. That would make it unable to sustain marine life or provide
drinking water to the booming cities along its banks. The government
has promised to clean up the Yangtze, which supplies water to almost
200 cities along its banks. China's rapid economic development means
that many of the nation's waterways are facing similar problems. Last
year the authorities announced that the country's second-longest
river, the Yellow River, was so polluted that it was not safe for
drinking. Correspondents say that 300 million people in China do not
have access to safe drinking water.

May 24, 2006 -
Terror 'tsunami' imminent, former MI chief warns - The former Israeli
Military Intelligence chief warns of an impending world jihad
"tsunami" that he said may soon descend on the entire Middle East.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been overheard promising the
"end of history in two or three years." Tehran will soon have nuclear
tipped surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 5,000 kilometers,
putting Europe within striking distance. Major jihadist organizations
have of late intensified their attacks against sites in Arab
countries. "There is a motion away from the periphery and toward the
center, and Israel is at the heart." "A great deal of the recruitment,
training and managing of these groups is done on the Internet."

New research suggests women who have a diet rich in dairy products are
five times more likely to have twins than those who eat no animal
products. The reason may be hormones given to cattle to boost their
milk and meat production. The number of twins in the world has
increased significantly in the past 30 years.

Thousands of Germans have flocked to a botanical garden to witness the
FREAK appearance of three flowers on a giant member of the lily
family, notorious for its revolting smell. Since mid April, an Arum
Titan in a garden in Bonn in western Germany has been displaying three
monster buds, a phenomenon described by the management as unique. The
plant is known to botanists as Amorphophallus titanium but more
familiarly as the corpse-flower because of its repulsive odour. “Our
example is the only one in the world to put out several flowers
simultaneously.” The biggest bud opened Saturday, reaching a size of
2.59 metres (8.5 feet) but has now withered. The plant comes from the
Indonesian island of Sumatra. Arum Titan lives for 40 years but
flowers only three or four times.

South Africa - The National Sea Rescue Institute is monitoring a
mysterious situation on the KZN south coast. "Numerous" eye-witnesses
reported an unidentified flying object crashing into the sea on
Saturday. "Following a full-scale search of the area covering 12
square nautical miles nothing has been found. There are no reports of
activity in the area that may be related to this incident and there
are no aircraft reported overdue or missing." Numerous eye-witnesses -
including teachers and pupils attending a sports event at the high
school, by-standers and local fishermen - were convinced they had seen
an aircraft go into the water. They said they saw smoke and described
"water exploding". Some also reported seeing flames. "Some reported
seeing something, an unidentified object, splash into the sea causing
a ripple effect of waves." " We will continue to monitor the
situation, which remains a mystery."

April 28, 2006 -
INDONESIA - A thick column of sulfurous smoke surged into the sky
Monday as Mount Merapi continued to show signs of an imminent
eruption. On the western end of the mountain, near the town of
Magelang, people trade rumors of a mysterious sparkling light sweeping
across the sky in the early morning hours, or the distant sounds of
howling wolves, both signs of a coming eruption. The Javanese believe
increased volcanic activity at Merapi signifies a coming political
change and is a warning to politicians to settle disputes. "In the
four cycles of Javanese life, we are embarking on a dark age, a time
of evil. This accounts for the many natural disasters and the
political upheaval of the last decade." The volcano erupted in 1965,
the year before Suharto, following an aborted coup, claimed the
presidency. Volcanic activity similar to what scientists are seeing
now preceded the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which led to mass
demonstrations, violence and the downfall of Suharto the following
year.

In the two months leading to the Columbine school shooting
anniversary, students have threatened violence in 10 schools across
the U.S. "We tend to see more plots leading up to the Columbine
anniversary. However, the state of incidents, many quite serious,
since March 1 seems to be a very unusual cluster - an unusually large
cluster of plots and threats in a very short period of time. If there
is any legacy from Columbine, it is that it can happen anywhere." The
list of places where students were arrested recently after allegedly
threatening attacks at their schools reads like a cross-section of
small-town America: Puyallup, Wash., on April 24; North Pole, Alaska,
on April 22; Riverton, Kan., on April 20; Platte City, Mo., on April
17; Pierce County, Wash., on April 7; Atco, N.J., on April 5; Foley,
Ala., on March 24; Rochester Hills, Mich., on March 20; Greenwood,
Ind., on March 2; and Muscatine, Iowa, on March 1.

Colombian pilgrims have been gathering at a church to see a statue of
the Virgin Mary that appears to be crying. The sculpture, called "The
Virgin of Rosary," is at a church 330 miles southwest of Bogota,
Colombia. Residents and visitors have been coming to see the sculpture
since Sunday night. In a separate incident, residents of a small
township in southwest Colombia have been surprised by a strange
phenomenon visible on a tree. Despite warm weather, some branches on
the tree appeared to remain frozen. Residents started placing candles
under the tree to ask for blessings. Others have drunk the water
melting from the branch in the hope that it possesses healing powers.

RED RAIN - Scientists in Britain say they have confirmed that DNA, the
genetic blueprint for life, does exist in the mysterious red rain
which fell over the Kerala region of India, in 2001. The blood-
coloured rain caused a storm of controversy among the world’s
scientists. Many theories have been put forward to explain the strange
phenomenon, but the latest results, from studies carried out at
Cardiff University in Britain, seem to confirm that the red colour
does come from living cells, although where they came remains a
mystery. The strange cells fell as red rain for six weeks, following
reports of an explosion in the sky. Indian scientists who first
analysed the rain expected to see grains of dust or sand, perhaps
blown from the Sahara by freak winds. Instead, they found themselves
looking at complex cell-like structures, that have many of the
characteristics of living organisms. They were even more surprised to
find the cells could be made to come to life and reproduce, under
laboratory conditions. “If there was an explosion of a small piece of
a comet over Kerala, and an explosion was in fact heard just minutes
before the first rainfall, those particles would have drifted along a
belt of latitude, but when you look at a map of the world, the
latitudes west of Kerala run into the Indian Ocean and then into the
Sahara. So if it fell all over that area it wouldn’t have been
noticed, and in the Sahara there is not much rainfall, so the
particles could have drifted a long way away and not be noticed.”
Intensive investigation under high-powered microscopes confirmed the
cell-like structures are biological and that they do contain DNA, the
blue print of all life forms on Earth. What’s not yet known is whether
it is terrestrial life or alien DNA, but investigators believe they
will know soon. The Cardiff team is now comparing DNA from the red
rain with that of all known terrestrial species. "It’s a long and
painstaking study, but if no known DNA from Earth matches, the only
remaining possibility would be that it is an alien life form from
outer space."

April 18, 2006 -
A respected Texas scientist says the best way to save the world is to
kill 90 per cent of the people on the planet with the Ebola virus.

A new optical telescope designed solely to detect light signals from
alien civilisations has opened for work at an observatory in Harvard,
US. It will conduct a year-round survey, scanning all of the Milky Way
galaxy visible in the Northern Hemisphere. "Sending laser signals
across the cosmos would be a very logical way for ET to reach out."
Visible light can form tight beams, be incredibly intense, and its
high frequencies allow it to carry enormous amounts of information.
Using only present-day terrestrial technology, a bright, tightly
focused light beam, such as a laser, can be 10,000 times as bright as
its parent star for a brief instant. Such a beam could be easily
observed from enormous distances.

The United Kingdom's growing demand for goods and services is having
an impact on the rest of the world. In 1961, the Earth could have
supported everyone having a UK lifestyle. It would take 3.1 planets to
support the current UK lifestyle. "Lifestyles in Britain are becoming
increasingly unsustainable and are placing an ever larger burden on
the global environmental system." The UK's food self-sufficiency has
been falling steadily for more than a decade, and indigenous food
production is now said to be at its lowest level for half a century.
In 2004, the UK lost its energy independent status when it became a
net importer of gas. At a global level, the world is also living
beyond ecosystems' ability to supply the resources and absorb the
demands being placed upon them. "On one level, there is absolutely
nothing wrong with importing goods and services, but our eyes are
bigger than the planet. "The problem is that we want to have our
planet and eat it and not think about the consequences." "While you
are not living within the planet's limits and are eroding
ecosystems...the greater the risk of a system crash."

Scientists invent an ultra-thin, natural-feeling light that could
spell the end of the traditional bulb. 8

Almost 30 per cent of men who take paternity tests discover they are
raising someone else's child, a study has found.

April 12, 2006 -
Privacy threat? - Supermarkets in Europe are introducing a new
technology that some say threatens a fundamental invasion of our
privacy. We are all familiar with barcodes, those product fingerprints
that save cashiers the bother of keying in the code number of
everything we buy. Now, meet their replacement: the RFID tag, or radio
frequency ID tag. These smart labels consist of a tiny chip surrounded
by a coiled antenna. While barcodes need to be manually scanned, RFID
simply broadcasts its presence and data to electronic readers. It
means the computer networks of companies can track the position and
progress of billions of products on rail, road, sea and shelf. "RFID
really brings a revolution to everything that is transported from one
point to the other, and in the future you will have it really on
everything." But with remotely readable tags on everything from boots
to beans, is it the customers or what they buy that is being labelled?
One solution being floated is the idea of killing the code on the chip
as customers leave the shop. A Christian author in the U.S. has just
published a book claiming RFID will evolve into the mark of the beast
featured in Revelation and presage the end of the world.

Jesus may have walked on ice, not water, scientists say. A freak cold
spell that covered parts of a lake with ice could explain the biblical
tale about Jesus walking on water, says a team of U.S. and Israeli
scientists. "A rare set of weather events may have combined to create
a slab of ice about 4 to 6 inches [10 to 15 centimeters] thick on the
lake, [making it] able to support a person's weight."

Judas, the disciple blamed for betraying Jesus Christ to the Romans,
was a hero, a newly released 26-page ancient text says. The 1700-year-
old codex, or ancient book, says Jesus asked Judas to betray him.

Pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs,
researchers have warned.

Doctors have 'grown' bladders for patients - American doctors have
implanted bladders made from engineered tissue into patients with
bladder disease. The patients' progress has been monitored for between
two and four years and the signs are excellent.

A laser which melts fat and may treat heart disease and cellulite is
being developed by scientists.

Ancient dentists drilled teeth 9,000 years ago. Ancient man used
sophisticated drills to treat tooth decay, according to a French
anthropologist who turned up evidence of fine dental work in ancient
Pakistani cemeteries.

China has ambitious exploration plans, including robotic Moon missions
starting next year. Beyond Moon missions, including a flight to
collect and return lunar samples to Earth in 2017, the Chinese space
agency plans to develop a nonpolluting launch vehicle that can lift
25,000kg into orbit by 2010. The Chinese space agency envisions a
"constellation" of eight satellites to monitor global disasters, and
another satellite that would watch the Earth's magnetic fields as a
possible predictor of earthquakes.

April 1, 2006 -
Scientists forecast meat grown on kitchen counters - Scientists are
trying to develop an industrial process that grows meat tissue from a
few cells in a lab - or even at home, in a device like a bread maker.
Instead of being cut from a farm animal, the beef, pork or chicken
would be grown in incubators from a few starter cells, a growth medium
and some hormones to get the cells to divide. Muscle produced in an
incubator could have reduced fat content, and the process would do
away with problems such as bacterial contamination and mad cow
disease. "It has the taste and texture resembling the ground meat
products that are already available," such as hamburger or chicken
nuggets. "Producing a steak or ... a whole chicken breast is a much
more difficult task, technically."

What's in the water? - Birth control pills, cancer drugs and a host of
other pharmaceuticals that people flush down the drain every day are
showing up in our drinking water, says Ontario's environmental
commissioner.

THE US military plans to detonate a 700-tonne explosive charge in a
test called "Divine Strake" that could send a mushroom cloud over Las
Vegas, a senior defence official said. The test, which is not a
nuclear one, is scheduled for June 2, and is part of a US effort to
develop weapons capable of destroying deeply buried bunkers housing
nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. "We have several very large
penetrators we're developing." "The purpose is to conduct research
into ground motion." The aim is to measure the effect of the blast on
hard granite structures. The military does not expect the test to have
an adverse impact on the environment or the health of either local
residents or participants in the exercise.

The much-expected solar eclipse was experienced in major cities across
Nigeria on Wednesday with residents trooping out on the streets in
excitement to catch a glimpse of the unusual incident. The eclipse,
which threw most of the affected towns into total darkness as early as
10a.m also paralysed commercial activities as long as it lasted across
certain states in the federation. Fear and anxiety had gripped many
Nigerians few hours before the eclipse appeared, as there was
apprehension about what might be the effect of the phenomenon. The
awesome event, which began with the sky getting hazy as if it was
going to rain soon after clothed the sky with total darkness leaving
millions of Nigerians to grope in the dark. The State Police Command
maintained surveillance in the state capital to prevent break down of
law and order as many people had earlier believed that the end of the
world was near.

"We have 40 years, at the outside, to change the whole way that we
live. It doesn't mean we have to live worse, we just have to live
differently. If we don't act now, the real consequences of climate
change – in massive weather changes – will dwarf into total
insignificance any small sacrifices that people would have to make
today." Governments worldwide must accept weather patterns will change
and must build infrastructure to cope with extreme events caused by
global warming. "Evidence that humans have affected the world's
climate is incontrovertible. The only question is how fast the changes
are going to come and how bad they are going to be. When we're looking
at renewing infrastructure, we have to bear in mind that the weather
for which they were designed isn't going to be the same."

March 13, 2006 -
There is all kinds of strange stuff falling from the sky: frogs,
sardines, jellyfish, alligators. Weird rain is one of the more bizarre
- and still largely unexplained - phenomena that is periodically (yet
continually) reported from all corners of the globe. There have been
accounts of frog rain, fish rain, squid rain, worm rain, even
alligator rain.
In 1890, Popular Science News reported that blood rained down on
Messignadi, Calabria in Italy - bird's blood. It was speculated that
the birds were somehow torn part by violent winds, although there were
no such winds at the time. And no other parts of the bird came down -
just blood.
J. Hudson's farm in Los Nietos Township, California endured a rain of
flesh and blood for three minutes in 1869. The grisly fall covered
several acres.
The American Journal of Science confirmed a shower of blood, fat and
muscle tissue that fell on a tobacco farm near Lebanon, Tennessee in
August, 1841. Field workers, who actually experienced this weird
shower, said they heard a rattling noise and saw "drops of blood, as
they supposed...fell from a red cloud which was flying over."

This week in CHINA, a sandstorm dimmed the sky and turned the air the
colour of rust in northwest China, reducing visibility to less than 50
metres. In Artux, capital of the Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous
Prefecture, the deputy head of a monitoring station called it the
WORST AND STRANGEST SANDSTORM TO HIT THE CITY IN 13 YEARS. "It is like
going into a flour mill. It is hard to breathe when standing outside
as the air is so smoky." Particle counts in the city's air were as
much as 222 times higher than normal on Sunday.
In the city of Kashi, a yellow sandstorm swept in early Sunday morning
and later turned the sky saffron yellow.
SOUTH KOREANS have been treated to a RARE WEATHER PHENOMENON when
yellow snow fell in the capital and elsewhere across the country. But
the snow - containing dust or sand from the desert regions of northern
China, could pose a health hazard, the country's meteorological office
warns. "It's tough to say whether it's yellow sand mixed in snow or if
it's snow mixed in yellow sand." A high concentration of the dust
particles prompted the weather bureau to issue a yellow dust warning
for the second time in three days. South Korea frequently gets sand or
dust storms, but a yellow snow storm is VERY RARE. "I have never seen
yellow snow falling before," a meteorological official said.
RUSSIA is red again after a freak fall of colored snow. Northern
regions of Russia's Maritime territory have been blanketed by a creamy
REDDISH SNOW caused by a combination of weather patterns. Authorities
have been broadcasting non-stop weather bulletins to explain the
phenomena is due to natural causes after panicked locals bombarded
police and emergency services. Meteorologists have explained sand
storms from neighbouring Mongolia are to blame. A cyclone passed over
Mongolia on its way to Russia causing sand particles to be driven up
into the air causing the colour of the snow to change. The red snow
comes just weeks after YELLOW SNOW, caused by pollution from an oil
and gas factory, fell on Russia's Far East island of Sakhalin.
CHOCOLATE BROWN SNOW fell in Arizona. Caused by a wind storm in
northern Arizona, which kicked up dust that was carried east and fell
with the snow overnight, the off-colored snow, described as everything
from "dusty" to "chocolate brown" was prevalent at several ski resorts
over the last week of February.

Widespread access to wi-fi could be the force behind the net's next
wave of innovation, say experts. So far, it is generating a huge
number of start-ups such as PodBop, which gives you podcasts of bands
coming to your home town. Websites such as TechCrunch and others are
cataloguing these new firms. What all these start-ups assume is that
users are never offline. This is where wi-fi comes in. It is only when
wireless net access is everywhere that these companies can even exist.
"Wi-fi everywhere will mean staff not having to commute unless they
want or need to. It lets staff work where they need or want to. That's
going to be a huge shift in the fabric of society." But this shift to
an always-on, always-connected world may bring with it some unwanted
effects. "The big problem from a social point of view is learning when
to turn it off. It's about choosing when you are contactable."
Anti-viral vaccines could potentially prevent up to 25% of cancers in
the developing world, a report says.

March 6, 2006 -
BLOOD-RED RAIN - There is a small bottle containing a red fluid on a
shelf in Sheffield University's microbiology laboratory. The liquid
looks cloudy and uninteresting. Yet, if one group of scientists is
correct, the phial contains the first samples of extraterrestrial life
isolated by researchers. Inside the bottle are samples left over from
one of the strangest incidents in recent meteorological history. On
July 25, 2001, blood-red rain fell over the Kerala district of western
India. And these rain bursts continued for the next two months. All
along the coast it rained crimson, turning local people's clothes
pink, burning leaves on trees and falling as scarlet sheets at some
points. Investigations suggested the rain was red because winds had
swept up dust from Arabia and dumped it on Kerala. But "if you look at
these particles under a microscope, you can see they are not dust,
they have a clear biological appearance." Instead the rain appears to
be made up of bacteria-like material that had been swept to Earth from
a passing comet.

"Something is amiss. Something about this blazing loveliness feels
just a little bit off, a little bit wrong, something nagging and
squirming just under the skin of this sunny daydream bliss, and if
you're paying any sort of attention to the world these days you can't
help but hear, as you bask in the warm sun-kissed goodness, an uneasy
and nervous voice stabbing into your sun-dappled brain: Isn't it just
a little too warm? Too sunny? Can this be right? And finally: Is this
winter heat just another little sign of impending doom, a hint of far,
far worse things to come, of heat waves and storms and direness and
death? Is it all, in short, just a deceptively lovely result of the
looming wrath of global warming? You know it's true. It doesn't take
many weirdly balmy winter days or freakishly violent storms or photos
of Katrina's fury to know that something's more than a little
amiss..."

A re-usable, lightweight suit could save the lives of women at risk of
dying during childbirth, a study says.

Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into "stealth spies"
capable of tracking vessels undetected, a British magazine has
reported. They want to remotely control the sharks by implanting
electrodes in their brains. It aims to build on latest developments in
brain implant technology which has already seen scientists controlling
the movements of fish, rats and monkeys. The US navy has acoustic
signalling towers capable of sending sonar signals to a shark up to
300km (187 miles) away. "Remote-controlled sharks do have advantages
that robotic underwater surveillance vehicles just cannot match: they
are silent, and they power themselves."

FEBRUARY 27, 2006 -
New infectious diseases are now emerging at an exceptional rate.
Humans are accumulating new pathogens at a rate of one per year. Most
of these new infectious diseases, such as avian influenza and HIV/
Aids, are coming from other animals. "This accumulation of new
pathogens has been going on for millennia - this is how we acquired
TB, malaria, smallpox. But at the moment, this accumulation does seem
to be happening very fast. We're going to have to run as fast as we
can to stay in the same place. So it seems there is something special
about modern times - these are good times for pathogens to be invading
the human population."

The age of retirement should rise to 85 by 2050, to cope with longer
life expectancy, a US scientist says.

The London Olympics in 2012 are likely to be hit by electricity
blackouts, according to a poll of energy experts. Many of the UK's
nuclear and coal-fired stations will have closed by 2012, and demand
for electricity is rising. Nuclear power supplies about 20% of the
nation's electricity; but by 2012, nine of the 12 stations still
operating will have closed.

Scientists say it may be possible to predict how well we will remember
something before the event has even taken place. By analysing scans,
they discovered the brain must get into the 'right frame of mind' to
store new information. For top performance, the brain must mobilise
its resources, not only at the moment we get new information, but also
in the seconds before. Previously it was thought that brain activity
after an event, not before the event, was key.

February 15, 2006 -
Petro-geologists think peak oil is nigh. Rising demand from emerging
economies, particularly in China and India, and peaking supply is a
collision course for disaster. A catastrophic worldwide depression of
immense proportions seems likely, with millions of people starving and
millions more facing eternal financial hardship. Our society is
stumbling with obliviousness and nonchalance into a new and horrible
epoch.

More and more Americans seem to be stressed out , miserable and
depressed, according to opinion polls. One long term survey shows that
personal misery among Americans is at its highest levels since the
early 1990s, with people saddled with woes over healthcare,
unemployment, paying bills and romance.

Disasters inspire soul-searching - Millennia have passed since
biblical times, when every disaster seemed to be a call to repentance.
A look back at 2005, though, shows that some human impulses die hard.
The year's catastrophic hurricanes, earthquakes, famines and other
disasters raised choruses of prayer, not only for relief from
suffering, but also for guidance to light a better moral path. "People
experience (disaster) as a call to their own moral improvement,
whether that means using less fossil fuel or doing less gambling or
giving more donations to the poor. Clever ministers or
environmentalists will use the moment to call their people to a better
way of living," as they did time and again in 2005. Examples of the
impulse to link disaster with morality spanned cultures, ideologies
and religions in a year marked by record-setting upheaval.

Big companies employ futurologists to make radical predictions about
the next few years. From contacting life on other worlds to creating
artificial life down here on Earth, any future is, in theory,
possible. The latest technology timeline released by one company
suggests hundreds of different inventions for the next few decades
including:
2012: personal 'black boxes' record everything you do every day
2015: images beamed directly into your eyeballs
2017: first hotel in orbit
2020: artificial intelligence elected to parliament
2040: robots become mentally and physically superior to humans
2075 (at the earliest): time travel invented.

A windup laptop computer that would sell for about $116 is among a new
category of gadgets being developed that could help stretch funding
for impoverished countries, according to an MIT professor.

Scientists are working on a method to enable doctors to identify
disease even before symptoms appear. A team at the Defence Science and
Technology Laboratory found distinct patterns can occur in the immune
system in the earliest stages of infection. Their goal is to find a
way to minimise casualties among service personnel in the event of an
attack with biological weapons. They are confident that their work
would also have great potential for use among civilians.

January 30, 2006 -
Is Nostradamus on target with his predictions as they apply to our
current climate change?
You don't need to try to decipher his Prophecies, just read the letter
of dedication he wrote to his son, Cesar. In it Nostradamus openly
predicted both the serious drought and the heavy rains and flooding
that are occurring in many parts of the world. Nostradamus stated very
clearly that "there would be great indunations of water and before and
after these inundations in many countries there shall be such scarcity
of rain and such a great deal of fire,...And a thousand other
accidents shall happen by waters and continual rains, as I have more
fully at large declared in my other Prophecies."
More frequent floods and drought, brought a near 20 percent rise in
natural disasters in 2005.
Look at PORTUGAL as one example of what is occurring as the climate
all around the globe is changing. Portugal's south risks turning into
a desert as temperatures rise, its coasts will erode and droughts will
become more frequent. Freak weather has already hit the country. Last
year Portugal recorded its WORST DROUGHT SINCE 1931 while this weekend
snow fell in Lisbon for the FIRST TIME IN DECADES. Last year's forest
fires destroyed 325,226 hectares (803,600 acres), the SECOND WORST IN
HISTORY. Rainfall could decrease between 20 and 40 percent over the
next 100 years, mostly because of increased concentration of rainfall
during the winter months, which could then cause floods.
- According to a new report, the Greenland ice sheet is likely to
melt, leading sea levels to rise by seven metres over 1,000 years.
"That would be an incredible change that would wipe a lot of low-lying
areas off the map, like Florida, like Bangladesh, and would
fundamentally change the coastline in Britain." Climate change is
already shifting the shape of Greenland, making it less stable. The
report says there is only a small chance of greenhouse gas emissions
being kept below "dangerous" levels. A rise of two degrees Celsius
will be enough to cause:
Decreasing crop yields in the developing and developed world.
Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia.
Large-scale displacement of people in north Africa from
desertification.
Up to 2.8 billion people at risk of water shortage.
97% loss of coral reefs.
Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar
bear and the walrus.
Spread of malaria in Africa and north America.
"Above two degrees [temperature increase] the risks increase very
substantially, involving potentially large numbers of extinctions or
even ecosystem collapses, major increases in hunger and water shortage
risks as well as socio-economic damages, particularly in developing
countries."
Global sea levels could rise by about 30cm during this century alone
if current trends continue, a study warns. Australian researchers
found that sea levels rose by 19.5cm between 1870 and 2004, with
accelerated rates in the final 50 years of that period. -
What else may lay ahead? Nostradamus stated that there would be so
many great inundations of water, that "there shall scarce be any land
that shall not be covered with water...and burning stones shall fall
from Heaven, that nothing unconsumed shall be left...The swords draw
near to us now, and the plague and the war more horrid than hath been
seen in the life of three men before, and also famine, which shall
return often, for the stars agree with the revolution."

Odd winds from the southwest have been creating havoc with the normal
weather patterns. In Indiana for one example, "since around Dec. 20,
we've had an atypical wind pattern. Most of the time, the wind comes
from the northwest in Canada. Now the wind is coming from the
Southwest, causing a big difference in temperature." The wind patterns
are unique this season. The whole world is affected by the same
weather causing different effects in many parts of the world, despite
their connection.
Note that the Southwest Wind was historically known as the 'Plague
Wind'. Pazuzu, the demon of the southwest wind is also the Sumerian-
Assyrian Demon of epidemics.

December 4, 2005 -
The Bermuda Triangle - 60 years ago on December 4, 1945, 6 planes took
off; none returned. The strange disappearance of 27 Navy Reservists
and Marines and the six planes they flew prompted what was, in 1945,
the most massive search-and-rescue operation in U.S. military history.
The rescuers were looking for five Avenger bombers that had flown off
on a practice bombing mission in the Caribbean. They were also looking
for a Martin Mariner seaplane that had gone out to find the Avengers
and then disappeared itself. The five-day search of 250,000 square
miles of ocean turned up nothing. Not even a life jacket. "For the
first couple of days, we really thought we would find something. But
there was no sign of anything. No debris. It was amazing."
Transmissions from the Avenger pilots verge on panic: "Everything is
wrong. We can't be sure of any direction. Everything looks strange.
Even the ocean." A freighter in the area reported an enormous blast of
fire about where and when the Mariner was thought to have disappeared.
The event introduced millions of Americans to the mystery of the
Bermuda Triangle, that stretch of ocean now infamous for swallowing
hundreds of ships and planes, often without leaving a clue as to why
or exactly where they foundered.

Seen a sasquatch, an abominable snowman or the Loch Ness monster? If
so, you could be in line for a $1-million reward. Loren Coleman, a
professor at the University of Southern Maine, says anyone with a
photo that leads to the live capture of one of the legendary creatures
will get the money.

When babies receive shots against diseases like polio and measles,
their vaccinations may in the future include protection against
getting fat, according to researchers.

November 8, 2005 -
Think it's the Apocalypse? Check the history books. " It sounds like
an over-the-top, summer blockbuster. Or, worse yet, an apocalyptic
network miniseries rolled out in time for sweeps. A tsunami swallows a
dozen countries and leaves 270,000 dead. On the other side of the
world comes a wave of destructive hurricanes and deadly flooding. An
earthquake kills 80,000 people. A raging war sends home 2,000 body
bags. All the while, terrorism looms, the economy lags, gas prices
soar and now a bird flu pandemic threatens. It's the End of Days, the
prophetic time of reckoning. Or it's just the state of the world in
2005...We tend to reach for a historical "Golden Time," believing the
generation before us enjoyed calmer, simpler times and that ours is a
world of insecurity and steep decline. "Along with that nostalgia,
there's also a certain arrogance or smugness that we are better, we
are more evolved and sophisticated. So we are just dumbfounded when we
make the same mistakes we did in the past" or when our technological
advances fail to cocoon us from the world's harsh realities."

Many automatic garage doors in Ottawa, Canada have suddenly, and
strangely, stopped working, due to a powerful radio signal that
appears to be interfering with the remote controls that open them. The
phenomenon began last weekend. "It affects a 25-mile radius. That's
huge." It appears to cluster in the Byward Market area just east of
Parliament Hill, and a corridor leading southeast from there. The Door
Doctor has received more than 100 calls from irate customers who can't
operate their doors using the usual remotes. The signal is transmitted
on the 390-megahertz band, which is used by virtually all garage door
openers on the continent. That's the same frequency used by the U.S.
military's new state-of-the-art Land Mobile Radio System - the strong
radio signals on the 390-megahertz band simply overpower the garage
door openers. Remote manufacturers started seeing the same problem
around military bases last summer. The only US facility in Ottawa
that's operating on 390 is the American Embassy, and they're the only
ones who can block it. But the U.S. Embassy denies any transmissions
on that frequency. So does the Canadian military.
UPDATE - Garage doors have begun working again. The powerful radio
signal causing the problem stopped being transmitted on Thursday
afternoon, around the time CBC News contacted the U.S. Embassy to ask
if it knew anything about it.

The death of a molecular biologist has fuelled renewed speculation
about a "curse" connected to the ancient 'iceman' corpse. Tom Loy, 63,
had analysed DNA found on "Oetzi", the Stone Age hunter whose remains
were discovered in 1991. Dr Loy died in unclear circumstances in
Australia two weeks ago, it has been announced, making him the seventh
person connected with Oetzi to die. An inquest into Dr Loy's death was
inconclusive, ruling out foul play but unable to determine if he had
died of natural causes, an accident, or both.

October 15, 2005 -
[Sorry - pessimistic this week.]
The director of the Environmental Education Media Project, who has
spent 25 years in China and witnessed the disasters there, has an
unapologetic, four-alarms fire warning: "Every ecosystem on the planet
is under threat of catastrophic collapse, and if we don't begin to
acknowledge and solve them, then we will go down." Unprecedented mass
movement defines our global age. But increasingly, among the displaced
is a population whose status only in recent years has gained some
level of legitimacy: environmental refugees. It categorizes people who
suffer from a wide spectrum of environmental disasters, manmade or
natural. Their homes have become uninhabitable, veritable wastelands.
China remains a hotspot of environmental disaster. It is buckling
under unsustainable development, rapid air pollution and toxic rivers.
Overpopulation of man and animal have created diseases like SARS and
the swine and bird flus. Desertification threatens the country's
future. The result of these manmade catastrophes has been the
displacement of millions.
"This leads me to wonder whether all disasters are man-made... We have
come to the point where we know where and where not to site and
situate human habitation; and how to build it so that it withstands
wind, water, fire and earthquake. We know which acts of commerce and
agriculture create risk from weather, and increasingly understand how
we make our own weather. We know that we can protect people by doing
certain basic things to keep them safe. In other words, we know how to
adequately warn and prepare for most 'natural' disasters. Natural
disasters used to be called Acts of God, didn't they? Now I think we
can begin calling them something else entirely."
There will be as many as 50 million environmental refugees in the
world in five years' time. That is the conclusion of experts who
believe that already environmental degradation forces as many people
away from their homes as political and social unrest.

The coming global human "die-off" - "The one that has already begun in
places like Africa and will grow into a global event sometime within
our lifetimes and/or those of our children. The one that will kill
millions of white people. That's right, clean pink little Western
World white people like you and me. Nobody in the U.S. seems to be
able to deal with or even think about this near certainty, and the few
who do are written off as nutcases by the media and the public. Mostly
though, it goes unacknowledged. All of which drives me nuts because
the now nearly visible end of civilization strikes me as worthy of at
least modest discussion...when the electricity goes out, we are back
in the Dark Age, with the Stone Age grunting at us from just around
the corner. This will likely happen in 100 years or less, assuming the
ecosystem does not collapse first."

Are the U.S. & Russia are embroiled in an illegal race to harness the
power of hurricanes & earthquakes? In the US, the technology was
developed under the high-frequency active auroral research programme
( HAARP) - originally part of Ronald Reagan's controversial Star Wars
defence system. Based in Gokoma, Alaska, the weapon operates by
beaming powerful radio waves into the upper atmosphere to alter
weather patterns. The Russians are thought to have their own "weather
steering" system, called Woodpecker, involving the transmission of low-
frequency waves which are capable of disrupting the atmosphere and
altering the path of the jet stream. The US carried out hurricane-
manipulation experiments between 1962 and 1983, under the codename
Project Stormfury, after it was calculated that a single hurricane
contained as much energy as all the world's power stations combined.
More recent projects have involved pouring tens of thousands of
gallons of vegetable oil on to the sea. "Hurricanes gather their
strength from the warm sea surface. By spreading a large film of oil
on the sea it would reduce the intensity by cooling the surface. In
theory it is possible to change the path of the hurricane this
way." [I wonder what the effect was of the oil spilled into the Gulf
of Mexico by Hurricane Katrina on further lack of hurricane
development there?] Military scientists believe it is also possible to
direct powerful energy beams into vulnerable fault zones, causing the
Earth's plates to shift, creating a massive earthquake. Along fault
lines beneath the oceans, the same technology could be used to launch
devastating tsunamis. Former US defence secretary William Cohen warns:
"Terrorists are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they
can alter the climate, set off earthquakes and volcanoes remotely
through the use of electromagnetic waves. It's real, and that's the
reason why we have to intensify our efforts."

In Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala, a week of tropical storms washed away
towns and roads, killing more than 650 people. Hundreds more are still
missing. Two villages here sat side by side, one lost, one spared. In
Panabaj, about 500 men, women and children are believed dead and
buried under the avalanche of mud and rock that burst last week from
the mountains that loom thousands of feet over the town. Next door,
the homes in Tzanchaj were largely untouched. A spiritual leader in
Tzanchaj said that the Maya shrine at his home and a strong belief in
ancient ways spared his village, and that his neighbors' neglect of
those traditions killed them. The Maya who live around Lake Atitlan
clung to their ancient culture long after the arrival of Spaniards in
the 16th century, absorbing elements of Catholicism. The majority are
now split between Catholicism and evangelical Christianity, with only
a small minority still believing in the Maya's Nahual spirits. One
member of that minority said the destruction and deaths did not come
without warning. He said he found an abandoned altar to Inox, the Maya
god of water, during a hike in the mountains this year. "The next
night I had a dream of water." A Maya priest warned that the dream
demanded that the village participate in three ceremonies or risk
catastrophe. "My faith tells me we were protected by God," said one
woman. "But besides God, we have our guardian angels, the Nahuals. My
family came here 200 years ago, and for 200 years we have followed the
traditional ceremonies. And for those 200 years, every single member
of my family has had a dream about nature agreeing to protect us."

October 3, 2005 -
"This very young century already feels much older than it should. Six
short years ago, when the calendar was about to turn over its big new
number, the talk was all about Y2K and Nostradamus' apocalyptic
script. Maybe those notions of millennial gloom were too early, and
trivial diversions at that. The world seems so much more frightening
now than it did then, so much more fragile and furious."

A meteorologist in Pocatello, Idaho, claims Japanese gangsters known
as the Yakuza used Russian KGB inventions to cause Hurricane Katrina.
Scott Stevens says after looking at NASA satellite photos of the
hurricane, he is convinced it was caused by electromagnetic generators
from ground-based microwave transmitters. “There is absolutely zero
chance that this is natural, zero.”
"Just before landfall, the eye morphed into a peanut kind of shape
where we almost had two eyes forming, one still driving water into
Lake Pontchartrain to ensure that those levies flooded, and then the
other ensuring that the Gulf Coast of Mississippi had a direct
hit...What's also curious is that the Director of Homeland Security
[Michael Chertof] said yesterday on CNN that they had been preparing
for this disaster for weeks. How do you prepare for a disaster that
hasn't yet formed in a storm in the Bahamas? They knew it was
coming ... This technology has introduced vast amounts of energy
that¹s drawn through a membrane, that¹s one of the reasons why we saw
a dramatic ³up kick² in this planet¹s warming beginning in the mid-
¹70s, when these weather operations began. Partially at first, then
full-time in the late ¹80s." His prediction for the next big disaster
is an earthquake. "There¹s been some very unusual activity in southern
California."

Did God Send Hurricane Katrina? This natural disaster is bringing
together a perfect storm of environmentalist and religious doomsday
sayers.

How much TV children watch accurately predicts whether they will go on
to become overweight, a study suggests.

The United States will send four astronauts to the moon by 2020.

A tugboat and her 12 crew have disappeared without trace while towing
a big ship to the scrappers' yards in India. In an incident equal to
the most enduring maritime mysteries of all time, the big ship has
been found drifting in the Indian Ocean like a ghost, her tow wire
hanging down into the sea. There is no sign of the tug or her crew.

In Illinois, peculiar pulsing red lights reappeared over Southland
skies early Saturday morning, causing many a police switchboard to
light up with calls. A trio of steady red lights seemed to swim across
the western night sky starting about 11 p.m. Friday night and
reappearing after midnight. The three dots at times formed a
triangular shape, but they then seemed to straighten into a line, much
like sightings in the same area late last summer and on Halloween.

September 1, 2005 -
Shippers on the Mississippi river are warning of disruption to supply
chains and logistics across North America as the commercial impact of
Hurricane Katrina extends far beyond initial worries about energy
markets. The port of New Orleans, a major gateway for commodities from
grain to steel, remains closed while damage to navigational aids and
debris also prevents larger ocean-going vessels from entering the
Mississippi. “This comes at a very bad time with the US agricultural
harvest just a few weeks away." Higher fuel prices and operational
disruptions resulting from the storm will add to problems faced by
struggling US airlines such as Delta Air Lines and Flyi, the parent
company of Independence Air. “Delta is already bleeding cash and at
near-term risk of insolvency. The added financial pressure may hasten
an already likely bankruptcy filing, which will probably occur within
weeks. Closure of refineries...is already raising gasoline prices
significantly and is having an effect on jet fuel, as well.”

“U.S. gasoline prices are now in the process of the most dramatic
spike ever seen.” Although the US government attempted to calm the
market by saying it would tap the strategic petroleum reserve, this
move was seen as largely ineffective after the disruption to refining
capacity caused by Katrina. Katrina has left nine refineries idle and
four operating at reduced rates. US heating oil prices also pushed to
a new record high. Coffee prices are expected to rise amid fears that
8 per cent of global coffee supply could be disrupted.
At least 20 oil rigs and platforms are missing in the Gulf of Mexico
and a ruptured gas pipeline is on fire after Hurricane Katrina tore
through the region, a US Coast Guard official said.

MTV's shooting of its reality TV show ‘The Gauntlet’ on Turtle Beach
in Tobago caused massive damage to a critical nesting beach for
critically endangered leatherback sea turtles. The shoot, which
wrapped up early in August, continued with little concern for the
nesting sea turtles despite requests by from a local conservation
group to relocate to one of many nearby beaches not used by sea
turtles. Heavy equipment, the presence of about 90 film crew and the
removal of sand blocked numerous turtles from nesting and destroyed an
estimated 8 nests containing approximately 400 eggs. Numerous other
eggs are now buried beneath densely compacted sand without any hope
for escape for the hatchlings.

68 years ago a Colorado farmer building an outhouse found something
that might change Western history. About 8 feet down, he found a flat,
precise mosaic of evenly spaced rectangular and square sandstone
pieces, 4-inches-thick, apparently grouted with a putty-like substance
covering more than 12 square feet. Some archaeologists subsequently
said it was undisputable evidence of an advanced civilization 25,000
to 80,000 years ago. Others said they were sure it was the work of
nature. The floor was eventually reburied until recently, when more
scientists examined it and concluded nature was responsible, maybe.

August 11, 2005 -
A group of researchers in Russia claim they have solved the mystery of
crop circles. According to them, plants bend as a result of microwave
emissions caused by lightning strikes. An experiment placed several
stalks of cereals in a microwave oven with a glass of water. He said
the stalks bent in exactly the same way as those usually found at crop
circles. They now have to find out how microwave emissions appear on
fields. They have a theory that they come from underground, but cannot
prove it. The emissions are most likely a result of lightning strikes.
An argument backing up this theory is the fact that real crop circles
are often accompanied by so called lichtenberg figures — narrow strips
of bent grass, usually left by a lightning strike.

A mysterious object was seen flying over Manitoba, Canada.

August 3, 2005 -
China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence
and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will
attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.
U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one
troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the
United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese
attack. "We may be seeing in China the first true fascist society on
the model of Nazi Germany, where you have this incredible resource
base in a commercial economy with strong nationalism, which the
military was able to reach into and ramp up incredible production," a
senior defense official said. For Pentagon officials, alarm bells have
been going off for the past two years as China's military began
rapidly building and buying new troop- and weapon-carrying ships and
submarines. The war fears come despite the fact that China is hosting
the Olympic Games in 2008 and, therefore, some officials say, would be
reluctant to invoke the international condemnation that a military
attack on Taiwan would cause.

Smoking could be a thing of the past in Australia within 25 years if
present trends continue, research shows.

Something strange is causing dogs to jump off the Overtoun Estate
bridge, west of Glasgow, Scotland at an alarming rate. Most are killed
by the 60-foot fall or are so severely injured that veterinarians must
put them to sleep. Others have survived, only to come back and try
again. Scores of dogs have jumped during the past three decades. Maybe
it's due to the whistle of the wind from distant Loch Lomond, or the
fabled "white lady" who is said to haunt an adjacent mansion or the
rustle of tree branches next to a nearby waterfall.

In December of 2004, one in every 52 emails was infected by some sort
of malicious security threat; by January it was one in every 35
emails, and by June, that ratio increased to one in every 28 emails -
signifying a fifty percent increase from last year - a disturbing
trend for businesses and consumers alike. Increased critical security
events are seen on Fridays and Sundays. Spam consistently decreased
from 83 percent of all emails in January to 67 percent of all emails
in June 2005.

Organic farms are better for wildlife than those run conventionally,
according to a study. The organic farms were found to contain 85% more
plant species, 33% more bats, 17% more spiders and 5% more birds.

Last December's tsunami, this July's deluge of a whopping 944.2
millimeters (37.1 inches) of rainfall dumped on the city of Bombay in
a 24-hour period, floods in India's Gujarat state in June this year,
and an earthquake in the same state in January 2001 all happened on
the 26th day of the month. "Eight, which is two plus six, amounts to a
number which brings disaster," say numerologists. Astrologers,
meanwhile, said their readings based on the alignment of planets
showed that a calamity on that day was inevitable. "Mars in retrogade
with other planets denotes sudden calamities."

July 8, 2005 -
The world faces a 70-per-cent risk of a weapon of mass destruction
being used within the next decade, arms experts predict in a survey.
They also say up to five more countries are likely to acquire nuclear
weapons within the next 10 years. The experts estimate the risk of a
nuclear attack to be 16.4 per cent over the next five years and 29.2
per cent over the next decade. Asked to consider the possibility of a
nuclear, biological, chemical or radiological (dirty bomb) attack on
any nation, they conclude the chance of one of the four to be 50 per
cent over five years and 70 per cent over 10 years, "a very
conservative estimate". An attack with a dirty bomb, combining a
conventional explosive such as dynamite with radioactive material, is
seen as most likely, with a risk of 40 per cent over the next decade.

Millions of butterflies are showing up near Calgary, Canada, creating
a rare treat for spectators. In fact, people in southern Alberta are
seeing more of the colourful insects than they have in 20 years. It's
thought that this year's larger migrations have been triggered in part
by heavy winter rains in the desert.

Scientists say that if the Greenland, West Antarctic and East
Antarctic Ice Sheets all melted in future years, an 84-metre rise in
sea levels could also see other major centers in England, such as
Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Norwich and Bournemouth,
swamped. About two million people nationwide could find themselves
homeless, and even London could be under water in just 200 years time.
Britain would be reduced to a small series of islands, with only the
hills of Scotland, Wales and south west England staying above water.
"We are going to have sea level rises and a high degree of climate
change in the future - there is no doubt about that. "There will be
higher temperatures, more heatwaves and lower rainfall in the summer,
meaning a severe risk of droughts and melting ice sheets."

United Nations officials say bird flu is entrenched in Asia and it
will take up to a decade to rid the region of the deadly virus.

July 1, 2005 -
Leukemia clusters - Fallon, Nevada, is a quiet desert town, with a
population of 8,300, located next to a naval air station. The town
became famous when 15 of its children became sick with leukemia in
just a few short years. Statistically, a cluster of this magnitude
will occur in the United States only once every 22,000 years. Since
the tragedy in Fallon was one of the largest leukemia clusters ever
recorded, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention invested two
years and millions of dollars into trying to discover what might have
caused it. In the end, however, the scientists did not find any
smoking gun, just a handful of clues that seemed to point in different
directions. One theory held that jet fuel from the nearby naval air
station could have factored in to the cluster, but no general increase
in childhood leukemia was found in the other counties. Now, scientists
are beginning to look into what may be the next big leukemia cluster.
In Sierra Vista, Arizona, 13 children have been diagnosed with
leukemia since 1997. The town is near Fort Huachuca, an Army base, and
Libby Army Airfield.

Every year, more than 70,000 reports of UFO sightings come into UFO
research organizations around the world. While it is true that nine
out of 10 sightings are explainable, it is also true that only one in
10 is ever reported, and each year the number of reports increases. 10
things you should do if you encounter a UFO.

Milk supplies are at risk from terrorist toxin - Terrorists could kill
hundreds of thousands of people by putting botulinum toxin in a milk
truck, finds a study that was initially suppressed. Terrorists could
poison more than 500,000 people, and more than half would die, by
putting as little as 10 grams of botulinum toxin in a milk truck on
its way to a pasteurising plant. Botulinum poisoning causes muscle
paralysis, which leads to an inability to breathe and death by
suffocation. "This scenario is so scary, I was purposely conservative
in my assumptions."

June 16, 2005 -
Is there a new generation of special children among us who are
psychically sensitive and spiritually evolved? Those who follow
metaphysics and ancient spiritual teachings have for years quietly
nurtured the belief in these kids, known as Indigo children for the
deep blue color of the "auras" psychics say they see around them. Some
people believe Indigo kids will play a significant role in the
evolution of humanity. "It's such an important time in human evolution
and our history that we need wise souls. Maybe it's possible these
children are coming to save the planet."

Israeli researchers say they have succeeded in growing a date palm
from a 2,000-year-old seed. The seed was one of several found during
an excavation of the ancient mountain fortress of Masada. Scientists
working on the project believe it is the oldest seed ever germinated.

Three quarters of men will be overweight within five years, research
shows. The Men's Health Forum said a change in the way weight
campaigns were aimed at men was needed to avert the crisis. It said
part of the problem was that messages were often targeted at women -
despite more men (65%) than women (55%) being overweight or obese.
Projections for 2010, based on present trends show that 75% of men
will be overweight or obese by 2010, compared to two thirds of women,
the forum said. The rise in obesity was 50% a decade in both the 1980s
and 1990s in the U.S.

A cholera epidemic is about to break out in the Afghan capital of
Kabul, a health expert has warned. Eight or nine people have died in
the past two weeks of the disease and more than 2,000 cases have been
reported. The disease has been detected in city wells, which are the
source of drinking water for most of the people in the city. The
disease has also been found in irrigation ditches.

Cattle mutilation in Canada - There were no tire tracks or footprints.
There was no sign of a struggle. Perhaps most bizarre, however, was a
glaring lack of blood despite the numerous and carefully crafted
incisions into the carcass. Cow mutilations are a relatively recent
phenomenon, with the earliest documented cases dating back to the
mid-1900s. While cows have been the main targets in the cases reported
throughout North America, less frequent victims have included deer,
elk, horses, lambs and dogs. In some cases, UFO sightings have been
reported near the mutilation sites. And even though skeptics will
scoff at these extra-terrestrial accounts, no surveillance team has
ever come up with any rational explanation for what took place. In
most cases the culprits usually take the tongue, one ear, one eye and
the udder. Sex organs such as the scrotum, rectum and uterus are also
routinely amputated. Predators, birds, and other animals generally
won’t come near the mutilated carcass for anywhere from a few days to
upwards of a month. This rancher left the rotting corpse in his
pasture to see if any birds or animals would start feeding on the
carcass. But nothing other than some interested neighbours and a few
flies have even come close.

Prophets & Visionaries - "When you gaze across the spectrum of
prophecies and visions of the future that we have generated in recent
centuries, one thing leaps out: if the prophets saw true, then the
transformation we are embroiled in and that is coming to a head, is
more profound and unsettling than anything humanity has yet faced."
Survival preparations.

-- Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of
feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way
that is "complementary" to the present. In other words, you can pop
back in time and have a look around, but you cannot do anything that
will alter the present you left behind. According to Einstein, space-
time can curve back on itself, theoretically allowing travellers to
double back and meet younger versions of themselves. And now a team of
physicists says this situation can only be the case if there are
physical constraints acting to protect the present from changes in the
past. If you went back in time and met your teenage parents, you could
not split them up and prevent your birth - even if you wanted to, the
new quantum model has stated. Quantum behaviour is governed by
probabilities. Before something has actually been observed, there are
a number of possibilities regarding its state. But once its state has
been measured those possibilities shrink to one - uncertainty is
eliminated. So, if you know the present, you cannot change it.

Remote controlled people are on the way - Japanese researchers have
found a way to use electrodes on the human scalp to affect the sense
of balance in the inner ear, enabling them to control the movements of
experimental subjects by radio. Researchers claim that this technique
will be useful in games, but there are obviously many other uses for
it, such as controlling prisoners, and not just ordering, but forcing,
soldiers to function in a given way on the battlefield.

A group of researchers in Russia claim they have solved the mystery of
crop circles. According to them, plants bend as a result of microwave
emissions caused by lightning strikes. An experiment placed several
stalks of cereals in a microwave oven with a glass of water. He said
the stalks bent in exactly the same way as those usually found at crop
circles. They now have to find out how microwave emissions appear on
fields. They have a theory that they come from underground, but cannot
prove it. The emissions are most likely a result of lightning strikes.
An argument backing up this theory is the fact that real crop circles
are often accompanied by so called lichtenberg figures — narrow strips
of bent grass, usually left by a lightning strike.

June 9, 2005 -
Thousands of sharp-edged pieces of metal have been found protruding
from roadside guardrails around Japan and authorities are
investigating the bizarre phenomenon. About 24,000 knife-shaped pieces
of metal have been found stuck in guardrails in all of Japan's 47
prefectures (states) in the past week. The ominous-looking metal
fragments have been repeatedly shown on television and photographs of
them have been published in newspapers, as the nation puzzles over the
mystery. "It's eerie. Why are such objects, so many of them, all over
the country? If they had been intentionally installed, it's a serious
crime."

Thousand s of tiny frogs have rained on a town in northwestern Serbia.
Strong winds brought storm clouds over Odzaci, 120km north-west of
Belgrade, on Sunday afternoon, but instead of rain, down came the tiny
amphibians, witnesses said. The frogs, different from those usually
seen in the area, survived the fall and hopped around in search of
water.

Police in Scotland admitted they were baffled after a series of
sightings of a mysterious creature, described as a cross between a
kangaroo, a cat and a monkey, roaming a city’s streets. Wiltshire
Police was unable to dismiss the reports as just another “big-cat”
style claim because two of their own officers had also seen a bizarre
creature the previous night. Officers did not believe the animal,
likely to be an unusual pet on the run, was dangerous adding that
there had not been any reports of dogs or other domestic animals being
mauled in the area.

June 3, 2005 -
Some observers of the oil industry predict that this year, maybe next
— almost certainly by the end of the decade — the world's oil
production, having grown exuberantly for more than a century, will
peak and begin to decline. And then it will be all downhill. The price
of oil will increase drastically. Major oil-consuming countries will
experience crippling inflation, unemployment and economic instability.
It will take a decade or more before conservation measures and new
technologies can bridge the gap between supply and demand, and even
then the situation will be touch and go. Most oil industry analysts
doubt this doomsday scenario will ever come true. Theythink production
will continue growing for at least another 30 years.

A 50,000-strong swarm of spider crabs gathered off a Melbourne,
Australia beach this week, covering a stretch of seafloor the size of
a football field, up to a meter (3.3 feet) deep in places, with crabs
piled 10 high. The reason for the mass swarming was unknown, but it
was likely related to breeding. The crabs are normally found in small
groups. "It was like something out of a science-fiction movie... as
far as you could see there were crabs," and the crustaceans were
"scaring the hell out of local fish". This has been observed elsewhere
in the world, like the Mediterranean ... it's not a rare event, but
it's rare that you encounter it."

* First snow ever in tropical Somalia, Africa - The first snowfall
ever in this part of the world has claimed one life and caused
extensive damage to properties. Puntland, northeastern part of Somalia
has never recorded snowfall before until June 1st when snow storms
with high winds destroyed homes in Rako town. Aside from this
unexplained snowfall on this tropical land, Somalia has experienced
very strange weather in the past few months.

Fires in the Siberian forests - the largest in the world and vital to
the planet's health - have increased tenfold in the last 20 years and
could again rage out of control this summer, Russian scientists warn.
They say they have neither the money nor the equipment to control or
extinguish the huge forests fires often started illegally and
deliberately in the Russian far east by rogue timber firms who plan to
sell cheap lumber to China. Russia's forests stretch almost from the
steppes of central Asia to the Arctic permafrost, and from European
Russia almost to the Bering Sea.

--- May 25, 2005 -
From the prophecies attributed to St. Malachy, what does the phrase
"glory of olives" have to do with Pope Benedict XVI? "Well, the
Benedictine Order has a subgroup known as the Olivetans, and St.
Benedict, the founder of the Benedictines, is said to have prophesied
that the last pope would be a Benedictine and would usher in an age of
world peace. (The olive branch, of course, is a symbol of peace.)
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger took the name Benedict upon his election,
apparently in honor of St. Benedict and Pope Benedict XV. He
reportedly has strong ties with the Benedictines and has spent several
"retreats" with them. Is that enough to fulfill the prophecy?"

If we continue with current rates of species extinction, we will have
no chance of rolling back poverty and the lives of all humans will be
diminished. That is the stark warning to come out of the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, the most comprehensive audit of the health of
our planet to date. Organisms are disappearing at something like 100
to 1,000 times the "background levels" seen in the fossil record.
Scientists warn that removing so many species puts our own existence
at risk.

A big rock has sprouted in a farm field in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
creating a big mystery. The rock wasn't there last year. The boulder's
weight is estimated at 15,000 pounds, and may be a meteorite. But the
rock is clean, not burned. It's sitting on the field, not in a crater.
There are scratch marks on the boulder, as if it was lifted by a
machine. But it's unlikely someone plopped the rock in the field with
a crane.

A former NASA astronaut has called on the U.S. Congress to evaluate an
asteroid with a small chance of hitting Earth in 2036 and suggested
lawmakers consider a space mission to monitor the object. The odds of
a collision in 2036 are about 1-in-10,000. The asteroid, named 2004
MN4, was found last year. It orbits the Sun but crosses the path of
Earth. In December, preliminary observations showed it might strike in
2029. It briefly had the highest odds ever assigned to a possible
collision. Further investigation ruled out the 2029 impact scenario,
but scientists cannot yet rule out an impact in 2036.

May 12, 2005 -
Since January of 2004, more than twenty scientists are known to have
died in accidents, under suspicious circumstances, or been murdered.
Now another scientist involved in disease control has been killed.
David Banks was the principal scientist with Biosecurity Australia and
was involved in containing pest and disease threats. Since 2001, there
have been 47 such deaths reported outside of Iraq, and reputedly
numerous scientsts in Iraq who worked on Saddam Hussein's weapons
programs have been assassinated.

A strange disease spread by a fungus in northwestern Ontario and
Manitoba has doctors stumped. The fungus, which can cause a variety of
conditions ranging from pneumonia to bone infections and skin
abscesses, is thought to be in the soil. The affliction, known as
blastocmycosis, has even killed some people. Doctors are not sure of
the total number who have died, because the disease remains difficult
to diagnose. And doctors cannot say exactly how or why it is spread.

Mysterious lights have been appearing for several weeks in the night
sky over North Wales.

* For more than 250 years the cause of lightning strikes has been a
mystery, but now scientists believe they have traced the answer to
cosmic rays from outer space. A major experiment in Florida is now
being prepared to test the theory that cosmic rays - from the sun and
other stars - are a crucial element in causing thunderbolts.

* A Russian court has ruled that an astrologer can proceed with a
lawsuit against the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) for its plans to bombard a comet. The astrologer claims the
destruction of the comet will "disrupt the natural balance of the
universe."

May 5, 2005 -
Several items from India -
Are extra-terrestrials manipulating the tectonic plates in Sumatra to
avoid a massive natural calamity in 2012? Reports from India say that
the potential simultaneous polar shifts in the earth and the sun, as
well as alignment of some of the planets between earth and sun, will
make 2012 the most probable year for massive natural calamities.
According to researchers, these natural disasters have started
happening already with tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides. Recent
satellite images, when modeled with a computer simulation model, show
slow but steady tectonic shifts in a reverse direction, created to
avoid current pressure build-ups similar to those that caused the Toba
supervolcano eruption 74,000 years ago. The simulation shows a
systematic counter-force is shifting the tectonic plate pressure to
prevent the Toba volcano from erupting. There are strange lights at
night above these regions being reported by sailors and locals. There
is an electromagnetic flux that is apparently being applied to the
tectonic plates. Some scientists and geologists are convinced that the
extraterrestrials are trying to halt or minimize an imminent natural
disaster.

Recent giant waves may be further evidence of disaster manipulation.
According to sources, some giant waves of 6 to 8 feet in height are
causing serious panic in Indian coastal areas. According to some
experts these are caused by slow artificial tectonic plate shifts.
Officials are saying these are not tsunamis. But some argue these are
'controlled tsunamis' resulting from tectonic plate shifts being
controlled from somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

An interesting theory has emerged based on which some scientists are
saying that many of the Government and other computer-generated
reports are flawed. Through the use of low intensity targeted computer-
algorithm electromagnetic pulses, one can slowly modify computer
programs creating flaws in reports, databases and even military
systems. According to many think tanks, future military confrontation
will be based on smart algorithms that control electromagnetic
pulsing. The whole effort will be to disable others' infrastructure
and point the adversaries’ weapons back to the adversaries
themselves.

A lot of rumors are floating all around the world about secret Moon
and Mars missions in the last twenty years. According to these
reports, countries have traveled to the Moon and Mars in the past
twenty years secretly using extraterrestrial UFO technologies.
Recently, the U.S. revealed that it plans to revisit the moon but that
it will take twenty years. If the U.S. successfully landed on the Moon
in 1969, then what was really holding NASA up to go again for the last
fifty-seven years? The extraterrestrials, according to these rumors,
informed all the countries involved in space exploration that they
cannot travel beyond a few thousand miles from earth’s atmosphere
unless they use more advanced non-polluting technologies. Spreading
earth’s diseases into the Universe was another issue. According to
these rumors, the extraterrestrials offered escorted joint exploration
to Mars and the Moon and other extra-terrestrial bodies.

A growing number of people in China believe in unidentified flying
objects, or UFOs. A 21-member delegation has been picked by
international UFO associations to represent Earth when the first
contact is made and the first negotiations get underway.

Since arriving at the Columbia Hills on Mars, Spirit, one of the Mars
Exploration Rovers, has encountered some mysterious phenomena. The
rover’s right front “arthritic” wheel that plagued Spirit’s 2-mile
trek across the plains is now suddenly working perfectly and the once
dust-covered solar panels whose power output was cut in half have now
been miraculously wiped clean.

The economic implications of an avian flu pandemic next winter could
be bad. "How bad could it get? Lop 30% off the average stock price and
consider it a down payment." According to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, even a "medium-level" pandemic in the United
States could infect about one-third of the population and cause up to
200,000 deaths. If that same infection rate were applied globally,
roughly 2 billion people would fall ill; a mortality rate of just 1%
(down from the current 67%), translates to 20 million fatalities. The
World Health Organization puts the minimum fatality range for a
pandemic at between 2 million and 7 million people.

April 27, 2005 -
Doomsayers on the web say Pope Benedict DOES fit the world end
prophecy.

Hundreds of toads have met an unexplained, explosive demise in Germany
in recent days. According to reports from animal welfare workers and
veterinarians as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished
after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were
propelled for up to a meter. It is like "a science fiction film". The
bodies of the toads expanded to three-and-a-half times their normal
size.

A no-frills funeral company in Australia has received the go-ahead to
create a cemetery where bodies will be buried standing up to save
space and lessen environmental impacts.

A glow-in-the-dark fish net has won an environmental award because it
could save thousands of sea mammals.

April 20, 2005 -
Initial interpretations of St. Malachy's prediction for Pope were
incorrect, with a surprise election of an unexpected Pope. The new
Pope, Benedict XVI, the 267th, who should fit Malachy's Glory of the
Olives description, will be the second-to-last Catholic leader
according to the predictions of St. Malachy. The end of the world, or
at least of Rome, appears nigh if Malachy is believed. Signing off his
predictions with the 268th Pope, he wrote: "In the final persecution
of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman who will
feed his flock amid many tribulations after which the seven-hilled
city will be destroyed and the dreadful judge will judge the people.
The End."

The entire list of Malachy's predictions for Pope. This site says that
"according to the prophecy of Daniel 9:27 and Revelation 13 and
17:10-18, the last pontiff will be the Devil-incarnate, and he will
break Rome's covenant with the Jewish bankers." However, it seems
Malachy made only 111 predictions so that John Paul II's successor,
"Gloria Olivae" should actually be the final pope. It appears the
Benedictines devised pope 112 (268) to dissociate their order from the
"Beast".

* One of the prevailing views nowadays is that the prophesies of
Malachy are elaborate forgeries, probably perpetrated by a school of
Jesuits in the 1600s. "This is based on the clear relation of the
mottos to the various popes until that period, and the need to find
oblique references (such as the motto of the Pope's home diocese) to
make the particular motto fit the particular pope."

The December tsunami carried a small bronze Buddha on a tiny raft from
Burma 1,000 kilometres across the ocean. It was found eight days after
the tsunami by fishermen in Tamil Nadu. All the villagers in
Meyyurkuppam, a small Tamil fishing hamlet in southern India, survived
the tsunami and look upon the Buddha as their protector.

A device which allows people with diabetes to inhale insulin could be
licensed within a year, scientists claim.

April 16, 2005 -
The deadly tsunami on December 26, 2004 was the result of Saturn,
Moon, Earth and the Sun falling in a straight line, claims a retired
scientist of the Department of Atomic Energy. The resulting
"imbalance" of electrical repulsive force pushed solid earth away from
the Sun, causing sea water to overflow due to its fluidity, creating a
tsunami. A few years back, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake occurred in the
Sea of Maramara (Turkey) a day after a total solar eclipse. Also, in
1883, the Krakatoa explosion occurred when the Moon was crossing the
Saturn-Sun transit.

Depending on how you intepret St. Malachy, the next pope will either
be France's Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger or Ennio Antonelli, the
archbishop of Florence. Malachy did not foresee the names of the
future popes, but rather a distinguishing trait, or an allusion to a
country, coat of arms, or insignia - given in Latin - of each of the
112 popes that were to succeed Celestine II, who was elected in 1130.
Malachy's clue to the next pope's identity is Gloria olivae (the glory
of the olive tree). Saint Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, describes
the Jews as a cultivated olive tree. So that points to the "Jewish"
cardinal, 78-year-old Jean-Marie Lustiger, who converted to
Catholicism when he was 14. Archbishop Antonelli also fits, as
Antonelli hales from Umbria, "the land of olive trees," and his staff
bears the images of the sun - symbol of glory - and an olive tree.
According to Malachy, who has a good track record even if many of the
traits have been identified in new popes AFTER they are elected, John
Paul II was the third-to-the-last pope.

An unusual light reportedly appeared over the Vatican on the morning
of Pope John Paul II's funeral and was captured live on many TV news
video broadcasts.

An automated car rental system, like one already in use in Boston,
could help reduce traffic congestion in big cities.

April 5, 2005 -
St. Malachy of Armagh made a chilling prophecy in 1139 that the world
would end with the death of the 112th pope. John Paul II was the 3rd
to last remaining pope, according to Malachy. Malachy called him "De
Labore Solis" - "from the Sun's labor" and John Paul II was born on a
total eclipse. He will also be buried during a solar eclipse which
occurs on April 8th. The 2nd to last pope is identified by Malachy as
"Gloria Olivae" - "glory of the olive". (Some prophets believe this
pope will take Leo XVI for his name and will bring peace between
Israelis and Arabs). St. Malachy predicts that Pope John Paul II's
successor will be an active peace-making member of the religious
hierarchy. But he will die in 2008 with his work unfinished and the
next pope - called Peter of Rome ("Peterus Romanus") - will rule until
the Apocalypse in 2020.

An interpretation of Nostradamus' prophecies by a leading Colombian
author states that the pope elected to succeed John Paul II will be
assassinated and his death will spark a Muslim invasion of the West
that will split the Roman Catholic Church. "The next pope elected will
be subsequently murdered in central Italy. Then comes pope number 112,
who will flee Rome because of an attack by Muslims." The pope will
base himself in Avignon, France, and another pontiff will take control
in Italy, splitting the Catholic church in two.
( Please note that there are many interpretations of Nostradamus - and
he usually is not well understood until AFTER events have taken
place.)

People could one day extend their lifespan by up to 30 years just by
taking a pill, a scientist has claimed.

The dandruff and skin cells that we all shed could be contributing to
air pollution just as smokestacks and car exhaust do.

The most comprehensive survey ever into the state of the planet
concludes that human activities threaten the Earth's ability to
sustain future generations. The report says the way society obtains
its resources has caused irreversible changes that are degrading the
natural processes that support life on Earth. It reports that humans
have changed most ecosystems beyond recognition in a dramatically
short space of time. The pressure for resources has resulted in a
substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on
Earth, with some 10-30% of the mammal, bird and amphibian species
currently threatened with extinction.

March 16, 2005 -
Many in India are getting ready for an expected upheaval in 2012.
According to ancient Mayan, Chinese, Indian and Egyptian
civilizations, the year 2012 is most significant for human
civilization. Can we survive? Some scientists are seeing evidence of
Magnetic Pole reveral in the earth as well the Sun – something we have
not seen for millions of years. Some say that the dark matter will
engulf our solar system and cause a premature supernova of our Sun.

Geologists and astrophysicists are slowly becoming convinced that the
Sumatra epicenter of the earthquake that caused the Tsunami in late
December is in the same area where a mega-volcano erupted 74,000 years
ago and killed almost all living beings on the earth. The 74,000 year
cycle is supposed repeat within a few years - in 2012. According to
some geological engineers and scientists in India, the tectonic plate
movement may have been artificially created by extra-terrestrials to
prevent a mega-volcano eruption.

Mobile telephones intelligent enough to recognise their users' faces
and perform only for them could soon be on the market, in a big boost
to security in an increasingly sensitive sector.

Whale, dolphin and porpoise strandings in the UK have more than
doubled in the last 10 years, a study finds. "Everyone who is involved
in marine conservation agrees that no population can sustain the level
of die-off that we've seen, with the common dolphin particularly, in
the last five years."

Another mysterious beast has been spotted - Chupacabra?

March 3, 2005 -
Japan announced plans to send people to a station on the moon by 2025,
on the heels of its successful rocket launch on the weekend.

A strange and powerful burst of radio waves from near the center of
our galaxy may have come from a previously unknown type of space
object.

Nearly 90 million Africans - up to 10% of the continent's population -
could be infected by the HIV virus in the next 20 years if more is not
done to combat the epidemic, the UN has warned. Some 25 million
Africans have HIV, the virus that causes Aids, at present. The
effective use of resources could eventually end the Aids epidemic in
Africa, but current levels of inaction could see the disease bring the
entire continent to its knees.

Tiny pre-humans who lived on an Indonesian island until about 12,000
years ago had brains so surprisingly sophisticated that the creatures
may represent a previously unrecognized species of early humans, or
hominids, scientists reported.

A plunge in the number of monarch butterflies migrating from the
United States and Canada to Mexican winter colonies has experts
worried. Biologists say the population this year is the smallest ever
and down three-quarters from 2004. "Their numbers always fluctuate,
but if you look at a chart of the past 10 years, it appears the trend
is going lower." Mexican and US biologists are studying different
points along the migration route to work out what is hurting most - US
pesticides, bad weather, deforestation in Mexico, predatory birds or
even climate change.

February 25, 2005 -
Triangular UFOS are being sighted all over - some extraordinary video
in California was shot last week. Sightings were reported in Canada
and Maryland as well.

At the end of January there were rampant rumors of a possible UFO
crash in Nepal. The crash site is in deep Himalayan border of Nepal
and China. According to sources, the crash site may be close to Mount
Everest and is totally inaccessible from either side. The rumor world
is speculating that the Chinese military is actively looking at the
crash site.

There were a rash of UFO sightings all over the Eastern Hemisphere
just before the huge Indonesian quake and tsunami. In December,
citizens of Indonesia, China and Australia all reported seeing
unidentified flying objects. Some sightings were followed by
"earthshaking sounds like bombing." One theory is that some were
meteorites, but no one has found any evidence of what caused the
phenomena.

An unidentified flying object on a 17th century French coin continues
to mystify rare coin experts. "The legend written in Latin around the
rim is also mystifying. 'OPPORTUNUS ADEST' translates as 'It is here
at an opportune time'.

Will Pope John Paul II survive his latest health crisis? A stone
carving in one of Rome's biggest cathedrals may hold the answer. The
carved marble monument to Pope Sylvester II, who ruled the Catholic
church 1000 years ago, is said to moisten when the death of a pontiff
is imminent. Today, a priest touched the carving in Rome's Basilica of
Saint John Lateran and confirmed it was dry.

British television has shown a man undergoing an exorcism while his
brain activity was monitored.

The world's population will rise by 40%, swelling from the current 6.5
billion to 9.1 billion by 2050.

February 16, 2005 -
One-half of the world's population will live in cities in two years,
the United Nations says.

Terrorists will inevitably attempt to strike the United States using
germ warfare, poison gas or nuclear weapons, America's new spy chief
warned Wednesday.

The recently discovered AIDS "superbug" could be the beginning of a
new cycle of deadly AIDS infections.

Scientists say the number of cases of humans being infected with bird
flu may have been underestimated.

A 1,000-YEAR lifespan is a possibility, a geneticist says. Most people
accept dying of old age as a natural part of life, but some scientists
insist we could be living much longer. Reaching that goal, however,
will take at least 10 years of mouse trials and another 15 on humans.
"There's an enormous amount of uncertainty...I'd say we have a 50-50
shot of getting there within 25 years from now."

Intel has unveiled research that could mean data is soon being moved
around chips at the speed of light. Scientists at Intel have overcome
a fundamental problem that before now has prevented silicon being used
to generate and amplify laser light. The breakthrough should make it
easier to interconnect data networks with the chips that process the
information. Researchers said products exploiting the breakthrough
should appear by the end of the decade.

A Peter Jennings Special to air on ABC on February 24 will conclude
that there has been inadequate scientific research into the UFO
phenomenon. Skeptics will be given a hearing, but the program will
draw a similar conclusion to a paper that recently appeared in the
British Journal of Interplanetary Science. In the peer-reviewed
article, four prominent scientists suggest that understanding being
gained from new discoveries in physics mean that it is almost
inevitable that aliens are here and have been here for a long time.
Mr. Jennings will suggest that there is too much UFO evidence to be
ignored, and that if even a small amount of it represents objects
under intelligent control, serious and effective scientific research
is needed.

February 9, 2005 -
The amount of spam circulating online could be about to undergo a
massive increase, say experts. A novel virus which hides the origins
of junk mail makes spam look like it is being sent by legitimate mail
servers making it hard to spot and filter out. If the problem goes
unchecked real e-mail messages could get drowned by the sheer amount
of junk being sent. The director of Spamhaus predicted that if a lot
of spammers exploit this technique it could trigger the failure of the
net's e-mail sending infrastructure.

2005 should see an epidemic of wireless viruses and worms attacking
handheld devices, cellphones, and wireless networks in what
International Business Machines Corporation calls a "new and troubling
trend."

An unidentified streak moving through the night sky above Hawaii on
December 17th has sky watchers puzzled. The streak was captured on
film by a camera positioned on a volcano in Haleakala, Hawaii. This
object is visible for a good 55 minutes at Haleakala and close to 30
minutes at Mauna Kea. Usually, satellites take a few dozen seconds or,
at the most, a couple of minutes to cross the entire sky. "No
satellite passes seem to fit this observation. It is also impossible
to be a meteorite."

The Year of the Rooster began on Wednesday and Chinese fortune tellers
predict it won't be as disastrous as the past Year of the Monkey but
some are bracing for more epidemics, earthquakes and sex scandals.
"The year in general won't be as turbulent and horrible as 2004.'' In
general, it's more peace talks, more compromises and more
negotiations. In the Middle East, we look forward to a more peaceful
time.'' Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler died and World War II ended in the
Rooster year of 1945.
Soothsayers say the Year of the Rooster will be a good time for stock
and property markets and the world economy in general.
"2005 is less problematic but it is still a year of earthquakes.''
Some of the biggest quakes happened during Rooster years, including a
9.1-magnitude temblor that jolted Alaska in 1957, triggering a
volcanic eruption. In the same year, a global influenza pandemic
killed more than a million people.
Last year it was the general opinion that the Year of the Monkey would
be a time of tumult. Indeed it was.

February 2, 2005 -
According to the ancient Mayan civilization, around 2012 the world
will face major calamities from natural disasters and other factors.
According to Russian scientists, the number of earthquakes has
increased exponentially over the past few years, a phenomenon not seen
in modern human history. According to some Russian scientists, another
major earthquake in the same vicinity as the Indonesian one, and a
series of the same near the equator, is evident in the near future.
The resultant tsunamis will be three to five time as severe as this
last one. The earth has entered a seismically active period when
weakness in earth's crusts start breaking apart, volcanoes erupt,
plate collisions cause major earthquakes, mud volcanoes erupt and
geysers come out in different parts of the world with much higher
frequency. The angular momentum theory also says earth has become more
wobbly and there is a fair possibility that we will see a polar
inversion where the North Pole will become the South Pole and vice
versa.
The activity of volcanoes around the world has risen dramatically over
the last year according to the U.S.G.S. This has been described as an
activity level not seen in 5000 years.(scroll down to 'TAA Notes'
section) The Mayan predictions for 2012 were made 5000 years ago.

Don't panic, but do ponder this report from Russia - "Military
activity has increased to a level not seen in decades and many high
level military officials have been leaving our region by aircraft
bound for the [safety of the] great underground city beneath Yamantau
Gora Mountain it is also being reported. Much frantic activity is also
being seen with many thousands of animals migrating towards the
interior spaces between our mountains and leaving costal areas with
much speed. Strange news has also been received from the United States
that a mistake in their Emergency Broadcasting System signaled an
evacuation of one of their Eastern coastal regions, Connecticut.
Though being dismissed by many Americans as a mistaken order this
message does provide a notice that the American authorities are also
aware of impending events and are themselves in preparation for the
massive evacuations of their costal residents. It is interesting to
note too that the time frame as specified in this warning coincides
with the massive continuing sun explosions now occurring. It is
estimated that the giant explosive regions of the sun, soon to be
facing earthward, will occur in less than a week's time. Continued
bombardment of the earth of the massive and increasing energy
'blasts', of which I have written of before to you, are wrecking
unprecedented damage upon the Southern Hemispheric Regions and greatly
affecting all of the earth's weather systems."
There is a lot more at - http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index675.htm
including the 1500 volcanoes activating and the increase in meteors
hitting the earth, unprecedented in recent history. The Russians and
others are baffled that the U.S. population is not recognizing the
signs of approaching disaster. They are preparing - should we be?

The Indian Ocean region, which was rattled by the 9.0 magnitude
earthquake on December 26, will take at least a month more to
stabilise. History shows that the chances of another quake of high
magnitude during the stabilisation process are remote.

Thousands of people have demonstrated in support of a Moroccan
newspaper which claimed that the tsunami was an act of divine
retribution. The newspaper of Morocco's Islamic party said the
disaster showed God's displeasure with South-East Asia's sex tourism
industry. The comments have provoked outrage among human rights groups
and rival political parties.

The Shroud of Turin is much older than suggested by 1980s radiocarbon
dating, a new chemical study suggests.

January 26, 2005 -
UFO sightings, strange animal behavior and strange signals are being
reported again in the Indian Ocean as they were prior to the 9.0
earthquake and ensuing tsunami – are aliens involved somehow?

A Web site, www.ufocenter.com, is regularly updated with UFO reports
from throughout the U.S.

Humans and animals may not be as well protected from mad cow disease
as was hoped, scientists admitted Thursday after finding rogue
proteins that cause the deadly illness in organs where they weren't
thought to lurk.

Women in the developing world now give birth to fewer than four
children on average, according to a major United Nations study on
fertility. The average number of births has fallen from 5.9 children
in the 1970s to 3.9 in the 1990s. The UN Population Division's World
Fertility Report says improved contraception is behind the fall. In
both the developed and developing world, women are increasingly
choosing to get married later and to postpone having children. The
average age for marriage for women is now 23, and 27 for men.

There are a string of cases of squids washing up dead on Pacific
beaches. The latest numbered about 500 and were enormous. Regular
squid sightings are not uncommon but the jumbos were said to look
"extra-terrestrial".

January 19, 2005 -
A new terror is washing over southern Thailand in the wake of the
tsunami - ghosts. Locals say spirits are terrifying them; health
experts say the phenomenon is an outpouring of delayed mass trauma.
Widespread trauma began to set in about four days after the waves hit.
"This is when people start seeing these farangs (foreigners) walking
on the sand or in the ocean...Thai people believe that when people
die, a relative has to cremate them or bless them. If this is not done
or the body is not found, people believe the person will appear over
and over again to show where they are...(The tsunami) happened so
quickly, the foreigners didn't know what happened and they all think
they are still on the beach. They all think they are still on
holiday."

The scale and the horror of December's tsunami has led some atheists
to argue that it provides further proof that there is no God. If there
were, the argument goes, He would not have allowed such suffering to
happen. But many in the worst-affected areas say their faith is
unshaken.

NASA scientists say there is no scientific data to suggest all this
violence from the Earth, at the same time, is unusual. This is normal
behavior from an active planet. "The world is not coming to an end.
Things are fine."

By growing rat tissue onto a microscopic silicon chip, scientists have
created tiny robots that can move using their own muscle power.

Scientists are developing an inkjet printer that can create "made to
measure" skin and bones to treat people with severe burns or
disfigurements. Human cells are suspended in a nutrient-rich liquid
before being printed out in several thin layers. Project leaders say
the method could be used to build an organ in a day.

January 12 -
Ever since 373 BC, when rats, weasels and snakes are said to have
deserted the Greek city of Helice just before it was demolished by an
earthquake, animals have been widely believed to have powers of
detection denied to human beings.

*In October 2004, a field officer working for the Central Marine
Fisheries Research Institute in India had reported that a species of
fish found only in deep-waters had been caught by fishermen in shallow
waters and this could be a warning for the onset of a natural
calamity. The fish normally changed its inhabitation only when the
seas experienced turbulence, which had been reported before in 1977,
1979, 1987 and 1996. In all these years some sort of natural calamity
had struck, including a tsunami in Japan and cyclones in the Bay of
Bengal.

*Just 11 days after Asia's tsunami catastrophe, conspiracy theorists
were out in force, accusing governments of a cover-up, blaming the
military for testing top-secret eco-weapons or aliens trying to
correct the Earth's "wobbly" rotation.

The current disaster in the Indian Ocean that affected Indonesia
(Sumatra), Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, and many islands is part of the
same geological system that destroyed Atlantis, according to at least
one researcher. "To the ancient Egyptians, who were the first to start
the Atlantis story, the Atlantic Ocean was the entire ocean
surrounding Africa." Thus, other areas besides the current Atlantic
Ocean should be considered as possibilities for Atlantis. In a new
book, "The Atom and the Soul," Bill Lauritzen claims that the Sunda
Plain of Indonesia fits Plato's Atlantis story quite well.

Is there an underground UFO base in the Himalayan border area deep
into the tectonic plates between China and India? The area is one of
the least accessed area in the world. According to the few locals,
this is where the UFOs are seen coming out of the ground. Strange
lighted triangular silent crafts show up from underground and move
almost vertically up. The area has beautiful rocks and granites. For
some strange reasons neither Chinese nor Indian authorities ever
excavate, dig or mine holes in this area. Another alternative is that
it is an underground strategic Air Force base. But why would either
country allow the base on the official no-man's-land in the highly
sensitive disputed border area?

A new material created at the University of Toronto could lead to
clothing that can harness the sun to recharge cellphones and other
devices. A thin solar panel could be woven into clothing or applied
like paint to any device.

January 5, 2005 -
* Mystery 'blasts' and frequent 'tremors' have been shaking some parts
of India. Coming close on the heels of the tsunami terror-floods, the
villagefolk are interpreting the incidents as omens of something more
horrific and have begun living outdoors. Similar unexplained "blasts"
were reported from another district too, over a year back. "On Monday
night there were major tremors making it difficult for us to sleep.
Between 8:15 and 8:20 pm there were four vibrations and these were
followed by blasts...there was a vibration and everything began
shaking, even the street animals began running helter-skelter."
Reportedly the frequency of the "blasts" has increased since Monday
and there were 22 "blasts" during the day continuing through the
night. A seismologist says although he heard the "blasts" during his
visit, the tremor was not felt by him. He has asked for a sensor to be
installed in the area. The blasts are reported to have begun in the
last week of November. Since then many people have left the village
and large-scale migrations have been reported from nearby villages.

A scientist at Brigham Young University in Utah, United States,
predicted in 1997 that an earthquake measuring at least 8.0 on the
Richter scale was due in the Indian Ocean.

"The scale of the tragedy wrought by last Sunday's deadly duo of
tremor and tsunamis was such it made all conventional mourning
meaningless - for no one knows where to begin or where to end...Many
who were witness, victim or even in the vicinity of the disaster
described the experience as apocalyptical...The tsunamis snared
praying Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Buddhists in the region all
alike. The mythology of each of these religions has ancient tales of a
great deluge wiping life off the Earth and it must have certainly
seemed to many that fateful morning like the legend had come
devastatingly true."

A Taiwan astrologer has predicted that 2005 will be a year of
bloodshed for the United States, but peace between Taiwan and China.
He based his prediction on the 1,500-year-old Tui Bei Tu (Push Back
Chart) which predicts China and the world's future and is China's
equivalent to French prophet Nostradamus's Centuries. He believes Bin
Laden is likely to launch the attacks on the U.S. after the Chinese
New Year holidays - a week-long festival starting on February 9. He
says the terrorism-caused war will last until the third quarter,
possibly August, but there will be no winner. After 2005, there will
be several years' peace in the world because the terrorists need a
rest.

Not only did the psychic forecasts fail to foretell what would happen
in 2004, the psychics continued their tradition of missing the major
events that did make the headlines.

OPINION - The Earth does NOT want to destroy you. Nature is not your
enemy. In the past, Mother Earth was struck and fractured into a
number of plates. She was almost torn completely apart and the strain
on her is incredible. She is doing her best to hold herself stable and
to provide a safe home for the fragile life upon her. When the plate
underneath the Indian Ocean slipped, the waters escaped and inundated
the coasts, drowning her precious children despite her best efforts to
cradle us all gently.

January 1, 2005 -
Top astrologers in India are hinting that the tsunami strike might
indeed be a step towards Nostradamus' prediction - End of the world in
2010. They state, "Besides tsunami strikes, there'll be a series of
natural catastrophes which could destroy parts of the world...There's
going to be another major strike in June 2005, somewhere in the world.
It will continue in 2006 and even in 2007 taking millions of lives."
"If we hope to survive, we need to erase negative energies and
transform them into positive energies. Else, chaos is just round the
corner."

Leading scientists have spent the past two years lobbying the United
Nations for a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean. The
governments of Indonesia and Australia, worried about a series of
smaller earthquakes off Java, felt the region needed a tidal wave
warning system similar to that used in the Pacific.

On April 23, 2003, a meteorite measuring 5 meters in diameter fell
into the Pacific Ocean. The resulting explosion released energy which
measured nearly half the energy that had been released by the
Hiroshima bomb. Had the diameter been 500 meters, the explosion would
have been a million times stronger, leading to gigantic sea waves,
which would have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people
living along the Pacific coast. Had the meteorite been of a diameter
of 5 kilometers, the explosion would probably have been a billion
times more intense, and this could have led to the destruction of
nearly all life on Earth. (FYI: this article has a religious slant.)

*At 8pm on February 22, 1491 a tsunami more than 10 times as great as
the Sumatra one almost certainly hit Australian shores, rising at its
peak to 130m above sea level. That event was probably caused by a
comet or meteor smashing into the ocean, but an equally devastating
flood could happen at any time, caused by an earthquake on a
geological fault running down the west coast of New Zealand's South
Island.

Ode to Gaia, the Earth Mother, the planet you live on.

December 24, 2004 -
The SETI Institute predicts that we'll detect an extraterrestrial
transmission within twenty years.

There's a 1-in-300 chance that a recently discovered asteroid,
believed to be about 1,300 feet long, could hit Earth in 2029, a NASA
scientist said Thursday, but he added that the perceived risk probably
will be eliminated once astronomers get more detail about its orbit.
There have been only a limited number of sightings of Asteroid 2004
MN4, which has been given an initial rating of 2 on the 10-point
Torino Impact Hazard Scale. The possible impact date - Friday the
13th, April 2029.

A mystery noise is causing sleepless nights in a Midlothian town. The
low frequency sound has plagued residents in an area of Mayfield,
Scotland for around four years. But noise consultants ruled that the
sound was not loud enough for them to take action. Investigators from
the Scottish Environment Protection Agency also carried out tests at a
factory to try and establish the source. However, the agency failed to
find the cause of the whining sound and remain unable to pinpoint the
origin.

The United Kingdom is full of old hospitals, many of which have at
least one and sometimes several ghost stories attached. The stories
vary, but a common theme is a "grey lady" or "woman in white" who made
some terrible medical error and took their own life in remorse, only
to reappear at times of crisis. These apparitions may be forms of
electro-magnetic energy - a sort of faded echo of people whose lives
were intensely stressful.

December 17 -
For the past several years, some people who live on Camano Island and
near Stanwood in Washington state have been hearing a strange low hum
in the night that seems to be coming from the ground. The mystery has
fueled speculation as wild as Navy sonar and Russian submarines to as
mundane as buried power lines. But nobody seems to know what is
causing it. People describe similar sounds in Taos, New Mexico and
elsewhere.

Overconsumption is threatening the ecological balance on earth. People
are consuming the planet's resources at a rate that outstrips its
capacity to support life, a global conservation group says.

Heavy traffic not only stresses drivers out, it can actually increase
the risk of a heart attack in susceptible people, doctors have found.

Children of older fathers are more likely to develop schizophrenia in
later life, research suggests.

Real-life "Hobbit" discovered in Asia - not so long ago a miniature
human species flourished on an Indonesian island and hunted elephant-
like beasts, a new fossil find suggests.

December 8 -
*According to a Madras geologist, planetary configurations suggest the
possibility of an earthquake measuring up to five or six in the
Richter scale in Assam, India on December 12 around six in the
morning. There are seven other regions where he believes an earthquake
is likely to be triggered around that time: San Francisco, the Gulf of
California, Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, the Banda sea, and the
Solomon Islands. According to his theory, alignment of the earth with
the Sun, Moon and two or more planets along more or less a straight
line can create forces that may trigger the release of accumulated
stress on the earth.

* On the heels of one of the most deadly hurricane seasons in memory,
a top forecaster is calling for another busy slightly above-average
year next year. He predicts 11 named tropical storms for the Atlantic
Basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico, in 2005. Of those, he
expects six to become hurricanes, and three of those to become major
hurricanes with sustained winds of 111 mph or stronger. The odds of at
least one major storm hitting the U.S. coast is 69 percent. The season
begins June 1st.

*Forecasters predict a cooler-than-normal U.S. winter.

If ET ever phones home, chances are Earthlings wouldn't recognize the
call as anything other than random noise or a star. New research shows
that highly efficient electromagnetic transmissions from our neighbors
in space would resemble the thermal radiation emitted by stars. A
message transmitted with optimal efficiency is indistinguishable from
random noise to a receiver unfamiliar with the language in the
message.

Even the sceptics are questioning the origins of a strange light that
hovered over Darwin, Australia, on Saturday night. Neither the RAAF or
the airport were able to shed any light on the UFO with flashing
green, blue and red lights that witnesses saw.

Public health officials are planning for a flu pandemic that they say
could kill up to 58,000 people in Canada.

December 4 -
*The BBC has made a disaster movie which predicts one billion people
will be wiped off the earth by a "supervolcano" which will affect the
climate around the globe. The drama claims America's Yellowstone
National Park is due an eruption of cataclysmic proportions. If - or
when - it does erupt, 100,000 Americans will be killed in minutes by a
giant cloud of burning ash.

*In the decades to come Asia, home to more than half the world's 6.3
billion people, will lurch from one climate extreme to another due to
global warming, with impoverished farmers battling droughts, floods,
disease, food shortages and rising sea levels.

Crowds are flocking to a Hindu temple on Indonesia's resort island of
Bali for a glimpse of an ancient banyan tree which has begun oozing a
honey-like substance said to have mystical properties.

Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) are so polluting and dangerous that
they should carry a cigarette packet-style health warning. That is the
view of a United Kingdom think tank. "They're really Satan's little
run-around...They sell themselves as the vehicle version of a gated
community, intended to make people feel safe, when in fact they're a
greater danger to pedestrians, other road users and the drivers
themselves."

Giant squid are taking over the world, well at least the oceans, and
they are getting bigger. According to scientists, squid have overtaken
humans in terms of total bio-mass.

November 25 -
Speculation that reality is nothing but an illusion, or simulation, or
controlled environment, has been with us for thousands of years. But
now two respected British scientists are questioning whether all
matter and mind we know is actually the creation of some mega-
supercomputer somewhere. It has long been known that a civilization
slightly more advanced than our own could simulate "universes in which
self-conscious entities can emerge and communicate with one another".
"The question is : Could WE be in such a simulation?"

Retired archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu warns
that South Africa is becoming "a powder keg" because too few black
citizens are sharing the country's wealth 10 years after the end of
apartheid.

Wrecks and abandoned munitions around the British coast risk exploding
unpredictably, an expert says. One of the main concerns is Beaufort's
Dyke, a deep submarine trench in the Irish Sea between Scotland and
Northern Ireland, used as a munitions dump since early last century.
More than one million tonnes of weapons were jettisoned there.

Videotapes and hundreds of photographs were taken during what the UFO
network's Illinois Section is calling some of the most massive area
UFO sightings in recent history. Two of the events took place Aug. 21
and Oct. 31 of this year and were reportedly seen by hundreds of
people.

Eyewitnesses in every state in the U.S. are reporting glimpses of
something large, dark and mysterious in the skies above big cities and
busy highways. The crafts are often described as triangular in shape,
silent in their movements, and of unknown origin. Mystery triangle
craft have been seen for decades all over the world but have appeared
all across the U.S. lately.

November 17 -
A top New Zealand researcher warns that humans face extinction by the
end of the century. He says that a huge community of scientists have
become alarmed that if we continue our present growth path, humans
will face extinction due to the effects of global warming.

UFOs are showing a keen interest in our nuclear weapons facilities,
says investigator Robert Hastings. He speculates they have not openly
revealed themselves to avoid public panic. "What they're doing is
engaging in a decades long psychological preparation process whereby
slowly but surely people on earth understand this is real, they're
here."

Strange reports of UFO activity continue from India. These reports are
impossible to verify, and it's difficult to tell if this 'flap' is
being generated by the press or if it's real. There have been
extensive UFO sightings in isolated areas of the Himalayas and in
China.

A Taiwan resident, Lee Cheng-chi, who has become known for his alleged
ability to predict earthquakes has agreed not to make any more public
predictions after the Central Weather Bureau warned him that he could
be fined NT$1,000,000. Lee has an ear condition known as tinnitus
syndrome that causes sufferers to hear a ringing in their ears. The
symptoms become pronounced when an earthquake is about to occur. Lee
came to public prominence on October 15 when he sent an email to the
CWB early that morning saying that his tinnitus symptoms were severe
and warned of an impending quake. Around the noon that day, a
magnitude 7 earthquake struck Taiwan. He also correctly predicted
several quakes shortly after that.

November 11 -
Disenchanted Americans are flooding the immigration sites for other
countries - Inquiries from Americans wanting to move to New Zealand
have skyrocketed since George W. Bush was re-elected president of the
United States.
Canada is starting to look like a pretty good place to live for
thousands of other Americans who are unhappy about Bush winning the
presidential election.

Environmentalists are warning that the melting of glaciers in the
Himalayas could spell disaster for millions of people living in the
region and that the situation is not being adequately monitored.

Was a UFO captured on film over Iceland? Or was it an airplane
swerving to avoid an erupting volcano? Check out the photos.

The National UFO Conference has just been held in California. Trained
observers - pilots, air traffic controllers, radar operators,
astronauts, military personnel - and government agencies have reported
and documented spectacular unknown objects visually, photographically,
and on radar. Some have landed and left ground traces in Europe and
the United States which have been studied by scientists. "The
demonstrable facts on the subject are so astonishing that there is no
need for speculative theories or sensationalism."

Sci-fi channel paranormal investigation series 'Ghost Hunters' last
week featured a clip which some believe is one of the most convincing
pieces of ghost footage ever recorded. The video was shot in
Pennsylvania Eastern State Penitentiary.

Oct. 27 -
Presidential Predictors: Which to believe??
The Washington Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers at the weekend
and thus, according to the sporting legend that has proved eerily
accurate for 17 straight elections (80 years), John Kerry is bound for
the White House.
Since 1904, the incumbent has failed to win re-election if the Dow
Jones index falls by 0.5 per cent or more in October. This October,
the Dow has fallen 0.52 per cent, pointing to a Kerry presidency.
Hundreds of thousands of school readers of "Weekly Reader'
traditionally take part in a nationwide mock vote which, since 1956,
has accurately chosen the actual White House winner. This time around,
more than 60 per cent of the children opted for Mr Bush.
Since 1980, the candidate whose likeness on Halloween masks had
outsold his opponent's has won the White House. As of this weekend,
Bush masks were reportedly the more popular choice, but only by the
narrowest of margins.
Some believe the historic World Series win last week by the Boston Red
Sox baseball team augurs a Kerry win, given that Boston is the
Massachusetts senator's home team. They also point out that the Red
Sox won the World Series in two other election years - 1912 and 1916 -
and in each case the Democrat candidate came out on top.

Indian astrologers say that the planets favour Democratic candidate
John Kerry to win the White House race. Another encouraging finding
for Senator Kerry was that they say he would point the United States
in the right direction. "Kerry's win will rejuvenate the United States
and bring peace to the rest of the world."

George W. Bush is heading for a surprise landslide victory in next
week's U.S. Presidential elections, if online betting patterns are to
be believed.

The use of robotic domestic help will surge sevenfold by 2007, a new
United Nations survey suggests.

Armgeddon could be closer than we think. Research by a Welsh
astronomer suggests Earth's chances of suffering a collision with a
comet are higher than previously thought. There may be hundreds of
invisible "dark" comets close to earth that cannot be detected by
normal optical telescopes.

European birdwatchers are scratching their heads over why a particular
species of bird, the booted eagle, is migrating north this winter
instead of the balmier south. Nearly 1,000 of the rare eagles have
been spotted in southern France over the past two weeks - more than 30
times the normal number - after reversing their normal September
movement which should see them head to Africa and India. No other
species appears to be having the same navigation trouble.

A gardener in England got the shock of her life when a freak storm
rained 20 crabs down on her. Fish and frogs falling from the sky are
not common occurrences but have been reported many times around the
world. It happens when a mini-tornado passes over water and sweeps up
objects of all shapes and sizes.

Oct. 20 -
Ads in video games are becoming a lucrative area for firms trying to
reach young people.

The locust crisis that has devastated crops across West Africa may be
even worse next year, experts warn.

Fungus from a deep-sea sediment core that is hundreds of thousands of
years old can grow when placed in culture. Indian researchers say the
fungi come from sediments that are between 180,000 and 430,000 years
old.

Air fresheners and aerosols can damage the health of babies and their
mothers, research suggests. Frequent use during pregnancy and early
childhood was linked with diarrhea and earache in infants and
headaches and depression in mothers. Daily use of aerosols such as
polish, deodorant and hairspray was associated with a 30% increase.
These mothers who used air fresheners and aerosols daily had nearly
10% more headaches and were about 26% more likely to experience
depression.

Filmmakers have spotted Yeti in Shennongjia Forest in central China.

October 15 -
Scientists believe the world's amphibians are facing an unprecedented
onslaught of environmental threats. They say as many as 122 species
may have become extinct since 1980 and a third of known amphibians
face oblivion. "Since most amphibians depend on fresh water and feel
the effects of pollution before many other forms of life, including
humans, their rapid decline tells us that one of Earth's most critical
life support systems is breaking down...we are rapidly moving towards
a potentially epidemic number of extinctions."

Dolphins may have the power to alter our DNA and switch our genes "on"
and "off" to help us heal. That's the claim of a dolphin researcher
who says that the mammals can generate sound and electromagnetic
fields that can have a positive effect on human DNA to help treat
diseases like autism, cerebral palsy and depression.

Scientists say they have developed an effective vaccine against
malaria that could be ready in six years.

An apartment fire that burned a couch, blistered walls and likely
killed an 86-year-old Jacksonville, Florida woman while remaining
unnoticed by neighbors has baffled firefighters who sifted through the
scene. "There's no smoke. There's no smoldering embers. There's
nothing." While fire investigators had not found what caused the fire,
they had also not determined what put it out.

A strange red light (a UFO? a divine sign?) appeared in the sky over
Trinidad last week.

October 7 -
From lake beasts to murderous mud, Alaska has its share of scary
legends. There are many stories: whole herds of mastodons preserved in
a glacier, utopias born of ice and snow, strange disappearances, tides
that swallow men whole.

An elusive giant ape has been spotted in remote forests in central
Africa, sparking theories that it could be a new species of primate -
a finding that would be the most astonishing wildlife discovery in
decades.

Swiss scientists have discovered what they believe is Europe's biggest
fungus, a Honey Mushroom stretching for 86 acres under an Alpine
forest. The underground fungus is only visible in the fall, when its
mushrooms break through the earth and grow around the roots of trees.
The fungus is believed to be 1,000 years old.

Dozens of squirrels have been washing up along Michigan beaches from
Grand Haven to Muskegon, and the experts have no idea why. Looking at
the bodies, experts say nothing is obvious and that there are no gun
shot wounds or signs of trauma.

September 30 -
A giant catfish is suspected of having eaten a dog in a German lake
near the Polish border. Attempts to net the giant catfish and to use
electroshocks to stun it have so far failed.

Chinese scientists will launch an expedition this month to search for
fabled "lake monsters" in north-west China's Xinjiang region. For
hundreds of years there have been rumours that mysterious monsters
live in the prefecture's Kanasi Lake, devouring livestock. As horses,
cattle or sheep went missing near the lake every year, the legend
grew. In 1985, teachers and students from the Xinjiang University
Department of Biology discovered that dozens of huge red fish, each 10
to 15 metres long and weighing more than four tonnes, live in the
lake.

Scientists are developing insect-inspired miniature surveillance
robots.

Men will continue to dodge their share of the housework in the future,
despite the hopes of young women, a study reveals.

An unidentified signal that's been showing up on the 40-meter phone
band on or about 7238 kHz has mystified amateurs in the western U.S.
and Canada, where it's been heard frequently for the past few weeks.
While no one's sure what it is, the FCC HF Direction Finding Facility
has been able to determine that it's coming from somewhere north of
Prescott, Arizona.

September 23 -
A family in Shawano, Wisconsin has discovered a 45-inch diameter hole
about 15 inches deep in their horse pasture that seemed to suddenly
appear. The ground is hard, you wouldn't even be able to dig it with a
shovel. There are no signs of a dirt pile near the hole and there is
grass everywhere else but right there. "If an animal dug that, I don't
know what animal it was, but I wouldn't have wanted to be out here
when it was. They would have had to eaten the dirt - I don't know
where it went." A geologist was unable to give a theory of what may
have happened. He did not think it was from a meteorite impact as
there is no evidence of scorched earth.

The mystery of what happened aboard a Taiwanese ship found floating
abandoned with tons of rotting fish aboard may never be known. Little
is known about the High Aim 6, which has been compared to the ill-
fated ship Marie Celeste, which was found drifting without its crew in
the Atlantic in 1872. The owners of the High Aim 6 reported it missing
in mid-December 2002, several days after the last contact with the
captain. The U.S. Coast Guard searched for the vessel but failed to
find it. The whereabouts of the so-called ghost ship remained a
mystery until it was spotted steaming, crewless, towards the West
Australia coast on January 4, 2003.

Authorities in Chile are puzzled after a number of motorists reported
seeing strange creatures resembling dinosaur kangaroos.

Earth's magnetic field is fading. Today it is about 10 percent weaker
than it was in 1845, scientists say. If the trend continues, the field
may collapse altogether and then reverse. Compasses would point south
instead of north. Several generations from now, humans may witness the
reversal.

September 16 - Two amateur explorers hope to prove the existence of
the mythical "jungle yeti" by capturing the creature on film in
Sumatra. Three years ago, the pair found a footprint and hairs which,
when analysed by scientists, did not match any known species.

People are more likely to be struck by lightning than get the deadly
Creutzfeldt-Jakob (CJD) brain-wasting disease, a leading Melbourne
brain doctor says.

Mysterious mild tremors rocked parts of Andhra Pradesh's Vijayawada
city in India damaging some houses and causing panic. The National
Geological Research Institute said the observatory did not register
any tremors and Vijayawada has never recorded tremors in the past.
Experts will be looking into the phenomenon.

In Tenessee a very mysterious circle shaped like a bull's-eye has been
evolving for the past three years, and so far no one who has come to
examine it can give any definitive explanation for it. Its bull's-eye
shape resembles some of the highly publicized crop circles worldwide
that continue to mystify much of the scientific community. What this
one doesn't share with the vast majority of these intriguing phenomena
is that it appeared in grass, not wheat or corn as most of the others
have done. Moreover, the crop circles don't develop over a lengthy
period of time like this circle has. Similar circles have sometimes
formed in ice for no known reason.

September 8 -
From polio to HIV to Asian bird flu, viruses seem to be popping up
faster than human medicine can respond.

The bird flu virus that can kill humans has the potential to be spread
by cats, scientists have found. The disease killed at least 20 people
in Asia earlier this year, and forced farmers to cull almost 200
million birds. "H5N1 is getting more and more worrisome...If any virus
is going to cause a great human pandemic in the near future, then it
is likely to be H5N1."

*The European Space Agency's chief scientist has said that there
should be a Noah's Ark on the Moon, in case the Earth was destroyed by
an asteroid or nuclear holocaust. The ark should be a repository for
the DNA of every single species of plant and animal.

Tales of sightings in Montana and Idaho lend credence to Bigfoot
myths.

Unexplained cattle mutilations still continue. One recent incident was
in Nebraska on Aug. 19. A cow was found dead, it's left eyeball had
been removed and the bag and udders had been removed. None of the
internal organs were removed and the cuts seemed to have been made
with surgical precision. The tongue had also been removed, with the
incision made far back into the throat. Two puncture wounds were on
the cow's chest, each about an eighth of an inch in diameter.No blood
was found on or near the cow. The case will be featured on a
documentary special for the History Channel, currently slated for
broadcast in November.

September 2 -
There could be an alien spacecraft with a message for us lurking
somewhere in our Solar System, say scientists writing in the journal
Nature. Until now, it was generally believed that the best way to find
ET is to look for a radio signal from them as such signals can travel
vast distances. But an analysis by U.S. researchers suggests that
sending a probe into space would be more efficient.

Existing technologies could stop the escalation of global warming for
50 years, and work on implementing them can begin immediately,
according to an analysis by Princeton University scientists. 15
technologies — from wind, solar, and nuclear energy to conservation
techniques — are ripe for large-scale use and each could solve a
significant portion of the problem.

Fort Wayne, Indiana officials are trying to figure out the source of
mysterious booming noises that have shaken houses on the city's
northeast side. City officials got their first complaint about a month
ago. More calls started coming in a few weeks later. The noise appears
to be occurring on a long, narrow stretch of land at random times.

Theories are still flying thick and fast for possible causes of
Tuesday's mysterious 'blasts' followed by tremors that were heard and
felt in practically all corners of the city of Pune,India, but the
answers remain elusive.

Aug. 24 -
The risk of wars being fought over water is rising because of
explosive global population growth and widespread complacency,
scientists said.

Research says the next 50 years will see wild swings in the world's
population, with India overtaking China.

Burt Rutan, SpaceShipOne's designer, has predicted that mass space
tourism could happen within 10 to 15 years, for about $30,000.

The inhabitants of the once thriving African village of Makusi fled
from what they strongly believe are supernatural activities. One
morning a few months ago, three people and a dog died after they
reportedly witnessed something spectral. Before the three villagers
died, four others also lost their lives under highly mysterious
circumstances at the village.

New crop circles are "coming in faster and faster now" and some see
them as messages from extraplanetary beings. One researcher is working
on the theory there is a connection between the exact longitude and
latitude of a new crop circle and the exact longitude and latitude of
the controversial face on Mars, as well as the exact location of
several additional astronomical bodies. All the designs have always
been built on mathematical principles. The crop circles in England are
astonishingly elaborate with their three-dimensional designs of crops
bent over at several different heights.

Aug. 18 -
Russian scientists claim discovery of an alien spaceship wreck in
Siberia at the site of the 1908 Tunguska blast, which has been widely
believed to have been caused by a meteorite, but remains one of the
20th century's biggest scientific mysteries.

In Africa, a human-like baby has been found inside a sheep.
Agriculture officials suspect its a deformed lamb whose mother may
have been eating poisonous plants.

Vacationers in Vermont saw a seagull fall prey to a snake-like
creature, perhaps a close encounter with Champ, Lake Champlain's
lurking legendary monster. There are reports of a similar creature,
Chessie, which is believed to inhabit Chesapeake Bay.

A new courthouse camera in Chestertown, Maryland captured an image of
a ghost, a strange light "walking" in a stairwell.

Strange formations have appeared twice now in the grass in Iowa, with
some similarities to crop circles.

August 10 -
*Giant tsunamis that can devastate coastal cities, super volcanoes so
big that their ash crushes houses 1,500km (932 miles) away, giant
earthquakes and asteroid impacts could pose a greater threat than
terrorism, scientists claim. The global community needs to monitor
these risks, and develop strategies to cope in the face of a
catastrophe. Careful preparation could potentially save thousands of
lives. In any one year the chances of one of these things happening is
probably much less than 1%. But in the longer term it is 100%.
The potential threat that scientists currently have their eye on is an
insecure rock - the size of the Isle of Man - in the Canary Island of
La Palma. The rock is in the process of slipping into the sea and when
it finally collapses, the resulting tsunami will cause massive
destruction along the coasts of countries like the USA, UK and many on
the African continent, within a matter of hours. The trigger that
sends the rock into the Atlantic is likely to be an eruption of Cumbre
Vieja Volcano which could blow "any time". Walls of water 300 miles
high would travel to the U.S. at the speed of a jet. Within three
hours, the wave would swamp the east coast of Africa, within five
hours it would reach southern England and within 12 it could hit
America's east coast. New York, Washington DC, Boston and Miami would
be almost wiped out.

UFO sightings across Canada may reach record highs this year, says a
group that tracks reports of unidentified flying objects. The
sightings come from all provinces, but this year aliens seem partial
to the West.

A lesser-known type of the bird flu common among poultry in Asia is
becoming deadlier and could spark a pandemic by mixing with human
viruses, a Hong Kong scientist has warned.

August 5 -
Banking customers could find themselves confronted with cash machines
which know their personal details and greet them by name.

The World Health Organization says it is optimistic that polio can be
eradicated globally by the end of the year, after vaccinations resume
in Nigeria.

Does a mysterious Bigfoot beast really roam the mountains of southern
Oklahoma? The most compelling evidence is a series of unusually large
fingerprints.

Stealing to finance a mobile phone habit rather than a drug habit
would become a disturbing new trend, a judge has predicted.

As a result of heavy rain, locusts are breeding at alarming levels in
southern Mauritania and Senegal. It could be the worst locust plague
in decades - a crisis of biblical proportions. Swarms will be able to
reach as far as Sudan, bringing famine to half the African continent.

It's absolutely possible that there may be a new epidemic of human mad
cow disease (Variant CJD), because the cases we've seen so far may
only be those who are unusually susceptible or have the shortest
incubation periods. Just over half the population fall into the new
potential risk category.

Japanese scientists develop a new kind of assisted reproduction, so
one animal species can create another.

July 27 -
The worst locust plague in 15 years has spread from Morocco to Niger,
Mali, Mauritania and Senegal, and it threatens Chad, Libya, and
Tunisia. Locusts can eat their own weight in food every day, which
means a single swarm can consume as much food as several thousand
people and hundreds of livestock. Millions of locusts loom over the
region, poised to annihilate the crops of nine African nations.

Early California wildfires may fortell a fall disaster - Last fall was
the most disastrous fire season in California history. Gigantic blazes
burned across more than 750,000 acres, destroying 3,650 homes and
killing 24 people. Firefighters fear the unprecedented early onslaught
of wildfires this summer could foretell a replay of last year's
catastrophic fire season.

The U.S. military has created new food rations that can be rehydrated
using dirty water or urine.

Organizers of a race for homing pigeons were still scratching their
heads in wonder after about 1,500 of the birds, famous for their
ability to find their way home, went missing during the contest. Only
about 500 have returned to their lofts. In past races, the birds made
the journey in about two hours. Speculation is that the birds might
have been thrown off course by subtle changes in the earth's magnetic
field. There have been no reported sightings of the missing birds
anywhere in southern Sweden.

July 20 -
A noted hurricane forecaster at Colorado State University, predicts a
71 percent chance of a major hurricane hitting the United States this
year.

The first surfboards containing electronic shark shields will be
available during the upcoming Australian summer.

It has been found that the more cigarettes a person smokes, the more
teeth he or she is likely to lose.

Smoking cigarettes cuts an average of 10 years off a person's life, a
landmark study suggests.

"It is clear the future holds opportunities - it also holds pitfalls.
The trick will be to seize the opportunities, avoid the pitfalls, and
get back home by 6:00."
-Woody Allen

July 13 -
Intelligence chatter that was "stronger and more robust" than usual
was heightening concerns that al-Qaeda might launch attacks timed to
coincide with the U.S. presidential election, a senior U.S. security
official says.

The man behind the internet ".com" and ".co" system predicts the
disappearance of phone numbers. Ten years from now all communication
will be over the net, he predicts, and we will no longer need phone
numbers, just web addresses. "The net is only in the Bronze Age of
evolution, we are not even at the Iron Age stage in the network."

The course of history might have been very different if some of the
world's past leaders and dictators had seen a psychiatrist, according
to doctors.

A third of male fish in British rivers are in the process of changing
sex due to pollution in human sewage, research by the Environment
Agency suggests.

July 6 -
The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation warns of a plague of
desert locusts that could soon hit several north African states.

The rise in demand for air travel is one of the most serious
environmental threats facing the world, a study says.

Scientists renew cloning warnings - cloning creates potentially
dangerous abnormalities in embryos, researchers have warned.

Australia warned of water crisis - Australia faces severe water
shortages if it fails to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, a report
warns.

Sunspots are reaching a 1000-year high - the Sun is more active now
than at anytime in the past 1,000 years, according to an analysis of
ice cores and sunspots by Swiss-based researchers.

June 29 -
Research suggests bird flu is becoming more dangerous - and a greater
threat to humans - each year.

Brazilian researchers are developing embryos to create a transgenic
cow whose milk could be used to produce drugs to treat blood
disorders.

Watching too much television may distort the hormonal balance of
adolescents and push many of them into early puberty, say researchers.
The phenomenon of precocious puberty is increasing all over the
western world.

Scientists have developed a method which they say could predict when a
woman will go through menopause. They say it will be possible to
assess whether a woman is likely to have an earlier or later
menopause, based on her ovarian size.

June 22 -
Experts are warning that deaths from the hospital superbug MRSA could
double over the next five years.

Malnutrition is the underlying cause of more than half of all child
deaths, experts have warned. Providing a better diet would save
millions.

Some scientists think perfectionism should be categorised as a medical
condition, alongside other behavioural problems, such as obsessive
compulsive disorder. Certain forms of perfectionism can be linked to a
host of emotional, physical, and relationship problems, including
depression, eating disorders, marital discord and even suicide.

Scientists have shown that there is a degree of truth in the old adage
that love is blind. They have found that feelings of love lead to a
suppression of activity in the areas of the brain controlling critical
thought.

"We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know
all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one'. We forget that we have
still to make a study of 'and'.
- Sir Arthur Eddington

June 15 -
The world is turning to dust, with increasingly vast areas becoming
desert wastelands every year and threatening to send millions of
people fleeing to greener countries, the U.N. said. The transformation
into desert seems to be picking up speed - doubling its pace since the
1970s. One third of the earth's surface is now at risk. Entire parts
of the world might become uninhabitable.

A wearable camera full of sensors that records our day could give
wearers a photographic memory, say Microsoft researchers. The
prototype SenseCam takes an instant snap every time it spots changes
in movement, temperature or light.

Civil engineers warn the U.K. will be swamped under a mountain of
rubbish in 20 years if opposition to waste treatment continues.

The world spent nearly $1 trillion on weapons in 2003, with the U.S.
accounting for almost half of the total, according to a Swedish
research institute.

For a vision of what the future holds, thousands of nay-sayers and
believers alike have gotten an up close and personal glimpse at
NextFest, an expo in San Francisco organised by the technology
magazine, Wired. Flying cars, transparent cloaks, technology which can
read minds and games played by brain waves - these seemingly far-
fetched inventions - and more - are now reality.

The inventor of the "invisibility" cloak has said that his next
project will be to develop the technology to allow people to see
through walls.

June 6 -
Nokia is making a mobile phone that lets you write short text messages
in mid-air. The messages are written using a row of LEDs fitted on the
rear cover of Nokia's forthcoming 3220 phone. A motion sensor in the
phone makes the lights blink in a sequence that spells out letters
when the handset is waved in the air. The phone is due to go on sale
this summer.

Tobacco giant British American Tobacco has been testing cigarettes
flavoured with substances such as chocolate and wine.

Doctors claim to have uncovered new evidence that tiny life forms
known as "nannobacteria" do indeed exist and may cause a range of
human illnesses. In 1996, nannobacteria came to the attention of the
world's media when scientists announced they had found fossils in a
Martian meteorite of what appeared to be nano-sized bacteria.

One of the UK's best-known scientists says only a catastrophe will
prompt the world to tackle the threat of climate change. He
thinks the Earth's attempts to restore its equilibrium may eliminate
civilisation and most humans. He wants a rapid end to the destruction
of natural habitats, which he says are key to planetary climate and
chemistry.

Millions of Tehranis fear the Iranain capital will be hit by an
impending earthquake of biblical proportions as rumours keep making
the rounds and dates are predicted of when the killer quake will
strike. But scientists say the faults under Tehran have not moved
since March. A quake measuring over 6 degrees on the Richter scale
could kill more than one million people.

May 2004 Predictions:
"The purpose of life is to watch and experience living, to enjoy every
moment of it." - Yogi Bhajan
[YOUR FUTURE - INVENTIONS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE]
Our skies in 20 years' time could be a lot quieter, if research by
engineers on "silent aircraft" really takes off. Cambridge-MIT
Institute (CMI) engineers have been working on new styles of planes
that would be barely audible.

The successor to the GameCube could make its debut in May 2005,
Nintendo has suggested.

[HOT TRENDS]
Junk e-mails now account for nearly 70% of all messages, say experts,
despite efforts to reduce spam.

Yo-yo dieting - Women who repeatedly lose weight only to put it back
on again could be damaging their immune systems.

Men prefer mobile games while women are downloading ringtones to their
phones, research has found.

Women who are born in the summer are likely to have fewer children
than women born in other months.

Criminologists believe they have found a new way of predicting where
burglaries are likely to happen. Their research shows properties
within 400m of a home which have already been burgled, are at higher
risk for up to two months after the initial incident. Offenders know
the house layouts, exit routes and the kind of pickings they can
expect from one break-in and tend to return to the area soon
afterwards.

[ASTRONOMICAL EVENTS]
Scientists find signs of an ancient crater created by an asteroid
impact off the Australian coast possibly linked to the greatest mass
extinction in Earth history.

From 1775 through 2003, 120 known instances of meteorites hitting
humans (14), animals (6) or man-made objects (101) had been recorded.

A privately-built manned spacecraft has reached a record altitude of
212,000ft on one of its final tests before officially entering space.

There could be microbial life on the planet Venus, U.S. scientists
have concluded in a report. The existence of life on the planet's oven-
hot surface is unimaginable, but microbes could survive and reproduce
while floating in the thick, cloudy atmosphere, protected by a
sunscreen of sulphur compounds.

[BIOLOGY PREDICTIONS]
Scientists have genetically engineered plants to produce health-
promoting substances usually found in fish.

Scientists have created a microscopic walking robot using the building
blocks of life: DNA.

Tiny pieces of plastic and man-made fibres are causing contamination
of the world's oceans and beaches, the journal Science has reported.
Even remote and apparently pristine layers of sand and mud are now
composed partly of this microscopic rubbish, broken down from
discarded waste. Given the durability of plastics and the disposable
nature of many plastic items, this type of contamination is likely to
increase.

Scientists fear many sea organisms, which could provide new drug
treatments, might disappear before we can tap their potential.

[HEALTH PREDICTIONS]
A survey has found disease-causing microbes in dried baby food
products. A serious outbreak of meningitis at a neonatal intensive
care unit in Tennessee in 2001 was traced to a batch of powdered
infant formula. But the latest research is the first to detect the bug
in dried infant food, although to date there have been no actual cases
of infection linked to these products. The risk increases if you add
water and then leave them at room temperature.

Man-made chemicals are affecting the development of children's brains,
a new report has suggested.

Up to a quarter of Caesareans could be avoided if women in labour were
allowed to rest, researchers have suggested.

Scientists believe friendly bacteria found in the mouth could be used
to block HIV infection.

Consumption of carbonated drinks has increased five-fold in the U.S.
in the last 50 years. This has been linked to a six-fold increase in
oesophageal cancer in white men - who consume the most fizzy drinks.
Research suggests that carbonated drinks cause the stomach to distend,
which makes it more likely that its contents will flow back into the
oesophagus. In countries like China and Japan, where the fizzy drinks
craze has been much slower to catch on, there was no rise in cancers
affecting the oesophagus.

Having diabetes can increase a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's
Disease by up to 65%, scientists suggest.

Scientists find more evidence that being breast-fed reduces a person's
risk of developing heart disease as an adult.

Mothers-to-be who eat fish in the later stages of pregnancy are less
likely to have small babies, research suggests.

The chances of a miscarriage rise sharply if a woman's partner smokes
heavily during her pregnancy, research finds.

China has confirmed two more cases of SARS; prompting the World Health
Organisation to call for a reduction in the number of samples of the
virus held around the globe.

Dirt may help prevent eczema - children who are exposed to a grubby
household or to pets are less likely to develop eczema, according to
the latest study to suggest that modern hygiene may be behind the rise
in allergic diseases like eczema, asthma and inflammatory bowel
disease. This could help explain why Western countries - where hygiene
and sanitation have improved hugely, helped by the move to a smaller
families - are now experiencing an epidemic of asthma and other
allergic ailments.

International experts warn that the emergence of new diseases that are
passed from animals to humans, such as avian flu, is accelerating and
they are ill-equipped to counter the trend.

The SARS virus has been found in sweat glands, leading to fears the
disease could be spread through a handshake, not just airborne
droplets, according to a new study.

Vitamins could actually increase levels of "bad cholesterol",
researchers have suggested. New York University researchers found
vitamins including E, C and beta carotene stop the liver breaking down
an early form of bad cholesterol. The researchers say their findings
mean they cannot recommend that people use the vitamins.

[ODDITIES]
There is disquiet in southern Tanzania over an illness causing young
girls at a primary school to faint. Last week the school was forced to
close for three days after 18 students fainted in one day. Angry
parents have protested to the school, accusing teachers of bewitching
their children, after doctors found nothing medically wrong with
them.

[POLITICAL PREDICTIONS]
*Scientists warn that the world is heading for a catastrophic
earthquake within the next century that will kill at least 1 million
people in one of the huge cities of the developing world, where strict
building codes either don't exist or are rarely enforced. It only
takes a moderately sized quake to cause death and injury on a scale
never seen before. There are now 35 metropolitan areas in the world
with populations of 2 million or more within 125 miles of an
earthquake zone.

U.S. officials have highly-credible intelligence pointing to an
upcoming terror attack within the United States this summer, according
to a report.

Spain's former prime minister warns that the United States should be
prepared for terrorist actions aimed at affecting the outcome of this
fall's presidential election.

[SPIRITUAL PREDICTIONS]
Lottery winners, trust-fund babies and others who get their money
without working for it do not get as much satisfaction from their cash
as those who earn it, a study of the pleasure center in people's
brains suggests. There's substantial evidence that people who win the
lottery are not happier a year after they win the lottery.

[STOCK MARKET PREDICTIONS]
Economists have been surprised by an influential survey which shows
that U.S. consumers are concerned about the future.