In the meantime, stay healthy and happy !
Saturday, July 23, 2011
It's finally vacation time !
In the meantime, stay healthy and happy !
NASA Picks Rover’s Destination - A Mountain on Mars
Mission scientists announced Friday that the rover, a nuclear-powered vehicle the size of a small S.U.V., would head to Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide depression near the Martian equator. What attracted them there is a mountain that rises upward nearly three miles at the center, making it taller, for example, than Mount Rainier outside Seattle."
NYTimes.com /continue reading
Norway: island shooting death toll rises to at least 80
The suspect is reported to be Anders Behring Breivik
"The death toll rose sharply after police began recovering bodies from the water surrounding the Utoeya island outside Oslo, where the shootings took place.The attack at the youth camp came just hours after a bomb attack outside government buildings in Oslo killed seven people.
A 32-year-old man, named by Norwegian media as Anders Behring Breivik who has reported links to the far-Right, was being questioned by police in connection with the attacks.
Initially the number of dead on the wooded island was put at 10, but early on Saturday morning they said they had discovered more bodies and that the gunman had killed at least 80 people.
The mass shootings are among the worst in history and is the worst violence to hit Norway since the second world war."
Telegraph/continue reading
Friday, July 22, 2011
Seven killed by bomb in Oslo
"A terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami (the Helpers of the Global Jihad), issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, according to Will McCants, a terrorism analyst at CNA, a research institute that studies terrorism. The message said the attack was a response to Norwegian forces' presence in Afghanistan and to unspecified insults to the Prophet Muhammad. "We have warned since the Stockholm raid of more operations," the group said, apparently referred to a bombing in Sweden in December 2010, according to Mr McCants' translation. "What you see is only the beginning, and there is more to come." The claim could not be confirmed."
via guardian.co.uk /read more
via guardian.co.uk /read more
Shots fired at Norwegian youth camp
The news site VG reported that a man dressed in a police uniform opened fire at the camp. It says several people were injured.
Oslo police chief Anstein Gjengdal said anti-terror units were being sent to the camp at Utoya, outside the Norwegian capital.
He had no other information on that incident, which came hours after a bomb blast outside the government headquarters killed at least two people and injured 15.
via
Why Norway?
"The answer to that is three fold. In then first instance, with the increased levels of security and surveillance in the UK and the US as well as other European capitals, Norway might have been seen as a softer target despite the recent breaking up of an al-Qaida cell in Norway.
A more detailed explanation of the problems that Norway has had with Al Qaeda were supplied a year ago by the Atlantic magazine in an article by Thomas Hegghammer, a senior fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment in Oslo, and Dominic Tierney.
That piece followed the arrest of three men in Norway and Germany for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack involving peroxide explosives. All of those arrested were were Muslim immigrants to Norway.
The first explanation," wrote Hegghammer and Tierney, "is Afghanistan. Norway has been part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan from its foundation in late 2001.... In late 2007, for example, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's
second-in-command, said that the group had previously threatened Norway because it "participated in the war against the Muslims...
A second contributory factor for why Norway may have been eyed in the past for potential jihadi terrorist attack is the fact that in 2006, a Norwegian newspaper reprinted a series of Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad which prompted threats against the country. A third potential explanation is the recent decision last week by a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he's deported from the Nordic country."
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor at the Observer
A more detailed explanation of the problems that Norway has had with Al Qaeda were supplied a year ago by the Atlantic magazine in an article by Thomas Hegghammer, a senior fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment in Oslo, and Dominic Tierney.
That piece followed the arrest of three men in Norway and Germany for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack involving peroxide explosives. All of those arrested were were Muslim immigrants to Norway.
The first explanation," wrote Hegghammer and Tierney, "is Afghanistan. Norway has been part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan from its foundation in late 2001.... In late 2007, for example, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's
second-in-command, said that the group had previously threatened Norway because it "participated in the war against the Muslims...
A second contributory factor for why Norway may have been eyed in the past for potential jihadi terrorist attack is the fact that in 2006, a Norwegian newspaper reprinted a series of Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad which prompted threats against the country. A third potential explanation is the recent decision last week by a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he's deported from the Nordic country."
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor at the Observer
Big Blast Hits Government Buildings in Central Oslo
Initial media reports described a chaotic scene as police cleared the area around the building and were searching for additional explosives, according to the daily Aftenposten. Photos and television footage showed a 17-story building with windows blown out and the surrounding street strewn with glass and debris.
Norwegian media reported that the prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, was safe.
The cause of explosion was not immediately clear, but a Reuters reporter described seeing the mangled wreckage of a car near one of the buildings."
via NYTimes.com /continue reading
Who does he think he is... Winnie the Pooh?
But while the cartoon character managed to free his head from his favourite honer pot, this poor grizzly needed a little extra help.
'Freaky' Mouse Is Immune to Poison
The discovery, reported in the journal Current Biology, demonstrates how hybridization can occur naturally among animals, yielding non-sterile individuals with beneficial attributes. In this case, the result is a mouse that is resistant to warfarin, a toxic and, usually, deadly ingredient in many rodent poisons.
Hybrids often cannot reproduce, but “sometimes there is the occasional odd hybrid that has just about the right novel combination of genomes from two species that renders them, at least temporarily, superior over the pure species,” lead author Michael Kohn told Discovery News.
Fish catches man
Fudge and a friend weren’t having much luck while fishing for crappie, bream and bass in Reelfoot Lake in Tiptonville last week.
After giving up on a spot, Fudge started the eight horsepower engine on their rented jon boat and headed off in search of fish.
Moments later, a 30-pound Asian carp found Fudge when it jumped about seven feet out of the water and landed in the tiny aluminum boat.
“It all kind of happened in slow motion. It was surreal,” said Fudge, 26, an Old Hickory resident who was on his first trip to Reelfoot. “We were running across the lake to another spot and that thing just jumped in the boat with us.”
via tennessean.com by Mike Organ/continue reading
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Painter Lucian Freud Dies at 88
Mr. Freud, a grandson of Sigmund Freud and a brother of the British television personality Clement Freud, was already an important figure in the small London art world when, in the immediate postwar years, he embarked on a series of portraits that established him as a potent new voice in figurative art.
via NYTimes.com /continue reading
Life Lessons
The Portuguese Water Blog/continue reading
Thanks to Parlance
It's fight not flight that keeps them alive.
Photographer and writer Steve Bloom has spent a decade trekking the globe in a bid to capture some of nature's most feared species in moments of conflict such as these two bald eagles battling it out in Alaska.
Emotional end to Nasa space shuttle programme as Atlantis touches down for last time
After more than 30 years, Nasa's space shuttle programme comes to an end as Atlantis touches down at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"The crew of four, lead by Commander Christopher Ferguson, have completed a two-week supply run mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Space shuttle Atlantis will now join Discovery and Endeavour in retirement.
Until the next generation of spacecraft is developed, Nasa will rely on Russian Soyuz vehicles to ferry crew and cargo to the ISS and beyond."
Video: Emotional end to Nasa space shuttle programme as Atlantis touches down for last time - Telegraph
Space shuttle Atlantis will now join Discovery and Endeavour in retirement.
Until the next generation of spacecraft is developed, Nasa will rely on Russian Soyuz vehicles to ferry crew and cargo to the ISS and beyond."
Video: Emotional end to Nasa space shuttle programme as Atlantis touches down for last time - Telegraph
A lion is most likely to eat you just after a full moon, research has shown.
Other predators, such as wolves, may also be at their most dangerous when the moon starts to wane.
The discovery, from an African study of 500 lion attacks, could explain the full moon's place in folklore as a harbinger of evil or disaster, and its association with werewolves and vampires.
Scientists studied records of nearly 500 lion attacks on Tanzanian villagers between 1988 and 2009.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)