Mentally Impaired 11 Year Old Girl Arrested In Pakistan on Charges of Blasphemy
Posted: August 20, 2012 Filed under: CRIME! | Tags: All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, Charges of Blasphemy, CRIME, human rights, Islamic Muslim extremists, Koran, Quran Leave a comment »
A teenage – Christian – girl with Down Syndrome has been arrested in Islamabad on blasphemy charges in Pakistan, accused of burning pages inscribed with verses from the Quran, a conviction for blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan.
Local Ramna police say the girl, known as Rimsha, was arrested on Thursday after she was reported to be holding burnt pages which had Islamic text and Koranic verses on them.
A local police official said the girl, who he described as being in her early teens, was taken to a police station in the capital Islamabad, where she has been detained since. Indian press and All Pakistan Minorities Alliance is reporting that the girl is 11 years old. The police official, who requested anonymity, told AFP that angry Muslim protesters had held rallies demanding the girls punishment.
“We had to register the case fairly quickly to prevent any unpleasant situation,” the officer said, referring to the demonstrations.
Rimsha was produced before an Islamabad court on Friday and remanded in custody for 14 days, another police official said. She is expected to go before the court again by end of this month :: Read the full article »»»»
Researchers Make Major Breakthrough In Heroin Addiction
Posted: August 20, 2012 Filed under: Cankler Science News | Tags: Drug Addiction, Drug Treatment, Heroin Addiction, Medical Treatment for Drug Addiction Leave a comment »
Researchers have made an important breakthrough in helping people suffering from addiction to opioid drugs like heroin. The team of scientists from Adelaide and Colorado universities has discovered a receptor in the body’s immune system that increases addiction to drugs such as heroin and morphine.
Both the central nervous and the immune systems influence addiction, but the study has shown only the immune response in the brain needs to be blocked to prevent cravings for opioid drugs.
The researchers have found that the immune-addiction response can be blocked by a drug known as plus-naloxone. The study’s lead author, University of Adelaide research fellow Mark Hutchinson, says the results could eventually lead to new drugs that help patients with severe pain, as well as helping heroin users kick the habit.
“We’re really excited about the opportunities that this presents for us in understanding the basic science behind drug addiction but also from the clinical perspective, the opportunities that it presents for safer pain relief and potentially treatment of drug addiction,” he said :: Read the full article »»»»
Gates Foundation Reinvents The Toilet
Posted: August 20, 2012 Filed under: Favorite New Thought, From The Web | Tags: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Melinda French, Reinvent the Toilet Fair, William Henry "Bill" Gates III Leave a comment »
William Henry “Bill” Gates III, Microsoft co-founder, philanthropist and socially conscious billionare has launched a search for a new toilet more suited to developing countries in an effort to help prevent disease and death.
The flush – endowed with $US33.5 Billion – charitable foundation setup by Gates and his wife Melinda French kicked off a “Reinvent the Toilet Fair” in Seattle and awarded prizes for promising innovations.
The Toilet Fair was described as a swirl of about 200 inventors, designers, investors, partners and others passionate about creating safe, effective, and inexpensive waste management systems.
“Toilets are extremely important for public health and, when you think of it, even human dignity,” Mr Gates said. ”The flush toilets we use in the wealthy world are irrelevant, impractical and impossible for 40 per cent of the global population, because they often don’t have access to water, and sewers, electricity, and sewage treatment systems.”
Universities from Britain, Canada, and the United States were awarded prizes in a competition launched a year ago challenging inventors to come up with a better toilet :: Read the full article »»»»
US Air Force Tests ‘Waverider’ The 1 Hour New York to Paris Hypersonic Jet
Posted: August 15, 2012 Filed under: Grilled | Tags: Hypersonic Jet, NASA, Pentagon, Scramjet, US Airforce, Waverider, X-51A Leave a comment »
The United States Air Force is poised to test an experimental aircraft designed to fly at six times the speed of sound, at almost 7,000 kilometres an hour, the Waverider can travel from New York to Paris in under an hour.
The Waverider project is jointly funded by the Pentagon and NASA, and is part of US plans to one day deliver missile strikes around the globe within minutes. The research could also be used to build a commercial plane which is able to reach much higher speeds than today’s jets.
The unmanned X-51A Waverider resembles a missile and will be dropped from the wing of a B-52 bomber off the California coast at an altitude of about 15,000 metres, according to the Air Force.
After a scheduled flight of about five minutes – in which it is expected to reach an altitude of 21,000 metres – the Waverider will splash down in the Pacific, the Air Force said.
X-51A achieves hypersonic speeds with what’s known as a scramjet engine, which has no moving parts. There are no plans to recover the test vehicle. Hypersonic flight renders conventional turbine jet engines useless due to the extraordinary heat and pressure generated at such high speeds :: Read the full article »»»»
UPDATE! Arthur Boyd ‘Bride Running Away’ Sells For $AU1.68 Million
Posted: August 15, 2012 Filed under: Art News | Tags: Art Auction, Arthur Boyd, Australian Art, Australian Artist, Australian Galleries, Bride Running Away, Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste, Record Price Leave a comment »
UPDATED: Arthur Boyd’s, Bride Running Away has set a new record for a Boyd Painting, fetching $AU1.68 Million at auction. The work was created in 1957, and is part of the Love Marriage and Death of a Half Caste series of paintings that explores the plight of Indigenous Australians at a time when they were greatly marginalised. The painting has been in a private collection since 1969.
Geoffrey Smith from Sotheby’s said the sale presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy the famous painting. “Bride Running Away is an icon of 20th century Australian art,” Mr Smith said.
“It was purchased by the current owners from Australian Galleries in 1969 and has never been offered publicly for sale.”
Mr Smith pointed out that the piece had great cultural significance. ”It’s an incredibly seminal painting, a key work in his oeuvre. And was very confronting when it was first painted,” Mr Smith said. ”Arthur Boyd was a great humanist and as an artist he explored the themes, the issues that confronted human kind.” :: Read the full article »»»»
Pigeon Pie Cordoba Style
Posted: August 15, 2012 Filed under: The Organic Gourmet | Tags: Argentina, Cordoba, Oscar De Allende, Paicor, Pigeon Pie Leave a comment »
An Argentinean provincial bureaucrat has been suspended over his proposal to feed local children feral pigeon meat in an effort to curtail the surge in the bird population.
Oscar De Allende, an official at the local environment ministry responsible for wildlife, was suspended over his “controversial statements on pigeon consumption,” Cordoba governor Jose Manuel de la Sota said in a statement.
“We estimate we have 600 million pigeons in Cordoba,” Mr De Allende told a local radio station. ”Let’s consider that pigeons are an abundant resource, not a pest. We are working with the people of Paicor to start a project that will turn pigeons into food”.
Earlier this week Mr De Allende proposed that Paicor, a government program for distributing food and clothing to poor students, serve pigeon meat at public schools.
I can hear the sighs of sympathy for Mr De Allende, his was not a covert thought, the bureaucrat was quite serious about feeding the flying rats to the less fortunate, the impoverished of the province.
Cordoba’s cabinet chief Oscar Gonzalez called the initiative “nonsense” and insisted there are no plans for such a program. More at The Organic Gourmet »»»»
NEXUS Q Googles FIRST Original Gadget STALLS!?
Posted: August 15, 2012 Filed under: Standout, Technoid Computer News | Tags: google, Home Media Player, Media Device, Media Streamer, Nexus Q, Streaming Media Leave a comment »
It takes bucket loads of work to get a launch RIGHT, a kizillion things need to go smoothly, not least of which is product!
Those übergeeks at Techcrunch have run a post on the woes of that internet behemoth that is Google and their stalling on the release of it’s media streamer Nexus Q.
Seriously how bad would something need to be for a company – GOOGLE - to decide to postpone the launch of such a high-profile product indefinitely, just days before it was expected to ship.
Apparently pretty BAD, stall is precisely what Google has just done with it’s Nexus Q.
The oddly spherical Google Nexus Q media streamer wasn’t just the companys first consumer electronics hardware project designed completely in-house. But it was also a key product that the company recently showcased at its I/O developer conference, putting the gadget into every attendee’s swag-bag.
TC reckons that even at I/O it was clear that Google wasn’t really sure what the Q was supposed to be and maybe that explains why the on-stage demo of the Q, which was meant to go on-sale for $299, was the single worst demo of I/O :: Read the full article »»»»
