Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Prince Charles to the rescue

We have been seeing less and less of our beautiful red squirrel recently as its existence is left threatened by our mistakes, as is the case with so many beautiful animals all around the world.  However, the red squirrel has got a good friend in high places – Prince Charles has been called in to come to the aid of the red squirrel, which the Prince himself warned could be extinct within 10 years.

The Prince has been communicating his personal worries for the red squirrel while speaking at the launch of a charity set up specifically to protect endangered native species.

Charles placed the blame for the disappearance of the little creatures on today’s “increasingly throwaway” society and has portrayed his concern for the way the future of small creatures is headed.

“I cannot think of a better mascot for our country than the red squirrel. Perhaps that might make people realise what it is that they are about to lose,” said Prince Charles.

“The terrifying reality is that, within a decade, if we cannot work together to bring in the necessary funding for the task which needs to be done, the red squirrel could be totally extinct across the UK,” Charles continued.

The grey is killing off the red

Prince Charles gave the speech in Cumbria at the official launch of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust.  The charity is aimed at protecting the red squirrel which has been having a hard time since the grey squirrel hopped onto our shores from America and started to bully the natives.

“The plight of the red squirrel and the honeybee too is yet another example of man’s short-sightedness in an increasingly throwaway society.  The future of both species is a crucial test of just how serious we are about sustainability,” said Charles.

The Prince also mentioned that he had often had the chance of spending time with the furry little squirrels, which he labelled “utterly charming creatures”, in Scotland at his Birkhall residence.

The Prince sees reds all the time

“Unlike many people in this country, I am lucky enough to see red squirrels at Birkhall where I have been indulging them with hazelnuts and they have become remarkably tame and are coming into the house.

“Sometimes sitting at my desk I hear the pitter patter of tiny feet and sometimes they do the wall of death around my office. They are very special creatures.

“I have been indulging them with hazelnuts and they have become remarkably tame and come into the house. Sometimes when I am sitting at my desk I hear the pitter patter of tiny feet, and sometimes they do a wall of death around my office,” Charles said.

The Prince met with supporters of the charity as well as local dignitaries at Levens Hall – unfortunately the grounds, located near Kendal, hasn’t seen a red squirrel in around 15 years.

What about you?

What do you think about the plight of the red squirrel here in Britain?  Do you want to do more for our native red squirrel?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you think…

He’s got a lighter.  Everyone down on the ground…

Smoking was never so dangerous – six police patrol cars were rushed to a scene where a man was carrying a hunting rifle in a Chinese city and the whole situation could have gotten very messy…if the hunting rifle wasn’t infact an oversized lighter.

Police in the Chinese city of Nanjing were suddenly inundated with emergency telephone calls claiming that there was a man on the loose brandishing a hunting rifle.

The police obviously responded to the emergency calls and were expecting a possible dangerous situation but instead they arrived at the scene to discover the man, clearly unaware that people around him were scared out of their skins, was simply carrying a gigantic lighter on his back.

“We sent out six patrol cars immediately, trying to stop the man before anything bad happened.

“On spotting the man, officers forced him to stop. The man was obviously very scared and said the gun was only a toy lighter, which he just won as an award in a restaurant,” commented a police spokesman.

Well, the flame was pretty hot.

After getting the supposed rifle back to the police station, the police tested the object but once they had pulled the trigger they realised the mistake that had been made as a small innocent flame poked out of the barrel of the gun.

Unfortunately the man who was allegedly stalking the streets with a deadly firearm was given a warning for carrying the lighter, which was confiscated.

The end of novelty lighters?

The news comes as fire officials in Louisville in the United States demanded that novelty lighters were removed from stores as they are apparently responsible for several deaths a year, although not because they are parading as hunting rifles.

The fire officers claimed that the lighters can easily be picked up by children who will play with what they think is a toy and then there is a strong possibility that a fire could start.

“Anytime a child can get to it and they think it’s a toy and they get by themselves in a closet and they’re playing with it and a fire starts, that’s the biggest concern we’ve got,” said Henry Ott of the Louisville Fire Department.

“Kids are playing with lighters, kids are cooking at home, using candles in the room, or they may lay a curling iron down.”

According to an arson investigator in Louisville children are responsible for around half of all fires in the United States.

No real proof…

However, the fires have not been connected with novelty lighters, partly because the United States Fire Administration only started to keep their eyes on the cigarette accessories since January of last year.

Although the move by the Fire Department doesn’t have the backing of some hardcore smokers, the plans do indeed have the unanimous backing of the Louisville Metro Council Public Safety Committee and the full council will be meeting next Thursday to vote on the move.

What do you think?

Is this proposal to ban joke lighters a good decision or is it just another example of how wrapped up in cotton we are as a culture?  Let us know…

Cricket isn’t English?

It seems that we have been wrong all these years – travelling around the country, bragging that we, the English, were the creators behind the charming game of cricket…but new academic research would seem to have proven us all wrong.  Belgium had the sport first…

According to a poem that has been discovered, that is said to have been written in 1533, suggests that the game actually originated from Flanders.

The news has taken the country unaware, striking shock into the hearts of the living rooms and streets of cricket lovers nationwide.

The poem, attributed to John Skelton, has claimed that Flemish weavers were called “kings of crekettes”.  The poem also gives mention to “wickettes”.

Skipping church for a quick game…

Paul Campbell, of the Australian National University, who has been declaring that the game was really a foreign import, made the discovery.

The original belief was that the game we know now as cricket evolved from an English children’s game and the first mention of the game being in England was found in the form of fines that were handed out when people skipped church to have a play.

Cricket was taken up by the majority of the country and then eventually found its way into public schools and then into both Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

Cricket isn’t even an English word.

Mr Campbell is quite sure that there is no chance that the game was created in England and has been backed up with Dr Heiner Gillmeister’s earlier research, which had already claimed that the word cricket couldn’t have come from the English language.

“‘There is no way to relate the term to any existing English word,’ he told the BBC,” said Campbell.

“I was brought up with Flemish children and I know the language well. I immediately thought of the Flemish phrase ‘met de krik ketsen’ which means to ‘chase a ball with a curved stick’.”

Meanwhile, upon hearing the news, cricket historian David Frith took the news quite well, saying, “It is hard to deny that this is a breakthrough. This discovery points to an addition to the great history of cricket.

“It’s exciting we haven’t yet written the final word on it.  It does make you wonder why Belgium isn’t playing Test cricket though, doesn’t it?” he continued.

Dr Gillmeister – golf isn’t even Scottish!

However, fans of Dr Heiner Gillmeister will be pleased to discover that his research didn’t come to a halt with cricket – he also pledged to discover the origins of golf.

Scots won’t be very happy to hear that as he is taking cricket away from England he is also quite happy to take golf away from Scotland.

Gillmeister is claiming that early records again indicate that the Belgians could have been found to play a similar game before the British.

What are we going to do?

How do you feel about the news?  Have you changed your views about cricket or do you think cricket is cricket…

It’s OK – the problem has been solved…

Everyone can relax – stop worrying, the wait is finally over…a scientist has uncovered the mystery of “belly button fluff”.

Georg Steinhauser, an Austrian chemist, has found a type of hair that actually holds pieces of lint that are floating around the belly button and then drags them into the navel.

This news didn’t come without a bit of sweat or tears as Dr Steinhauser spent his recent free time studying 503 pieces of fluff from his own belly button over a three-year period.

And if you thought that the contents of the belly button fluff were simply bits of lint then I’m afraid that Dr Steinhauser has proven you wrong.  Inside the fluff apart from the lint you will find particles of dead skin, fat, sweat and dust.

And here’s the reason…

Writing in the journal, Medical Hypotheses, Dr Steinhauser claimed that the scaly structure of the hair promotes the “abrasion of minuscule fibres from the shirt” thus moving the lint into the belly button.

According to Dr Steinhauser’s study “small pieces of fluff first form in the hair and then end up in the navel at the end of the day”.

“The hair’s scales act like a kind of barbed hooks.  Abdominal hair often seems to grow in concentric circles around the navel,” continued Dr Steinhauser.

“The question of the nature of navel fluff seems to concern more people than one would think at first glance.

“We hope we have been able to provide information for doctors when they are next confronted with the simple question of ‘why some belly buttons collect so much lint and others do not’.”

No stranger to the strange…

Dr Steinhauser is no stranger to weird and wacky studies – he has also looked at answering the question of why his wedding band erodes.

To add to the study, Dr Steinhauser explained a number of methods of ridding the body of the unproblematic fluff.  If you found the fluff to be an annoyance then you should think about shaving the hair or even getting a belly button piercing fitted.

However, Dr Steinhauser was quick to remind shavers that the problem would resurface as soon as the hairs grew back.

Another tip from the doctor is to wear old clothes as they tend to shed less amounts of lint compared with newer clothes.

When you think that a new item of clothing can lose up to a thousandth of its weight over the course of a year then perhaps this isn’t as much of a laughing matter as you might have originally thought…

Maybe more valuable than we thought?

Of course, there are always viable reasons for keeping hold of the belly button fluff and one man that will definitely not be shaving his belly button or fitting a piercing will be Graham Barker.

Mr Barker has been building up a collection of the fluff since 1984 in hopes that he might one day see a picture of himself in the Guinness Book of Records.

The most expensive bottles of Vimto in the world?

Police chiefs have waster almost a quarter of a billion pounds of taxpayers money by investigating the so-called theft of 5 bottles of Vimto by other police officers.

The bottles of Vimto in question were discovered by two transport officers, Rob Mitchell and Kris Catterall. They found the bottles of the popular cordial inside an abandoned cardboard box next to a rail line.

However, they stepped out of line according to police rules as they should have brought the box in to the station where it should have been reported lost or stolen.

Unfortunately for the officers and the taxpayer, Mitchell and Catterall couldn’t contain their excitement and had to share the bottles as equally as possible between each other and other colleagues.

18 month suspension and an internal probe…

These actions led to the officers being suspended for 18 months until the ridiculous case against them was dropped.

However the officers had to wait for 8 months until lawyers decided upon a charge, being a fine of four wages each for the officers who were forced to plead guilty to neglecting their duties – a sum of £400 each.

Mitchell and Catterall still face an internal probe over the situation.

A waste of taxpayer’s money…

Still, the biggest upset over the whole issue has to be the fact that the investigation has cost the taxpayer around £200,000 and has been blasted as a gross misuse of money.

Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers’ Alliance has spoken out about the situation, which he says could have been resolved without wasting so much time or money.

“This is an absurd and shocking waste of taxpayers’ money and utter incompetence on behalf of the senior officers involved.

“If disciplinary action needed to be taken it should have been done quickly and without wasting money. The police chiefs who oversaw this episode should be held accountable to taxpayers,” said Elliott.

Unnecessary stress on the officers!

Meanwhile, the officers in question will be feeling the stress involved with such a remarkably weird investigation as well as the approaching internal probe looming over their heads.

The chairman of the British Transport Police Federation, Alex Robertson, who is representing both officers involved in the Vimto issue, claimed that the whole situation was a huge upset for both the officers.

“To be suspended for so long over something so trivial will have put the officers and their families under great stress.”

Were they wrong?

However, in retaliation the British Transport Police have claimed that the officers they employ must remain devoted to the laws of the land if they expect to continue at their jobs successfully.

“The integrity of officers is paramount in maintaining public confidence and any failure to uphold our high standards will always be treated seriously,” claimed a spokeswoman for the British Transport Police.

How about you?

What do you think about the whole Vimto fiasco?  Do you see it as a complete waste of your money or are you on the side of the Transport Police who claim that their officers must remain observant of the laws of the land, even in the smallest of cases?

The search is over?

The western world for the most part has been on the look out for the elusive Osama Bin Laden ever since the horrific September 11th attacks. Well, according to a geography professor the search could soon be over.

Bin Laden is almost sure to be residing in one of three houses in Pakistan, according to Thomas Gillespie, a geography professor at the University of California in Los Angeles – although if Bin Laden is keeping his beady eye on the web then what’s to say he hasn’t moved down the street?

However, according to Gillespie, there is a science behind his announcement – it wasn’t just a wild stab in the dark, thankfully.

Animal behaviour is the key!

Gillespie claimed to have studied animal behaviour and in particular the way the species spread providing him with what he believes to be the location of the man behind the world-changing attacks.

Along with these studies, Gillespie announced in a new study published on the Internet by the MIT International Review that simple facts, a fundamental understanding of geography and satellite imagery that is available to the public all helped Gillespie do what the United States intelligence agency could not.

Gillespie also considered Bin Laden’s needs for high ceilings to combat his tall frame, electricity, security and the obvious need for available room for his security guards, which led to the proposed three targets.

“If he’s still alive, he honestly could be sitting there right now,” commented Gillespie.

“It is still the safest tribal area and city in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of northwest Pakistan and one of the only tribal areas that the U.S. has not bombed with its unmanned Predators.”

Parachinar - Pakistan

The location that Gillespie is talking about is the location that has been deemed the mostly likely place for Bin Laden to be staying at – Parachinar, a town in northwest Pakistan.

This of course isn’t the first time the town has appeared in the news.  Parachinar is well known for providing a home for a number of mujahideen at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

John A. Agnew, the co-author of the study who is also a geography professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, has underlined the fact that this solution to the search is the first scientific one of its kind, and has stated that the search could be easily reproduced.

“We believe our work represents the first scientific approach to establishing bin Laden’s current location.  The methods are repeatable and could easily be updated with new information obtained by the U.S. intelligence community,” said Agnew.

Criticism of course…

However, you can’t go claiming that you can easily find the hiding place of a man who has a $25 million reward tag on his head without expecting a fair old bit of criticism.

Kim Rossmo, of the Texas State University who has worked with the military to try to find terrorists in the past, has slated the method, saying, “The idea of identifying three buildings in a city of half a million especially one in a country the authors have likely never visited is somewhat overconfident.”

Coke, Pepsi, Fanta, Cow’s Urine…

Fizzy drinks are often blasted in today’s health conscious society.  So you can imagine the up-roar about the imperative release of a new fizzy drink in India that is made using the urine of cows.

Created by India’s Hindu nationalist movement, Rashtriya Swayamesevak Sangh, the fizzy drink is said to be almost ready for general consumption.

Named Gau Jai, or Cow Water, the drink has been developed in a research centre in Haridwar, an Indian holy city, and is hoped to provide a healthier alternative to soft drinks like Coke and Fanta.

Health implications – Fizzy Cow’s Urine fights diseases.

According to the director of the Rashtriya Swayamesevak Sangh’s Cow Protection Department, Om Prakash, the drink is an invaluable cure for a number of supposed diseases.

“We refer to gau ark (cow urine) as gau jal (cow water) as it has immense potential to cure various diseases.

“We have developed a soft drink formula with gau jal as the base and it has been sent to a laboratory at Lucknow for testing,” said Prakash.

The organisation is now focusing its development to managing the preservation of the urine drink through the hot summer months.

“It will be a revolution of sorts. The acceptance of cow urine as a potent medicine is increasing day by day and once it comes as a cold drink, its demand will definitely increase.

“It will prove and justify the high stature accorded to a cow in Indian culture.”

Not as bad as you might think…

However, for all of you who are expecting a foul smelling, yellow drink will be pleased to hear that this will not be the case.  In fact, Prakash claims that the drink will taste good if anything and will work in a de-tox fashion.

The move comes as Pepsi and Coca Cola have gained firm success in the Indian market and they are anything but healthy.  It would appear that Prakash’s movement is firmly against the soft drinks and is simply working to create a healthy alternative for the people of India.

The RSS has had a number of dealings with the sickly soft drinks as in 1994 the organisation declared a nationwide boycott of goods which included the likes of Pepsi and Coke.

How much for that cow’s urine in the window?

Price wise, the RSS is remaining tight-lipped over the whole thing but has said that the drinks will be cheap.  However, competition will be tight as Pepsi and Coke  are also extremely cheap throughout India.

Maybe Prakash’s drink will stand a chance in the Pepsi/Coke dominated market as the big named brands have been struggling to fight off allegations of their drinks containing dangerous and harmful toxic pesticides – something which cow’s urine clearly would not fall pray to.

Would you drink it?

What about you?  Would you swap the Dr Pepper and the Sprite for a mouthful of the healthy cow’s urine or do you think you’ll stick to a few E numbers?  Let the world know!

Message from a Saint…

How fitting is it that an island has been discovered in the Adriatic that is shaped like a small heart?  The small island was found using the popular Google Earth programme, which allows users to take a satellite view of the world.

As Valentine’s Day creeps even close, the island comes as if a message from the Saint himself.  Even the owners of the island were unaware of the loveable shape and after seeing the images from space is now becoming responsive to the possibilities that it holds.

The owner of the heart-shaped island, found off the Croatian coast, was inundated with letters from couples requesting to stay there on probably the most perfect location for lovers around the world.

Welcome to Celebrity Love Island, without the celebs, thankfully…

Since then the owner has decided to go ahead and allow people access to the island, creating the ultimate “love island” hidden from the rest of the world – apart from Google Earth’s prying eyes of course.

The owner, Vlad Juresko from the closely situated Pasman Island, has been taken aback by the recent attention by lovers to the island.  He is prepared to allow lovers who are over the age of 16 onto the 130,000 square meter island.

Planning a race?  Why not…

Juresko is also said to be planning a 1.5 kilometre race across the island to lovers who have expressed their desire to visit the island.

“It has been incredible. We think it is the most perfect heart-shaped island in the world.

“We always thought it looked a bit like a heart but since it’s been on Google Earth everyone else has seen it too and the whole world seems to want to stay here.”

Google Raider?

This is not the first time Google Earth has helped make an interesting discovery.  An American musician has been using the software package to search for hidden treasure.

After reading a book about hidden American treasure and as his imagination started to work in overtime, he opened Google Earth and started searching the country.

Eventually he found something in Texas, picked up his keys and took the long trip from Los Angles to check it out.

They are refusing to see the funny side…

The gentleman representing the family who owns the land that the musician wanted to search, Ron Walker, claimed that using Google Earth for something like this was considered an insult to the family.

“It was offensive that somebody could go on Google Earth, look down and see what they think, I guess see, under the ground and see a ship and come in and say I want to dig up your property. They have no proof anything is there and no experience,” said Walker.

What do you think?  Are you going to be using Google Earth to plan your trip to the heart shaped island, or search for buried treasure, or don’t you get what the hype is all about?

Cheaper than a Virgin Atlantic flight…

Jennifer Figge has become the first woman to swim across the Atlantic Ocean, making the epic crossing at the truly inspiring age of 56.

Figge, an American athlete, spent 24 days making the huge crossing from Cape Verde off Africa to Trinidad and Tobago. Officials are still calculating the exact total distance she swam.

And according to Figge she hasn’t had enough as she is now planning on carrying on her swim all the way up the coast to the British Virgin Islands.

Shark attack…when is it safe to get back in the water?

The physical strain was not the only issues Figge had to deal with but also the threat of attack by sharks.  Figge swam the Atlantic, therefore behind the protective cover of a cage to keep the danger of the sea predator at bay.

Probably viewed as both a let down and a relief, Figge didn’t end up seeing any sharks, but instead got an eye full of pilot whales, dolphins and turtles.

However, the sea can be just as dangerous as sharks as Figge faced daily torrents of waves reaching around 9 meters into the sky.

Energy drinks kept her going…

To keep her going, as Figge spent 8 hours at a go in the water before taking some solace in one of the rescue boats, crew members would chuck energy drinks to her.  Even in stormy weather, divers would be on hand to bring the drinks to her in person.

However, when the weather got too bad it was said that the crew would lose her and wouldn’t be able to see her in the water.  The weather also didn’t help with Figge’s route as she ended up being thrown 1,000 miles off course due to the bad weather.

The Atlantic was originally crossed by Benoit Lecomte, a French swimmer who swam the choppy sea 10 years ago, spending over two months, 73 days in total, swimming 4,000 miles, around double the distance that Figge is expected to have crossed.

19 out of 24 days isn’t bad, let’s be honest…

Figge wasn’t able to swim everyday of the 24 day adventure, due to the bad weather at sea.  According to her business manager, David Higden, Figge was forced to stay on the accompanying Catamaran until the weather eased up.

“She swam 19 of 24 days.  It turned from an endurance swim into an extreme adventure swim. She didn’t get into the water as much as she wanted, because the waves were so high.

The weather was so extreme the crew had trouble seeing her in the water,” continued Higden.

Even a cast wouldn’t stop her!

Figge is not new to the world of extreme sports and has been enjoying cross-country running and maritime crossings since her 30s.  Some of her accomplishments have seen her run 180 miles across Mexico which actually saw Figge complete the final 60 miles with a cast around her left leg.

Mirror, signal, position…

Most of us pass our driving tests after the first few goes at the most.  However, what do you do when you have just failed for the 771st time?  Maybe get the hint?

A 68-year-old woman in South Korea has indeed taken the driving test 771 times and apparently she is nowhere near giving up just yet.

Although, the story doesn’t pan out exactly as you would expect.  In this country we get the opportunity to take the test after about a few weeks wait due to the high number of learner drivers, however, the woman was able to take the test almost every working day since 2005.

30-50 per cent…

Even more ridiculous is how she is failing the test.  Apparently she stumbles on the written aspect of the test, where she is averaging a score between 30 and 50 per cent, although the pass rate is 60 per cent.

The woman, only known as Cha, failed her latest test this week and the plans are already set for her to take the test for the 772nd time.

Cha currently delivers groceries door-to-door around her home city of Jeonju, and it is said that she could use a car to help her business.

4 million Won.

According to the police in Jeonju, Cha has up until now spent 4 million Won (£2,000) on the tests and has won over the hearts of the police officers that know her story.

According to Park Jung-Seok, a traffic police officer in Cha’s area, “I feel sorry every time I see Cha fail. When she passes, I’ll make a commemorative tablet myself and give it to her.”

Maybe she would appreciate a crib sheet in the mean time and maybe a helping hand in the actual exam.

Don’t even mention the practical test.

Apparently once she passes the theory test, costing her 6,000 Won a go, she will then be able to move on to the practical test.

According to the Driver’s License Agency in Jeonju, Cha has now broken the record for the amount of tests taken by a single person, although that little record will be little reward as all she wants is to pass her test.

Try a bit of technology.

We here in Britain don’t seem to have these issues due to all the literature, DVDs and technology surrounding the subject.  Even the Nintendo DS has recently announced that there is a game in the “brain-training” style that helps the user to gain a strong grasp of the Driving Theory Test.

Maybe we should all chip in a penny and buy her a DS and the Theory game and she might eventually get 60 per cent…but then there’s the practical test.