Fire Ball!
Last night a fireball lit up parts of the Utah sky– and the phenomenon, which saw the dead of night as bright as day, was captured on CCTV. One video filmed by security cameras at the University of Utah's Milford observatory shows a blinding flash of light around 12:07 am yesterday, followed by clear images of the object streaking away. "It looks like a shooting star on steroids," said Seth Jarvis, director of the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City. “Although it's too early to say definitively how large the object was and how fast it was going, Jarvis estimated that it was about the size of an oven and was traveling at about 80,000 mph. It broke through the Earth's atmosphere and was probably around 100 miles above the ground when it became visible, he said. It almost certainly broke up before it reached the ground, he said.”
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Hacked Off
“Never mind the disastrous interview with Katie Couric or the blank stares in response to Charlie Gibson’s question about the Bush Doctrine. Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin calls the hacking of her Yahoo e-mail account ‘the most disruptive and discouraging’ incident in last year’s presidential campaign,” writes Wired. “Writing in her new book, Going Rogue: An American Life, Palin says the intrusion into her personal e-mail account in September 2008 ‘created paralysis’ in her administration, because it cut off easy communication with her ‘Alaska staff.’ Presumably, this refers to her staff in the governor’s office, which would seem to be an acknowledgment that the personal account was used to conduct critical state work, as alleged in an activist’s lawsuit last year.”
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Santa Scandal
“Thousands of starry-eyed children all over the world are writing letters to the jolly man at the North Pole this holiday season, but they will not likely get a response from Santa Claus or his helpers,” writes Fox News. “The U.S. Postal Service is dropping a popular effort begun in 1954 in the small Alaska town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. Replies come with North Pole postmarks. Postal Service officials said they are tightening rules in such programs nationwide after a postal worker in Maryland recognized a volunteer in the agency's Operation Santa program as a registered sex offender. The postal worker interceded before the individual could answer a child's letter, but the Postal Service viewed the episode as a big enough scare to make changes to the program.”
A Downs Cure?
Sufferers of the chromosomal disorder Downs syndrome could be helped by a new drug which increases the levels of message-carrying chemicals in the brain. This means that the learning and developmental difficulties symptomatic of the condition could be improved. US researchers injected mice suffering from Downs with a drug called norepinephrine, which is a neurotransmitter, and this was found to improve their thinking capability. Dr. Ahmad Salehi of the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, whose study was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine said, “If you intervene early enough, you will be able to help kids with Down syndrome to collect and modulate information.”
’Til Death Do Us…
“A polygamist businessman was convicted by the [South Africa’s] Vereeniging Circuit Court for the murder of his pregnant wife and attempted murder of his second wife, the Sowetan reported on Thursday. Jabulani Ndlovu shot and killed Phindile Dlamini in June last year. She was seven months pregnant at the time. Fourteen days later he shot and wounded his second wife Tholakele Ngubane while they were having sex. Ndlovu's employee, Mzwenduku Ngubane was found guilty of being an accessory to murder after he helped his boss dispose of Dlamini's body and kept quiet about the killing. ‘After Dlamini was killed you failed to report the matter to the police. Alternatively you also failed to take the stand during the trial and explain why you helped Ndlovu to dispose of Dlamini's body,’ Judge Margaret Victor was quoted as saying.”
Obama’s Task
“There is no doubt that the prospects for success in Afghanistan are so bleak right now because former President George W. Bush failed for seven long years to invest the necessary troops, resources or attention to the war,” writes the New York Times. “But it is now President Obama’s war, and the American people are waiting for him to explain his goals and his strategy. Mr. Obama was right to conduct a sober, systematic review of his options. We all know what happens when a president sends tens of thousands of Americans to war based on flawed information, gut reactions and gauzy notions of success. But the political reality is that the longer Mr. Obama waits, the more indecisive he seems and the more constrained his options appear… It has become a cliché in Washington that there are only bad choices in Afghanistan. But it seems clear that this is not the time for a precipitous withdrawal, nor can the United States cling to the status quo while the Taliban gains ever more territory and more power. To move forward, Mr. Obama needs to explain the stakes for this country, the extent of the military commitment, the likely cost in lives and treasure and his definition of success. Mr. Bush failed to do all of that in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Super Submarine
A super-submarine left over from the Second World War has been found in Hawaii. But according to a historian Dr Hans Van Tillburg "the I-201 submarine was nothing like anybody had in the Second World War. It had a streamlined body and conning tower and retractable gun." In fact the submarine more closely resembles a Cold War submarine than something from the Second World War. “Japan wanted to use these ships to launch aerial attacks in the continental United States. To do this, it used three Aichi light bombers, each capable of carrying an 800-kilogram bomb. When their mission was complete, the bombers returned to the submarine, landing on the water using floats,” according to Gizmodo.
Facing Fat
“Some obese individuals don't realize they have a weight problem, a new study finds. That could be an unhealthy attitude as these same people tend not to exercise and have many risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The study, based on survey data collected in Dallas, found that one in 10 participants — all of whom were classified as obese — were satisfied with their body size and didn't think they needed to lose a few. ‘That is a sizeable percentage who don't understand they are overweight and believe they are healthy,’ said lead researcher Tiffany Powell, a cardiology fellow at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Either way, obesity packs many negative health effects, including increased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and hypertension.”
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What’s In A Name?
A translation firm is offering prospective parents the chance to check their preferred baby-names don’t mean anything embarrassing in other languages. For nearly $2,000 the company, Today Translations, will carry out a translation “audit” of baby names, checking the meaning across 100 languages. “Celebrity couple Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes might have thought twice about naming their daughter Suri if they'd known that it means ‘pickpocket’ in Japanese, ‘turned sour’ in French, and ‘horse mackerels’ in Italian, suggest Today Translations,” reports Reuters. The service is available to anyone, but the firm says it expects interest from celebrity couples who are likely to give their children “unusual” monikers. “Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale may have known Zuma meant ‘peace’ in Arabic when choosing their son's name, they may not have been aware it also translates as ‘Lord frowns in anger’ in the Aztec language of Nahuatl.”
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Guantanamo Delay
“US President Barack Obama has for the first time admitted that the US will miss the January 2010 deadline he set for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison. Mr Obama made the admission in interviews with US TV networks during his tour of Asia. He said he was ‘not disappointed’ that the deadline had slipped, saying he ‘knew this was going to be hard’. Officials are trying to determine what to do with some 215 detainees still held at the US prison in Cuba. Mr Obama's announcement follows considerable speculation that the deadline would slip, as the administration wrestles with how to deal with those inmates who cannot either be freed or tried in US courts.”
