Facebook the world top most social networking web site redesigned new profile page for users to display more what they want on their page. We can place images, videos and favorite things and most online friends. 
Adrian Szczypolwski, 52, was arrested for driving into two parked cards before driving head on into another car with 5 times the lethal toxicity level of alcohol at 384mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood this past August 7th. 
Taking a daily aspirin can dramatically cut the risk of dying from cancer, a landmark study has concluded. 
Amazon introduces new generation Kindle with Wi-Fi and 3G wireless. The new Kindle is described as smaller, lighter, faster, and has 50% better contrast. The Kindle Wireless Reading Device features WiFi/3G, 6-inch display, and graphite screen. 
Researchers suggest that pregnant women who regularly use mobile phones are putting their babies at risk of developing behavioral problems. 
A new study has discovered that alcohol is a more dangerous drug than heroin and cocaine. The report is from Britain’s Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs. Its research classified drugs on the basis of the harm they do in our society. Alcohol came top of the list, with heroin second and cocaine third. Researchers created nine categories of harm that drugs can do "from death to damage to mental functioning and loss of relationships," and seven types of harm they do to others. Experts in Britain are now calling for new laws to control alcohol. Don Shenker from the group Alcohol Concern said: “The government should now urgently ensure alcohol is made less affordable and invest in prevention and treatment services to deal with the rise in alcohol dependency that has occurred."The research was led by a former government drugs advisor, Professor David Nutt. He has been calling for a change in the way Britain classifies drugs for many years. He was fired in 2009 for his views and claimed the government was more interested in politics than scientific evidence. Any laws that make alcohol a dangerous drug would cause harm to any government trying to win an election. However, the current study is very extensive and strongly suggests he was right to call for a reclassification. Professor Nutt told Britain’s Guardian newspaper: "We need to rethink how we deal with drugs in the light of these new findings." One suggested change is that cigarettes are put in the same category as cocaine, because they cause as much harm to the individual and society.
British Oscar-winning actress Emma Watson has hit out at the slang used by her compatriots. The star of Harry Potter and Nanny McPhee movies told the British magazine Radio Times that she thought too many people in Britain didn’t speak properly. She said a lot of the language she heard on the streets made people sound stupid. In particular, the phrases “innit” and “ain’t” drove her insane. “Innit” started off as a variation of “isn’t it” but is now used to replace a whole variety of tag questions, ranging from “wasn’t it” to “don’t we” and “won’t I”. She made her comments after visiting her old high school. She told the students not to use slang so much, “because it makes you sound stupid and you're not stupid”.
Six of the seven countries with the highest obesity rates are English-speaking nations. This is according to a new report from the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development). The country at the top of the list is the USA. This is followed by Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland. The OECD looked at 33 different countries. The other 26 countries were non-English speaking. The ten slimmest countries included Japan, Korea, Italy, Switzerland and Sweden. Health experts are now wondering why English-speaking countries top the world’s obesity league. One theory is that they are all copying an American lifestyle; people eat a lot of fast food and a lot of it is in sizes considerably larger than those found in the rest of the world.The OECD report contains some interesting statistics. Australia has the fastest growing obesity rates. They are expected to rise by another 15 per cent over the next decade. This compares to an increase of five per cent in South Korea. Education makes a big difference to weight in America and Sweden. Poorly educated women are 30 per cent more likely to be overweight than those who had a good education. Swedish women with poor educations are more than twice as overweight as educated women. In the USA and UK, children are particularly overweight. Around 30 per cent of British kids are overweight, compared with 40 per cent for their American counterparts. In Sweden, one person in ten is obese, although more than half of adult men and a third of adult women are overweight there.
http://breakingnewsenglish.com/1009/100925-being_overweight.html
Google is testing a car it believes is the future of motoring. The Internet giant has been testing the car that drives itself for several months. It has driven along thousands of miles of public roads in California. The car is guided by sensors, lasers and video cameras. A Google spokesperson explained to concerned motorists that the car has never been driven “unmanned,” and had test drivers, just in case things went wrong. The tech company says its vehicles are still “very much at the experimental stage”. Google’s interest in artificial intelligence is a sign that it wants to branch out beyond the web. It is an extension of its Street View project, in which millions of streets have been photographed and put online.Google’s blog said the company’s entry into the world of automotive technology is part of its plans to make the world a better place. “Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] founded Google because they wanted to help solve really big problems using technology,” it wrote. The post continued: “One of the big problems we’re working on today is car safety and efficiency. Our goal is to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use.” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said last month that it was unfortunate that cars were invented before computers: “Your car should drive itself; it’s amazing to me that we let humans drive cars,” he told reporters.
http://breakingnewsenglish.com/1010/101011-self-driving_car.html
NASA is looking for people to go to Mars, and never come back. This appealing career is for people who want a permanent change of scenery and planet. It is part of an ambitious new project to colonize Mars called the Hundred Years Starship. Settlers would travel to the Red Planet and live there forever. NASA says it would be too expensive to bring humans back to Earth. The space agency can afford, however, to send supplies to the astronaut pioneers. NASA has started the project with a modest $1.6 million, but hopes to attract investment from space-loving billionaires. Google founder Larry Page told NASA he’d be interested if they could get the cost of a one-way ticket down from $10 billion to $2 billion.
The increasing popularity of social networking sites and mobile phone texting have presented society with problems in how to protect children online. More and more youngsters are becoming victims of Internet predators and bullies. Parents are finding it more difficult to ensure their kids are safe online. Gone are the days when Mum and Dad could keep an eye on their child’s surfing with parental controls on the family computer. Today’s new mobile and networked world poses new and dangerous threats to online kids. Two recent initiatives aim to teach children about cyber-safety. Internet safety will soon be taught in UAE schools, while in Indiana, USA, parents will attend an Internet Social Networking conference.
Tens of thousands of students across the U.K. took part in protests on Wednesday against their government’s increase in tuition fees. They were speaking out against the three-fold rise in the prices universities can charge, and voicing their opposition to the scrapping of benefits that will harm poor students. The nationwide protest was organized by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC). High school and university students, teachers and lecturers took to the streets to demonstrate. Around 10,000 protestors rallied in London, where there were arrests after ugly clashes left a police officer with a broken arm. The protests were largely trouble-free, unlike those two weeks earlier in which the ruling Conservative Party headquarters was attacked.
Scientists have shown that Mozart has a positive effect on many things, but the great composer himself might be surprised that his music helps bananas ripen. A Japanese fruit company, Toyoka Chuo Seika, claims its bananas taste better after being exposed to Mozart’s music for a week. The company has special “ripening chambers” that play wall-to-wall Mozart to its Philippine bananas non-stop for a week. Company officials say "String Quartet No. 17" and "Piano Concerto No. 5 in D major" are particularly good at sweetening the fruit. The company is very confident its methods work. It has started selling its fruit as "Mozart Bananas" in local supermarkets. A spokesperson believes the bananas will become a hit throughout the rest of Japan once word gets out.The Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Chinzan-so is hosting a cooking class featuring Christmas dishes on Dec. 15.
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Leonardo Di Clemente, the executive chef at the hotel's Il Teatro Italian restaurant, will teach participants how to cook a traditional Italian Christmas meal. The dishes to be introduced include baccala (dried, salted codfish) salad with celery and pomegranate bark; tortellini stuffed with pumpkin and mostarda, served with chicken broth; oven roasted veal with tuna sauce and kuruma-ebi (Japanese tiger prawn) marinated with thyme; and panettone parfait for dessert.
The reception starts at 10 a.m. (continental breakfast will be served), and the cooking class starts at 10:30 a.m. After the lesson, enjoy the meals from 12 p.m., served with wine, at Il Teatro.
The class costs ¥10,000 per person, including tax and service charge, and is available for up to 30 people.
The Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Chinzan-so is a 10-minute walk from Edogawabashi Station on the Tokyo Metro Yurakucho Line. For more information and reservations, call Il Teatro at (03) 3943-6936.
The Hotel Nikko Tokyo in Odaiba has prepared party plans for the yearend and New Year's at its five restaurants and bars. From ¥5,000 per person, the plans are available through Jan. 31.
For example, the ¥5,500 plan (including tax and service charge) at Lounge & Champagne Bar Veranda comes with a sparkling cocktail, eight kinds of finger foods and a selection of desserts, with two hours of unlimited drinks. Unlimited drinks include eight kinds of cocktails, beer, wine, highballs and soft drinks. Sparkling wine can be added for an additional ¥2,000; Champagne for an additional ¥3,000.
The plan at Veranda is available for groups of five or more people between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.
The Hotel Nikko Tokyo is adjacent to Daiba Station on the New Transit Yurikamome Line. For more information or reservations, call(03) 5500-5500.
That which we know the least about is often the most interesting. A case in point is the civilization of the Olmecs. This flourished in Mexico between 1500 B.C and 400 B.C., leaving behind much intriguing evidence in its art and archaeological remains but no written record to explain anything. Because of this, the Olmec have become a fertile source of historical riddles, mysteries, and speculation. This lost world is the subject of "Olmeca: the Most Ancient Civilization of the Americas," a medium-size exhibition at the slightly out-of-the-way Ancient Orient Museum.
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| Ancient stone mysteries: A jade mask (1500-1000 BC) carved using only stone tools shows the artistic sophistication of the ancient Olmec civilization. C.B. LIDDELL PHOTO |
Located on one floor of a building in the Sunshine 60 complex in Tokyo's Ikebukuro area, the museum's space has very little of the mystique and glamour of the ancient times to which it is dedicated. But, for this exhibition, it has made some attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the Olmec world. At the entrance, visitors are greeted by a full-size replica of one of the giant stone heads for which the Olmecs are famous, flanked by a bit of tropical shrubbery and a stuffed jaguar.
The distinct features of these stone heads have prompted imaginative speculation in some quarters that the Olmecs may have been immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa. This, though, is the same sort of overambitious, blue-sky thinking that attributes the pyramids in the New World to architects from the Old. More down-to-earth theories point to artistic stylization and technical reasons, such as stone-carving techniques, as the reason behind the characteristic look of these statues.
Whatever the truth, these giant heads lie at the heart of our understanding of this civilization, which first began to be recognized in the 19th century when antiquarians and historians began to take notice. The word "Olmec" (meaning "the rubber people" in the language of the Aztecs) was then coined to describe this mysterious race and their culture.
As to what the Olmecs actually called themselves, this is an intractable mystery. However, rubber — extracted from trees native to Central and South America — seems to have been important to them. It was used to make large, solid balls that were then used in a sport, which, archaeologists believe, had great ritualistic and religious significance. One interesting theory is that the large stone heads are representations of successful players. Even an alternative theory that suggests the heads are of rulers admits the importance of the sport by conceding that those rulers chose to dress in ball-playing gear.
The exhibition includes a replica of one of the rubber balls, which visitors are encouraged to pick up. Weighing several kilograms, it was used in a game known as "the Mesoamerican ballgame," which continued to be played by later Central American civilizations, such as the Mayas and Aztecs. Thought to resemble volleyball, but without a net, the density of the solid rubber ball meant that a game could include particularly bruising encounters. Also, there is a theory that losing teams were sacrificed to the gods.
The importance of sport provides a point of contact with a modern audience. Another area of fascination for people today is the so-called "Mayan Prophecy" that suggests 2012 will be the end of an immensely long cosmic cycle and the start of new one with potentially dire consequences. Although it is popularly associated with the later Mayan civilization, the calendar on which this "prophecy" is based is thought to have originated with the Olmec. However, apart from a couple of extremely ambiguous stone carvings, the exhibition has very little to offer on the subject except copious explanations in Japanese.
Among the pieces of pottery and fragments of masonry, there are few items that impress at this exhibition, but a couple of jade masks, dating from between 1500 B.C. and 1000 B.C. stand out. Carved using only stone tools, these beautiful representations of the human face show how skillful the Olmec craftsmen could be. Artefacts such as these suggest that — despite the limitations of a civilization that lacked writing, metal tools, and the wheel — the Olmec possessed some profound wisdom, rather like an idiot-savant. Perhaps it is this that fuels our contemporary belief that these ancient Mesoamericans saw something in the year 2012 that our more scientific minds may have missed.
