Saturday, September 4, 2010

Mid Day International News

Mid Day International News

106 years old and still a virgin!

Posted:

A 106-year-old woman in Britain is not only a virgin, she has never ever been kissed.

Isa Blyth, who turned 106 Saturday, puts her longevity to being a virgin, The Sun reported.

She is of the opinion that being single has made her stay strong.

"I'm not sure if anyone ever tried it on - but they never got anywhere! She says she never felt the need for romance and never had time for a man.

"She did like the odd sherry though," her niece Sheena Campbell was quoted as saying.

Blyth was born in 1904.

She used to attend flower club and church, sang in the choir, and played golf or gardening. She always stayed in Edinburgh and worked for 35 years as a private secretary to a whisky producer.

Sheena said: "She was wrapped up in her church and she loved her choir and flower club.

"And she had a high-powered job, which meant she was always busy.

"I think she was also a bit of a maiden lady as she was the first-born and acted as a head with her six brothers and sisters.

"She never had time to be sad. She's an amazing character. You wouldn't believe she was 106."

Twitter tops 145 million registered users: CEO

Posted:

Twitter has over 145 million registered users and more people are using mobile devices to access the microblogging service, according to co-founder Evan Williams.

Williams, in a post on the Twitter blog late Thursday, also said that nearly 300,000 third-party applications have been developed around the service, which allows users to pepper one another with messages of 140 characters or less.

"These new services help people get the most out of Twitter, contributing to user growth and new business opportunities -- both of which are critical to the long-term viability of the ecosystem," Williams said.

The Twitter chief executive said the number of people using Twitter on mobile devices had jumped 62 percent since mid-April and 16 percent of new users start on mobile, up from five percent in April.

Forty-six percent of active Twitter users regularly use a mobile device, he said.

Twitter acquired a third-party mobile application called Tweetie in April and turned it into the official Twitter program for Apple's iPhone.

Applications also exist for using Twitter on Research in Motion's Blackberry and devices powered by Google's Android mobile operating system.

Williams also published figures on the top 10 applications people have used to access Twitter during the past 30 days.

Seventy-eight percent used the official Twitter.com website, 14 percent used Twitter's mobile website m.twitter.com, eight percent used SMS, eight percent used Twitter for iPhone and seven percent used Twitter for Blackberry.

Other applications in the top 10 were TwitPic, a program for uploading photos, TweetDeck, Echofon, Google Friend Connect and UberTwitter.

Twitter said the numbers add up to more than 100 percent because people often use more than one application to access the service.

Amateur gardener grows world's biggest potato

Posted:

Peter Glazebrook has boldly gone where few men have gone before into the record books for the world's biggest potato.

The amateur gardener pulled up the giant spud weighing a whopping 8lbs 4oz (3.76 kg) and found it bore an uncanny resemblance to Star Trek's Enterprise spaceship.

The potato, which was unveiled yesterday at the National Gardening Show in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, weighs 9oz more than the previous record holder.

Glazebrook, (66), is now awaiting verification from the Guiness Book of World Records.

He previously held the world record for the longest carrot, after producing a 17ft long monster.

Glazebrook has also been the double Guinness World Record holder for the heaviest parsnip, at 13lb, and the longest beetroot at 21ft.

The success followed last month's astonishing feat of growing by Maria Desimone who produced a 5ft 6in
courgette in her garden vegetable patch.

The mother-of-two, from Cambridge, said it was her first attempt at growing courgettes and added, "They were outside in all sorts of weather. This one just kept on getting bigger."

Speaking before his latest triumph, he said, "The secret to success is starting with the right seed.

It's learning how to grow them and putting a lot of effort in and picking up tips from other growers and reading what you can about it."

3.76 kg
The weight of the giant spud grown by Glazebrook

Bono could be Prime Minister: Blair

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In a memoir filled with profound navel-gazing, political bombshells and a few purple-prose love scenes, Tony Blair has also found time to salute U2's activist frontman, claiming he "could be ... prime minister".

Blair's new book, A Journey, is the hottest thing in bookshops this week.

It captures the government equivalent of band in-fighting Brown and Blair like the Gallagher brothers and even Blair's struggle with alcohol.

But it's also got a tiny bit of real rock stardom, particularly in a passage on Bono.

All praises

On page 555 (via Spinner), Blair praises Bono as pop's answer to Barack Obama someone who could cross party lines and get things done.

"I knew he would work with George [W Bush] well, and with none of the prissy disdain of most of his ilk," Blair writes.

"[Bono] could have been a president or prime minister standing on his head.

He had an absolutely natural gift for politicking, was great with people, very smart and an inspirational speaker ... [He was] motivated by an abundant desire to keep on improving, never really content or relaxed."

Although he doesn't name his favourite U2 album, Blair does recall anti-Thatcher concerts by Red Wedge in the late 80s.

"There was a group of musicians ... fronted by people like Paul Weller and Billy Bragg, who came out and campaigned for us," he writes.

"It was great. But I remember saying after one of their gigs ... 'We need to reach the people listening to Duran Duran and Madonna'... [The idea] went down like a cup of sick."

Celebrities, Blair explains, "can reinforce, even boost [a political] message ... What they can't do, of course, is substitute for the politics ... but properly used, they help.

And frankly, given the difficulty in rousing the damn thing, [Labour] needed the help." Perhaps U2 could write a new soundtrack for Blair's audiobook.

Smashing records
Tony Blair's memoirs has become the fastest selling autobiography in Britain.

Two days after its release Tony Blair's book, A Journey, is rewriting the rules of British political memoirs traditionally a minor genre in the overall autobiography market.


Wife, mistress meet at mine

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Trapped miner finds himself in tight spot after wife meets lover at Vigil

Hey guys, take your time. One of the trapped Chilean miners is in no rush to be rescued because both his wife and his longtime mistress will be waiting for him when he finally sees the light of day.

Neither woman was aware of the other's existence until they met at a candlelight vigil for the miners.

Yonni Barrios' wife, Marta Salinas, was shocked to hear another woman shouting her husband's name at the gathering held to support the 33 men who are trapped 2,300 feet underground.

They compared notes and figured out that they both had been shafted.

Officials said the miners aren't likely to be rescued before Christmas.

Despite feeling "horrified" about her husband's cheating ways, Salinas (56), has told friends she still plans to welcome Barrios (50), back with open arms once he's freed.

"Barrios is my husband. He loves me and I am his devoted wife," she said. But she's not the only one who feels that way.

Susana Valenzuela, who's been his mistress for five years, insists she'll always be his soul mate.' "We are in love. I'll wait for him," she said.

Salinas clawed back at her rival, refusing to address Valenzuela by name. "This woman has no legitimacy," she hissed.

Valenzuela has been pictured at the mine site with a statue of the Virgin Mary tucked in one arm and holding a sign with a picture of Barrios, along with a heartfelt message to him.

Barrios, who once studied nursing, has been busy providing medical care to the other trapped workers.

He's administered medicine and has vaccinated all the men and himself against the flu and pneumonia with
supplies dropped down the shaft.

A new video shot by the miners late Tuesday showed the men clean-shaven, wearing fresh clothing and enjoying the chance to listen to music.

They've been able to snack on chicken sandwiches, yogurt, cereal and get tea and water daily.

But their request for booze and cigarettes fell on deaf ears.


Judge forces Juror to write five-page essay

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A Detroit-area woman who was removed from a US jury for commenting about the ongoing case on Facebook has a longer writing task ahead: a five-page essay about the constitutional right to a fair trial.

A judge ordered the essay for Hadley Jons, three weeks after she wrote on Facebook that it was "gonna be fun to tell the defendant they're GUILTY".

The trial, however, wasn't over.

"I'm sorry, very sorry," Jons (20), told Macomb County Circuit Judge Diane Druzinski.

The post was discovered by the defence team on August 11 before the defence had even started its case and Jons was removed from the jury the next day.

Druzinski told Jons that it didn't matter whether she used Facebook to express an opinion or simply spoke to a friend about the case.

"You violated your oath. ... You had decided she was already guilty without hearing the other side," the judge said.

By October 1, Jons must submit an essay about the 6th Amendment to the US Constitution and pay a $250 (Rs 13,000) fine.

Jons declined to comment outside court. Her lawyer, John Giancotti, said the outcome was appropriate. He declined further comment.

Jons was a juror in a criminal case against Leann Etchison, who was charged with resisting arrest. She was eventually found guilty.

The Facebook post was found by Jaxon Goodman, the 17-year-old son of Etchison's defence lawyer.

"She'll think twice about how important being on a jury is," Goodman said.


Religious leaders hit back at Hawking

Posted:

Believers slam Nobel Prize winning physicist for saying that God did not create the universe

Religious leaders in Britain yesterday hit back at claims by leading physicist Stephen Hawking that God had no role in the creation of the universe.

In his new book The Grand Design, Britain's most famous scientist says that given the existence of gravity, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing," according to an excerpt.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," he wrote.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going."

Reactions

But the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, said that "physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing."

He added, "Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the universe.

It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence."

Williams' comments were supported by leaders from across the religious spectrum in Britain. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, "Science is about explanation.

Religion is about interpretation. The Bible simply isn't interested in how the Universe came into being."

The Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, added, "I would totally endorse what the Chief Rabbi said so eloquently about the relationship between religion and science."

Ibrahim Mogra, an imam and committee chairman at the Muslim Council of Britain, was also quoted saying, "If we look at the Universe and all that has been created, it indicates that somebody has been here to bring it into existence. That somebody is the almighty conqueror."

Hawking was also accused of missing the point by colleagues at the University of Cambridge in England.
Fraser Watts, an Anglican priest and Cambridge expert in the history of science, said that it's not the existence
of the universe that proves the existence of God.

Hawking's book as the title suggests is an attempt to answer the 'Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything', he wrote, quoting Douglas Adams' cult science fiction romp, The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

His answer is M-theory, which, he says, posits 11 space-time dimensions, vibrating strings, ... point particles, two-dimensional membranes, three-dimensional blobs and other objects that are more difficult to picture and occupy even more dimensions of space."


Posted by Harshad at 7:11 AM

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