RIGHTS TRASHED

Games 'catalyst for China abuses'

Amnesty said China had failed to keep its promise to improve human rights in the lead up to the Games.Chinese authorities have not yet commented on the report.Committee pleaThe report said the August 2008 Olympics was "a catalyst for a continued crackdown on human rights defenders, including prominent rights defence lawyers and those attempting to report on human rights violations".

BRAIN SPACE

Hawking escapes wheelchair on zero-gravity flight

Cosmologist Stephen Hawking soared into weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight that allowed the leading expert on gravity to escape his wheelchair for a brief period of time."It was amazing ... I could have gone on and on," Professor Hawking, 65, said after riding for two hours on a modified jet that flew a rollercoaster trajectory to create the impression of microgravity.

HYPER RICH

Russia's 'secret city' is lined with huge mansions

Moscow's suburb for billionaires

According to Forbes magazine Russia now has 60 billionaires. It is quite a change for a place that 15 years ago had no millionaires, let alone billionaires.

How exactly these people have got hold of such vast wealth in such a short time is a very good question, and one many ordinary Russians would like answered.

[Fifteen years ago everything in Russia was owned by the state. Today a quarter of Russia's economy is owned by 36 men.]

MYSTERIOUS FIRE

“Spontaneous” ignition blamed

Spontaneous combustion is being blamed for a small shed fire behind a business on Strathalbyn’s historic High Street last week.
The fire on Monday, April 16, caused $300 damage to two pieces of furniture held in storage after being salvaged from a major fire at the nearby Antiques Bazaar back in February.
Sergeant Mark Thomas from Hills Police said the fire was not suspicious.
“A rag soaked in linseed oil and mineral turps was left on top of a wooden cabinet and it is believed to have spontaneously combusted,” he said.

SEA GOING

'Ghost yacht' found drifting off Australian coast

Australian authorities have ended their search for the crew of a yacht found off Australia's Great Barrier Reef, saying their fate remains a mystery.

The Kaz II was found with its engine running, a laptop computer switched on sitting on a table and neatly folded clothes and sunglasses on deck, but there were no signs of any people.

The three-crew members are thought to have set sail for Townsville from Airlie Beach on Sunday.
The 12m (40 foot) catamaran was spotted by a helicopter on Wednesday, but a rescue team only reached the boat on Friday, and confirmed that there was no one aboard. An air and sea rescue operation retraced the yacht's voyage.

News Limited reports: The yacht, which had a badly torn sail, was found with its motor still running, while the vessel's dinghy remained attached.

Original item.

[Remember the Marie Celeste? Or was it the Mary Celeste?]

OUR COSMOS

The gyroscopes used in Gravity Probe B are 'the most perfect spheres ever made'.

Einstein was right, probe shows

Early results from a Nasa mission designed to test two key predictions of Albert Einstein show the great man was right about at least one of them. It will take another eight months to determine whether he got the other correct say scientists analysing data from Nasa's Gravity Probe B satellite.

One of these effects is called the geodetic effect, the other is called frame dragging. A common analogy is that of placing a heavy bowling ball on to a rubber sheet.
In the analogy, the geodetic effect is similar to the shape of the dip created when the ball is placed on to the rubber sheet.
If the bowling ball is then rotated, it will start to drag the rubber sheet around with it. In a similar way, the Earth drags local space and time around with it - ever so slightly - as it rotates.
Over the course of a year, these effects would cause the angle of spin of the gyroscopes to shift by minute amounts.

[Other experiments are due to test the equivalence principle which stems from the observation that when two objects are dropped, they will accelerate at the same rate.
"Here there is a theoretical framework where one might expect to see a departure from the equivalence principle," said Professor Sumner. "This might give us pointers as to the way forward."]

COAL-MINE CANARIES

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

Scientists suggest that mobile phone radiation (and that of other hi-tech gadgets) is responsible for the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops.
Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers.
The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

[The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing them from finding their hives. There is now evidence to back this up.]

OIL WARS

Middle East fears broken Iraq

When you travel around the Middle East and ask people about how the war in Iraq has affected them you get a combination of regret, anger and trepidation.

Meanwhile ...

On the flight deck of the enormous US aircraft carrier the USS Eisenhower in the Gulf this week, warplanes were being shot out of the steam catapults on the flight deck with engines that roared and screamed so loudly you felt it in your sinuses, teeth and jawbone.
"Listen to it," one of the officers told me when the warplanes were launched and streaking up the Gulf to Iraq.

"It is the sound of freedom."

SACRED EARTH

Sacred Mound Springs drying up due to mining

The Sacred Mound Springs are of profound cultural significance to the Aboriginal people of the region. The Arabunna people are the traditional custodians of the Lake Eyre South region, the land in which effected mound springs are located. The springs and the Artesian waters that supply them form an integral part of the communal intellectual property of the Arabunna people.

WMC refused to negotiate with the Arabunna or be party to any initiatives to preserve and protect the mound springs.

In fact, former owners WMC mounted an extensive campaign against the World Heritage nomination of the Lake Eyre Basin. It had a vested interest in preventing World Heritage nomination because of its profligate use of water from the Great Artesian Basin.

[Olympic Dam's infamy stems in part from its thirst: the mine draws around 45 million litres of water per day from the Great Artesian Basin under the surface of central Australia to process the ore.]

SKY LIGHTS

Re: Strange lights seen over southern Queensland

An Adelaide skywatcher saw something at about the same time as the Queensland phenomenon and concluded it was a malfunctioning Russian satellite.

COAL-MINE CANARIES

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." - Albert Einstein

Flowers and fruit crops facing disaster as disease kills off bees

Devastating diseases are killing off vast numbers of bees across the country, threatening major ecological and economic problems. Honeybee colonies have been wiped out this winter at twice the usual rate or worse in some areas.
The losses are the result of either Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a disease that has already decimated bee populations in the US and parts of Europe, or a new, resistant form of Varroa destructor, a parasite that attacks bees.
Experts fear that, because honeybees are responsible for 80 per cent of all pollination as they collect nectar for the hive, there could be severe ecological problems with flowers, fruit and crops failing to grow.

In London, about 4000 hives — two-thirds of the bee colonies in the capital — are estimated to have died this winter.
In the US, 50 per cent of honeybee colonies have been destroyed by CCD, while hundreds of thousands have been wiped out in Spain.
Bee-keepers in Poland, Greece, Croatia, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal have also reported heavy losses. Meanwhile, scientists at universities in Southampton and Stirling who are concerned about declining numbers of wild bumblebees — which also aid pollination — are to use dogs to search for colonies in Scotland and Hertfordshire this year.

L'AMIE

© abk.