The chilly waters off northeastern England are rarely that inviting for bathers, but at least those who do venture in for a dip have been able to do so in the knowledge they are safe from sharks. Until now, that is. British maritime agencies have warned surfers and divers thinking of braving the North Sea to be on the alert for a shortfin mako shark.
A girl described as a 17-year-old weakling has beaten three robotic arms powered with plastic muscles in the first arm-wrestling competition of its kind, The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday. ”I was hoping we could have a win, but that didn’t happen,” said Yoseph Bar-Cohen, an expert on responsive plastics with the United States space agency.
Michael Jackson’s defence attorney sought on Tuesday to undermine the credibility of the younger brother of his accuser by presenting a Father’s Day card written by the now 14-year-old to the singer. ”When we get broken and shattered into tiny little pieces, you always heal us,” the boy wrote.
South African companies are involved in dumping illegal weapons in conflict-ridden areas in Africa, an Amnesty International researcher said on Tuesday. ”In one recent example, an air-freight company operating from Johannesburg International airport helped fly several hundred tonnes of weapons into the Great Lakes region,” said Brian Wood, the organisation’s research manager.
Aslan Maskhadov, the leader of the Chechen separatist movement, was killed on Tuesday during a raid by Russian special forces. In a well coordinated media operation, his corpse was shown on the Russian TV channel NTV lying in a pool of blood in the courtyard of the house in whose basement he had been hiding.
During the headier days of his 24 years as CBS news anchor, Dan Rather was called the ”voice of God” of American prime-time television. But when he makes his final send-off on Wednesday night, his exit will be rather less exalted. His departure is the result of a flawed report last September on United State President George Bush’s service in the Texas air national guard.
The Zimbabwean Attorney General has filed an appeal against the early release of 62 alleged South African mercenaries, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reported on Tuesday night. The Zimbabwean High Court last week reduced their sentences by four months, meaning that they could be released immediately.
Spare a thought for the humble tyre. Its entire working life is spent exposed to the elements, it gets dragged along the roughest of road surfaces with scant regard for its well-being, and it receives little, if any, tender loving care. Yet these rubber hoops are what keep our cars and our families safe on the road.
To date, there are just seven Land Rover Defender 147s on our roads, and one is owned by Kian Barker of Shakabarker tours in St Lucia. With a zoology degree and honours in ichthyology, Barker is nobody’s monkey and he soon realised that to provide his guests with the ultimate turtle egg laying/ hatching experience, he needed a very different vehicle.
Mining is never a pretty sight. It has a deserved reputation for defacing nature and putting profit before everything, including the environment. By their very essence, mining and conservation seem to be antithetical concepts. Many old, abandoned mines are unrehabilitated and environmental hazards. <i>Earthyear</i> finds out what’s being done to clean them up.