First it was the fridge mountain, then it was the tyre mountain. Now discarded computers have got environmentalists worried. According to a new study, the world’s relentless appetite for buying new computers — and the ease with which we throw out old ones — is having a major impact on the environment.
Oil prices fell on Tuesday as investors rushed to cash in a day after prices spurted to a post-Iraq war high when OPEC indicated it would shun importers’ calls to scrap a planned cut in output. The price of reference North Sea crude oil for April delivery lost 40c to .40 per barrel in early deals here.
The hungrier you are the more sensitive the taste of sweet and salty food, scientists say. Simply skipping breakfast is enough to make the brain more sensitive to sweet and salty tastes — and could explain why dieting is so difficult.
The blasts in Spain that killed nearly 200 people could illustrate a trend towards "spectacular" attacks, with terrorist groups adopting tactics proven to cause mass casualties, British experts said on Friday.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=32602">’Today, they killed every Spaniard'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=32603">The war moves to Europe</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=32549&t=1">E-mail warns of ‘black wind of death'</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=32550">Another bomb found in Madrid</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=32601">African Union condemns blasts</a>
Anti-terrorist police quizzed four British Muslims on Wednesday, a day after their release from United States custody at Guantanamo Bay, as a fifth savoured freedom for the first time in two years. All five men returned on a flight from the naval base in Cuba where the US holds about 650 alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
McDonald’s is already well on the way to phasing out the few ”super size” menu items that it offers in Europe, a regional spokesperson for the United States fast-food chain said on Thursday. ”In most of Europe, there aren’t portions of that size,” McDonald’s Europe spokesperson Mike Love said in London.
Computers like things precise: on or off, one or zero, yes or no. The real world is rarely precise or exact; information is partial and uncertain and people make judgement calls. Artificial intelligence (AI) is about making computers act more like humans and you might be surprised at how many places it is showing up — from cameras and fridges to spam filters and Microsoft’s forthcoming BizTalk Server 2004.
Britain’s sugar industry is conducting a last-ditch lobbying campaign to prevent Brussels from removing its lucrative virtual monopoly in the high-priced European market in favour of more competitive farmers from the developing world.
Zimbabwe’s ruling party is training children as young as 12 to torture and kill its political opponents, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported on Sunday. The BBC’s investigative programme Panorama said it had interviewed dozens of veterans of training camps for youth militias loyal to President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.
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/ 27 February 2004
South Africa this week emerged as the second African country with which the United Kingdom’s Home Office has started talks to take failed asylum seekers from Britain as part of a concerted drive to step up immigration removals and deportations.
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/ 26 February 2004
British intelligence agents spied on United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in the run-up to the Iraq war, a former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Cabinet said on Thursday. Blair refused to say whether the allegation was true, but said the former minister had been ”deeply irresponsible”.
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/ 26 February 2004
”Woof!” It might sound like a meaningless bark but, in fact, the dog is saying ”Ya ne! Soba ni konai de! [Hey! Don’t come near me!]”. And while a European might make the mistake of approaching the diffident hound, Japanese dog owners would know to steer clear. Why? Because their phones would translate for them.
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/ 25 February 2004
British defence manufacturers are using a ”dangerous loophole” to peddle weapons to developing countries that are subject to arms embargos, the development charity Oxfam said on Wednesday. Components made in Britain are reaching countries such as Zimbabwe, Israel, Indonesia, Uganda, Colombia, Nepal and the Philippines.
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/ 24 February 2004
Libya’s Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem has said that Libya only agreed to pay compensation for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing to ”buy peace”, according to a BBC interview broadcast on Tuesday. He also said there was no evidence that a Libyan was responsible for the shooting of a British policewoman 20 years ago.
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/ 20 February 2004
Some employers say it doesn’t happen in their workplace, many wish it didn’t, but we all know that there are people who flirt at work. Romance at the office is bound to happen. But when does attraction become harassment?
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/ 16 February 2004
Britain’s Treasury chief called on Monday for extra funding to tackle poverty and disease in developing countries, ahead of a globalisation conference to be addressed by the president of the World Bank and the rock star Bono.
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/ 16 February 2004
United States President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair ought to have the guts to say sorry for waging ”an immoral war” against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, according to excerpts of a speech Archbishop Desmond Tutu was to deliver on Monday.
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/ 14 February 2004
A British police chief has revealed the type of weapon he would most like to see officers carry in the future, it was reported on Saturday — a disabling ”phaser gun” of the sort used in television show Star Trek. The gun would be able to turn ”someone’s brain off”, he was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
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/ 6 February 2004
At least 18 shellfish hunters died when they were trapped by fast-rising tides in treacherous Morecambe Bay in northern England, police said on Friday. Police reported seven others were rescued and the search was continuing. The dead — 16 men and two women — were among a group of people all believed to be Chinese nationals.
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/ 6 February 2004
Reviewers have hailed Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation as though it were the cinematic equivalent of the Second Coming. Reading the praise, I couldn’t help wondering whether I had watched a different movie and whether the plaudits had come from a parallel universe of values, writes Kiku Day in London.
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/ 6 February 2004
The end of the most pervasive product of the 20th century may come sooner than expected. World production of plastic bags is at an all-time high, but an additive developed in the United Kingdom is said to be reducing their lifespan from decades to just a few months.
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/ 5 February 2004
Britain’s defence minister on Thursday played down a spiralling row over pre-war information on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction after Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted he was in the dark about a key piece of intelligence. Blair on Wednesday said he had not been clear about what sort of weapons Iraq was alleged to possess.
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/ 3 February 2004
The British government will hold an inquiry into the intelligence used in deciding to go to war with Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday. The announcement comes a day after United States President George Bush announced he would name an independent, bipartisan inquiry into faulty intelligence in Iraq.
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/ 29 January 2004
Greg Dyke, the head of the BBC, resigned on Thursday after a judicial inquiry harshly criticised the network’s journalistic standards. On Wednesday, Judge Lord Hutton criticised the BBC for an ”unfounded” report it broadcast accusing the government of ”sexing up” a dossier about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction with information it knew was wrong.
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/ 28 January 2004
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Wednesday he accepted ”in full” a judicial report that exonerated him of any wrongdoing in the suicide last year of weapons expert David Kelly. ”The report … leaves no room for doubt or interpretation. We accept it in full,” Blair said.
Hutton report clears Blair
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/ 28 January 2004
A judicial inquiry into the suicide of weapons expert David Kelly has cleared British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government of ”dishonourable conduct” or embellishing its September 2002 dossier on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, The Sun newspaper reported on Wednesday.
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/ 23 January 2004
Psychiatrist Robin Murray had never really planned on studying the effects of cannabis on mental health. Rather, he found himself falling into it after noticing that some of his patients, who had been gradually climbing out of the well of schizophrenia, were having relapses after smoking the occasional spliff.
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/ 20 January 2004
The Barclay twins believe their bid to take over Conrad Black’s press empire is ”a done deal” and certain to gain regulatory approval, though there are conditions attached to their offer, a published report said on Tuesday.
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/ 19 January 2004
Stephen Hawking, the severely disabled British scientist renowned for his theories on cosmology, has suffered ”a series of mystery assaults”, the Daily Mirror reported on Monday. Police confirmed they were ”investigating an allegation of assault on a 62-year-old man from Cambridge”.
Britain sought on Tuesday to allay fears about putting sky marshals on commercial airliners, saying it is a "responsible and prudent step" in the face of the threat of global terrorism. The British pilots’ union, Balpa, has recoiled at the plan, and the country’s biggest airline, British Airways, is also reported to be cool to the idea.
There was a time in the ’70s when no one expected Keith Richards to reach 40, let alone 60, when he was (by his own description) ”a human chemical laboratory”. But as the Rolling Stone guitarist approaches his seventh decade, fans are still throwing their knickers at him.
Italian police arrested seven more suspects in the snowballing Parmalat fraud scandal as reports suggested the bankrupt food giant may soon turn to the banks for a multi-million pound rescue package to stay in business. The arrested are suspected of criminal association leading to fraudulent bankruptcy and false accounting.