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Monday, March 9, 2009

The 2009 Tim Hortons Brier and the 2009 Scotties Tournament of Hearts are hosting premier Canadian curlers in a competition for the right to advance to the World Curling Championship. The champions will also have a chance to compete at the 2009 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials for the privilege of representing Canada at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Jennifer Jones’ Team Canada from Winnipeg, Manitoba became repeat Canadian champions during the 2009 Scotties Tournament of Hearts held from February 21 to March 1 at the Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre in Victoria British Columbia. They will now proceed to the 2009 World Womens Curling Championship at Gangneung, South Korea from March 21 to 29, 2009. They are also guaranteed a spot in the 2009 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials.

The men’s Canadian curling for the Ford World Curling Championship, will be determined between March 7 to 15 at the Calgary Pengrowth Saddledome in Alberta during the 2009 Tim Hortons Brier. Currently Kevin Martin’s Albertan team is in the lead. The winning team will then advance to the Ford World Championship held April 4-12 at the Coliseum in Moncton, New Brunswick.

The 2009 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials will be December 6-13, 2009 at Rexall Place in Edmonton, Alberta. Teams are selected from the winners of major curling championship in Canada to create a pool for the 2009 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials, including the 2006–07 to 2008–09 winners of the Strauss Canada Cup tournament, the Players’ Championships, and the Canadian Men’s/Women’s Curling Championships. The 2010 XXI Winter Olympics will be held February 12-28, 2010, in Vancouver, British Columbia. The 2010 Canadian Women’s Curling Championship will be held in the Essar Centre, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and the 2010 Men’s Brier will be held in the Metro Centre, downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Curling is a popular winter sport in Canada, with over one million Canadians involved in the sport across Canada. Approximately 1 in 3 adult Canadians, around eleven million, watch the sport either live or via television.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Internet giant Google has begun a pilot program, allowing users of its “Maps” service to look inside businesses. This tool is aimed to further the controversial Street View feature which already allows the public to access 360° images of streets.

A spokesman for Google described the new feature: “Building on the Google Art Project, which took Street View technology inside 17 acclaimed museums, this project is another creative implementation of Street View technology, to help businesses as they build their online presence.” He also told of how the company hoped the service would “Enable businesses to highlight the qualities that make their locations stand out through professional, high-quality imagery.”

Combating previous complaints about privacy, this service will be rolled out on an entirely voluntary basis, with businesses allowed to post their own photographs. Businesses will also be instructed to warn customers that they will be photographed.

Google will roll out this initiative across the world with initially-selected locations including London and Paris as well as a number of other cities in Japan and Australia.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Tera Myers, a former actress in pornographic films, has left her position as a science teacher at Parkway North High School in St. Louis County, Missouri after her past was revealed by a student. This marks the second such controversy involving Myers, also known under the names Tericka Dye and the stage name Rikki Anderson. She was suspended by Kentucky’s McCracken County Public Schools system in 2006 after her career in pornography was made public.

Don Senti, interim superintendent of the district, said Myers was on administrative leave from her position at the school at her own request. Myers’ request, granted “out of respect for her privacy and that of her family,” came after a student inquired about her pornographic career. The district said Myers passed background checks before being hired as a teacher in 2007, but it did not know about her past until the student found out about it online, because her career in the pornography industry was legal. A Parkway representative said the Kentucky school at which Myers last worked was contacted in 2007 to verify her references, but no mention of her suspension or stint in pornography was provided.

Myers will continue to be paid until the end of the semester, at which time she is to leave the Parkway School District. “We’re surprised, very surprised,” said Parkway spokesperson Paul Tandy. “At the same time we feel for her and her family. We do believe she has tried to move on with her life … Unfortunately, even though it happened fifteen years ago, [the video] is still there.” According to Tandy, Dye “was concerned about the impact it would have in the building,” and, on March 4, informed the school’s principal of her past after being asked by the student. Myers also was the coach of the girls’ volleyball at Parkway North High School.

Myers previously taught at Reidland High School in Paducah, Kentucky, and was suspended in 2006 after a student there discovered her pornographic career. That May, Myers defended herself, saying, “Anybody who has been in my classroom could tell you how much I love teaching and how much I love these students, and that should be what matters more than anything in my past.” Known as Tericka Dye at the time, she protested against her dismissal and even appeared on the “Dr. Phil” talk show.

Myers said she became involved in the adult industry after working as an impoverished exotic dancer in California.

Thursday, April 6, 2006

It has been confirmed that tests done on a dead Mute Swan found in the village of Cellardyke in Fife, Scotland has tested positive for the deadly strain of H5N1 Bird Flu virus. The swan is believed to have been native to Scotland.

Two other swans found in Richmond Park in Glasgow are being tested for the H5N1 virus. They are among at least 14 other dead birds and 12 more swans found in Glasgow, that are being tested for the H5N1 virus.

This is the United Kingdom‘s first confirmed case of the H5N1 virus and would make the U.K. the 14th country to report the virus.

“The risk to humans has not changed by the fact that we have found the virus in the U.K.. There is a better chance of a person winning the national lottery than catching bird flu in the U.K. today,” said Doctor Jim Robertson from the National Institutes for Biological Standards and Control in a press conference.

“We also have to work on the assumption that there is some spread among wild birds. There is no doubt we are getting closer to the day when moving birds indoors will be necessary,” said former President of the British Veterinary Association, Bob McCracken. “The situation is that the virus is there, and it will probably continue to circulate among the birds. It will spread through close contact, irrespective of species. There is one big question mark: Will the virus disappear from wild birds after a period of six months, or will it still be present after a period of six years?” added McCracken.

McCracken also said that the virus could turn up in more birds saying, “I would start from the assumption that a small pool of wild birds in the Fife area are infected and potentially passing it on to other birds” and that seagulls could pose a threat of passing on the virus because they have been known to peck at the bodies of other dead birds that were infected. “We have to assume that,” he said.

In a statement by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, released yesterday, the Scottish Executive confirmed that a “highly pathogenic H5 avian flu” virus was found in a sample taken from the dead swan.

The swan was discovered March 29, 2006 and has been confirmed as a domestic species and officials say that it may have caught the virus from another infected bird. Officials also report that the area where the swan has been found is being sealed off.

“In accordance with a recent EU decision the Scottish Executive is putting in place a protection zone of a minimum of three kilometres radius and a surveillance zone of 10 kilometers. Keepers of birds in the protection zone are being instructed to isolate their birds from wild birds, by taking them indoors where ever possible,” said the Scottish Executive in a statement.

Samples from the swan were sent to the European Union Bird Flu Laboratory at Weybridge.

“Bird keepers outside the protection zone should redouble their efforts to prepare for bringing their birds indoors if that becomes necessary. They must also review their biosecurity measures to ensure that all possible precautions have been taken,” said Charles Milne, Chief Veterinary Officer for Scotland yesterday in the statement.

An exercise named ‘Exercise Hawthorn’ was to prepare people for a possible pandemic was taking place yesterday and was halted just after the discovery of the dead swan. Officials were in the second phase of the exercise. Taking part in the exercises were the Ministry of Defence, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Environment Agency and several other areas of the British government.

“I brought to an end the national avian influenza exercise to ensure that we can bring all our resources to bear on this situation. We are already in a high state of readiness and I have every confidence that officials north and south of the border will work together to manage this incident successfully,” said the United Kingdom’s Chief Veterinary Officer, Debby Reynolds.

However; today Reynolds stated “there is no reason for public health concern” and also stated that in order for Bird Flu to infect humans, it would require “extremely close contact with infected birds, particularly feces.”

According to the World Health Organization H5N1 has killed 109 people worldwide since 2003.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

A new television advert for Diet Coke featuring singer Duffy has been cleared by the Advertising Standards Authority in the United Kingdom after they received twenty two complaints.

The advert depicts Duffy cycling through a supermarket during a concert she was performing in. Eighteen viewers complained because she was not wearing reflective clothing and her bicycle had no lights. Four other viewers complained because they believed children could copy her actions.

ASA upheld Coca Cola’s argument that the ad was supposed to reflect Duffy’s fantasy and her escape from the pressures of celebrity and that children would realise cycling around a supermarket was not a realistic idea.

Friday, July 14, 2017

On Wednesday, astronomers at the University of Cambridge in England announced the discovery of a dwarf star, known as EBLM J0555-57Ab, which is slightly bigger than Saturn and smaller than Jupiter. It was found using data from an array of automated telescopes called the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP). The study was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The star belongs to the Milky Way galaxy and is approximately 600 light years away from Earth. Its mean radius is about 80 percent the size of the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter, but despite its small size it is very dense. Its mass is almost 85±4 times the gas giant, the study said. The star’s surface gravitational pull is about eleven times stronger than the Sun’s — 300 times the strength by which the Earth attracts matter. It is part of a binary star system, meaning it moves around the galaxy with another star, both orbiting around the same central point. However, it stays so close to its companion star, that it takes about 7.8 days to orbit around the pair’s shared centre. The distance between the two stars is less than between Mercury and the Sun, and about eight percent of an astronomical unit, in stark contrast to the 100–1000 astronomical units that typically separates two stars in such a system.

It was discovered by the method called “astronomical transit”. This method is used to discover planets or satellites, and the astronomers initially thought it was merely an exoplanet. During a planet’s revolution, when it crosses its parent star, there is a dip in the brightness of the light coming from the parent star. The companion of this dwarf is the size of the Sun, and it is brighter than the dwarf, making the discovery more difficult. “Indeed, until we measured the mass it looked just like a transiting planet”, Amaury Triaud, co-author of the paper, told Popular Mechanics. With a brightness 2000 to 3000 times fainter than the Sun, it was the mass that indicated it was actually a dim star.

According to lead author of the study, Alexander von Boetticher, their “discovery reveals how small stars can be.” He added, “Had this star formed with only a slightly lower mass, the fusion reaction of hydrogen in its core could not be sustained, and the star would instead have transformed into a brown dwarf”. A brown dwarf converts hydrogen to deuterium, a hydrogen isotope, rather than helium, which is the usual result of such a process from most stars including the Sun.

The tiny star’s temperature is lesser than most known gas giant exoplanets. “That star likely represents the smallest natural fusion reactor that we know of[…] We’re trying to replicate fusion on Earth in labs, but that’s basically as small as it gets in nature”, Triaud told CBC News. The size of the star makes it difficult to study, but the brightness of its companion star also makes it more challenging. “It’s like trying to look at a candle beside a lighthouse,” Triaud said.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Traces of radioactive material that apparently killed former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko were found at restaurants where he met other spies just before falling ill and at his home, Scotland Yard said Friday.

Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who was investigating the death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya suddenly fell ill on November 1. In interviews, he stated that he had met with two former KGB officials earlier in the day, and then had had lunch at Itsu, a sushi restaurant on Piccadilly in London. He died two days later at the age of 44.

“Traces of Polonium-210 were found at the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, the Millennium Hotel, Grosvenor Square, and at Mr. Litvinenko’s home in Muswell Hill, London,” Scotland Yard said in a statement. “We are not prepared to discuss further.”

Roger Cox, head of the HPA’s radiation protection branch, confirmed that the radiation was found in Litvinenko’s body.

“A large quantity of alpha radiation from polonium-210 was found in the urine of Mr. Litvinenko”, Cox said, adding that it was “unlikely” that the radioactive material came from natural sources.

Litvinenko, in a statement written before his death and read Friday, accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being behind his murder, a charge Putin denied.

“You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life,” Litvinenko said in his statement.

Doctors all around the world have been explaining to the media how harmful Polonium-210 can be to a person.

“Only a very, very small amount of polonium would need to be ingested to be fatal, but that depends on how pure the polonium is,” said Dr. Mike Keir, a radiation protection adviser at the Royal Victoria Infirmary.