Match-tip tiny, Brookesia micra (juvenile pictured) is the smallest of four new chameleon species found on the African island country of Madagascar. With an average adult length of just over an inch (2.9 centimeters) from snout to tail, B. micra is among the tiniest reptiles in the world. Read more Photos
National Geographic
Bacon's 1963 work "Portrait of Henrietta Moraes" was snapped up by an unnamed telephone bidder at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art auction, which realised £80.6 in total.
The Bacon auction record is $86.3 million for his 1976 "Triptych" which was achieved at Sotheby's New York in May 2008.
The painting sold on Tuesday was described in the catalogue as "the most seductive painting ever realised by Francis Bacon". Bacon died in 1992 and is now regarded as one of the 20th century's most important artists.
German visual artist Richter's large 1994 green, blue and pink "Abstraktes Bild" sold for £9.9 million, following on from the $20.8 paid for one of his abstracts at a New York sale last November. (AFP)
Claire Simmons, 33, reportedly has selective eating disorder - likely to have developed from an unwillingness to try new foods - and as a result hasn't consumed anything else other than cheese and tomato pizza since the age of 2.
She told The Sun that she gags if any other food is in her mouth.
Simmons stated: "I keep myself healthy with exercise and drink a lot of water.
"But my GP says I'm storing up many problems for the future due to a lack of vitamins and minerals."
Simmons, who shared her story with the tabloid newspaper after reading about the teenager who lives on a diet of chicken nuggets, adds that she too has been warned about the risks of continuing with her diet.
She also defended herself despite not eating any fruit or vegetables, saying that she's "scared" of them.
"I get so angry when people think I'm being faddy," she commented. "This is a real medical condition."
Source: Digital Spy
PARIS: A probe designed to delve into the "Big Bang" that created the cosmos has uncovered an enigmatic fog of microwave radiation in the centre of our galaxy, European astronomers reported on Monday.Planck, a billion-dollar European space telescope launched in May 2009, found "a mysterious haze of microwaves that presently defies explanation" during a scan of the centre of the Milky Way, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.
It could be a form of energy called synchrotron emission, which occurs when electrons zip through magnetic fields after being accelerated by the blast of an exploding star, or supernova.
But the newly discovered emission is something of a mystery, as its signature lingers far longer compared with other synchrotron sources spotted in the Milky Way.
Several explanations have been offered, ranging from higher rates of supernovae in the galactic centre to the annihilation of so-called dark matter particles, ESA said in a press release.
Planck, deployed in orbit 1.5 million kilometres (937,000 miles) from Earth, is designed to pick up tiny variations in temperature in microwave energy released after the Big Bang that created the universe some 14 billion years ago.
Scientists looking at the data have to filter out a haze of microwave emissions that obscure the precious telltale, known as Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation.
The new results are being presented this week at a conference in Bologna, Italy, which is looking at the intermediate results from the mission.
Planck has also located concentrations of carbon monoxide among the clouds of cold gas in the Milky Way and other galaxies that are a reservoir for making stars. (AFP)
KARACHI: Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) adds another feather in its cap by carrying two passengers in its flight from Lahore to Karachi in toilet due to non-availability of seats, Geo News reported Tuesday.The captain of the national flag carriers' flight PK 303 accommodated two passengers in the plane's toilet, as all the seats in the plane were occupied and there was no more seat left for them.
Through introduction of its amazing new service for its valued passengers, PIA really does justice to its slogan 'Great people to fly with)'.
JAKARTA: "Angry Birds", the most-downloaded mobile app of 2011, was catapulted to the world of Facebook on Tuesday in a bid by its Finnish maker Rovio to get one billion people playing the addictive game.Fans were able to test the new Angry Birds Facebook app online Tuesday morning ahead of its official global launch in Jakarta, the world's most Facebook-connected city.
"With the great success of the Angry Birds game on smartphone platforms, Rovio intends to reach more fans and be on every screen and every platform," Rovio Asia senior vice president Henri Holm said in a statement.
"Therefore, the company developed Angry Birds on Facebook to reach more than 800 million Facebook users worldwide."
In the game, players fling colourful and grumpy wingless birds from a slingshot into smarmy egg-stealing pigs.
It has been downloaded more than 700 million times since it launched in 2009 and the birds have become a global phenomenon, featuring on a huge array of merchandise and in popular culture. (AFP)
A British man is believed to have given birth, causing an ethical controversy.The ‘male mother’ started life as a woman but underwent a sex change. He is thought to have had the baby last year, while living as a man.
Medical experts said that if the womb is not removed in sex change surgery, there is nothing to stop a woman who becomes a man from having a child.
But others said that the welfare of the baby is paramount and queried how the child will deal with even the simplest of issues, such as whether to call the man ‘Mummy’ or ‘Daddy’.
Only a handful of ‘male mothers’ have given birth worldwide and this is believed to be the first case in Britain.
Details were revealed by Joanna Darrell of the Beaumont Society, which provides support to those have changed sex or would like to do so, a process also known as gender reassignment.
She said the man, in his thirties, inquired about the practicalities of having a baby after the surgery. Read Full Story at Daily Mail uk
While Europe shivers through a severe cold snap that has killed hundreds of people, Winnipeg has enjoyed its third-mildest January in more than a century, with the average temperature a relatively balmy -10.8 Celsius (12.6 Fahrenheit).
It's been the same story across much of Canada. Toronto, the country's biggest city, was forecast to climb well above the freezing mark on Thursday, while Berlin will be at -11 C going into the weekend and Paris and London will hover around -6 C.
"People refer to Winnipeg as Winterpeg so they expect it to be really cold, but everyone is really happy about the warm weather," said Emili Bellefleur, spokeswoman for Festival du Voyageur, which includes snow carvings of wolves, bison and cultural symbols around the city of 700,000.
"We're going to take it, you know?"
With supplies of natural snow skimpy, the festival is trucking in artificially made snow from a winter recreation area, similar to the machine-made snow used on ski hills.
Bellefleur said she knows of only one other year that the 43-year-old festival had to buy artificial snow.
Winnipeggers and others in Western Canada can thank a flip-flop in air pressure patterns for the mild winter, which has funneled warmer southwest air across the Prairies, said Natalie Hasell, meteorologist at Environment Canada.
Normally, the La Nina weather phenomenon off the Pacific Coast of North America would leave the Prairies digging out of frigid, snowier than usual conditions.
But this winter it's been much milder, and bone dry. Nearly all of the country's main grain-growing region has received below-normal precipitation since November 5.
While Winnipeggers have happily put away their snow shovels, a dozen of the Festival du Voyageur's snow sculptors, coming from as far away as Switzerland, the Netherlands and even Mexico have been shocked by the mild weather.
Usually, "the worst part for them when they come from Mexico is dealing with the cold itself," Bellefleur said. "Not necessarily the (lack of) snow." (Reuters)
MOSCOW: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin received a drink fit for dinosaurs on Friday when he was presented with a sample of ancient water from a sub-glacial Antarctic lake pierced by Russian scientists.Russian scientists said this week they had drilled through Antarctica's frozen crust to the vast Lake Vostok, which has lain untouched for at least 14 million years hiding what scientists believe may be unknown organisms and clues to life on other planets.
"Well, did you drink the water?" Putin asked Russia's Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev after being presented with a vial of water which the government said was from the Vostok borehole.
Trutnev, looking flustered, assured Putin that he had not tried a drop of the water.
"Well it would have been interesting you know: dinosaurs drank it and Trutnev, a member of the Russian government, too," Putin said with a smile.
Trutnev stifled a chortle and said he did not want to be dinosaur.
Sealed deep under the ice, Lake Vostok is one of the world's last unexplored frontiers. Scientists suspect its depths may provide a glimpse of the planet before the ice age. (Reuters)
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| drawing by L.Gedö from 'Sittengeschichte des Weltkrieges' |
Peter Laskaris, owner of Vienna's Red Rooms Laufhaus, is offering up a free bed, a hot shower and a meal to ten people every night. However, he insisted that "other services are not included".
"We are not really doing much business in the current cold weather anyway and it is the school holidays - a lot of people are off away with their families," he said.
"Lots of our rooms are empty and it seemed a shame not to use them for a good cause. In these cold temperatures nobody should be left out on the streets."
Laskaris added that he is currently in talks with other brothels to d the same as temperatures in the city reach as low as -20 degrees.
"The homeless shelters are completely full. People need a warm place to stay," he said. "None of my girls are complaining - they will have a lot of sympathy for the homeless.
"We have security staff here anyway but it's been no problem - everyone who has taken up the offer has been very grateful to have a warm roof over their heads."
Source: Digital Spy
He is being accompanied by a documentary production team to tape the carcass. On Thursday, Karachi Fish Harbour Authority (KFHA) officials, after weighing the carcass at Weigh Bridge, moved it to the site of a former zoological museum inside the harbour to preserve it for research.
KFHA officials said the exact weight of the whale shark was 14.5 tons. They said a four-member team of British experts from the 'Windfall Films' production company, along with a scientist who specialises in whale sharks, was arriving today (Friday) to conduct the dissection of the dead marine mammal and ascertain the cause of its death.
Producers from Windfall Films, which is known for producing documentaries and films on science fiction, contacted KFHA officials and had shown interest in documenting their investigation into the cause of death of the whale shark.
Fisheries authorities said some experts from Marine Fisheries Department and the Centre of Excellence in Marine Biology, University of Karachi, also visited the Fish Harbour, and collected samples of the whale shark.
Meanwhile, KFHA authorities approached the director general of the National Museum to request him to preserve the whale shark.(The News pk)