Knox appeal for sex-murder case

By M.K. Lim,

Knox, a 23-year-old from Seattle who was jailed for 26 years for the murder, gripped the edges of the sleeves of her blue cardigan and nodded while talking with her lawyers in the courtroom during the hearing.
"We feel as though we have a very good case," her step-father, Chris Mellas, told AFP ahead of the hearing.
"She's going to go home," said Mellas, who has been living in Perugia since September to help Knox prepare for her appeal.

Mellas said the wait for the appeal had been "difficult" for Knox, who was a student in the city at the time of the killing.
To read more, click here.

Virus Hoax on Facebook

By M.K. Lim,

There’s a new message spreading quickly on Facebook users’ walls, warning people about an application called “Christmas Tree.” The message is fake to our knowledge: No internet security firm has issued a threat warning about such an application.


To read more click here.

Potter's Owl Supplier Got Sued

By M.K. Lim,

London : The couple who supplied owls for a Harry Potter flick have landed in a legal trouble.
Veronica Mepham, 70, and husband Reinhard, 64, who run an animal sanctuary, have appeared in court on 36 cruelty charges.

     They are accused of causing unnecessary suffering to 18 animals including guinea pigs, a goat, a rabbit and a hen.

To read more, click here.

Pope says condoms sometimes permissible to stop AIDS

By K.M. LEW


VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Using condoms may sometimes be justified to stop the spread of AIDS, Pope Benedict says in a new book, in surprise comments that relax one of the Vatican's most controversial positions.
     In excerpts published in the Vatican newspaper on Saturday, the pope cites the example of the use of condoms by prostitutes as "a first step towards moralisation", even though condoms are "not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection".

 To read more, click here

The Future of Construction

By Y.C. LIM

A 15-story building built in two days, sound impossible? The Chinese Ark Hotel just proved that it is possible by erecting the entire building in 48 hours.
Level 9 Earthquake Resistance: diagonal bracing structure...(more)

Who is the victim?

By M.K. Lim,

A young hairdresser in Kaluga, Central Russia, locked a robber who tried to steal her money in the basement of the beauty salon. After that, she has brutally raped her hostage for three days. A court in Kaluga has filed criminal charges against both of them, the Russian website Newsru.com reports.


The robber, who has not been named, burst into the salon armed with shotgun at about 17.00 on March 14. He demanded money. There were two hairdressers and one client in the salon at the time. One of hairdressers, who was studying judo and taekwondo, disabled the robber with a smashing body blow. Then she carried the unlucky robber to the basement and bound him with a hairdryer (more)

Black Widow behind bars

By M.K. Lim,

Black Widow that resembles Valeria's personality

     A young Russian woman, a devoted collector of horror films and spiders, is on trial for sedating and raping ten men.

     The police were shocked that 32-year-old Valeria K., a quiet good-looking woman from the city of Tambov, was the mysterious rapist who abused ten local men after poisoning them with clonidine.

To read more click here.

Obama admits losing sight of leadership role

By K.M. LEW

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at DAR Constitutional Hall in Washington September 30, 2010.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama admitted in an interview aired on Friday that he focused on policies but failed to rally people behind those initiatives, leading to Republicans' big gains in congressional elections this week.
     "We were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that we stopped paying attention to the fact that leadership isn't just legislation," Obama said in an excerpt from a CBS "60 Minutes" interview to be broadcast on Sunday.

To read more, click here

Engine problems hit second Qantas aircraft

By K.M. LEW

Engineers inspect the outermost port engine of a Qantas Boeing 747, flight QF6, at Singapore's Changi airport November 6, 2010. A Qantas Boeing 747 aircraft which left Singapore for Sydney on Friday evening has returned to the city-state, a Changi Airport official said on Friday.

SINGAPORE/SYDNEY (Reuters) - Engine trouble forced a Qantas Airways Ltd jet to make an emergency landing in Singapore on Friday, less than 48 hours after another of the Australian carrier's aircraft had to land prematurely because its engine blew up.

     The Sydney-bound Boeing 747-400 aircraft, with 412 people on board, returned to the airport 20 minutes after takeoff due to "an issue with one of its engines," Qantas Airways Ltd said in a statement.

To read more, click here

Qantas plane makes emergency landing in S'pore after losing engine (Updated)

By K.M. LEW

No reports of injuries or explosion, says airline spokesman

SINGAPORE: Qantas says one of its planes safely made an emergency landing Thursday in Singapore, after one of the aircraft's engines shut down while flying over Indonesia.

     A Qantas spokesman in Sydney, Australia, said the A380 aircraft experienced an engine issue soon after taking off from Singapore on a flight to Sydney.

To read more, click here

Girl, 10, gives birth

By K.M. LEW

CADIZ (Spain): A 10-year-old girl has given birth in southern Spain, regional officials said Tuesday,the youngest woman known to have borne a child in the region of Andalusia , according to Qatar News Agency (QNA), citing the German Press Agency (DPA) report.

     The girl gave birth to a baby weighing 2.9kg at a hospital in Jerez de la Frontera a week ago.

     To read more, click here

Live crab vending machine

By K.M. LEW

     This live hairy Shanghai crab vending machine keeps the crabs at 5° C, at which temperature the poor crustaceans go into hibernation. When you insert money (according to the value stated) it will dispense a crab accordingly.

     If it dispenses a dead crab, the machine's owner will give you three free live crabs by way of compensation. 

To read more, click here

Mail Bombs exploded in Athens

By M.K Lim

Investigators surveying explosion area .

ATHENS - A bomb exploded at the Swiss embassy in Athens Tuesday and suspicious packages were detonated by police outside Parliament, the Bulgarian embassy and a courier company, officials said.

     No injuries or damage were reported from Tuesday’s four small explosions. Police say they suspect that far-left domestic groups are responsible for the wave of attacks that began Monday when four mail bombs failed to reach their targets — French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the embassies of Mexico, the Netherlands and Belgium.

     The bombs were found Monday after one exploded at a delivery service in central Athens, lightly wounding a worker at the delivery company.

To read more click here.

China starts counting its wary population

By K.M. LEW

BEIJING (Reuters) - China launched a once-in-a-decade census on Monday in an exercise that will form a basis for policy-making in the world's most populous country, but is likely to face resistance from residents wary of government officials.

     Six million census-takers will fan out across the country from the booming cities on the eastern coast to the remote mountains of restive Tibet as they try to visit some 400 million households over a 10-day period.

To read, click here

Indonesia volcano erupts again, tsunami deaths hit 430

By K.M. LEW

 Mount Merapi volcano spews smoke as seen from Deles village in Klaten, near the ancient city of Yogyakarta, November 1, 2010. (REUTERS/Dwi Oblo)

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's Mount Merapi volcano erupted on Monday for the third time in a week, driving the number of refugees to almost 70,000, as the death toll from a tsunami thousands of kilometres to the west rose to 431, officials said.
     The fresh eruption forced a thick ash cloud around 1.5 kilometres (0.9 miles) into the air above Merapi, which sits on the outskirts of Yogyakarta city in Central Java, and caused panicked residents to flee villages on the slopes of the mountain for safety shelters.

To read more, click here

Public File Sharing

By M.K Lim,

The man behind the project, Adam Bartholl

NEW YORK : Across New York City, a new kind of network is going up. You may see it. USB connections jutting out of walls at locations around the city.

     You can plug into, anybody can, and leave whatever they want and download what they want. The man behind the project, Aram Bartholl, describes the project he calls "Dead Drops".

     "An anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. I am ‘injecting’ USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessible to anybody in public space. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data."

To read more click here.

Death toll in Indonesian tsunami, volcano tops 340

By K.M. LEW

MENTAWAI ISLANDS, Indonesia (AP) - The death toll from a tsunami and a volcano rose to more than 300 Wednesday as more victims of Indonesia's double disasters were found and an official said a warning system installed after a deadly ocean wave in 2004 had broken from a lack of maintenance.

Hundreds were still missing after Monday's tsunami struck the remote Mentawi islands off western Sumatra, where officials were only beginning to chart the scope of the devastation. At least 311 people died as the huge wave, triggered by an undersea earthquake, washed away wooden and bamboo homes, displacing more than 20,000 people.

To read more, click here

Facebook for sale

By M.K. Lim

     There’s a new stocking stuffer for the social gamer on your holiday shopping list: Facebook Credits.

     Already available at Target stores, the social networking site is set to offer the credits which can be used for in-game purchases in games like FarmVille at Walmart and Best Buy too.

To read more click here.

The Truth About War on Iraq

By Y.C. Lim

At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army.

Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout...(more)

Indonesian tsunami kills 108

By K.M. LEW

JAKARTA: At least 108 people have died and more than 500 people are missing on a group of Indonesian islands hit by a tsunami, according to local officials. And the country’s most active volcano Mount Merapi has erupted three times and continued to do so Tuesday night. 

To read more, click here