Eathquake Strikes San Francisco Bay Area

A MODERATE earthquake has struck the San Francisco Bay area.Initial reports say the quake was 5.6 on the Richter scale.The magnitude-5.6 tremor, centered about 9 miles northeast of San Jose, was the strongest to hit the Bay Area since the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, which killed 62 people, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists have warned for decades of another big one—this time on the Hayward, which runs through a 50-mile swath of suburbia east of San Francisco.

The San Jose Mercury news website reported the earthquake caused minor damage, but did not give details.It said residents poured out of apartments in downtown San Jose to survey the damage.

Tuesday's temblor, however, came from the lesser-known Calaveras Fault. The quake produced no reports of serious injuries or damage, officials said, but it managed to rattle nerves and homes when it struck shortly after 8 p.m. The shaking was widely felt within an 80-mile radius, as far away as Santa Rosa, Sacramento and Monterey.

The epicenter was near Alum Rock, in the Diablo Range foothills east of San Jose—not far from home of Mayor Chuck Reed.

The website also reported phone service failed in a part of Palo Alto, home to Hewlett-Packard computer company and Stanford University.

"It was pretty significant. you could actually hear the rumbling of the ground. It was a good shake," said Nick Muyo, a spokesman for the San Jose Police Department.

Asked about damage, he said he knew of "nothing other than things tipping off cabinets and dressers."The quake occurred at a depth of 9.2 km, according to official monitors.

Historically, severe quakes have occurred on the Hayward every 151 years, give or take 23 years. The last one to hit was in 1868, meaning it is now into the danger zone.

The Association of Bay Area Governments estimates such a powerful Hayward quake would wipe out some 155,000 housing units, 37,000 in San Francisco alone.

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Mosul Dam On The Verge of Collapse

The largest dam in Iraq is in serious danger of an imminent collapse that could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, possibly killing thousands of people and flooding two of the largest cities in the country, according to new assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other U.S. officials.The top U.S. military commander in Iraq in a briefing to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in May that the country's biggest dam, just up the Tigris River from Mosul, is at risk of collapsing, putting the city's 1.7 million people in danger of being inundated by a 65-foot flood wave.

The letter from Army Gen. David Petraeus, co-signed by the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, is included in an audit to be published today.

The report found that little or no progress has been made to shore up the Mosul Dam since the May warning, largely because a $27 million project funded by U.S. reconstruction money has been plagued by mismanagement and possible fraud.

It seems Iraq is being pounded by both man and nature . With daily bombing and bloodshed being a part of Iraqi life. This news could not come at a worst time ..

Mosul is a city in northern Iraq and the capital of the Ninawa Governorate. It stands on both banks of the Tigris River, with five bridges linking the two sides, some 396 km (250 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

The fabric Muslin, long manufactured here, is named for this city. Another historically important product of the area is Mosul marble.

In 1987, the city's population was 664,221 people; the 2002 population estimate was 1,739,800. It is Iraq's third largest city, after Baghdad and Basra.

The city of Mosul is home to the University of Mosul, one of the largest educational and research centers in Iraq and the Middle East.

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Jimmy Conway

And you learn the two greatest things in life. Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.


from: Goodfellas (1990)
-- Jimmy Conway

Jeremy Blake video for Beck’s “Round the Bend”

"I am deeply saddened at the news of the loss of Jeremy Blake. I got to work with him back in 2002 on the art for the Sea Change album. His pioneering video paintings had an intelligence and power that seemed to open the door to the possibilities of what the medium could become. I had not heard from him in a few years, so it was heartbreaking to learn of this turn of events. I feel really privileged that I got to collaborate with him, and be a part of the world he created with his work. My condolences go out to his family and friends. We'll be forever in his debt for the stunning images he gave us." Jeff Beck, July 27,2007

Ben Mezrich New Book "Rigged" draws rave reviews

Ben Mezrich has already written New York Times best-seller 'Bringing Down The House', but he has written a new book - "Rigged" : The True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, From Wall Street to Dubai"

'Rigged' is said to be a true, explicit story of an 'Ivy League Kid Who Changed The World Of Oil, From Wall Street To Dubai'.

Ben Mezrich is an American author from Boston, Massachusetts, who started out writing fiction but now has made his foray into non-fiction. He graduated magna-cum-laude from Harvard in 1991. He has since published eight books which have together sold over a million copies in nine different languages. Some of his books have been written under the pseudonym Holden Scott.

Mezrich is best known for his first non-fiction work, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions . This book tells the story of a group of students from MIT who bet on blackjack games using a sophisticated card counting system, earning millions of dollars at casinos in Las Vegas and other gambling centers in the United States and the Caribbean.

This is the startling rags-to-riches story of an Italian-American kid from the streets of Brooklyn who claws his way into the wild, frenetic world of the oil exchange.

After conquering the hallowed halls of Harvard Business School, he enters the testosterone-laced warrens of the Merc Exchange, the asylumlike oil exchange located in lower Manhattan. A place where billions of dollars trade hands every week, the Merc is like a casino on crack, where former garbagemen become millionaires overnight and where fistfights break out on the trading floor.( source:ebooks )

Other Non-Fiction Books Written By Ben Mezrich :

* Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (2002)
* Ugly Americans : The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions (2004)
* Busting Vegas : The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees (2005, ISBN 0060575123)
* Rigged : The True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, From Wall Street to Dubai (2007)

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Miss England Georgie Horsely ordered To get Fat for Miss World

photocredits:celebrity insider blog

Now this is beauty with a difference. In fact its "beauty with a little bit of fat".Miss England Georgia Horsley has been asked to put on weight to increase her prospects of bagging this year’s Miss World title.

The twenty-year-old Georgia Horsley from Malton, North Yorkshire, is now on a high-fat diet for gaining pounds in time for the contest in Sanya, China, on December 1.

Miss England Georgia Horsley said that the beauty pageant’s judges go for curvy women since it promotes healthy eating.

“Miss World judges like naturally curvy girls and don’t like the stick-thin women you see on the catwalks. They promote healthy eating and I want to help them get that message across, so I’m giving it my all,” the Daily Express quoted her, as saying.

Miss England director Angie Beasley, a former model and Miss World judge has asked Horsley to gain weight.“Beauty pageants are meant to appeal to women everywhere and Miss World has always championed real women,” Beasley said.

The 2007 Miss England’s Georgie Horsely's diet will be packed with high-fat treats, but she will also have healthy meals and snacks. Her diet regimen will include fish suppers, nuts and plenty of avocados that contain fatty oils essential for model-perfect skin and hair.

Georgia clocks in at nine stones in weight and is a size 8 for clothes. So she is actually quite a healthy size. What the judges really want is a more curvacious body and this hasn't only to do with weight.

She is said to be planning to tuck into plenty of chocolate treats and high fat foods, as well as her usual healthy snacks. Will this make any difference and give her a larger bust measurement for instance? Time will tell.

“My friends are amazed at how much I eat. I love chocolate and am hopeless at diets. I guess I’m lucky and just have a naturally fast metabolism,” she said.

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Tiffany Sutton Given 10 years sentence

24-year-old Tiffany Sutton was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in Mesa, Arizona for stabbing her lover. However this was no ordinary domestic violence

According to police reports, the victim, 46-year-old Robert McDaniel, agreed to be tied up during sex but became alarmed and asked to be untied when Sutton pulled out a knife and said she liked to drink blood. Sutton then attacked him, slicing his leg, puncturing his arm, shoulder and back and cutting his neck and stomach. When he escaped, she chased him with a pickax.

The attorney for Ms. Sutton claims that her client suffers from personality disorder. Considering that Sutton thought she was a vampire for the first few weeks of her prison stay her attorney just might be right.

A woman who stabbed her tied-up lover so she could drink his blood has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Tiffany Sutton told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Udall that she was sorry for the incident and said she never meant to hurt anyone, but received the stiff sentence anyway after he called the crime especially heinous.

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Ben Kingsley Movie On Taj Mahal With Bollywood Stars

Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai will star in a movie by Ben Kingsley on the making of the Taj Mahal, India's famous marble monument to love, a report said on Thursday.

The movie is likely to be filmed next year in Agra that is home to the Taj Mahal, The Times of India newspaper quoted Kingsley as saying in an interview.

The Taj Mahal, recently voted one of the new seven wonders of the world, was built by Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan between 1632 and 1654 for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Soon after its completion, Shah Jahan was deposed by his son and imprisoned at the nearby Agra Fort.

In all probability, Bipasha Basu's first international project will be a Mughal historical featuring Ben Kingsley and Aishwarya Rai. And she will play Shah Jahan's devoted daughter Jahanara Beghum.

"Yes, there's another role in the film," Bipasha reveals."And Ben Kingsley has asked me to do it. We've already spoken about it. And now we just need to work out the dates."

While Aishwarya and Kingsley will play Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan in the film on the building of the Taj Mahal, Bipasha says, "There's a very special character which Ben has asked me to play."

The idea of Bipasha being part of Sir Ben's production was discussed when they met at the 7 Wonders event in Lisbon.

Kingsley was born Krishna Bhanji in Britain. His father, Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, was of Indian descent.Ben Kingsley won the best-actor Oscar for Richard Attenborough's ``Gandhi'' in the 1980s. He is well known in India for his portrayal of the independence leader and champion of nonviolence.

In his latest movie, "You Kill Me,'' Kingsley played a hit man being rehabilitated for alcoholism.

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Extremepumpkin.com Creator Writes a Book on Pumkins Creation

It’s almost that time of year again when we get ready for Halloween, when we go to the kitchen, get out the butcher knife, and carve a face onto a pumpkin .

Tom Nardone, author of the just published “Extreme Pumpkins: Diabolical Do-It-Yourself Designs to Amuse Your Friends and Scare Your Neighbors” (HP Trade, $13.95), suggests using a bit more “attitude” to bring a pumpkin to life.

“Halloween had started to get too wimpy, so I wanted to turn it back into a scary holiday,” Nardone says.

Here is what the creator of Extreme Pumpkins has to say about his website .

"Carving pumpkins is something I enjoy, yet most of the pumpkin carving websites were not to my tastes. I decided to make a pumpkin carving site that included shocking, funny, and gross pumpkin designs. The concept is about adults having fun during the halloween season."

Based on his popular Web site www.ExtremePumpkins.com, Nardone has created a full-color guide to pumpkin carving that’s truly frightening. Featuring the site’s signature Puking Pumpkin, and spanning everything from Drowning Pumpkin, Crime Scene Pumpkin, and Cannibal Pumpkin to Electrocuted Pumpkin and other designs, this gleefully gory guide is nothing short of a manifesto to take back Halloween from the cheerful, the cutesy, and the parent-sanctioned. For the egg-throwing, toilet tissue-streaming, window-soaping teenager in all of us, finally — a whole new way to celebrate Oct. 31.

Nardone, creator of www.extremepumpkins.com, wrote a book, "Extreme Pumpkins," based on his popular Web site. It features his signature Puking Pumpkin (it's disgorging pulp and seeds) in the 20 designs, which have names such as "My Head Is On Fire" Pumpkin, Electrocuted Pumpkin, Worm-Infested Pumpkin, Roadkill-Eating Pumpkin and Brain Surgery Pumpkin.

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Shuttle Launch Countdown may be delayed

NASA has filled the external fuel tank of the shuttle Discovery in preparation for a launch Tuesday at 11:38 a.m. /1538 UTC, but officials say rain and clouds may delay the liftoff.

Technicians pumped nearly two million liters of liquid oxygen and hydrogen into Discovery's giant orange external fuel tank at the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Crew members have started to board the shuttle.

Discovery astronauts will install a pressurized compartment on the International Space Station. The compartment will serve as a docking port for the Japanese and European laboratories that will be launched on a later flight.

Discovery is expected to return to Earth on November 6.(source: Voice of america )

Space Shuttle Discovery (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-103) is one of the three currently operational spacecraft in the Space Shuttle fleet of NASA, the space agency of the United States. (The other two are Atlantis and Endeavour.) When first flown in 1984, Discovery became the third operational Space Shuttle and is now the oldest shuttle in service. Discovery has performed both research and International Space Station (ISS) assembly missions.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

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Colorado Rockies Online tickets Crash Servers

Colorado Rockies officials planned to relaunch their sale of World Series tickets Tuesday after the team said their first attempt to sell tickets online was stopped by an "external malicious attack".

The Rockies were forced to stop the online-only sale of tickets after about two hours Monday after 8.5 million hits overwhelmed the servers set up to take the orders. Later spokesman Jay Alves announced that the ticket sales website had crashed because of an attack.

When asked if the team was prepared for another repeat Alves said: "We absolutely have backup plans in place," without elaborating. He referred questions about the attack to Irvine, Calif.-based Paciolan Inc., which runs the computers for the Rockies' World Series ticket sales.

However All of Pueblo wants to know: Did anyone in town get a World Series ticket on Monday?

At Robert Hoag Rawlings Public Library, computer screens flashed back-and-forth with www.coloradorockies.com for more than an hour.

But the dozen or so Internet users only read the same message over and over: "Please wait for the server to become available. The site is experiencing heavy overload."

Then came the heartbreaker: "This page cannot be displayed."

Then like machine-gun fire, the group of baseball fans attempting to buy tickets hit the "refresh" button on the Rockies Web site.

After more than an hour, many of the disappointed fans logged off and abandoned hope of scoring seats for home Games 3, 4 and, if needed, Game 5 of the best-of-seven World Series between the Rockies and Boston Red Sox.

Buying a World Series ticket Monday was harder than finding Willy Wonka’s golden ticket after the Colorado Rockies’ server crashed with a reported 8.5 million hits in 90 minutes.

Aspen was not immune to the Rockies fever that sickened servers, as many residents spent much of the morning trying to get on to the website selling the only World Series tickets available to the public.

The Colorado Rockies are set to play the Boston Red Sox in the seven-game World Series, beginning Wednesday in Boston and coming to Denver on Saturday, Sunday and Monday (if necessary). It’s the Rockies’ first World Series appearance.

Aspen resident Greg Ricker was in the Pitkin County Library at 11 a.m. trying to buy tickets. Instead, all he got was frustrated with the blank pages popping up on the screen.

“It’s just frustrating,” said Ashley Boun of Aspen, who spent two hours trying to get tickets. “I don’t know why they didn’t just have a random lottery system. We’ve all been here with multiple screens going, and now I need to go to work.”

Shortly after midday, the Rockies announced they had suspended online ticket sales after were suspended after Paciolan, the Irvine, Calif., company that manages Rockies ticket sales, had a system-wide outage. Paciolan sells more than 100 million tickets to concerts, sporting events and other happenings annually, roughly 25 percent of all live events in the country.

The Rockies said fewer than 500 seats sold during the morning. Roughly 18,000 tickets are available for each game at Coors Field, or less than half stadium’s 50,449 seats. The other seats are available for season-ticket holders, the teams and Major League Basebal

Aspen Internet expert Farr Shepherd, owner of Decypher Technologies, said 8.5 million hits is extremely large and that numerous servers would have been necessary to handle the traffic. Shepherd said scalpers, who use computer programs with far faster Internet access, might have exacerbated the crash.

A Colorado Rockies spokesman said late Monday that an “external malicious attack” caused its website to crash, but tickets would go on sale at noon today.

source: Aspentimes.com

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Charley Uchea in a Street Fight

BIG Brother Charley Uchea got a pasting this weekend when a mystery girl attacked her outside a nightclub.

The loudmouth,Charley Uchea who was one of the show's most unpopular housemates ever, got into a fight outside the trendy Embassy nightclub in Mayfair, London.

And for once, it was Charley who ended up on the receiving end of a pasting.

She was thrown to the ground in front of baying clubbers, and had her hair pulled by a girl who'd obviously taken a dislike to the ex housemate.

Despite trying to fight back, Charley was no match for her opponent and she ended up losing some of her beloved extensions.

One version is that Charley was minding her own business and was walking past a group of girls and they began to make remarks about her - then the trouble began!

Suddenly all hell broke loose, there was a fight between Charley and another girl and our heroine was on the floor and yelped as her hair was being pulled. Finally two brave men stepped in and Charley got to her feet screaming and shouting and had to be dragged away.

Her friend said, "It was really nasty and an unprovoked attack. They just jumped on her. One of them said 'let's do her'. She doesn't want to involve the police."

The 22-year-old Charley Uchea recently said that she was considering getting breast implants, to go from a C to an E cup size.She also claimed that she had "an entourage bigger than J-Lo", which made it difficult to go shopping.

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Chiari malformation : Symptoms Causes and Cure

Chiari malformation, sometimes referred to as Chiari malformation or ACM, is a congenital malformation of the brain.

Chiari (kee-AR-ee) malformation (CM) includes a complex group of disorders characterized by herniation of the cerebellum through the large opening in the base of the skull (foramen magnum) into the spinal canal.

The correct name is Chiari ( not Kiari ) But most people tend to spell it either Kiari or Chiari since phonetically both sound the same

In layman's terms, Chiari malformation is when the bottom of the brain extends out of the skull and crowds the spinal cord, blocking the flow of spinal fluid to and from the brain.

Chiari often is misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome.

Cause of Chiari malformation:

• The cerebellar tonsils are elongated and pushed down through the opening of the base of the skull (see foramen magnum), blocking the flow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

• The brainstem, cranial nerves, and the lower portion of the cerebellum may be stretched or compressed.

• Therefore, any of the functions controlled by these areas may be affected. The blockage of CSF flow may also cause a syrinx to form, eventually leading to syringomyelia. Many sufferers turn to the Chiari Institute in Long Island, NY for specialized medical attention and medication.

The Chiari Institute in Great Neck, N.Y., estimates that 200,000 to 2 million Americans have the condition. Once regarded as rare, the number of cases has risen sharply with the increased availability of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), according to the institute's Web site.

Patients with CM1 may experience no symptoms. When symptoms are present, they usually do not appear until adolescence or early adulthood, but can occasionally be seen in young children.

Some patients may go an entire lifetime without having noticeable symptoms. Or, symptoms can be minimal, then turn severe suddenly due to head trauma which alters the condition of the spine, brain, or cerebellar tonsils and begins to cause more difficulties.

Symptoms of Kiari malformation & Kiari malfunction

The majority of patients complain of severe headache and neck pain. Other common symptoms are dizziness, vertigo, disequilibrium, visual disturbances, ringing in the ears, difficulty swallowing, palpitations, sleep apnea, muscle weakness, impaired fine motor skills, chronic fatigue and painful tingling of the hands and feet. Because of this complex symptomatology, patients with CM1 are frequently misdiagnosed.

How common is Chiari malformation?

Until recent years, CM1 was regarded as a rare condition. With the increased availability of magnetic resonance imaging, the number of reported cases has risen sharply. Current estimates range from 200,000 to 2 million Americans with the condition. Genetic studies spearheaded by Dr. Milhorat support a hereditary tendency with a transmissibility rate of 12 percent. Women are affected three times more often than men. Approximately 3,500 Chiari operations are performed each year in the United States.

source:xactnews.blogspot.com

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Watch Orionids meteor shower on 21st october

The Orionids meteor shower peaks Sunday morning, 21 October. The meteors can be seen anywhere in the sky, but they appear to stream out of a point, called ‘the radiant,’ in the constellation Orion. © Science Centric

A spectacular meteroid shower awaits you on Sunday 21st October.Go outside on Sunday morning, 21 October, around 1 AM, and start looking east (no telescope required). Every 10 minutes or so you’ll see a meteor streak. It is not an intense shower, about 20 to 30 meteors per hour. The meteors can be seen anywhere in the sky, but they appear to stream out of a point, called ‘the radiant,’ in the constellation Orion.

Don’t stare at that spot, meteors near the radiant seem short and stubby, a result of foreshortening. Instead, look toward any dark region of the sky about 90 degrees away. You’ll see just as many Orionids there, but they will seem longer and more dramatic.

Although the Orionids are not so spectacular as the Perseids, which peak around 12 August, they are consistent. The Orionids are related to the eta Aquarids, a southern hemisphere meteor shower in May. Both spring from Halley’s Comet. Earth comes close to the orbit of Halley’s Comet twice a year, once in May and again in October and although the comet itself is rarely nearby, Halley’s dusty debris constantly moves through the inner Solar System and causes two regular meteor showers. Orionid meteoroids are very fast. They strike Earth’s atmosphere travelling 66 km/s.

source:Sciencecentric
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Bobby Jindal is Governor of Louisiana

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Happy Sweetest Day

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Harry Reid Letter worth 2 Million on Ebay

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