Author: NW0.eu

From CNN Money:

Virgin unveiled the latest addition to Richard Branson’s luxury fleet on Friday: an underwater plane that will fly riders into the depths of the Caribbean Sea.

Guests on Necker Island, a retreat in the British Virgin Islands, will be able to dive underwater in a submarine dubbed the Necker Nymph for $25,000 a week. But that’s only after shelling out around $300,000 for a one-week stay on Necker, the private island owned by billionaire and Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson.

Beginning on Feb. 20, two riders and a pilot will be able to take the plunge from land, or from a boat. The underwater plane uses the downward pressure on its wings to fly through the water for up to two hours at a time, while an open cockpit will give riders a 360-degree view…

Tom Leonard writes in the Telegraph:

A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book.

Dr David Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at Brown University, said that five years of records showed Oscar rarely erring, sometimes proving medical staff at the New England nursing home wrong in their predictions over which patients were close to death.

The cat, now five and generally unsociable, was adopted as a kitten at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, Rhode Island, which specialises in caring for people with severe dementia.

Dr Dosa first publicised Oscar’s gift in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in…

Robert D. Manning was the editorial adviser to the Disinformation-distributed documentary In Debt We Trust (available on iTunes and DVD) and is the founder of the Responsible Debt Relief Institute. He writes in the Washington Post:

They’re yuppie food stamps. They give new meaning to the question “paper or plastic?” And they’re in everyone’s wallet. Americans have nearly 700 million all-purpose bank credit cards, plus nearly 500 million retail store cards — and they have transformed how we live and consume. Today, Americans are more dependent on credit than savings, a radical departure from the last major economic crisis, in the 1930s. Congress’s effort to change that, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act signed by President Obama last spring, will go into effect in a few weeks. But it won’t fix…

F. William Engdahl writes on Global Research:

Behind the smoke, rubble and unending drama of human tragedy in the hapless Caribbean country, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world’s richest zones for hydrocarbons-oil and gas outside the Middle East, possibly orders of magnitude greater than that of nearby Venezuela.

Haiti, and the larger island of Hispaniola of which it is a part, has the geological fate that it straddles one of the world’s most active geological zones, where the deepwater plates of three huge structures relentlessly rub against one another — the intersection of the North American, South American and Caribbean tectonic plates. Below the ocean and the waters of the Caribbean, these plates consist of an oceanic crust some 3…

Via the Tehran Times:

Iraq’s Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the U.S. over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says.

Iraq’s Minister of Human Rights, Wijdan Mikhail Salim, told Assabah newspaper that the lawsuit will be launched based on reports from the Iraqi ministries of science and the environment.

According to the reports, during the first year of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq, both countries had repeatedly used bombs containing depleted uranium.

According to Iraqi military experts, the U.S. and Britain bombed the country with nearly 2,000 tons of depleted uranium bombs during the early years of the Iraq war.

Atomic radiation has increased the number of babies born with defects in the southern provinces of Iraq.

Iraqi doctors say they’ have been…

by Andy Coghlan for New Scientist:

Genetically modified crops are everywhere, it seems – even in Europe. Strict laws designed to keep the European Union free of unauthorised GM crops and products are not working, and are posing problems for the EU’s €150 billion livestock industry, according to farmers’ representatives. They say that supplies of animal feed for poultry and pigs are being refused entry at European ports when found to contain even trace amounts of unauthorised GM material.

Under Europe’s “zero-tolerance” laws on GM contamination, introduced in 2007, the presence of even a few seeds of unauthorised GM material will rule out an entire shipment. The animal feed industry says that the laws are unworkable because GM material is almost ubiquitous, given today’s global supply chain.

“Though we understand the consumer concern…

By Linda Geddes for New Scientist:

A lucky few seem to be able to laugh in the face of death, surviving massive blood loss and injuries that would kill others. Now a drug has been found that might turn virtually any injured person into a “super-survivor”, by preventing certain biological mechanisms from shutting down.

The drug has so far only been tested in animals. If it has a similar effect in humans, it could vastly improve survival from horrific injuries, particularly in soldiers, by allowing them to live long enough to make it to a hospital.

Loss of blood is the main problem with many battlefield injuries, and a blood transfusion the best treatment, although replacing lost fluid with saline can help. But both are difficult to transport in sufficient quantities. “You can’t…

By Brandon Griggs for CNN:

Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) — To some men, she might seem like the perfect woman: She’s a willowy 5 feet 7 and 120 pounds. She’ll chat with you endlessly about your interests. And she’ll have sex whenever you please — as long as her battery doesn’t run out.

Meet Roxxxy, who may be the world’s most sophisticated talking female sex robot. For $7,000, she’s all yours.

“She doesn’t vacuum or cook, but she does almost everything else,” said her inventor, Douglas Hines, who unveiled Roxxxy last month at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Lifelike dolls, artificial sex organs and sex-chat phone lines have been keeping the lonely company for decades. But Roxxxy takes virtual companionship to a new level.

Powered by a computer under her soft silicone…

deadlinescotland – Staff at a top boutique hotel believe they may be accommodating some extra guests after hearing strange noises coming from the basement.They also said they felt a “strange chill” while fetching linen from an underground cellar in…

The U.S. economy came “very close” to collapsing into a second Great Depression and the government had no alternative to bailing out financial firms, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said.

The government has guaranteed virtual immortality for every British citizen – as long as they join the National Identity Register.

After the US begun beefing up its military presence and war paraphernalia off the Iranian coast, Iran’s Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani warns against the US political ploy in the region.

Israeli National Security Advisor Uzi Arad has threatened Iran with ‘heavy’ measures after reports of US augmentation of forces off Iran’s coast.

One of the most important calculations of Indian history has been done on the basis of the lifetime of a certain Indian emperor called Ashoka, considered to be one of the greatest emperors of world history. Renowned British Historian HG Wells wrote about Ashoka:

“In the history of the world there have been thousands of kings and emperors who called themselves ‘their highnesses,’ ‘their majesties,’ and ‘their exalted majesties’ and so on. They shone for a brief moment, and as quickly disappeared. But Ashoka shines and shines brightly like a bright star, even unto this day.”

Ashoka was a Buddhist emperor who was responsible for the spread of Buddhism, to distant corners of India and the neighboring countries, by sending large number of Buddhist missionaries to these places. He built thousands of…

ONE of the region’s airports is on a collision course with the government over controversial body scanners that produce a naked image of passengers.

Teenage schoolchildren think oats grow on trees and bacon comes from sheep, a survey showed today.

By detaining people during night raids and torturing them in Afghan field prisons, the US military officials are not battling the insurgency, but actually creating it, believes investigative journalist Anand Gopal.

South Korea’s military was watching Tuesday for any North Korean missile tests after the communist state banned shipping from several more coastal zones in its territory.

Pope Benedict XVI marked the announcement of his first papal visit to Britain with an unprecedented attack on the ­government’s equality legislation yesterday, claiming it threatened religious freedom and ran contrary to “natural law”.

England is a “cesspit” and breeding ground for fundamentalist Muslims, the Nobel laureate and political activist Wole Soyinka has said in an interview in which he also accused Britain of allowing the existence of “indoctrination schools”.