|
|
News Update
Hansen sets 100-metre breaststroke record
IRVINE (California): Brendan Hansen broke his own world 100-metre breaststroke record, Michael Phelps won the 400m individual medley and Katie Hoff set a US 200 IM record to open the US Swim Championships on Tuesday.
Hansen won in 59.13 seconds to shatter the world record he set on July 8, 2004 at US Olympic qualifying in Long Beach for the Athens Games. Scott Usher was a distant second in 1:01.07 with Matthew Lowe third in 1:01.02. Phelps, the Athens Olympics hero, captured the 400 IM in 4:10.16, 1.9 seconds off the world record he set at Athens.—AFP
Don't kill Harry Potter, US authors urge Rowling
NEW YORK: Two of America's top authors, John Irving and Stephen King, made a plea to J.K. Rowling on Tuesday not to kill the fictional boy wizard Harry Potter in the final book of the series.
“My fingers are crossed for Harry,” Irving said at a joint news conference before a charity reading by the three writers at New York's Radio City Music Hall.
The author of The World According to Garp and a string of other bestsellers said he and King felt like “warm-up bands” for Rowling, who is working on the seventh and last book in the Harry Potter series, and who has said two characters will die.
King, who shot to fame in 1974 with Carrie, said he had confidence that Rowling would be “fair” to her hero.
“I don't want him to go over the Reichenbach Falls,” King said in a reference to Arthur Conan Doyle's effort to kill off the character of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Pressure from fans eventually led Conan Doyle to resurrect Holmes, who was found in a later story to have survived.
Rowling, a Briton whose books have sold 300 million copies worldwide according to her publishers, said she was well into the process of writing the final book.—Reuters
Buffalo take over town
OTTAWA: Wild buffalo have taken over a small town in Canada's far north, but unlike stray cats, pigeons, and other nuisance animals, these massive bovine pests can smash a truck, a local official said Tuesday.
The so-called wood bison wandered into Fort Providence in the Northwest Territories in May and seemed to like its thick manicured lawns, open spaces and lack of predators such as wolves, Darren Campbell told AFP by telephone.
The town is now trying to convince the herd, which outnumber townsfolk 2,400 to 800, to leave town for good, Campbell said.—AFP
Artefacts might shed light on life of 'black Paul Bunyan'
Archaeologists excavating the 200-year-old graves of a slave family said that they recovered several artefacts that could shed light on the life of a man dubbed ''the black Paul Bunyan.''
However, the scientists uncovered no genetic material from Venture Smith, who is depicted in tales as a 6-foot-1 lumberjack slave whose fabulous feats of strength helped win his freedom. They had hoped to find DNA that would trace Smith's life back to Africa, filling in the gaps of one of the earliest and most important slave biographies.
But teams found several items from the nearby graves of Smith's family that should help answer many questions, said Chandler Saint, president of the Beecher House Centre for the Study of Equal Rights in Torrington, Connecticut, who is managing the excavation.—AP
Spoon-wielding women trap workers in TV station
Mexico: About 500 women armed with kitchen spoons surrounded a state-run television station in Oaxaca on Tuesday, trapping 60 employees inside.
The protesters demanded to broadcast a live message calling for the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz, whom they accuse of rigging his 2004 election victory and of violently repressing opposition groups.—AP
|
Tech replaces diamonds as girl's best friend NEW YORK: Diamonds are no longer a girl's best friend, according to a new US study that found three of four women would prefer a new plasma TV to a diamond necklace. The survey, commissioned by US cable television's Oxygen Network, found the technology gender gap has virtually closed with the majority of women snapping up new technology and using it easily. Women were found on average to own 6.6 technology devices while men own 6.9, and four out of every five women felt comfortable using technology with 46 per cent doing their own computer trouble-shooting. “People assume that women are not as advanced as men when it comes to technology and I was surprised at the parity men and women now have in terms of technology,” Geraldine Laybourne, chairman and chief executive of Oxygen Network, told Reuters. The Girls Gone Wired survey of 1,400 women and 700 men aged 15 to 49, which was conducted by market researcher TRU, found that given the choice, women would opt for tech items rather than luxury items like jewellery or vacations. The study found over the next five years women see themselves increasing their activities in six tech areas: digital cameras, cell phones, e-mail, camera phones, text messaging and instant messaging.—Reuters |
|
|
| SAN CLEMENTE DEL TUYU: Penguins are being released after finishing their rehabilitation process from an oil spill in San Clemente del Tuyu, some 300 kilometres from Buenos Aires, Argentina, on July 31. Around 224 penguins were found in Santa Cruz province during the month of May, victims of an oil spill. The 190 that survived were later taken to Fundacion Mundo Marino in San Clemente del Tuyu for their rehabilitation. The first 50 recovered were set free again in their natural habitat on Monday.—AP |
|
|
| Sidon: A Lebanese man checks the damage at a branch of Bank of Kuwait and the Arab World destroyed by Israeli strikes in the southern Lebanese town of Ghaziyeh in Sidon on August 1. At least 828 Lebanese, mostly civilians, have been killed by Israeli strikes since the conflict began 21 days ago.—AFP |
|
|
| SYDNEY: Children touch a life-size walking model of a Torosaurus dinosaur as it performs during the world premiere of ‘Walking With Dinasours — The Live Experience’ in Sydney on August 1. The A$12 million ($9 million) show, based on the BBC television series Walking With Dinasours, will consist of 15 life-size animatronic dinosaurs performing on stage. It will open to the public in January 2007, and will travel around the world later that year.—Reuters |
|
|
|
