Today's news

Picking Berries Protects Rain Forests Best - Study
BRASILIA - Small community projects for picking fruits and nuts are the best way to alleviate poverty and protect the Amazon and other tropical forests, but are largely ignored by governments, a study showed on Monday.

New Sealy Mattress Recreates Feeling Of Falling Asleep On Bus
Sealy, the company known for providing innovative sleep technology with its Posturepedic, TrueForm, and SpringFree mattresses, on Monday unveiled the Destination, a mattress designed to simulate the sensation of drifting off to sleep on a moving bus.

New Titanic Film Told From Iceberg's Point Of View
by James Cameron

Plant a Virtual Tree in Second Life, Get a Real One Planted for Free!

Safer cigarettes coming soon? (K)
The federal agency charged with keeping food and drugs
from harming people may soon be asked to take a
consumer product that kills more than 400,000 people a
year and make it safer.

As tasty as a truckload of rats (K)
Live rats are being trucked from central China,
suffering a plague of a reported 2 billion rodents
displaced by a flooded lake, to the south to end up in
restaurant dishes, Chinese media reported.

Don't trust your man, minister tells women (K)
Indian men cannot be trusted in their sexual behavior
and are fuelling the country's HIV epidemic, a female
government minister said Monday, slamming the
country's "hypocrisy" about sex.

Japan investigates 'nuclear leak' (K)
Japanese officials are investigating the possibility
of a second radioactive leak from a nuclear plant,
following Monday's earthquake in central Japan.

"Blame on the bottled water!" (Co)
E' una vera e propria dichiarazione di guerra all'acqua in bottiglia.
Numerose città del pianeta stanno chiedendo ai propri cittadini di
abbandonare l' uso dell' acqua minerale a favore di quella che scende dai
rubinetti. In questi giorni è New York ad essere scesa in campo, dando il
via ad una campagna per ridurre se non per eliminare l' uso delle
bottigliette di plastica. Obiettivo: aiutare l' ambiente.

"Waterspouts make it rain worms, eels and jellyfish" (Co)
A woman was crossing a road in Jennings, Louisiana, last week when something
very strange fell from the sky. Eleanor Beal was on her way to work when
large clumps of tangled worms dropped down from above. In fact, many reports
of strange showers of creatures could be explained by waterspouts or
tornados. In the recent shower of worms in Louisiana, a waterspout was
sighted around the same time over a river less than 8 kilometres (5 miles)
away. It is possible that the vortex sucked up the worms into a storm cloud
and later dumped them on land.

"Wish for rain to wash away Homer" (Co)
Pagans have pledged to perform "rain magic" to wash away a cartoon character
painted next to their famous fertility symbol - the Cerne Abbas giant. A
doughnut-brandishing Homer Simpson was painted next to the giant on the hill
above Cerne Abbas, Dorset, to promote the new Simpsons film. Many believe
the ancient chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused giant to be a
symbol of ancient spirituality. The painted Simpsons character has been
painted with water-based biodegradable paint which will wash away as soon as
it rains.

"Elephants "Learn" to Avoid Land Mines in War-Torn Angola" (Co)
Elephants moving into war-ravaged southern Angola from neighboring countries
appear to have developed the ability to avoid the land mines that litter the
region, scientists report. The elephants are returning in growing numbers to
southeast Angola, where thousands of the animals were massacred during the
country's protracted civil war, said Chase, who heads the nonprofit
conservation group Elephants Without Borders.