No God Bus

In London , A christian Driver refused to drive a Bus that displaed an athiest advertisement saying "There's probably no God" on the side of the bus.

The driver from Southampton in Hampshire reacted with "shock" and "horror" last Sunday when he saw the slogan and walked out of his shift in protest. He was just about to board the bus when he saw the ads staring in his face, he was shock horror, the driver Ron Heather . The drive did better go home because of the ads..

The protest comes amid a growing campaign by atheists that started in Britain earlier this month and has spread to Spain, with a similar initiative planned in at least one city in predominantly Catholic Italy.
The slogans have been plastered on 800 buses across Britain and in London's subway system in a move backed by the British Humanist Association (BHA).
The advertisements have been condemned by clergy in Italy and Spain, while angry Christians have protested to Britain's advertising watchdog -- asking for proof that the slogans are telling the truth.
The ads in Britain were the brainchild of comedy writer Ariane Sherine and were financed by more than 140,000 pounds in public donations.
Sherine has said she objected to Christian adverts on some London buses that carried an Internet address warning that people who rejected God would spend eternity in "torment in hell."
Sherine, 28, sought five-pound donations towards a "reassuring" counter-advertisement and won support from the BHA and atheist campaigner Professor Richard Dawkins.
Heather's employer First Bus said it would do everything it could to ensure that he did not have to drive the offending buses. After meetings with First Bus managers on Monday, Heather has agreed to return to work.

Poached Egg in Buns

Ingredients:
1/4 kg. bacon
3 pieces hamburger buns, halved, buttered & toasted
3 tbsp. flour
1 cup Evap Milk.
1 cup cheese, grated
2 cups water
1 tbsp. vinegar salt to taste
6 pcs.

Preparation:
1.  Cook bacon in a skillet until golden brown; drain. Arrange bacon in buns. Set aside.

2. In the same skillet, stir in flour, evap milk and cheese. Cook stirring constantly until thickened. Set aside.

3. Boil 2 cups water and vinegar with salt. Break eggs, one at a time, into a cup. Slide eggs gently into a boiling water. Cook until egg white is set. Make sure egg yolk doesn't break.

4. Place cooked egg on top of bacon in bun. Top with white sauce.

How Birds Can Down an Airplane

Early reports suggest that a bird strike caused a jet plane to crash in the Hudson River near Manhattan today, leaving questions about how a little flying animal could down a big airliner.
More than 200 people have been killed worldwide as a result of wildlife strikes with aircraft since 1988, according to Bird Strike Committee USA, and more than 5,000 bird strikes were reported by the U.S. Air Force in 2007. Bird strikes, or the collision of an aircraft with an airborne bird, tend to happen when aircraft are close to the ground, which means just before landing or after take-off, when jet engines are turning at top speeds.
The incidents are serious particularly when the birds, usually gulls, raptors and geese, are sucked into a jet engine and strike an engine fan blades. That impact displaces the blade such that it strikes another blade and a cascade can occur, resulting in engine failure. Geese or another large bird would be much more hazardous than a little black bird. If the birds get close to the engine's intake, the birds get sucked in, its like a vacuum. The jet engine are made up of a lot of compressor blades it can easily damaged, even if only one breaks off, then the one blade will go through the rest of the engine as the engines turning faster its like a sharpnels inside the engine.
A 12-pound goose striking an aircraft going 150 mph at lift-off generates the force of a 1,000-pound weight dropped from a height of 10 feet, according to Bird Strike Committee USA. Birds can be very dangerous to aircraft, particularly in the first several thousand feet after take-off, where the birds are flying. 
Large aircraft are certified to be able to keep flying after impacting a 4-pound bird, however if there are more that one 4-pound birds, even smaller birds, can cause engine failure.
The greater the difference in the speed of the plane and the bird, the greater the force of the impact on the aircraft. The weight of the bird is also a factor, but the speed difference is a much bigger factor.
The speed at which the two are moving causes the bird to get ingested into the engine. And the engine is very delicate to withstanding a major impact and shut the engine down.
Flocks of birds are even more dangerous as they can result in multiple strikes.
Delicate birds, delicate aircraft

Take several precautions to keep Airplane safe from birds. Don't plant trees in the nearby, these are their nesting place. no lagoon lakes or small body of water in the nearby because these are playgrounds of water birds like geese.

A cannon is also a must, it fire during and after landing to make a noise as a deterent for birds to clear the runway from birds. Also a deterent birds is a help they can keep the birds from nearby.

Bird and any other wildlife strikes to aircraft result in million dollar in damage a year, according to Bird Strike Committee USA. Five jet airliners have had major accidents involving bird strikes since 1975, the committee says. In one case, about three dozen people died.

NASA also worries about bird strikes, too.
During the July 2005 launch of Discovery on mission STS-114, a vulture soaring around the launch pad impacted the shuttle's external tank just after liftoff. With a vulture's average weight of 3 to 5 pounds, it strike on a critical point on the shuttle - like the nose or wing leading thermal protection panels damage - could cause catastrophic damage to the vehicle.
NASA put safety measures into place in 2005 to reduce the chances of bird strikes with the shuttle. The NASA wants to avoid bird strikes to the shuttle's fuel tank that could damage the heat shield during launch and landing.
For instance, NASA has a special during launch countdown where they can stop to wait for birds to pass. And during landing, NASA has a sound cannon that they fire to make sure the runway is clear from birds to make sure shuttle isn't damaged during landing.

Conviction reversed in 30-year-old death row case

A white man in Houston, Texas could be freed from a 30 nearly years in death row because of an appeals court has ruled that the prosecutors improperly excluded blacks from his jury in the belief that blacks empathize with defendants.
Jonathan Bruce Reed was convicted and condemned for the November 1978 rape-slaying of Wanda Jean Wadle at her Dallas apartment.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled Dallas County prosecutors improperly excluded black prospective jurors from Reed's trial and ordered him released unless prosecutors choose to retry him quickly.

The unfortunate story of Reed more than 30 years after the crime took place is a reason to stop death penalty. The constitution affords Reed a right to relief.

Jamille Bradfield, a spokeswoman for Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, said it was premature to comment on whether Reed would be retried.

Reed has been on death row since September 1979, making him among the longest-serving prisoners awaiting execution in Texas.

The 5th Circuit said Reed's case mirrored the capital murder case of Thomas Miller-El, on Texas death row for nearly 20 years until the Supreme Court overturned his verdict, citing racial discrimination during jury selection. Miller-El last year took a life prison sentence as part of a plea deal.

The Supreme Court cited a manual, written by a prosecutor in 1969 and used for years later, that advised Dallas prosecutors to exclude minorities from juries. Documents in Miller-El's case described how the memo advised prosecutors to avoid selecting minorities because "they almost always empathize with the accused."

Reed presents this same historical evidence of racial bias in the Dallas County District Attorney's Office.

Reed, now 57, was identified as the man who attacked Wadle and her roommate, Kimberly Pursley, on Nov. 1, 1978. He'd apparently entered their apartment by posing as a maintenance man.

Pursley survived an attempted strangulation by feigning unconsciousness. Two other residents identified Reed as the man they saw in the apartment complex just before the time of the attack.

Doña Mary Ejercito, passes away at 103

Philippines - The mother of former President Joseph Estrada passed away on Tuesday afternoon.

Doña Mary died of multiple organ failure, her kidneys have already shut down four days before her death.
Doña Mary died of heart seizure and aneurysm in the stomach. The former President Joseph Ejercito Estrada was beside his mother's deathbed, Doña Mary, 103 years old, died at around 4:15p.m. at the San Juan Medical Center tuesday afternoon.
She had been on a respirator for over a year and had also experienced pneumonia as a consequence of possible infections from the respirator. The doctors tried to revive her but she was no longer responding. Her remains will be brought to the St. John the Baptist Church in San Juan City, Philippines.
Senator Jingoy Estrada also thanking those who prays for his grandmother, "Maybe she is going to take a rest because her body can no longer carry the pain," the Senator Jingoy Estrada said.
The former President and his siblings were with Doña Mary when she passed away. Also at her side was San Juan City Mayor Joseph Victor "JV" Ejercito.

Overwork a silent killer in Japan

Pushed to their limits, thousands of Japanese are literally working themselves to death each year, a scourge the Asian power has started to address but which could get worse in the global economic crisis.

Employees in Japan work like crazy , their atmosphere is hectic, others say they suffers from stress night and day, particularly in peak periods when everybody works late into the night.

The Japanese call the problem "karoshi," or death by overwork. And with the global downturn sapping demand for Japanese exports and leading companies to slash jobs, the stress on workers is becoming even more severe. Even they go out with their colleagues at night to relax to dwell the bad things during the days with their bosses, still no room to breathe.
While for some the overwork is simply annoying, for others it causes everything from poor blood circulation to arteriosclerosis to strokes. According to the survey by the Japan's main labour union federation Rengo that 53 percent of workers have been suffering more stress.

It was estimated that more than 2,200 Japanese committed suicide due to work conditions in 2007. But Hiroshi Kawahito a lawyer who represents relatives of karoshi victim said that figure represent only a fraction of the problem. He estimated some 10,000 workers in the same year suffered heart attacks or strokes, which were sometimes fatal, due to stress.

He said that fewer than 10 percent of the incidents were reported to authorities or companies because of the long time it takes to certify cases and the fair chance the effort will be in vain.
In 2007, 58 percent of people who sought compensation for a loved one's karoshi had their application refused. However, this was still a big improvement on 20 years ago when 95 percent of cases were rejected.
The public pressure for this scourge to be better recognised according to Kawahito.

In May 2007, the head of a construction site in the Tochigi region north of Tokyo committed suicide after putting in 65 to 70 hours every week for six months, plunging him into ill physical health and depression.
Even if the government is addressing the problem, the families of karoshi victims dare to go to former employers. The labour ministry certify the suicide as a work accidents and offer his widow $32,000 (3 million yen) a year compensation.

Nearly half of all businesses have no measures at all in place to prevent workplace stress, according to an investigation by the union, in Japan, businesses thinking that their employees' mental state is their private problem, pointing on working conditions at Rengo, the union federation.
Even though the law sets a 40-hour working week, one-quarter of Japanese workers toil for more than 50 hours a week and 10 percent put in more than 60 hours.
The vast majority of overworked employees are men, many in their 30s who are working their way up the corporate ladder.
Stress has long been a problem in Japan. Not even the imperial family is immune, with three members, including Emperor Akihito, all diagnosed in recent years with health problems tied to stress.
But karoshi has become a much more serious problem since the early 1990s when the collapse of the country's post-World War II economic miracle destroyed workers' promise of stable jobs for life.
Companies now routinely hire temporary workers, allowing bosses to lay them off when times get tough and putting more pressure on workers who remain on full-time contracts.
The long hours work is not the problem here, but the abusive bosses, power tripping, tension with co-workers, and a sense of professional defeat amongst workers.
The Japanese people worked very hard but they also dreamed of a better life.

Solraya's Sunshine Chicken: Don't Just Feel It. Taste It!

Solraya's Sunshine Chicken: Don't Just Feel It. Taste It!

Palawan underground river still in the race

Last of RP wonders.
The Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, one of the Philippines top natural attraction and recognized as a World Hiretage Site by the United Nations, has entered the second round of an ongoing global search for the seven new wonders of the world.
Palawan's 8.2 kilometers underground river set on a huge primeval karst formation in the NorthWestern coast of Puerto Princesa City bested six other local natural attractions in the Country's last year's polling.
The Coral Triangle, a region that the Philippines shares with five other countries and representing the majority of the world's corals and marine-based species made the cut of 226 sites from among the original 441 entries in last year's Internet-base voting campaign.
The qualified national and multinational nominies from 222 countries feature iconic locations, such as the Grand Canyon in Colorado, Loch Ness in Scotland, the Black Forest in Germany, and Mount Fuji in Japan, alongside the Amazon, the Danube, the Dead Sea, the Great Barrier reef, Iguazu Falls, the Klahari Desert, Mont Blanc and Niagara Falls.
New7Wonders, a private foundation based in Zurich, Switzerland, which is spearheading the search. The foundation was establish by a Swiss-born Canadian filmmaker in 2001, Bernard Weber an adventurer to contribute to the protection of the world's human-built and natural heritage and to foster respect for the cultural diversity on our planet.
Among the country's tourist attraction's failing to hurdle the first round was erstwhile voting leader Tubataha Reefs, also located in Palawan, Chocolate Hills in Bohol, Mayon Volcano in Albay, the Hundred Islands in Pangasinan, Mount Pinatubo in Zambales and Taal Volcano in Batangas.

Of the original nominees worldwide, 180 or 40% were eliminated. The finalist of the world's seven new wonders will be choosen through internet-base voting and an international panel of experts in two years.
On July 21, the third and final phase of voting will begin. The voters will have approximately two years to vote among the 21 finalists for the official New7wonders of the world to be revealed in 2011.

The Coral Triangle features an abundance of coral reefs straddling the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste.
Covering more than 8.5 million square kilometers with over 600 reef-building coral species that encompass 75 percent of all species known in the world, the region is regarded by environmental conservationists as top priority for conservation of marine life. More than 3,000 species of fish live in the Coral Triangle, including the largest fish  the whale shark  and the living fossil coelacanths, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Among the neighboring country's, the selected entries include Cambodia's Yak Loum Lake, Vietnam's Ha Long Bay, Laos' Nam Ha National Park, Singapore's Bukit Tima Nature Reserve, Brunei's Tasek Merimbun,  Malaysia's Sipadan Island, Thailand's Ko Phi Island, Jaco Island in East Timor, the Mergui Archipelago of Burma (Myanmar) and the Mekong River, shared by China and Mainland Southeast Asian Nations.

British boxing scribe belittles Pacquiao

Veteran trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. isn't alone in his opinion that Ricky Hatton will pound Manny Pacquiao into submission in their rumor May 2 light welterweight bout in Las Vegas.

Geoff "The Professor" Poundes of the ringsidereport.com joined great Erik Morales in belittling Pacquiao chances against the British Hitman.

Hatton is expected will win inside the distance in a fight, if Hatton turns up fit, healthy and ready for action.

Poundes even say Pacquiao is going to get his ass whipped by Ricky Hatton.

Hatton is very comfortable and powerful at 140 LBs., which is the weight for their fight will be made, and he has never been close to being beaten at that weight.

Sout Korean blogger arrested

A self-styled financial market prophet, known by his Internet name, Minerva or by his family name, Park, leaves a Seoul court after the court approved prosecutors to further detain him January 10, 2009. South Korean prosecutors have detained a self-styled financial market prophet who had a large following on the Internet but whose gloomy predictions upset the government battling an economic slump.
A South Korean blogger pleaded not guilty Saturday to charges that he spread false economic information on the Internet, a news report said, in a case that drew heated debate over freedom of speech.
The blogger, identified only by his surname Park, gained prominence among South Koreans because some of his dire predictions about the global economy, including the collapse of Lehman Brothers, later proved to be correct.
Known widely by his pen name "Minerva," the mythological Greek goddess of wisdom, the 31-year-old man accused of spreading false information in the Internet discussion, last month that the government had ordered major financial institutions and trade businesses not to purchase U.S. dollars.
Kim Yong-sang, a judge at the Seoul Central District Court who issued a arrest warrant for Park, said the case "affected foreign exchange markets and the nation's credibility. Park told the judge he wrote articles to help underprivileged people and did not seek any personal financial gain or harm the public interest.
In about 100 postings on the popular Web site last year, Park criticized the government's handling of the economy and made predictions, negatively on  the future. His writings were sprinkled with jargon that convinced some readers that he was an economic expert.
Park described himself in Web entries as a former securities firm employee with a master's degree earned in the United States and experience in the field of corporate acquisitions and takeovers.
His deeply analytical style and sometimes prescient forecasts made Park a star on the Web, earning him the nickname "economic president on the Internet."
But prosecutors said Park was an unemployed resident of Seoul who studied economics on his own after graduating from a vocational high school and a junior college with a major in information and communication.
It is rare in South Korea that a blogger is arrested, one of the world's most wired and tech savvy nations. Critics say the case could undermine freedom of speech on the Internet.

"It is as if control on the Internet started as of today," a blogger wrote on a bulletin board in Daum Communications, one of South Korea's popular Web portals after news came of Park's detention.

Lawyers for a Democratic Society, a prominent human rights group, has called for Park's release and urged the prosecution to stop its investigation.
It is extremely intolerant for the government "to punish those who freely express their opinions and discuss them on the Internet," the group said Friday.
In a statement, the main opposition Democratic Party expressed disappointment over the arrest and accused the judiciary of paving the way for human rights violations.
If indicted and convicted, Park could be sentenced up to five years in prison or receive a fine of up to 50 million won ($37,250). Park was transferred to a Seoul detention center after the court issued the warrant.