Will a Child Be Charged in the Fires? Nov 7, 2:40 PM ET The 10-year-old boy who accidentally started one of the worst California wildfires last month could face stern consequences, should prosecutors decide to bring charges. Though too young to be charged as an adult, the boy could still face millions of dollars in fines, removal from his home and possible detention as a ward of the state. For now the boy's fate - and that of his parents, who would be partially liable for any restitution payments he would have to pay - rests with Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley. His office told TIME he has not yet decided how to proceed. "The matter is under review," spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons told TIME on Monday. "No decision has been made."

Defiant Iran reaches key nuclear enrichment target Nov 7 07:38 AM US/Eastern Iran has reached a key target of 3,000 centrifuges for uranium enrichment , President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday, vowing to ignore UN resolutions calling for a halt to Tehran's sensitive nuclear work. "We have now reached 3,000 machines," a defiant Ahmadinejad told a rally in the northeastern city of Birjand. Scientists say that in ideal conditions 3,000 centrifuges can make enough highly enriched uranium in a year's time for an atom bomb. The hardline president also said that Iran "could not care less" about UN Security Council resolutions aimed at halting Tehran's nuclear drive. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in August that Iran had 12 cascades of 164 centrifuges (1,968) running simultaneously to enrich uranium and that 656 others were either under construction or being tested. The centrifuges are located at an underground nuclear facility at Natanz in central Iran. Iran has so far defied international calls to suspend enrichment, the process by which nuclear fuel is made, as well as -- in highly purified forms -- the core of an atomic bomb.

British gasoline tops $ 8 a gallon Nov. 7, 2007 LONDON, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- The average British gasoline price hit $8 a gallon Wednesday and more increases are on the way, Britain's Automobile Association said. British motorists are paying an average $14.65 more to fill up a car now than they were at this time last year, the association said. Diesel fuel averaged $8.21 a gallon, the association said. If oil prices continue to rise, "relief for the British motorist is unlikely in the near future," AA road safety head Andrew Howard told London's Telegraph newspaper. UPI

A two-year-old girl who was born with four arms and four legs is being operated on by Indian doctors. They hope that they will succeed and leave the girl with normal anatomy. The girl, Lakshmi, is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, and some in her poor village in the northern state of Bihar revere her as a goddess. Others sought to make money from her. Her parents, Shambhu and Poonam, kept her in hiding after a circus apparently tried to buy the girl, according to a report in the Hindustan Times.

Saturday, November 3, 2007 - Kit aircraft loops, rolls in the air like a fighter jet Tri-City Herald PASCO — Scott and Dan Hanchette were called the Wrong Brothers when they decided a decade ago to build an airplane. But, just as the Wright brothers silenced their critics, the Hanchettes' Viperjet MKII Executive has quieted those who questioned their wisdom to sell a profitable gym business to get into making aircraft. Their passion helped them create a sleek, sporty, twin-seater jet from a kit they designed. Their experimental aircraft, which resembles a fighter jet, can climb 10,000 feet a minute, cruises at more than 500 mph and can reach altitudes of 28,000 feet. The Viper can fly about 760 miles without refueling. And there aren't many like it in the kit-airplane market, which consists primarily of single-engine, propeller-driven aircraft, said Dick Knapinski, communications director at Oshkosh, Wis.-based Experimental Aircraft Association. Monty Thompson, who recently came to Pasco from Aspen, Colo., to take a test ride, calls the Viperjet a piece of art. "That plane just wants to fly and doesn't want to come down," he said after a flight. At an average cost of less than $800,000 apiece, the two brothers have already sold 23 Viperjet kits that are in various stages of being built nationwide. It costs about $400 to $500 an hour to operate. Viper has made the kit modular so that customers can put it together without much hassle, said Dan Hanchette, vice president of the Pasco company, which gets about 20 inquiries a week about the plane.

Scent of a Führer Hitler wanted to control the world. But he couldn't even control his flatulence. Guests at the Berghof, Hitler’s private chalet in the Bavarian Alps, must have endured some unpleasant odors in the otherwise healthful mountain air. It may sound like a Woody Allen scenario, but medical historians are unanimous that Adolf was the victim of uncontrollable flatulence. Spasmodic stomach cramps, constipation and diarrhea, possibly the result of nervous tension, had been Hitler’s curse since childhood and only grew more severe as he aged. As a stressed-out dictator, the agonizing digestive attacks would occur after most meals: Albert Speer recalled that the Führer, ashen-faced, would leap up from the dinner table and disappear to his room. This was an embarrassing problem for a ruthless leader of the Third Reich. With uncharacteristic concern for his fellow human beings, Hitler had first tried to cure himself when he was a rising politician in 1929 by poring over medical manuals, coming to the conclusion that a largely veg diet would calm his turbulent digestion as well as make his farts less offensive to the nose. A rabid hypochondriac, he would also examine his own feces on a regular basis and administer himself camomile enemas. Hitler decided to swear off meat completely in 1931, when his niece (and presumed romantic interest) Geli Raubel committed suicide: When presented with a plate of breakfast ham the next morning, he pushed it away muttering, “It’s like eating a corpse.” From that squeamish moment on, great piles of vegetables, raw or pulped into a baby mulch, were Hitler’s daily staple. (All cooked foods, he decided, were carcinogenic). He showed a particular fondness, culinary historians assure us, for oatmeal with linseed oil, cauliflower, cottage cheese, boiled apples, artichoke hearts and asparagus tips in white sauce. Strangely, Hitler was unfazed by the fact that this high-fiber diet was having the opposite effect on his digestion than what he had intended: His private physician, Dr. Theo Morell, recorded in his diary that after Hitler downed a typical vegetable platter, “constipation and colossal flatulence occurred on a scale I have seldom encountered before.” The Smart Set / Drexel University

Police searching for teacher and boy, apparent lovers, on the run The Associated Press Thursday, Nov 01, 2007 - OMAHA — Authorities were searching on Thursday for a 13-year-old boy and a female middle school teacher believed to be on the run after police began investigating an alleged intimate relationship between the pair. A judge issued an arrest warrant Monday charging her with kidnapping, child abuse and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Authorities believed the two were traveling together in Peterson’s white Pontiac, and police nationwide were notified about them. Court documents said the boy was last seen Oct. 26. The boy, 13-year-old Fernando Rodriguez, was an eighth-grade student at the school, but it was not clear if Peterson was his teacher two years ago. Peterson taught at the school and Rodriguez was a student, but district Superintendent Todd Chessmore said he wasn’t sure whether the boy was in her class. A school official referred questions to Chessmore. Court documents showed authorities had recovered several e-mails and letters in which the two professed their affection for one another. Some letters were discovered by Peterson’s father, Timothy Peterson, who turned them over to police, court documents said. In the letters, the boy called Peterson his “Baby Gurl” and said their relationship was “just not about the sex but that it was pretty good,” according to court documents. Court documents say Peterson’s school-issued laptop contained letters to the student, including one from April saying she loved him, thought he loved her, was “100 percent faithful” to him and would always be faithful.

Mother charged with assault of 13-year-old November 7, 2007 A Wisconsin woman, a former teacher, is charged with sexual assault after allegedly having an affair with her daughter's 13-year-old former boyfriend. Thirty-nine year old Anne Knopf of Prescott, Wisconsin was charged with Sexual Assault of a Child Under 16 in Pierce County District Court Monday. The charge is the result of a four-month investigation into the relationship between Knowpf and the boy. The boy's parents became aware of the relationship and notified police in mid May. She has been released on $25,000 bond. Knopf has been ordered to refrain from contacting the victim. She retained custody of her two children. kare11.com

A photo released by the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the National Geographic Society on May 10, 2005 shows a model of King Tutankhamun made by a French team based on facial reconstructions from CT scans of King Tutankhamun's mummy. Teams of forensic artists and scientists built models of the boy pharaoh's face based on some 1,700 high-resolution photos from CT scans of his mummy to reveal what he looked like the day he died nearly 3,300 years ago. The linen wrapped mummy of King Tut was put on public display for the first time on Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007, 85 years after the 3,000-year-old boy pharaoh's golden enshrined tomb and mummy were discovered in Luxor's famed Valley of the Kings.

Jaws were dropping all around when our own Adam Frucci brought back video of his harrowing 377-foot-high ride in a glass-bottomed car on the Odaiba Ferris Wheel in Tokyo, but now the Chinese are going to top that wheel with the tallest one in the world. Today, construction began on the Great Wheel of China, a $99 million Ferris wheel that will tower over Beijing at a stupendous 680 feet when construction is complete in 2009. Each one of its 48 cars is like a gondola, air-conditioned and holding 40 passengers, for a total of 1920 stomachs pressed against the top of their abdominal cavities as the big wheel keeps on turnin'. Too bad there was so much bickering over the design of the gigantic wheel, because originally the plan was to complete construction in time for next summer's Beijing Olympics.

Study shows marijuana-smoking teens doing just fine, thank you Reuters Tuesday, November 06, 2007 CHICAGO - A study of more than 5,000 youngsters in Switzerland has found those who smoked marijuana do as well or better in some areas as those who don't, researchers said. But the same was not true for those who used both tobacco and marijuana, who tended to be heavier users of the drug, said the report from Dr. J.C. Suris and colleagues at the University of Lausanne. The study did not confirm the hypothesis that those who abstained from marijuana and tobacco functioned better overall, the authors said. In fact, those who used only marijuana were "more socially driven ... significantly more likely to practice sports and they have a better relationship with their peers" than abstainers, it said. "Moreover, even though they are more likely to skip class, they have the same level of good grades; and although they have a worse relationship with their parents, they are not more likely to be depressed" than abstainers, it added. It did not explain the reasons behind the apparent effect. The study, published in the November issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, was based on a 2002 survey of 5,263 Swiss students age 16 to 20, of whom 455 smoked marijuana only, 1,703 who used both marijuana and tobacco and 3,105 who abstained from both. The report said that while marijuana use has declined among U.S. adolescents, it has increased in recent years among the same age group in Switzerland and other European countries. The study said that while one theory holds that using legal drugs like nicotine and alcohol opens the door to marijuana and other illegal drug use, recent research also has found marijuana may come first and it "may reinforce cigarette smoking or lead to nicotine addiction ..." In the study, about half of the tobacco and marijuana group had used the latter drug 10 times or more in the previous month. That compared to 56 percent in the marijuana-only group who had used the drug only once or twice in the same time period. "These findings agree with previous research indicating that (tobacco) smokers were significantly more likely to be heavy cannabis users than nonsmokers," the study concluded. In addition, those who use only marijuana were less likely to have started using that drug before the age of 15 compared to tobacco users, and the tobacco-marijuana group was more likely to have abused alcohol, the study said.

Army tests James Bond style tank that is 'invisible' Last updated at 11:56am on 30th October 2007 New technology that can make tanks invisible has been unveiled by the Ministry of Defense. In secret trials last week, the Army said it had made a vehicle completely disappear and predicted that an invisible tank would be ready for service by 2012. The new technology uses cameras and projectors to beam images of the surrounding landscape onto a tank. The result is that anyone looking in the direction of the vehicle only sees what is beyond it and not the tank itself. A soldier, who was at the trials, said: "This technology is incredible. If I hadn't been present I wouldn't have believed it. I looked across the fields and just saw grass and trees - but in reality I was staring down the barrel of a tank gun." How the technology works in a combat situation is very sensitive, but the MoD is believed to be testing a military jacket that works on the same principles. He said the only drawback was the reliability of the cameras and projectors. But he added: "The next stage is to make the tank invisible without them - which is intricate and complicated, but possible." Daily Mail

World’s Largest Shotgun The 10-feet long, 2-in barreled weapon, called the Punt Gun, is the longest shotgun in the world. In the late 1800s, a hunter could use this gun to sneak up on a raft of sleeping ducks, fire a single shot (which consists of 2 lb of BB pellets) and kill nearly 100 ducks with a single round! TechEBlog has the larger pic and video: Link

Aztec Paddleball "Ullamaliztli," a ceremonial ball game played by the Aztecs a few hundred years before the European discovery of America, called for players on two teams to don large stone belts or hip paddles. These paddles were used to bounce a small rubber ball back and forth down a narrow court with inclined stone walls. The players used each others’ bodies and walls as they attempted to maneuver the ball into a small stone ring high above mid-court. The game ended when either side scored a goal. Amazingly enough, the game actually enjoyed long popularity among the native peoples of Mexico and Central America before the Aztecs played it, including the Maya some thousands of years earlier. Of course, the stakes were a little greater when the Aztecs came to play. In their version of the sport, at the end of the game one of the captains was sacrificed to the gods, giving even more meaning to the phrase "sore loser."

Quick question, what side of your car is your gas tank filler? If you are anything like me, you probably can't remember right away. Well ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to share with you - my little secret so you will no longer look like Ace Ventura on your way to the gas station or put your neck at risk of discomfort or injury. If you look at your gas guage, you will see a small icon of a gas pump. The handle of the gas pump will extend out on either the left or right side of the pump. If your tank filler is on the left, the handle will be on the left. If your tank filler is on the right, the handle will be on the right (see photo above). It is that simple!

Electric car with 1,350Nm of torque on sale now Posted on Monday 5 November 2007 This may look like a golf buggy posing as an electric car but this is one of the most powerful electric vehicles we’ve come across yet. With a price tag of $ 108,000 , the ‘120-M.P.H. Electric Car’ will accelerate from 0-60mph in four seconds flat and reach a top speed of 120mph with just one gear. It features two electric motors - smaller versions of the same kind found in diesel-electric locomotives - that combine to produce over 1,354Nm (1,000lb-ft) of torque. The vehicle’s chassis is made of stainless steel and features an integrated roll-cage for added safety. The body panels are made of carbon fiber, Kevlar, and fiberglass, and its side impact bars are claimed to offer four times the protection found in typical SUVs. The car generates no emissions and operates from a set of lead-acid batteries that can recharge using any power outlet up to 50 amps, providing enough power for a range of 40-80 miles. If you can wait for the Tesla Roadster to ever be completed then head over to Hammacher Schlemmer and order your 120-M.P.H. Electric Car today.

An 18-year-old girl was surprisingly crowned "Japan's best bottom" babe at Triumph International's "Show Me Your Sloggi" Japan contest held on Tuesday in Tokyo after a freak accident scorched her rump days before the contest. "I always take care of my bottom, but I'm embarrassed to show it today because I burned it by sitting on a hair iron the other day," Kaho Watanabe, clad in pink baby doll lingerie, said in her short self-promotion spiel.

Joe Castro from Hollywood performs in full Halloween costume on of Santa Monica Boulevard during the West Hollywood Costume Carnival on Halloween night in West Hollywood, California, October 31, 2007

Winner of the 2007 World Backside Championships Kristina Dimitrova of Bulgaria, shows off her backside in Munich. A Bulgarian woman and a Romanian man have the world's best-looking bottoms, according to the jury of a backside beauty contest sponsored by a lingerie firm, a company spokeswoman said Thursday.

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