You talk too much

And you worry him to death:

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.

The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.

It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

On the bright side, this may alleviate Social Security and Medicare funding problems.

A Very Fine Bird Is the Publican

But, keep it to yourself, please:

Bar managers and store owners face large-scale compensation claims if their customers ogle their barmaids, waitresses or check-out staff.

New sex discrimination laws also mean that landlords who allow loud sexist jokes or banter among drinkers could be taken before a tribunal.

The regulations say that bosses are responsible for protecting their staff from sexual harassment by customers - and that those who fail to do so can face unlimited compensation claims.

....Restaurant managers or hoteliers risk action if staff object to backchat from diners or guests asking for a date.

....The regulations were pushed through by Women and Equalities Minister Harriet Harman, who has powers under European legislation to amend discrimination law.

....Stuart Chamberlain, an employment law specialist at Consult GEE, said: "Employers may feel uncomfortable about confronting clients but they need to be aware that failing to take action could result in a claim for compensation, including for injury to feelings.

....The burden of proof will lie with employers. There will be no need for workers to show their employer allowed harassment to happen - instead, managers must demonstrate that they were not at fault.

Happy Hour?

Waste not, want not...in Australia:

A MAN attacked his girlfriend and then refused to go to hospital to see her before she died because he had not finished his beer, a Sydney judge has been told.

During a sentencing hearing in the New South Wales Supreme Court today, Justice Roderick Howie was told Edward David Zammit threw the woman against a fridge and a cupboard, after she told his ex-girlfriend that he sometimes hit her.

The court was told Deslie Ward had stopped breathing and had no pulse by the time an ambulance arrived, but Zammit declined to go to hospital with her, saying he was waiting on phone calls.

When she began showing signs of life and he was again urged to go to the hospital, Zammit declined, saying: "I'm waiting for phone calls and besides that they just poured me a beer".

Didn't get off the ground

In Bavaria, they're still down to earth:

The magnetic levitation (maglev) idea was patented as long ago as the 1930s. For the past four decades, Germany's best engineers have been working out the technical details.

But the Transrapid -- the monorail maglev system developed by Siemens and ThyssenKrupp that has trains speeding on a magnetic cushion at 500 kilometers an hour -- simply won't fly.

The decision announced Thursday to halt plans for a 37-kilometer link between Munich's airport and the city center may be the final nail in the coffin for the prestige project.

The federal German government and the state of Bavaria withdrew their financial backing when it became clear that costs were soaring towards 3 billion euros (4.6 billion dollars).

....The hope was that a successful Transrapid in Germany would provide the showcase necessary to market the high-speed technology to the rest of the world.

....After the Munich decision, the Transrapid appears set to follow the fate of the Zeppelin -- another German showpiece -- into the dustbin of exciting but failed high-tech.

The Belt Tower

If that's a leaning tower, it must be Italy:

Work began in Venice this week to fit a titanium belt to one of the city's most famous landmarks, the bell-tower in St Mark's Square.

Experts were called in after a survey revealed the 99-metre bell-tower is sloping by seven centimetres, a sign that its foundations - thousands of wooden posts driven into unstable ground - are failing to provide adequate support.

Surveyors also reckon the foundations of the tower are cracking by a millimetre a year.

To prevent the tower from toppling over, the titanium belt will be wrapped around its foundations two metres below ground and will be invisible from the outside.

Consorzio Venezia Nuova (CVN), the conservation group in charge of the restoration, has warned that the picturesque square - a must on Italy's tourist trail - will be covered in scaffolding for the next two years while the belt is fitted.

Every Cloud Has...

...if not silver, an ivory lining to Global Warming:

NOVY URENGOI, Russia: .... The ivory in this part of the world comes from the remains of extinct woolly mammoths, as they emerge from the tundra where they have been frozen for thousands of years. It is a traditional Russian business that had all but gone extinct itself during the Soviet period but is flourishing now.

....The trade, bolstered recently by global warming, which has melted the tundra and exposed more frozen remains, is not only legal but actually endorsed by conservationists. They note somewhat grudgingly that while the survival of elephants may be in question, it is already too late for mammoths. Mammoth ivory from Siberia, they say, meets some of the Asian demand for illegal elephant ivory and its trade should be encouraged.

....Woolly mammoths are the last of three extinct elephantine species that inhabited Siberia. They appeared about 400,000 years ago and lasted at least until 3,600 years ago - the age of some mammoth remains found on an island off the northern coast of the Russian region of Chukotka in 1993.

The tusks emerge with the spring thaw or after heavy rains, or along the eroding banks of rivers. A boom in gas and oil investment has added another source, as crews dig wells and dig ditches for pipelines. Fresh from the permafrost, mammoth ivory is nearly pristine, though with a characteristic green patina. But if left outside and exposed to the elements, it will disintegrate within three years into worthless splinters.

That is another point in favor of the mammoth ivory trade, said [Aleksei Tikhonov, director of the Zoological Museum in St. Petersburg], the Russian mammoth expert. It encourages the gathering of tusks that would otherwise be lost. In fact, he said, vastly more mammoth ivory is destroyed in this natural cycle in Russia than is ever found and sold, perhaps hundreds of tons a year.

But, will they come when you call them...

...fish...from the vasty deep:

Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Wood's Hole, Massachusetts, are testing a plan to train fish to catch themselves by using a sound broadcast to attract them into a net.

They hope to release fish into the open ocean, where they would grow to market size, before enticing them into an underwater cage to be harvested when they hear a tone that signals feeding time.

If successful, the system could be used to bolster depleted fish stocks and reduce the costs of fish farming, scientists said.

"It sounds crazy, but it's real," said Simon Miner, a research assistant at MBL.

Mr Miner said the first step in the project was to establish whether fish could be trained.

Hamburger UnHelper

In this lengthy article on the demise of the Reeperbahn,

Controlled and legal prostitution - at least the kind that made Hamburg's Reeperbahn famous and profitable for decades - is dying in what still rates as one of the world's most famous red light districts. ....

The message was driven home explicitly with the announcement that Hamburg's oldest brothel is to shut, having provided an uninterrupted service for its clients for the past 60 years.

One has to get to the third page to find out that the famous district's problem is the efficiency of modern shipping:

...probably the most significant reason for the Reeperbahn's seemingly terminal decline lies 2km away on the opposite bank of the mud-brown River Elbe. The container port has more lights than the Reeperbahn and is busy around the clock all year. There are plans to dredge the Elbe to accommodate bigger, deep-draft container ships.

...[in] the 50s and early 60s when the streets of the Reeperbahn thronged with sailors because, back in those days, cargo ships took at least four or five days to unload, which allowed their crews a run ashore every night. "These days the turnaround on the container ships is so quick that the crews often don't even get off," said [an amateur economist].

Low Expectations Down Under

And even then, the behavior is appalling:

Indigenous leader Noel Pearson says authorities should not hesitate to remove abused children from their communities amid national and international condemnation over the gang rape of 10-year-old girl in Aurukun [North Australia].

....Queensland Crown prosecutor Steve Carter has now been stood down pending an investigation into his handling of the case.

Mr Carter said the case where a 10-year-old girl was raped by nine men involved what he described as consensual sex in a non-legal manner and he called those involved "very naughty".

He did not recommend any of the perpetrators, aged from their teens to 26, to face jail.

Lest anyone think the above is an aberration:

Aboriginal leader and lawyer Mr Pearson, who comes from Cape York, has long argued passive welfare is to blame for a complete breakdown in social norms in Indigenous communities

...."This is the tip of a tragic iceberg and it's a problem that has been going on for a long time," he said.

"It's a problem that we've been trying to highlight for a long time now and it's a problem that is not disappearing.

"There's nothing that we are currently doing that is decisively avoiding this kind of tragedy."

...."We will get 80 cases reported month - 30 are substantiated and this is an average monthly reporting level for child protection."

...."It's a crisis that the State Government has attempted to respond to through its new child safety system and through alcohol limitations and so on, but it's not a crisis that we are on top of," he said.

....He says part of the answer is to remove the children at risk.

"It's the immediate answer, absolutely," he said.

....He says he has absolutely no doubt the perpetrators of the gang rape, some of them only teenagers, should have gone to jail.

"There is absolutely no justification for leniency," he said.

"In fact, part of the whole breakdown, the social and cultural breakdown that we see in our communities is the consequence of courts taking into account the historical and social background of Aboriginal offenders.

"In the past 30 years there's been a tendency for the judicial system to take into account this cultural and historical background of Aboriginal offenders and therefore resulting in leniency, when in fact the imperative has all along been to make sure that social norms are observed and maintained in communities.

"If we want to diminish in the long term the number of Aboriginal people in prison, we have got to have low tolerance of anti-social behaviour and criminal behaviour.

Big Italy

Russia just can't shake the planning thing, even if they have to outsource:

Italian architects are to build a new futuristic metropolis the size of Manhattan in the Volga region of Russia.

Milan-based firm Dante O. Benini won a tender earlier this month to build the urban complex across the river from Russia's third largest city, Nizhni Novgorod.

....Globe Town will replace the small, run-down town of Bor and will feature skyscrapers in glass, aluminium and steel arranged in ascending and descending order of height to create an undulating skyline.

....Globe Town will also have a public park four times bigger than New York's Central Park as well as stadiums, hotels, sports centres and a large river port on the banks of the Volga.

The regional government of Nizhni Novgorod hopes the new complex, which will provide housing for 500,000 people, will act as a spillover for the crowded industrial city.

Streets as wide as motorways will allow 250,000 cars to circulate in the city, which will be connected to Nizhni Novgorod by four bridges and an underground tunnel.

Snow covers the area where the city will be built for half of the year, and the site is also vulnerable to being swamped by the Volga river. ''To overcome the problem of flooding the water will be channelled into canals, while four million square metres of land where we're going to put the buildings will be raised eight metres above ground level,'' Gonzo explained.

An underground system will pump hot water to heat the houses in winter and will store cold water and ice to cool the city in summer.

To make the city eco-friendly, the architects will use 'smog eating' material - photocatalytic asphalt and cement that gobbles up pollution from the air - and will also build a gasifier to convert household rubbish into fuel.

Green spaces will cover around 15 million square metres, or around half of the city's total surface area.

Knowing the Price of Everything

And calculating the value of being re-elected in Zimbabwe:

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has threatened to force businesses to cut prices ahead of the 29 March elections.

Prices have again shot up after Mr Mugabe awarded huge pay rises to teachers and civil servants last month.

"We are going to read the riot act to them [businesses]," he told a campaign rally in Hwange.

The government last year ordered prices to be reduced, leading to widespread shortages. Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate is 100,000% - the world's highest.

....Mr Mugabe says white-owned businesses are raising prices in order to reduce his chances of being re-elected.

The businesses say the official prices are below the cost of production.

Some 12,000 people were arrested last year for selling goods at above the official prices.

Picture a Little Love Nest...

Down in the land of canings:

The Singapore government is offering students lessons in seduction in an attempt to boost the city state's flagging birth rates.

Students at two polytechnics can earn two credits towards their final degree by choosing the love elective. Activities include watching slushy films, holding hands and "love song analysis".

An 18-year-old mechanical engineering student, Isabel Seet, told the local Straits Times newspaper: "My teacher said if a guy looks into my eyes for more than five seconds, it could mean that he is attracted to me and I stand a chance.

"It's very interesting, and if I have a boyfriend in future, I'll know how to cope with any problems we may have."

Global Warming Is So 90s

NASA has a satellite that is telling meteorologists some things they didn't expect:

[Michqel] Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"

[Jennifer] Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."

Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"

Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."

Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."

Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."

Official Tennis Family...

...of the Obama Campaign?

Tennis is a prejudice game. Well, I'm Black and I'm prejudiced, very prejudiced. I'll be always prejudiced as the White man. The White man hated me all my life and I hate him. That's no secret. I'm not even an American, it just so happens that I was born in America. People are prejudiced in tennis. I don't think Venus or Serena was ever accepted by tennis. They never will be. But if you get some little White no good trasher in America like Tracy Austin or Chris Evert who cannot hit the ball, they will claim this is great.

M is for the many times...

We've turned you away, for lack of room at the incubators:

More than four in ten maternity units in NHS hospitals have turned away women in labour and forced them to travel miles to give birth, according to new figures.

The statistics show the true scale of the crisis facing maternity units across the country, which could be putting the lives of mothers and babies at risk.

Many mothers-to-be have been forced to travel miles away from home after the doors were closed at their local NHS hospital.

Doing it for the children

The vaunted foreign policy credentials of Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton's boasts that she gained major foreign policy experience as First Lady have been undermined after 11,046 pages of her White House schedules provided scant evidence to back up her claims.

....her visits to Northern Ireland indicate that she went little beyond the traditional role of a president's wife attending social events, meeting women's groups and greeting children.

Despite Mrs Clinton's claim last week that she was "instrumental" in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, the schedules do not record her attending a single policy meeting in the province.

....In Belfast [in 1998], she gave an address to the Vital Voices women's conference, spent 30 minutes at a reception at the City Hall and visited the PlayBoard children's project.

Her schedule records that she and Cherie Blair, the then Prime Minister's wife, were to "proceed to the children's play area, where children are creating playground models". They were then to "proceed down the path where they are joined by 25 children with balloons" and go "to the top of the hill and release the balloons".

....Her second solo visit came in May 1999.

She attended the dedication of a Playspace project, designed to ensure that children should have the chance to play in a "non-hostile environment". Her schedule noted that she was to invite "12 children to join as she and the programme participants plant two trees".

Speedy Gonzalez

Is now Suing Gonzales in Spain:

A man caught driving at 260 kilometres per hour [about 160 mph] on a highway in northern Spain is suing the Spanish government for more than EUR 300,000 in compensation for confiscating his driving license.

The 42-year-old man, whom court officials identified as Constantino G. S., was clocked by police travelling at more than twice the legal speed limit last year in an Audi A8 sedan. His driving license was immediately withheld and he was charged with reckless endangerment. More than a year later, a judge acquitted him of the charges due to a legal loophole.

In response to being banned from driving for 13 months, Constantino G. S. filed a lawsuit requesting EUR 313,454 [about $ 470,000] in compensation for the added expenses and time it had cost him to travel to and from work and for the "moral damage" caused by having his photo published by the media.

Our Standards are Junk

That's how we make a living:

Chris Pearson, a state legislator in Vermont, had a sense the people were with him when he proposed a bill in November to allow residents to block junk mail.

He got media attention, interview requests and e-mails from constituents eager to stop the credit-card offers, furniture catalogs and store fliers that clog their mailboxes.

Then came the pushback from postmasters, who told Pearson and other lawmakers that "standard" mail, the post office name for junk mail, has become the lifeblood of the U.S. Postal Service and that jobs depend on it.

Pearson's bill remains in a committee and has not been scheduled for a vote.

Barred by law from lobbying, the Postal Service is trying to make its case before a growing number of state legislatures weighing bills to create Do Not Mail registries similar to the popular National Do Not Call Registry.

The agency printed 3,000 "information packets" about the economic value of standard mail and sent postmasters to testify before legislative committees around the country.

....The Postal Service is working with the Direct Marketing Association, which represents retailers and the printing industry, in its new campaign designed to quash Do Not Mail initiatives.

....Perhaps surprisingly, many environmental groups are cool to the idea of a registry that prohibits marketers from sending mail to those enrolled and that fines violators. One reason may be that most environmental groups use standard [junk] mail for their solicitation.

World's Greatest Monopolist

Not content with exploiting teenage labor, the NCAA enters the scalping business (to protect their customers, of course):

The NCAA is ready to reap even more money from its men's basketball tournament by engaging in a practice it once frowned upon: The resale of Final Four tickets at prices well over face value.

It is having its official ticket package provider, RazorGator, move large blocks of prime tickets online at markups of hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.

The association entered the ticket resale business last year. It did so to protect its financial interests and to protect fans from counterfeit tickets, says Greg Shaheen, the NCAA's senior vice president for basketball and business strategies.

Late Tuesday afternoon, RazorGator was selling hundreds of all-sessions tickets to the Final Four at San Antonio's Alamodome, which will have capacity of 44,500 for the event. The tickets cover the national semifinals doubleheader, April 5, and the final, April 7. Some were selling for nearly 15 times their face value of $140-$220, and 14 blocks of at least 10 tickets were available in either the lower level, between the baskets or just outside the baskets.

Nose up in the air?

Make sure it's in good hands:

A Lloyd's of London syndicate said Tuesday it is insuring the nose of winemaker Ilja Gort for $8 million. The 47-year-old Dutch winemaker and taster took out the policy after hearing about a man who lost his sense of smell in a car accident.

"Tasting wine is something you do with your nose, not your mouth," said Gort, who produces wines at his Chateau de la Garde vineyard in France's Bordeaux region.

The policy covers the loss of either his nose or his sense of smell. But it has some conditions for protecting his nose: He is barred from riding a motorcycle; working as a knife thrower's assistant or fire-breather; and he can't be a boxer.