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"We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots," said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. "This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months."

That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.

In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.

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It reads like a James Bond novel: an enigmatic white-haired computer hacker; a soldier turned whistleblower; secret government correspondence; and the world's most powerful country desperate to contain the situation.

Julian Assange, the Australian-born face of the web iconoclast WikiLeaks, is in hiding overseas after the US military arrested one of its own soldiers, Bradley Manning, and accused him of leaking a a secret video of a US Army helicopter gunning down civilians in Iraq in 2007.

The video was released on Wikileaks this year, and the US is now desperate to find Mr Assange before he leaks thousands of hugely embarrassing state diplomatic cables, which are believed to discuss the Middle East, its governments and leaders. Continue reading "The US's hunt for the ... »

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(Reuters) - A German student created a major traffic jam in Bavaria after making a rude gesture at a group of Hell's Angels motorcycle gang members, hurling a puppy at them and then escaping on a stolen bulldozer.

German police said on Monday that after making his getaway from the Hell's Angels club, the 26-year-old dumped the bulldozer, causing a 5 km (3 miles) traffic jam near the southern town of Allershausen, local police said. He then fled to his home nearby where he was apprehended by the police.

"What motivated him to throw a puppy at the Hell's Angels is currently unclear," said a spokesman for local police, adding that the student had lately been suffering from depression.

The puppy was now in safe hands, the spokesman added.

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WASHINGTON - The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

This is actually pretty hilarious. Had me laughing :3.



You know what I've noticed is that FBI is always extremely polite, whereas police are always extremely belligerent and rude. Guess it's just to make you feel uncomfortable and more willing to answer questions.

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In what has to be one of the biggest violations of common sense and burden of proof in motoring news this year, the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that officers can “visually estimate” how fast a person is driving… and give them a ticket for it.

Thanks Ohio Supreme Court for giving cops the green light to make up speeding tickets.

Continue reading "Ohio Supreme Court rules in ... »

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28-year-old Neil Harbisson has achromatopsia, which means he only sees in black and white. You'll notice in his photo however, that he's wearing a camera mounted to his head. This converts colors into soundwaves—making him "hear" colors.

It's almost like a form of synesthesia, where one of the forms makes people see colors for specific letters or numbers. Harbisson became a "cyborg" after meeting a fellow student while at university in England, who worked on it with a Slovenian software developer, fine-tuning it to the point where he can now see 360 color hues, as well as color saturation. Continue reading "Neil the cyborg" »

It might be protein restriction instead, or even more specifically, the amino acid, methionine, which is common in meat.

I wouldn't change my diet until they get something conclusive, because they seem to be making totally retarded conclusions about the whole thing. Read the article and you'll see what I mean

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Like, did they think it was calorie restriction that was doing the trick, because they just happened to be reducing proteins as a result of reducing calories? And even more specifically it's only methionine that needs to be reduced? I hate when they don't make any obvious connections like that.