Olympics: Britain win first gold medal in women's cycling race

Nicole Cooke has won Britain's first gold medal of the Beijing Olympics, cycling to victory in the road race.

The 25-year-old Welshwoman was in a group of five that pulled away from the peloton in the 6km uphill climb to the finish through driving rain. She then won a sprint to the line before hoisting her arms in the air in delight.

'We did it, it was perfect. It's a dream come true,' said a jubilant Cooke, who finished in 3 hours, 32 minutes and 24 seconds .


'I want to thank all the people who have been there from the start. I have worked so hard, I am so happy.'

Cooke came fifth in Athens when a lack of supporting team-mates cost her a medal.

But today with Emma Pooley and Sharon Laws she had probably the best British women's team ever assembled.

Simon Clegg, Team GB's chef de mission, said: 'Nicole Cooke has just secured Team GB's first medal - and what a medal. It's not only gold but it's Team GB's 200th gold medal from the modern Olympic Games.

'Emma and Sharon did an awesome job in supporting Nicole in her race for gold.'

Sweden's Emma Johansson won the silver and Tatiana Guderzo of Italy won the bronze.




Nicole Cooke Factfile:

1983 - Born April 13, Swansea, Wales.

2000 - Wins gold medals in world championship junior road races in France and

Spain.

2001 - Continues that success with further wins in junior race and time trial

in Portugal. Awarded the Bidlake Memorial Prize, given for outstanding performance or

contribution to the betterment of cycling.

2002 - Wins gold medal in women's road race at the Commonwealth Games in

Manchester.

2003 - Wins the women's road race world cup, the youngest to do so and the

first Briton. Named BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year.

2004 - Becomes the youngest winner of the Giro d'Italia Femminile. August - Finishes fifth in road race in the Athens Olympics.

2006 - Wins the bronze medal in the road race at the Commonwealth Games in

Melbourne. September 3 - Wins road race world cup for the second time.

2008 - August 10 - Wins gold medal in road race at the Beijing Olympics,

Britain's first medal of the games.

Extraordinary satellite images show an ordinary day in Britain - as seen from space

This is Britain - but not as we know it. These extraordinary satellite images reveal what our nation looks like from the skies.

From flight paths and road networks to telephone exchanges across London, the stunning aerial shots paint a striking new perspective on the British Isles.

Everything from London taxi journeys to internet activity across the nation are replicated in the breathtaking images.

Using the latest satellite technology and innovations in aerial photography, the pictures will be shown for the first time on 'Britain from Above', a new BBC series that starts this Sunday.

Presenter Andrew Marr takes to the skies by plane, helicopter, microlight and even parachute to give viewers a bird's eye view of landmarks across the UK.

The programme uses satellite data and the latest computer generated imagery to demonstrate how Britain keeps moving - tracking the planes that enter our airspace, the ships that cross the English Channel and the cars that travel our streets, all in the space of a single day.

Series director Cassian Harrison, said: 'It has been amazing to work with cameras mounted on so many helicopters and planes.

'The one disadvantage is that when we film we're contending so much with the weather.

'It has been a battle with the elements, but a brilliant one, working out how many different ways it is possible to get up in the sky and look down at the nation.

'In a way, though, the biggest privilege is being able to look down on the world you know.

'It's like Google Earth, but for real.'

'Britain From Above' begins on BBC1 on Sunday at 9pm.

Why beaming messages to aliens in space could destroy our planet

Thanks to the foolish antics of a downmarket TV company and a website favoured by self-obsessed teenagers, planet Earth could be in for a nasty shock towards the end of this century.

For if, in the decades to come, a fleet of flying saucers arrives with malicious intent, they will be the culprits.

This week it was announced that documentary-maker RDF and Bebo, a 'social networking site' for dippy youngsters, are to use a big radio telescope in Ukraine to send a powerful focused beam of information - 500 messages from the public in the form of radiowaves - to a nearby star called Gliese 581.

A 'mere' 20 light years (120 trillion miles) away, Gliese not only lies in our cosmic backyard but astronomers think it is also home to one or possibly two Earth-like planets which could be home to life.

The Gliese 581 solar system is, in other words, probably the likeliest home for our cosmic next-door neighbours.

Surely this is a harmless piece of nonsense? What danger could there possibly be from sending a big 'Hello' from Earth to a nearby star system?

After all, aliens are probably just a myth and if they are out there they will come in peace. That's the idea anyway.

Let's get one thing straight: I am not part of the UFO brigade. I have seen no convincing evidence whatsoever that aliens have yet visited the Earth in person.

I know The X Files is a work of fiction, not a documentary, and I accept that those who claim to have seen flying saucers and even to have been abducted by strange little aliens are either sincerely mistaken, mendacious or mad.

I have no truck with crop circle mystics and those who believe the pyramids were built by little green men from the Planet Tharg.

We have been looking for alien life for several decades now, sending probes to Mars and Venus, and listening out for radio messages from the stars.

And, so far, we have found nothing. Not even a microbe.

And yet, I also accept that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We have been looking for extraterrestrials for only a very short time.

We have really considered the possibility of their existence for a few centuries at most - a tiny proportion of the time that we humans have been around.

Most of all, I accept that although we have not found aliens yet, the statistical probability that there are intelligent lifeforms somewhere out there must be very high.

There are, after all, a hundred thousand million stars in our galaxy - and more than a hundred billion galaxies besides.

Astronomers now think that most of these stars - more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth - have retinues of planets around them.

So far, they have discovered only about 250 of these potentially life-bearing worlds or 'exoplanets' but there are many hundreds of thousands of millions more out there.

Not all of them will be habitable, but many millions will probably be 'Goldilocks worlds' - not too cold, not too hot, not too big and not too small, but just right, in theory, for life to have evolved.

Indeed at least one of the planets orbiting Gliese 581 is maybe such a Goldilocks world.

And even if we accept that life will not evolve everywhere it can, we must also accept that on the one world we know life has emerged - our own - it did so with startling rapidity.


Life on Earth is very nearly as old as Earth itself, and this suggests that if conditions are right then biology of some form will come into being.

Of course 'life' is not the same as 'intelligent life'. The galaxy could be swarming with microbes and algae, shrubs and lichen, even rabbits, lizards and fish (or their alien equivalents).

Discovering that this is so would be interesting and marvellous, but it would not be the same as discovering fellow intelligent beings out there.

And even intelligent life does not mean 'spacefaring life'; it took us thousands of years to get from the invention of the wheel to the first space rockets and radio telescopes.

But the sheer size and age of our galaxy suggests that at least some other worlds should be inhabited by creatures at least as bright as us - creatures able to build radio telescopes and pick up messages and think about doing something about it when they do.

And herein lies the problem. One of the most plausible reasons that we have seen of no signs of aliens may be simply that they haven't found us yet.



Which brings us to the fact that the most likely means of our discovery by alien life is by sending radio waves announcing our presence through space.

Indeed, there are those who point out that radio and TV signals from Planet Earth have been leaking inadvertently into space since the dawn of the radio age 86 years ago.

Surely intelligent alien lifeforms - if they are out there - would have detected these Earthly signals by now, they argue.

After all, the signals travel on through space at the speed of light, so all star systems closer than about 80 light years away could, in theory, have picked up hints of our transmissions by now.

But in reality, picking up these signals will be hard, even for the most advanced civilisation.

Weak and undirected, ordinary television and radio transmissions become almost undetectable at cosmic distances. Yet powerful, focused signals such as the one to be sent by RDF/Bebo are different - they are far easier to detect.

So far, just a handful of such signals have been sent, the first message fired out by the Arecibo radio telescope in 1974. And these have generated immense controversy.

Some scientists, notably the physicist and writer David Brin, have pointed out the danger of shouting 'we are here' to a potentially hostile cosmos.

The fact is that if a civilisation even a few centuries in advance of ours (in technological terms) were to get wind of our existence then the results could be catastrophic.

For what if Gliese is home to a belligerent lifeform with infinitely superior technology to ours? After all, the history of Earth tells us that when advanced civilisations meet technologically backward ones, the results have been, almost without exception, disastrous for the people with bows and arrows.

If we are unlucky, the inhabitants of Gliese could send an invasion fleet. Since they are 20 light years away, the signal will not reach them until 2028 and it will be some decades after that before the fleet arrives here.

It is important to remember that any aliens capable of flying across the great voids between the stars will be in possession of technology so advanced that fighting them would be like taking on a modern army with spears.

We would have no chance. So the best thing may be to keep shtum.

Or to hope that the inevitable self-obsessed triviality that is bound to comprise any message sent by the Bebo community will be enough to convince any purple-tentacled aliens who are on Gliese 581 that there is no intelligent life on Earth whatsoever - and to leave us well alone.

Top 10: Things Only Men Can Do

No.1 - Age well

Sorry ladies, all your creams, moisturizers and youth-in-a-bottle remedies have nothing on us. Our male hormones give us thicker skin, which means we get fewer wrinkles and our skin stays younger longer. While women have Joan Rivers to look forward to, we have Sean Connery. Keith Richards? Well, we’ll just count him as a genetic anomaly.
honorable mention
Become President
Sure, Hilary Clinton made it close for a while -- a "while" that was much longer in her mind. Her defeat for the Democratic nomination, which in itself is not a guarantee for presidency, makes the odds of having a female president as likely as Axl Rose releasing Chinese Democracy. Whether the next female bid is four years or eight years from now, women will always have Battlestar Galactica and Air Force One and other fictitious film and TV women presidents or vice presidents to inspire them while they wait.


No.2 - F*** things

Yep, we can stick ourselves into the middle of things better than anything else. Of course, some of us can do it better than others, but no amount of plastic pegs, rods or mambas can come close to our natural technique.


No.3 - Pee standing up

Full bladder, but there’s a line for the urinal? Just step outside and pee behind a dumpster. On a camping trip? Pee and lean against a tree to steady your flow. While women have to unzip, pull down and crouch before they can go, our process is pretty simple: Find some cover, unzip and go. And if we want to write our name in the snow, we can see exactly what we’re doing.


No.4 - Fertilize eggs

Call it mankind, humankind or peoplekind, we have fertilized history. Yes, our swimmers are under siege from early scientific studies that show women can create sperm from their own bone marrow. And of course, studies are also underway to grow babies out of the womb. Are these studies headed by lesbians? Anyway, until our offspring are named 1765A and 1766B, our tadpoles will continue to hit the target.

No.5 - Play real sports

Be honest; which of these would you prefer to watch: WNBA or NBA? NHL or women’s hockey? NFL or women’s rugby? MLB or softball? We understand that women play plenty of sports and, yes, they are good athletes, but their sports are a snoozefest to watch. An example, in the WNBA a slam dunk stops the presses, while in the NBA, unless it’s a back reverse through three defenders, it’s just another two points.

No.6 - Shave our heads

Sure, Natalie Portman, Sigourney Weaver and Demi Moore all sheared their locks for Hollywood, but as a true lifestyle choice in everyday society, guys have mastered the bald top. From Michael Jordan to David Beckham to Samuel L. Jackson guys wear bald better. Still need more proof? Just look at bald Britney. Result: Shaving our heads is something only men can do.

No.7 - Navigate spatially

Men are much better at seeing things as they really are -- in 3-D. True, the fact that we can see Spy Kids 3-D in focus is no reward, but our superior ability to see shapes also improves our abilities in geometry and math. This explains why more men are math geniuses than women. Sure, the journal Science declared otherwise in 2008 and we are socialized to believe girls are less competent in this realm, but tradition is a hard thing to beat.

No.8 - Manscape

The playoff beard, the love canal, the Fu Manchu, and the goatee are strictly male innovations, and growing them are things only men can do. Plus we can wear chest, underarm, leg, ear, and nose hair as proudly and loudly as we like. Women? Sure they can imitate our Sasquatch look, but like the Sasquatch, they might limit their survival to a small band of tree huggers, who also share their “natural” beauty.

No.9 - Hold our liquor

Sorry ladies, we’re genetically wired to pack it away a lot better than you. Men produce more of the protective enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which breaks down alcohol. This ultimately means that while you’re buzzing off one Cosmo and saying “I love this song” for five songs straight, we can enjoy another two whisky sours and continue to debate whether or not the world can be saved from global warming.

No.10 - Go topless

Sure, women can go topless on the beach, but we can do it whenever and wherever we please. Walking down the street? Off. Mowing the lawn? Off. Street ball? Skins. Rollerblading -- women can try it, but it might be painful. Still in doubt? What gender do you think is responsible for “No Shirts. No Shoes. No Service.”? Useless nipples and the lack of oversized sweat glands are the reasons for this entry on our list of things only men can do.

NASA Scientist: Reports of Mars Life Finding Are 'Bogus'

Rumblings in the media suggest some intriguing findings from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission that relate to the question of life, specifically whether it could have survived on Mars in the past.

The issue bubbled up when it was reported Friday that some interesting results from Phoenix's wet chemistry laboratory, part of the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) suite of instruments, were mentioned in a White House briefing.

Not so, says Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona, who denied that any details of the MECA findings had been shared and called the reports "bogus and damaging information."

The Aviation Week & Space Technology report came on the heels of the Thursday NASA announcement that Phoenix had confirmed the presence of water ice at its landing site in Mars' arctic regions, first detected in 2002 by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. MECA team members were not present at the press briefing at which the water-ice announcement was made.

"The goal [of having no MECA team members present] was to prevent them from being asked any questions that could reveal information before NASA is ready to make an announcement, sources say," the Aviation Week article said, adding that, "The Bush Administration's Presidential Science Advisor's office, however, has been briefed on the new information that NASA hopes to release as early as mid August."

But Smith told SPACE.com that this was "not true, MECA results have not been discussed at the White House."

"There is no one who knows either on the [Phoenix] project in Tucson or at [NASA] HQ who knows where this information came from," Smith said in a subsequent email.

Smith also said that the MECA team was not present at the Thursday briefing because "they had nothing new to report, the story was about water ice."

When the writer of the Aviation Week story, Craig Covault, was contacted by SPACE.com, he attributed much of the confusion and media hubbub to other news outlets picking up his story and mistakenly reporting that his article said that NASA had discovered life on Mars.

"Note the [Aviation Week] story said very, very clearly three times or so, NO life on Mars detected and Phoenix can NOT [detect life] in the first place," Covault wrote in an email.

Smith added that the results from the analysis of the second soil sample in MECA's wet chemistry lab didn't have any bearing on the question of Mars' past habitability "in any direct way."

"We are attempting to assess the chemicals and minerals that make up the soil composition," he explained. "We are now about half way through the process and there are several conflicting points of view. This is not a good time to go public with half the story."

Covault said that he stands by his story and noted that his piece mentioned the ongoing review of MECA data.

The wet chemistry laboratory has four teacup-sized beakers, each used only once. Samples of the Martian dirt are place in a beaker and mixed with water brought from Earth.

Sensors on the inner surface of the beakers act like electronic tongues and "taste" the dirt to detect salts that can dissolve in water. The sensors can also detect the pH of the surface.

All of this information gives scientists a picture of what the surface layer of dirt looks like now and whether or not it might have been a habitable area at some point in the planet's past.

MECA's first analysis showed that the Martian regolith contained several soluble minerals necessary for life, including potassium, magnesium and chloride. The surface also had an alkaline pH, which on Earth is suitable for growing some plants, such as asparagus. The second sample, currently being analyzed, was delivered to the instrument on July 7.

Scorpion kebab, anyone? It's fast food Beijing style.... But will any Olympic visitors have the stomach for it?

There is a Cantonese saying that the Chinese eat everything that flies, except aeroplanes; everything with four legs, except tables; and everything that swims, except submarines - and visitors to Beijing's fast-food market during the Olympic Games will be left in no doubt of that.

A stroll among the food stalls of Wangfujing Snack Street, not far from Tiananmen Square, reveals delicacies of every conceivable kind.

Laid out in trays and boiling in cauldrons are everything from goat lungs with red peppers to scorpion brochettes, seahorses on skewers, iguana tails, dung beetles and silk worms on a stick, by way of fried sparrows, grilled snake and turkey vulture schnitzels.

The locals insist that Western visitors shouldn't be put off the food on sale on this street - after all, it is mostly 'conventional' Chinese cuisine and great for lunch or dinner.

Indeed, even though dog meat is off the menu for competitors during the Games - they'll be filling themselves up with high-protein drinks and masses of carbohydrates - tourists can still sample dog brain soup or dog liver with vegetables.

As the official Beijing travel guide points out, Westerners should not turn up their noses at these dishes.

'While you might consider things eaten in China to be distasteful, you must bridge the cultural gap and look at it with an open mind,' it advises.

And an open mouth come to that - for as the guide also points out: 'There have been times of severe famine (in China), even as recently as the late Sixties, when tens of millions died of starvation in the Great Leap Forward. Back then, you would have been glad to have had what's on today's menu.'

The half-a-million visitors from around the world who are expected to flood into the Chinese capital over the next three weeks will have the opportunity to try these home-grown specialities - if they have the stomach for it.

And many do try, even if they struggle. One U.S. visitor, Jackie Siegel, could not resist starfish fried in shark oil, though the centipedes, worms and scorpions on offer 'kind of bothered me a little'.

'I'm trying to down the sea urchin, but I don't think I can do it. It doesn't even taste cooked. You know what it looks like? Something really dirty,' she said.

It's not a view shared by the Chinese, who take great pride in their cuisine - dog, in particular, which is a speciality in the Korean restaurants of Beijing, where it is known as gou rou (which is pronounced 'go row').

But Chinese chefs insist they do not cook pets - they say the dogs are specially raised for cooking, 'just as cow, lamb or chicken would be in the West'.

So the visitor must put their ideas of good taste on hold for the duration of their visit and try a freshly fried and seasoned skewer of farmed scorpions, one of the most famous of the delicacies on offer, which costs about 50 yuan (£3.70).

At the weekend, one 19-year- old British tourist plucked up the courage to try a seahorse on a stick for 15 yuan (£1.10).

'It's not too bad,' he said, while biting into the cooked tail. 'It's definitely a different experience.'

But the delicacies of Wangfujing Snack Street are not only about taste and appetite.

The Chinese also believe that certain animals, or their limbs and organs, have medicinal or lifeenhancing properties, such as deer's antlers boiled as tea or snake pickled in China's popular baijiu alcohol.

'Seahorses are good for men's kidneys and their virility,' says Sun Hainan, a young food trader from the Anhui province in the east of the country, who has a stall in the street.

'Crustacean are good for girls - they improve their skin and looks - and lizards boost virility.'

Scorpions are said to make your blood hotter in cold weather and to cure 'certain conditions', although no one seems sure what grasshoppers on a stick are a remedy for, or mixed cow and horse soup, come to that.

Ever since the first European merchants and missionaries visited China, Westerners have been appalled by what the Chinese eat.

In the late 13th century, Marco Polo noted with distaste that the Chinese liked eating snakes, dogs and, in some places, even human flesh.

French Jesuit historian Jean-Baptiste du Halde recorded a Chinese banquet in 1736 in which guests ate: 'Stag pizzles [penises] . . . bears' paws . . . nay, they do not scruple eating cats, rats and such like animals.'

As Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop writes in her fascinating book Shark's Fin & Sichuan Pepper, the 19th-century British surgeon C. Toogood Downing described British sailors in the port of Guangzhou picking carefully at their food 'lest they should detect themselves in the act of devouring an earthworm, or picking the delicate bones of a cat'.

Dunlop describes a Chinese cookbook she came across with full colour photographs in which the heads and feet of various fowl loll over the rims of serving dishes.

On one page, 11 lizards have been partially skinned and deep-fried, 'so their bodies, golden and crisp like chicken nuggets, are sandwiched between scaly tails and heads in which the ruined eyeballs have been replaced by fresh green peas'.

There is a whippy egg-white pudding decorated with cherries and what look like chocolate sprinkles, but on closer inspection turn out to be dried ants (good for dispelling rheumatism).

And then there is the piece de resistance - a whole puppy, roasted crisp, with a garnish of coriander and flowers made from pink radishes.

While living in China, Dunlop ate rabbit heads, pig brains, scorpion and preserved duck eggs - known as 1,000-year- old eggs - whose oozy black yolks and 'noxious aroma' caused her flesh to crawl, made her feel sick and left a toxic black slime on her chopsticks.

She visited a restaurant in Sichuan that specialised in insect dishes, where she had the expensive delicacies bee pupae, timber grubs and sand-crawling caterpillars, which she pronounced to be delicious. She ate sheep's lungs and even the ovarian fat of a snow frog.

'Although a typical Chinese meal consists of grain, pork and vegetables with a bit of fish or seafood thrown in, there is little that can't be considered a potential ingredient,' she says.

'Most people eat dog meat and donkey penis rarely, if at all, but there is no taboo in China about the idea of eating them.'

Mind you, according to the ancient historian Pliny the Elder, the Romans ate flamingo tongues, while medieval Europeans dined on living geese and 19th-century Americans liked deer testicles, so you can't call one culinary cuisine more cultured than another.

On Wangfujing Snack Street, however, the fried silk worms and dung beetles, baby sharks and fried starfish jostle with that most famous, and admired, delicacy - bird's nest soup.

It is made from the nest of the swiftlet, a tiny bird that lives in caves in South-East Asia. Instead of twigs and straw, it makes its nest from its own saliva.

Harvesting the nests requires great skill: men balance on tall bamboo poles to grab the nests from inside the dark caves. Sadly, bird's nest soup actually has a rather bland taste.

But then its recent rise in popularity comes from its growing reputation around the world as a health tonic - and aphrodisiac.

So there might just be a point in trying it, along with lizard legs and a couple of seahorses on the side, from that roadside stall in Beijing after all.

5 Things You Must Know About Sleep

You're tired. You could put your head down on a desk right now and fall asleep immediately. You went to bed late last night, had trouble falling asleep and woke up too early. And let's not kid ourselves: Tonight will be the same unless ... well, read on.

This is the classic not-so-shut-eye experience of many Americans who think they are sleep-deprived and possibly need pills or other treatment to fix their insomnia, teeth grinding, jet lag, restless or jerky legs, snoring, sleepwalking and so forth.

Reality is quite different.

For instance, insomnia is said to be the most common sleep disorder, but these dissatisfying sleep experiences only get in the way of daily activities for 10 percent of us, according to the National Institutes of Health. And in almost half of those cases, the real underlying problem is illness (often mental) or the effects of a substance, like coffee or medication.

Here are five recent findings that might help you rest easier:

1. We sleep better than we think we do

For most of us, sleep deprivation is a myth. We're not zombies. The non-profit National Sleep Foundation (which takes money from the sleep-aid industry, including drug companies that make sleeping pills) says the average U.S. resident gets 7 hours a night and that's not enough, but a University of Maryland study earlier this year shows we typically get 8 hours and are doing fine. In fact, Americans get just as much sleep nowadays as they did 40 years ago, the study found.

2. We need less sleep as we age

We'll die without sleep. The details are sketchy, but research suggests it's a time when we restore vital biological processes and also sort and cement memories. Last year, the World Health Organization determined that nightshift work, which can lead to sleep troubles, is a probable human carcinogen. On the upside, the latest research suggests we need less of it as we get older.

3. You can sleep like a baby (or Thomas Edison)

Multiple, shorter sleep sessions nightly, rather than one long one, are an option. So-called polyphasic sleep is seen in babies, the elderly and other animals (and Thomas Edison reportedly slept this way). For the rest of us, it is more realistic and healthy to sleep at night as best we can and then take naps as needed. EEGs show that we are biphasic sleepers with two alertness dips — one at night time and one mid-day. So talk to HR about setting up a nap room, like they have for NASA's Phoenix mission team members.

4. Animals exhibit a range of sleep habits

The three-toed sloth sleeps 9.6 hours nightly. But newborn dolphins and killer whales can forgo sleeping for their entire first month. However, the latter extreme is not recommended for humans. We grow irritable and lose our ability to focus and make decisions after even one night of missed sleep, and that can lead to serious accidents driving and using other machinery.

5. Get used to being tired, hit the desk

The bottom line is that a good night's sleep is within the reach of most of us if we follow common-sense guidelines for sleep hygiene:

* Go to bed at the same time nightly.
* Set aside enough time to hit that golden 7 hours of sleep.
* Refrain from caffeine, heavy or spicy foods, and alcohol and other optional medications that might keep you awake, four to six hours before bed-time.
* Have a pre-sleep routine so you wind down before you hop in.
* Block out distracting lights and noises.
* Only engage in sleep and sex in bed (no TV-watching, reading or eating).
* Exercise regularly but not right before bed.

But you already know all this and you don't do it. So your realistic plan might be to surrender to the mid-day desk nap.

Cubans poach 'biggest egg' record

First they rid themselves of the capitalist yoke - now Cuba is claiming the world's largest egg.

A Cuban chicken may have poached the record by laying an egg weighing 180g, or 6.34oz.

One-year-old hen Titi should now win a place in the Guinness Book of Records - unless, of course, rival contenders cry fowl.

Titi belongs to the Martinez-Guerra family in Campo Florido, 25km or 15.53 miles east of the capital Havana.

Crowing Cuban officials say the egg weighs 10g more than the previous record-holder from - believe it or not - the Canary Islands.

Owner Estela Guerra said: "Everyone is amazed at how large it is.


"This has never happened before. We have never seen one this size and we've had chickens for a very long time."

Grandson Kendry added: "A short time ago they published something about an egg on the eastern side of the island.

"It weighed 171g so we got curious about our egg which is larger and heavier and could break all egg records.

"We've been trying to contact the media with the objective that the world should see this curiosity."

Genetic mutations: Imagining nature's errors

Not the results of a nuclear fall-out, but just some of the eye-catching entries to a popular online image-altering contest on the theme of genetic mutations.

Internet users were given 48 hours to come up with an imaginary creature to illustrate what happens “when nature messes up”.

Among the other striking entries were a circular centipede with no head or tail, a horse with tiny front legs and a cat with four ears.

All the accepted images can be seen on Worth1000.Com, the image-editing contest website which hosted the competition.

The digital alteration of images, know as “photoshopping” after the Adobe Photoshop software on which it is often done, has become a popular online pursuit.

Numerous websites host photoshopped images along certain themes, while others are devoted to identifying photos that have been altered and presented as true.

Pictured: The moment 100 skydivers came together mid-air to form a diamond the size of a 747

Gliding through the air four thousand feet above the ground, this diamond pattern looks like a giant handkerchief knitted into the skyline.

Consisting of 100 jumpers this world record canopy formation was achieved above Lake Wales, Florida last November.

Measuring 200 ft by 200 ft the breathtaking configuration was achieved by skydivers locking their feet into the lines of parachutes below them and grabbing the canopies below them with their hands.

Roughly the size of a 747 jet, the successful formation broke the previous record of an 85-way canopy formation set in 2005.

A canopy formation, one of the most difficult manoeuvres for parachutists, is built by parachutists flying their parachutes in proximity to each other and then taking grips ("docking") on other jumpers' parachutes.

The practice of building such formations is known by several names; canopy formations (CF), canopy formation skydiving (CFS) or canopy relative work( CRW or CReW).

The 100 jumpers were able to join together on a second of two attempts, using their hands and feet to hook up to adjacent parachutes.

The skydivers exited five planes flying at staggered altitudes to execute the formation.

Brian Pangburn, a participant and one of the organisers of the record jump, explained the technical complexities behind the record.

"The canopy formation is probably only done by about five per cent of skydivers in the world," explained the 43-year-old.

"The planning for this was very precise.

"We had five planes, three Otters and two CASAs, which carried the jumpers.

"The way you build it is that the gut on top starts and then he grabs the guy coming from underneath and so on. So we actually built it from the top going down.

"The first plane, which was at 21,000 ft carried the first nine jumpers. They pulled their cords immediately after exiting the plane to get into position.

"Exactly two minutes later we had another plane empty out the next 25 jumpers and two videographers from 18, 000 ft.

"Two minutes after that at 15,000 ft we had another aircraft with another 25 jumpers.

"And then at 12, 000 ft we had the last two planes carrying 20 and 21 jumpers.

"It took us 11 minutes from the moment the first jumpers exited to when everyone hit the ground so we didn't have much time.

"We also knew we had to break apart at no lower than 4,000 ft so that everyone to land safely on the ground.

"It was close but we got the record just at the last moment."

Using specially designed advanced technology and aerodynamic PD Lightning CReW parachutes the jumpers were travelling at 1, 200 ft per minute.

The success of the formation was built around solid communication.

"Only three people out of the hundred could transmit messages - two in the air and one from the ground," explained Brian.

"Each docking had to be exactly right so the communication had to be spot on.

"The most dangerous portion was breaking the formation which is know as a 'starburst'.

"When we broke it down we send off the bottom row and start counting backwards."

For Brian one of the hardest tasks was to find enough participants to break the world record.

"The canopy formation is probably only done by about five per cent of skydivers in the world," explained the 43-year-old.

"It was very difficult for us to find the talent and we had to look around the world to get this record done.

"Fifty-six per cent of the team were from America, the other 44 per cent were from countries all over the globe - Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Russia, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Egypt, Argentina and Canada."

Brian, who is also a member of the US Skydiving team and trains canopy formations all over the world, has been part of the organising team since 2000.

"I got involved in the 100 way record because after the Germans broke the 53 record back in 1996 they proclaimed it to be a physical impossibility to build anything larger.

"That sounded like a challenge to me so we decided to see how big we could go.

"But we never dreamed of going to 100 until 2003 when we put up a 70 way and then in 2005 we got the world record 85 way.

"It wasn't until then that we thought 100 might actually be doable.

"Over the years we have gained a pretty good group of people from around the world who could get it done.

"As we got more and more credibility we were able to attract better people from around the world."

However such was the skill levels involved, Brian and his team had to assemble the best skydivers in the business - from all over the world.

"We started the training camp in February and we would invite people from around the world to what we called a try out/raining camp and we would evaluate their performance and we had a certain criteria they had to meet.

"They had to dock with in a certain time period and they docked nice and smooth. Then we gave them a formal invitation to participate in the record.

"From the time we started in February I was only home 21 days. We were going around the world evaluating people it took a lot of time to do that."

Brian found that not only the language, but also the different styles of techniques played a large factor in deciding the final team.

"It is kind of difficult with the language barrier and with all the different cultures of skydiving.

"Some people are used to doing things some ways and we ended up having to change a few mindsets to say we are going to go out and do things this way. Everybody had to thinking the same way.

"Between the actual language communication and the techniques they were two of our biggest obstacles that we had to face.

"Three of us went around to pick the talent and it was a difficult chore because there were a lot of talented people around the world and some were better than us but we had to have the same techniques in order to make this thing work.

"The Russian were talented but some didn't make the team because they wouldn't adopt the same techniques."

Videographer Norman Kent documented the world record as he parachuted next to the formation.

"In the case of the 100 record my job was much more complicated," said the 52-year-old.

"The concept of the 100 canopy is a little bit crazy. You jump out of an aeroplane and arrive and open your parachute and then you're going to go and mess with it so that is off the wall.

"I know a lot of skydivers look at them and say to these guys, are you nuts?"

Despite the months of planning, Norman still had to work on instinct to get the best shot.

"There's a lot of guess work involved in this type of photography," he explains.

"This is a nerve wracking drama and you are in the middle of it."

Pictured: The intricate chocolate replicas of British landmarks and celebrity homes

It's the perfect gift for the person who has everything - an edible replica of their home.

But at £2,000 each they'll set you back a bit more than your average box of chocolates.

The intricate creations are being snapped up by the rich and famous with Prince Charles, Sting and Nicolas Cage among those who have commissioned carvings.
The replicas made by Father and daughter chocolatiers Kerr Dunlop and Flo Broughton , measure around 20cm x 10cm and take three weeks to make using intricate moulds.

The pair spent five years perfecting their technique for making the 'edible architecture', which has also been used to recreate British landmarks.Now they have released pictures of their work for the first time, including the sculpture of Prince Charles' Highgrove country estate in Gloucestershire.

They also show Midford Castle near Bath, Somerset - recently bought by Nicholas Cage - and Stings's Lake House mansion at Wilsford-cum-Lake in Wiltshire.

Retired inventor Kerr, 64, said: 'It's very difficult to make them. We have to build them up in different stages as you would a model.

'There are different colours for different parts of the building. If there's a portice on the door we would do that separately then add other features like windows.

'It's neither a quick nor an easy process but we pride ourselves on offering beautiful and original chocolates for our consumers.

'A mould for something like a house can take two or three works and hard to do occasionally stopping for breaks.'

The family launched their company Chocolate on Chocolate five years ago and converted a barn at their home in Rode, Bath, into a chocolate factory.

They started selling a range of just 12 chocolates at trade shows and quickly landed orders from upmarket shops such as Harrods.
Inventor Kerr then designed a method of sculpting buildings using moulds made out of plastic.

He made replicas of the Town Bridge in Bradford-upon-Avon, Wiltshire, and the Devil's Bridge in Kendal, which were spotted by a member of Prince Charles' staff at a show three years ago.

Charles then commissioned a chocolate replica of Highgrove and his three-feathered Royal crest.

He was so impressed he recently started selling them at The Highgrove Shop, which sells produce from the Prince's land near Tetbury and other local producers.

The Highgrove replica - 20cm x 10cm with 250g of chocolate - retails at £12 and the Royal crest - which is 10cm squared and uses 110g - is £6.

Making the chocolates takes up to three weeks starting with photographing the buildings and making several moulds and costs up to £2,000 per commission.

Giant machines spin gallons of different flavoured dark, milk, white and red chocolate which are poured into the moulds.

Extra pieces are then intricately hand-carved for different parts of the building.

The luxury treat business has boomed - now making 200 different products - and they now plan to expand into a factory four times the size including a chocolate cafe.

Graphic Designer Flo, 29, said: 'We started when I finished my degree and had a brief discussion about how cool it would be if I came up with some imaginative designs and then dad carved the moulds out of plaster.

'Dad has experience as an inventor and can carve amazingly intricate moulds and we just thought we'd give it a go.

'It's a dream come true to be surrounded by chocolate all the time.

'It's hard to resist eating the chocolate all the time because it smells so good, but I've got used to it.'

Sheep sex suspect banned from farmland

A man arrested by police investigating a series of violent sex attacks on sheep has been banned from visiting farmland.

The 27-year-old man was questioned over a series of attacks on sheep in Chislehurst, Bromley, south east London.

Officers held the man on suspicion of bestiality and possessing drugs with intent to supply after a dawn raid at his home in Dulwich.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said the man was released on bail pending further inquiries.

He said bail conditions prevent the man entering Bromley borough or any farmyard area within the Metropolitan Police area.

The arrest followed several complaints made to police about a man molesting sheep on grassland off Botany Bay Lane, Chislehurst, in May and June.

Witnesses reported a tall black man sexually assaulting sheep before running off, often leaving clothing at the scene.

Two joggers became suspicious when the man was spotted pulling up his trousers as he stood near a sheep that was lying on the ground.

A young stable girl who came face to face with the man during a similar incident also contacted detectives.

It is understood that the man was traced after forensic scientists identified DNA recovered from a pair of jogging bottoms found at the scene.

Two sheep were found dead in the field during the period of the attacks but it is not known if their deaths were linked.

Police are also investigating reports that the suspect also took photographs of the animals.

He's been named the ugliest dog in the world, but after battling skin cancer Gus shows why he is a REAL winner

He's got a face only an adopted mother could love - and far more problems besides.

With only one eye, a withered ear, three legs and skin ravaged by cancer, nine-year-old Gus has been crowned the world's ugliest dog.

The nine-year-old Chinese Crested dog has spent the last eight years, since being rescued by owner Jeanenne Teed from a crate in a garage, battling all manner of illnesses.

Despite a series of operations costing Jeanenne more than £2,500, Gus is still battling cancer, but his loving family claim he is "so ugly he's cute".



Gus scooped the title of World's Ugliest Dog at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in California.

Jeanenne, 46, said: "We have had Gus for the last eight years.

"He had been kept in a crate inside a garage for a year when we found him. He wasn't socialised and his nails had grown to the point where he couldn't walk.

"When we got him he was four-legged, two-eyed and his ears stood up straight but he was in a bad way.

"He quickly developed hematoma in one ear and when that was stitched down his ear crinkled over.




"He had no hair. Most Chinese Crests can be beautiful dogs, but Gus was so hairless he was hideous.

"That was the beginning of the end for his ugliness factor."

In December 2006 Gus was diagnosed with skin cancer after patches of dry skin developed on his body and his legs became ulcerated.

The condition deteriorated so much he had to have his back left leg removed and he was given just six- to nine months to live.

Jeanenne and her children Janey, 16, and Tommy, 14, decided to act and opted for doggy chemotherapy.


"We had to decide: Do we put him through the treatment?," said Jeanenne.

"Was it fair to him, was it fair to the family? We were talking radical surgery, amputating the one leg and then taking quite a bit of the other leg to remove as much tumour as possible.

"That was the hardest decision to make and it turned out to be the right decision because after the treatment he was up and walking and he didn't miss his leg at all.

"Then we followed that up with some chemotherapy for three months."

Despite being an accountant, Jeanenne admits that her financial common sense went out of the window when she paid for Gus' treatment.

"The financial implications were radical, I am an accountant by trade so I am supposed to be very rational when it comes to finances but I became very irrational and common sense went out of the window.

"In total it cost the family $5,000.

"I went from driving a 1997 Mercedes Benz to driving a 1997 Ford Escort Wagon. Its a jump in the wrong direction if you know what I mean."

Due to his condition Gus receives extra special treatment in the household, which includes seven-year-old Chihuahua Buttons, cats Princess and Tiger, both aged seven, and two-year-old cat Slinky.

Poor Gus lost his eye thanks to a tiff with Slinky, who lashed out and scratched him, possibly in a fit of jealousy.

Now he is facing a second cancer battle, following the return of the cancer. Radiation treatment could cost Jeanenne a further £2,500.

However, for Jeanenne and her children, winning the ugliest dog award was just deserts for brave Gus.

"Gus is pretty ugly and he certainly has an ugly side where he has no leg or eye," she said.

"And even though Gus is still ill, we are hopeful he will be able to defend his title in a year's time.

"We are hoping he will stay healthy enough to do radiation in a few months and in that case we are back next year to defend our crown at the ugliest dog in the world competition."