King has been married to seven different women, but this is his eighth divorce, because he remarried one of his former spouses and then divorced her again.I remember, years ago, that David Letterman had a funny video segment that was a "guide" to being a new wife for Larry King. I wonder if it is around on the net somewhere.
Japan's budget, announced last week o kick off the fiscal year, promises to spend a record trillion dollars, and the government must issue a record ¥44.3-trillion of new bonds this year.
The heavy spending and financing are raising worries in Japan about the country's long-term fiscal health, amid concern that Japanese government
bonds are turning into an asset bubble fuelling a public debt that is the highest among advanced economies.Japan's debt, mostly owed to creditors within the country, is more than 200 per cent of annual gross domestic product, compared with 113 per cent in Greece, 50 per cent in Spain, and 69 per cent in the United States, according to the New York-based ISI Group.
This is the part that really caught my eye:
“I'm actually envious of the Greek situation,” said Masaaki Kanno, chief economist at J.P. Morgan in Tokyo, and a former senior official of the Bank ofJapan . “They have market pressure forcing them to take action sooner than later. In Japan, even if the government tries to cut spending, social security costs will likely grow ¥1-trillion every year. The government deficit is likely to grow forever, in a sense.”
"So, we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth, and a landing on Mars will follow."
A new species of leech, discovered by an international team of scientists, has a preference for living up noses.
Researchers say the leech can enter the body orifices of people and animals to attach itself to mucous membranes.
They have called the new blood-sucking species Tyrannobdella rex which means tyrant leech king.
The creature was first discovered in 2007 in Peru when a specimen was plucked from the nose of a girl who had been bathing in a river.
The creature lives in the remote parts of the Upper Amazon and has a "particularly unpleasant habit of infesting humans", the scientists say.
Studies also revealed that it had "a preference for living up noses". The research published their findings in the online scientific journal PLoS One.
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They don't actually explain what bugs can give you the disease, apart from having a photo of some unnamed blood sucker. Wikipedia explains that it is usually via a bug with particularly unpleasant habits:Some 18m people worldwide have Chagas disease, caused by an infection with the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi.
Recently, researchers discovered having this disease puts the individual at increased risk of stroke due to heart complications and blood clots.
Chagas disease is endemic in Latin America. But emigration of millions of people to Europe, North America, Japan and Australia over the past 20 years has also made Chagas disease an emerging health problem in these countries with the potential to cause a substantial disease burden, say the investigators.
In Chagas-endemic areas, the main mode of transmission is through an insect vector called a triatomine bug.[1] A triatomine becomes infected with T. cruzi by feeding on the blood of an infected person or animal. During the day, triatomines hide in crevices in the walls and roofs. The bugs emerge at night, when the inhabitants are sleeping. Because they tend to feed on people’s faces, triatomine bugs are also known as “kissing bugs.” After they bite and ingest blood, they defecate on the person. Triatomines pass T. cruzi parasites (called trypomastigotes) in feces left near the site of the bite wound. Scratching the site of the bite causes the trypomastigotes to enter the host through the wound, or through intact mucous membranes, such as the conjunctiva.Yuck.
Since Obama announced his changes to NASA, which include abandoning the current return to the moon rocket development, some have argued that this may work out better in the long run. I don't really know enough to know, but I can certainly see the argument that NASA needed shaking up in some major way.The main problem with NASA is not lack of money. Its current budget is about the same size, when adjusted for inflation, as the average during the 1960s and early 1970s. But space exploration has become so costly that this level of financing won’t even pay for a return to the Moon anytime soon, which is what prompted the White House to cancel the Bush administration’s lunar mission.
Normally, once a pioneer makes the first trip somewhere, the cost goes down as others follow and technology improves. That’s why so many colonists could follow Columbus to the New World, and why the masses today can afford to fly in Lindbergh’s path back to Europe. The real costs of shipping freight by rail and air have declined by an order of magnitude since locomotives and airplanes were invented.
In space transportation, though, many costs have actually risen since the days of Apollo.
....Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi recently declared that nothing in Islam bans men and women from mixing in public places like schools and offices.The article goes on to give some examples of Saudi segregation which shows how extreme it is:Supporters of the status quo responded harshly. Anyone who permits men and women to work or study together is an apostate and should be put to death unless he repents, said Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Barrak.
Men and women enter government offices and banks through different doors. Male professors teach female university students from separate rooms using closed-circuit television. Companies must create all-female rooms or floors if they hire women. And the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce just announced different work hours for male and female employees so the two don't mix on arrival and departure.I wonder what outdoor events women attend there. 'Cos I am thinking, if ever there is a brave man in Saudi Arabia, it would be the first male streaker at a women's only sporting fixture.
An unemployed man in Osaka City was sentenced to one year in prison suspended for three years on Tuesday for stealing electricity worth 2.5 yen from a shared electric outlet at his apartment building.
