Eideard

Cookware taken in evidence

Police have arrested a woman in Pakistan on suspicion of murdering her husband, chopping his body to pieces and boiling it in a bid to get rid of the evidence.

Zainab Bibi, 42, allegedly told authorities she killed her husband Ahmad Abbas because he tried to sexually assault her 17-year-old daughter from another marriage.

She told police she sedated her husband by mixing sleeping pills in his tea and strangled him with rope before dismembering him.

Police say they discovered her plot after neighbours complained about a bad smell coming from her home.

The alarm was raised by Bibi’s landlord, Behzad, who lives on the ground floor of the two-storey Green Town house. He was so upset by the bad cooking smells coming from upstairs that he went up to complain.

Police claim that he found Bibi at the stove, cooking a korma with flesh from her husband’s arm and leg – because she believed it was the only way to practically dispose of his body…

“It occurred to me that if I cooked the body in parts with spices and aromatic ingredients that would curb the stench.’

But she insisted she had no plans to eat the resulting dish, or to feed it to others, adding: ‘I had a plan to do away with the cooked stuff by throwing it in a gutter. I would say to people that it had spoiled…’

The rest of Mr Abbas’s body was found in an aluminium trunk on the premise.

You never know when you might need to add extra ingredients to balance out a recipe.

 
Jetman does best commercial for an expensive watch – ever!

GARY SPEED
September 1969 – November 2011

Black Friday sales increased 6.6 percent to the largest amount ever as many U.S. consumers unleashed pent-up demand and bought for themselves.

Shoppers spent $11.4 billion yesterday, ShopperTrak said in a statement today. Foot traffic rose 5.1 percent, according to the Chicago-based research firm…

The brisk turnout came as retailers from Gap to Wal-Mart Stores to Toys “R” Us opened their doors earlier than ever.

Many shoppers were rookies who had never before participated in the busiest shopping day of the year, dubbed Black Friday because many retailers are said to become profitable then. As many as 152 million people were expected to shop at stores and websites on Black Friday, up 10 percent from last year, according to the National Retail Federation…

Black Friday arrived with consumer sentiment at levels previously reached during recessions, as a record share of households said this is a bad time to spend, according to the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index. The measure has reached minus 50 or less in nine of the past 10 weeks, an unprecedented performance in its 26-year history.

Even with low confidence, shoppers paid more for goods and unleashed some pent-up demand, said Craig Johnson, president of consulting firm Customer Growth Partners, which is based in New Canaan, Connecticut…

Chains such as Macy’s, Target Corp. and Kohl’s Corp., which all opened at midnight, may have taken revenue from competitors like J.C. Penney that didn’t open until 4 a.m., according Ken Perkins, president of Swampscott, Massachusetts-based Retail Metrics…

The move to turn Black Friday into more than just one day also grew on the Web as online retailers, such as Amazon.com Inc., began advertising “Black Friday” deals well before yesterday. Online sales gained 39 percent on Thanksgiving and 24 percent on Black Friday, according to IBM’s Coremetrics.

Black Friday may illustrate a gap between what consumers tell pollsters and how they actually behave — a trend that has prevailed for much of this year, said Retail Metrics’ Perkins…“A solid Black Friday suggests the rest of the season should be pretty good,” Perkins said. “Those who have jobs have been willing to spend.”

Americans who have jobs have returned to saving in the course of the year. After a couple decades of relying on plastic to close the gap between the quest-for-scarce-goods and declining real income we reached negative savings numbers at the beginning of the recession. Over the course of this year, that number returned to halfway normal – around 5%.

My hopes – not ideological guesswork – is that folks return to increasing those savings amounts once the holiday season is past. We have a ways to go to return to a more traditional 10%. Meanwhile, China’s new middle class sticks to a savings rate around 40%. They even show up to buy a new car with cash instead of credit! You can guess what Wall Street whizbangs think of that?

Robot wardens are about to join the ranks of South Korea’s prison service.

A jail in the eastern city of Pohang plans to run a month-long trial with three of the automatons in March. The machines will monitor inmates for abnormal behaviour. Researchers say they will help reduce the workload for other guards.

South Korea aims to be a world leaders in robotics. Business leaders believe the field has the potential to become a major export industry.

The three 5ft-high robots involved in the prison trial have been developed by the Asian Forum for Corrections, a South Korean group of researchers who specialise in criminality and prison policies…The robots move on four wheels and are equipped with cameras and other sensors that allow them to detect risky behaviour such as violence and suicide.

Prof Lee Baik-Chu, of Kyonggi University, who led the design process, said the robots would alert human guards if they discovered a problem. “As we’re almost done with creating its key operating system, we are now working on refining its details to make it look more friendly to inmates,” the professor told the Yonhap news agency.

There’s a mistake. They should make the robots another couple feet taller and intimidating. I’d add fangs.

Success stories reported by the Korean media include Samsung Techwin’s sale of a robotic surveillance system to Algeria and shipments of the humanoid Hubo robot to six universities in the US…

Within the country English-speaking robotic teaching assistants are already being deployed in some schools to help children to practise their pronunciation.

The Joongang Daily newspaper reported in August that a company called Showbo had begun mass producing a robot that bowed to shop customers and told them about promotions on offer.

Other firms say they hope to start selling robots to help care for the elderly before the end of the decade, and personal assistant robots further down the line.

The government is also building a Robot Land theme park…

I can’t wait until they ask for the right to vote.

A complete shell fish hook from the Pleistocene

Tuna has been on the menu for a lot longer than we thought. Even 42,000 years ago, the deep-sea dweller wasn’t safe from fishing tackle according to new finds in southeast Asia.

We know that open water was no barrier to travel in the Pleistocene – humans must have crossed hundreds of kilometres of ocean to reach Australia by 50,000 years ago. But while humans had already been pulling shellfish out of the shallows for 100,000 years by that point, the first good evidence of fishing with hooks or spears comes much later – around 12,000 years ago.

The new finds blow that record out of the water. Sue O’Connor at the Australian National University in Canberra and colleagues dug through deposits at the Jerimalai shelter in East Timor. They discovered 38,000 fish bones from 23 different taxa, including tuna and parrotfish that are found only in deep water. Radiocarbon dating revealed the earliest bones were 42,000 years old.

Amidst the fishy debris was a broken fish hook fashioned from shell, which the team dated to between 16,000 and 23,000 years. “This is the earliest known example of a fish hook,” says O’Connor. Another hook, made around 11,000 years ago, was also found…

“There is nothing like this anywhere else in the world,” says Ian McNiven of Monash University in Melbourne, who was not a member of O’Connor’s team. “Maybe this is the crucible for fishing.”

East Timor hosts few large land animals, so early occupants would have needed highly developed fishing skills to survive. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” says O’Connor. “Apart from bats and rats, there’s nothing to eat here…”

Broader patterns of human migration suggest that more evidence of fishing would be found through examining those submerged sites. After leaving Africa around 70,000 years ago, it took modern humans only 20,000 years to skirt around Asia and reach Australia. The journey over land into Europe, although much shorter, took 30,000 years. “Humans appeared to move quite quickly along the coasts,” says McNiven. “Developed fishing skills could have kept them moving.”

Fishing has always seemed the most reliable of protein sources to me. Which is why I would expect humankind to have stuck to shorelines as we advanced into new territory. Expanding inland would have been guided by herd animals – and their migrations. Sustained over seasons in temperate climates by techniques of smoking and drying learned originally from preserving fish.

The dangerous task of removing cluster bombs dropped by Israel on Lebanon

A U.S.-led push to regulate, rather than ban, cluster munitions failed Friday after 50 countries objected, following humanitarian campaigners’ claims that anything less than a outright ban would be an unprecedented reversal of human rights law.

While the United States, China and Russia want rules about the manufacture and use of cluster bombs, activists say such regulations would legitimize the munitions, backtracking from the Oslo Convention, an international treaty that seeks a worldwide ban.

“Against all odds it looks like we’re going to have success this evening,” Steve Goose, head of the arms division at Human Rights Watch, told a press conference in Geneva. “How often do you see the U.S., Russia, China, India, Israel and Belarus push for something, and they don’t get it? That has happened largely because of one powerful alliance driving the Oslo partnership.”

Cluster bombs, dropped by air or fired by artillery, scatter hundreds of bomblets across a wide area and can kill and maim civilians long after conflicts end…

Those lining up against the U.S. plan included the International Committee of the Red Cross and the top U.N. officials for human rights, emergency relief and development.

The U.N. agency chiefs said cluster bombs were a particular threat to children, who were attracted by their unusual, toy-like shapes and colors. They said they were extremely concerned at plans to do anything less than ban them…

Activists said the opposition to the U.S. proposal was led by Norway, Mexico and Austria, while 12 signatories to the 2008 Oslo Convention, including Japan, France and Germany, said they were in favor of regulation of cluster bombs under the CCW.

China and Russia, which like the United States are major producers of cluster munitions, were strongly supportive of the U.S. measure.

No surprises in any aspect of the politics on display here. Whether the question is one of allowing torture – or carrying on with the manufacture, deployment and distribution of anti-personnel weapons generally used by the most reactionary regimes on Earth – the United States has supported continuing use.

We accepted all the premises from the Axis we fought against in World War 2. And invented new rationales, more lies for the Cold War and beyond.

For most people it is a way of toning the limbs and soothing the stresses of everyday life, but the Catholic Church’s best-known exorcist says yoga is evil.

Father Gabriele Amorth, who for years was the Vatican’s chief exorcist and claims to have cleansed hundreds of people of evil spirits, said yoga is Satanic because it leads to a worship of Hinduism and “all eastern religions are based on a false belief in reincarnation”.

Reading JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books is no less dangerous, said the 86-year-old priest, who is the honorary president for life of the International Association of Exorcists, which he founded in 1990, and whose favourite film is the 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist…

“Practising yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter,” he told a film festival in Umbria this week, where he was invited to introduce The Rite, a film about exorcism starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as a Jesuit priest.

“In Harry Potter the Devil acts in a crafty and covert manner, under the guise of extraordinary powers, magic spells and curses,” said the priest, who in 1986 was appointed the chief exorcist for the Diocese of Rome…

Father Amorth has previously said that people who are possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron and have such superhuman strength that even children have to be held down by up to four people.

He has also claimed that the sex abuse scandals which have engulfed the Catholic Church in the US, Ireland, Germany and other countries was proof that the Anti-Christ is waging a war against the Holy See.

Being caught at criminal behavior apparently is just a result of the anti-christ plot. Uh-huh.

RTFA for more superstitious silliness.

Don’t blame Father Christmas if he doesn’t allow your child to sit on his knee at a school event — teachers may have banned him from coming into contact with youngsters.

While those playing Father Christmas are no longer required to pass a Criminal Records Bureau check, many schools have decided to “err on the side of caution” and impose rules on grotto behaviour. Parents who have offered to don the red suit have been told they must not allow youngsters to sit on their laps and cannot be left alone with them.

Because CRB checks are required only for volunteers who have regular contact with children, Father Christmases are exempt. However, government guidance states: “Under no circumstances must a volunteer who has not obtained a CRB disclosure … be left unsupervised with children.”

Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said this meant many of its members had decided it was better if Father Christmases avoided all physical contact with children…

A spokesman for the Department for Education said children could still sit on Father Christmas’s knee as long as parents were consulted and were “completely comfortable” with the situation. “Santas in schools should be treated in the same way that other visitors to the school are managed. Our guidance recommends that for such visitors a member of staff is present,” added the spokesman.

Idiots. It’s more than conceivable, you know, that a modicum of care and oversight can be maintained without turning holiday festivities into rituals requiring approval by censors and bluenoses.

Windowfarms let you grow fresh vegetables at home by taking advantage of natural light and climate control indoors. The roots are bathed in nutrients from the sea, preventing food plants from getting root bound (as they do in traditional soil filled containers). You get healthier roots, and fresher, more nutritious vegetables without dirt in small spaces.

By bringing edible gardens into living rooms and kitchens, you learn about where your food comes from while eating the freshest produce available…

This is a Kickstarter project and special offer.

The new Windowfarms systems are made from environmentally friendly plastic and wire. The new design allows us to offer Windowfarms at a greatly reduced price…It just snaps together, decreasing the assembly time from a full day to about ten minutes.

We are so excited about this simplified and lower cost option because it will allow us to include people in the windowfarms movement who just want to focus on the growing part. We believe in the power of our community to change the way that people grow and eat food.

If you order before November 30, you’ll receive your Windowfarm in March 2012.

Our new Windowfarms will not be ready to ship by the holidays, however, if you are pre-ordering as a gift, we will send a personalized welcome-to-the community card to your loved one before December 24. The card will include a link to a personalized webpage for his/her windowfarm. Your giftee will be able to begin customizing the page and learning about his/her window’s microclimate, going through Windowfarms 101, selecting plants, and meeting other windowfarmers. It’s like the Facebook game, Farmville, but tastier! By the time the windowfarm arrives, your loved one will be ready to grow for real!!

My mom built systems like this in our kitchen when I was a kid back in a New England factory town. It gave us a certain amount of fresh greens all winter long. Kept our meals healthy and a bit mellower till we got back to normal growing season for our Victory Garden.

Thanks, Ursarodinia