Amitabh Bachchan Furious At Rice Company Copyright Caper

Amitabh Bachchan is fuming. The Bollywood legend is threatening legal action against a company that sells rice. He claims that the rice company is running an advertising campaign that rips off his KBC quizmaster avatar and the show's format.

Bachchan writes on his blog:

"A company selling basmati rice has done an exact imagery of KBC. The set, the computers, the question and the contestant being asked from an over the shoulder shot of AB, in suggestion and the voice being used again to ask a question on the product being marketed. This is so unethical and legally wrong."

READ MORE: Amitabh Bachchan's KBC Rice Wars

Forest Songs

Papua, Indonesia.

The Korowai Tribe number about 3,000.

Nomadic tree-dwellers living in the forest canopy at heights of up to 50m above the forest floor.

Living off forest animals and plants, hunter foragers, they also cultivate some crops.

The Korowai have their own language.Their only clothes, when they wear any, banana leaves.

Until 1970 they believed that they were the only people on Earth having never met anyone outside of their tribe.

Now included for the first time in Papua's census they have been given the status of 'tree-dwellers'.

They are believed to be the first people anywhere in the world to be given this official status.

catalogued
like some new species
forest songs

Paul Conneally

A Green Guide To Drinking Tea And Coffee

Re-posted from: Hold The Milk! A Green Guide To Drinking Tea And Coffee at Allvoices:

Some of us do drink an awful lot of coffee and tea so maybe it adds up to a significant amount. But is it significant enough for us to consider how we take our tea and coffee and how we prepare it?

So what’s the score when it comes to tea and coffee?

Berners-Lee and Clark present us with these figures:

21g CO2e: black tea or coffee, boiling only the water you need
53g CO2e: white tea or coffee, boiling only the water you need
71g CO2e: white tea or coffee, boiling double the water you need
235g CO2e: a large cappuccino
340g CO2e: a large latte

What strikes one immediately is the difference in carbon footprint that taking tea or coffee white makes. Taking milk more than doubles the carbon footprint of a cup of tea or coffee. It’s surprising at first that the milk makes such a difference. One might have expected that the growing and transporting of the tea and coffee itself would have been the biggest factor but no it’s the milk. Why? Well milk comes from cows and as ruminants they produce an awful lot of methane at both ends!

Berners-Lee and Clark claim that drinking three large lattes a day equates to twenty times as much carbon equivalent as flying half way across Europe.

So the most environmentally sound beverages other than cold water seem to be black tea or coffee made with water from a kettle that’s been used to boil just enough water to fill the cups and no more and certainly not sugared.

So green tea really is amongst the greenest drinks one could choose!

Enough thinking I’m off for a brew.

morning sun
a wren flits in and out
the back border

paul conneally

James Bulger Killers Were Old Enough To Be Tried for Murder

Robert Thompson and Jon Venables - James Bulger's Killers - were old enough to know what they were doing and so it was right to try them for murder.

This is the response from the British Government to calls from Maggie Atkinson, the Children's Commissioner for England, who said yesterday that children under 12 should not be held criminally responsible.

Maggie Atkinson wants the age of criminal responsibility raised from 10 to 12 in the UK.

A Government spokesperson from the Ministry of Justice said:

"We are committed to tackling crime, and in particular intervening early with young people to prevent crime and antisocial behaviour.

"We believe that children aged 10 and over can differentiate between bad behaviour and serious wrongdoing. We do not intend to raise the age of criminal responsibility. It is not in the interests of justice, of victims, or the young people themselves, to prevent serious offending being challenged."

The Pill Cuts Cancer Risk Heart Disease And Prolongs Life

Women that use The Pill live longer.

A new study by Professor Philip Hannaford in the British Medical Journal reports that using the contraceptive pill reduces the risk of cancer and heart disease when looked at across all women.

The pill slightly increases the risk of cancer and heart disease in younger women but the protection it offers older women more than compensates for this.

Some Catholic organizations believe that by concentrating on the positive health benefits for older women that younger women will not realize that they are putting themselves at increased risk of cancer and heart disease by using the pill. The Catholic Church opposes all artificial modes of contraception.

Other pro-contraception groups such as Planned Parenthood warn those with more than one partner should also use a condom to protect from sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia and syphilis.

Facebook Killer Gets Life

A man who killed his girlfriend after seeing a picture of her on Facebook with another man has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Paul Bristol, an IT technician, flew 4,000 miles from Trinidad to England where he stabbed girlfriend Camille Mathurasingh 20 times.

An Old Bailey jury took only an hour to convict Bristol of murder and the Judge ruled that he must serve at least 22 years behind bars.

After starting their affair when Mathurasingh went to work for PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Trinidad. Bristol was enraged when after returning to London the love of his life rejected him and posted pictures of herself with new lover Besim Haxhia on gthe social networking site Facebook.

Bristol flew to London, confronted Mathurasingh and killed her.

Giving Bristol life with a minimum of 22 years the Judge added to the arguments around the early release of toddler James Bulger killers, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. Venables was returned to prison last week after breaking the conditions of his parole.

daffodils

another friend request

from a stranger

National Rail Strike Travel Chaos

Britain is steeling itself for the first National Rail Strike in 16 years as pundits predict a heavy 'Yes' vote when the RMT strike ballot result is announced on Thursday.

Any such strike will see travel chaos over the coming Easter holiday period not only for rail travelers but road users too as train passengers switch to car and coach.

The strike, claim union leaders, is not about pay but more about working practices which workers feel put the safety of passengers at risk.

Leader of the RMT Union, BOB CROW, said:

"No matter how they try to spin it, the maintenance cuts and the changes to safety practices involving signallers will leave the senior management at Network Rail with blood on their hands in the event of another Hatfield or Potters Bar"

This said the fact that the RMT want to make train drivers and crew work on Sundays without extra pay and the threat of 1,500 redundancies built into Network Rail forward plans are also factors in any strike vote.

Network Rail say that any strike will only cause minimum disruption but many will already be looking to find alternative transport or just stay at home over the bank holiday period.

traveling first class
missing the second class
conversation

Paul Conneally

Further Coverage at NowPublic national rail Strike Planned