Father-son team sends balloon into space, captures video

Balloon floats 19 miles high into the upper stratosphere … and returns with video filmed on a camera tethered to the homemade capsule

A father-son team, prompted by the boy’s persistent request to build a homemade spacecraft, have exceeded expectations by successfully sending a small helium-filled balloon into space and capturing the dizzying journey on video.

This short video made by the father and son team has become a viral hit receiving over a million views.

Want to read more go to: EARTHEASY.COM/BLOG

Wikileaks info on Cuba : Fidel Castro nearly died

in 2006 Cuban leader Fidel Castro came close to death , according to the latest secret US diplomatic cables published by the site Wikileaks.

Castro almost died after suffering a perforated intestine during an internal flight, unnamed sources told US diplomats in Havana.

The illness led Castro to hand power to his brother Raul, although he has since returned to public life.

In Cuba the 84-year-old's health is considered a state secret

The Wikileaks cables, published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais, reveal the intense efforts made by US diplomats in Havana to find out the nature of Fidel Castro's illness and his chances of recovery.

The names of the sources of information reported in the cables have been redacted by Wikileaks, but some apparently knew people who were close to the Cuban leader, or had access to his medical records.

The details of what they say cannot be independently verified.

One cable, sent in March 2007 by the then-head of the US interests section in Havana, Michael Parmly, quotes a report by an unnamed doctor on the moment Mr Castro fell seriously ill in July 2006.

"He will progressively lose his faculties and become ever more debilitated until he dies”

End Quote Unnamed medical source quoted in leaked 2007 US cable

"The illness began on the plane from Holguin to Havana," reports the cable.

As it was a short flight there was no doctor on board and they had to land urgently once they knew of Mr Castro's bleeding. He was diagnosed with diverticulitis of the colon.

The source said Mr Castro had a perforation of the large intestine and needed surgery.

But it says he "capriciously" refused to have a colostomy, with the result that his condition deteriorated over time and he required further surgery.

"This illness is not curable and will not, in her opinion, allow him to return to leading Cuba," the report concludes.

"He won't die immediately, but he will progressively lose his faculties and become ever more debilitated until he dies."

Defiance

Further leaked cables quote other sources as saying Mr Castro was terminally ill, and examine statements by his medical team and reports of specialist drugs being brought into Cuba.

Pictures released in January 2007 showed Fidel Castro looking thin and weak

But the reports of his imminent death have proved to be exaggerated.

Castro has since made an apparent recovery and earlier this year returned to making speeches and appearing in public, though he has not taken back the reins of power from his brother Raul.

The former Cuban leader recently praised Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, saying the leaks of thousands of diplomatic cables had brought the US "morally, to its knees".

"Julian Assange, a man who a few months ago hardly anyone in the world had heard of, is showing that the most powerful empire in history can be defied," he wrote in an article published by Cuban state media.

The US government and its intelligence agencies have been staunch enemies of Mr Castro and the communist government in Cuba for more than half a century.

So far, all their predictions of the imminent demise of communist party rule on the island have proved false.

Hot topics news: Las Vegas casino stupid robber's luck runs out

An armed bandit has escaped on a motorbike after stealing, at least $1.5 million from the casino Bellagio resort in Las Vegas - something normally only in the Hollywood movies.

The thief took chips from the Bellagio resort and he may have carried out a similar raid elsewhere, less than a week ago.

But he may not have thought his plan through, as Rajesh Mirchandani reports. The $1,5 million was in casino chips that are only used in the same casino so the authorities are looking for someone that try to pass as a big winner in the Bellagio Hotel Casino.

What do you Think does he have a real plan as in the Hollywood movies?, or was only a bad robber's desicion?

Hot topics news: Wikileaks founder bailed, but release delayed

The founder of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has been granted bail in London on conditions including cash guarantees of £240,000.

But he will remain in prison pending an appeal against the bail decision lodged by Swedish prosecutors.

Mr Assange is fighting extradition to Sweden, where he is accused of sexually assaulting two women earlier this year.

He denies the charges, which he says are politically motivated and designed to discredit him.

His lawyer Mark Stephens said the case was turning into a "show trial".

A large crowd including demonstrators, reporters and a number of Mr Assange's high-profile supporters gathered outside City of Westminster Magistrates' Court for the bail hearing on Tuesday.

Journalists inside the court were given permission by the judge to report on proceedings live via micro-blogging website Twitter.

Mr Assange was granted bail on condition he provides a security of £200,000 to the court, with a further £40,000 guaranteed in two sureties of £20,000 each.

He must also surrender his passport, obey a curfew at an address in Suffolk, wear an electronic tag and report to a local police station every evening.

Mr Stephens said the court would hear the challenge to the bail decision within the next 48 hours.

Speaking outside court, he said: "The Swedes won't abide by the umpire's decision. They want to put Mr Assange through yet more trouble, more expense, more hurdles.

"They clearly will not spare any expense but to keep Mr Assange in jail."

'No access'

Mrs Assange also read a statement from him, which she had copied down when he spoke to her from Wandsworth Prison. In it, he defended the actions of Wikileaks, adding: "My convictions are unfaltering."

Mr Stephens said his client had not been given any of his post - including letters relating to legal letters - since being remanded in custody.

People demonstrated in support of Mr Assange outside
City of Westminster Magistrates' Court

"He has absolutely no access to any electronic equipment, no access to the outside world, no access to outside media," he said.

The lawyer said the only correspondence his client had received was a note telling him that a copy of Time magazine sent to him had been destroyed because the cover bore his photograph.

In recent weeks, Wikileaks has published a series of US diplomatic cables revealing secret information on topics such as terrorism and international relations.

The latest release, published by the Guardian newspaper, shows that the US had concerns after the 7 July bombings that the UK was not doing enough to tackle home-grown extremists.

Another cable claims British police helped "develop" evidence against Madeleine McCann's parents after she went missing.

Missile Launch California:Still a mistery!

Missile Launch California: a rogue missile or airplane?

Yesterday, photographs out of an affiliate news station out of California showed what appeared to be a missile going through the air around California. Immediately, panic ensued.

Was it a rogue missile, or was it simply an airliner jet, photographed from the right angle? The press and everyone would like you to believe that it's just an airplane.

Conspiracy theorists aren't buying it. They think it's something deeper - something far more sinister.

Personally, I don't know what to believe. Good Morning America brought in an expert this morning that explained how the direction of the missile made it appear as if there's no way this is a missile, and that it's really just an airplane.

Sounds fishy to me, doesn't it you? Come on...do you HONESTLY think if there was an "accidental" launch that they would actually reveal that to us? Wouldn't that be a big black eye

Facebook Launches New Service For Retailers Called Places!

The popular social networking site Facebook is launching the service named Places, is concentrating on the concept of social commerce. The giant has launched a new mobile check in service for leading retailers and it covers several hundreds of mid and small sized businesses in the USA.

The service Facebook Deals is meant for linking users of Facebook Places to offers and deals from brands like Gap, 24 hours Fitness etc.

It is accessible only through the iPhone app of Facebook. The Android smart phone users can avail Places but Deals is not meant for them as yet. The Facebook team said that the popularity of the Places has inspired the merchants.

However, the exact number of Facebook users who use the Places service is not known. The Facebook users who use the Places service on their mobile Facebook app will now get notification of deals and offers at stores nearby. Initially, 23 big retailers and 20000 smaller merchants have tied up for the service. The service will also be helpful for the users as they will not have to use PCs or hit the stores in persons to get notified and updated about new offers. This may eventually change the way commerce is done in near future, feels the Facebook team.

"This is not about broadcasting your location to the world, it's about sharing where you are with your friends," said Michael Sharon, product manager for "Places."

Users will be able to declare their whereabouts whenever they want, thereby opening themselves up potentially to offers, suggestions or advertisements about nearby businesses. Facebook on Wednesday said it had no immediate plans however to pursue such money-making opportunities.

However, Facebook is rolling out the service with an eye on its revenue for sure. It is estimated that the company will earn $1.28 billion from global advertising revenue in 2010 alone. However, before launching such new features Facebook needs to bolster its security, feel some veterans. The hackers have targeted it many times in recent past.

'Why Wont My Parakeet Eat My Diarrhea': One Of The Craziest Google Suggests

"Why wont my parakeet eat my diarrhea,"

Is only one of the many crazy Google suggests out there, reached the top trending topic on Google trends. Wondering why? If you try typing "Why won't..." into Google, you'll see Google try to automatically complete the search term, and few odd suggestions pop up, including "Why won't my parakeet eat my diarrhea."

What's going on here?

It has to do with a Google feature that's designed to expedite searches. How does Google Suggest work, and where do those "suggestions" come from?

The short answer is this: the suggestions are taken from searches previous users all over the world have done on Google, as well as searches you've done, sites in Google's search index, and ads on Google.

They're suggestions based off of searches by people just like you.

a black hole-driven quasar in a nearby galaxy, recently shut off like a snuffed candle.

A black hole is a region of space whose gravitational force is so strong that nothing can escape from it. A black hole is invisible because it even traps light. The fundamental descriptions of black holes are based on equations in the theory of general relativity developed by the German-born physicist Albert Einstein. The theory was published in 1916.

One of the universe’s brightest lights, a black hole-driven quasar in a nearby galaxy, recently shut off like a snuffed candle. New observations of a bizarre cloud of glowing gas, and a nearby galaxy that illuminates it, show that the galaxy’s central light went dim sometime in the last 70,000 years.

The finding could reveal how supermassive black holes
help galaxies grow and evolve.

“This is the best view we will ever have of the host galaxy of a quasar,” said astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski of Yale University, lead author of a paper published online Oct. 26 in Astrophysical Journal Letters and cofounder of the crowdsourced space science project Galaxy Zoo. “It’s the nearest one to us, and the quasar is dead.”

Quasars are ravenous, supermassive black holes that lurk at the centers of some galaxies and devour gas and dust from a surrounding disk.

As the gas falls into the black hole, a process astronomers call accretion, friction heats the gas until it glows white-hot.

“Accretion transforms the darkest objects in the universe into the brightest,” said black hole expert Chris Done of the University of Durham in the U.K., who was not involved in the new study. “It’s like the final scream before it disappears forever below the event horizon.” Astronomers have long suspected that energy from quasars can help galaxies grow, a notion supported by the fact that bigger galaxies tend to have bigger central black holes. But until now, evolving galaxies have been impossible to observe.

A new clue comes from Hanny’s Voorwerp, a weird cloud of glowing green gas found in Galaxy Zoo’s archival telescope data in 2007. The Voorwerp (Dutch for “object” ) was thought to be lit up by a nearby quasar zapping it with a floodlight-like jet of ionizing radiation. But there was no nearby quasar to be found. The closest object was a wimpy, dim galaxy called IC 2497 between 45,000 and 70,000 light-years away from the Voorwerp. Both objects are about 730 million light-years from Earth, “which cosmologically speaking is our backyard,” Schawinski said. There were two possible explanations for the missing quasar. Either there’s so much gas and dust between Earth and the galaxy that the floodlight looks like a flashlight to us, but not to the Voorwerp, or the quasar died sometime between when its light hit the Voorwerp and now.

To test the first idea, Schawinski and colleagues observed the galaxy with two space telescopes, the Suzaku X-ray Telescope and the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. These telescopes detect high-energy X-rays that would penetrate even the thickest clouds of dust. The team did see a few X-rays, but it was “a really weak, puny little source,” Schawinski said. “This source is way way way too weak to light up the Voorwerp,” he said. “It’s like trying to light up your house with an LED. It’s just not enough.”

As it appears today, the quasar is 100 to 10,000 times dimmer than whatever lit up the Voorwerp, Schawinski and colleagues concluded. The quasar must have shut down sometime in the last 45,000 to 70,000 years, while its light was still traveling to the Voorwerp, and left the cloud as a ghostly echo of the dead quasar’s former brilliance. Because the quasar switched off so quickly, the accretion disk surrounding the black hole must have been relatively small, Done says.

That’s consistent with some models of how black holes gobble up their surroundings. “Those models are quite hard to test,” Done said. “This might tell us is that our ideas about accretion do actually work. I’m quite excited about it.”

The quasar corpse also provides a unique laboratory for studying how galaxies evolve shortly after their central engines quiet down. “It’s certainly giving us a view of a very particular phase of the evolution of quasars, and one that we can’t normally study,” Done said. The discovery would never have happened if not for Galaxy Zoo, Schawinski notes. “We would have never found the nearest quasar to us, this system that will ultimately teach us so much about black holes and galaxies and how they evolve together, if it wasn’t for citizen science and the internet,” he said. “It’s so much cooler than anything we could have imagined.”

Read More at: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience

Melatonin:Drinking the nighttime milk of cows may help insomniacs fall asleep.

Drinking the nighttime milk of cows may help imsoniacs fall asleep. A German firm has recently patented a new milk product, which it claims contains high levels of sleep-regulating hormone melatonin, ABC News reports.

The Munich-based company, Milchkristalle, believes that if its herd of cows is milked between 2 and 4 a.m. the animals will produce more melatonin than during the daytime.

They freeze-dried the milk, packed it and sold it under the brand Nightmilk Crystals, which can be mixed with milk or yogurt and consumed before going to bed.

"It tastes like milk, maybe a little bit stronger," said Maike Schnittger, a Hamburg resident who uses Nightmilk Crystals.

Schnittger was out of work for a while and at night worries used to flood her mind, keeping her up for hours. But she says taking Nightmilk Crystals was a huge help, conking her out in just 30 minutes.

"It was a deep sleep and the next morning I felt really awake," she said, adding that she likes that the product is natural.

To further boost the hormone production, the cows are fed clover and soothed under warm red lights to calm them while being milked. And during the day when the weather is good, the pampered animals are turned out in a pen with grass and deep, cozy sand.

The special treatment, as claimed by the firm, helps yield milk that has ten times more melatonin than the normal milk.

After years of research, Nightmilk Crystals' inventor Tony Gnann says his studies show that giving cows different care and milking them during the middle of the night changes the level of nocturnal melatonin in their blood and the milk they produce.

Melatonin, which is widely available without a prescription in the US, is under much stricter restrictions in Europe where it's only available at pharmacies.
The hormone is naturally produced by the body and used by the brain to regulate the sleep-wake cycle. Doctors often recommend supplements of melatonin for people who have jet lag or work odd shifts.

"Melatonin won't make you sleepy, but will help you fall asleep if your body clock is out of sync," said David Schulman, a doctor at the Emory University sleep laboratory in Atlanta.

Meanwhile, consumer watchdog groups have questioned the company's science, saying a person would have to drink an impossible amount of the milk product to see results.

Schulman also has concerns about the dose size. The average recommended dose of melatonin is three milligrams, far more than a person would get from the 1,800 picogram dose of the Nightmilk Crystal supplement.

"I'd be surprised if this small a dose did anything at all," Schulman said.


Article extracted from www.timesofindia.com

Nintendo Wii proved to Prevent Alzheimer's disease

article by Stephanie Harris, published in Helium.com

It may seem a little strange for an older person to buy themselves a Nintendo Wii but you will see rather quickly just how much good it will do for you and your health.

Especially if you buy the Wii Fit plus balance board. This will help you get fit quite quickly and as you have to get standing up to do the exercises and you can either jog or just dance to begin with, there are some lovely yoga moves as well which will help enormously with any balance problems you may have.

The main thing with the Wii is that you will have to listen and move just as they tell you, sorry, forgot to mention that during the yoga and fitness moves you do get your own trainer. You get to choose your trainer, a very like-able young girl or young man and they help you with how to actually do the exercises, so that you will not be doing the movements wrong and hurting yourself.

Alzheimer's disease is a disease that can be prevented...

...if you know what to do to prevent it and buying the Nintendo Wii can prevent this disease. It is all due to the fact that the Nintendo Wii was used during a project called Cognitive Fitness and Innovative Therapies which is a study to find out whether training the body and the mind at the same time using such a games machine would help the older generation hold onto their memories for much longer would help, and it did.

It powered up peoples ability to concentrate for longer and if it can get the blood pumping around you body, surely that will not be a bad thing, after all , isn't that what it is supposed to do.

Another game that can be bought for the Nintendo Wii is Brain Academy, were you can literally show your grandchildren and their friends that you really do know so much more than they do. The Brain Academy has memory games, logic games and maths games to name just a few and it can go up in the difficulty rating.

So why not treat yourself, or maybe give your children a few large hints for birthday or Christmas presents.

You will enjoy yourself this present lot more than if you receive yet another pair of slippers and if you practice madly while they are away, apart from enjoying yourself and getting a whole lot fitter in body and mind and preventing Alzheimer's disease and a whole host of other diseases that accompany old age you will be able to shock your children and grandchildren with your new found fitness and the fact that nobody can beat you on brain academy, no matter how intelligent your children and grandchildren are.

Pancreatic Cancer is not an spontaneous disease as cancer doctors led you to believe!

(NaturalNews) New research published in the journal Nature reveals that pancreatic cancer takes 20 years to grow to the point where it is diagnosed by conventional medical doctors. This was determined by sequencing the DNA of cancer tumor cells from deceased patients. Because cancer mutations occur in growing tumors at a known rate, scientists were able to map the timing of the development of full-blown pancreatic cancer tumors.

Here's what the scientists at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute found (and here's why this matters in a huge way to people interested in healthy living):

• It takes 11.7 years for one mutation in a pancreas cell to grow into a "mature" pancreatic tumor (which might show up on a medical scan). • It takes another 6.8 years for the pancreatic tumor to spread and cause tumors to appear in other organs of the body.

In all, it takes about 20 years for a person to grow a cancer tumor and see it spread to the point where their doctor will diagnose them with pancreatic cancer.

In other words, by the time doctors diagnose you with cancer, you've already been growing it for two decades.

Here's why this matters


This is a huge story for five very important reasons:

Reason #1) The idea thrown around by cancer doctors that cancer is a "spontaneous disease" that strikes randomly and without warning is pure bunk. In order to "get" cancer, you actually have to GROW cancer for two decades! It doesn't just suddenly appear like magic.

Reason #2) When cancer doctors diagnose you with pancreatic cancer and say things like, "Good thing we caught it early!" they are full of bunk yet again. They didn't catch it early -- they caught it late! Almost 20 years too late.

Reason #3) If it takes 20 years to grow cancer tumors to the point where you get diagnosed with aggressive pancreatic cancer, then that means you have 20 years to change your lifestyle and stop the cancer!

That's the most important point of all, of course. In order to grow cancer tumors for 20 years, you have to feed the cancer for 20 years while keeping it alive. And how do you do that?

How to grow and feed a cancer tumor

First of all, to grow a cancer tumor, you need to eat lots of sugar. Liquid sugars are the best (soda, anyone?), but any form of refined sugar will do. You have to eat sugar daily if you really want to support cancer cell division and growth.

Next, you have to be vitamin D deficient for the entire 20 years. That's because vitamin D halts 77 percent of all cancers (including pancreatic cancer), and when combined with other nutrients like selenium, you can halt even more cancers. (http://www.naturalnews.com/021892.html)

If you combine vitamin D and selenium nutrition with other anti-cancer nutrients such as fresh vegetable juice (on a daily basis), omega-3 fatty acids, a wide variety of fresh fruits (including citrus and berries), and even red wine (rich with resveratrol), you will create an internal biological environment in which cancer tumors just can't grow at all. (http://www.naturalnews.com/023655_I...)

This is especially true if you pursue a more alkaline diet that's rich in vegetables and green foods rather than acidic substances such as sugar, fried foods and caffeine.

Combine all this with some regular exercise, good sleep, stress reduction habits and strict avoidance of cancer-causing chemicals, and you've got a recipe for blocking virtually all tumor growth in your body.

Cancer tumors simply cannot grow in an environment that's rich in plant-based nutrients and based on healthy, natural living.

So even if you have a wayward pancreatic cell that decides to mutate and try to become cancerous on its own, that cell will not have any long-term success in replicating inside your body because it's surrounded by healthy cells and bathed in anti-cancer nutrients carried to it each day in your blood!

Remember, your cells rely entirely on nutrients delivered by your blood, and if your blood is delivering anti-cancer nutrients each day, then "bad" cells will never be allowed to replicate and become cancer tumors.

Obviously, the composition of your blood is determined by what you eat. If you eat junk food, your blood will be junk blood, and it will deliver junk to your cells (cancer cells love junk!). If you eat healthy foods, you will have healthy blood, and cancer tumors will shrivel up and actually lose their blood supply then die. (Antiangiogenesis.) (http://www.naturalnews.com/001261_m...)

This is what this new research actually reveals: That pancreatic cancer takes two decades to develop inside your body, which naturally means you have two decades to change your health habits and stop growing cancer tumors in your body.

You may be growing cancer tumors right now... (but here's how to stop it)
If you've been pursuing a lifestyle of junk foods, processed foods, fried foods, excessive animal products and sun avoidance (you're not seriously still slapping sunscreen on your skin, are you?), then you are probably growing cancer tumors in your body right now. Almost as if you were trying to!

So you might be on year 10 of the 20-year cancer diagnosis plan. There's no way to know because cancer tumors don't show up diagnostic tests when they're only 10 years old (usually). But if you've been following a cancer-promoting lifestyle, you can rest assured you have micro tumors in your body that are just waiting for more sugar and less vitamin D in your blood in order to divide and grow even more.

So why not stop growing cancer tumors today? Start juicing! If you want to stop cancer in its tracks, buy yourself a high-end countertop juicing machine, go out and buy some organic produce on a regular basis, and start juicing away your cancer. (No kidding!)

Start consuming anti-cancer nutrients on a daily basis. Even a small amount of fresh kale, cabbage or broccoli juice (just one ounce) taken every day will have a powerful anti-cancer effect and may halt tumor growth in your body.

But just to be sure, blend and drink fresh citrus fruits, organic berries, and microalgae supplements on a regular basis. Read NaturalNews and learn about the latest breaking news on anti-cancer foods and supplements. Changing what you eat will dramatically alter what your body grows inside. Instead of growing cancer tumors, you can start growing healthy cells that will quickly overpower any diseased cells.

Steer clear of all synthetic chemicals

Of course, for all this to work, it is VITAL that you avoid all synthetic chemicals: Do not take pharmaceuticals; do not use conventional perfumes, skin lotions, shampoos or other personal care products; do not use conventional laundry detergents (they're filled with cancer-causing fragrance chemicals); do not use anti-bacterial soaps; do not cook on nonstick cookware; do not drink fluoride in your water... basically just get all the toxic chemicals out of your house and out of your life.

The bottom line to all this is the GREAT NEWS that you don't have to grow cancer tumors anymore! You can simply decide to stop growing cancer by changing the biochemical environment in which your cells live. Change the environment and you change the results. It's a simple matter of cause and effect.

So remember: Cancer is not random, nor is it genetic. It doesn't appear spontaneously, and in the case of pancreatic cancer, it actually takes two decades to grow it to the point where it gets noticed by cancer doctors!
That means you've got 20 years to make a change in your life. Why not start right now? (If you haven't already...)

Fact: Pancreatic survival rates have not changed in the last 40 years. Do you know why? Because conventional medical doctors wait until you've been growing cancer for 20 years to tell you that you have cancer. (Seriously. And they think they're running the most "advanced" medical system in the world.)

Wouldn't it make more sense to teach patients how to prevent cancer two decades earlier and thereby avoid growing it in the first place?

About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher, author and award-winning journalist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In mid 2010, Adams produced NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and pursues hobbies such as martial arts, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org

Response to the Charlie Chaplin Time Traveler

Time Traveler Caught On Charlie Chaplin Movie!

There's been a buzz lately about a time traveler caught on film "in the background of Charlie Chaplin's 1928 film The Circus." Some say it's just pure coincidence, but you'll have to continue reading to watch it for yourself.

The footage in question starts at 2:43 in the below video. What do you think? It sure looks like someone holding a phone up to their ear and talking into it, doesn't it?