one year after a cyclone in Myanmar

Last year's cyclone was catastrophic. It killed at least 140,000 people and left at least 2 million people without homes, according to the United Nations World Food Programme...

The winds were so powerful that they blew away the village buffalo. In Nway's village, 120 people out of a population of 430 people lost their lives...

allo spider

'Spider silk is already tougher and lighter than steel, and now scientists have made it three times stronger by adding small amounts of metal.

The technique may be useful for manufacturing super-tough textiles and high-tech medical materials, including artificial bones and tendons...'

Optimum Population Trust

Sir David Attenborough said yesterday that the growth in global population was frightening, as he became a patron of an organisation that campaigns to limit the number of people in the world.

The television presenter and naturalist said that the increase in population was having devastating effects on ecology, pollution and food production.

“There are three times as many people in the world as when I started making television programmes only a mere 56 years ago,”

the sad slide into addiction

'The dux of a Sydney girls' school describes MySpace as MyEnemy, Jennifer Aniston reportedly dumps her boyfriend because of his Twitter addiction, and China successfully enforces time limits on teenage internet gamers.

This is a snapshot from the frontier of cyberspace, where mankind's new technological marvels are imposing burdens on brain cells they were never designed for, rewiring the architecture of our synapses and perhaps even changing what it means to be human...'

nuke spooks

I'm proud of the way my homeland, New Zealand, has managed to keep nuclear energy out of its minimal space in the south pacific/world,
proud of the way former PM David Lange defended nuclear free NZ so charistmatically at the annual Oxford Union debate in 1985,
but I'll be b*ggered supporting any government that rescinds this law for the sake of a better alliance with the USA

check out the world's for environmentally friendly surfboard

made with over 50 percent renewable materials, no less

the business of rebuilding schools 'properly'

Hang Yanrong, deputy governess of Sichuan, said at least 4,553 schools would need to be rebuilt.

State coffers will fund construction of 3,340 schools. Another 1,213 schools will be built with the financing by the province ....