Quote:In a move similar to Youtube’s block, a brazilian judge ordered all brazilians ISPs to block a Wordpress.com blog. The blog and the reason of the block are still unknow…

According to Abranet, the Brazilian Association of Internet Providers, there’s about 1 million brazilians blogs hosted in Wordpress.com.

The order to block wordpress.com was sent to Abranet who sent it to all associated ISPs. In an interview, Eduardo Parajo, Abranet’s president said: “We must not discuss a court order, we must obey it. Since it’s not possible to block only the blog’s address, all the acces to any wordpress.com sites will be forbidden in Brazil”.

According to Alexa, Wordpress.com ranks the 27th position in Brazil’s most accessed pages.

The decision to block wordpress.com came from the judge Maury Ângelo Bottesini, last month…

Quote:...the Supreme Court ordered the site to find a way to permanently block the video from being uploaded on its servers, to shut down their site until such a block can be realized, or to face an order imposed upon Brazilian Internet service providers to block access to YouTube.

Quote:BEIJING (Reuters) - China is preparing an arsenal of rockets and aircraft to protect the Olympics opening ceremony from rain, hoping to disperse clouds before they can drench dignitaries at the roofless "bird's nest" stadium.

Officials believe there is a 47 percent probability of rain during the August 8 opening ceremony and a 6 percent chance of a heavy downpour and will try to drain humidity from clouds before they reach Beijing.

More than 100 staff at 21 stations surrounding the city will have 10 minutes' notice to fire rockets or cannons containing silver iodide at approaching clouds in the hope of making them rain before they reach the stadium. Three aircraft will also be on stand-by to drop catalysts to unleash rain from the clouds.

HayWire Wrote:China to use heavy artillery on rainclouds for Beijing Olympics

Quote:BEIJING (Reuters) - China is preparing an arsenal of rockets and aircraft to protect the Olympics opening ceremony from rain, hoping to disperse clouds before they can drench dignitaries at the roofless "bird's nest" stadium.

Officials believe there is a 47 percent probability of rain during the August 8 opening ceremony and a 6 percent chance of a heavy downpour and will try to drain humidity from clouds before they reach Beijing.

More than 100 staff at 21 stations surrounding the city will have 10 minutes' notice to fire rockets or cannons containing silver iodide at approaching clouds in the hope of making them rain before they reach the stadium. Three aircraft will also be on stand-by to drop catalysts to unleash rain from the clouds.

In Soviet China, parade rains on clouds!

...With flak

Quote:Associated Press
Apr 24 06:15 PM US/Eastern

Study says near extinction threatened people
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement. "Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."

Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA-which is passed down through mothers-have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal.

The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.

The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.

Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently.

Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction."

Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Shintetsu Wrote:EXCELLENT WORK, Mr. PAMATONG!

True enough, there are a LOT(excuse me for my inexcusable prejudice) of questionable facts, false dogmas, false facts, and misleading teachings coming from the Roman Catholic community.

Again, sorry to the hard-boiled catholics who may be reading this (I know a few).

Hey, I think I've heard his name somewhere in the news before.

Sforza Wrote:

Shintetsu Wrote:EXCELLENT WORK, Mr. PAMATONG!

True enough, there are a LOT(excuse me for my inexcusable prejudice) of questionable facts, false dogmas, false facts, and misleading teachings coming from the Roman Catholic community.

Again, sorry to the hard-boiled catholics who may be reading this (I know a few).

Hey, I think I've heard his name somewhere in the news before.

Pamatong gained notoriety for his pro-US rallies and for disrupting traffic in Metro Manila by placing spikes on the road. His nickname is "spike boy".

He tried to join the presidential elections in 2004 but the Comelec threw out his bid and declared him a nuisance candidate.

He tried to join the Pampangga governorship elections won by Fr. Panlilo (now that's a good priest), but I think his bid was thrown out too.

maitreya Wrote:Kraft Reformulates Oreo, Scores in China