Topic: NEWS english - on October 4, 2007 at 10:22:00 AM CEST
Thai chilli triggers chemical alert in London
A Thai chef in London, making his bi-annual spicy 'Nam prik pao', shut down several blocks of the city as people smelling the smokey peppers thought it was a chemical agent.
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Topic: NEWS english - on October 3, 2007 at 12:44:00 PM CEST
Cubans treat man who killed Che
Cuban doctors working in Bolivia have saved the sight of the man who executed revolutionary leader Che Guevara in 1967, Cuban official media report.
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Topic: NEWS english - on September 16, 2007 at 11:57:00 AM CEST
Arctic ice melt opens Northwest Passage
Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.
The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.
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Topic: NEWS english - on September 15, 2007 at 7:14:00 PM CEST
World's Top 10 Most Polluted Places
Russia, China and India contain the most areas where toxic pollution and human habitation collide with devastating effects
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Topic: NEWS english - on September 13, 2007 at 11:27:00 AM CEST
Official prototype of kilogram losing weight
A kilogram just isn't what it used to be.
A 118-year-old cylinder that has been the international prototype for the metric mass, and kept tightly under lock and key outside Paris, is mysteriously losing its weight - if ever so slightly.
Physicist Richard Davis of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, southwest of Paris, says the reference kilo appears to have lost 50 micrograms compared with the average of dozens of copies.
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Topic: NEWS english - on August 28, 2007 at 11:03:00 AM CEST
Cappuccino Coast: The day the Pacific was whipped up into an ocean of froth
It was as if someone had poured tons of coffee and milk into the ocean, then switched on a giant blender.
Suddenly the shoreline north of Sydney were transformed into the Cappuccino Coast.
Foam swallowed an entire beach and half the nearby buildings, including the local lifeguards' centre, in a freak display of nature at Yamba in New South Wales.
One minute a group of teenage surfers were waiting to catch a wave, the next they were swallowed up in a giant bubble bath. The foam was so light that they could puff it out of their hands and watch it float away.
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Topic: NEWS english - on August 26, 2007 at 4:27:00 PM CEST
Skype's black Tuesday won't be a patch on the next one
Irish Novelist Edna O'Brien once wrote a novel called August is a Wicked Month. Tell that to the folks who run Skype, the internet telephony service that 200 million people worldwide now habitually use for voice calls and instant messaging, and you'll be rewarded with rueful nods.
On Thursday, 16 August, Skype went dead and remained in that state for the best part of two days. Users were unable to log in, instant messages went undelivered and at one stage Skype even blocked people from downloading its software. From the moment the 'outage' began (about 3am Pacific Standard Time) the net was ablaze with rumour. It was, some said, a software problem. Others wondered if it might be the result of a malware attack. There were mutterings about traditional telecoms firms (whose attitude to Skype resembles that of the devil towards garlic). And, of course, some argued Microsoft must be involved.
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Topic: NEWS english - on August 21, 2007 at 2:32:00 PM CEST
Skype's Explanation For Downtime Not Ringing True
It took quite a while, but Skype was finally able to get its service back up and running after extended downtime last week. Monday morning, Skype posted an explanation of what happened, but it has many of us scratching our heads -- and many professionals questioning Skype and trying to match up the official explanation to reality.
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Topic: NEWS english - on August 20, 2007 at 3:15:00 PM CEST
What happened on August 16
On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.
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Topic: NEWS english - on August 17, 2007 at 9:25:00 PM CEST
Pole positions
Men in Indonesia climb greased poles to retrieve prizes such as bicycles and rice cookers, as part of Friday's Independence Day celebrations.
Indonesia is celebrating the 62nd anniversary of its breakaway from Dutch colonial rule.
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Topic: NEWS english - on August 17, 2007 at 9:04:00 PM CEST
Some Skypers get reconnected, but most still offline
Some users, albeit far from a majority, are happily reporting they're now able to successfully reconnect to Skype following a problem which earlier this week floored the VoIP service.
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Topic: NEWS english - on August 17, 2007 at 10:59:00 AM CEST
Skype Won't Comment on Major Outage
Skype is in the midst of a major outage affecting many users' ability to both log on to the network and send IMs. Beginning late yesterday, some Skypers were greeted with massive undelivered message notifications, and while some can now log in, they’re finding that the client is crashing fairly consistently.
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