Putin’s website down by hacktivist group

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A more incisive and creative way to show protest. Hacktivist group Anonymous has been up to its old tricks again, this time briefly taking out the web site of the Russian president as a show of support for the growing opposition to newly re-crowned leader Vladimr Putin. Like most of the group's DDoS campaigns, the attack only temporarily disrupted the kremlin.ru site, which is back online now.

Anonymous tweeted from its Op_Russia Twitter account this Wednesday referencing OpDefiance, its new campaign designed to protest against what it claims were unfair elections in Russia which swept former president and prime minister Putin back to power. 

Putin’s work to change legislation allowing him to get back to power has just paid back, but anti-Putin rallies have been increasing even after his reelection. 20,000 people took part in a protest on Sunday against Mr Putin's inauguration, though police put the figure at 8,000. 

Even in the US, Obama’s office came with a disapproval of the "mistreatment" of peaceful protesters. 

The US and Russian leaders will meet during the G20 summit in Mexico in June, but so far it’s highlighted growing tensions between the two nations over the US missile defence plans in eastern Europe, our correspondent adds.





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Brand new Russian jet crashes in Indonesia

46 people died in a jet crash this Wednesday in Indonesia. The wreckage was found only today (Thursday) near a volcano. The airline operated a demonstration flight especially arranged to sell the merits of this new civilian model, called SSJ100, who had just received her certification in April to fly in Europe.

The demonstration flight, to which were invited several journalists, was part of a tour organized by Soukhoï in the region and should take SSJ100 to Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Burma, Laos and Vietnam.

The SSJ100 is often presented as the hope of Russian civil aircraft, which went into decline after the end of the Soviet Union. With the capacity to carry between 75 and 100 passengers, the aircraft was designed to compete with the Brazilian Embraer and Canadian Bombardier in the regional aviation market. Its first commercial flight, from the Russian airline Aeroflot, happened a year ago, in April 2011.

Real Madrid clinches 32nd spanish title

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Football season's near the end in most european leagues. FC Porto and Ajax assured national titles in Portugal and Netherlands, but at the moment the strongest european league is the Spanish, where Real Madrid has just conquered its record-extending 32nd Spanish soccer league title with a 3-0 win over Athletic Bilbao. Barcelona’s Lionel Messi settled with a European goal-scoring record.

Gonzalo Higuain, Mesut Ozil and Cristiano Ronaldo scored - as the "merengues" pushed their single-season Spanish scoring record to 115 goals - to give Real its first La Liga title since 2008 and end Barcelona’s three-year reign as champion. New champion has 94 points, seven more than its arch rival with two matches left. “The league is even harder when you fight for it with a team like Barcelona,” Ronaldo, who missed a penalty kick, said in comments on Real’s website. “We were better than them.”

The victory gives Real manager Jose Mourinho (seven) championships in four different countries, following titles with Porto, in his native Portugal, Chelsea, in England, and Inter Milan. 




“I won the league title in Portugal, Italy and England, but this one has been the toughest,” Mourinho told RealmadridTV. “I’ve won seven league titles overall and I know what it feels like.”

Ronaldo lifted his league tally to 44 goals, two fewer than Messi, who scored three times last night in a 4-1 win over Malaga to break the record for goals in a European season.





Hilarious political boycott on Euro'2012

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Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands announced this week they would not send government ministers to the Euro 2012 soccer tournament because of the way that co-host nation Ukraine has treated imprisoned former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. 

It is a laughable statement considering they have not been selected to play. However, meant as political signal to Kiev this move has been the only media decision they could think of in order to get some sort of reaction. As it was in the past, governments are still using sport as a political instrument to do their job. 









This statements are even more silly considering that none of the European soccer federations involved in the tournament have boycotted the event and UEFA chief Michel Platini said in an interview last week that the European Championships would continue on as planned.

Calls for the snub first came from two German ministers and EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding at the weekend. In recent days Austria, Belgium and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said they will not go. The Netherlands has also threatened to stay away.

The President of Poland - which is co-hosting Euro2012 with Ukraine - has accused EU politicians planning to boycott Ukrainian matches of ulterior motives. Bronislaw Komorowski said the crackdown on opposition in Ukraine is not comparable to events which prompted previous Western boycotts - of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and the Beijing Olympics in 2008. "These were the effects of war which Russia launched against Afghanistan or the bloody repression of Tibetans' aspirations for freedom, where blood was spilt, where there were mass arrests, jailings and so on. But the situation in Ukraine is not like that. We all understand this perfectly. So it is possible to speculate there are some other calculations being made."

Komorowski's remark on "other calculations" is an allusion to concerns that some EU countries are using human rights as a pretext for harming EU-Ukraine integration.The countries on the boycott list have in the past opposed moves to give Ukraine a promise of future EU accession.

The man made his point.

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IMAGES OF TISSUES IN 3D MAY HELP TREAT CANCER

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Scientists from the University of Leeds, in England, have created a technique to generate hi-resolution, colour 3D images of a piece of tissue. The images can be rotated on a computer screen and examined from any angle. Cancer Research UK said the technology could help researchers understand how cancer grew and spread, and learn how to treat it more effectively. These findings have been published in the American Journal of Pathology.

In many applications this three-dimensional nature is important as it will help provide much more information than a simple 2D scan, creating a realistic image that a researcher can manipulate and spin around. This may help spot small tumours that could be missed by conventional approaches and if there is a major blood vessel fairly nearby, it will be possible to see if a tumour has reached it. And if it has not, it can be probably cut out safely.

It is the same with organs. If a surgeon wants to remove a tumour near a very sensitive organ, the main question is about the safety of the procedure. A tumour is a complex three-dimensional 'organ' made of cancerous and healthy cells, including blood vessels, immune cells and other 'normal' cells.
In the past, there have been attempts to create 3D images of tissue samples. But the images were low resolution and hence not very detailed, generated after taking photos of slides on a microscope with a camera, one by one, and then assembling them digitally.

But the Leeds University team said that their approach was the first time a standard digital scanner had been used to produce high-resolution images.




CHILDREN CONTROLLED BY MICROCHIP

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And now it's in Brazil. The microchip technology that allows schools and parents to know students whereabouts in real time has begun in a college of Vitoria da Conquista, State of Bahia. This outrageous experiment has been already released in several private companies to control their worker and now extended to schools in a worldwide phenomena that threats to become universal. In Victoria, students have to wear shirts which carry a chip that allows monitorization of the frequency of each student and generates the record of the time in real time to parents via SMS.

Initially, there will be about 25 000 children and adolescents between 6 and 14 years, haunted with the project. By 2013, it is planned to include all current 42,725 students in the municipal. They can always undress their uniforms, and try a taste freedom.

But soon there will not exist such possibility as this so-called project will evolve to microchips implanted in the body.  For the control, was applied to radio frequency identification technology called RFID, developed by a core of Senai and generally adopted by private companies for workers' control. All parents have the phones registered and receive alerts via cell phone on the entry or exit from school. The system does capture through sensors that are installed in the units. They are automatically read the chips and pass the information via text message parents.

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NEW HOPE IN BREAST CANCER TREATMENTS

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A landmark scientist research study identified 10 categories of breast cancer and by doing so brought new hope for the treatment of each type.
 In this early stage, the findings will not have an immediate impact on breast cancer cases but sets out a new field of research which will allow investigation to follow more precise paths.
It means it’s now possible to predict survival more accurately, to draw a map of the disease.


Hopefully, this will also help doctors to have a more precise information of their patients needs.

For the moment, only one of these 10 breast cancer types have a targeted treatment (Hercepin).

The new findings will open new fields of medical research to the other nine types of the disease, which are dealt with chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

The majority of breast cancers (more than 70 per cent) respond to hormone therapies, but the reaction to the treatment varies wildly. But there’s hope of more efficient treatments in a few years. 

TYCOONS’ TAKE OVER

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Twelve of the richest people on the planet joined an initiative which consists in giving at least half their fortunes to humanitarian causes.
The campaign baptised by one of the mentors, Warren Buffet, as “Giving Pledge” is announced as the result of a common understanding of the need for positive changing in the world.  Buffet, Bill Gates, Steve Bing, Elon Musk and John Sobrato are some of the names of this campaign, also subscribed by Michael Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg, David Rockfeller, among others.
We should be aware some of these men’s fortunes is high above gross national product of most of world countries.

They are more powerful than most of worlds political leaders and they certainly have for a long time the technological and financial resources to operate “positive changings” in the world. Not to mention their huge capacity to lobby interests.
So, the question is: why did they come forward with this marketing campaign. Are they trying to look as the saviours of humanity, our guardian angels?
Are the funds they say they’ll give away the same disappearing in real state speculations, financial and stock markets and increasing national debts all over? Let us keep an eye on tycoons. They are a lot more than meets the (common man’s) eye.

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SYRIA TRUCE OR FALSE?

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Cartoon from The Khaleej Times

After months of massacres and slaughters resulting in thousands of dead, Syria's resilient president Bashar al-Assad's maintains his tanks and infantry deployed in hostile to his government cities, but according to reports, troops are respecting the truce, and ceased fire shortly after the deadline declared by the UN. In spite of this truce, state media are accusing "terrorists" of attacks on troops that might justify retaliation, and rebels are urging demonstrators to test the ceasefire by massing on the streets on Friday.



NORTH KOREAN LONG RANGE ROCKET

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They say their only intent is to put a satellite in space, but there are serious doubts about the significance of the rocket launch expected in the next few days in North Korea. The young new supreme leader Kim Jong-un seems to have assured the financial support from China and will probably proceed in developing the nuclear weapon program started by his father. So far this menace is being taken serious in neighbour countries South Korea and Japan but the threat is growing strong and may force the United States to take preemptive measures.

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THE LAST OF THE DINOSAURS

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The bones and eggs of a new 70-million-year-old dinousaur that resembled a flightless bird have been found in Patagonia, scientists say. Paleontologists said they expected the eggs to help explain how birds evolved from dinosaurs. The new species, Bonapartenyus ultimus is a member of the small, long legged , fast moving Alvarezsaurid dinosaur family, reports the Cretaceous Research

TSUNAMI AND CHICKEN

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Panic took over India, Thailand and Indonesia population as tsunami alerts raised tragic memories of the 2004 southeastern asia tragedy, wich killed 230 thousand people. The alerts were issued after a sequence of earthquakes reaching up to 8.2 on Richter Scale throughout the region.
Apparently, there was no really danger of a tsunami. Nevertheless, on this April 11th, the KFC multinational branch in Thailand  was forced to issue an apology after posting a Facebook message that urged people to rush home and order a bucket of chicken