Tuesday, March 31, 2009 Local municipal and provincial volunteers in Manitoba, Canada are exhausted in their efforts to divert the rising waters of the Red River of the North. It has been hard work with little sleep for the residents who live on the shores of the Red River to shore up their defences with…
UK inflation rate increases to 4%
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have made a statement saying the inflation rate of the United Kingdom measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased to 4% in January 2011. In December 2010, this figure was 3.7%. According to BBC News Online, 4% is the highest CPI that the UK…
Belgian Archbishop lectures on health care and religion
Friday, March 23, 2007 Yesterday, Belgian Archbishop Godfried Danneels visited the Catholic University of Leuven to give a lecture on health care and religion, entitled “Care for the body, care for the mind”. Some 120 people, mainly professors at the University Hospitals, but also clerics and students, attended the conference and following piano recital. In…
National Museum of Scotland reopens after three-year redevelopment
Friday, July 29, 2011 Today sees the reopening of the National Museum of Scotland following a three-year renovation costing £47.4 million (US$ 77.3 million). Edinburgh’s Chambers Street was closed to traffic for the morning, with the 10am reopening by eleven-year-old Bryony Hare, who took her first steps in the museum, and won a competition organised…
Gastric bypass surgery performed by remote control
Sunday, August 21, 2005 A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not…
Swiss finish drilling world’s longest overland tunnel
Sunday, May 1, 2005 Eleven years of drilling and blasting using a total 16 tons of explosives were completed Thursday when Swiss engineers detonated the last few yards of granite completing the 21 mile (35 km) Lötschberg tunnel in the Alps. The Lötschberg is now the longest overland tunnel in the world, and the third…
New studies may bring slug-made glues closer to use in medicine
Thursday, April 11, 2019 In two studies presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Orlando, Florida in the United States, scientists have disclosed new steps toward using natural adhesives made by the dusky Arion slug (Arion subfuscus) in medical applications such as in closing skin…
Cambodian lawmaker calls for ASEAN website to be blocked over missing land
Saturday, June 2, 2007 Thirty-five square kilometers, or 13.5135755 square miles, or 3,500 hectares or 8,648.68835 acres. However you figure it, it’s a sizeable chunk of land. And it’s missing from Cambodia on the website for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, a 10-member regional body of which Cambodia is a member. The…
Wesley So wins TATA Steel Chess
Wednesday, February 1, 2017 On Sunday, Filipino-US chess grandmaster Wesley So won this year’s Tata Steel Chess Tournament, held in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands, securing 9.0 points out of thirteen. Following closely in second place was current World Champion Magnus Carlsen with 8.0 points. Wesley So won five games and drew the remaining eight. A…
Ross Edgley swims around Great Britain for first time in history
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 On Sunday, Ross Edgley, aged 33, completed his 157-day (five-month) staged swim around Great Britain mainland. He went ashore at Margate, Thanet, Kent, England at 8:40 a.m. local time. This was the first time a human swam the roughly 2,800 km (1750 miles) around the island. The finish line was marked by…