Kaoyan - World News

A NEW Zealand pro-cannabis group says it has scientific evidence that cannabis can stop the development of mad cow disease.

It was not clear whether the findings applied to both cows and humans.The National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml) said a French study showed cannabidiol might be effective in preventing bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), known as mad cow disease, the New Zealand Press Association reported tpday. Scientists at the National Centre for Scientific Research in France found cannabidiol - a non-psychoactive ingredient - may prevent the development of prion diseases (progressive neurodegenerative disorders), the most well known of which is BSE, Norml said.

Researchers found cannabidiol inhibited the accumulation of prion proteins in infected mice and sheep.  Norml spokesman Chris Fowlie said the discovery added to the scientific evidence supporting a bill from a New Zealand Greens MP  to legalise the medicinal use of cannabis.

“(It) should be supported by any MP with a clear head. Unfortunately most politicians act like mad cows whenever cannabis is mentioned,” Mr Fowlie said.

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A CZECH speedway driver knocked unconscious in a crash stunned ambulance drivers when he woke up speaking perfect English. 18-year-old Matej Kus was out cold for 45 minutes after the crash, but when he woke up he conversed fluidly in English with paramedics, even speaking in an English accent.

The teenager had just begun to study the language and his skills were described by friends and team-mates as “basic at best”. Peter Waite, the promoter for Kus’s team, the Berwick Bandits, told the Daily Mail: “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“It was in a really clear English accent, no dialect or anything. Whatever happened in the crash must have rearranged things in his head. “Before his crash Matej’s use of the English language was broken, to put it mildly. “He was only just making a start on improving it and struggled to be understood, but was keen to learn.

“Yet here we were at the ambulance door listening to Matej talking to the medical staff in perfect English. “Matej didn’t have a clue who or where he was when he came round. He didn’t even know he was Czech. “It was unbelievable to hear him talk in unbroken English.” Unfortunately, the speedway driver’s new found skills didn’t last and he remembers nothing of the accident or the following two days. He is now keen pursue studies in English.

He told the Daily Mail, through an interpreter: “It’s unbelievable that I was speaking English like that, especially without an accent. “Hopefully I can pick English up over the winter for the start of next season so I’ll be able to speak it without someone having to hit me over the head first.

“There must be plenty of the English language in my subconscious so hopefully I’ll be able to pick it up quickly next time.”

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PRISONERS in a county jail in New Mexico have gone on a rampage, breaking toilets and windows, after being told they would be allowed only one sausage at dinner.

Jail officials said around 33 inmates threw a “temper tantrum”, yelling and banging on their doors when told about the sausage rationing. The jail was locked down and additional officers called to restore control.

Warden Jann  Gartman said the other 300-plus prisoners accepted the meal without incident.

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Heavy rains spawned flooding that left “hundreds” dead or missing in North Korea and destroyed more than 30,000 homes, the country’s state media reported Tuesday.The official Korean Central News Agency said preliminary information revealed massive casualties after the storms that began last week, but gave no specific figures.

It said the rain also flooded tens of thousands of acres of farmland in the impoverished country that suffers from regular food shortages.”The heavy rain destroyed at least 800 public buildings, over 540 bridges, 70 sections of railroads and at least 1,100 vehicles, pumps and electric motors,” KCNA said.

Hardest hit appeared to be Kangwon province, where KCNA said there were “huge casualties” and that homes for more than 20,000 families were partly or completely destroyed. The effects also reached to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

“The material damage so far is estimated to be very big,” KCNA said. “This unceasing heavy rain destroyed the nation’s major railways, roads and bridges, suspended power supply and cut off the communications network.”North Korea also suffered from flooding last year that caused massive casualties, although the exact numbers of dead were never revealed by the secretive country.

Damage from storms is often worsened in North Korea because its citizens denude vast hillsides to create more arable land to grow food, meaning natural vegetation that can stop erosion and landslides is no longer present. More than 2 million people are estimated to have died in North Korea after a famine struck in the mid-1990s. The government blamed the famine on natural disasters, but it was also linked to outdated farming methods as well as the loss of the country’s Soviet benefactor. North Korea still relies on outside food aid to help feed its people.

In a statement Tuesday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies also noted the damage from the weather and said the national Red Cross was on a 24-hour alert. The statement gave no details of deaths and only mentioned five people missing in an initial series of reports that did not include all areas affected.

The international federation said it had given disaster kits to 500 homeless families with blankets, kitchen sets, water containers and other necessities.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Pity poor Pluto, the puny former planet is facing yet another indignity.Demoted from planethood a year ago into a new category of dwarf planet, it now turns out that it isn’t even the biggest one of those. “This is sort of Pluto’s last stand,” joked Emily L. Schaller of California Institute of Technology, co-author of a report in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science. When the International Astronomical Union redefined planets last year, it created the new subcategory dwarf planets, and Pluto was thought to be the largest in that group.

Planetary astronomy professor Michael E. Brown and graduate student Schaller found otherwise while studying Dysnomia, the moon of Eris, another dwarf planet. Using the Keck Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope they were able to calculate the movement of Dysnomia and, with that information, calculate the mass of Eris at 27 percent more than Pluto. But even though Eris tops Pluto, Earth is still 360 times more massive.

“Pluto and Eris are essentially twins — except that Eris is slightly the pudgier of the two,” Brown said.

Eris, by the way, is named for the Greek goddess of, among other things, rivalry.

Read more on CNN.COM

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BALTIMORE, Maryland (AP) — NASA’s Messenger probe will make its second pass by Venus on Tuesday afternoon, which will help guide the spacecraft on its circuitous journey to Mercury and give scientists a close-up look at Earth’s cloud-shrouded neighbor.The fly-by also will give researchers the rare opportunity to pair with a European spacecraft studying Venus.

“This is the first time that we are able to take observations from two different vantage points,” said Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the principal investigator for the Messenger program. During Messenger’s first pass by Venus in October, the planet was on the opposite side of the sun, putting the probe out of radio contact for two weeks. The spacecraft also did not pass as close to the planet, so researchers decided against turning on its instruments, Solomon said. If successful, Messenger, launched in August 2004, would be the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, arriving in 2011. The spacecraft cannot fly straight to Mercury because it isn’t carrying enough fuel, so it is flying once past Earth, twice past Venus and three times past Mercury for gravity assists before slowing enough to slip into orbit around the small, hot planet.

While planets are often used to give probes gravity boosts to speed their travel, Messenger is using Venus to slow down and help guide it into orbit around Mercury, said Andy Calloway, Messenger mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel. Messenger is the seventh in NASA’s Discovery program of lower-cost, scientifically focused space missions. The Applied Physics Laboratory, which built and operates the probe, manages the mission for NASA.

Eric Finnegan, Messenger mission systems engineer at the Applied Physics Laboratory, said the Venus flyby begins a “veritable inner-planetary roller coaster” ride over the next 18 months as it homes in on its final destination. Messenger will pass 209 miles above the surface of Venus, using the planet to decelerate from 22.7 to 17.3 miles per second, putting the probe on target to pass Mercury for the first time in January. Messenger will be the first probe to orbit Mercury and the first to visit the planet since Mariner 10 zoomed by three times in the mid-1970s.

Researchers also will team with the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission to observe the planet second-closest to the sun. Messenger and the European spacecraft will make joint measurements, for example, of how solar wind affects the planet’s atmosphere. Hakan Svedhem, a Venus Express project scientist with the European Space Agency, said that astronomers currently have an excellent view of Venus and that many will be watching the planet as the two probes take measurements.

“So, we will get lots of data,” Svedhem said.

The flyby “provides an excellent opportunity, really, to study Venus from two points close to Venus and also from many points on Earth.”

Read more on CNN.COM

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Next generation Accord will not have hybrid version, diesel option possible.

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The new Honda Accord, which will go on sale in September, will not be available in a gasoline-electric hybrid version, according to a company spokesman.

“We have found that our hybrid system works better on smaller cars,” said Chris Naughton, a Honda spokesman.

Honda previously announced that it will introduce a new hybrid car in 2009. That car will be smaller in size and less expensive than the Honda Civic Hybrid. The Accord, a midsized car, is larger and more expensive than the Civic.

Honda currently makes a hybrid version of the Accord that’s engineered to provide a balance of performance and fuel economy, using a 6-cylinder gasoline engine rather than a smaller 4-cylinder engine. The competing Toyota Camry Hybrid uses a four-cylinder engine resulting in considerably better fuel economy than the Accord Hybrid. Hybrid cars use electric motors to supplement power from the gasoline, resulting in improved fuel economy.

Hybrids accounted for 14 percent of Camrys sold last month, but just 1.4 percent of Accords, according to data from Power Information Networks, an auto research firm. The Accord and Camry are the two best-selling passenger cars in the United States. “We have seen that what interests hybrid consumers is ultimate fuel economy,” Naughton said.

Honda has previously said it will introduce a new 4-cylinder diesel engine in the United States by 2009. Diesel engines get considerably better fuel economy than gasoline engines without the technical complexity of gasoline-electric hybrid systems. With cleaner diesel fuel available here, allowing engines to meet strict emissions requirements, diesel cars will become more widely available in this country in coming years.

Read more on CNN.COM

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