The Express Tribune T2 - December 10

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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 10, 2011

Awesome sports!

Maze

Explore

Ok…so you may be a basketball champ and maybe hitting sixers is your thing during a good ol’ cricket match. But before you start thinking of yourself as the athletic guru of your generation, you might want to take a shot at sports that are slightly…out of the box! Here are some ideas to get you going!

Jogging+juggling=joggling!

Backing balloons

Kick away at the shuttlecock!

Jogging is all about getting some exercise and clearing your mind. But if you think just jogging around a track is way too boring for you, then here’s something to make your morning jog a little more entertaining…for yourself and other people! If you’re up for a challenge, then try juggling with jogging. What with trying to see where you’re heading to making sure you don’t get hit with the balls on your head, it’s a taxing sport but a good coordination exercise.

You’re attending a birthday party and poof goes the light!

You can’t exactly play musical chairs or passing the pillow in the stuffed living room. And all around, you see a lot of kids and balloons. Well, you can now play balloon sandwich outside. This game requires two players to stand with their backs facing each other and between their backs, they have to support no-helium balloons. The person who pops the balloon or drops it has to go back and do it all over again.

While the one who carries it and crosses the line, wins!

It’s no fun when you can’t find badminton racquets when you’ve decided to play badminton one day. All you have is a few shuttlecocks to entertain yourself. Well, you could always play jianzi. Originated in China, this sport requires one to keep the shuttlecock off the ground with any part of the body, save the hands. That’s right! Keeping that shuttlecock off the ground without the hand is seriously not easy . However, there are many versions of the game and you can pick the one you like!

SOURCE: ALLSTARACTIVITIES.COM

ha ha ha

What did the football coach say to the broken vending machine?

“Give me my quarterback!”

What lights up a soccer stadium?

A soccer match.

Why do grasshoppers not go to many football matches?

They prefer cricket matches!

Where does the baseball catcher sit for dinner?

Behind the plate.

Why should you be careful playing against a team of big cats?

They might be cheetahs!

Why was Cinderella thrown off the team?

She ran away from the ball!

What kind of cats like to go bowling?

Alley cats Why did the volleyball visit the bank?

Tussle of the toes!

Polo on bikes!

You might be familiar with arm wrestling and the amount of strength needed to try and bring down the competitor’s hand. Well if you do that with your feet, the game becomes toe wrestling!

Gaining momentum in UK, this game starts off with removing the shoes and the smelly socks off your opponent’s feet as a sign of respect. Whoa! The players must really respect each other for doing that! Well, then it’s time to grapple with your opponent’s foot. The person who pins the other’s foot flat on the ground first, wins!

It’s fascinating seeing players on horses trying to get hold of the ball to score a goal. The sheer charm of being on well-groomed stallions may force you to go for the sport but the only problem is… how on earth will you take care of those horses? But hey, if you’re really passionate about the sport then maybe you should try out bicycle polo. This version of polo is similar to the original polo save for the replacement of horses with bikes. At least you’ll have a go at the game and your mom won’t fret about you falling off horses!

He wanted to know his net worth

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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 10, 2011

Teen spirit health tips

Twitter quitter!

If one needs to make a Twitter account to gain popularity, then i am fine with being a nobody

Canned energy GOHAR WARRAICH

Felix felicis, the luck potion from Harry Potter, is much like how energy drinks are advertised. They promise to make you confident, daring and reckless. The adverts promise you the feeling of being airborne, just like the players on the Quidditch field.

The concept of energy drink is not new, yet it has only recently gained popularity. In 2011, it was projected that energy drink chugging is going to bring up the value of the market to 11 billion US dollars.

These drinks, which instantly cause ‘adrenaline rushes’, are essentially cocktails of sugars, caffeine and other substances. The amount of caffeine in one serving amounts to three times that in a Cola, or an almost equal if not more number of cups of tea. The caffeine in a single can of energy drink varies from 70-200 mg, and this amount exceeds the advised level of daily caffeine intake for younger consumers.

Though these facts might not seem too alarming, energy drinks contain ingredients which release additional caffeine beyond the ingredient listing on the label. These substances, including ginseng, can actually interact with medications being taken for other illnesses. The synergistic effect of all the substances in energy drinks have never been put under the microscope, neither have energy drinks been medically investigated in detail.

Moreover, energy drinks have other well-known adverse effects. They are known to cause anxiety, irritability, sleeplessness, digestive problems and changes in blood which set your heart racing and thumping increasing blood pressure. Caffeine intoxication can also easily occur especially when larger servings are packaged in bigger cans. Numerous runs to the loo are also caused by too much caffeine intake, potentially resulting in dehydration. Athletes, children with heart conditions and insomniacs need to be especially wary of consequences of inappropriate use of these beverages.

Due to all these side effects, attempts have been made to even ban these drinks in certain countries, including France, where a young athlete fell victim to a tragic fate after a fatal combination of four energy drink cans and a game of basketball.

Recent medical literature advises moderation in their use. Energy drink consumption should be limited to not more than one 500 ml — a can a day. Athletes should rather rehydrate with suitable sports drinks which replenish salts and electrolytes, vitamins and nutrients.

Steer clear from bingeing and chronic use of energy drinks, because they have no proven benefits. People with chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and so on, should consult with their physician with regards to using this product.

So before you drink in order to jump, just make sure you don’t end up like Icarus.

ILLUSTRATION: JAMAL KHURSHID

FAIZA HAI

A few days ago my friend made me realise that I am a “nobody” because I don’t use Twitter. Unlike the manic hordes of teenagers obsessing over Facebook and Twitter, I don’t like social networking. (Yes, kill me for that).

So yes, I am not on Twitter and I am too lazy to bother about making a Twitter account. But my friends did not excuse my absence on Twitter and made me feel like a pariah in society.

In fact, they made me feel like an otherworldly creature because apparently only aliens don’t use Twitter. So alas I just got sick of them mocking me and finally decided to be somebody. Sigh!

I finally made my account on Twitter and then fell asleep with the satisfaction that, now, at least I am

somebody. But the very next day, a miracle of sorts happened. I logged in to my fresh new Twitter account to confirm that I am somebody and realised that I had attracted twenty followers — all strangers — within eight hours of making my account.

Thank you guys for following me; it’s nice to have followers and the bigger that number is the more of a “somebody” I am. But who are these people? Do I want to tweet personal stuff for them to read? Are they even real people? Yes, I can block people from following me, but then what is Twitter all about?

And another disturbing thing is the spam that I have encountered. Spam is part of the internet and you can’t really escape from it while web surf-

Spam is part of the internet and you can’t really escape from it while web surfing, but with Twitter one just drowns in spam

ing, but with Twitter one just drowns in spam. Be it just spam accounts that follow you or the automatic direct messages that try to sell you stuff you don’t want, the quantity of spam is just unmanageable.

I feel that Twitter is just like a Bieber fan page these days. The presence of Justin Bieber has turned Twitter into a platform for attracting his fans. I am not a Belieber for sure but I am not exactly his diehard fan either.

But on Twitter, all I come across is Bieber-related stuff. Why must I have to encounter him on Twitter when I am clearly not interested in following live updates about his life?

And by the way, have you ever read a single thing on Twitter that actually enlightened you in any way.

Have you? Keep thinking… I am waiting for your response. Thought of something yet? Yeah, me neither.

Everything said and circulated on Twitter is absolutely pointless. I don’t care about the sandwich someone has just eaten or that they are heading out to work. People really need to stop pretending that they are celebrities when they are not and believe that people are interested in knowing about their lives. I, for one, am not.

Twitter is a very successful social networking site for professionals or journalists, but not for teenager like me. So I have decided to abandon Twittering once and for all. If next time someone ridicules me for being a nobody then I will simply tell them I am from Mars and aliens just don’t like to tweet.

Famous Teen Twitterati Miley Cyrus

Cyrus wrote, “Please stop bombarding my friends (sic) Twitter pages with rude comments. NOTHING gives you the right to threaten people. I love u @ MissKellyO :)”

what is real.” He continued, “Judge me on the music!”

Demi Lovato

Justin Bieber Followers: Over 15 million The “Never Say Never” star has a diehard following on Twitter. Not only does he have a growing base of fans, Twitter is inundated by the Bieber fan account.

After allegations that he has illegitimately fathered a child with a 20-year-old fan surfaced and spread like wild fire on the internet, the young heartthrob expressed his reaction on Twitter by writing, “I’m going to ignore the rumours and focus on Followers: Nearly 4 million The Hannah Montana star is as Twitter savvy as a star can get. She regularly tweets to reach out to her fans. Whether it is telling her fans about her life — “Having curly fries with demi! Why r curly ones better than straight ones??? Question of the day”- or responding to tabloid gossip to clear the air — I did not get a new puppy!!! It was a friend’s”, Miley’s candid tweets keep coming. Recently, the teen queen scolded fans on Twitter who had been sending rude messages to her friend, singer Kelly Osbourne, on Twitter for defending Miley’s against claims that she is a pothead.

Followers: Over 5 million Demi is an avid Twitter user. From defending her healthy weight to skeptics — “I’ve gained weight. Get over it. That’s what happens when you get out of treatment for AN EATING DISORDER.” — to showing off the matching tattoos she and her mom got, the star loves to reach out to her fans via tweets.

Lovato, who recently got out of rehab, quit Twitter in October 2010, much to her fans’ disappointment but rejoined the social networking site in 2011.

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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 10, 2011

New earth-like planet discovered

Tech Society

Don’t get hooked into the “phishing” net

PHOTO: FILE

Beware! You’ll come across an online crook sooner or later...

NOMAN ANSARI

Several years ago, I received an alarming email from what appeared to be e-commerce giant, PayPal, regarding my account, which stated that ‘suspicious activity’ had been noticed, and that my account had been ‘compromised’.

Addressing me correctly by my full name, the email told me that time was of the essence, and that I should follow the link provided at the end of the email, to login, and verify my information immediately.

With a large sum of money resting in my account, I blindly followed instinct (Read: panicked), and quickly clicked the link in the email. Next thing I knew, I was the on what looked exactly like the PayPal login page, complete with my correct email address neatly placed in the login box. All that was required was from me was to type in my password, and hit the ‘enter’ key to enter my account.

Which I almost did. But out of the blue, something didn’t feel quite so right. Suddenly, a word popped up in my head like a warning bell.

Phishing!

I studied the login page, trying to figure out what it was about the webpage that felt so off. I glanced at the fonts, and noticed that they seemed ever so slightly different from what I was used to on the website. I then looked up at the address bar, and the realization hit me like a hammer: rather than say ‘paypal’ the URL was simply a dubious string of numbers instead.

Quickly, I closed the page, typed the correct URL myself, and logged in, to discover to my relief that the status of my account was perfectly normal. It then dawned on me that someone had gone through some trouble to try and get access to my password, and that I was extremely lucky not to have given it away.

Luckily, I had already been

aware of the concept of ‘phishing’, which probably helped raise warning signs in my head, but millions haven’t been so lucky. In a Gartner, Inc. survey conducted in 2007, it was estimated that in the 12 months leading up to August 2007, 3.6 million U.S. adults were the victims of such attacks, and the US lost an estimated 3.2 billion in that period overall to such strikes.

Meanwhile, in 2005, in the United Kingdom, it is estimated that phishing-related web bank fraud has resulted in losses of £23.2m.

In June 2011, Google disclosed that it had discovered and disrupted a spear phishing campaign — a phishing attempt which targets large organisations — to steal hundreds of Gmail passwords and monitor the accounts of prominent people, including senior government officials.

Similar tactics were also used in an attack on a company called RSA Security, which security experts say

may have given hackers the tools to carry out a serious intrusion last month at Lockheed Martin — the world’s largest military contractor.

What exactly is ‘phishing’ you ask? Well, pronounced ‘fishing’, it is a method for online crooks to access sensitive information like credit card details, and login information for e-commerce and banking websites, by typically disguising emails and instant messages to lead unsuspecting users to counterfeit websites. Not only that, but some phishers have actually faked entire phone banking systems to gain access to user account and PIN numbers.

Companies are constantly taking steps to combat this decay at electronic commerce. For instance, modern day browsers are now coming equipped with antiphishing safeguards yet in the end, the biggest weapon against such attacks is user awareness.

If you are wary of falling prey to such attacks, then remember that vigilance is the majority of the battle. Whether you are about to use an e-commerce website like PayPal, or conduct online banking on a website like Citibank, always enter the URL of the said website yourself, and never under any situation, use a link from a piece of electronic correspondence.

If you are ever suspicious of a website or an email, you can report any concerns to the legitimate companies through the proper channels, by arming yourself with information on how to address your concerns. For example, if you receive an email from PayPal, which you wish to ensure is real, you can simply forward said email to spoof@paypal.com for confirmation. In the end, keep in mind that the greatest defense against phishing is to simply not take the bait.

If you grew up believing in the existence of extraterrestrial life, now’s the time to get really excited. A newly discovered planet is very similar to Earth and is sitting outside our solar system in what seems to be the ideal place for life, except for one hitch. It’s a bit too big.

The planet is right in the middle of what astronomers call the Goldilocks zone, that hard to find place that’s not too hot, not too cold, where water, which is essential for life, doesn’t freeze or boil. And it has a shopping mall-like surface temperature of near 22 degrees, scientists say.

The planet’s confirmation was announced by NASA along with other discoveries by its Kepler telescope, which was launched on a planet-hunting mission in 2009.

That’s the first planet confirmed in the habitable zone for Kepler, which had already found Earth-like rocky planets elsewhere. Twice before astronomers have announced a planet found in that zone, but neither have been as promising.

The new planet — named Kepler-22b — has key aspects it shares with Earth. It circles a star that could be the twin of our sun and at just about the same distance. The planet’s year of 290 days is even close to ours. It likely has water and rock.

The only trouble is the planet’s a bit big for life to exist on the surface. The planet is about 2.4 times the size of Earth. It could be more like the gas-and-liquid Neptune with only a rocky core and mostly ocean.

The technology of planet hunting

GRAPHIC: JAMAL KHURSHID

Geek Guide

Ready to launch?

SYED MOHAMMED ALI

Most mobile phone operating systems offer little tweaking and customisation of the home screen. Yes we can change the wallpaper, or the shapes of the icons, but the overall look is mostly fixed. Android begs to differ. Offering several home screen replacement apps called launchers, android has something to satisfy all users.

Installing a launcher is like installing any other application on your phone. These get activated when the home button is pressed on your droid and offer you alternate screens which you can tweak to your heart’s content. If you don’t like what you see, simply uninstall the application and you are left with your earlier home screen.

Here are the top two launchers in my books:

Zeam Launcher This is a no-nonsense, lightweight, straight-forward, snappy, minimalistic launcher (phew!) which is perfect for those who just hate to see a phone lag. Zeam is a second lease of life for relatively under-powered droids (slow processors). While removing all the heavy and unnecessary elements, Zeam still manages to remain a full featured launcher.

Let’s look at where it’s best at: • Action bindings — You can program certain things to happen with finger swipe gestures. E.g. a swipe up opens the address

book, or shows you your application list. This is pretty helpful as it lets you get to what’s important much quicker.

• Battery saver — believe it or not, my battery started giving around four to five hours of extra time while using Zeam. No unnecessary animations, no useless notifications.

• Scrollable dock — The dock at the bottom of the screen can be scrolled left and right, allowing us to add as many apps as you want.

Without switching screens, you can simple scroll the dock to find the desired application.

• Choice between horizontal and vertical application list.

• Highly configurable — select your choice of rows, columns, screens etc.

• Fits your phone’s screen orientation — Whichever angle your phone is, Zeam adapts. Take that you other built in launchers!

Having a smaller screen droid, I was surprised to see that Zeam seems to manage space much more effectively than any other launcher I’ve tried. Using smaller icons and allowing icon labels to be hidden, frees up plenty of space on the screen, giving a more comfortable look. 5 stars!

Go Launcher Ex Extreme makeover for your phone, as the slogan goes, and rightly so.

Go Launcher Ex takes tweaking, customisation and animation to where

no launcher has ever gone before.

This launcher is a visual treat for all users. Diving into its most prominent features: • Custom widgets and lock screen — With Go Launcher ex, we get the chance to use their custom made widgets for calendar, clock, contacts and facebook/Twitter. A recent addition is a lock screen application which adds a lot of spice to a previously dull and simple lock screen.

• Extremely fancy home screen animations — As shown below, Go Launcher Ex can be set to display any of its sexy animations, when transitioning from home screen to application list etc • Thousands of beautiful themes

Keplerv Telescope

Offering several home screen replacement apps called launchers, android has something to satisfy all users (most can be freely downloaded).

• Built in task killer in applications list • Hide unwanted apps from appearing in application list • Re-size icons and widgets to what size seems best to you • Built in application-store which informs of frequent updates and new themes While Go Launcher Ex used to be my default home screen, I felt it did kind of slow down my phone. Plus as I only wanted to maximise on battery life, the animations didn’t make that easy. But if you have a decent smartphone and want to impress your friends with cool visual treats, Go Launcher Ex is what you should download.

Kepler, named after the noted German astronomer Johannes Kepler who invented the Keplerian Telescope, is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-sized planets around other stars. Launched in 2009, its main goal is to generate a base estimate, or census, of the number of such planets orbiting within habitable zones, where conditions are right for liquid water to exist.

The instrument package doesn’t orbit the Earth in a satellite: It’s housed within a spacecraft 9 feet in diameter and 15.3 feet in height, that orbits the sun, trailing our home planet.

Kepler uses a very wide field telescope and a photometer — an instrument for measuring the intensity of light — to measure brightness variations in more than 156,000 stars simultaneously. It takes these readings every 30 minutes because transits can require from an hour to half a day, depending on the planet’s orbit and the type of star involved.

The Cygnus-Lyra neighbourhood (constellations in the Milky Way) was chosen as the study area because it is wellpopulated with stars and lies high enough above the Earth’s orbital plane that the sun, Earth and moon won’t get in the way of Kepler’s observations. The stars are between 600 and 3,000 light-years away. Kepler finds planets via the photometric or transit method, which entails detection of the small drop-off in a star’s brightness occurring when an orbiting planet passes between the star and the viewer. Once the data analysis identifies a dimming event, scientists look for further dips of the same magnitude, duration and period to confirm the planet’s existence.

This is no easy task: An Earth-sized planet crossing in front of a sun-sized star dims its light by a mere 0.01 percent. Scientists at NASA like to say that detecting such a tiny dip is like “spotting a flea crawling across a headlight from several miles away”. Bigger planets, like those of the size of Jupiter, cast a bigger shadow. Nevertheless, viewed from outside our solar system, Jupiter’s transit only reduces our sun’s brightness by 1 to 2 percent. So far the Kepler telescope has spotted 2,326 candidate planets outside our solar system with 139 of them potentially habitable ones. Even though the confirmed Kepler-22b is a bit big, it is still smaller than most of the other candidates. It is closest to Earth in size, temperature and star than either of the two previously announced planets in the zone.

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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 10, 2011

offbeat Man’s best friend, man’s butt’s worst enemy A US hunter was rushed to the hospital after being shot in the buttocks by his dog.

The 46-year-old man was hit after his “excited” pet stepped on a shotgun in his boat.

He escaped serious injury, receiving only minor wounds to his buttocks and probably a bigger one to his pride.

Police said the man had been duck hunting with a friend on the Great Salt Lake, Utah, when the bizarre accident happened.

The hunter, from Brigham City, was shot as he climbed out of the boat to move decoys in an area of shallow marsh.

Deputy chief sheriff Kevin Potter said: “The dog got excited, was jumping around inside the boat and then it jumped on the gun.”

“It went off, shooting the decoy setter in the buttocks. I don’t know if the safety device was on. It’s not impossible the dog could have taken it off safety.”

Mr Potter said the man was hit from about 10 feet away with 27 pellets of birdshot during the incident at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.

He wasn’t seriously injured, in part because he was wearing waders or thick, waterproof trousers.

The men called 911 and walked to a nearby main road to wait for emergency crews. The wounded hunter was then transported to a local hospital.

More a bunny and less a bug…

It looks a bit like an alien, but this carrot-eating weta has now been declared the world’s biggest insect.

This is a real life Bugs Bunny — a huge insect that eats carrots.

A former park ranger discovered the giant weta up a tree and his find has now been declared the world’s biggest insect.

Mark Moffett found the cricket-like creature, which weighs a staggering 71 grams, after two days of searching on a tiny island.

The big bug, with a wing span of over seven inches, is only found on Little Barrier Island in New Zealand.

SOURCE: METRO.CO.UK

For it’s a jolly good log!

SOURCE: ORANGE.CO.UK

Haircuts earn barber hot rides!

Ramesh Babu is a Bangalore-based barber who gives customers a haircut for a modest Rs100 but owns a Rolls Royce Ghost worth Rs 3 crore, and 67 other cars. “Somehow, things have clicked for me,” says Babu, whose clients include politicians, police officers and film stars such as Salman Khan, Aamir Khan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

With a film on his life — expected to be released in three languages — in the pipeline, his Bollywood contacts may come in handy.

Babu was nine when his father died in 1979, leaving the family with nothing. To make ends meet, they rented out his father’s saloon on Brigade Road for a mere Rs5 per day. Forced to get a fulltime job, Babu dropped out of school after Class 10 and started working as a barber.

The career choice paid off better than he could have imagined. In 1991, he started his own salon, Inner Space, which gained popularity among the city’s trendy bunch. But the turnaround happened in 1994, when Babu purchased a humble Maruti Omni van and started renting it out.

Seventeen years later, his car collection is anything but humble. Apart from the Rolls Royce, his fleet includes four Mercedes, an equal number of BMWs and 50 Toyota Innovas — which he rents out. Renting the Rolls Royce for a day will set you back by Rs 50,000.

SOURCE: HINDUSTANTIMES.COM

Hard on the heart— Monsters of the harder on the wallet deep

A bunny that’s chicken!

Anglers may be known more for their imaginations than their catch, but Jeremy Wade is telling no fishy tale when he says he’s wrestled with monsters of the deep.

The extreme fishing fan has spent years tracking down some of the world’s most dangerous and bloodthirsty fish — and he has only just lived to tell the tale.

He has tangled with the sawfish, often described as a cross between a shark and a chainsaw, and the huge prehistoric alligator gar, which reaches up to 3 metres (10feet).

The author and TV presenter has trapped beasts, that include 2.4m (8ft) man-eating catfish, electric eels and super-piranhas.

Once he was hit in the chest by a 2m (6ft 6in) arapaima fish, scarring his heart.

Mr Wade has recorded his tales in a new book called River Monsters, ‘a tale of obsession, adventure and very big fish’.

“People generally have no idea how weird and also how large some of these things are,” he said. “Some look like something from the time of the dinosaurs.”

A heartbroken businessman spent £22,000(Rs3,057,348) on the world’s most expensive dessert to cheer himself up after he was dumped by his girlfriend.

Diamond merchant Carl Weininger, 60, splashed out on the extravagant pudding as a “pick-me-up” after she ended their three-year relationship.

The chocolate-laced pudding is styled like a Faberge egg and its list of ingredients included edible gold, champagne and caviar.

It contained a gold bracelet and spoon set and the cherry on top was a two-carat diamond.

Mr Weininger took the pudding to the Aviators’ Ball, at Heathrow’s Sofitel Hotel where lucky guests sampled the luxury dessert.

Each mouthful cost around £800(Rs111,176) and the whole dessert took just 15 minutes to devour.

“Buying the dessert was a real boost for my morale,” he said.

“I was dumped earlier this year and felt this could be a decent pick-me-up.

“I’m not much of a chocolate lover myself but all the women who tasted it said ‘Wow’. It was absolutely delicious, as you would expect.”

SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

SOURCE: METRO.CO.UK

Otto would make the perfect chicken, except for a few hiccups.

Hatching eggs, scratching around the coop and roosting on a beam with the rest of the hens are great habits for chickens, but rather unusual for an eight-month-old male rabbit.

The confused bunny came as a free gift to Ville Kuusinen’s home, when he bought nine Silkie hens and a rooster from a farm.

The Kuusinens and their three children live on a small island in Velkua some 210 kilometres (130 miles) northwest of Helsinki.

“When I went to the hen house, I noticed he was sitting on the eggs. Later I watched through the window how he jumped on the beam, failed, tried again and with a lot of practice eventually he stayed up there,” said Kuusinen.

Otto does not like to sit on laps or eat carrots like most pet rabbits. The rabbit, who has lived with chickens all his life, prefers chicken feed and runs with the chickens outdoors and sometimes plays with them by jumping over them.

“For the chickens he is one of them. He often sits on the beam between the hens and under their wings,” Kuusinen said.

But he said Otto’s rabbity instincts still take over when a visitor steps into the hen house. He runs away and hides, but can be lured out with raisin buns. REUTERS

The world’s longest ever Christmas cake — a 1kilometre-long vanilla flavoured log with a bitter chocolate cover — has been created by 80 cooks in China.

The cake, measuring exactly 1,068 metres (3,504 feet), was created at the Pudong Shangri-la Hote.

The busy chefs designed, baked and sweetened the cake across a period of seven days.

A staggering 904 organic eggs, 1045 kilograms (2,304 pounds) of flour, 209kg (461 pounds) of sugar, 401kg (884 pounds) of bitter chocolate and an impressive 34 kilograms (75 pounds) of Tahitian vanilla were all mixed together to create the one-of-akind dessert.

“We make the sponge, we bake and then, when it’s cooled down, we make our vanilla cream, which is inside, we roll it up, and we make our very secret recipe of chocolate frosting,” explained pastry chef Yusuf Yaran.

“We put it all over the cake, and then we have our candy decorations and some icing sugar on the top.”

The final presentation saw 150 staff put the finished touches to the cake, helping to place it out on 156 tables during an intense 24-hour period.

Initially, the team of cooks aimed to create a cake at a length of 888 metres (2,913 feet), but only upon the cake being measured did they realise the scale of their achievement.

After celebrating the success of the long cake, the hotel began to slice it to sell to the public, with all proceeds going to support chemotherapy treatment of four children in Shanghai.

The previous record holders for the world’s longest cake were the French with a 207 metre effort.

SOURCE: METRO.CO.UK

Crash, bang, thud... £2m of scrap metal

Whoever heard of a car crash with a price tag that huge? Well.. you have now!

A multiple car crash in Japan has created an estimated £2m(Rs277940812) of scrap metal.

Twelve of the 14 cars involved in the accident near Shimonoseki were supercars — including eight Ferraris, two Mercedes and a Lamborghini.

Reports suggest the crash happened after a Mercedes was driven on the wrong side of the road on the Chugoku expressway.

Japanese newspaper The Daily Yomiuri said 10 people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

The group of drivers was reportedly made up of self-employed “car enthusiasts”, who were travelling from Kyushu to Hiroshima.

Among the vehicles were two Ferrari F430s, two 360 Modenas, two F355s, a Lamborghini Diablo and a Nissan GTR. SOURCE: NEWS.SKY.COM