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Russia to Stop Giving Free Trips to US Astronauts

Russian Space Agency said on Tuesday it will stop giving free space trips to U.S. astronauts. The agency chief Anatoly Perminov quoted by Reiters said they “will put U.S. astronauts into orbit only on a commercial basis” from 2006.

Russia has been servicing the International Space Station alone for almost two years since the crash of the U.S. Columbia shuttle. The United States has often funded Russian cosmonauts’ trips to the station on its shuttles and since the tragedy Russia has done the same for U.S. astronauts.

A spokesman of the Russian agency quoted by Reuters said Perminov will go to the United States early next year with a proposal. It says, the United States would write off debts of man-hours that Russia owes for work carried out on the station in exchange for Russia launching its astronauts. NASA officials have not commented this information yet.

U.S. officials have said Shuttle flights could resume in May, an event Russia is keenly awaiting. “At the beginning of next year I will go to America to personally make sure that the preparation for the resumption of Shuttle flights is going according to plan,” Perminov said.

Cruel coincidence befalls UPS driver

So the other day a UPS driver in New Hampshire was on his way to the Cheshire Medical Center in Keene to deliver some much-needed parts for a piece of medical equipment when he got into a crash. He suffered a head injury and was taken by ambulance to the very same hospital he was headed to, but they weren’t able to do any of the tests they needed because the brain scan machine was broken—and the parts needed to fix it were sitting in his wrecked truck on the highway. If only there were some word to describe situations like these…

So I left work on Friday, and made my way down to Weschester to visit with Lilli and Jake for the weekend. Jake wanted to go to the Intrepid, and far be it from me to deny myself the opportunity to talk about the Navy. I let him check out my cruise book in the car on the ride down, and was attacked by about a bajillion questions, usually starting with, "Drew, when the ship is at war..." or "Drew when the ship is at battle..." It was a really fun day followed by Dim Sum, and Peking Duck, which I'd never had before, but am now a fan of. The rest of the weekend wasn't boring either, but doesn't get mentioned here. Shhhhh it's a secret, and something about my inner voice.

By Theresa Howard, USA TODAY

Gillette (G) will announce Thursday its strategy to go after a bigger cut of the women's shaving market this spring, including two new products in its successful Venus line and - in an unusual move in personal care products - equality with similar men's products in price.

The company will roll out a battery-powered Venus Vibrance shaver, similar to its men's M3Power, that sends little vibrations to the skin to raise the hair for a closer shave. It also will add Venus disposables.

What with Chaunuka around the corner, me driving all over the freaking New England area, and all the Mass-holes who drive like they're team has won 26 World Championships, I am adding this to my wish list.

Nov 30th 2002 at the Four Seasons Hotel in NYC, my Mother married Hank Karen, who has proved to be a great Husband, and mentor! Congratulations to the both of you!

Ever woken up one morning with a raging hangover that was promptly worsened by the memory of the drunken cell phone call to the ex at 3 a.m.?

If the memory is not painful enough, the aftermath--potentially involving apologies, restraining orders, a "friendly visit" from the ex's new partner (who is probably either a black belt in Zen Do Kai or a leading underworld figure) and sundry other humiliations--adds to the agony.

Amid the flurry of capped plans, bundling and discounting characterizing the pre-Christmas mobile marketplace, Australia's Virgin Mobile has sought to differentiate itself with a service tailored to help people avoid making those embarrassing drunken calls.

A survey of 409 people by Virgin Mobile, a joint venture of The Virgin Group and Optus, found 95 percent made drunken phone calls. Of those calls, 30 percent were to ex-partners, 19 percent to current partners, and 36 percent to other people, including their bosses.

The company said that, beginning Wednesday, Virgin Mobile customers could dial 333 plus a phone number they don't want to call when drunk. Virgin Mobile would--for a 25-cent fee--stop all calls to that number by blacklisting it until 6 a.m. the following day.

The move comes amid an intensifying price war between mobile players to secure customers, exemplified Tuesday by a flurry of announcements. Virgin is launching a new AU$45 (about $35.00) monthly cap that includes up to AU$200 (about $155) worth of mobile services, while rival Vodafone also launched a new AU$49 (about $38.00) cap that would allow customers to use up to AU$230 (about $178.00) worth of services.

For its part, Optus touted a service allowing its customers to call overseas on their mobiles for the cost of a local call.

Iain Ferguson of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

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NASA sending hammer to space

Pink Floyd pupils sue for royalties
By Nigel Rosser, Evening Standard

A group of former pupils at a London comprehensive school are poised to win thousands of pounds in unpaid royalties for singing on Pink Floyd's classic Another Brick In The Wall 25 years ago.

The pupils from the 1979 fourthform music class at Islington Green School secretly recorded vocals after their teacher was approached by the band's management.

Now the 23 ex-pupils are suing for overdue session musician royalties, taking advantage of the Copyright Act 1997 to claim a percentage of the money from broadcasts.

Music teacher Alun Renshaw took the 13- to 14-year-old pupils out of lessons by to the nearby Britannia Recording Studios in Islington to record - without the head's permission.

With its chorus of "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom - teachers leave them kids alone," the song was an anthem for teenagers. The album The Wall sold over 12 million copies.

Music royalties expert Peter Rowan said: "Some of the kids have put in a claim for royalties due to session musicians for recordings played on the

radio or broadcast since

1997. We are going through the process of claiming now."

Today, Mr Renshaw, 59, revealed how he hid the song's lyrics from the head. The Evening Standard tracked him down to his home outside Sydney, Australia, where he runs a vocational training course company.

He said: "I viewed it as an interesting sociological thing and also a wonderful opportunity for the kids to work in a live recording studio.

"We had a week where we practised around the piano at school, then we recorded it at the studios. I sort of mentioned it to the headteacher, but didn't give her a piece of paper with the lyrics on it."

When the song was released the Inner London Education Authority called it "scandalous".

Headteacher Margaret Maden banned the children from appearing on Top Of The Pops or in newspapers and refused to let the band make a video of them singing it.

Mr Renshaw, who emigrated shortly after the song reached No1, said: "Afterwards I looked at the words again and realised ... well! But the parents said it was great and the children loved doing it. Margaret was very good about it. She absorbed most of the politics and I didn't get too badly told off."

Islington Green's current headmaster, Trevor Averre-Beeson, has a platinum record of the song, and the school got a cheque for ?1,000. But Mr Renshaw said: "At the time we didn't think of it in terms of money, more of the experience."

Ms Maden, 62, now a professor at Keele, said: "Alun Renshaw was a seriously good if somewhat anarchic music teacher. I was only told about it after the event, which didn't please me. But on balance it was part of a very rich musical education."

Peter Thorpe, who sang on the single, told friends: "We were just taken to the studios and it was great fun. I didn't realise royalties were owed and I'm very glad to be in a position to claim them."

This Is London

It's official, he proposed, she said yes.  Mike and I are going to coordinate a knife fight to see who gets to be the best man.

For almost 4 years now I've known these guys, and the only better couple that I've seen is Linus and Lucy.  I'm glad Adam finally grew a pair, and that Wendy didn't decide to stay in Asia, working for Joyce Chen.   Good luck, we love you!

Sound solution to the pistachio problem

Grab a handful of pistachio nuts and you will usually find several with shells that are closed so tightly they cannot be eaten. But soon you might be able to enjoy the snack without this frustration.

A gadget that listens to the distinctive pings made by nuts when they bounce off a surface could help to sort open-shell nuts from uncrackable closed ones.

Ripe, open-shelled pistachios, which fetch top dollar as a snack food, have to be separated from sealed unripe ones, which are normally shelled mechanically for use in ice cream or cake mixes.

But the spinning drums that producers use to do this are less than perfect. The inside of each drum has thousands of needles designed to catch on the open lips of ripe shells. Closed nuts end up in your nut bowl because sometimes they are speared too.

Blasted off

Now Tom Pearson, an engineer at the US Agricultural Research Service in Manhattan, Kansas, US, thinks he has the answer. He developed a sound-based sorter after noticing the different noises the two types of nut made when they struck the ground. “I could pick the types out perfectly without looking,” he says.

Pearson’s machine drops 25 nuts per second onto a steel plate, where a microphone picks up the impact sound they make. Signal-processing software detects the shorter ping of a closed-shell nut, and opens an air valve to blast it off the line.

While not as fast as the needle picker, the sound sorter is cheaper to maintain and up to 97% accurate – against the needle sorter’s 90%.

Geoff Gibbons of Setton Pistachio, California, is testing five sound sorters in tandem with his needle pickers. He estimates the machine will save the company $500,000 a year, and lot of frustrated customers.

Record haul of fake Lego to go up in smoke

HELSINKI: More than 10 tonnes of Chinese-made plastic toy bricks will go up in smoke when the largest customs haul of illegal imitation Legos ever seized is incinerated, a Finnish customs official says.

The bricks were crushed on Thursday and will be burned later to produce energy for the southern Finnish town of Lahti, the customs officer said on Friday. Scandinavian environmentalists shouldn't worry: no toxins were found in the toys.

The phoney Legos, totalling more than 54,500 fake sets, were seized by Finnish customs last year en route to Russia, said the Danish company that makes the genuine toys.

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