Thursday, July 31, 2014

Why Orlando Bloom punched Justin Bieber - video, pics

Why Orlando Bloom punched Justin Bieber

Date: July 31, 2014 - 4:17PM

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Jenna Clarke

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Orlando Bloom lashes out at Justin Bieber

Witnesses capture vision of Orlando bloom allegedly lashing out at singer Justin Bieber at an Ibiza restaurant.

Pull up a chair, make a cuppa, this may take awhile because a modern day Helen of Troy tale is unfolding in Hollywood, Spain and New York right now.

The story involves a love octagon between the supermodel, two pop stars, an actor, a billionaire, a wannabe pop star-slash-model ex-wife and a high-profile businessman.

And it reached its climax on Wednesday, when Lord of the Rings star Orlando Bloom took on lord of the brats Justine Bieber in an exclusive Spanish restaurant. Bloom’s slap is believed to be retribution for the 20-year-old singer breaking one of the 10 Commandments two years ago with Bloom’s then wife, Miranda Kerr.

Justin Bieber and Miranda Kerr reportedly met and connected backstage at the 2012 Victoria's Secret show. Photo: CBS

To recap, reports surfaced in November 2012 of Bieber, the Christian pop star who was discovered on YouTube by Usher, flirting with Kerr, a former Victoria’s Secret angel, backstage at the label's fashion show. Rumours of "sexy text messages and dates" followed, then Kerr and Bloom announced their separation last October.

In December, Kerr, 31, was linked to her old mate, casino mogul James Packer, who had divorced his second wife, fledgling pop star Erica Baxter, two months earlier. Packer and Baxter married in 2007, the same year Baxter released her last single, I Don't Feel a Thing,

Months of speculation followed as to whether Kerr and Packer were a couple - less than a year earlier, the Packers and the Bloom-Kerrs had all holidayed together in Tahiti.

James Packer and Erica Baxter arrive for Paul Ramsay's funeral. Photo: INF

In early 2014, Bloom, 37, was spotted sharing a cigarette on the street in Los Angeles with Bieber’s former girlfriend Selena Gomez, 22, while the pair attended Chelsea Handler’s stand-up show.

A fortnight after that, on May 4, Packer was accosted outside his Sydney home by his best friend, Nine Entertainment Group chief executive David Gyngell. The two slapped, grunted and wrestled each other for a number of minutes before three men separated them. The fight was allegedly the result of simmering tensions as Gyngell disapproved of Packer’s divorce and his apparent relationship with Kerr. Ironically a year before Gyngell and Packer enacted their soap opera-esque scene in Bondi, Gyngell cancelled Days Of Our Lives' 45-year run on Channel Nine.

Erica left her LA base to accompany her former husband to Ramsay Health founder Paul Ramsay’s funeral in country NSW on May 9. The pair comforted each other.

Packer then retreated to his luxury superyacht, The Arctic P, and Kerr joined him in Cyprus the following month. Their island getaway was never confirmed, but the model-turned-entrepreneur posted on Instagram photos of Mediterranean sunsets while quoting Socrates.

Packer’s former wife and three children joined him on board a few weeks laterand the couple appeared to be amicable.

Packer handed over the keys to the 88-metre vessel to Baxter, who headed to Spain where she was joined by Bloom. The pair were photographed strolling the streets of Formentera in Ibiza on Tuesday.

However, for never was a story of more woe than on Wednesday evening. While dining at the exclusive Cipriani, Bloom was reportedly taunted by Bieber.

According to Page Six, Bieber made some crude comments about Kerr, the mother of Bloom's three-year-old son, before yelling “What’s up bitch” across the restaurant. Bloom stormed over and attempted to hit him. The pint-sized singer was surrounded by bodyguards and appeared to cower away from the confrontation. He took to Instagram to post a photo of Bloom wiping his eyes.

Meanwhile, Kerr was promoting her latest venture as the face of 7 For All Mankind jeans. The new advertisement, released on Thursday, features her topless and rolling around on a bed, saying “I love them, I love them.”

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Game of Drones - yep, I guess that just about says it...

China's Atlantis of the East - believe in Atlantis? Well it does exist, at least in Shicheng, China - pics, article

Often called the “Atlantis of the East” by travellers, the underwater city of Shicheng is a magnificent, mysterious time capsule of Imperial China. Stone architecture dating to the Ming and Qing dynasties (which ruled from 1368 to 1912) stands perfectly preserved 40m under Qiandao Lake in Zhejiang province, 400km south of Shanghai.

Related article: An underwater hotel opens in Africa

Unlike the mythical Atlantis, Shicheng – which means Lion City in Mandarin – was purposely flooded in 1959 to make way for the Xin’an Dam and its adjoining hydroelectric station. Nearly 300,000 people were relocated for the project, some of whom had families that had lived in the city for centuries.

The city was “rediscovered” in 2001 when the Chinese government organised an expedition to see what might remain of the lost metropolis. Interest and exploration increased further in 2011, when the Chinese National Geography published some never-before-seen photographs and illustrations hypothesising what the small city, which measured about half a square kilometre, might have looked like in its heyday.

Expeditions and underwater photographs have revealed that the city had five entrance gates, as opposed to the traditional four – with two western-facing gates as well as gates in the other cardinal directions. The city’s wide streets also have 265 archways, featuring preserved stonework of lions, dragons, phoenixes and historical inscriptions, some of which date back as far as 1777; the city walls are believed to date back to the 16th Century.

Despite being underwater, Shicheng has remained well preserved; the water actually protects it from wind, rain and sun erosion. Today, advanced divers can get up close to the ruins with dive operators such asBig Blue and Zi Ao Diving Club, which run regular dives between April and November. Since the ruins have yet to be fully mapped, the dive is still considered “Exploratory” and is limited to divers with deep water, night and buoyancy experience.

Friday, July 25, 2014

BBC News - Gaza baby rescued from mother killed by Israeli airstrike

Gaza baby rescued from mother killed by Israeli airstrike - if only the leaders of this atrocity would take this image into their hearts and stop the bloodshed of innocent lives. Peace to all and cherish life.

Gaza baby rescued from mother killed by Israeli airstrike

5 hours ago

A premature baby has been delivered from a woman killed in a Israeli airstrike on Gaza.

More than 800 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military offensive on 8 July with the declared objective of stopping Hamas firing rockets into Israel. Israel has lost 36 people.

Ian Pannell reports.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28490640

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Astronaut's saddest photo from space - the Gaza War

Astronaut Alexander Gerst shows Gaza war in 'saddest' photo from space

July 24, 2014 - 2:16PM

Gaza, as tweeted by astronaut Alexander Gerst.Photo: Twitter

By ROSE POWELL

The worsening crisis in Gaza has much of the world looking on with horror, including an astronaut whose latest photograph is going viral.

Alexander Gerst tweeted a photo of the troubled region on Thursday. Shrouded in the darkness of night, Gaza and the surrounding area is shown through veins and clusters of lights indicating cities.

The most disturbing lights in the photo are the explosions in the densely populated region.

The German flight engineer, a geophysicist and volcanologist, is spending six months aboard the International Space Station.

He is on a European Space Agency mission with fellow engineer American Reid Wiseman and Russian flight commander Maksim Surayev.

They are among six astronauts now in space.

Mr Gerst has been orbiting the Earth for 57 days and described the photo as his saddest yet.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

The destruction of Flight MH17 - the original statement of events as issued by the US Embassy in Kiev - hard to ignore

The imperial meddling of Vladimir Putin will be tainted for years to come by this incident.

As for the destruction of flight MH17, on Saturday the US embassy in Kiev issued an unusually blunt and detailed account of events that is unlikely to be contradicted by the criminal investigation to come: “We assess that flight MH17 was likely downed by a SA-11 surface-to-air missile from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine. We base this judgment on several factors.

“Over the past month, we have detected an increasing amount of heavy weaponry to separatist fighters crossing the border from Russia into Ukraine. Last weekend, Russia sent a convoy of military equipment with up to 150 vehicles including tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and multiple rocket launchers to the separatist. We also have information indicating that Russia is providing training to separatist fighters at a facility in south-west Russia, and this effort included training on air defence systems.

“Pro-Russian separatist fighters have demonstrated proficiency with surface-to-air missile systems and have downed more than a dozen aircraft over the past few months, including two large transport aircraft.

“At the time that flight MH17 dropped out of contact, we detected a surface-to-air missile (SAM) launch from a separatist-controlled area in south-eastern Ukraine. We believe this missile was an SA-11…

“Social media postings on Thursday show an SA-11 system travelling through the separatist-controlled towns of Torez and Snizhne, near the crash site and assessed location of the SAM launch …

“Ukraine also operates SA-11 systems, but we are confident no Ukrainian air defence systems were within range of the crash. Ukrainian forces have also not fired a single surface-to-air missile during the conflict, despite often complaining about violations of their airspace by Russian military aircraft.

“Shortly after the crash, separatists – including the self-proclaimed “Defence Minister” of the Donetsk people’s republic, Igor Strelkov – claimed responsibility for shooting down a military transport plane on social media …

“Audio data provided to the press by the Ukrainian security service was evaluated by intelligence community analysts who confirmed these were authentic conversations between known separatist leaders, based on comparing the Ukraine-released internet audio to recordings of known separatists.”

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Lego Galore - beach craze as thousands of Lego toys wash up on beaches 17 years after they were lost at sea

Lego galore: Beach craze as toys wash ashore

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Tuesday, 22 July 2014

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By Bill Gardner

When 50,000 cases of whisky washed on to the beaches of a remote Scottish island in 1941, the inhabitants thought all their dreams had come true.

Now, in scenes reminiscent of the film Whisky Galore, the sands of Cornwall are scattered with precious cargo - but instead of whisky, it is pieces of Lego.

Thousands of the building sets, including plastic cutlasses, dragons and daisies, have begun turning up on the beaches 17 years after they were lost at sea.

Nearly five million pieces fell into the ocean about 32 kilometres off Land's End when a large swell hit the container ship Tokio Express in February 1997, tipping 62 containers overboard.

It is believed that recent storms have released thousands of the toys from the seabed or sand dunes and beachcombers are rushing to hunt for the brightly coloured models among seaweed and stones.

Listed in the lost cargo were 353,264 miniature daisies, which are now being found in clusters of twos or threes on the Cornish sands, while top of the list for collectors are the rarer black octopuses and green dragons.

Since news of the Lego jetsam spread, families with children have flocked to the beaches.

Charlotte Arnold, 31, was yesterday enjoying a day on Great Western Beach in Newquay with her son Kieran, seven. She said: "My son loves Lego so he'll be looking non-stop."

Tracey Williams, from Newquay, who runs a Facebook page devoted to the lost toys, has built up a collection that is the envy of her fellow "dragon hunters".

She said: "I first started seeing them in the late 1990s and it's carried on from there. It's pretty competitive because it's quite an achievement to find a dragon or an octopus.

"Some of the pieces are so small you can't really see them. The witches' brooms just look like twigs, and you wouldn't know what the ships' rigging piece was unless you knew what you were looking for.

"These days the holy grail is an octopus or a dragon. I only know of three octopuses being found, and one was by me, in a cave in Challaborough [south Devon]."

All the Lego pieces lost in 1997 were in one metal shipping container - the contents of the other 61 lost containers have never been disclosed.

The ship's manifest showed that 4,756,940 pieces fell into the sea, including 3,178,807 that were light enough to float. Since the violent winter storms, the number of finds has risen sharply, suggesting the toys have been worked loose.

Graham Cheney, owner of The Sand Bar on Great Western Beach said: "I pick the beach for litter every morning and found a piece of Lego last week. I thought it was strange but didn't think much of it until I heard about more being found."

There have been reports of pieces found in Australia and Mrs Williams said her son had found an octopus in Ireland.

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a US oceanographer, said strong sea currents meant it was possible the Lego could wash up on any beach in the world.

"It takes three years for sea debris to cross the Atlantic Ocean, from Land's End to Florida. Undoubtedly some Lego has crossed and it's most likely some has gone around the world."

He added: "Tracking currents is like tracking ghosts - you can't see them. You can only see where flotsam started and where it ended up."

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Magician picked World Cup Winner AND score and time of goal 2 weeks ago on UK TV

Magician predicted World Cup winner two weeks ago

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Wednesday, 16 July 2014

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Let's put things into perspective a bit.

Marking out Germany as the eventual World Cup winners isn't a feat of magical brilliance - they do have one of the strongest teams on the planet and looked threatening from the outset.

Most people's grandmothers would have made a similar call.

But Dynamo went one step further, not only predicting that the Europeans would go on to take the title, but that they'd do so with a late 113-minute goal from a young player.

The street illusionist made the forecast two weeks ago when he appeared on Sky Sports News in the UK.

He sealed his predictions in a brown envelope, announcing that he'd reappear on the show after the World Cup final to reveal just how accurate he had been.

He returned to the show yesterday morning and invited the hosts to open the envelope, which contained a CD.

Upon playing it, they learned that he had recorded that either Neymar, Messi or Ronaldo would be forced to leave the tournament due to injury.

Neymar was ruled out of the World Cup due to injury following Brazil's quarter-final clash against Colombia. Dynamo correctly guessed it would be due to a back injury.

His next guess was that a European team - either Germany or Italy - would go on to face a Latin American team in the final. He predicted that the Latin American team would be Argentina.

His last forecast was the winning goal, which he said would be the only goal of the final match.

Dynamo successfully guessed that it would be scored by a player on the pitch in extra time after 113 minutes, and that the player would be one of the youngest.

Of course, Mario Götze, the 22-year-old Bayern Munich attacking midfielder, scored the only goal in extra time.

Dynamo signed off his predictions with a telling "Auf Wiedersehen", which is a formal "Goodbye" in German.

- Independent

Archangels and Demons

Thursday, July 31, 2014