BEIJING, Sept. 2 — The ducks were released near Hampton Court Palace as part of the Great British Duck Race, raising money for charities including the NSPCC and Water Aid.

    Official entrants were an exotic blue, instead of the more traditional yellow, after stewards last year face problems with people throwing their own unofficial plastic birds into the water at the event.

    The 250,000 ducks created a world record this year for the most plastic ducks raced together. It beat the record set on the Thames last year, when 165,000 were raced down stream, raising more than $180,200 for charity.

    Each duck cost $3.604 to enter in to the race, with the owner of the first past the finishing line at the Sheriff Boat Club at Albany Reach receiving a $18020 first prize.

    In 1992, 29,000 rubber ducks fell overboard from a boat in the Pacific Ocean and floated around the world for more than 15 years.

September 3, 2008

By Nadja Brandt

(Bloomberg) — Dogs and cats living in Los Angeles have plenty of company these days: sheep, chickens, pigs and Brahman cows.

As immigrants from Latin America and Asia pour into the city, they often bring farm animals with them. That has led to clashes with animal rights advocates, including Hollywood celebrities, who fret about the creatures’ living conditions. And then there are neighbors who raise a stink over barnyard sounds, sights and smells.

Local authorities say they seized 1,623 farm animals in the 12 months through June because they were being abused or neighbors complained, which is 45 percent more than in the previous year. One man was charged with cruelty and neglect for keeping 120 barnyard creatures including sheep, goats and cattle, without adequate food, water and space. Advocates are urging the city council to tighten animal regulations.

“When people have farm animals in backyard situations because they care for them, that’s great,” said actor James Cromwell, 68, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his 1995 role as a farmer in the movie “Babe.” “But when they can’t afford to keep these animals, or they abuse them or ill-treat them, when they don’t understand their needs and sort of abandon these animals, that is horrendous.”

Celebrity Advocates

Cromwell, a vegan since his work on the film, supports the farm shelter Animal Acres. So do actresses Daryl Hannah, Thora Birch of the movie “American Beauty” and Jorja Fox of TV’s “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.” The organization in Acton, California, north of Los Angeles, has taken in about 60 animals from the city this year, including a sheep called Mary found running through Chinatown.

How many farm animals live in Los Angeles? No one can say for sure, because ownership permits aren’t required, said Lieutenant Troy Boswell of Los Angeles Animal Services.

The population is rising, based on the increase in the number of farm animals taken in during the fiscal year through June 30, he said. The 1,623 confiscated by Los Angeles officials compares with 308 seized by New York’s Animal Care & Control in the 12 months through August, according to spokesman Richard Gentles.

“We get a lot of calls about roosters,” Boswell said. “We also get other calls. Having a potbelly pig, for example, may be acceptable to one person, but to another it may seem dirty.”

Most of the animals were owned by immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries, said Animal Control Officer Jose Gonzalez. In 2004, Los Angeles had the largest Hispanic population of any U.S. county, with 4.6 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“A lot of people come here, the land of opportunity, and they bring with them their culture,” said Ed Boks, general manager at Animal Services. “That may include farm animals.”

Moved to Malibu

While some animals in Los Angeles wind up as food for their owners, others have had better luck.

Four Barbados sheep rescued during a January raid by the Animal Services department in the city’s Sunland area, for instance, have a view of the Pacific Ocean from their new Malibu home. Animal Acres placed them with Marshall Thompson, 60, a freelance video producer, and his wife, Susan Tellem, 63, who runs her own public relations firm.

“They now enjoy million-dollar ocean and canyon views,” Thompson said. “Isn’t the irony just great?”

Their original owner, Adolfo Malagon, 52, received three years of probation after pleading guilty to the charges of animal cruelty and neglect, said Lieutenant Gil Moreno of the Los Angeles Animal Cruelty Task Force. Reached by phone Aug. 29, Malagon declined to comment.

Cultural Differences

Along a four-lane street in south Los Angeles, among body and tire shops, chickens scratch in the dirt of a small front yard. Sara Mendoza, 46, immigrated to the city in 1990 from Mexico’s Michoacan region.

“My mom grew up with animals,” said her 17-year-old daughter, Maria. “Having chickens and roosters is just the most normal thing to her.”

Poultry and other animals can be less appealing for some.

“I’m not a farm boy,” said Solomon LeFlore, 60, a retired liquor-store owner in south Los Angeles who says his neighbor’s roosters wake him in the middle of the night. “I’m a cancer patient, and I have diabetes. I need my sleep.”

At the moment, farm animals in Los Angeles are regulated through distance requirements. Roosters must be kept in a pen 20 feet (6.1 meters) from their owner’s home and 100 feet from a neighbor’s. Chickens have to be 35 feet from a neighbor’s house, while goats and sheep must be kept 75 feet away.

Proposed Restrictions

Boswell of Animal Services says he wants to restrict poultry to certain areas of the city, mandate animal ownership permits as New York does, enlarge space requirements and limit numbers.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn is working on her own proposal, which would limit each household to one rooster and set up new procedures for dealing with noisy birds.

“There’s a mentality among many people toward farm animals that is either neglectful at best or veers into abuse,” said actress Birch, 26, a vegetarian since age 18. “Some of this comes about, I think, because it’s in the hands of people who don’t connect with animals.”

Opportunities in Hollywood, Actors, Singers, Writers, Directors, Producers and Funders info@archeremc.com and www.archermc.com

Madonna kicks off World Tour

Reuters

By Cindy Martin

CARDIFF (Reuters) - “Queen of pop” Madonna entered the stage on a throne on Saturday as she kicked off her world tour, and defied her age with athletic dance routines before tens of thousands of screaming fans.

The U.S. singer, who turned 50 a week ago, opened her “Sticky & Sweet” tour at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, with “Candy Shop”. She wore a black leotard-style outfit designed by fashion house Givenchy and black, knee-length boots.

For her second number, “Beat Goes On”, Madonna drove along the stage catwalk in a white car from which she emerged wearing a white top hat.

U.S. rappers Pharrell Williams and Kanye West, who featured on Madonna’s latest chart-topping album “Hard Candy”, appeared in video clips, as did Britney Spears.

Madonna will be hoping to shatter her own record for the highest-grossing tour ever by a female artist and prove that the musical master of reinvention still has what it takes to pull in crowds young and old.

“It was so charismatic,” said Paul, from the Welsh city of Newport, after the show. “I don’t believe she’s 50. She’s more like 30.”

“I think she’s amazing,” added Morgan, a young girl from Cardiff. “I want to be that way when I turn 50.”

Though state law doesn’t allow for clothing-optional areas in parks, the policy, written by a former parks director in the 1970s, suggests citations be made only after a member of the public complains and the violators fail to voluntarily cover up.

Judge Sheila Fell tentatively ruled earlier this week that state parks officials must hold a public hearing if their enforcement on nude beach-going changes. She has 90 days to issue a final ruling, but attorneys expect it much sooner.

“Departments can’t just come out and jerk the rugs out from people’s feet without the public being heard,” said Elva Kopacz, the attorney representing Baylis and nudists organizations Naturist Action Committee and Friends of San Onofre Beach.

She raised concerns in court about rangers photographing nude beachgoers from the bluffs above the park, as well as the newly installed signs warning against nudity in the area. Judge Fell said the photographing issue was outside the case’s purview but would issue an opinion on the signage quickly.

Parks officials expressed disappointment at Fell’s decision.

“We did not agree with the court’s tentative ruling,” said Ken Kramer, a district superintendent with the state parks department. “We are pleased that the judge is taking a closer look at it. Once the final ruling is issued, we will explore our options at that point.”

Kramer wouldn’t speculate as to what would happen at the Trail 6 beach come Labor Day.

Outside the courtroom, Kopacz went on to distinguish between the clothing-optional beachgoers and the criminal activity allegedly occurring in the parking lots there. If the naturists ultimately lose their case, Kopacz said they were willing to pursue other options, but declined to elaborate.

Baylis expressed confidence that Fell would ultimately rule in the nudists’ favor.

He likened the naturists to off-road riders or BMX bikers in their specialized recreational pursuit and expressed fear that a ruling against his group could spell the end of nude beaches across California.

“Some people choose to be offended by the human body,” said Baylis, who wore a gray suit and maroon tie to court. “Many of us choose not to be offended by it.”

In the meantime, pending Fell’s final ruling, the Department of Parks and Recreation must allow clothing-optional visitors to Trail 6. According to the judge, naked beachgoers can be cited only in response to a public complaint and if they refuse to comply with law enforcement’s subsequent requests.

Buzz Venture Capital will be expanding operations across Asia with the immanent release of a portal for those seeking funding. Buzz has focused on a “Services for Equity” system with great success offering start ups advertising, IT, PR, web and other services in exchange for an equity stake in the company.

So far Buzz Venture Capital has developed strong stakes in a diverse range of investments including Entertainment, Mining, Property, Publishing, Tourism, Software, Manufacturing, Legal Services, Public Relations, Advertising, Shipping and Solar Energy.

We have also been involved in some “Micro-financing” and small joint ventures as a way of building the Brand and Corporate Image of Buzz. In Asia we have been offering free hosting and IT support for any size business, provided they are a Buzz Marketing Publisher, in the cases of substantial development or web development we have become a partner in the enterprise. Although not a strong earning sector of the business, it does help the development of regional IT talent and Web Entrepreneurs loyal to Buzz.

Our program allowing Internet Cafes, PC Stores and Mobile Phone Stores to earn money from installing Buzz as the home page on PC’s and Smart Phones has been  hugely successful and a driving force in making Buzz one of Asia’s most popular sites. This is currently being taken to the next level with VoIP and Mobile VoIP being a new product for Cafes and Stores to retail. The product has been built so that the retailer can enjoy a 30% return with no capital outlay, Mobile Phone retailers have been quick to seize the opportunity making good sales as a result of the iPhone release in many regional markets.

At valuation these investments represent in excess of $20m dollars.

How about this for the next instalment of the Indy franchise: Indiana Jones and the Dodgy Antiques Dealer?

Less than three months after the Quai Branly Museum in Paris discovered that a crystal skull once proclaimed as a mystical Aztec masterpiece was a fake, it is now the turn of the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution to find they were victims of skull-duggery.

Scientists from those two prestigious institutions today said their crystal skulls were cut, honed and polished by tools of the industrial age, not by Mesoamerican craftsmen of yore.

“The skulls under consideration are not pre-Columbian. They must surely be regarded as of relatively modern manufacture,” they say.

“Each skull was probably worked not more than a decade before it was first offered for sale.”

The skulls became star exhibits in all three museums long before the Indiana Jones movie, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, hit the movie screens this year.

The superstitious deemed them part of a collection of 12 skulls, endowed with healing or mystical powers, that dated back to the ancient culture of Central America.

Reuniting all 12 skulls, together with a putative 13th, would conjure up a massive power that would prevent the Earth from tipping over on December 21 2012, the “doomsday” in the Mayan calendar, according to one fable.

Legend-lovers had a bad day on April 18 when the Quai Branly said it had found grooves and perforations in its 11-centimetre-high quartz skull revealing the use of “jewellery burrs and other modern tools”.

Doubts had also surfaced about the skulls in London and Washington, with art experts noting they were unusually large and with teeth markings that were exceptionally linear.

Seeking the verdict of science, researchers from those two museums examined the skulls with electron microscopes, looking at tiny scratches and marks left by the carving implements.

These were then compared with the surfaces of a crystal goblet, rock crystal beads and dozens of greenstone jewels known to be of genuine Aztec or Mixtec origin.

The study appears in the Journal of Archaeological Science, published by the Elsevier group.

The skull in the British Museum, purchased in 1897, is made of transparent rock crystal and is 15 centimetres high. The Smithsonian skull, acquired by the museum in 1992, is of white quartz and measures 25.5cm in height.

The investigators found that rotary wheels gave the British skull its sharp definition, a drill had dug out the nostrils and eyes, and diamond or corondum had been applied with iron or steel tools to smooth its upper surfaces.

The city of London remains riveted by the revelations of Formula One boss, Max Mosley, who appears unabashed in his battle to throw open his sex life to win a defamation case against the tabloid paper News Of the World.

On day two of proceedings yesterday, a woman who played a significant part in Mosley’s now infamous S&M sex party insisted to the court that there was no Nazi theme to the orgy.

Identified solely as ‘D’, the woman is a key witness in the case against the newspaper which published photographs, video and a page one splash about a so-called Nazi orgy held in the company of five young women in the basement of a specially fitted out flat in the upmarket London suburb of Chelsea.

Mosley is suing for breach of privacy and has angrily denied references to his peccadilloes as “Nazi”. The son of an infamous British Fascist Party boss, Sir Oswald Mosely, he has also categorically denied that he found sexual gratification in Third Reich history.

Yesterday, woman D told the court that she did not see anything “Nazi” during the party. A student in her 20s, she has not been named: “I am particularly appalled at the accusations that our scenarios had any Nazi connotation or overtones. No Nazi images, uniforms or material were used,” she told the court.

According to the London Times, when asked by David Sherborne, junior counsel for Mr Mosley, for her view of the newspaper’s description of the orgy as “grotesque and brutal” she said: “Well, grotesque, I do not think so … it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoy it.”

Another woman, a German labelled just woman B, was said to have dressed up in a Luftwaffe jacket to take part in the orgy but told the hearing that she had been angry at being labelled a Nazi.

She said she was upset and offended because Germans and Nazis are not the same thing: ” … my grandparents were not members of that party,” she said.

“It makes me so cross and angry. Nobody on this planet can make me do something like that and our friend did not suggest anything like that.”

Mr Mosley has stadfastly refused to resign as president of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) since the newspaper report and pictures made headlines all over the world.

He has admitted leading a secret, 45-year S&M double life - kept secret from his wife for as many years - but denies any Nazi influences.

He admits his sex parties were played out in “cod German” accents but only because he enjoyed the harsh sounding words and not because of Nazi fantasies.

He told a packed court yesteraday that if he had wanted to evoke the fascist period, he would not have dressed the women involved in his sex plays in expensive and fashionable, modern brands from London’s best high streets: “Had I wanted a Nazi scene, I would have said I wanted one and ‘A’ would have got some of the inexpensive Nazi stuff from the joke shops that provide uniforms and would not have gone to Marks and Spencer and got quite expensive jackets.”

However in a chilling admission, he told Mark Warby, QC, acting for the newspaper, that the re-enactment of head-lice checking and shaving in one scenario was simply “the kind of thing these people do all the time”.

“I had never had lice-checking before but went with the flow. I didn’t find it particularly erotic,” he said.

Mr Mosley is seeking exemplary punitive damages from the News of the World for breaching his privacy by exposing his personal fantasies. He argues that the disclosure of his secret sadomasochist sessions, hidden for 48 years during his entire marriage, were not in the public interest.

Mosely told the court that he used the pseudonym ‘Mike’ to protect his identity and that the women invovled all seemed to lead “perfectly normal and respectable lives”.

He said that in one weekend, the newpaper had destroyed his life: “It is difficult to describe how public this humiliation has been”, he said.

A 3-ft.-high tablet romantically dubbed “Gabriel’s Revelation” could challenge the uniqueness of the idea of the Christian Resurrection. The tablet appears to date authentically to the years just before the birth of Jesus and yet — at least according to one Israeli scholar — it announces the raising of a messiah after three days in the grave. If true, this could mean that Jesus’ followers had access to a well-established paradigm when they decreed that Christ himself rose on the third day — and it might even hint that they they could have applied it in their grief after their master was crucified. However, such a contentious reading of the 87-line tablet depends on creative interpretation of a smudged passage, making it the latest entry in the woulda/coulda/shoulda category of possible New Testament artifacts; they are useful to prove less-spectacular points and to stir discussion on the big ones, but probably not to settle them nor shake anyone’s faith.

The ink-on-stone document, which is owned by a Swiss-Israeli antiques collector and reportedly came to light about a decade ago, has been dated by manuscript and chemical experts to a period just before Jesus’ birth. Some scholars think it may originally have been part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a trove of religious texts found in caves on the West Bank that were possibly associated with John the Baptist. The tablet is written in the form of an end-of-the-world prediction in the voice of the angel Gabriel; one line, for instance, predicts that “in three days you will know evil will be defeated by justice.”

Such “apocalypses,” often featuring a triumphant military figure called a messiah (literally, anointed one), were not uncommon in the religious and politically tumultuous Jewish world of 1st century B.C. Palestine. But what may make the Gabriel tablet unique is its 80th line, which begins with the words “In three days” and includes some form of the verb “to live.” Israel Knohl, an expert in Talmudic and biblical language at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University who was not involved in the first research on the artifact, claims that it refers to a historic 1st-century Jewish rebel named Simon who was killed by the Romans in 4 B.C., and should read “In three days, you shall live. I Gabriel command you.” If so, Jesus-era Judaism had begun to explore the idea of a three-day resurrection before Jesus was born.

This, in turn, undermines one of the strongest literary arguments employed by Christians over centuries to support the historicity of the Resurrection (in which they believe on faith): the specificity and novelty of the idea that the Messiah would die on a Friday and rise on a Sunday. Who could make such stuff up? But, as Knohl told TIME, maybe the Christians had a model to work from. The idea of a “dying and rising messiah appears in some Jewish texts, but until now, everyone thought that was the impact of Christianity on Judaism,” he says. “But for the first time, we have proof that it was the other way around. The concept was there before Jesus.” If so, he goes on, “this should shake our basic view of Christianity. … What happens in the New Testament [could have been] adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

Not so fast, say some Christian academics. “It is certainly not perfectly clear that the tablet is talking about a crucified and risen savior figure called Simon,” says Ben Witherington, an early-Christianity expert at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. The verb that Knohl translates as “rise!,” Witherington says, could also mean “there arose,” and so one can ask “does it mean ‘he comes to life,’ i.e., a resurrection, or that he just ’shows up?’ ” Witherington also points out that gospel texts are far less reliant on the observed fact of the Resurrection (there is no angelic command in them like the line in the Gabriel stone) than on the testimony of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ post-Resurrection self. Finally, Witherington notes that if he is wrong and Knohl’s reading is right, it at least sets to rest the notion that the various gospel quotes attributed to Christ foreshadowing his death and Resurrection were textual retrojections put in his mouth by later believers — Jesus the Messianic Jew, as Knohl sees him, would have been familiar with the vocabulary for his own fate.

Knohl stands by his reading. “The spelling and the phrasing is unique,” he told TIME, “but it is similar to to other texts found around the Dead Sea.” Yet for now, at least, Gabriel’s Revelation must take its place among a slew of recently discovered or rediscovered objects from around the time of Jesus that are claimed to either support or undermine Scripture but are themselves sufficiently, logically or archaeologically compromised to prevent their being definitive. In 2002, a bone-storage box with the legend “James Son of Joseph Brother of Jesus” bobbed up that seemed to buttress Jesus’ historicity while at the same time suggest that the Catholic teaching that he had no true brothers was false — but the Israeli Antiquities Authority declared the inscription as a forgery (although various experts continue to disagree). In 2007 the Discovery Channel aired a documentary (funded by Titanic director James Cameron) that purported to have located the “Jesus Family Tomb” in the Israeli suburb of Talpiot, with bone boxes with the names “Jesus Son of Joseph,” “Mary” and one of the names of Mary Magdalene. If the ossuaries were for the gospel Jesus, his mother and Mary Magdalene, then the implications for Christianity would be dire; but despite considerable initial hoopla, the idea is regarded by many as speculation.

It remains to be seen whether Gabriel’s Revelation, and especially Knohl’s interpretation, will weather the hot lights of fame. Even the authors of its initial research seem a little dubious about his claims that it is a dry run for the Easter story. But, as often happens in such cases, they seem better disposed to a slightly toned-down assertion: in this case, that the Gabriel tablet does indicate a very rare instance of the idea that a messiah might suffer — a notion introduced in Judaic thought centuries before by the prophet Isaiah but which supposedly went out of style by Jesus’ time. If that more modest theory gains traction, it will forge a link between a trend in first-century Judaism and one of Christianity’s galvanizing thoughts — that God might throw in his lot with a suffering or even murdered man — that could contribute to a growing mutual understanding.

One of the eight inhabited Channel Islands off the northern coast of France has gone on the market, the agency handling the sale said.Martel Maides, based on the island of Guernsey, said it was looking for a new buyer to take on the 40-year leasehold of Herm, about five kilometers away.

The island offers a beautiful place to live with a remarkable lifestyle, supported by a thriving tourist-based business, reads a descripton on the firms website. As well as a fine home at the top of the island, and the farmland, hotel, restaurant and tavern that we all know so well, the purchaser will also get a jail, an obelisk and a landing craft.

The island is just 2.4 km long by 800 meters wide. But it includes a manor house, 13th-century chapel, the worlds smallest jail, farmland, white sandy beaches, pub and restaurants.

There is a hotel with no clocks, televisions or telephones, plus other facilities built up in the last 50 or so years include self-catering cottages, shops, a campsite and housing for 150 people.

There are 50 permanent residents on the island. It is also a tax haven.

Adrian and Pennie Heyworth, who have run Herm for the last 28 years, told the Guernsey Post newspaper they are moving for private and family reasons. Herm is great, but perhaps having had the Heyworth family for 28 years its time for a change. Perhaps it needs new ideas, Adrian Heyworth said.

Britains Sunday Times said the island could be sold for 15 million (HK$228.9 million).