I was flicking through news headlines and summaries last week, there were some noteworthy ones:
*Declaring the global warming debate over, an international team of scientists urged the world’s nations on Tuesday to act now to keep climate change from becoming a catastrophe.
Debate? How can you argue it? Did these things always happen so fequently?
At least 12 people have been killed and dozens are missing in landslides triggered by heavy rains on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores, officials say.
US President George W Bush has toured the rubble of an Alabama high school where eight students were killed by deadly tornadoes.
*More than 60 nations launch the broadest scientific investigation yet of the Arctic and Antarctic on Thursday to chart polar regions on the front lines of global warming.
This must be why one of my lecturers is so passionate about the Global Warming issue. His microbiology work is based out of Antarctica. I mentioned at the start of the year that this was the year of the poles or something like that – it’s nice to see that scientists really took that on board and are continuing investigation into the poles.
*Hollywood director James Cameron displayed on Monday artifacts that he said might have come from the tomb of Jesus, which once contained his remains, those of Mary Magdalene, and possibly their son, Judah.
Huh? As far as I knew they were never sure of the location of the tomb, there’s lots of tombs in the area. Did everyone forget that the whole Jesus-being-married-having-a-child-Da-Vinci-Code thing is fiction? What about those claims by the disciples and over 500 witnesses that Jesus was raised from the dead? Since Mary Magdeline was one of the first to find him not there and the tomb belonged to someone else I’m thinking that her remains were never in that tomb.
*A male jaguar killed a zookeeper at the Denver Zoo on Saturday and employees put the animal down, police said.
What a waste! They steal a Jaguar from its home (or possibly its parents if it was bred in captivity) and then they just kill it?! They know that it can be dangerous to be around them… I wonder how they did it, did they get up close and put it to sleep or did they just shoot it from a distance?
*Pope Benedict on Saturday condemned genetic engineering and other scientific practices that allow people to select so-called “designer babies” by screening them for defects.
Mince words much? Screening for defects and genetic engineering designer-babies are two entirely different things. I can see someone condemning engineering because it’s playing God, I can understand not liking genetic screening because essentially it’s informing people of defects to see if they want to abort. If someone is indeed engineering a baby then you don’t need to use normal screening methods because you have all the DNA already, if there’s a defect you don’t implant. If you’re going to condemn something at least know what you’re talking about.
Australian rocker Billy Thorpe died of a heart attack. Sad and strange; he was my Dad’s age and seemed fairly fit, he still managed to jump around the stage at least.
*A Japanese dolphin is squealing with delight after receiving a prosthetic tail to replace one amputated due to a skin disease.
On par with the baby chimps being born at the zoo story at the end of the news, this dolphin is a nice story. They didn’t just put this animal down, they gave it a second chance at life.
In yesterday’s news: People across the world have been watching the first total lunar eclipse for three years, as the Earth’s shadow moves across the moon.. I was at a party and forgot about the eclipse!!! We were even outside for most of the night 🙁
