Rio's team-mate tales

United's performances on the pitch are, in part, born out of togetherness and camaraderie off it. Rio Ferdinand gives us the inside track on life in the first-team dressing room...

Best trainer: Scholesy. He’s such a good passer, and his team always wins in training.

Worst trainer: I’d say Wes or Wazza. They must be saving themselves for the games.

Fittest squad member: Wayne or Ronaldo. They’re both explosive players that could run at the same pace in the last minute of a game as they could in the first.

Most outrageous skill: Obvious… Ronaldo. Nani tries to compete, but to no avail!

Toughest tackler: Wayne, Vida and Scholesy. There are some big tackles that go in. Maybe they don’t like their team-mates.

Anyone play out of position? No, the manager doesn’t let us. Back in the day I used to play up front in training. But that was stopped, I think I was too much of a threat to the forwards.

Joker in the dressing room: The sly joker is Fletch. People don’t suspect him, but when something’s going on he is normally involved. Pique and Fletch are always at the centre of pranks with player’s clothes. Me? I don’t get involved. It’s not my game. I’m a very mature member of the squad now so I don’t get drawn into the young boys’ antics!

Most intelligent player: Edwin van der Sar would like to think that he’s the most intelligent. I’d probably put myself up there [laughs]. But seeing as Edwin thinks he’s the most intelligent, let’s let him believe it.

Person you'd least like on your quiz team: Got to be Ando (Anderson). Considering he joined the club at the same time as Nani, Ando’s English is shocking by comparison! Nani is holding television interviews in English and Anderson struggles to hold a conversation with the lads. He wouldn’t get us many answers.

Best dressed: I’d say the person that puts the most effort in is Ronaldo. He doesn’t just wake up, go into his wardrobe and throw something on. He tries really hard. Every day his clothes are a planned event.

Worst dressed: Tomasz Kuszczak! I say that purely for the electric blue shirt he wore one night out once. It was shocking. It was one of the worst colours that I’ve ever seen. The thing is, he’d saved it just for that occasion as well.

Best dressing room music: Mine. My iPod has by far the greatest variety of music; 80s pop, 80’s soul, R‘n’B, reggae, dance, old house music... there’s a mixture there. Unfortunately, some of the young European lads don’t appreciate old Hacienda house music. Patrice likes to get involved with selecting dressing room music. He tends to cater for the foreign lads a bit more with his Euro pop. To be fair to him he mixes it up with a bit of R‘n’B. But he doesn’t have the variety and depth of music knowledge that I have.

Cycling jacket wins design award

An American inventor based in the UK has won an international design competition.

Michael Chen, 28, won a £6,000 prize for his Reactiv cycle jacket, which changes colour as the cyclist brakes.

The inspiration for the jacket came from wanting to feel safer when cycling the streets of London.

Chen said: "I cycled round London in the dark wearing my first prototype. It was a £10 waterproof jacket with LEDs stuck on by gaffer tape."

He continued: "For the first time, I noticed that cars passed me more slowly, gave me more room, and that the drivers and passengers were even making eye contact."

How it works

The jacket uses an accelerometer to sense movement, changing the colour of LEDs on the back from green when accelerating, then to red when braking.

A tilt switch in the jacket also makes LEDs in the arm flash amber when the wearer lifts their arm to indicate a turn.

There were entries from 14 countries in the James Dyson international design awards in New York.

They included a tangle-proof sailing rope, underwear which can correct posture and a toilet which analyses waste.

Michael Chen will get a cash prize of £5,000 with the other £1,000 going to his former university in London.

Look! In the Sky. It’s a Rocket Racer.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a Rocket Racer!

Rocket Racing

A new sport that combines the sport of auto racing with the aerobatic displays of air shows will begin holding exhibition races in August. The sport is rocket racing, and it involves top-flight pilots maneuvering rocket-powered aircraft along a virtual racecourse at high speeds and varying altitudes.

Spectators will be able to watch the pilots’ progress on screens that show the racecourse as well as unique views from inside the cockpits and various cameras. The Rocket Racing League has been developing the sport since 2005, when it was cofounded by Ansari X Prize chairman Peter Diamandis and Granger Whitelaw, an Indianapolis 500 team owner

The planes the league will use are based on a small jet sold by Velocity Aircraft, a league-owned company in Florida.

The racers may finally be reaching the starting line.

The Rocket Racing League, a long-promised attempt to create a kind of Nascar of the skies, will hold its first exhibition races this year, its founders said.

The races are promised as a kind of living video game — but louder — with a virtual raceway laid out in the sky that will be visible on projection screens at the site of each event.

Racers in rocket-powered aircraft will fly four laps around a five-mile “track” at anywhere from 150 feet to 1,500 feet above the ground. The planes, designed to fly at 340 miles an hour, will start side by side, two at a time. The pilots include professional test pilots who received their training in the military and a former astronaut.

As pilots follow the course, spectators will be able to see alternate views from remote cameras and the cockpits. The league has signed up six teams so far.

“We’re taking the business of auto racing and the business of air shows and we’re combining them,” said Granger Whitelaw, the league’s chief executive and a partner in professional auto racing teams. The races will consist of four heats, each of which will take about 15 minutes, he said.

The announcements are to be made at a news conference planned for Monday at the Yale Club in Midtown Manhattan.

The planes the league will use are based on a small jet sold by Velocity Aircraft, a league-owned company in Florida. The planes will be modified to handle a rocket engine that burns liquid oxygen and kerosene.

The engines should be loud enough to satisfy the decibel-hungry fans of racing and air shows, Whitelaw said, and produce a bright 10-to-15-foot flame.

The engines will come from two companies, Whitelaw said: Xcor Aerospace of Mojave, Calif., and Armadillo Aerospace of Mesquite, Tex. Armadillo was founded by John Carmack, a high-tech businessman who created successful video games, including Doom and Quake.

The first public taste of rocket racing will take place Aug. 1 and Aug. 2 in Oshkosh, Wis., Whitelaw said, at the annual Experimental Aircraft Association air show. It will involve two of the sleek aircraft developed for the league. The racers will also perform at air shows in Nevada and New Mexico. (More information is available at rocketracingleague.com.)

Competition should begin in 2009, the founders said.

That is quite a bit later than the league planned. Rocket Racing was announced in 2005, and the company released animations showing what a race might look like, with plenty of swooping and blazing rockets. The founders said then that the first races would be held in 2006.

The league’s plans have faltered in the interim. A video game based on the races that the founders said would be produced has not emerged, and one of its original teams, Leading Edge Rocket Racing, dropped out last year, issuing a statement that suggested the league was in disarray.

“Some of the things took longer than we had anticipated,” Whitelaw said. He added, “We’re 15 months behind where I thought we would be, which is not too shabby.”

The league’s co-founder, Peter Diamandis, served as chairman of the X Prize Foundation, which awarded the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004 for the first privately financed human flight to space. Diamandis said in an e-mail interview that “most pioneers who enter this business are, typically, optimists, and tend to believe things can be accomplished faster than it really takes.”

The league, he said, fits into a broader goal of “making space a firsthand experience” for people, and driving down the cost of getting to space through commercial ventures.

Whitelaw stressed that the league was a business. It will patent technological innovations on its racers, like safety features, in hopes of making money off them should they make their way into general aviation, and it will try to build profits out of television and merchandising rights. The company will also sell conventional jet-engine versions of the Velocity racer, he said.

Diamandis said, “If we do our job right, many of these new technologies will end up in both space-related hardware and general aviation — just like technologies pioneered in Formula and Indy Racing end up in the cars we drive.”

He acknowledged that flying rockets involved the risk of accidents and death, an issue that has raised questions about the viability of space tourism. Racing, however, is a different arena, with a higher level of accepted risk, he said.

Man Utd are the best team in the country, says Alex Ferguson

Sir Alex Ferguson believes his Manchester United side have established themselves again as the country's dominant force as they close in on a 10th Premier League title.

United's victory over Arsenal at the weekend, and Chelsea's draw against Wigan last night, means Fergie's men will be champions with wins in their next two games against Blackburn and Chelsea.

From the start of the season Fergie claimed that results between the Big Four of United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool would determine the outcome of this season's title race.

And with United having twice beaten Liverpool, taken four points off Arsenal and looking to do the double over Chelsea to retain the title, Fergie said there can be no doubt his team are the best once more. "I said results between the top four would be the key this season and that's been proved right," he said. "Thank goodness we've performed well and got results against our main rivals, because we've dropped points elsewhere.

"The Premier League has become much tougher in recent seasons. For example, we lost six points to Manchester City this season, which is something we didn't expect.

"We also lost at West Ham and Bolton, but the key is keeping those setbacks to a minimum.

"We've managed to do that and if we can win our next two games, then we're champions again."

Assuming Chelsea beat Everton on Thursday and United overcome Blackburn Rovers on Saturday, Fergie's men will go to Stamford Bridge on April 26 five points clear and knowing a win there would clinch the title.

That would leave United eight points ahead with two games left. But defender Rio Ferdinand, outstanding against Arsenal, sounded a note of caution and argued: "There are still games we have to win to make sure of the title, so we need to get the right results.

"If we do that, hopefully we'll be the team picking up something.

"It's that stage of the season where it's crunch time.

"The trophies are being handed out soon and the three points against Arsenal gets us a step closer to being able to pick up one of those trophies.

"We'll keep our fingers crossed that we can keep motoring on and playing the way we are.

"Against Arsenal we were a bit more open than we'd have liked, but the most important thing was to win.

"Coming from a goal down to win, we showed the confidence and resilience that has been a trademark of ours for the last couple of years - and long may that continue."

United's 2-1 triumph over Arsenal at Old Trafford on Sunday completed a remarkable 14-point swing between the two sides in just a couple of months.

When Arsenal came to the Theatre of Dreams in the fifth round of the FA Cup on February 16, they were five points clear of United at the top of the table. But a 4-0 thrashing by United proved the beginning of the end for the Gunners.

In a nightmare sequence, Arsene Wenger's brittle young stars have managed just one win in the league since then and must face up to a third straight season without any silverware.

Yet Ferdinand insisted there could be no sympathy from United for their bitter rivals.

"This is no time for sentiment," said the England centre-half.

"That might sound harsh, given what's happened to Arsenal in recent weeks, but I'm sure they wouldn't be worrying about us if we weren't able to win a trophy.

We only care about ourselves. Arsenal are a great side and play fantastic football.

"But we just need to keep our eyes on ourselves and if we do that, we'll go a long way to being successful."

Owen Hargreaves, whose 72nd-minute free-kick sealed victory over Arsenal, said United's players now sensed the title was within reach.

"It was a big win over Arsenal," said Hargreaves.

"We knew how important it was and we've only got a few games left now.

"We'll go to Blackburn on Saturday in good spirits. We don't have a game this week, so we can get some rest ahead of what promises to be a fabulous end to the season."

HOW THE BIG FOUR FARED

At the start of the season Sir Alex Ferguson claimed results between the top four would decide the title. And he looks to be right as our stats below show.

1. Man Utd: Played 5: Won: 4 Drawn: 1 Lost: 0 Goals For: 10 Goals Against: 3 Points: 13

2. Arsenal: Played: 6 Won: 1 Drawn: 3 Lost: 2 Goals For: 7 Goals Against: 8 Points: 6

3. Chelsea: Played 5 Won 1 Drawn: 2 Lost: 2 Goals For: 3 Goals Against: 5 Points: 5

4. Liverpool: Played: 6 Won: 0 Drawn: 4 Lost: 2 Goals For: 3 Goals Against: 7 Points: 4

'Miracle baby' is feted in India

There's even talk of a temple being built in Lali's honour

They're calling her the miracle baby.

Barely a month old, baby Lali was born with a rare condition which has given her two faces.

It's called Craniofacial Duplication and she has two sets of eyes, noses and lips.

In the village where she was born, close to the edge of Delhi, her condition has made her an object of fascination and reverence.

'Blessed'

"When I first saw her, I was scared. It's natural," her father, Vinod Singh, tells me.

"But now I feel I'm blessed."

Doctors have told him them that despite having two faces Lali is healthy and normal.

She is able to drink milk through either mouth and breathe normally.

Mr Singh is a poor farm worker. At his mud and brick house at the end of a narrow dusty lane, a neighbour applies a fresh coat of paint to his front door.

We just want to enjoy time with our first born child Vinod Singh

Inside, he stands surrounded by villagers, some sitting on sturdy hessian cots, others smoking pipes.

For the past few days, people have been lining up to see his daughter.

Many of them bring offerings of money, believing that Lali has special powers.

"When you see something unnatural, it can only be the miracle of God," says Jatinder Nagar, a neighbour who's taken on the self-appointed role of tour guide.

"It's something so magical that we believe that she's a goddess. We regard her as one."

Uncomfortable

Eighty-year-old Ballabh Saini is a grandmother and respected as a village elder.

But even she bows her head in reverence.

"She has brought us fame and she is blessed," she tells me.

"So many people have been coming to see her - travelling long distances on cars, motorbikes, horse-drawn carts."

But all this is making Vinod Singh increasingly uncomfortable and upset.

"She's my daughter. I don't want any more of this. I'm fed up," he says, throwing up his hands in despair.

But he's up against centuries of superstition.

Faced with something they're unable to comprehend, the villagers believe she is the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess.

There's even talk of a temple being built in her honour.

Her new found status is lost on Lali, as she lies cradled in her grandfather's arms.

Doctors in Delhi say there is no possibility of separating her head.

But they do want to carry out more medical tests to determine if her internal organs are normal.

But her parents won't allow them.

"What is the need? As far as we are concerned she's like any other child," says Vinod Singh.

"We just want to enjoy time with our first-born child."

Operation Beijing storm: rockets target rain

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is preparing an arsenal of rockets and aircraft to protect the Olympics opening ceremony from rain, hoping to disperse clouds before they can drench dignitaries at the roofless "bird's nest" stadium.

Officials believe there is a 47 percent probability of rain during the August 8 opening ceremony and a 6 percent chance of a heavy downpour and will try to drain humidity from clouds before they reach Beijing.

More than 100 staff at 21 stations surrounding the city will have 10 minutes' notice to fire rockets or cannons containing silver iodide at approaching clouds in the hope of making them rain before they reach the stadium. Three aircraft will also be on stand-by to drop catalysts to unleash rain from the clouds.

"We've worked with neighboring provinces on a contingency plan for rainstorm and other weather risks during the ceremonies," said Wang Yubin, the deputy chief of China's meteorological service assigned to the Olympics.

The government has spent $500,000 to build up Beijing's cloud seeding capacities over the last five years and authorities will conduct practice runs in June and July. It typically uses pellets of silver iodide, which is highly insoluble in water and can concentrate moisture to cause rain.

Zhang Qiang, head of Beijing's Weather Modification Office, believed her staff can fend off drizzle, but could be powerless in the face of a heavy downpour.

"I hope God will not send any storms to Beijing," she said.

Harvard Reconnects with Its Native American Past

Bruce Curliss, a direct descendant of one of the Native Americans who attended Harvard Indian College, discusses the excavation of Harvard Yard with students. (Jason Urbanus)

Pieces of lead type found in Harvard Yard that are likely from Harvard Indian College's 17th-century press. (Jason Urbanus)



An 18th- or 19th-century padlock is one of the artifacts that is helping fill gaps in the early history of Harvard Yard. (Courtesy Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard)

On an unseasonably warm day last November, members of Massachusetts's Native American community, along with Harvard University students and professors, gathered in Harvard Yard to commemorate the school's Indian history. For two years, students have been digging on the famous university green as part of a course called "Archaeology of Harvard Yard." Their most astonishing finds so far are several pieces of lead print type, believed to have been part of the printing press that produced the first Bible in the New World--a translation into Wampanoag, a regional dialect of the Algonquin language.

Although Harvard University is one of the world's most famous academic institutions, little is known about its early relationship with local Native Americans. When English settlers arrived in the Boston area in the seventeenth century, Puritan leaders were determined to convert nearby tribes to Protestantism. Harvard's 1650 charter explicitly states its intention to promote the "education of English and Indian youth of this Country in knowledge and godliness." To this end, in 1655, the university finished construction of the two-story Harvard Indian College, the first brick edifice on a campus now noted for its rows of dark red brick buildings. The college was intended to house some 20 Native American students who would be educated according to a seventeenth-century English curriculum. Excavators believe that the pieces of print type discovered during the 2007 field season are part of the printing press set up in the college.

The "Archaeology of Harvard Yard" course has had several Native American participants, including freshman Tiffany Lee Smalley, the first undergraduate member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe at Harvard since the 1660s. "In many important ways our class has revisited what took place on this very ground 300 years ago," said William Fash, director of the Peabody Museum at Harvard. "It's a great opportunity for dialogue between both Native and non-Native American students to communicate with each other and the past."

Jason Urbanus is a doctoral candidate at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University.

© 2008 by the Archaeological Institute of America
www.archaeology.org/0803/abstracts/harvard.html

Beware of Bottled water

Urgent Matter - all females (wives, daughters, girlfriends etc) must be warned about bottled water!!!

Bottled water in cars leads to Breast Cancer!!!!

This is how Sheryl Crow got breast cancer. She was on the Ellen show and said this same exact thing. This has been identified as the most common cause of the high levels in breast cancer, especially in Australia.

A friend whose mother was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, the Doctor told her: " Women should not drink bottled water that has been left in a car".

The doctor said that the heat and the plastic of the bottle have certain chemicals that lead to breast cancer. So please be careful and do not drink bottled water that has been left in a car, and pass this on to all women in your life.

This information is the kind we need to know and be aware and just might save us!! The heat causes toxins from the plastic to leak into the water and they have found these toxin in breast tissues.

So instead; Use a stainless steel Canteen or a glass bottle when you can!!!

PLEASE INFORM PEOPLE ABOUT THIS MATTER

- BP SUJEEWON M.D

Dangerous (Do not drink Coka-Cola and eat MENTOS together)

In Brazil, last week a little boy died when eating
Mentos and drinking Coca-Cola.

A similar case happened, in Brazil, a year before.
In order to see any reactions of these 2 products
which caused the death of the 2 Boys, a group
of people decided to do an experiment.

Now see what happens when adding Mentos to
Coca Cola!!! The pictures show the results.

So be careful with your Menthos and your Coke!!!

- BP SUJEEWON

Computer viruses hit one million

The vast majority of viruses are aimed at Windows machines

The number of viruses, worms and trojans in circulation has topped the one million mark.

The new high for malicious programs was revealed by security firm Symantec in the latest edition of its bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report.

The vast majority of these programs have been created in the last twelve months, said Symantec.

Cyber criminals pump out malware to fool anti-virus programs which look for characteristics they have already seen.

Money game

The latest edition of the Symantec report covers the second half of 2007 during which time the security firm detected 499,811 new malicious code threats. This figure was up 136% on the first six months of 2007.

Throughout 2007 Symantec detected more than 711,912 novel threats which brings the total number of malicious programs that the security firm's anti-virus programs detect to 1,122,311.

The report notes: "almost two thirds of all malicious code threats currently detected were created during 2007."

The vast majority of these viruses are aimed at PCs running Microsoft Windows and are variants of already existing malicious programs that have proved useful to hi-tech criminals in the past.

Symantec said part of the rise was down to criminals increasingly using trojans as a "beachhead" to gain access to a PC and then use that route to download and install a variety of other malicious programs.

Popular malicious installations include key loggers that spring to life if particular websites are visited or programs, such as online games, are started up.

The report also put the growth in malicious code down to the increasingly professional digital criminal underground.

Typically, groups engaged in hi-tech crime employ groups of programmers to generate the novel variants.

The fact that these programmers expect to be paid drives the criminals to make as much money as possible out of the information they steal and to be constantly on the look out for new victims.

Said the report: "The combination of these factors results in a high volume of new malicious code samples that threaten users online."