Scorpion Addict Immune To Poison

A Chinese man can eat live scorpions without suffering any side effects. Li Liuqun, 58, is a man with a passion for the scorpion. This self-proclaimed scorpion addict has spent the last thirty years eating over 10,000 scorpions. He picks them up – alive – and stuffs them down his mouth like a really big piece of fried chicken.

His habit began 30 years ago when, while hiking, he was stung by a scorpion. Angrily, Li picked up the scorpion and devoured it. Li enjoyed the sweet and nutty taste, so he continued eating them.

Despite being stung hundreds of times, Li still is healthy. He has only suffered a bit of swelling in the mouth.

Supermom Primates Raise Twins

The first occurrence of twins for free-ranging Tibetan macaques has just been documented, revealing how rare survivorship of twins can be in many primate species, and how important mothers are to their success.
It’s possible that only supermom primates, humans included, can properly raise twins. In the wild, twins often die shortly after birth, or only one lives into adulthood.
Successful parenting of twins among all non-human primates is rare, save for one family of South American monkeys, the Callitrichidae, which includes tamarins and marmosets. Females of this primate family routinely give birth to twins, with males providing substantial care. Sometimes mothers and dads of these primates will even raise triplets.

Oldest Dinosaur Nests Found in South Africa

The oldest known dinosaur nests have been found at the same South African park where scientists previously unearthed the oldest known dinosaur embryo , a new study says.
Paleontologists recently found ten nests—each containing several tightly clustered eggs—in a nearly vertical cliff in Golden Gate Highlands National Park. Both the nests and the previously discovered embryo date back 190 million years.
The new find shows that the region was an early Jurassic nesting site used by a plant-eater called Massospondylus carinatus. The site predates other known dino nesting grounds around the world by more than a hundred million years.
After the ancient fossil embryo was described in 2005 , "we decided to go back to the original site and see if we [could] find embryos and nests in place in the rock wall," said Robert Reisz, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Toronto in Mississauga.
"After a lot of searching and walking on hands and knees and crawling ... we found a total of ten nests altogether in locality, which is amazing."

Source: National Geographic

Shakespeare theme to lead 'Isles of Wonder' Olympic opening ceremony

The  £27m London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony will begin with the ringing of the biggest bell in Europe and inspired by Shakespeare and featuring NHS nurses and 900 local pupils.The ceremony is being held on 27th July with an expected spectators of One billion.

The show's artistic director, Danny Boyle, said the 'Isles of Wonder' ceremony was inspired by The Tempest.

Six months before the performance starts London 2012, the Oscar winner said it would be about a land recovering from its industrial legacy.

Boyle, who is best known for directing Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, said: "We'll be celebrating the whole of the country... there are so many 'Isles of Wonder'".

Human Colony on the Moon

The United States will have a permanent manned colony on the moon by 2020 if Newt Gingrich is in charge, the Republican presidential hopeful announced on 25th January, 2012.

Gingrich laid out this goal during a speech in the city of Cocoa, on Florida's Space Coast. He also said that near-Earth space would be bustling with commercial activity by 2020, and that America would possess a next-generation propulsion system by then, allowing the nation to get astronauts to Mars quickly and efficiently.

"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American," Gingrich said.

Social Networks Get Rewound

If there is anyone out there who journals regularly,you know how enlightening it can be to go back on old entries to see how much you’ve grown. It’s also a good way to remember what you were passionate about or what concerns you had during a different time in your life.
Social networks are the diaries and journals of a more connected generation, but they can still serve the same purpose. Now there's a start up called Timehop that can rewind your Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Instagram tweets back a year, and send them to you, answering the questions “What was I doing?” or “How far have I come?”
All it takes is a quick sign up, which adds the application to your Facebook and allows you to control how much access it has to your information. Daily emails will be sent that detail the history of your page from last year. According to an interview on TechCrunch, co-founder Jonathan Wegener wants to build the site into “the best way of recording, remembering and reconnecting around our digital histories.” The company just earned $1.1 million in funding, which will be used to add more engineers to the project.  

Twitter's Latest Censorship!

Twitter announced Thursday that the company now has the ability to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis, allowing the popular microblogging site to comply with local governments' request to remove or block certain content.

"Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries' limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country -- while keeping it available in the rest of the world," Twitter wrote in a blog post. "We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why."

The company noted that it has not yet exercised the option to withhold content from users in specific countries.

Once it does, it will alert its users to censored tweets by replacing the text of the post with a grayed-out tweet that reads, "This Tweet from @username has been withheld in: Country. Lean more."

Read original announcement on Twitter blog.

Australia need 4 wickets for clean-sweep

Ryan Harris is thrilled to dismiss Rahul Dravid

Adelaide, Jan 27: Autralia now require four wickets in the last for a 4-0 whitewash as the day ended with India at 6 for 166, having been set a target of 500.

Australia had began the day on 50-3, 382 ahead, but Ponting (60 not out) and captain Clarke (37) added 71 for the fourth wicket, that allowed the hosts to declare at 167-5 just after lunch, settting India a victory target of 500.

Having both struggled with the bat in last winter's Ashes, captain Michael Clarke has scored 626 runs (average 125.20) in this series with his predecessor Ricky Ponting making 544 at 108.80.

India lost Gautam Gambhir, who edged Ryan Harris to keeper Brad Haddin in the fifth over and after the dismissal of Virender Sehwag, who smashed 62 from 53 balls, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, the two Indian legends, looked to pull India out of trouble but those hopes were soon died as Dravid's thick edge off the bowling of Ryan Harris was snapped up by Michael Hussey at gully.

The "Little Master", still one short of 100 international centuries, gave a simple bat-pad catch for Lyon. This is Sachin Tendulkar's fifth Test tour of Australia across two decades, but the first in which he has failed to score a century.

VVS Laxman and Virat Kohli fought with a 52-run partnership in the dying stages but both fell in the last 10 minutes of the day.
Score Card

Score Card AUS vs IND

Australia 604/7d & 167/5d

India 272 & 166/6 (56.0 ov)

India require another 334 runs with 4 wickets remaining

Stumps - Day 4

• Border-Gavaskar Trophy - 4th Test
• Test no. 2031 | 2011/12 season
• Played at Adelaide Oval
• 24,25,26,27,28 January 2012 (5-day match)

	Australia 1st innings		R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
	EJM Cowan	c Laxman b Ashwin	30	110	63	3	0	47.61
	DA Warner	lbw b Khan	8	28	23	0	0	34.78
	SE Marsh	b Ashwin	3	10	12	0	0	25.00
	RT Ponting	c Tendulkar b Khan	221	516	404	21	0	54.70
	MJ Clarke*	b Yadav	210	380	275	26	1	76.36
	MEK Hussey	run out (Gambhir)	25	51	33	3	0	75.75
	BJ Haddin†	not out	42	92	66	1	2	63.63
	PM Siddle	c †Saha b Ashwin	2	12	15	0	0	13.33
	RJ Harris	not out	35	64	51	2	1	68.62
	Extras	(b 3, lb 17, w 8)	28
	Total	(7 wickets dec; 157 overs; 636 mins)	604	(3.84 runs per over)

Did not bat BW Hilfenhaus, NM Lyon

Fall of wickets 1-26 (Warner, 6.5 ov), 2-31 (Marsh, 9.6 ov), 3-84 (Cowan, 25.5 ov), 4-470 (Clarke, 120.3 ov), 5-520 (Hussey, 133.6 ov), 6-530 (Ponting, 136.1 ov), 7-533 (Siddle, 139.6 ov)

	Bowling	O	M	R	W	Econ
	Z Khan	31	4	96	2	3.09	(2w)
	U Yadav	26	1	136	1	5.23	(1w)
	R Ashwin	53	6	194	3	3.66
	I Sharma	30	6	100	0	3.33
	V Sehwag	16	0	55	0	3.43
	V Kohli	1	0	3	0	3.00

	India 1st innings		R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
	G Gambhir	c Hussey b Siddle	34	140	94	4	0	36.17
	V Sehwag*	c & b Siddle	18	21	18	3	0	100.00
	R Dravid	b Hilfenhaus	1	8	9	0	0	11.11
	SR Tendulkar	c Ponting b Siddle	25	94	69	3	0	36.23
	VVS Laxman	c †Haddin b Lyon	18	61	43	1	0	41.86
	V Kohli	lbw b Hilfenhaus	116	237	213	11	1	54.46
	WP Saha†	b Harris	35	137	94	1	1	37.23
	R Ashwin	lbw b Siddle	5	12	9	0	0	55.55
	Z Khan	c †Haddin b Siddle	0	1	1	0	0	0.00
	I Sharma	b Hilfenhaus	16	30	23	3	0	69.56
	U Yadav	not out	0	5	0	0	0	-
	Extras	(b 1, w 1, nb 2)	4
	Total	(all out; 95.1 overs; 378 mins)	272	(2.85 runs per over)

Fall of wickets 1-26 (Sehwag, 5.1 ov), 2-31 (Dravid, 6.6 ov), 3-78 (Tendulkar, 31.2 ov), 4-87 (Gambhir, 33.5 ov), 5-111 (Laxman, 46.1 ov), 6-225 (Saha, 84.4 ov), 7-230 (Ashwin, 87.1 ov), 8-230 (Khan, 87.2 ov),  9-263 (Sharma, 93.6 ov),10-272 (Kohli, 95.1 ov)

	Bowling	O	M	R	W	Econ
	RJ Harris	25	7	71	1	2.84
	BW Hilfenhaus	22.1	5	62	3	2.79	(2nb, 1w)
	PM Siddle	15	2	49	5	3.26
	NM Lyon	21	5	48	1	2.28
	MJ Clarke	6	1	23	0	3.83
	MEK Hussey	6	0	18	0	3.00

	Australia 2nd innings		R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
	DA Warner	c & b Ashwin	28	38	39	4	0	71.79
	EJM Cowan	lbw b Ashwin	10	47	27	1	0	37.03
	SE Marsh	lbw b Khan	0	5	4	0	0	0.00
	RT Ponting	not out	60	146	96	5	0	62.50
	MJ Clarke*	c †Saha b Yadav	37	71	43	4	0	86.04
	MEK Hussey	lbw b Sharma	15	42	40	1	0	37.50
	BJ Haddin†	not out	11	28	26	2	0	42.30
	Extras	(lb 6)	6
	Total	(5 wickets dec; 46 overs; 191 mins)	167	(3.63 runs per over)

Did not bat PM Siddle, RJ Harris, BW Hilfenhaus, NM Lyon

Fall of wickets 1-39 (Warner, 9.6 ov), 2-40 (Marsh, 10.6 ov), 3-40 (Cowan, 11.4 ov), 4-111 (Clarke, 28.2 ov), 5-147 (Hussey, 38.5 ov)

	Bowling	O	M	R	W	Econ
	Z Khan	13	1	38	1	2.92
	R Ashwin	20	2	73	2	3.65
	I Sharma	8	0	27	1	3.37
	U Yadav	5	0	23	1	4.60

	India 2nd innings (target: 500 runs)		R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
	G Gambhir	c †Haddin b Harris	3	18	18	0	0	16.66
	V Sehwag*	c Ponting b Lyon	62	82	53	12	0	116.98
	R Dravid	c Hussey b Harris	25	95	71	2	0	35.21
	SR Tendulkar	c Cowan b Lyon	13	46	34	2	0	38.23
	VVS Laxman	c Marsh b Lyon	35	101	88	4	0	39.77
	V Kohli	run out (Hilfenhaus)	22	96	62	2	0	35.48
	I Sharma	not out	2		4	0	0	50.00
	WP Saha†	not out	0		6	0	0	0.00
	Extras	(lb 3, w 1)	4
	Total	(6 wickets; 56 overs)	166	(2.96 runs per over)

To bat R Ashwin, Z Khan, U Yadav

Fall of wickets 1-14 (Gambhir, 4.3 ov), 2-80 (Sehwag, 19.1 ov), 3-100 (Dravid, 28.1 ov), 4-110 (Tendulkar, 31.4 ov), 5-162 (Laxman, 53.2 ov), 6-166 (Kohli, 54.6 ov)

	Bowling	O	M	R	W	Econ
	RJ Harris	14	4	25	2	1.78	(1w)
	BW Hilfenhaus	9	2	33	0	3.66
	PM Siddle	10	3	36	0	3.60
	NM Lyon	19	3	57	3	3.00
	MEK Hussey	2	0	3	0	1.50
	MJ Clarke	2	0	9	0	4.50