Dubai opens world's largest half-mile-high tower

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Dubai opened the world's tallest skyscraper Monday in a blaze of fireworks, then added a final flourish: It renamed the half-mile-high tower for the head of neighboring Abu Dhabi, whose billions bailed out Dubai amid last year's financial crisis.

Long known as Burj Dubai — Arabic for "Dubai Tower" — the building rises 2,717 feet (828 meters) from the desert. The $1.5 billion "vertical city" of luxury apartments and offices and a hotel designed by Giorgio Armani also plans to have the world's highest mosque (158th floor) and swimming pool (76th floor).

Its backers wanted the skyscraper to be a monument to the boundless, can-do spirit of Dubai — one of a federation of seven small sheikdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates — but the timing could not be worse. Property prices in parts of Dubai collapsed by nearly half in the past year, the result of easy credit and overbuilding during a real estate bubble that has since burst.

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Female Reindeer Pull Santa's Sleigh

Jeanna Bryner at Live Science today points out some interesting facts about reindeer.

Mixing fact with fiction, she argues that all of the reindeer mentioned in stories about Santa Claus had to have been female. Here's why:

• Females keep their antlers throughout the winter, but males shed theirs in early December. Illustrations of Santa's sleigh pullers uniformly show reindeer with antlers.
• The mating season depletes males of body fat, leaving them with just 5 percent on their scrawny frames around Christmas time. Females, on the other hand, retain 50 percent of their body fat. They'd be in shape to haul Santa.

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Major volcanic eruption feared in Philippines
"within days"

LEGAZPI, Philippines – The Philippines' most active volcano could have a huge eruption within days, officials warned Sunday after detecting a drastic surge in earthquakes and eerie rumbling sounds in surrounding foothills. Tens of thousands of villagers have been evacuated as a precaution.

Scientists raised the alert level for the Mayon volcano after 453 volcanic earthquakes were detected in a five-hour span Sunday, compared to just over 200 Saturday, said Renato Solidum, chief of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

The five-step warning system was raised to level four, meaning a hazardous eruption "is possible within days." Level five is when a major eruption has begun.

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Report: White House Security Breached 91 Times

Secret Service report reveals dozens of security breaches since 1980 surrounding U.S. presidents.

Tareq and Michaele Salahi may be the most famous party crashers after sneaking into President Obama's first state dinner last month, but they're by no means the first to elude the Secret Service and breach White House security.

A report compiled by the Secret Service reveals security surrounding the president has been breached at least 91 times since 1980, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

A summary of the secret 2003 report, along with descriptions of more recent breaches by federal homeland security officials, details scores of breaches, including a family who was mistakenly allowed onto White House grounds in a minivan, a woman allowed in despite already having falsely claimed a "special relationship" with former president Bill Clinton and a celebrity hunter who joined Harrison Ford's entourage to get near Clinton.

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Why Has Taiwan's Birthrate Dropped So Low?

In a society where the cost of living is high, the notion that kids are an unwelcome burden — taboo in many cultures — has become an accepted idea.

In a research poll administered by Kun Shan University in 2007, students interviewed 100 residents of Taiwan between the ages of 20 and 40 about their family plans. One-third didn't plan to have any children for fear of losing two precious things: money and freedom.

Balancing work and family life has proven to be a challenge for both men and women in Taiwan. According to the Swiss-based International Institute of Management Development, Taiwanese work some of the longest hours in the world, averaging nearly 44 hours a week, and Taiwan's women are very career-oriented. "Most women are afraid of losing their jobs" by taking time out to have a child, says Liu. He says Taiwan should follow the lead of European countries like Germany, where women are entitled to up to three years of maternity leave by law. Taiwan has been making progress in this area; in 2002, the government passed a law requiring companies to allow their employees two-year parental leaves without pay. This year, a policy came out that enables parents to take six months of parental leave while receiving 60% of their salary. But many say these changes only look good on paper, as most bosses discourage people from taking the time off.

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Hip Berlin: Europe's Capital of Cool

Time Magazine - A chill wind is blowing through Mitte, the once drab district in central Berlin that is fast becoming hangout central for the world's creative types. Davide Grazioli, used to warmer climes, pulls his black woolly hat over his head and strides up Kastanien Allee — now dubbed Casting Alley because of all the wannabe film directors and actors who frequent its cafés.

Germany has a lot of fine qualities, but being hip isn't usually thought to be one of them. Up-and-coming artists, especially ones from abroad, used to flock to London, Amsterdam or New York City rather than Hamburg, Munich or Cologne. As for Berlin, it hasn't been on the international cool list since Christopher Isherwood lived in the city in the early 1930s and chronicled the demise of its rambunctious culture under the Nazis.

But two decades after the Wall that cut through Berlin's heart came tumbling down, the city is once again a happening place, drawing a host of international designers, writers, architects, musicians and visual artists like Grazioli, some just to visit, many to stay. The influx is transforming the city.

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YouTube University

Newsweek - YouTube has built a global reputation as the place to go for video clips of singing cats, laughing babies, reckless drivers, and raucous wedding processionals. But there's more to the site than pointless entertainment; there is a growing collection of university lectures available, including one by a Harvard Business School professor talking about consumer psychology in the recession, and Cambridge University historian David Starkey discussing the history of the British monarchy. Earlier this year YouTube launched a new home for education, YouTube EDU, which started as a volunteer project by company employees seeking a better way to aggregate educational content uploaded by U.S. colleges and universities.

One need not be a student to reap the benefits of higher education anymore. In addition to YouTube EDU, Web sites like iTunes U, TED, and Academic Earth allow millions of people to download lectures by some of the world's top experts—for free. Known as open educational resources—or OER—the movement is turning education into a form of mass entertainment.

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Emotional Bunny Says: "Guess who's taking free online chemistry courses from MIT?"

Students create countries in social studies class

World geography classes typically don't stray from the 195 established countries that circle the globe.

Some new nations, though, emerged Tuesday: Aquatopia, an underwater country off the coast of Florida; Timpatoint, an arctic nation northeast of Canada; and Marinya, an island nation near the Philippines.

Of course, the countries aren't real. Fifth-graders in Andrea Hollan's gifted class at Allen Park Elementary spent six weeks exploring forms of government, finances, culture, geography and climates of existing nations.

"We looked at what's real, and went from there," Hollan said.

Students then created their own countries, complete with a flag, currency, food and landscape. Students even developed the first steps of a new language, creating words for hello and goodbye.

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(Image credits: www1.pgcps.org)

First U.S. Tsunami Shelter Planned as Earthquake Looms

When a major earthquake triggers a giant tsunami in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, as experts predict, one coastal town will be ready. Residents of the small Oregon town of Cannon Beach are preparing to build the first tsunami-resistant shelter in the U.S. (Get tsunami facts.)

The Pacific Northwest is one of the most dangerous earthquake and tsunami zones in the world—capable of producing magnitude 9 earthquakes followed within minutes by deadly, 50-foot (15.2-meter) high waves.

The next big earthquake could happen tomorrow or in several hundreds of years—no one knows for sure.

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How Hawaii's Budget Crunch Led to Furloughed Kids

At Noelani Elementary, the small school near Honolulu where President Obama learned to read and write, the next generation of Hawaii's leaders learned a new word this week: "furlough."

The Noelani students joined nearly 170,000 other children across Hawaii whose teachers on Friday began an unprecedented state furlough program that will close classrooms 34 days over the next two years. The "furlough Fridays" are part of a controversial effort by Gov. Linda Lingle to deal with a projected budget deficit of nearly $1 billion. The cost-cutting measure has angered parents, lawmakers and children. Popular musician and Hawaii public school graduate Jack Johnson sang at a rally Friday morning at the state Capitol to protest the furloughs. During the rally, parents handed a petition bearing thousands of signatures protesting the furloughs to the governor, whose office is on the fifth floor of the state Capitol.

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Teen sets off on round-the-world sail

SYDNEY – A 16-year-old Australian steered her bright pink yacht out of Sydney Harbor on Sunday to start her bid to become the youngest person to sail solo and unassisted around the world.

Jessica Watson's plan to make a 23,600-mile (38,000-kilometer) journey through some of the world's most treacherous waters sparked a debate in Australia about whether someone so young should be allowed to try such a potentially dangerous feat.

Watson and her family insist she is an experienced and capable sailor who has studied navigation, electronics and maritime safety procedures. Although she will sail solo and unassisted, she will be in constant contact with her support team via radio, e-mail and a blog.

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World's Richest People: Asia Poised to Pass U.S.

As Asia's economic growth races ahead of that of the U.S., the investment portfolios of Asia's wealthiest people are picking up enough momentum to launch them past their North American counterparts.

A report released on Oct. 13 by Merrill Lynch and consulting firm Capgemini Financial Services projects that with the global recession easing, the total net worth of Asia-Pacific's wealthy — those with at least $1 million in investable assets — is set to grow at a faster pace than the holdings of rich people in other parts of the world. If this trend takes hold, the total value of assets held by Asia's rich could surpass the combined assets of North America's wealthy by 2013.

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Will New Laws Help Russia Take Down the Mafia?

The raid looked like something out of a Hollywood action movie. On July 7, Russian special forces dropped down on ropes from a helicopter to storm a luxury yacht on the Pirogovsky reservoir outside Moscow, arresting three dozen mobsters, including the group's alleged ringleader, Tariel Oniani. But within days, nearly all of them, including Oniani, had to be set free because prosecutors couldn't charge them with anything.

Russia's laws have long been weak and unspecific when it comes to combating organized crime, part of the reason why the underworld has thrived in the country in the post-communism years. But the government may finally be getting serious about cracking down on the Mafia.

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What Is Killing South African Crocs?

Mass deaths of South Africa's Nile crocodiles puzzle biologists.

Carcasses of adult crocodiles do not usually signal the return of winter in South Africa, but mass death seems to be becoming the harbinger of the season. Rangers at the Kruger National Park have found Nile crocodiles floating in the Oli­fants River or bloated and decaying along its banks. Investigators are rushing to figure out the cause and worry that the deaths might be signaling the presence of toxins or pathogens that could threaten not only the croc population but also the livelihoods of the people living near the river.

...The first sign of croc trouble in the river came in the winter of 2008, when rangers collected 170 dead individuals, sometimes at a rate of 20 bodies a week. A survey at the end of this May showed nearly 400 crocs living in the park’s gorge, down from at least 1,000 in 2008. So far, as of Au­­gust 7, rangers and scientists have found 23 carcasses.

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Malawian boy uses wind to power hope, electrify village

(CNN) -- William Kamkwamba dreamed of powering his village with the only resource that was freely available to him.

His native Malawi had gone through one of its worst droughts seven years ago, killing thousands. His family and others were surviving on one meal a day. The red soil in his Masitala hometown was parched, leaving his father, a farmer, without any income.

But amid all the shortages, one thing was still abundant.

Wind.

"I wanted to do something to help and change things," he said. "Then I said to myself, 'If they can make electricity out of wind, I can try, too.'"

Kamkwamba was kicked out of school when he couldn't pay $80 in school fees, and he spent his days at the library, where a book with photographs of windmills caught his eye.

"I thought, this thing exists in this book, it means someone else managed to build this machine," he said.

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Qatar Prince's Renovation Plan: Far From Regal Welcome

Qatar Prince wants to renovate an $88 million historic 17th century French building with air conditioning, elevators, and underground parking.

Voltaire once called it a home fit for a king. And for a few hundred years, it was. Since the Hotel Lambert was built in 1639 on Paris's Ile Saint-Louis by architect Louis Le Vau, who also designed the Chateau de Versailles, the mansion has played host to French nobility, exiled Polish princes and members of the Rothschild family. But for Qatari Prince Hamad bin Abdullah al-Thani, who bought the property from the Rothschilds in 2007 for $88 million, the welcome has been far from regal.

The Prince's plan to restore the mansion to its 17th century glory while also adding elevators, air-conditioning and an underground parking lot has run into opposition from historical preservationists, who say the $60 million renovations would be "disastrous." But critics are even angrier that the French Ministry of Culture approved the plan in the first place, the latest example of what preservationists say is the government's disregard for the protection of France's architectural treasures.

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Komodo Dragon Originated in Australia

livescience.com – Tue Oct 6, 11:46 am ET

Dragons may come from the land Down Under.

Scientists now find that the world's largest living lizard species, the Komodo dragon, most likely evolved in Australia and dispersed westward to its current home in Indonesia.

In the past, researchers had suggested the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) developed from a smaller ancestor isolated on the Indonesian islands, evolving its large size as a response to lack of competition from other predators or as a specialist hunter of pygmy elephants known as Stegodon.

However, over the past three years, an international team of scientists unearthed numerous fossils from eastern Australia dated from 300,000 years ago to roughly 4 million years ago that they now know belong to the Komodo dragon.

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After a Devastating Fire, an Intense Study of Its Effects

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. — The Station fire, which in over a month has burned away nearly a quarter of this vast, mountainous backdrop to the Los Angeles skyline, is finally just about out, sending all but a handful of firefighters home. Now, the scientists swoop in.

And Todd M. Hoefen, a geophysicist, scooped up white and black ash as part of research to analyze “the impact of it, what blows out of these fires and what are people breathing.”

Fire, typically touched off by lightning strikes, has always been part of the life cycle of the wilderness here and elsewhere, to a large degree crucial to regenerating it. Most wildlife and landscape eventually come back.

But with the increasing frequency and size of fires — 7 of the state’s 10 largest wildfires have occurred in the last six years, and most were caused by people — scientists are intensifying study of the environmental aftermath of the changing burn pattern.

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3 Americans share 2009 Nobel medicine prize

STOCKHOLM – Americans Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak won the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that has inspired new lines of research into cancer.

It was the first time two women have been among the winners of the medicine prize.

The trio solved the mystery of how chromosomes, the rod-like structures that carry DNA, protect themselves from degrading when cells divide.

The Nobel citation said the laureates found the solution in the ends of the chromosomes — features called telomeres that are often compared to the plastic tips at the end of shoe laces that keep those laces from unraveling.

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Unemployment rate identical at 9.7%: "Good" under Obama, "Bad" under Reagan

A study from the Business & Media Institute: Identical Unemployment Numbers ‘Good’ News for Obama, But ‘All’ Bad under Reagan.

Unemployment under President Barack Obama is at a 26-year-high. The last time the economy had 9.7 percent or higher unemployment was under President Ronald Reagan. But despite similar periods of rising unemployment, Obama and Reagan received almost exactly opposite treatment from the network news media.

Under Obama reporters have gone to great lengths to spin rising unemployment by finding “positive trends” in the job losses, even focusing on as few as 25 jobs being “saved” by the economic stimulus package. But when Reagan was president journalists showed unemployed families living out of their cars under a bridge in Texas and quoted Democrats or union leaders’ attacks on the president’s “wicked” and “sadistic” fiscal policies.

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(Image credits: thewalrusblog.com, sodahead.com)