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London, May 14 (ANI): Actor Rob Lowe has revealed that he seeks Feng Shui master’s blessings before filming for any new TV or movie project.
The American actor admits that he likes to work in a tidy place which is filed with good energy workspace.
“I think there is a lot to that stuff. A billion Chinese can”t be wrong…
“I”m looking for any edge I can get,” the Daily Express quoted him as saying. (ANI)
London, April 27 (ANI): English actress and TV presenter Denise Welch has admitted that she snorted cocaine on the sets of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street.
Welch revealed that she battled with the deadly drug habit during her time Coronation Street days.
She admitted that she snorted cocaine between takes and drove under drug”s influence.
The confession is mentioned in the 51-year-old actress” autobiography ”Pulling Myself Together”, reports The Daily Express.
Welch has blamed chronic depression for her drug habit.
“I”d reached a point where I felt taking cocaine was the only way I could survive. I was suffering crippling depression and I”d made myself believe coke was the only thing that could make me cope. In fact, I was locked in a vicious circle because the more I took, the worse the comedowns would be. I was sinking deeper and deeper,” Welch wrote in her autobiography.
The ”Loose Women” panellist said that her situation got so messed up that she used to leave her shooting set in Manchester to go and buy stuff.
“The risks I took were incredible. I was a total wreck,” said Welch. (ANI)
New York, April 17 (ANI): A court has ruled that topless bars in New York maybe shut down if they do not confirm to zoning rules.
A decision issued on April 16 gives the city the power to shut down topless bars that are just paying lip service to zoning rules, reports the New York Daily News.
City regulations require that X-rated businesses be confined to special zones.
Stores outside those zones can’t have more than 40 percent adult material.
The city says many sex-related shops stocked G-rated stuff to meet the letter of the law – while their main focus was porn.
A judge had already agreed inspectors could go after video and bookstores that fell into that category.
The new ruling allows them to force 20 clubs out of residential neighbourhoods. (ANI)
Melbourne, April 01 (ANI): Australian singer Gabriella Cilmi is upset about her recent photo shoot for a men’s magazine.
The ‘Sweet About Me’ singer, 18, posed for a series of lingerie and topless shots for UK FHM magazine”s May 2010 issue.
But Cilmi said she was not happy with the results.
“I think I”m happy with about three of those shots, and I would very happily use some of them as the front cover for my record,” News.com.au quoted her as saying.
“But there are some in there that I look at them and I don”t see how they related to me in any way,” Cilmi added.
But she said she had learnt from the experience and wouldn”t make the same mistake again.
“Would I do it again? I don”t think so. I guess you learn not to get caught up in the same stuff, you learn for next time.
“I don”t regret it, but I wouldn”t do it again.
“They”ve given me bigger boobs than I have anyway. So, I guess you get like a free boob job or something. I don”t know what that”s supposed to mean.
“I look at them and I laugh at them, because I know that they”re not very representative of me, and who I am as a person, and what my music”s about,” she added. (ANI)
The University of Queensland (UQ) has appointed its first female lecturer in mining engineering.
Dr Penny Stewart has been a mining engineer for 15 years and recently worked on Brisbane’s Clem Seven tunnel.
She says she has noticed a positive move towards accepting women within the mining industry.
“Since I graduated back in 1995 there’s definitely been a lot of change in the industry and probably how the experience that what women mining engineers have when they join the industry,” she said.
“When I graduated there was still that element of pornography and stuff like that that was around the sites and you know but you don’t see that sort of thing anymore.”
Dr Stewart says students have told her it is refreshing to be taught by a female.
“It’s been a really lovely experience because at the end of one of my first lectures a couple of the female students came up to me afterwards and said it was really nice to have a female lecturer just as a change,” she said.
“It made me realise that up until that point I hadn’t really thought of it as being a big deal.
“But when I realised that it did have an impact on the students it made me feel good you know that they thought it was a good thing.”
London, September 18 (ANI): European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Planck spacecraft has obtained its first peek at the afterglow of the big bang, revealing it in unprecedented detail.
The ESA spacecraft was launched into space on May 14 this year. It is observing the glow of hot gas from just 380,000 years after the big bang, called the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
According to a report in New Scientist, the detailed properties of this background may contain hints of hidden extra dimensions or multiple universes, as well as providing clues to what caused a brief, early period of incredibly rapid cosmic expansion.
Planck began surveying the microwave background on August 13, a few weeks after reaching its planned perch 1.5 million kilometres from Earth at a point called L2 and cooling its detectors to within 0.1 degrees Celsius above absolute zero.
Now, the Planck team has released the probe’s first image, an observational strip covering about 5 per cent of the sky.
Slight variations in temperature from place to place in the early universe give the image its mottled appearance.
“With a few per cent of the data in, you can see it’s working well and delivering good stuff,” said team member George Efstathiou of the University of Cambridge.
Planck is expected to provide the most detailed all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background yet, improving on the best current map, obtained by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which launched in 2001.
Planck’s detectors have more than 10 times the sensitivity of WMAP’s, and about 2.5 times the angular resolution.
“Every strip that Planck scans, we’re getting data that is many, many times more sensitive than WMAP,” Efstathiou told New Scientist.
Although Planck was only designed to observe the sky for 15 months, the team believes it could last for more than 30 months, based on new estimates of how long its coolant will last.
The extra time will allow Planck to measure the radiation with even greater precision, since it will scan the entire sky four times – two more than originally planned. (ANI)
London, September 13 (ANI): Actor Michael Douglas has said that he no longer gets offers to play romantic-lead in movies.
“No love-interest stuff for me now,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying.
The ‘Basic Instinct’ star spoke about his character in new courtroom drama ‘Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.’
He said: “I play the bad guy, the rough old villain. My character is that duplicitous meanie I somehow specialise in.”
Douglas and wife/actress Catherine Zeta Jones recently moved from Bermuda to an apartment in New York, to make it easier to pursue his film career. (ANI)
London, Sept 11 (ANI): Genesis drummer Phil Collins may be forced to quit drumming after a back injury.
The 58-year-old had suffered back injury during the last Genesis tour, in 2007, and had said earlier this week that the problem had come about because of his drumming posture, due to which his vertebrae had been crushing his spinal cord.
The rockstar has now revealed that a surgery to repair the dislocated vertebrae in his neck had left him incapable of holding drumsticks properly or playing the piano.
However Collins was optimistic about the future and said “stuff appens in life”
The Telegraph quoted him as saying: “There isn’t any drama regarding my ‘disability’ and playing drums.
“Somehow during the last Genesis tour I dislocated some vertebrae in my upper neck and that affected my hands.
“After a successful operation on my neck, my hands still can’t function normally.
“Maybe in a year or so it will change, but for now it is impossible for me to play drums or piano.
“I am not in any ‘distressed’ state – stuff happens in life.” (ANI)
Colombo, Sep.8 (ANI): New Zealand cricketers have expressed relief that swashbuckling Indian opening bat Virender Sehwag will not feature in the tri-series in Sri Lanka and in the upcoming Champions Trophy in South Africa because of a shoulder injury.
A shoulder injury means New Zealand avoid one of the most devastating strikers of a cricket ball.
It maybe recalled that during the recent one-day series in New Zealand, Sehwag had tonked 299 runs at an average of 74.25 to help India win by a margin of three games to one.
“It is a relief,” said vice-captain Brendon McCullum when asked about the significance of Sehwag not leading off the Indian order in against New Zealand on Friday.
“The way he played against us in the home summer, he was pretty terrifying at the top of the order,” stuff.co.nz quoted McCullum, as saying.
“He really tore us apart so to not have him in their team is a bit of a blow for them,” he added. (ANI)
Washington, Sep 7 (ANI): American socialite Kourtney Kardashian has revealed that she is suffering from such terrible mood swings ever since her pregnancy that her boyfriend Scott Disick is terrified of her.
Kourtney, 30, who is expecting her first child with Disick, admits that her hormones are affecting her temperament, but she is doing her best to try not to be rude to those close to her.
“Scott keeps getting scared. But he’s been great with my mood swings so far. He’s like, ‘Just take a deep breath,’” Contactmusic quoted her as saying.
“He heard that with the last three months of a pregnancy you have really extreme mood swings so he was joking, ‘Oh, you’re not going to believe the mood swings!’” she said.
But it is not only her partner who has been getting the sharp end of her tongue, her family, including sisters Kim and Khloe and mother Kris, have also been suffering.
“If I’m just trying to pick a fight with someone and if I’m around Scott or my mom, then they’ll probably get it worst,” she told People magazine.
“If someone is annoying me – usually my mom – I’ll call Khloe and it’ll make me feel better because she’ll agree with me.
“I throw b***h fits. The other day, I was like, ‘This house is such a mess! Now that Scott’s living in my house, there’s stuff everywhere! We need to get it organised!’ Everything I had to do, I blamed it on Scott,” she added. (ANI)
London, Sep 5 (ANI): Brit footballer Theo Walcott’s girlfriend Melanie Slade is the new face of maritime fashion brand Helly Hansen.
Slade, who is a big fan of the range, says the clothes are perfect for all kinds of weather.
“It’s definitely stuff I would wear,” the Sun quoted her as saying.
“There is a huge range, from fab jackets which are perfect for all the cold winter football games to gorgeous summer dresses,” she added.
Slade, who hates being termed a WAG, is a full-time physiotherapy student when she is not modelling clothes. (ANI)
Wellington, Sep 2 (ANI): A person’s sex quotient lies in his or her brain, according to a study that suggests that being smart is sexy, and the smartest males get the most partners.
Through a study on Australian birds, a team of researchers have lent support to the idea that our big human brain evolved because it is a sexually attractive organ, not just a useful one.
According to the above theory, signs of intelligence – such as creating art, music, and humour – could have made the brainiest people luckiest in love.
The theory was hugely discussed in the book ‘The Mating Mind’ by an evolutionary psychologist, Geoffrey Miller, almost a decade ago.
Jason Keagy, of the University of Maryland in the US, said that testing the theory in humans was very difficult, and thus he chose to observe satin bowerbirds at Wallaby Creek in NSW instead.
He claimed that Bowerbirds are intelligent.
“But they’re not as complex as humans,” Stuff.co.nz quoted him as saying.
Keagy could get an accurate record of the male birds’ sexual success by videotaping their every movement.
“They can’t really lie to us,” he said.
Known for their fascination with blue objects, bowerbirds have a strong aversion to red.
In the first IQ test, the researchers placed three red objects under a clear plastic container in their bower, and found that the smartest males could remove the cover and carry away the offending objects in 20 seconds.
“It looks pretty simple, but some weren’t able to do it,” said Keagy.
In a second braintwister, he glued a red object down and observed that some bowerbirds kept on trying in vain to pull it out, while the brighter ones quickly twigged this was impossible and covered it with leaves.
The males who failed the plastic container test were spurned.
“No females were mating with them,” said Keagy.
However, the smartest birds attracted up to 20 female partners a season.
“This is the first evidence [in any species] that individuals with better problem-solving abilities are more sexually attractive,” he said.
He claimed that greater intelligence could allow male bowerbirds to woo more females because they can build more elaborate bowers, are better dancers or are more responsive to subtle cues from the females during courtship.
Alternative theories to the mating mind include that our large brain evolved because it was advantageous for hunting or living in social groups, and cultural creativity was simply a fortuitous by-product of the struggle to survive.
The study has been published in the journal Animal Behaviour. (ANI)
London, Sep 2 (ANI): Queen of Pop Madonna’s daughter Lourdes is said to have made an appearance in the video for her mother’s new single ‘Celebration’.
Lourdes, 12, was given a dancing role, and she could be seen showing off some breakdancing moves towards the end of the four-minute video, reports the Telegraph.
Dressed in leggings and a multi-coloured top, she is cheered on by Madonna’s troupe of backing dancers as she struts her stuff.
Other scenes showed Madge, 51, kissing her toyboy lover Jesus Luz, 22, the male model with whom she recently spent her birthday celebrations in Portofino. (ANI)
Melbourne, Sept 2 (ANI): They have finally confessed it – nearly every woman owns a secret pair of “skinny jeans” which she hopes to diet her way back into, a new Australian study has found.
What’s more, study by the Young Women’s Christian Association found that about 70 per cent admit holding onto the hope that too small clothes will eventually fit them.
However, experts have warned women about the dangers of dieting, reports The Courier Mail.
Body image expert Professor Marika Tiggemann said that while women spent time, money and energy on worrying about being thinner, it was “a waste”.
The expert added that many women suffered under the “false hope” they were going to drop several sizes.
“Most of the advice you get from the positive body image stuff is to throw away things that don’t fit and buy good clothes that fit you now,” she said.
The survey also found three-quarters of women were unhappy with their body size. (ANI)
Wellington, Sep 2 (ANI): New Zealand fast bowler Kyle Mills doubts that skipper Daniel Vettori’s new role as a national selector will harm his relationship with the players.
Vettori and head coach Andy Moles officially became members of the four-man selection panel on Tuesday after New Zealand Cricket (NZC) heeded the duo’s desire for a more hands-on role in team selection.
Mills has already had the dreaded talk with Vettori and suggested the skipper’s standing among the group would not create problems when the axe fell.
On the eve of the first test against Australia in Brisbane last November, the fast bowler was told not only did he miss the team, but he was also being sent back to provincial cricket.
“I think that’s the hardest thing as a captain. I’ve been given the word by Dan before on previous tours. In Australia, he came up and told me I’d been dropped from the test side so he’s made those gutsy conversations,” Stuff.co.nz quoted Vettori, as saying.
“At the end of the day, I’d probably rather hear it from him than someone else I’ve played a lot of cricket with him from a young age, he’s a mate of mine and we still go for a beer,” he added.
Mills was also happy the tour finally had two selectors on board.
The NZC decision to appoint Vettori and Moles alongside convener Glenn Turner and Mark Greatbatch has been highly scrutinised since the announcement on August 23.
Concerns over Vettori’s new role centred on how his working relationship might change with players now he has an official say in their selection or demotion, Stuff.co.nz reported.
There were also fears about how the added responsibility would affect his workload and performance.
When he was appointed, Vettori admitted it could be difficult when he or Moles had to convey bad news. (ANI)
Wellington, Sep. 1 (ANI): The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has given permission to the Bank of Baroda to begin trading in the country, making it the nation’s 19th registered bank.
India’s third-largest public sector bank first indicated a desire to enter New Zealand when then-chairman Anil Kumar Khandelwel visited the country in 2007, stuff.co.nz reports.
The Mumbai-based lender’s registration was confirmed by the central bank on Monday.
Bank of Baroda may open its first branch in Auckland’s Mt Roskill, according to reports.
The bank’s local operation, which are is expected to begin near the end of the year, is going to target all ethnic communities, not only Indian residents.
Bank of Baroda is in some 70 countries, including offices in Australia and Fiji, and is looking to continue expanding its international operations with a joint venture to open a banking company in Malaysia, according to its latest earnings report.
Overseas business contributed some 23 percent to the bank’s operating profit.
The parent company boosted its net profit some 85 percent in the three months ended June 30 from the same period a year earlier. (ANI)
Colombo, Aug 30(ANI): Former New Zealand cricketer Stephen Boock reckons that captain Daniel Vettori is one of the cleverest finger spinners to grace the cricketing world.
“Everyone knows what Dan bowls: little spinners that turn away [from the right-hander] or ones that skid through, that’s the guts of it. There’s no secrets in his armoury but the way he uses what he’s got is the best I’ve seen,” Boock told the Sunday Star-Times.
“What you’ve got to do is be able to read the wicket and work out what is about this wicket that will give me the best result. How fast should I bowl, how much effort should I put into turning he ball. Dan either does that naturally or by learning,” he added.
Speaking after Vettori double feat of 3000 runs and 300 wickets, Boock said Vettori’s intelligence as a bowler was without peer, as he possessed the ability to figure up the pitch in order to adjust his bowling pace and spin to get the best results, Stuff.co.nz reports.
“Dan’s not a flamboyant player, but he’s a clear thinker who has a good understanding of cricket and he will have no expectation that he will be treated as a movie star because that’s not what he is: he’s a spin bowler who works very hard,” Boock said.
He further said that if Vettori keeps on playing for another four-five years, he could go beyond Sir Richard Hadlee as New Zealand’s wicket-taker and could join Kapil Dev. (ANI)
Washington, August 30 (ANI): Reports indicate that the slums of Cairo, Egypt’s largest city, have got an energy makeover, with solar panels sprouting on apartment rooftops, providing residents with clean power and water and a chance to directly improve their lives.
According to a report in National Geographic News, since 2003, the nonprofit Solar CITIES project has installed 34 solar-powered hot water systems and 5 biogas reactors in Cairo’s poor Coptic Christian and Islamic neighborhoods.
“Our program is unique, in that we’re implementing rural-type solutions in an urban environment,” said project leader Thomas Culhane, an urban planner and 2009 National Geographic emerging explorer.
“It’s the kind of stuff you would do in the Peace Corps in an African village, but we’re doing it right smack dab in the slums of a city,” he added.
Solar CITIES’ hot water systems are constructed from recycled materials and are uniquely tailored to the parts of a city where water and electricity availability are often sporadic.
“The problem with professional solar hot water systems is that they’re made for cities with continuous water,” Culhane said.
By contrast, Solar CITIES’s water heaters use a city’s water when it’s available but draw from a backup storage tank when it’s not.
The setup consists of an insulated rectangular box covered in clear glass or plastic on one side. Inside the box are copper tubes wrapped in sheets of aluminum, which are painted black.
Sunlight striking the darkened aluminum is converted to heat, which is then used to warm water flowing through the pipes.
The glass sheet on top of the box prevents the heat from being carried away by wind.
The water, which can reach temperatures of 176 degrees Fahrenheit (80 degrees Celsius), is then pumped into an insulated plastic barrel for storage.
The water, which remains warm long after sunset, can be connected to an apartment’s plumbing system.
Solar CITIES also installs biogas reactors, which are based on designs Culhane saw while working in India.
The reactors use microbes harvested from animal guts to break down food wastes into flammable gas that can be used for cooking and heating.
If necessary, the reactors can draw hot water from the solar water heaters to maintain the warm temperatures the bacteria need to survive.
By attaching a simple plastic tube to the reactors, gas can be piped down several stories for residents to use.
“In 24 hours, you’ve got 2 hours of cooking gas from yesterday’s cooking garbage,” Culhane said. (ANI)
New York, August 28 (ANI): A nude model, who was arrested on charges of public lewdness at the Met on Wednesday, has said that she wants New Yorkers to stop being so prudish, and start accepting some bare skin.
“I want people to have the freedom to express themselves. I want the city to drop the charges,” the New York Post quoted Kathleen Neill, 26, as saying.
The Arizona native said that the purpose behind her stunt in the museum’s Hall of Arms and Armor was to get people thinking about the bare essentials of art.
“I would love to be able to go to museums and see stuff like this happen on any scale,” she said.
She was busted after whipping off her clothes, and streaking through the exhibit hall as photographer Zach Hyman snapped away.
Neill was grabbed by guards, and arrested on charges of public lewdness. (ANI)
Washington, Aug 28 (ANI): Mums-to-be Kendra Wilkinson and Kourtney Kardashian are eager to breastfeed despite implants.
“I was so scared that I wasn’t going to be able to nurse that when I saw stuff come out of my nipples the other day, I was like, I can breast-feed?” Usmagazine quoted Wilkinson as saying.
“And I asked my doctor, who said, ‘That’s fine, but it’s not milk yet!’” she added.
Kardashian, who, like Wilkinson, is due in December, also said, “They say usually you can [breast-feed with implants]. I want to.”
Meanwhile, Kardashian had recently confessed that she considered if she should get an abortion.
The American reality TV star said she agonized over the decision and “wasn’t thinking about adoption.”
She said she “definitely thought about it long and hard, about if I wanted to keep the baby or not.” (ANI)
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