A helmet that sends SOS on accident!

The brainchild of an India-born chef for top cyclists, a new 'life saver' bike helmet that connects with your phone and alerts emergency services in case of an accident is set to hit the markets soon.

The potentially life saving smartphone app, which can detect a crash and then alert the emergency services, has been designed for bike riders.

The clever application pairs through Bluetooth with a motion detector which is attached to the rider's helmet and senses the crash.

The invention has been created by Oklahoma-based software company ICEdot in the US.

The detector, named the ICEdot Crash Sensor, can even evaluate the severity of the crash depending on the force of the rider's fall, the Daily Mail reported.

Chris Zenthoefer, ICEdot's CEO, said: "The idea came from Biju Thomas, a prominent chef for a lot of top cyclists. He was on a solo ride and crashed and thought if the crash had been any worse, nobody would have know where he was located."

"We were then introduced and it became clear that the pairing of his idea with ICEdot existing technology were a perfect match," Zenthoefer said.

Following an accident the app will prompt the phone to sound an alarm and a countdown, which can be set to between 15 and 60 seconds, is initiated.

If the alarm is not deactivated the app will contact an SOS service and relay vital information.

Using GPS coordinates the device can reveal the user's location and the severity of their condition.

What's more, it can even pass on crucial medical details, for example if the user has diabetes or any allergies.

If the fall is not critical, the crash victim can simply cease the countdown on their phone and cancel the process.

The cost of the motion sensor device, the smartphone app and a one year membership to the ICEdot service is estimated to be about 120 pounds.

The device should be on the market in April next year, the daily said.

Twin prostitutes retire after having sex with 355,000 men

Two Dutch sisters are celebrating their retirement from prostitution with a tell-all book about their lives and the industry, revealing that they have entertained 355,000 men between them.

70-year-old identical twins Louise and Martine Fokkens shot to fame earlier this year as stars of a documentary charting their 50 year careers as prostitutes in Amsterdam.

Louise revealed that her bad arthritis meant that she had retired from prostitution two years ago.

Louise, who became a prostitute aged twenty after a brief spell making lampshades explained how she got in to the business.

"We didn't have enough money," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying on 'This Morning.'

"My husband's friends said it was the best way to make money so we decided to find out. I was 20/21 the first time.

"At first it was a problem for our mother and father but later we all lived normally with it," she said.

Mother-of-three, Martine still works as a prostitute two to three times a week.

"My family told me about my sister while I was in the hospital having my first baby.

"I didn't believe it but we talked about it and I loved her, that's life," Martine added.

Martine then started working at the brothel as a cleaner but two years later decided to join her sister as a prostitute after so many clients mistook her for her identical twin.

100 million'll die by 2030 if world fails to act on climate

More than 100 million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on Wednesday.

As global average temperatures rise due to greenhouse gas emissions, the effects on the planet, such as melting ice caps, extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels, will threaten populations and livelihoods, said the report conducted by humanitarian organisation DARA.

It calculated that five million deaths occur each year from air pollution, hunger and disease as a result of climate change and carbon-intensive economies, and that toll would likely rise to six million a year by 2030 if current patterns of fossil fuel use continue.

More than 90 percent of those deaths will occur in developing countries, said the report that calculated the human and economic impact of climate change on 184 countries in 2010 and 2030. It was commissioned by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a partnership of 20 developing countries threatened by climate change.

"A combined climate-carbon crisis is estimated to claim 100 million lives between now and the end of the next decade," the report said.

It said the effects of climate change had lowered global output by 1.6 percent of world GDP, or by about $1.2 trillion a year, and losses could double to 3.2 percent of global GDP by 2030 if global temperatures are allowed to rise, surpassing 10 percent before 2100.

It estimated the cost of moving the world to a low-carbon economy at about 0.5 percent of GDP this decade.

COUNTING THE COST
British economist Nicholas Stern told Reuters earlier this year investment equivalent to 2 percent of global GDP was needed to limit, prevent and adapt to climate change. His report on the economics of climate change in 2006 said an average global temperature rise of 2-3 degrees Celsius in the next 50 years could reduce global consumption per head by up to 20 percent.

Temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Almost 200 nations agreed in 2010 to limit the global average temperature rise to below 2C (3.6 Fahrenheit) to avoid dangerous impacts from climate change.

But climate scientists have warned that the chance of limiting the rise to below 2C is getting smaller as global greenhouse gas emissions rise due to burning fossil fuels.

The world's poorest nations are the most vulnerable as they face increased risk of drought, water shortages, crop failure, poverty and disease. On average, they could see an 11 percent loss in GDP by 2030 due to climate change, DARA said.

"One degree Celsius rise in temperature is associated with 10 percent productivity loss in farming. For us, it means losing about 4 million metric tonnes of food grain, amounting to about $2.5 billion. That is about 2 percent of our GDP," Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said in response to the report.

"Adding up the damages to property and other losses, we are faced with a total loss of about 3-4 percent of GDP."

Even the biggest and most rapidly developing economies will not escape unscathed. The United States and China could see a 2.1 percent reduction in their respective GDPs by 2030, while India could experience a more than 5 percent loss.

Soon, your walk can be your new password

Scientists are advancing biometrics security systems a step further by developing 'biosoles' that can recognise you based upon your unique walk. 

Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University's Biometrics Research and Identity Automation Lab are developing new ways to enable security based on body's movements, which, unlike retinal scans and fingerprints, can't be taken from an individual, the New York Daily News reported. 

The new discipline called "pedo-biometrics" uses a "BioSole" inserted into shoes to assess a wearer's gait, matching that distinctive pattern against an existing record to verify the person's identity. 

Biometrics have a decided advantage over passwords because they don't rely on users' ability to remember them, the system identifies users based on something they are, for example with a retina or fingerprint scan. 

Most authentication systems need "things you know", but more advanced systems need "things you are", explained NBC News. 

Fingerprints and retina scans fall into the latter category but can still be penetrated - by amputating the corresponding body part. 

The university is teaming up with Autonomous ID, a company based in Ottawa, Canada, to create passwords based on behavioural validation. 

Scientists are advancing biometrics security systems a step further by developing 'biosoles' that can recognise you based upon your unique walk. 

Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University's Biometrics Research and Identity Automation Lab are developing new ways to enable security based on body's movements, which, unlike retinal scans and fingerprints, can't be taken from an individual, the New York Daily News reported. 

The new discipline called "pedo-biometrics" uses a "BioSole" inserted into shoes to assess a wearer's gait, matching that distinctive pattern against an existing record to verify the person's identity. 

Biometrics have a decided advantage over passwords because they don't rely on users' ability to remember them, the system identifies users based on something they are, for example with a retina or fingerprint scan. 

Most authentication systems need "things you know", but more advanced systems need "things you are", explained NBC News. 

Fingerprints and retina scans fall into the latter category but can still be penetrated - by amputating the corresponding body part. 

The university is teaming up with Autonomous ID, a company based in Ottawa, Canada, to create passwords based on behavioural validation. 

Gait analysis is already being used as a sophisticated laboratory technique by which modern electronics are used to incorporate information from a number of inputs to illustrate and analyze the dynamics of gait. It describes for the clinician (physician, surgeon, therapist) in quantitative and dynamic terms the movement of the body and its limbs and the changing relationships of one extremity to other extremities during motion (e.g.: walking, leg raising). It helps the clinician judge what are the forces resulting in a dysfunction in movement of a limb and what is the result of compensating for the dysfunction; to put it another way, what is cause and what is effect. 

Though China has developed Gait already as a toll for espionage and security purposes, much is not known about it due to high security and secretive practices in science and research by Chinese authorities.

Mumbai boy becomes youngest skydiver

Krish Shanghvi, the eight-year old from Mumbai recently became the youngest skydiver on the planet, when he jumped off a plane from an altitude of 10,000 feet in Mozzel Bay, South Africa.

The act involved a thrilling 45-second free fall at 200 kilometers per hour, before the parachute unfurled.

Shanghvi achieved the dive in tandem with trainer Mr. Henk Van Wky.

His elder brother, Parth, holds the record of becoming the youngest scuba diver in the world. Parth achieved the feat in February 2010 in Goa.

Speaking to mediapersons, Shanghvi's father, Mehul Upendra Shanghvi, said that Krish was inspired by Parth's achievements.

"Getting inspired by his brother's feat, young Krish, who was only six years then, wanted to break some record," he said.

"We thought of skydiving, but in India the minimum age for skydiving is 16. So, we contacted some skydiving centers in Slovenia, where there is no age restriction for skydiving. But Krish was too small to fit in the Harness then" he added.

The standard three student from SVKM International School in Vile Parle has been awarded a certificate by Unique World Records, and the family has also applied to Limca Book of Records to have his name included.

Previously, the youngest skydiver in the world was Romanian girl Valentina Mihanciu, who performed the feat at the age of nine.

The record of being the youngest skydiver in India was held by Kolkata's Anaina Malik who had achieved the feat at the age of 13, jumping in Mauritius.

Smiley Emoticons turn 30 years old

The highly famous ':-)' emoticon, that is used by web and text users all over the globe, has marked its 30th birthday, a computer scientist who created the iconic "smiley face" has said.

The computer symbol for "not serious" or now more generally "happiness," made up of a colon, dash and a right parenthesis, was born into existence at 11:44 a.m. on September 19, 1982, after it was posted on an online bulletin board by Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Scott Fahlman.

"If someone made a sarcastic remark, a few readers would fail to get the joke, and each of them would post a lengthy diatribe in response," the New York Daily News quoted Fahlman, as writing, in a post on Carnegie Mellon's website about the invention of the sideways smile.

"The problem caused some of us to suggest (only half seriously) that maybe it would be a good idea to explicitly mark posts that were not to be taken seriously," he added. 

"In the midst of that discussion it occurred to me that the character sequence :-) would be an elegant solution ... So I suggested that," he said.

Fahlman also suggested the reverse, what has come to be known as a sad face, by using the other parenthesis marker.

"This convention caught on quickly around Carnegie Mellon, and soon spread to other universities and research labs via the primitive computer networks of the day," he wrote. 

Still on staff at Carnegie Mellon, Fahlman is modest about his invention, which he says he's never profited from.

"I probably was not the first person ever to type these three letters in sequence, perhaps even with the meaning of 'I'm just kidding' and perhaps even online. But I do believe that my 1982 suggestion was the one that finally took hold, spread around the world, and spawned thousands of variations," Fahlman wrote.

‘Popinator’ shoots popcorn directly into your mouth

WASHINGTON: A voice-controlled popcorn shooter ‘Popinator’ that works on demand has been introduced by the readers of Mashable to it.

According to the Mashable reader, Popinator is an automated popcorn launcher that tosses popcorn at your mouth every time you say “pop.”

It says that the device is equipped with a microphone that recognizes the key word, decides your location and then launches a piece your way.

The sales representative for the company, the Popinator is just a prototupe right now and it is still in the planning stages. Source:http://www.geo.tv

UK royal couple win French injunction on Kate topless photos

PARIS: A French court on Tuesday banned a gossip magazine from further publishing topless photographs of the wife of Britain's Prince William, the former Kate Middleton, and ordered it to hand the pictures over to the royal couple.

The injunction granted to the Duke and the Duchess of Cambridge, as the couple are formally known, also prevents France's Closer magazine from selling the pictures to other media.

The court in Nanterre, near Paris, earlier opened a criminal investigation into charges that the photographer who took the shots and Closer breached the privacy of the prince and his wife.

"The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge welcome the judge's ruling," a spokeswoman for the royal couple said.

Closer will be fined 10,000 euros ($13,100) per day of delay in handing over the images, the court said in the civil ruling. The couple are also seeking damages from the weekly over its publication of the photographs in a five-page spread on Friday.

The pictures were taken while the couple were on holiday in a chateau in southern France and show the duchess slipping off her bikini top, relaxing on a sun lounger and at one point pulling down the back of her bikini bottoms.

Buckingham Palace has called the photo spread a "grotesque" invasion of the couple's privacy. The royal family want to make an example of Closer.

The pictures have rekindled memories in Britain of the media pursuit of William's mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi.

British newspapers, fighting for their reputation after a string of scandals, have agreed not to publish the images, as has the British edition of Closer, which is managed separately.

The Sun tabloid screamed: "Find Le Rat" on its front page on Tuesday and said the photographer would be found and face jail.

The court said police would investigate whether there were grounds for criminal charges against Closer and its publisher, Italy's Mondadori, and the photographer.

On Monday, the publisher of tabloid The Irish Daily Star suspended its editor after the newspaper broke ranks with Irish and British peers, publishing pages from Closer with the photographs in its Saturday edition.

Italian gossip magazine Chi, also published by Mondadori, printed a 26-page special edition dedicated to the pictures on Monday. (Reuters)

Woman takes command of ISS after crew members’ return

MOSCOW: A woman took command of the International Space Station for just the second time Monday, after three US and Russian colleagues left the orbiting space lab and landed safely in the Kazakh steppe.

The Soyuz TMA-04M capsule touched down with US astronaut Joe Acaba and the Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin aboard after deploying a huge white parachute and making a pin-point descent with helicopters tracking its progress.

NASA television footage showed the men relaxing in lounge chairs and sipping warm drinks from thermoses with smiles on their faces as medical teams checked their pulses and chatted to them about their trip.

"All three crew members are safe and adjusting to gravity," the US space programme tweeted on the official NASA website.

The three leave behind another trio led by new commander Sunita Williams -- a US space veteran who has just set a record for the longest continuous stay by a woman in space.

Williams is now in charge of a crew also comprised of Japan's Aki Hoshide and the Russian Yury Malenchenko. They are set to be joined by a new expedition on October 17. (AFP)

Italian magazine plans 26-page special on topless Kate photos

MILAN: An Italian gossip magazine plans to publish on Monday a special edition dedicated to topless pictures of the wife of Britain's Prince William, its editor said, defying risks of legal action.

The royal couple has already begun action against the French magazine Closer after it published a dozen shots of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge - the former Kate Middleton - as she slipped off her bikini top while sunbathing at a French chateaux.

Both Chi and Closer are controlled by Italian publisher Mondadori, part of the media empire of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and chaired by his daughter Marina.

Chi Editor in Chief Alfonso Signorini said the special edition would include a 26-page reportage with topless pictures of the duchess, including some unpublished shots of her vacation with Prince William, second in line to the British throne.

"This reportage is worth a special edition. It shows in a very natural way the daily life of a young and famous couple very much in love," Signorini said in an emailed statement.

"The fact that we are dealing with the future British monarchs makes it certainly more interesting and in line with a modern conception of the monarchy," Signorini said.

Chi's front page, already widely published by Italian media, shows a large shot of Kate sitting topless, above the headline "Scandal at court: the Queen is Naked."

Prince William's office said there was no justification for further publication of the photos.

"We will not be commenting on potential legal action concerning the alleged intended publication of the photos in Italy save to say that all proportionate responses will be kept under review," his office said in a statement.

"Any such publication would serve no purpose other than to cause further, entirely unjustifiable upset to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who were enjoying time alone together in the privacy of a relative's home."

Closer's pictures, already wildly circulating on the Internet, were also picked up by several foreign publications.

Greek newspaper Eleftheros Typos had two photographs of the duchess, one showing her topless, on its front page.

The pictures have reignited the debate over the privacy and freedom of the press, especially in Britain where the media face possible new regulations after a series of publishing scandals.

No British paper has published the photographs, including the Sun tabloid, the only British title to run pictures of William's brother Harry naked in a Las Vegas hotel.

"Her picture will be probably available online until the end of the earth. But it's not the end of the world," commentator Maria Laura Rodota wrote in Italy's biggest daily Corriere della Sera. (Reuters)

Two 'hot Jupiters' found in star cluster: NASA

WASHINGTON: US scientists have for the first time found proof that planets can form and survive around sun-like stars within dense star clusters, NASA said Friday.

Astronomers have spotted two Jupiter-like orbs in the Beehive Cluster, a collection of around 1,000 stars that appear to be swarming around a common center.

"This has been a big puzzle for planet hunters," said Sam Quinn, a graduate student in astronomy at Georgia State University in Atlanta and the lead author of the paper describing the results.

"We know that most stars form in clustered environments like the Orion Nebula, so unless this dense environment inhibits planet formation, at least some sun-like stars in open clusters should have planets.

"Now, we finally know they are indeed there," he added in a statement.

Unlike Jupiter, these gas giants are boiling hot, because they are orbiting close to their parent stars.

The finding left astronomers puzzled as they theorize that gaseous planets can't form too close to a star because they would evaporate away.

The leading explanation so far is that the planets form further out and then migrate inwards toward the star.

Given the relatively young age of Beehive stars, the newly discovered planets could help scientists flesh out the theory.

If the stars are young, that means the planets must be as well, which "sets a constraint on how quickly giant planets migrate inward," said Russel White, the principal investigator on the NASA Origins of Solar Systems grant that funded the study.

"Knowing how quickly they migrate is the first step to figuring out how they migrate."

The team discovered the planets, Pr0201b and Pr0211b, by using the 1.5-meter (five-foot) Tillinghast telescope at an Arizona observatory to measure the slight gravitational wobble the orbiting planets induce upon their host stars.

Scientists had previously spotted two planets around massive stars, but had not yet found any around stars like the sun at the center of our solar system. (AFP)

Deaf gerbils hear again with human stem cells

LONDON: Scientists have restored hearing to deaf gerbils using human embryonic stem cells in an advance that could eventually help people with an intractable form of deafness caused by nerve damage.

The procedure needs further animal research to assess safety and long-term effectiveness but researchers said on Wednesday the experiment was an important proof of concept, marking a further advance in the growing field of regenerative medicine.

Marcelo Rivolta from Britain's University of Sheffield, who led the research, said the first patients could receive cell therapy for hearing loss in clinical trials in "a few years".

After treating 18 gerbils with complete deafness in one ear, his team reported in the journal Nature that stem cells produced an average 46 percent recovery in hearing function, as measured by electrical signals in the animals' brains.

"If this was a human patient, it would mean going from being so deaf as to be unable to hear a lorry or truck on the street to being able to maintain a conversation," Rivolta told reporters.

"What we have shown here is functional recovery using human stem cells, which is unique."

Gerbils were selected for the test because their hearing range is similar to that of humans, while mice - the usual choice for laboratory tests - hear at higher frequencies.

The animals were deafened using a drug to destroy their auditory nerves before receiving an injection of around 50,000 human embryonic stem cells, which had previously been treated with growth factors to coax them into becoming ear cells.

The response among the gerbils varied, depending on how well the new cells were integrated into the cochlea, the spiral-shaped cavity in the inner ear.

Deafness is caused primarily by loss of sensory hair cells in the ear and auditory nerves. Since these cells are created only in the womb, there is no way to repair them once they have been damaged, resulting in permanent hearing loss.

Cochlear implants offer a partial solution to loss of hair cells but there is no treatment for nerve loss, or auditory neuropathy, which accounts for 10-15 percent of cases of profound deafness.

Rivolta said stem-cell treatment would initially address nerve damage, although it could also be used in a wider range of patients if it was used in combination with implants.

Significant uncertainties remain.

In particular, the ability of embryonic stem cells to morph into any of the other cell types in the body means they can cause tumors - something that was not seen in the 10-week gerbil study but which Rivolta said needed longer study.

Another danger is that transplanted cells may be rejected by the recipient's immune system.

The research on deafness parallels more advanced work on the eye, where stem cells have already been shown to improve vision in small-scale human tests.

Doctors hope one day to use stem cells to treat a wide range of diseases such as Parkinson's, diabetes and cancer. But localized approaches in the eye or ear may be a promising first step, since fewer cells are involved.

Ralph Holme of the charity Action on Hearing Loss, which helped fund the Sheffield research, said the work was "tremendously encouraging" and gave hope of a fix to some types of hearing loss in the future.

"For the millions of people for whom hearing loss is eroding their quality of life, this can't come soon enough," he said. (Reuters)

Tallest ever dog revealed in Guinness Book of Records

LONDON: A Great Dane who towers 2.2 metres (7 feet 4 inches) on his hind legs is named the tallest dog ever recorded in the latest Guinness Book of World Records launched on Thursday.

The giant canine from Michigan in the United States eats an entire 14-kilogram (30-pound) bag of food every day and weighs in at 70.3 kilograms, the 57th edition of the global records book says.

Measuring 1.12 metres (44 inches) from paw to withers -- the point between the shoulder blades at which the official height of a four-legged mammal is judged -- he is officially the tallest dog ever recorded, the volume claims.

'Guinness World Records 2013' says the humongous hound breaks the record of Giant George, another Great Dane who is one inch shorter.

"The most common thing people ask is: 'Is that a dog or a horse?'" says the three-year-old's owner Denise.

"We had to get a van to be able to transport him, oh, and if he steps on your foot he leaves bruises!"

The book -- the latest edition of the world's best-selling copyrighted series -- also names Oklahoma Sam, a four-year-old American Mammoth Jackstock, as the tallest living donkey on the planet.

Measuring 1.55 metres (5 feet 1 inch) from hoof to withers, she dwarfs the average common donkey (80 centimetres, 2 feet 8 inches) and the average for her own larger breed (1.22 metres, 4 feet).

The four-year-old record-breaker lives in Watsonville, California, where she shares her one acre of land with a macaw, duck, goose and four cats.

The new book, which claims to reveal "the latest and greatest records in the universe", recognises the world's shortest woman as 18-year-old Joyti Amge from the central Indian city of Nagpur.

The book bestows the title of the world's oldest gymnast to 86-year-old Johanna Quaas, born on November 20, 1925 and a regular competitor in the amateur Landes-Seniorenspiele competition in Saxony, Germany.


AFP

Argentine morgue baby leaves hospital

BUENOS AIRES: Argentina's "miracle baby," born premature and declared dead in April and then found alive 12 hours later at the morgue, has been cleared to go home, the hospital said.

Luz Milagros Veron, 'Milagros' means "miracles" in Spanish, "is stable," with a tube for feeding and respiratory assistance "to help avoid fatigue," said the director of Resistencia's pediatric hospital, Juan Mario Jacobassi.

The five-month-old left the hospital in northeastern Argentina around noon, in the arms of her mother Analia Boutet.

She remains fragile, and her care will continue at home with the help of specialized equipment installed there.

Born on April 3, some three months before her due date, Luz Milagros weighed around 780 grams (1.7 pounds).

Doctors examined her and determined she was stillborn.

But 12 hours later, when the parents went to the morgue to see the body and say goodbye, they were shocked to hear a small whimper and see the baby making small movements.

"She was all covered up and full of something that looked like frost," Bouter told the local press at the time.

The parents had planned to name the baby Lucia Abigail, but changed it to Luz Milagros after the incident.

Hundreds jailed by 'fake' bomb detectors in Thai south

YALA, Thailand: Implicated by the wand of a "bogus" bomb detector, Hassan became one of hundreds detained in Thailand's insurgency-racked south because of equipment that experts say is useless.

Scandal over the Thai army's use of the GT200 detectors has deepened rancour towards the authorities in the Muslim-majority border region, where nearly 5,300 people have died in an eight-year conflict that shows no sign of abating.

Human rights activists say more than 400 people have been locked up - some for up to two years - on the basis of spurious evidence gleaned by the device, which is at the centre of a British fraud probe.

"I was playing football at my school when someone shot at soldiers nearby," said Hassan, who was held for 29 days without charge over the 2008 incident in Yala province - a hot-bed of violence.

"The soldiers entered the school looking for the gunman. They lined us up and used the GT200. The antenna pointed to me... and they took me away," he added, asking for his identity to be withheld because he fears reprisals for speaking out over his detention.

Billed as being able to detect minute traces of explosives, gun powder and even drugs, the GT200 is the army's main detection tool.

The hand-held device, which is claimed to be powered by the user's static electricity rather than a battery, is advertised as using a substance-detecting "sensor card" inside a plastic handle to trigger a twitch of its antenna in the direction of explosives.

Evidence debunking the powers of the GT200 - sold by Britain-based Global Technical Ltd - has long been in circulation, with experts describing it as little more than a radio aerial stuck on a useless piece of plastic despite the company's claims that it can detect explosives from hundreds of metres away.

In July the man behind the GT200 was charged in Britain with "dishonestly representing" the device as "capable of detecting explosives".

Several other British businessmen are awaiting trial for selling similarly defunct equipment around the world - including to Iraq.

A Thai government probe concluded the device works only 25 percent of the time, a success rate critics attribute to nothing more than random chance.

"Tossing a coin would be more accurate," said Angkhana Neelapaijit, of the Justice for Peace foundation, which uncovered the scandal.

"People in the south knew the GT200 was fake from the first time it was used" in 2007, she said. "But the Thai authorities refused to listen... all trust in the government and army has been lost."

Thailand's highest investigating agency is now mulling legal action against Global Technical and its Thai distributors.

But the powerful military has refused to concede it was duped over its rumoured $20 million acquisition, or apologise to those held in what rights groups say is a flagrant miscarriage of justice.

Hassan said he was threatened and interrogated in detention and forced to point out friends from a school photograph.

Among them was Ayub who said he was arrested with no further evidence and held for two years before he was freed without a conviction or an apology.

"I'm so angry. They took two years away from me but I am scared it can happen again," Ayub told AFP, also asking for his identity to be protected.

He said he now carries the stigma of having been accused of links to the militants, who are believed to want greater autonomy and kill both Buddhists and Muslims in near-daily bomb or gun attacks.

The Thai army refutes accusations of arbitrary detentions based on the faulty device.

"We found real evidence - guns, weapons, grenades - that's why we arrested them," Colonel Pramote Promin, deputy spokesman for the Internal Security Operations Command said, addressing the wider issue of detentions.

"It might be a hallucination but we found (weapons) many times. It might be a fluke or coincidence that it worked," he said, adding that the effectiveness could be "something above science".

Despite his endorsement, the army appears to have stopped mass round-ups of men for "wanding" by the device, which were commonplace between 2007 and 2010, according to locals in Yala and Pattani provinces.

But soldiers still check cars and roadsides with the device, raising fears its continued use is exposing the security forces - and civilians they are supposed to protect - to greater risks.

"It's a big scandal," said Jessada Denduangboripant, a biologist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University who was one of the first Thai experts to question the device.

He is sceptical that a probe by Thailand's top investigative body will apportion blame to the "powerful people" behind the purchase of the detector.

But as long as authorities refuse to admit fault, victims will continue to be denied justice, said Kaosar Aleemama of the Muslim Attorney Centre, which represents Hassan and Ayub.

"These people have never heard someone say 'I am sorry' for taking their freedom," she added. "It is an issue of human dignity." (AFP)

Strangest Car Dashboards

What if you could have all instruments inside the steering wheel? That was the idea behind the Maserati Boomerang. It was first displayed as a non-functional model at the Turin Motor Show in 1971. By the Geneva Salon in March 1972, it had been transformed into a fully operational vehicle. Themechanics were from Maserati, the engine being the race-bred V8 of 4.7 liters, developing no less than 310 hp and good for an indicated top speed of 300 km/h. One journalist observed that it looked as though it was doing a hundred miles an hour standing still! It was then, until 1974, successively shown at the Paris, London and Barcelona motor shows and was unanimously praised for its audacity. (Link | Photo)

The Citroen Xenia Concept was introduced in 1981 and was a scale model design that never went past the concept stage. The interior was just as futuristic as the exterior, with a slew of lights and buttons in-and-around thesteering wheel. The concept was envisioned as having an automatic gearbox and plenty of glass on all four corners, offering an open-air feeling for the occupants. (Link)

The 1988 Pontiac Banshee concept car interior was a blend of 1988 and 2008: high-tech gadgetry and conveniences, but using technology that existed when the car was built. Gauges were electronic and included a 3-D head-up display. 

Remember K.I.T.T., the talking, computerized car from the old 80's TV hit,Knight Rider? Built by a dedicated fan in Toronto, the replica took over 4 years and $40k (CAD) to build. The modified 1984 Pontiac Trans Amfeatures all of the meaningless flashing lights and buttons from TV's one-and-only talking car, along with a handful of updates like LCD screens and a DVD/CD/MP3 player to keep up with the times. Just about the only thing missing is the familiar voice of William Daniels to keep you in line. (Link)

Most Inspirational Athletes With Prosthetic Limbs

USA's paralympic swimmer Jessica Long. Credit

Aimee Mullins is a brave, strong, inspirational woman. She's a paralympian athlete, actress, and model, not to mention that she's beautiful. She was born with a birth defect called Fibular Hemimelia. This basically means that she was born with no fibula bone in either of her legs. After having both of her legs amputated below the knee on her first birthday, Aimee was able to learn to walk with prosthetic legs by the time she was two, and spent her childhood doing the usual athletic activities of her peers: swimming, biking, softball, soccer, and skiing, always alongside “able-bodied” kids.

People magazine named her one of their “50 Most Beautiful People in the World” and recently she was named the new Global Brand Ambassador for L'Oreal. Credit

Kelly Cartwright competes both in running and long jump.Credit

Jeremy Campbell wanted to be the first disabled athlete to throw a discus 60 meters in competition. He'd done it many times in training, but he wanted it on the record books.Campbell first hit the mark in April in California. Then, at the BT Paralympic World Cup in Manchester, England, his throw of 62.18 meters on May 22nd set a daunting new world record — seven meters longer than his gold medal throw at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Now, Campbell is aiming for gold in the discus at the 2012 London games.

However, that's not his only goal. Campbell, 24, a Texas native who was born without a right fibula, wants to compete against able-bodied athletes in the future. He often practices with the 2-kilogram disc used in regular competition, rather than the 1.5-kilogram Paralympic disc. Credit

Most Inspirational Athletes With Prosthetic Limbs

Heroic Hugh Herr enjoys nothing more than scaling a cliff, even though both of his legs were amputated after a disastrous climbing expedition when he was a teenager. As if conquering a 200ft rock face wasn't hard enough, one of his prosthetic legs fell off during his latest climb. However, he calmly waited for it to be roped back up to him before making it to the top. Mr Herr runs a lab making bionic legs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and insists that artificial limbs are an advantage.Credit

Joe Kusumoto Photography (2010 Vancouver Paralympic Games). Credit

An inspiring Oscar Pistorius moment: though he failed to qualify for the 400-meter Olympic final, the South African runner continues to be a role model for not only amputees but many others around the world.This is an older photo, but the cute image of his "race" against a little girl with prosthetic legs like his just surfaced. Credit

Mobile phones may have more germs than toilet seats: study

Cellphones carry up to 10 times more bacteria than most toilet seats, a new study has revealed.

Experts said the reason is that phones are often passed between people which spreads the germs around - but they are never cleaned which means the diseases keep on building up.

Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, said during his ongoing experiments he has found that bugs get onto a phone because it is so close to our hands and mouths.

When somebody lets a friend or a stranger use their mobile their bacteria easily gets onto the device too.

Professor Gerba added that because mobiles are electronic some people are reticent about cleaning them, the Daily Mail reported.

While toilets tend to get cleaned frequently, because people associate the bathroom with germs, cellphones and other commonly handled objects - like remote controls - are often left out of the cleaning routine.

France's oldest woman dies at 112

MARSEILLE: Paule Bronzini, France's oldest woman, has died at the age of 112, her retirement home announced on Wednesday.

Bronzini, who celebrated her 112th birthday on July 7, died overnight. She leaves five children, 12 grandchildren, 28 great-grandchildren and 16 great-great-grandchildren.

A former housewife who had been a widow since 1967, Bronzini had become the oldest living Frenchwoman in June following the death of Marie-Therese Bardet one week after her 114th birthday.

Italian-born American Besse Cooper, 115, is the oldest woman in the world, according to the US-based Gerontology Research Group (GRG), which compiles birth certificates of people aged over 110 years.

The GRG lists cover the Americas, Europe, Australia and Japan, but do not include Russia, China or African states. (AFP)