WIKILEAKS has been taken offline after its domain host EveryDNS.net terminated the whistleblower website's account.
"WikiLeaks.org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks," WikiLeaks tweeted, after its website went offline for the third time in a week.

EveryDNS.net said in a statement on its website it had terminated services to WikiLeaks, which it had hosted for four years.

"EveryDNS.net provided domain name system (DNS) services to the wikileaks.org domain name until 10pm EST, December 2, 2010, when such services were terminated."

It did not give any reasons for the termination, which comes amid massive controversy for WikiLeaks. On Sunday it began releasing 250,000 US diplomatic cables in its biggest leak so far, angering leaders across the globe.

WikiLeaks will now need to register wikileaks.org - which it owns until 2018 - with another domain host in order to get its site up and running again.

The outage came after Amazon.com Inc. announced yesterday it would no longer host WikiLeaks from its web servers because the site violated its terms of service.

The latest development comes the law closes in on Julian Assange.

Swedish authorities won a court ruling yesterday in their bid to arrest the WikiLeaks founder for questioning in a rape case, British intelligence is said to know where in England he's hiding, and US pundits and politicians are demanding he be hunted down or worse.

Sweden's Supreme Court upheld an order to detain him - a move that could lead to his extradition.

Earlier, posts on WikiLeaks' website detailed a host of embarrassing disclosures, including allegations that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accepted kickbacks and a deeply unflattering assessment of Turkmenistan's president.

Assange is accused in Sweden of rape, sexual molestation and coercion in a case from August, and Swedish officials have alerted Interpol and issued a European arrest warrant to bring him in for questioning.

The 39-year-old Australian denies the charges, which his lawyer, Mark Stephens, said apparently stemmed from a "dispute over consensual but unprotected sex". Mr Stephens said the case is turning into an exercise in persecution.

While Assange has not made a public appearance for nearly a month, his lawyer insisted authorities know where to find him.

"Both the British and the Swedish authorities know how to contact him, and the security services know exactly where he is," Mr Stephens said.

It was unclear if or when police would act on Sweden's demands. Police there acknowledged yesterday they would have to refile their European arrest warrant after British authorities asked for more details on the maximum penalties for the three crimes.

Scotland Yard declined comment, as did the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, responsible for processing European arrest warrants for suspects in England, where The Guardian claims Assange is hiding out.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/wikileaks-offline-after-domain-killed/story-e6frfro0-1225965338553#ixzz172PgZwuE

London: Full-body airport scanners are just as likely to kill you as a terrorist's bomb blasting your plane in the sky.

The controversial machines that have been brought in at major airports across the globe are evoking fears that the increased exposure to radiation may cause cancer.

Now a physics professor has claimed that scanners are redundant because you are just as likely to contract cancer from the radiation as you are to die in a terrorist bomb on your flight.

Peter Rez from Arizona State University in the US said the probability of dying from radiation from a body scanner and that of being killed in a terror attack are both about one in 30 million, reports the Daily Mail.

"The thing that worries me the most is not what happens if the machine works as advertised, but what happens if it doesn't. A potential malfunction could increase the radiation dose," he said.

Rez has studied the radiation doses of backscatter scanners using the images produced by the machines. He discovered the radiation dose was often higher than the manufacturers claimed.

Rez suggested the statistical coincidence means there is really no case to be made for deploying any kind of body-scanning machine -- the risk is identical.

Critics say the low level beam used delivers a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin -- one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body, that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.

A number of scientists have already written to the Food and Drug Administration to complain that the safety aspects have not been properly addressed before the nationwide rollout of the scanners.

Biochemist John Sedat from the University of California and his colleagues said that most of the energy from the scanners is delivered to the skin and underlying tissues.

"While the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high," they wrote.

Istanbul: About a week ago, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared to the United Nations that most people in the world believe the United States was behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

To many people in the West, the statement was ludicrous, almost laughable if it weren't so incendiary. And surveys show that a majority of the world does not in fact believe that the US orchestrated the attacks.

However, the belief persists strongly among a minority, even with US allies like Turkey or in the US itself. And it cannot be dismissed because it reflects a gulf in politics and perception, especially between the West and many Muslims.

"That theory might be true," said Ugur Tezer, a 48-year-old businessman who sells floor tiles in the Turkish capital, Ankara. "When I first heard about the attack I thought, 'Osama,' but then I thought the US might have done it to suppress the rise of Muslims."

Compassion for the United States swept the globe right after the attacks, but conspiracy theories were circulating even then. It wasn't al Qaeda, they said, but the United States or Israel that downed the towers. Weeks after the strikes, at the United Nations, the then US President George W Bush urged the world not to tolerate "outrageous conspiracy theories" that deflected blame from the culprits.

However, the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan provided fodder for the damning claim that the US killed its own citizens, supposedly to justify military action in the Middle East and to protect Israel. A 2006 survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that significant majorities in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Turkey — all among the most moderate nations in the Islamic world — said they did not believe Arabs carried out the attacks.

Two years later, a poll of 17 nations by WorldPublicOpinion.org, an international research project, found majorities in nine of them believed al Qaeda was behind the attacks. However, the US government was blamed by 36 percent of Turks and 27 percent of Palestinians.

Such beliefs have currency even in the United States. In 2006, a Scripps Howard poll of 1,010 Americans found 36 percent thought it somewhat or very likely that US officials either participated in the attacks or took no action to stop them.

Those who say the attacks might have been an "inside job" usually share antipathy toward the US government, and often a maverick sensibility. Besides Ahmadinejad, high-profile doubters include Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Former Minnesota governor and pro wrestler Jesse Ventura has questioned the official account. Conspiracy theorists have heckled former US president Bill Clinton and other prominent Americans during speeches.

Controversy over US actions and policies, including the widely discredited assertions that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, reinforced the perceptions of conspiracy theorists. Iranians dug deeper into history, recalling the US-backed coup in their country in 1953.

"Initially, I was doubtful about the conspiracy theories. But after seeing the events in later years, I don't have any doubt that it was their own operation to find a pretext to hit Muslim countries," said Shaikh Mushtaq Ahmed, a 58-year-old operations manager in a bank in Pakistan. "It's not a strange thing that they staged something like this in their own country to achieve a big objective."

In March, an editorial in The Washington Post harshly criticised Yukihisa Fujita, a lawmaker with the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, for saying in an interview that some of the September 11 hijackers were alive and that shadowy forces with advance information about the plot played the stock market for profit. Fujita said the article contained factual errors.

The record shows that al Qaeda agents on a suicide mission hijacked four American passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Centre towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people. The evidence is immense: witness accounts, audio recordings, video and photographic documentation, exhaustive investigations and claims of responsibility by al Qaeda.

Yet every fact and official assertion only feeds into alternative views that become amplified on the Internet, some tinged with anti-Semitism because of the close US-Israeli alliance. They theorise that a knowing US government stood by as the plot unfolded, or that controlled demolitions destroyed the Twin Towers, and the Pentagon was hit by a missile.

"All this, of course, would require hundreds if not thousands of people to be in on the plot. It speaks volumes for the determination to believe something," said David Aaronovitch, the British author of 'Voodoo Histories: the role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History'.

"This kind of theory really does have a big impact in the Middle East," he said. "It gets in the way of thinking seriously about the problems in the area and what should be done."

A US State Department website devotes space to debunking conspiracy theories about September 11, in the apparent belief that the allegations must be addressed forcefully rather than dismissed out of hand as the ruminations of a fringe group.

"Conspiracy theories exist in the realm of myth, where imaginations run wild, fears trump facts, and evidence is ignored. As a superpower, the United States is often cast as a villain in these dramas," the site says.

Tod Fletcher of Petaluma, California, has worked as an assistant to David Ray Griffin, a retired theology professor, on books that question the September 11 record. He was cautious about the Iranian president's comments about conspiracy theories, suggesting Ahmadinejad may have been politically motivated by his enmity with the US government.

"It seems like it's the sort of thing that could lead to further vilification of people who criticise the official account here in the United States," Fletcher said.

Bureau Report Zee News

Hyderabad, September 24

Reflecting the country’s growing economic prowess, India’s wealth generation has outpaced the global average by nearly four times. The individual wealth in India now stands at Rs 73 lakh crore and it is estimated to double over the next three years to touch Rs 144 lakh crore.

This means that the quantum of wealth earned and inherited by individuals in the past 62 years of Independence India will be doubled in the next three years. In what is billed as India’s first-ever Wealth Report, Karvy Private Wealth, the wealth management arm of Hyderabad-based financial services company Karvy Group, has said the individual wealth in the country was growing at a whopping 26 per cent as against the world average of 5.6 per cent.

“The wealth of the High Net worth Individuals (HNIs) across the globe is estimated to grow from USD 39 trillion in 2009 to USD 48.5 trillion by 2013, reflecting a growth rate of 5.6 per cent. The wealth held by individuals in India will almost double over the next three years from the present Rs 73 lakh crore,” the Wealth Report-2010 said.

Analysing trends in Indian investment scenario across all available asset classes, the report predicted rise in Indian investors’ appetite for risk-taking, manifold growth in equity investments and alternate asset class investments. The study considered asset classes like equity holding, bank deposits and debts and excluded assets like real estate and gold.

It pointed out that most of the individual wealth in the country is in the form of debt assets, which account for over 65 per cent of the total wealth at Rs 48.12 lakh crore, followed by equities at Rs 24.76 lakh crore (33.9 per cent).

Insurance investments comprise 14.3 per cent of the asset class, followed by savings bank deposits 9.2 per cent, small savings 7.1 per cent, PF 3.9 per cent and mutual funds 3.8 per cent. The report said Indians are currently under-invested in alternative assets, including private equity funds, real estate, real estate funds and real estate investment trusts.

Only 0.3 per cent of the wealth of Indian HNIs is in alternative assets as compared to 7 per cent globally. The report predicted an increase in alternative asset holding to 1 per cent in the next three years.

The investment trend is expected to undergo changes over next three years. The asset distribution will be redistributed, providing greater balance between debt and equities. The equity based asset classes will form 42.9 per cent of individual wealth by 2012-13. While investments in debt would increase by 20 per cent year-on-year in volume terms, its overall proportion would reduce from the present 65 to 56 per cent during the period. The shift could be due to reasons like a promising GDP growth, better understanding of newer and better investment avenues and a large young, educated population, the report said.

Broadly, individuals would remain invested in the same debt instruments as they are currently invested in. However, growth in small savings will become limited.

The Tribune 24/09/2010

London: Imagine searching the Internet simply by thinking. Well, your imagination may soon turn into reality, say scientists who claim to be developing a computer which reads human minds.

A team at Intel Corporation is working on a new technology which will directly interpret words as they are thought, unlike current brain-controlled computers which require users to imagine making physical movements to control a cursor on a screen.

In fact, the scientists are creating detailed maps of the activity in the brain for individual words which can then be matched against the brain activity of someone using the computer, allowing the machine to determine the word they are thinking, 'The Daily Telegraph' reported.

Preliminary tests of the system have shown that the computer can work out words by looking at similar brain patterns and looking for key differences that suggest what the word might be.

Dean Pomerleau, a senior researcher at Intel Laboratories, said that currently, the devices required to get sufficient detail of brain activity were bulky, expensive magnetic resonance scanners, like those used in hospitals.

"The computer uses a form of 20 questions to narrow down what the word is. So a noun with a physical property such as spade, which you dig with, produces activity in the motor cortex of the brain, as this is the area that controls physical movements.

"A food related word like apple, however, produces activity in those parts of the brain related to hunger. So the computer can infer attributes to each word being thought about and this lets the computer zero down on what the word is pretty quickly.

"We are currently mapping out the activity that an average brain produces when thinking about different words. It means you'll be able to write letters, open emails or do Google searches just by thinking," Pomerleau said.

Added Justin Ratner, director of Intel Laboratories and the company's Chief Technology Officer: "Mind reading is the ultimate user interface. There will be concerns about privacy with this sort of thing and we will overcome them.

"What is clear though is that humans are not restricted any more to just using keyboards and mice."

PTI

Seoul: North Korea on Saturday threatened to wage a nuclear "holy war of retaliation" if the US and South Korea proceed with joint military exercises on Sunday.
The country's army and population will "legitimately counter with their powerful nuclear deterrence", the National Defence Commission - the highest decision-making body in the country - said in a statement released by state media.

The commission insinuated that the US-South Korean exercises amount to training for a nuclear war.

North Korea has routinely threatened to deploy nuclear weapons in the past, for instance last February as the US and South Korea prepared for their annual joint military exercise.
The additional naval and air force exercises, formally announced Wednesday while US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defence Secretary Robert Gates were in Seoul, are meant to deter North Korea's "aggressive" behaviour in the conflict over the March sinking of a South Korean warship, which Seoul blames on Pyongyang.

The US Navy is capable of defending itself and "clearly it would be very unwise for North Korea to challenge these forces", a State Department spokesman said.

The four-day manoeuvre in the Sea of Japan is scheduled to start Sunday. According to information from the US, some 8,000 military personnel from both countries will participate, along with 200 planes and 20 ships - including the aircraft carrier USS George Washington.
North Korea's nuclear threat came one day after a spokesman for the country's delegation said on the sidelines of an Asian security forum that it would physically respond to the exercises.
The South Korean armed forces have intensified their surveillance of the border between the two countries, the Yonhap news agency reported. But there had yet to be any unusual movements on the North Korean side.
"The army and the population of the People's Republic will if necessary start at any time a holy war of retaliation, based on nuclear deterrence," Pyongyang warned Saturday.

All manoeuvres by the US and South Korea are "nothing but outright provocations, with which the People's Republic is to be in every way crushed through force", it added.

The Foreign Ministry in Pyongyang also warned the US against new sanctions. A statement said North Korea would expand its nuclear deterrent and resort to "strong physical measures" in response.

While in Seoul, Clinton had announced the tightening of sanctions against the Stalinist state. The move is mainly meant to block financial support for North Korean nuclear-weapon and missile programmes.

The tensions on the Korean Peninsula have drastically increased since the sinking of the South Korean warship, in which 46 sailors died. North Korea has repeatedly denied any involvement.

IANS

SCIENTISTS are celebrating the discovery of more than 700 suspected new planets - including up to 140 similar in size to Earth - in just six weeks of using a powerful new space observatory.
Early results from NASA’s Kepler Mission, a small satellite observing deep space, suggested planets like Earth were far more common than previously thought.

Past discoveries suggested most planets outside our solar system were gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn - but the new evidence tipped the balance in favour of solid worlds.

Astronomers said the discovery meant the chances of eventually finding truly Earth-like planets capable of sustaining life rose sharply.

NASA so far formally announced only five new exoplanets - those outside our solar system - from the mission because its scientists were still analysing Kepler’s finds to confirm they were actually planets.

“The figures suggest our galaxy, the Milky Way (which has more than 100 billion stars) will contain 100 million habitable planets and soon we will be identifying the first of them,” Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astronomy at Harvard University and a scientist on the Kepler Mission said.

"There is a lot more work we need to do with this, but the statistical result is loud and clear and it is that planets like our own Earth are out there."

Picture: NASA/Jon Lomberg
News.com.au

New York:  For the first time, a vaginal gel has proved capable of blocking the AIDS virus. It cut in half a woman's chances of getting HIV from an infected partner in a study in South Africa. Scientists called it a breakthrough in the long quest for a tool to help women whose partners won't use condoms.

The results need to be confirmed in another study, and that level of protection is probably not enough to win approval of the microbicide gel in countries like the United States, researchers say. But they are optimistic it can be improved.

"We are giving hope to women," who account for most new HIV infections, said Michel Sidibe in a statement. He is executive director of the World Health Organization's UNAIDS program. A gel could "help us break the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic," he said.

And Dr Anthony Fauci of the US National Institutes of Health said, "It's the first time we've ever seen any microbicide give a positive result" that scientists agree is true evidence of protection.

Associated Press

 Acute poverty prevails in eight Indian states, including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, together accounting for more poor people than in the 26 poorest African nations combined, a new 'multidimensional' measure of global poverty has said.

The new measure, called the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), was developed and applied by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative with UNDP support.

It will be featured in the forthcoming 20 th anniversary edition of the UNDP Human Development Report.

An analysis by MPI creators reveals that there are more 'MPI poor' people in eight Indian states (421 million in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal) than in the 26 poorest African countries combined (410 million).


The new poverty measure that gives a multidimensional picture of people living in poverty, and is expected to help target development resources more effectively, its creators said.

The MPI supplants the Human Poverty Index, which had been included in the annual Human Development Reports since 1997.

The 2010 UNDP Human Development Report will be published in late October, but research findings from the Multidimensional Poverty Index were made available today at a policy forum in London and on line on the websites of OPHI and the UNDP Human Development Report.

The MPI assesses a range of critical factors or 'deprivations' at the household level: from education to
health outcomes to assets and services.

Taken together, these factors provide a fuller portrait of acute poverty than simple income measures, according to OPHI and UNDP.

The measure reveals the nature and extent of poverty at different levels: from household up to regional, national and international level.

This new multidimensional approach to assessing poverty has been adapted for national use in Mexico, and is now being considered by Chile and Colombia.

"The MPI is like a high resolution lens which reveals a vivid spectrum of challenges facing the poorest households," said OPHI Director Dr Sabina Alkire, who created the MPI with Professor James Foster of George Washington University and Maria Emma Santos of OPHI.

The UNDP Human Development Report Office is also joining forces with OPHI to promote international discussions on the practical applicability of this multidimensional approach to measuring poverty.

Photograph: Arko Datta/Reuters
PTI

TEHRAN: Iran has submitted "evidence" to the Swiss embassy that its nuclear scientist was abducted by US intelligence agents, the English language Press TV website reported on Sunday.

"The evidence related to the abduction of Shahram Amiri by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) has been handed over to the Swiss embassy in Tehran," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanaparast was quoted as saying.

The Swiss embassy manages US interests in Iran since Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic ties.

"We expect that based on the US administration's obligations... the US authorities will announce the results of their investigation regarding this Iranian national," Mehmanaparast said.

Iranian officials have long maintained that Amiri was kidnapped by US agents from Saudi Arabia last year.

On June 29, Iranian television had screened a video of a man claiming to be Amiri and saying that he had managed to escape from the hands of US intelligence agents in Virginia.

"I could be re-arrested at any time by US agents... I am not free and I'm not allowed to contact my family. If something happens and I do not return home alive, the US government will be responsible," he said.

"I ask Iranian officials and organisations that defend human rights to raise pressure on the US government for my release and return to my country," the man said, adding he has not "betrayed" Iran.

A US official on Tuesday dismissed the allegations in the Iranian broadcast. Amiri disappeared in June 2009 after arriving in Saudi Arabia for a pilgrimage. Iran accused US agents of abducting him with the help of Saudi intelligence services.

ABC news in the United States reported in March that Amiri had defected and was working with the CIA. US officials have rejected these allegations.

AFP

Microsoft chief Bill Gates and Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi arrived in Jais on Tuesday for a day-long visit aimed at giving the global philanthropist a glimpse of social development work in the two 'Gandhi constituencies' of Rae Bareli and Amethi.

While Rae Bareli is Congress president Sonia Gandhi's parliamentary constituency, her son Rahul represents Amethi.

Gates and Rahul Gandhi, both dressed in white, flew in a chartered aircraft from New Delhi and landed at the Indira Gandhi Flying Academy in Fursatganj town, in Rae Bareli.

They drove down to Jais, named after famous Sufi poet Malik Mohammad Jaisi, where Gates, accompanied by an entourage of eight, and Gandhi visited the Rajiv Gandhi Women's Training Centre run by the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust.

There was heavy security as the group interacted with about 300 women actively associated with the women's self help groups formed here with Gandhi's personal initiative.

Women involved with different NGOs funded by the charitable trust gathered at the training centre well before the arrival of the VVIPs.

While Gandhi and Gates were driven inside the tall gates at the centre, the rest of their entourage followed them on foot after disembarking outside.

More than 100 police personnel were detailed to provide security cover from outside while Gandhi and Gates also had their own personal guards to maintain the inner ring around them.

Gandhi, who chose to keep the Gates visit a closely guarded secret, completely shunned the media as well as party workers. Even state Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi learnt about the visit through the media.

Local Congress leaders said Gandhi will also take Gates to a village in his constituency Amethi where a similar self-help group activity is to be showcased before the Microsoft boss. They will also visit a health camp run by the Rajiv Gandhi trust.

Gates and Gandhi then drove down to Amethi. They will fly back to New Delhi later in the afternoon after the Congress MP's condolence visit to the residence of a Congress worker who was murdered recently.

Press Trust of India

The sea which has shrunk by 90 per cent has ruined the once-robust fishing economy and left fishing trawlers stranded in sandy wasterlands. The sea shrank largely due to a Soviet project to boost cottong production in the arid region.

Its evaporation has left layers of highly salted sand, which winds can carry as far away as Scandinavia and Japan, and which plague local people with health troubles.

Ban Ki-Moon toured the sea by helicopter as part of a visit to the five countries of former Soviet Central Asia. His trip included a touchdown in Muynak, Uzbekistan, a town once on the shore where a pier stretches eerily over gray desert and camels stand near the hulks of stranded ships.

"On the pier, I wasn't seeing anything, I could see only a graveyard of ships," he said after arriving in the city of Nukus, the capital of the autonomous Karakalpak region.

"It is clearly one of the worst disasters, environmental disasters of the world. I was so shocked," he said.

The Aral Sea catastrophe is one of Ban's top concerns on his six-day trip through the region and he is calling on the countries' leaders to set aside rivalries to cooperate on repairing some of the damage.

"I urge all the leaders ... to sit down together and try to find the solutions," he said, promising United Nations support.

However, cooperation is hampered by disagreements over who has rights to scarce water and how it should be used.

In a presentation to Ban before his flyover, Uzbek officials complained that dam projects in Tajikistan will severely reduce the amount of water flowing into Uzbekistan. Impoverished Tajikistan sees the hydroelectric projects as potential key revenue earners.

Competition for water could become increasingly heated as global warming and rising populations further reduce the amount of water available per capita.

AP/ Telegraph

China has confirmed it carried out a test that destroyed a satellite, in a move that caused international alarm.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said a test had been carried out but insisted China was committed to the "peaceful development of outer space".

The US backed reports last week that China had used a ground-based medium-range ballistic missile to destroy a weather satellite.

A senior Taiwanese politician said he viewed it as an aggressive act.

It is the first known satellite intercept test for more than 20 years.

Several countries, including Japan, Australia and the US, have expressed concern at the test, amid worries it could trigger a space arms race.

Until Tuesday, China had refused to confirm or deny the 11 January test.


International concern

Liu Jianchao told reporters that China had notified "other parties and... the American side" of its test.

"But China stresses that it has consistently advocated the peaceful development of outer space and it opposes the arming of space and military competition in space," he told a news conference.

"China has never, and will never, participate in any form of space arms race."

However, Dr Joseph Wu, head of the body responsible for Taiwan's relations with China, viewed it differently.

"This is an aggressive act by the Chinese side," he told the BBC on a visit to Japan.

"I don't think it's just limited to Taiwan only but of course... Taiwan stands out to be the first country that might have to suffer if a future conflict were to erupt between China and some other countries."

China sees Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to use force if the island ever moved to declare formal independence.

The US, which is committed to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons, supports the status quo.

US spy satellites watch over the Taiwan Straits, and coordinating any defence against a possible Chinese invasion would be made much harder if those spy satellites were destroyed.

The never-ending city

A space enthusiast has taken spectacular images of the Earth's surface from space - using a standard digital camera taped to a helium balloon.

A mother and her baby have won their battle for survival after she became critically ill with swine flu when six months pregnant.