Women who want to prevent weight gain

By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY

Women who want to prevent weight gain as they age should hop on a bike or take a brisk walk, a new study shows.
The findings add to mounting evidence of the importance of moderate to vigorous exercise for weight control.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston analyzed data on more than 18,000 premenopausal women in the Nurses Health Study, an ongoing research project that began in 1989.

The women completed questionnaires on their medical, exercise and living habits.
According to findings from the study, reported in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, the women overall gained an average of 20½ pounds over 16 years. But those who regularly biked or walked briskly were less likely to gain as much.

"This research shows that both brisk walking and biking can help prevent weight gain," says Anne Lusk, a research fellow at Harvard School of Public Health. But slow walking doesn't keep weight in check, she says. Women need to step it up — or bike, which may be more comfortable for them, she says. Other research shows that men benefit, too, from those types of exercise, she says.
Anne McTiernan, director of the Prevention Center at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, has shown in her research that women who do exercise such as walking or biking for two to four hours a week during weight-loss efforts lose an extra 3 to 5 pounds over a year.

Indian students in Australia may be forced to return

New Delhi, June 28 (IANS) Around 15,000 Indian students in Australia could be forced to return home under a revised skills list that is set to become the mandate for visas and permanent residency to that country from July 1. Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi has urged Canberra to exempt existing students from the new list.

Australia has slashed the existing Skilled Occupations List (SOL) from 400 skills to just 181 for vocational courses and jobs, which are prerequisites to acquire permanent resident status and student visas.

Ravi, who visited Australia recently and raised the issue, is confident the Australian government will not turn down his plea, though he said it hasn't committed to his request to exempt the existing students from the new skills list in order to let them finish with their courses and for permanent residency.

'I asked the Australian ministers to implement the list prospectively and not retrospectively... I have asked them to give our students two and a half years' time to find a sponsor and employment,' Ravi told IANS, after returning from a week-long trip to Australia where he met Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, Trade Minister Simon Crean and Immigration and Citizenship Minister Chris Evans.

Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) Joint Secretary G. Gurucharan told IANS that 60 percent of the Indian students will not be affected by the revised list, and of the remaining, 30 percent will be given a transition period of two and a half years to either find a job or sponsor to acquire permanent resident status.

He said those in trouble are the remaining 10 percent, or around 10,000 students, who arrived in Australia on student visas with neither vocational nor language skills only intending to pick up jobs and secure permanent residency.

However, Ravi is confident that the authorities will not let down the students. He said: 'I am confident and hopeful that Australia will not disappoint our students though they have not committed to us on anything... They will look into the matter.'

Gurucharan said the ministry had reasoned with the Australian authorities that despite prior knowledge that these students lacked vocational and language skills, Australia had issued them student visas and so now they cannot be forced to leave.

'But they also had a good argument in their favour that when they gave these students visas, it was only a student visa and so under the new list they cannot be given permanent resident status. But still the minister (Ravi) spoke on their behalf to the Australian authorities and we are hopeful,' he added.

Also affected by the new SOL are at least 5,000 other students. They were hit when the Australian government ordered closure of 34 of its privately-run institutes in the last few months for failing to meet the laid down standards. Many more institutes are expected to follow suit.

The High Commission of India in Australia had early this year warned students planning higher studies in that country of the existence of several sub-standard institutions which do not meet the standards set by the Australian federal and state governments.

The state government in Victoria is currently auditing 41 privately-run educational colleges. Further, the federal government has mandated that all education providers and institutions delivering to international students need to re-register by Dec 31, 2010, so that the government can ensure they meet the mandated standards.

During his visit, Ravi also held talks with the Victoria Premier John Brumby and asked him to take initiatives to help the Indian students continue with their courses in recognised institutes without being affected by the new list and also help them find employment under the state-sponsored immigration policy.

Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara

On October 13, 2000, a small team of paleontologists led by Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago clambered out of three battered Land Rovers, filled their water bottles, and scattered on foot across the toffee-colored sands of the Ténéré desert in northern Niger. The Ténéré, on the southern flank of the Sahara, easily ranks among the most desolate landscapes on Earth. The Tuareg, turbaned nomads who for centuries have ruled this barren realm, refer to it as a "desert within a desert"—a California-size ocean of sand and rock, where a single massive dune might stretch a hundred miles, and the combination of 120-degree heat and inexorable winds can wick the water from a human body in less than a day. The harsh conditions, combined with intermittent conflict between the Tuareg and the Niger government, have kept the region largely unexplored.

Sereno, a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence and one of the world's most prolific dinosaur hunters, had led his first expedition into the Ténéré five years earlier, after negotiating agreements with both the leader of a Tuareg rebel force and the Niger Ministry of Defense, allowing him safe passage to explore its fossil-rich deposits. That initial foray was followed by others, and each time his team emerged from the desert with the remains of exotic species, including Nigersaurus, a 500-toothed plant-eating dinosaur, and Sarcosuchus, an extinct crocodilian the size of a city bus. The 2000 expedition, however, was his most ambitious—three months scouring a 300-mile arc of the Ténéré, ending near Agadez, a medieval caravan town on the western lip of the desert. Already, his team members had excavated 20 tons of dinosaur bones and other prehistoric animals. But six weeks of hard labor in this brutal environment had worn them down. Most had mild cases of dysentery; several had lost so much weight they had to hitch up their trousers as they trudged over the soft sand; and everyone's nerves had been on edge since an encounter with armed bandits.
Mike Hettwer, a photographer accompanying the team, headed off by himself toward a trio of small dunes. He crested the first slope and stared in amazement. The dunes were spilling over with bones. He took a few shots with his digital camera and hurried back to the Land Rovers.

"I found some bones," Hettwer said, when the team had regrouped. "But they're not dinosaurs. They're human."

First Working Replacement Lung Created in Lab

For the first time scientists have reconstructed working lungs in the lab and transplanted them into a living animal.

The achievement is a breakthrough in biomedical engineering that could lead to replacement lungs for humans in the near future, experts say.

Currently, the only way to replace diseased lungs in adults is a lung transplant, a high-risk procedure that's vulnerable to tissue rejection.

In a new study, researchers took lungs from a living rat and used detergents to remove lung cells and blood vessels, revealing the organ's underlying matrix.

This lung "skeleton"—made of flexible proteins, sugars, and other chemicals—consists of a branching network that divides more than 20 times into smaller and smaller structures. (See an interactive graphic of lung structure.)

The researchers placed these "decellularized" lungs into a bioreactor, a machine filled with a slurry containing different types of lung cells extracted from rat fetuses.

(Related: "Scientists Grow Lung Cells From Stem Cells.")

Within several days, the fetal cells naturally attached to the lung matrix and formed a functional lung.

"By and large, the correct subsets of cells went to their correct anatomical locations," explained study leader Laura Niklason, a biomedical engineer at Yale University. "It appears that the lung matrix has cues, or 'zip codes,' that tell the cells where to land."

When the team implanted the engineered lungs into an adult rat for short periods of time—between 45 minutes and two hours—the lungs exchanged oxygen and carbon dioxide in the same way as natural lungs.

"Leap Forward"

By using a natural lung matrix, Niklason's team has avoided one of the biggest hurdles of lung-regeneration attempts—finding a suitable "scaffold" for lung cells to attach to.

Because manufacturing techniques cannot yet replicate nature's complex design, attempts to create synthetic scaffolds have been unsuccessful.

Niklason spent several years trying to create a synthetic lung scaffold, but in the end concluded it was too difficult.

"I decided I couldn't do it, and probably nobody else could either," she said.

The new research represents a "real leap forward" in lung regeneration, said Peter Lelkes, a biomedical engineer at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

"People have engineered organs such as bone and cartilage before, but by comparison to the lung, these are all kids' games," added Lelkes, who was not involved with the study.

Stem Cell Hurdle

Niklason estimates it will be about 20 to 25 years before her team's technique can be used in humans.

That's because a few technical and scientific challenges remain.

Chief among these is finding ways of creating stem cells—which can transform into any other type of cell—from patients with lung disease. No techniques currently exist for creating such cells, which would carry no risk of immune rejection.

(Related: "Liposuction Fat Turned Into Stem Cells, Study Says.")

"The stem cell issue," Niklason said, "is really the big fundamental scientific hurdle."

The research is detailed in this week's issue of the journal Science

Jumbo Jellyfish or Massive Star?

Jumbo Jellyfish or Massive Star?06.17.10 A cloud of material shed by a massive star can be seen in red in this new image from WISE. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
› Full image
› View image gallery Some might see a blood-red jellyfish in a forest of seaweed, while others might see a big, red eye or a pair of lips. In fact, the red-colored object in this new infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is a sphere of stellar innards, blown out from a humongous star.

The star (white dot in center of red ring) is one of the most massive stellar residents of our Milky Way galaxy. Objects like this are called Wolf-Rayet stars, after the astronomers who found the first few, and they make our sun look puny by comparison. Called V385 Carinae, this star is 35 times as massive as our sun, with a diameter nearly 18 times as large. It's hotter, too, and shines with more than one million times the amount of light.

Fiery candles like this burn out quickly, leading short lives of only a few million years. As they age, they blow out more and more of the heavier atoms cooking inside them -- atoms such as oxygen that are needed for life as we know it.

The material is puffed out into clouds like the one that glows brightly in this WISE image. In this case, the hollow sphere showed up prominently only at the longest of four infrared wavelengths detected by WISE. Astronomers speculate this infrared light comes from oxygen atoms, which have been stripped of some of their electrons by ultraviolet radiation from the star. When the electrons join up again with the oxygen atoms, light is produced that WISE can detect with its 22-micron infrared light detector. The process is similar to what happens in fluorescent light bulbs.

Infrared light detected by WISE at 12 microns is colored green, while 3.4- and 4.6-micron light is blue. The green, kelp-looking material is warm dust, and the blue dots are stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

This image mosaic is made up of about 300 overlapping frames, taken as WISE continues its survey of the entire sky -- an expansive search, sure to turn up more fascinating creatures swimming in our cosmic ocean.

V385 Carinae is located in the Carina constellation, about 16,000 light-years from Earth.

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu.

Students Design Futuristic Flying Rescue Vehicles

WASHINGTON -- A rotorcraft that resembles a catamaran has taken the top prize in a NASA aeronautics competition for college students to develop a multi-purpose aircraft.

The entry by ten students at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., met the competition's challenge to design a civilian aircraft that could rescue up to 50 survivors in the event of a natural disaster, hover to help rescue missions, land on ground or water, travel 920 miles and cruise at speeds up to 345 miles an hour. The amphibious tilt-rotor vehicle also had to be able to fight fires by siphoning water into an internal tank, then dumping it after airborne.

NASA's Aeronautics Mission Directorate in Washington sponsored the competition through
the Subsonic Rotary Wing Project in its Fundamental Aeronautics Program.

More than 100 college students from the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Canada, Poland, China and Nigeria entered the contest in teams or as individuals.

Susan Gorton, principal investigator of the Subsonic Rotary Wing Project, led the review panel. "The designs were creative, innovative and looked at many issues in detail," she said. "Reading the student papers highlighted how many bright young engineers are interested in the future of rotary wing vehicles. I certainly hope some of them decide to work with NASA as a career choice."

Ten Virginia Tech undergraduates came up with the winning design-- a twin-hulled vehicle with a large prop-rotor flanking each hull. A team of 10 graduate students from Georgia Tech in Atlanta and the University of Liverpool in England took second place, and 28 undergraduates from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville placed third.

NASA sponsored the design contest to interest students in aeronautics and engineering careers. Each winning U.S. team received a cash award and an engraved trophy through a NASA education grant and cooperative agreement. Cash awards ranged from $5,000 for first place to $3,000 for third place. Five of the students from the top U.S. teams also won paid summer internships at NASA.

To read more about the competition and see some of the rotorcraft designs, visit:


http://www.aeronautics.nasa.gov/competition_winners2010_college.htm


The next student aeronautics competition will focus on green aviation. For more information, visit:


http://aero.larc.nasa.gov/competitions.htm

Pope Benedict XVI begged forgiveness - Friday

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI begged forgiveness Friday from clerical abuse victims for the sins of priests and promised to "do everything possible" to ensure prelates don't rape or molest children ever again.
Benedict's pledge was similar to comments he has made over time in the past. But they were uttered in the highly symbolic setting of a Mass concelebrated by 15,000 priests in St. Peter's Square marking the end of the Vatican's Year of the Priest. The year-long celebration of the clergy has been marred by revelations of hundreds of new cases of clerical abuse, cover-up and Vatican inaction to root out pedophiles.

In his homily, Benedict lamented that during what should have been a year of joy for the priesthood the "sins of priests came to light — particularly the abuse of the little ones."

"We too insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again," he said.

He said that in admitting men into the priesthood and in forming them as clergymen "we will do everything we can to weigh the authenticity of their vocation and make every effort to accompany priests along their journey, so that the Lord will protect them and watch over them in troubled situations and amid life's dangers."

His comments were similar to those reported by the Vatican during his private meeting with abuse victims in Malta in April, during which the pontiff had tears in his eyes as he heard the stories of men who had been molested by priests as children.

And they echoed his comments last month en route to Portugal in which he acknowledged that the "sins from within the church" were responsible for the scandal, not some outside anti-Catholic lobby.

As such, Friday's comments were a public admission of the sins of priests, a request for forgiveness from their victims and God, and pledge to take action — all delivered before 15,000 priests from around the world who came to Rome for a show of support of the pontiff and the priesthood itself amid the scandal.

It is unclear if his comments, though, would satisfy demands from victims groups for a personal mea culpa followed up by a clear-cut plan of action to protect children.

Benedict's own legacy has been tarnished by the scandal, since he was archbishop of Munich in the 1980s when he approved therapy for a suspected pedophile who was allowed to resume pastoral duties while being treated. The priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, later was handed a suspended sentence for molesting a boy. In addition, Benedict's legacy at the Vatican office that dealt with sex abuse has come under scrutiny.

Benedict said the scandal had shown the need for a purification of the church, and a task which the church and its priests must carry on into the future.

"Had the Year for Priests been a glorification of our individual human performance, it would have been ruined by these events," he said. "But for us what happened was precisely the opposite: We grew in gratitude for God's gift."

Harry Potter theme park

ORLANDO — Until now, Harry Potter fans could merely imagine the sensation of quaffing a butterbeer, finding a magic wand at Ollivander's or escaping the steam from a snarling dragon's snout.
But finally, 13 years after the first of seven books began chronicling the boy wizard's adventures, imagination has become reality at Universal Orlando.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a mini-park inside Universal's Islands of Adventure theme park, opens for general admission June 18, but The Associated Press got a sneak peek at what has become the most highly anticipated theme-park attraction in years.

Past a stone archway and the steam-belching Hogwarts Express, the fictitious city of Hogsmeade unfolds amid snowcapped, dingy rooftops and storefronts packed like row houses with shops straight from the books and movies. Zonko's joke shop offers Sneakoscopes and extendable ears. The confectionary Honeydukes has chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans (literally ranging from pear to fish). At the Owl Post, guests can stamp mail with a genuine Hogsmeade postmark.

Towering over it all is Hogwarts, a perfect reproduction of the imposing, many-spired castle where Harry and his magician friends are students.

"Once we locked in and knew what we were doing — what we thought would be the most iconographic moments of the fiction to bring to life — it became a matter of executing at a level of authenticity and detail that was going to be unquestionable," said Mark Woodbury, head of Universal Creative.

Park construction was overseen by the production manager from the Potter movies, and as Warner Bros. filmed the series' sixth movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, scenes were shot for the park's crown jewel, a ride called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.

The cutting-edge ride seamlessly combines the sensation of flight with tactile experiences like smoke and drops of water as it takes guests through a hodgepodge of encounters in Potter's chaotic life, from the Quidditch field to the mouths of giant spiders and dragons. The ride queue stars lifelike projections of film characters like Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

Potter author J.K. Rowling is a stickler for details, and Universal worked hard to get her OK. So many recipes were offered to find the perfect look, texture and taste for the heretofore fictitious butterbeer that Woodbury lost count.

"We had to package up all the ingredients and rent a hotel kitchen in Scotland so that we could put it all together," he said.

The result? A tasty, thickheaded (and nonalcoholic) brew reminiscent of cream soda, which has proven wildly popular with the fans who bought special tickets to preview the Potter park ahead of the June 18 public opening. Like Wizarding World employees, many of these avid Potterphiles dressed in robes and wizard hats, giving the place the slightly geeky feel of a Star Wars convention.

Besides the Forbidden Journey, The Wizarding World has just two other rides: Flight of the Hippogriff and Dragon Challenge, both of which are older roller coasters repurposed with Potter themes.

There's no additional admission for Wizarding World once you pay to enter Islands of Adventure. But guests who come from long distances just to see it may be disappointed that there's also not much to do beyond the three rides other than soaking up the scenery and going shopping — although long lines for the attractions could easily keep them in the mini-park for hours.

The shopping opportunities are so extensive — from broomsticks ($250 to $300) to magic wands ($28.95) and Gryffindor scarves ($34.95) — that it feels at times like the whole park is for sale.

The Wizarding World is an ambitious bet for Universal, which is co-owned by a division of NBC Universal and private equity firm Blackstone. Contract details buried in Securities and Exchange Commission filings reveal how badly Universal wanted a piece of the franchise, which it describes as the most financially successful in film history. The contract gives Universal the rights to operate the park for nine years, with two additional five-year options. But the rights can be pulled if Universal fails to maintain minimum quality standards, doesn't invest enough capital or sells controlling interests.

Universal has poured cash into the park the past few years, sinking up to $380 million in the Potter park and two other attractions — a ride themed on The Simpsons and a roller coaster on which guests choose their own soundtrack. The Potter section of Islands of Adventure alone reportedly costing more than $250 million.

Twitter was filled this week with rave reviews of what was being referred to in tweets as "wwohp." One fan who got access to the soft opening said it was the "best park experience" he'd had in a long time; another said Forbidden Journey was so good she cried. "Thumbs up" to butterbeer and pumpkin juice, tweeted another.

"It was truly amazing, they brought the books to life," said Jacki Lenners of Flagstaff, Ariz., who attended an early preview of the park last month.

Yoga Guru Ramdev - India

breast milk online

young mother, from Exeter, Great Britain, is selling her breast milk online, to earn extra cash, while on maternity leave.
26-year-old Toni Ebdon gave birth to a boy, earlier this year, and was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the amount of breast milk she was producing. One of her friends even joked that she should start a dairy, with the extra milk, and cash-strapped Toni took the idea seriously. Using a breast pump she drained the excess milk and stored it in the freezer. Next she went online and put an ad for breast milk, on Gumtree.
Although she was expecting some replies from new mothers who couldn’t produce enough breast milk for their babies, Toni Ebdon was surprised to find that most of the interested clients were men. It might sound weird, but many adults use breast milk to maintain good health, or cure illnesses such as cancer, diarrhea, or diabetes. Toni charges $26 for 113 grams of her precious milk, and sells it both fresh and stored in the fridge.
The young mother says she hasn’t made loads pf money from selling her breast milk, but since she doesn’t receive full maternity pay, and the baby’s father isn’t able to support them, the extra income is more than welcome. Toni will continue selling breast milk until she dries up, and she’ll definitely do it again, if she has another baby.

Summer of Innovation

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke with teachers and middle school students during the kick off of NASA's Summer of Innovation program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Thursday, June 10, 2010. Through the program, NASA will engage thousands of middle school students and their teachers in stimulating math and science-based education programs with the goal of increasing the number of future scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Blue Like Mars

This image shows the west-facing side of an impact crater in the mid-latitudes of Mars' northern hemisphere. Like many mid-latitude Martian craters, this one has gullies along its walls that are composed of alcoves, channels and debris aprons. The origins of these gullies have been the subject of much debate; they could have been formed by flowing water, liquid carbon dioxide or dry granular flows. Many of the other features observed in and around this crater are indicative of an ice-rich terrain, which may lend credence to the water formation hypothesis for these gullies. The most notable of these features is scalloped terrain in and around the crater. This type of terrain has been interpreted as a sign of surface caving, perhaps due to sublimation of underlying ice. Sublimation is the process of a solid changing directly to a gas. Another sign of ice is the presence of parallel lines and pitted material on the crater floor. Parallel linear cracks are also observed along the crater wall over the gullies, which could be due to thermal contraction of ice-rich material. together, these features are evidence for ice-rich material having been deposited in this region during different climatic conditions, material that has subsequently begun to melt and/or sublimate under current conditions. More recently, wind-blown deposits have accumulated around the crater, as evidenced by the parallel ridges dominating the landscape. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the image on April 13, 2010. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS): Core Programs

Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS): Core Programs
Available Formats:
HTML: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10571/nsf10571.htm?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click
PDF: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10571/nsf10571.pdf?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click
TXT: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10571/nsf10571.txt?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click

PROFF: QBB Ghee Contains Pig Lard

Dear friends

We wish to inform your goodself that for years, our consumer group as many other faithful consumers have been using “QQB” Ghee for various delicacies and religious functions without doubt,
with full confidence that the said product is manufactured from the milk of dairy cows by its highly reputable manufacturer based in Queensland, Australia.
However, lately, we found that although the colour and aroma had now varied much, the taste seemed to be somewhat different. Therefore, we investigated this matter and concluded the following matters:


· Its manufacturer Butter Producers’ Co-operative Federation Ltd (BPCF) addressed as No. 489, Kingsford Smith Drive , Hamilton , Brisbane , Australia had ceased operations in September
2006 and was no longer listed in the website of Australian trade authority being http://www.austrade /
.gov.au. In fact the satellite picture as the website http://maps. / google.com shows that the following site is vacant land.

· Printed on the tin is that the said product is manufactured from milkfat of dairy cows of Australia and in even smaller and rather unclear script, it is mentioned that its manufacturer is Q.B.I. Packaging Sdn Bhd, No. 19, Lorong Keluli 1C, Kawasan Perindustrian Bukit Raja Selatan, 41050 Shah Alam, Selangor DE.,Malaysia and that the said product is manufactured under license from
QBB (Pte.) Ltd., Singapore .

· QBB Pte Ltd.., Singapore was originally the sole agent for “QBB” Ghee for Malaysia , Singapore and Brunei and it is not clear whether at the time when BPCF ceased operations in 2006, the “QBB” trademark rights were transferred from BPCF to QBB Ptd Ltd., Singapore . We suspect that Q.B.I. Packaging Sdn Bhd and QBB Ptd Ltd., Singapore are together carrying an act of piracy i.e. producing and selling a product whose legitimate manufacturing and sales rights were not transferred to them by its original manufacturer BPCF who was since wound up.

· The report of an analysis conducted by a reputable food technology laboratory in Australia on the contents of a 2-lb tin of this product, where the said tin was taken from Malaysia to
Australia by one of our group members, mentions the following:-

“This product constitutes of decolorized and deodorized lard (pig fat) in semi-solid state with permitted additives giving the product color, flavor and aroma similar to that of pure ghee color, flavor and aroma.” (Original report is with the sender of this letter).

Therefore, our consumer group had to boycott the use of this product as:-

a) Our muslim members cannot use this product as it is haram by religion

b) Our Hindu and Sikh members cannot use this product for burning of ghee lamps, religious functions or for preparing sweetmeats as places of worship which forbid the use of any animal oil/animal fat.

c) Our vegetarian Buddist friends who only consume vegetarian diet cannot consume the said
product.

We believe that the “QBB Ghee” sold in Malaysia , Singapore and Brunei ever since BPCF closed down, is a product which is violating the related laws on the principle of “misrepresentation of
label”. Therefore we hope that your goodself will take the appropriate action to stop the sale of this product.

Thanking you.
Letter signed by Mohd Kadir bin Mohd Karim (I/C
No. 601223-10-6157)
Secretary of Kumpulan Konsumer Satu Malaysia
(KKSM)

Note: Copy of this letter and analysis report sent to
YAB Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Abd. Khalid bin Ibrahim,
Menteri Besar Selangor DE.

China Launches 3D Newspapers

Ever since China’s first 3D newspaper was released, back in April, the public has been asking for more. And they’re about to get it, as a limited number of the Hangzhou-based Daily Business editions are about to be issued, in 3D format.
British tabloid, The Sun, has announced it will be launching the first 3D newspaper, on June 5, a few days before the Soccer World Cup kicks off, in n attempt to raise awareness to the 3D broadcast of the sports event, by Sky News. Sorry guys, but you’re almost two months late, in China, 3D newspapers are already yesterday’s news.