• Just a few months into 2010, and Mother Nature has delivered a slew of costly and deadly natural disasters. From the catastrophic Haiti and Chilean earthquakes to the U.S. blizzard that descended on Washington, D.C., last month, which was mostly just inconvenient by comparison, 2010 is already above average in terms of natural-disaster casualties.
• In comparison to previous years, the number of casualties from natural disasters in 2010, which is already well above 200,000, is outside the norm. Yet as in other disastrous years, the high toll this year is due largely to a single event.
• Over the decade from 2000 to the end of 2009, the yearly average was 78,000, according to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR). For the 1990s, the average was 43,000, and the 1980s was 75,000. Disaster experts say the rise in tragedy is at least partly due to increases in urban populations.

Sudan’s land of ‘black pharaohs’ a trove for archaeologists

• A Sudanese man sits on a camel as he looks at the pyramids in the Meroe desert, north of Khartoum. There is not a tourist in sight as the sun sets over sand-swept pyramids at Meroe, but archaeologists say the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan holds mysteries to rival ancient Egypt.
• Meroe lies around 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Sudan’s capital Khartoum and was the last capital of Kush, also called Nubia, an ancient kingdom centered on the confluence of the Blue Nile, the White Nile and the River Atbara.
• Kush was one of the earliest civilisations in the Nile valley and, at first, was dominated by Egypt. The Nubians eventually gained their independence and, at the height of their power, they turned the table on Egypt and conquered it in the 8th century BC.
• They occupied the entire Nile valley for a century before being forced back into what is now Sudan.
• At the end of March, the Louvre will host its first exhibition on the Meroe dynasty, the last in a line of “black pharaohs” that ruled Kush for more than 1,000 years until the kingdom’s demise in 350 AD.

• Canada and U.S. authorities are talking about extending cross-border security measures that were implemented for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and were to end with the closing of the Winter Games.
• The RCMP and the U.S. Coast Guard have jointly patrolled the waters off Vancouver since the beginning of the month, boarding nearly 200 vessels and interviewing about 500 people in their efforts to maintain security, RCMP Sergeant Duncan Pound of the border integrity program said in an interview.
• Almost every small craft in the vicinity of the maritime border has been contacted to confirm the legitimacy of its voyage. Although some arrests on outstanding criminal warrants have been made and some vessels have been sent back to port for not being safe, none of the incidents involved a threat to Olympic security.
• The joint patrols will end with the Paralympics but spokesmen from the two agencies said yesterday legislation that would allow joint maritime policing on a permanent basis is on the agenda of both the U.S. and Canadian governments.

• WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A shooting at a Metro station adjacent to the Pentagon prompted the U.S. military to shut down the giant office complex on Thursday evening, officials and witnesses said.
• Local television station WUSA reported three people were shot. Two were taken to George Washington Hospital in Washington, the station said.
• Defense Department officials said they believed Pentagon security officers were among the injured.
• All entrances to the five-sided building were closed shortly after the incident.
• “Metro is locked down until further notice,” Pentagon police said in a message over the building’s intercom.
• Some witnesses reported hearing gunshots being fired in the station and people screaming.

• CAIRO – Egypt’s famed King Tutankhamun suffered from a cleft palate and club foot, likely forcing him to walk with a cane, and died from complications from a broken leg exacerbated by malaria, according to the most extensive study ever of his more than 3,300-year-old mummy.
• The findings were from two years of DNA testing and CT scans on 16 mummies, including those of Tutankhamun and his family, the team that carried out the study said in an article to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
• It also established the clearest yet family tree for Tut, indicating for the first time that he was the child of a brother-sister union.
• The study said his father was most likely Akhenaten, the pharaoh who tried to revolutionize ancient Egyptian religion and force his people to worship one god. The mummy shown by DNA to be that of Tut’s mother also turned out to be a sister of Akhenaten, though she has not yet been identified.
• Tut, who became pharaoh at the age of 10 in 1333 B.C., ruled for just nine years at a pivotal time in Egypt’s history. While a comparatively minor king, the 1922 discovery of his tomb filled with stunning artifacts, including the famed golden funeral mask, made him known the world over.

Boa Sr was the last of the Bo, a tribe on the Andaman Islands

• When Boa Sr sang in her own language, the result was gently hypnotic. “The earth is shaking as the tree falls, with a great thud,” she sang, on a recording captured by linguists.
• But the grey-haired, 85-year-old woman will not be heard again. And neither will her native tongue – Bo – aside from the recordings that have already been made. Campaigners revealed yesterday that the recent death of Boa Sr on India’s remote Andaman Islands marked the end of the Bo tribe and the loss of a language.
• Boa Sr was the oldest member of the Great Andamanese, an indigenous group of the Andamans, a cluster of islands 700 miles east of the Indian mainland in the Bay of Bengal. The Great Andamanese once numbered more than 5,000 and were made up of 10 distinct groups each with their own language.
• The Bo are believed to have lived on the islands for as long as 65,000 years, making them one of the oldest surviving human cultures. But today, after more than 150 years of contact with colonisers, the diseases they brought with them, and the disastrous impact of alcohol, the Great Andamanese number just 52.

RIP.

Marvels from Mars: Stunning postcards from the Red Planet

• “Devil’s punch bowl? The mouth of Albor Tholus, an extinct volcano, is 30km across”

Marvels from Mars: Stunning postcards from the Red Planet

Yep, that’s MARS right there!

Amazing photos, check out our neighbor!!!

criminalwisdom:

HOW TO THROW KNIVES
Image from Sideshow World’s Knife Throwing And Dangerous Acts collection.

theworldpulse:

Happy Birthday, Lord Ganesha!
OM GAM GANAPATAYE NAMAHA!
OM GAM GANAPATAYE NAMAHA!
OM GAM GANAPATAYE NAMAHA!

On this rare map, China is the center of the world

• Washington (AP) — A rarely seen 400-year-old map that identified Florida as “the Land of Flowers” and put China at the center of the world went on display Tuesday at the Library of Congress. It will eventually be housed at the University of Minnesota.
• The map created by Matteo Ricci was the first in Chinese to show the Americas. Ricci, a Jesuit missionary from Italy, was among the first Westerners to live in what is now Beijing in the early 1600s.
• Known for introducing Western science to China, Ricci created the map in 1602 at the request of Emperor Wanli.
• Ricci’s map includes pictures and annotations describing different regions of the world. Africa was noted to have the world’s highest mountain and longest river.
• The brief description of North America mentions “humped oxen” or bison, wild horses and a region named “Ka-na-ta.”
• Several Central and South American places are named, including “Wa-ti-ma-la” (Guatemala), “Yu-ho-t’ang” (Yucatan) and “Chih-Li” (Chile).

To produce this annual Index we consider nine categories: Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate. This involves a lot of number crunching from “official” sources, including government websites, the World Health Organization, and The Economist, to name but a few. We also take into account what our editors from all over the world have to say about our findings.

1. FRANCE - (for the 5th year running)
2. Australia
3. Switzerland
4. Germany
5. New Zealand
6. Luxemburg
7. United States
8. Belgium
9. Canada
10. Italy

(Does anyone out there agree with this list?)

• Archaeologists in Egypt have said they have discovered the largest known tomb in the ancient necropolis of Sakkara, to the south of Cairo.
• The tomb dates back 2,500 years to the 26th Dynasty and contains important artefacts, including mummified eagles.
• It is one of two newly discovered tombs found by an Egyptian team working close to the entrance of Sakkara, the burial ground for Egypt’s ancient capital.
• The tomb consists of a big hall hewn out of the limestone rock.
• There are a number of small rooms and passageways where ancient coffins, skeletons and well-preserved clay pots were discovered, as well as the mummies of eagles.
• Egypt’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, who announced the discovery, said that early investigations showed that although the tomb dated back to the 26th Dynasty, it had been used several times.
• He said it was most likely to have been robbed at the end of the Roman period.
• Other excavations at Sakkara are continuing and Dr Hawass said the latest finds confirm that the site still contains undiscovered secrets.