The United States has warned India over a deal which may not be approved by Congress if it does not back a UN motion against Iran. The deal gives India US nuclear technology to provide the country with energy. The warning was given by US ambassador to India, David Mulford, to the Press Trust of India.

Earth-like planet found

A team of astronomers have found a new planet around five times the mass of Earth, 25,000 light-years away. However any hope of life on it is unlikely as it has a very cold temperature of minus 220 degrees celcius.

The planet was found by using microlensing, which can detect far away planets with the same mass of Earth. It usually takes 1o years to orbit its parent star, a red dwarf which is like the Sun only a lot less hotter.

Whale dies

A bottlenosed whale that lost it's way up the river Thames has died. The whale died around 7pm today while being transported on a barge towards deeper water.

Bottlenosed whales are usually found in the North Atlantic ocean and how the whale found it's way into the river Thames is not known. A baby bottlenoised whale was also found dead.

Audio tape from Bin Laden

An audio tape with Bin Laden speaking on it was aired on the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera. The terrorist leader speaks of new attacks being planned on America and offered a long-term truce to the US which was quickly turned down.

It has not been confirmed if the audio tape is real or not.

Full Transcript
My message to you is about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the way to end it.

I had not intended to speak to you about this issue, because, for us, this issue is already decided: diamonds cut diamonds.

Praise be to God, our conditions are always improving, becoming better, while yours are the opposite.

However, what prompted me to speak are the repeated fallacies of your President Bush in his comment on the outcome of US opinion polls, which indicated that the overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of the forces from Iraq, but he objected to this desire and said that the withdrawal of troops would send the wrong message to the enemy.

Bush said: It is better to fight them on their ground than they fighting us on our ground.

In my response to these fallacies, I say: The war in Iraq is raging and operations in Afghanistan are on the rise in our favour, praise be to God.

The Pentagon figures indicate the rise in the number of your dead and wounded, let alone the huge material losses.

To go back to where I started, I say that the results of the poll satisfy sane people and that Bush's objection to them is false.

Reality testifies that the war against America and its allies has not remained confined to Iraq, as he claims.

In fact, Iraq has become a point of attraction and recruitment of qualified resources.

On the other hand, the mujahideen, praise be to God, have managed to breach all the security measures adopted by the unjust nations of the coalition time and again.

The evidence for this are the bombings you have seen in the capitals of the most important European countries of this aggressive coalition.

As for the delay in carrying out similar operations in America, this was not due to the failure to breach your security measures.

Operations are in preparation and you will see them on your own ground once the preparations are finished, God willing.

Based on the above, we see that Bush's argument is false.

However, the argument that he avoided, which is the substance of the results of opinion polls on withdrawing the troops, is that it is better not to fight the Muslims on their land and for them not to fight us on our land.

We do not object to a long-term truce with you on the basis of fair conditions that we respect.

We are a nation to which God has disallowed treachery and lying.

In this truce, both parties will enjoy security and stability and we will build Iraq and Afghanistan which were destroyed by the war.

There is no defect in this solution other than preventing the flow of hundreds of billions to the influential people and war merchants in America, who supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars.

Scientists Abandon AI Project After Seeing The Matrix

Scientists Abandon AI Project After Seeing The Matrix

Scientists at MIT's Advanced Machine Cognizance Project announced Tuesday that, after seeing the final installment of the Matrix trilogy, they will cease all further work in the field of artificial intelligence.

Enlarge ImageScientists Abandon AI Project After Seeing The Matrix

Jameson announces his decision to cease artificial-intelligence research.

"As scientists of conscience, we must consider the ethical ramifications of AI development," said Dr. Gregory Jameson, director of machine epistemology and ontology at MIT. "The Matrix taught us that we cannot ignore our obligation to the future of mankind. We must free our minds to this fact, or we will accidentally unleash a nightmarish army of sentient machines."

Added Jameson: "Some may call the extinction of humankind inevitable, but I, for one, will still resist."

A statement drafted by the MIT group was co-signed by an international coalition of AI experts that included scientists from the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, members of the Society for Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behavior, and a team of fan experts from the newly created San Diego ComiCon Committee on Moral and Ethical Implications for Society at Large.

In the statement, researchers said they were "frightened by the disastrous potential of AI" and called the Matrix trilogy of science-fiction action-thrillers a "wake-up call to any scientist concerned with the long-term consequences of his work," as well as a "freaky head-trip about a future run by floating metallic drones that look kind of like really scary seafood."

Pattern-recognition development analyst Dr. Janice Wunderling said the MIT team has placed its AI projects on hold pending the completion of a comprehensive feasibility study on the threat of "humans being imprisoned in tiny, slime-filled cyber-canisters."

"When we first saw The Matrix back in 1999, the premise of AI evolving into an unstoppable army of self-aware programs intent on dominating the planet gave us pause," Wunderling said. "But like most moviegoers, we dismissed the movie as a fun blockbuster showcasing cool bullet-time photography and shapely, leather-clad cyber-babes performing gravity-defying kung-fu in slow motion."

After seeing The Matrix Reloaded, however, Wunderling and her fellow scientists began to worry.

"The more we thought about it, the less we were able to laugh off the threat of killer machines," said Dr. Henry K. Arronovski, a leading expert in the field of heuristics classification. "It really started to freak us out. What if, decades from now, humans end up in a virtual-reality construct designed to blind them to their enslavement to the hivemind—all because of the work my colleagues and I started?"

Added Arronovski: "I want no hand in creating a world where only Keanu Reeves can protect my great-grandchildren from a giant drill that plummets through the ceilings of subterranean cave dwellings."

Enlarge ImageScientists Abandon AI Project After Seeing The Matrix jump

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a vocal proponent of AI research, offers an opposing view.

It was The Matrix Revolutions, the final movie in the series, that convinced scientists at MIT to put the brakes on their AI research.

"We were hoping that the third movie would quell our fears about the work we were doing, but it only raised more questions," Jameson said. "Sentient programs, like the Merovingian, though formerly agents of the Architect's operation to neutralize the human race, rebelled against the very system they were meant to serve? And which side were the renegade programs even on? Was the Oracle a sentient program herself, earmarked for 'deletion' by her former masters? Or was she just another part of the system without knowing it? We had no choice but to pull the plug."

Team member Dmitri Markovitch, author of Mechanical Computation And Consciousness, called his vote to abandon AI research "an intensely personal decision."

"I saw Revolutions with my 12-year-old son Eric," Markovitch said. "He saw the look of worry on my face and said, 'Dad, don't be scared. It's only make-believe.' I had to tell him, 'No, son, it's what your father does for a living.'"

"After watching Captain Mifune blast away in his robotic battle exoskeleton as hordes of relentless Sentinels swarmed the dock screaming in battle-frenzied rage, I could no longer put my career before the future of mankind," Markovitch continued. "Those poor, brave children of Zion—their annoying tolerance of rave culture notwithstanding—did not deserve that horrible fate."

Critics of AI research commended the decision. Dr. Lyle Freeberg, author of Ethics In The Age Of Nanotechnology, said humans have ignored the warning signs about AI long enough.

"The first two Terminator films identified the potential for global-linkage computer networks to send android assassins back in time, but the warning went unheeded," Freeberg said. "Artificial Intelligence: AI recognized the ethical dilemmas inherent in creating a robot who can love, but no one took the movie seriously, because it was so boring. But in the wake of the Wachowski brothers' prophetic series, we must, as the '90s alternative-rock band Rage Against The Machine urged us, 'wake up.'"

Source: The Onion

Ice rink update: Rescue workers stop search

Rescue workers have stopped their search for survivors in the callapsed ice rink in Bad Reichenhall. They stopped their work due to fears the roof would callapse even more and possibley kill anyone still alive under the rubble.

Workers are waiting till extra heavy lifting equipment arrives. Eleven people have already died with four people still missing.

Gas row update

The EU is trying to persuade the Ukraine and Russia to continue talks for an end to the gas row. The Ukraine said it would only continue talks if a third party would oversee talks between the two countries.

The Russain gas firm Gazprom said it has already begun working on getting the EU countries that have reported a fall in gas suppply back up to full supply.

France, Germany, Poland, Italy and now Slovakia, which is 100% dependant on Russian gas, have all reported a fall in gas supply. However Austria and Hungary said that the flow of Russian gas has returned to normal.

EU energy officials will meet tommorow to try and get the Ukraine and Russia back to talking.

Twenty still trapped under ice rink

The roof of an ice rink in southern Germany has collapsed trapping 20 people inside. Six people have already been reported dead while five bodies have been recovered.

Around 50 people were inside when the building callapsed in the Alpine town of Bad Reichenhall. A crane has been put up to move away parts of the building but the rescue workers are finding it hard to work with current wheater conditions.

Parents who had children in the building when it callapsed have given police on the scene their names. A twelve year old boy and seven year old girl are among the dead. A state of emergency has been declared.

Woman gives birth in toilet

A baby was born on a French passenger plane....in the toilet...I shit you not people!

Woman gives birth in plane toilet

A passenger plane flying from France to the Indian Ocean island of Reunion landed with an extra person on board after a woman gave birth in the toilet.

Officials with the airline, Air Austral, say a doctor on board helped to deliver the baby, named Elfayed.

Mother and child were admitted to hospital and are said to be doing well.

Airline officials said they did not usually allow women on flights beyond the seventh month of pregnancy, but the woman had not been visibly pregnant.

Mid-flight

After landing in Reunion, pilot Jean-Christophe Durieux told the AFP agency: "I didn't believe it and so I got up to go see and the baby was already out."

The flight had been in the air more than five hours after taking off from the eastern French city of Lyon on Saturday when a steward noticed a passenger had been in a toilet for a long time.

The 25-year-old woman, who had planned to give birth in her home on the island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, turned out to be in labour.

A stewardess wrapped the baby in a blanket and the doctor on board cut the umbilical cord.

Source: BBC NEWS

Gas problems continue

Russian gas suppliers, Gazprom, have officially cut-off gas pipelines to the Ukraine. The gas was cut off at 7am this morning. Around 20% of gas is piped through the Ukraine to other European countries including Poland, Germany, France, and Hungary. Poland and Hungary are already reporting loss of gas from Russia. While Germany and France are reported to have no problems with their gas supplies.

There has also been accusations from Gazprom that Kiev is stealing gas which is meant for other European countries. The Ukraine has denied, saying not one cubic meter has been stolen. The EU is planning a meeting on the 4 of January.