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World's oldest living trees

SCIENTISTS have found a cluster of spruces in the mountains in western Sweden which, at an age of 8000 years, may be the world's oldest living trees.

The hardy Norway spruces were found perched high on a mountain side where they have remained safe from recent dangers such as logging, but exposed to the harsh weather conditions of the mountain range that separates Norway and Sweden.

Carbon dating of the trees carried out at a laboratory in Miami, Florida, showed the oldest of them first set root about 8000 years ago, making it the world's oldest known living tree, Umea University Professor Leif Kullman said.

California's "Methuselah" tree, a Great Basin bristlecone pine, is often cited as the world's oldest living tree with a recorded age of between 4500 and 5000 years.

Two other spruces, also found in the course of climate change studies in the Swedish county of Dalarna, were shown to be 4800 and 5500 years old.

"These were the first woods that grew after the Ice Age," said Lars Hedlund, responsible for environmental surveys in the county of Dalarna and collaborator in climate studies there.

"That means that when you speak of climate change today, you can in these (trees) see pretty much every single climate change that has occurred."

Although a single tree trunk can become at most about 600 years old, the spruces had survived by pushing out another trunk as soon as the old one died, Professor Kullman said.

Rising temperatures in the area in recent years had allowed the spruces to grow rapidly, making them easier to find in the rugged terrain, he added.

"For quite some time they have endured as bushes maybe 1/2 metre tall," he said.

But over the past few decades we have seen a much warmer climate, which has meant that they have popped up like mushrooms in the soil.''

$512k diamond found in car wash

CAR cleaners at a Russian car wash got a surprise when they cleaned out a vacuum cleaner this week and found a diamond pendant worth up to 300,000 euros($A512,000).

"I didn't know how much it was worth at first so I got a jeweller to come around and he said it was worth as much as 300,000 euros,'' Vladimir Shapiro, owner of the car cleaning firm in Russia's northern city of St Petersburg, said.

"When I heard the value my jaw dropped to the floor,'' he said.

"You would have to notice losing something like this.''

He said he was not going to disclose much about the pendant so that he could return the jewel to its righful owner.

UK Chocolate killing

TWO teenagers were detained on Friday after admitting they killed a man in a row over a discarded chocolate bar.

Evren Anil, 23, died from serious head injuries after being punched to the ground after confronting the pair, who had thrown a half-eaten Lion Bar through the window of his sister Elif's car in Crystal Palace, south London, last year.

The computer science graduate hit his head on the kerb and died in hospital eight days later after falling into a coma, the Old Bailey was told.

On Friday, his killers, Patrick Rowe, aged 17, from Tottenham in north London and 16-year-old Dejon Thompson, from Thornton Heath, south London were each sentenced to four years detention.

They had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and knife possession at an earlier hearing.

"Your yobbish and stupid behaviour escalated and a knife was produced and a punch was thrown at Mr Anil with such force that he struck his head and died," Judge Anne Goddard told them.

"He was a decent, good young man with a first class degree. The loss to his family is impossible to describe. Their grief is unspeakable."

In a statement read to the court at an earlier hearing, Elif Anil said her brother's death had devastated their family.

She said their parents had split up and her brothers had needed psychiatric treatment as they struggled to come to terms with Evren's death.

Evren graduated from Kingston University in London with a first-class computer science degree and had secured a job with IT firm Logica a week before he was attacked.

Heathrow terminal faces more turmoil

LONDON Heathrow airport's new Terminal 5 was hit by fresh flight disruption today when the baggage system suffered a major software problem, airports operator BAA said.

"This morning a software problem has arisen in the baggage system at Terminal 5. This is entirely BAA's responsibility," a BAA spokeswoman said.

Heathrow's T5 opened last month with much fanfare from British Airways - the only carrier using the facility - but became a public relations disaster within hours when the baggage handling system became overwhelmed.

"We apologise to BA and all passengers who have been affected, and we assure them that our specialist staff are working hard to resolve the problem and keep disruption to BA's operation to a minimum," BAA said.

"We know what the problem is. We have a potential solution and we are having to carefully consider how and when we apply this to avoid further problems."

British Airways had hoped to operate a full flying schedule today for the first time since T5 opened on March 27.

"We regret to announce that the BAA baggage system in Terminal 5 has suffered another computer problem today, which has caused disruption to British Airways flights," BA said in a separate statement.

"We are now having to manually reconcile bags for each flight, which takes considerably more time than using the automated system.

"This has led to flight delays and as a result we have had to make a number of short haul cancellations."

BA said last week it expected the chaotic opening of T5 to cost the airline about STG16 million ($A34.85 million).

The browser wars are on again

THIS time it’s Apple, not Microsoft, that’s being accused of playing dirty.

In the original browser wars of the late ‘90s, Microsoft dominated by bundling its Internet Explorer web browser with Windows, essentially locking out Netscape Navigator, which had triggered the web revolution.

Microsoft’s abuse of its operating system monopoly raised the ire of the US Justice Department, but the end result was the same: Netscape faded and IE became the standard for browsing the web.

Flash forward to 2008, and this time it’s Apple leveraging its dominant iTunes media player software to get its Safari web browser on to more PC desktops.

Safari was launched as a Mac-only browser in 2003, pre-empting Microsoft’s dumping of IE for Mac. Last year Apple released a Windows version, ostensibly to assist developers in creating web applications for the iPhone, which runs a “lite” version of the browser.

And with the recent release of version 3.1, Apple controversially has included it as an option with Windows iTunes updates. Safari is ticked by default as an installation item when a Windows user runs Apple Software Update.

John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, which makes the open-source browser Firefox, has cried foul, blogging: “What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong. It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that’s bad - not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole web ...

“The likely behavior here is for users to just click ‘Install 2 items’, which means that they’ve now installed a completely new piece of software, quite possibly completely unintentionally. Apple has made it incredibly easy - the default, even - for users to install ride-along software that they didn’t ask for, and maybe didn’t want. This is wrong, and borders on malware distribution practices.”

Firefox is the current No. 2 browser after IE, but Safari’s popularity is increasing, and it could well overtake Firefox over the next few years.

Like Firefox, Safari is an open-source browser. It is based on WebKit, which has just become the first publicly available rendering engine to score a perfect 100 in the Acid 3 test for browser open standards, narrowly beating Opera.

Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, Microsoft has indicated that IE 8 will respect open standards, regardless of whether it works with websites currently optimised for IE 6.

Statistics on Safari’s market share vary. According to Net Applications, it had 5.7 per cent of the market in February, compared with 17 per cent for Firefox and 75 per cent for IE. IE’s share has been steadily declining from its high of over 90 per cent.

Safari’s rise will be aided by the iPhone and iPod touch, which run a “lite” version of the browser. M:Metrics reports that because of its user-friendly interface, the iPhone already is the dominant mobile device for browsing the web, with 85 per cent of iPhone owners using its web functions, compared with 58 per cent of users of other smartphones.

And StatCounter put the iPhone and iPod touch’s mobile browser market share at just under a quarter of a per cent in the March quarter, equalling Nokia’s global share.

With the recent release of the iPhone software development kit, New York Times tech writer David Pogue described the device as the “third major platform” in computer history after Windows and Mac OS X, while venture capitalist John Doerr, who has established the “iFund” for iPhone software development, predicts it will be bigger than the PC.

It all points to one thing: Safari is heading for a dominant position in the mobile web as well as the desktop.

Mac users aren’t limited to Safari, however; in fact they’re spoiled for choice. Other quality browsers for the Mac include Firefox, OmniWeb, Camino, Opera, Netscape and Mozilla.

Safari 3.1 for Mac and Windows is a free download at http://www.apple.com/au/safari/download

John O'Brien

Frustrated home owners turn to Ebay

More than 130 properties were listed on eBay's Australian site last week, including several multi-million dollar homes in Sydney and country NSW.

One property, a water view apartment in inner-city Pyrmont, is priced at almost $1.5 million. The apartment's owner, David Shaw, said selling privately would save him $10,000 in marketing costs and about $45,000 in agent's commission.

The luxury apartment has been listed for eight weeks and Mr Shaw said four potential buyers had been watching the listing.

"I've sold three other properties but not online," he said. "I don't expect to sell it overnight."

Mr Shaw said he would avoid real estate agents and have his solicitor finalise any sale, saving thousands of dollars in agency fees.

Among NSW properties listed for sale on the online auction website were a $325,000 house at Rooty Hill, a $300,000 pub at Lockhart and a $350,000 holiday home at Nelson Bay.

Australian Property Monitors spokesperson Michael McNamara said online private property sales allowed astute vendors to save tens of thousands in agency fees.

But he warned online and private sales could be fraught with danger.

Home owners pay $49.95 to list on eBay.

News.com.au

A little girl asked her father, 'How did the human race appear?' The father answered, 'God made Adam and Eve and they had children and so was all mankind made.'

Two days later the girl asked her mother the same question.

The mother answered, 'Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.'

The confused girl returned to her father and said, 'Dad how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Mom said they developed from monkeys?'

The father answered, 'Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your mother told you about hers.'

Source: GigglePedia.com

Google has turned the lights out for the day.

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/earthhour/

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