Photos of lovely sunlight beaming through thick leafs of some dense forest…
The first official order for the “$100 laptop” has been placed by the government of Uruguay.
Prototype of the $100 laptop
The South American country has bought 100,000 of the machines for schoolchildren aged six to 12. A further 300,000 may be purchased to provide a machine for every child in the country by 2009.
The order will be a boost for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organisation behind the project which has admitted difficulties getting concrete orders.
The XO laptop, as the machine is known, has been developed to be used primarily by children in the developing world.
It is durable, waterproof and can be powered by solar, foot-pump or pull-string powered chargers. It includes a sunlight readable display so that it can be used outside and has no moving parts.
OLPC aims to sell the laptop for US$100 or less. However, over the last year, the machine’s price has steadily increased and now costs $188. [BBC]
People tie 30,000 condoms to form a 3.269-kilometers line during an anti-AIDS event in Bucharest, capital of Romania, on October 28. Some 59% of the 10,447 HIV-infected patients and AIDS patients in the country are youth aged from 15 to 19.
A group of pigs had caused traffic congestion in Hampshire when the sow decided to feed her hungry piglets at the middle of the road…
An octopus with nine arms was spotted at the Marusan Seafood Shop in Marugame, Japan (Kagawa prefecture) on October 26, one day after it was caught in the Seto Inland Sea.
Masa Koita, the 60-year-old shop manager, noticed the abnormal Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) after he had boiled it in preparation for market. [Pinktentacle]
Abnormal octopus with 9 arms in Japan
Octopus has 8 arms in case you don’t know… in fact the word Octopus is derived from Greek word which literally translate to ‘eight-legs’.
People often referred to the arms as tentacles, but it is not a biological correct term. Octopuses don’t have tenctacles, squids do.
The Cow Parade, an international public art exhibition that has been featured in major cities over the world, arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with around 120 cow sculptures in October.
CowParade is the world’s largest public art event; while it is not meant to be high art, it is first and foremost a public art exhibit that is accessible to everyone.
Most important, CowParade ultimately benefits charity, raising over millions dollars of charity funds since it started in 1999. [Official website]
A 710-year-old church began its slow journey to a new home on Thursday (Oct 25) at 2km per hour, on a huge flatbed trailer, leaving behind an eastern German village being turned over to open-pit coal mining. [SMH]
It would take a week for the church to move to its new home, just 12km away
The Emmaus Church was first mentioned in historical documents in 1297. It has to move from its old home village of Heuersdorf outside Leipzig to the town of Borna, 12 km away, after the regional legislature passed a law in 2004 approving plans to dig up the village to mine 50 million tonnes of brown coal which will supply the electrical power station at Lippendorf near Leipzig.
The coal mining company Mibrag is paying 3 million Euros to move the church.
World number 4 Nikolay Davydenko (men tennis) has been fined US$2,000 for not trying hard enough during his shock defeat by Croatian qualifier Marin Cilic at the St Petersburg Open on Thursday (Oct 25).
“Nikolay Davydenko was fined $2,000 for lack of best effort in his second-round match against Marin Cilic,” the governing body for men’s tennis, ATP, said in a statement on Friday.
The top seed played near-flawless tennis in the first set against the 102nd-ranked Cilic but then started making numerous errors and committed 10 double faults in the last two sets.
He was warned by Belgian umpire Jean-Philippe Dercq in the final set for not trying hard enough.
“I double-faulted to lose a game in the third set and he gave me a warning saying I was trying to lose on purpose,” Davydenko told reporters after the match.
“I was simply shocked to hear him say that. This is just outrageous. How does he know what I was trying to do? I was so upset with the whole thing I started crying.” [Yahoo]
I never knew that the ATP can actually do that. I think it is a bit harsh though… I didn’t watch the match so I am not sure how deliberate Davydenko was, but every player would have his bad day, and it is probably an unlucky day for Davydenko.