[Update] The Music Idol show actually invited her, Valentina Hasan, as special guest at one of their episodes…

With the popularity of her videos on Youtube etc, Valentina might very well be more famous than the eventual winner of the competition.

Cecchini released half a million of coloured plastic balls from the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome on Wednesday (Jan 16)… a prank similar to the famous Sony Bravia commercial.

Cecchini said that he had done the stunt to raise the profile of Burma and the Karen people. He and his three other ‘compatriots’ are later arrested.

The Karen is a minority who have fought for an independent state since 1949, and accuse the military junta of ethnic cleansing. [BBC]

The six members of the Prague-based Ztohoven group were charged last month with spreading false information and face up to three years in jail if convicted, said Dusan Ondracek, the state prosecutor in the northern town of Trutnov, who is in charge of the case.

On June 17, viewers of a Czech television channel watching a Web cam program monitoring weather in various Czech mountain resorts could see a nuclear explosion taking place in the Krkonose or Giant Mountains in the northern Czech Republic. [CNN]

The song is not really great… but what a piece of viral marketing gem by the Richterscales.

The chimps had previously been taught the ascending order of the numbers. Using an ability akin to photographic memory, the young chimps were able to memorise the location of the numerals with better accuracy than humans performing the same task. [Newscientist]

She was asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”

Well, there is nothing wrong if we don’t know where is Budapest; my first guess was Romania and I got it wrong as well (the correct answer is Hungary)… Kellie’s responses beat me though.

Regardless, Kellie managed to raise at least US$25,000 for charity by appearing on the show… it doesn’t matter if she is dumb or not, she is probably doing better than most of us in contributing to the society. Thumbs up for that.

Btw, I think I saw Celine Dion.

The video is about 9 minutes (without audio), might be boring for people that are not interested in astronomy related stuff.

Press release by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)…

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) have successfully performed the world’s first high-definition image taking of an Earth-rise* by the lunar explorer “KAGUYA” (SELENE,) which was injected into a lunar orbit at an altitude of about 100 km on October 18, 2007 (Japan Standard Time. Following times and dates are all JST.)

The Apollo project was the first mission to take images of Earth rising over the Moon. The KAGUYA successfully shot high-definition images of the Earth-rise showing an impressive image of the blue Earth which was the only floating object in pitch-dark space. These are the world’s first high-definition earth images taken from about 380,000 km away from the earth in space.

The image taking was performed by the KAGUYA’s onboard high definition television (HDTV) for space use developed by NHK. The moving image data acquired by the KAGUYA was received at the JAXA Usuda Deep Space Center, and processed by NHK.

The satellite was confirmed to be in good health through telemetry data received at the Usuda station.

* Note: we use the expression “Earth-rise” in this press release, but the Earth-rise is a phenomenon seen only from satellites that travel around the Moon, such as the KAGUYA and the Apollo space ship. The Earth-rise cannot be observed by a person who is on the Moon as they can always see the Earth at the same position.

The advertisement was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, who was behind the Sony Bravia “Balls” commercial. The film was shot at a remote village called Iruya in northern Argentina.

I think this ad is just decent; I would expect something better from Fuglsig after his Balls creation (which is a classic)… but it’s always fun to watch these dominoes-effect.

It’s quite a gem even if you are not a Liverpool supporter (unless you are a Besiktas fan)…

Rhain Davis, who was born in England but has lived in Australia since the age of four, was hailed by the British press on Thursday (August 2) as the next Wayne Rooney after the United star striker.

The boy’s dribbling, stepover and goal-scoring skills was featured in a 4 minute YouTube clip (video below), which was viewed more than 3,000,000 times at the time of writing.

United confirmed the signing but played down the hype around Davis, who has moved back to Cheshire in northern England with his father, near the club’s training ground.

“Being here has been brilliant,” The Sun newspaper quoted Davis as saying. “The best part has been meeting a lot of the players, like Wayne Rooney.” [Soccernet]

This ‘tractor’ is actually a digital-created image, made by CG4TV animation studio. Below is a short video clip of the ‘tractor’ in action…