Monster Icebergs breaking it's drift closer to Australia..

SYDNEY (AFP) – An island-sized iceberg is breaking up as it drifts closer to Australia, producing hundreds of smaller slabs spread over a massive area of ocean, experts said Monday.
The 140-square-kilometre (54-square-mile) block of ice, known as B17B, was seen some 1,700 kilometres (1,054 miles) south-southwest of Australia's western coast on December 9, prompting a maritime alert for vessels in the area.
But as it has tracked further north and east the iceberg has shrunk to some 115 square kilometres -- still formidable at about twice the size of Manhattan.
"There are now many more smaller icebergs calving off B17B, measuring up to several kilometres in length, and spread over more than a thousand kilometres of ocean," said Australian Antarctic Division glaciologist Neal Young.
Young, who has tracked B17B using satellite images from NASA and the European Space Agency, said the iceberg was some 400 square kilometres in area and 40 metres high when it first broke off from Antarctica.
"If you didn't know about the early picture you would still say it's a monster," Young told AFP.
Young said he expected B17B to totally dissolve but was unable to predict when this would happen.
"Might be two weeks, might be several weeks. The key thing at the moment is it's getting thinner," he said.
"It's got its feet in what it thinks is warm water -- about six to eight degrees Celsius (45 F) -- we think that's freezing cold but for an iceberg that's quite warm.
"So it's thinning from the bottom and that's what's going to lead to it breaking up."
The iceberg, which calved from the eastern end of the Ross Ice Shelf nearly 10 years ago, is expected to continue tracking in a more easterly direction.
Australian authorities last week issued a shipping alert over the possible hazard from icebergs.

Octopus Carrying Coconut Shells for Shelter..

SYDNEY – Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal.
The scientists filmed the veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selecting halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptying them out, carrying them under their bodies up to 65 feet (20 meters), and assembling two shells together to make a spherical hiding spot.
Julian Finn and Mark Norman of Museum Victoria in Melbourne observed the odd activity in four of the creatures during a series of dive trips to North Sulawesi and Bali in Indonesia between 1998 and 2008. Their findings were published Tuesday in the journal Current Biology.
"I was gobsmacked," said Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specializes in cephalopods. "I mean, I've seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I've never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh."
Octopuses often use foreign objects as shelter. But the scientists found the veined octopus going a step further by preparing the shells, carrying them long distances and reassembling them as shelter elsewhere.
That's an example of tool use, which has never been recorded in invertebrates before, Finn said.
"What makes it different from a hermit crab is this octopus collects shells for later use, so when it's transporting it, it's not getting any protection from it," Finn said. "It's that collecting it to use it later that is unusual."
The researchers think the creatures probably once used shells in the same way. But once humans began cutting coconuts in half and discarding the shells into the ocean, the octopuses discovered an even better kind of shelter, Finn said.
The findings are significant, in that they reveal just how capable the creatures are of complex behavior, said Simon Robson, associate professor of tropical biology at James Cook University in Townsville.
"Octopuses have always stood out as appearing to be particularly intelligent invertebrates," Robson said. "They have a fairly well-developed sense of vision and they have a fairly intelligent brain. So I think it shows the behavioral capabilities that these organisms have."
There is always debate in the scientific community about how to define tool use in the animal kingdom, Robson said. The Australian researchers defined a tool as an object carried or maintained for future use. But other scientists could define it differently, which means it's difficult to say for certain whether this is the first evidence of such behavior in invertebrates, Robson said.
Still, the findings are interesting, he said.
"It's another example where we can think about how similar humans are to the rest of the world," Robson said. "We are just a continuum of the entire planet."

Pacquiao wins for his 7th World Title..

LAS VEGAS (AP)—Manny Pacquiao put on yet another dominating performance Saturday night, knocking down Miguel Cotto twice and turning his face into a bloody mess before finally stopping him 55 seconds into the 12th round.
Pacquiao used his blazing speed and power from both hands to win his seventh title in seven weight classes and cement his stature as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. Cotto took such a beating that his face was a river of red from the fury of Pacquiao’s punches.
Pacquiao dropped Cotto with a right hand early in the third round, but he wasn’t badly hurt and came back to finish the round strong. But after Pacquiao put Cotto on the canvas with a big left hand as Cotto was advancing forward late in the fourth round, Cotto was never the same again.
Cotto fought gamely but in the later rounds he was just trying to survive as blood flowed down his face and Pacquiao kept coming after him relentlessly.

Droid by Motorola..

The web is richer. Photos are sharper. Videos pop. It has the most advanced browser and Android 2.0 software with a blazing-fast processor and 3G speed for faster search. It has the world's thinnest QWERTY slider at 13.7mm. It can help you navigate turn-by-turn. It has a 5MP camera with a flash, plus loads of great camera features and a DVD-quality recorder to capture all the richer, bigger, wider experiences you're going to have.
It's the phone with the "Hi" IQ.

4 Things You should Never do with your Credit Cards

Susan McCarthy, a financial adviser in Oklahoma City and author of The Value of Money, lists her top four credit card don'ts:1. Don't make only the minimum payments. This stretches out your payment and, thanks to the interest, significantly increases your overall cost.2. Don't carry too many cards. Multiple cards make it easier to rack up debt because it's harder to keep track of your spending. Having lots of cards isn't necessarily bad for your credit, but misusing them is. So limit your plastic to two national cards (store cards often carry higher interest rates) that you manage carefully.3. Don't miss payment due dates. Not only will you be hit with a late fee-as high as $39 on some cards-but your interest rate could also jump. Sign up for online banking or pay over the phone if you're up against the deadline. (You may pay a processing fee, but it will probably be less than the late fee and the possible interest-rate hike.)4. Don't take cash advances. These advances generally come with sky-high interest rates and service fees, making them a far too expensive way to get cash. Avoid at all costs.

World Series Open Champion..

LAS VEGAS (AP)—A 21-year-old Michigan poker professional who chose cards over college won the World Series of Poker main event in Las Vegas early Tuesday, winning $8.55 million and becoming the youngest player to win the tournament in its 40-year history.
Joe Cada of Shelby Township, Mich., turned over a pair of nines early after 46-year old Darvin Moon called his all-in wager with a suited queen-jack, setting up an about-even race for most of the chips on the table.
But a board of two sevens, a king, an eight and a deuce didn’t connect with either player’s cards and gave Cada the win.
“I ran really well and I never really thought this was possible,” Cada said. “It was one of those dreams and I’m thankful it came true.”
The hand abruptly ended a final table that saw Moon, a logger from western Maryland, bounce back to a dominant chip lead after being down 2-1 in chips to start the night.
“I knew if I could catch, I got him,” Moon said of the final hand. “I just took a shot.”
Cada broke a record for the tournament’s youngest winner set last year by Peter Eastgate of Denmark. Cada is 340 days younger than Eastgate.
The record was previously held for two decades by 11-time gold bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who posed for pictures with Cada after the win.
He also posed with his mother, Ann Cada, a dealer at MotorCity Casino Hotel in downtown Detroit.
“My baby,” Ann Cada said as she approached her son with cameras snapping.
When asked what’s next for him after reaching the pinnacle for poker so early in his career, Cada said: “To win it back-to-back.”
Moon and Cada traded the lead several times in 88 hands spanning nearly three hours of play, with one 20-minute break.
Moon erased Cada’s lead in 12 hands, revealing a pair of queens during a showdown to rake in a pot worth millions of chips. Cada shook his head after he lost and briefly stood up from the table, walking over and chatting with two of his supporters.
After some chip-shifting, Cada was ahead by less than 4 million chips after 52 hands, with 194.8 million chips in play.
But Moon stormed to nearly a 100 million-chip lead after the break, visibly frustrating Cada and leaning on him to make tougher decisions.
Fortunes changed when Moon pounced on a board with two 10s, a nine and a five to put Cada’s entire tournament at risk. After a sip of bottled water and several minutes of thinking, Cada called the bet and flipped over a nine for a pair.
Moon held a straight draw but didn’t hit his hand on the river, giving the lead back to Cada and drawing roars from the crowd.
“I should have went all-in on the flop. He made a phenomenal call,” Moon said. “That’s why he’s the champion.”
Moon won $5.18 million for second place.
“I only play good when my back’s against the wall,” said Cada, who was nearly ousted from the tournament on Saturday when he held about 1 percent of the chips in play after 123 hands.
The players traded chips atop a table with a stack of cash and a gold bracelet on its felt, and in front of nearly 1,500 screaming fans in a capacity crowd at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.
Their tug-of-war ended an epic tournament that began with 6,494 players in July.
After a 115-day break, Cada and Moon endured more than 14 1/2 hours through 276 hands at the final table on Saturday and early Sunday, when they outlasted seven others to make it to heads-up play.
Unlike Cada, who said he regularly plays about a dozen tournaments at a time online or three at a time in heads-up cash games, Moon hasn’t played a single hand of online poker. He doesn’t even own a computer or have an e-mail address.

Largest Cruise Ship..

KORSOER, Denmark – The world's largest cruise ship cleared a crucial obstacle Sunday, lowering its smokestacks to squeeze under a bridge in Denmark.
The Oasis of the Seas — which rises about 20 stories high — passed below the Great Belt Fixed Link with a slim margin as it left the Baltic Sea on its maiden voyage to Florida.
Bridge operators said that even after lowering its telescopic smokestacks the giant ship had less than a 2-foot (half-meter) gap.
Hundreds of people gathered on beaches at both ends of the bridge, waiting for hours to watch the brightly lit behemoth sail by shortly after midnight (2300GMT; 7 p.m. EDT).
"It was fantastic to see it glide under the bridge. Boy, it was big," said Kurt Hal, 56.
Company officials are banking that its novelty will help guarantee its success. Five times larger than the Titanic, the $1.5 billion ship has seven neighborhoods, an ice rink, a small golf course and a 750-seat outdoor amphitheater. It has 2,700 cabins and can accommodate 6,300 passengers and 2,100 crew members.
Accommodations include loft cabins, with floor-to-ceiling windows, and 1,600-square-foot (487-meter) luxury suites with balconies overlooking the sea or promenades.
The liner also has four swimming pools, volleyball and basketball courts, and a youth zone with theme parks and nurseries for children.
Oasis of the Sea, nearly 40 percent larger than the industry's next-biggest ship, was conceived years before the economic downturn caused desperate cruise lines to slash prices to fill vacant berths.
It was built by STX Finland for Royal Caribbean International and left the shipyard in Finland on Friday. Officials hadn't expected any problems in passing the Great Belt bridge, but traffic was stopped for about 15 minutes as a precaution when the ship approached, Danish navy spokesman Joergen Brand said.
Aboard the Oasis of the Seas, project manager Toivo Ilvonen of STX Finland confirmed that the ship had passed under the bridge without any incidents.
"Nothing fell off," he said.
The enormous ship features various "neighborhoods" — parks, squares and arenas with special themes. One of them will be a tropical environment, including palm trees and vines among the total 12,000 plants on board. They will be planted after the ship arrives in Fort Lauderdale.
In the stern, a 750-seat outdoor theater — modeled on an ancient Greek amphitheater — doubles as a swimming pool by day and an ocean front theater by night. The pool has a diving tower with spring boards and two 33-foot (10-meter) high-dive platforms. An indoor theater seats 1,300 guests.
One of the "neighborhoods," named Central Park, features a square with boutiques, restaurants and bars, including a bar that moves up and down three decks, allowing customers to get on and off at different levels.
Once home, the $1.5 billion floating extravaganza will have more, if less visible, obstacles to duck: a sagging U.S. economy, questions about the consumer appetite for luxury cruises and criticism that such sailing behemoths are damaging to the environment and diminish the experience of traveling.
It is due to make its U.S. debut on Nov. 20 at its home port, Port Everglades in Florida.