Reality television star Jade Goody, aged just 27, died in her sleep early Sunday, her mother and publicist Max Clifford said, after a very public battle with cervical cancer. Goody died at her home in Upshire, Essex, at 3:14 am (0314 GMT) on Mother's Day, with new husband Jack Tweed and mother Jackiey Budden by her side. Prime Minister Gordon Brown led the tributes to Goody Sunday, saying he was "deeply saddened" by her death.

Goody, an ex-dental nurse from south London, first found fame on Britain's "Big Brother" reality television programme in 2002. But her rags-to-riches career was nearly ruined when she subjected Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty to racist bullying on the celebrity edition of the show in 2007, referring to her as "Shilpa Poppadom". The two subsequently made peace, with Goody appearing on the Indian "Big Brother" -- "Bigg Boss", hosted by Shetty -- although she pulled out after her cancer diagnosis.

She married Tweed -- a 21-year-old aspiring footballers' agent jailed last year for attacking a 16-year-old with a golf club -- on February 22, nine days after he proposed in hospital following her terminal diagnosis. Media rights for the lavish ceremony at a country house hotel north of London were reportedly sold for one million pounds (1.1 million euros, 1.4 million dollars).

Goody plus sons Bobby, five, and Freddy, four -- who she had with her ex-boyfriend, television presenter Jeff Brazier -- were christened on March 7, another event captured by a magazine. The christening was one of her final requests and her publicist Clifford said she wanted to do it so her sons "know about Jesus and hopefully in the years ahead they'll be able to keep in touch with (her) through Jesus".

Her case reportedly led to a 20 percent rise in the number of young women taking pap smear tests which can detect cervical cancer.

Amazed at the incredible picture above of the guy swimming and cuddling with the lion? It seems beyond comprehension that a human and a 185 kg lion could be act like a couple that has been found cuddling and now they're feeling a mixture of bothered and embarrassed! By the way, look at the head of that lion - it's so HUGE!



However, this is just a normal part of the day for the guy in these pictures, whose name is Kevin Richardson. He is 34 years old and is a zoologist and animal behaviourist and the lions he plays with are his close friends! He is often nicknamed "The Lion Whisperer" and is known for his unusual, controversial, but very successful way to raise and interact with some of the most dangerous animals on earth, especially lions and hyenas.



Kevin's way of developing exceptionally personal bonds with his "pets" or "students" are really unusual. He actually plays, sleeps and even swims with them. Meg the lioness and her sister Amy are some of his best friends. These pictures are taken in "The Kingdom Of The White Lion", a 650-hectare area near Johannesburg, South Africa.



Here's a video of the bath which shows how strong the bond between Kevin and this lioness is:



Here are some more pics of him during his favourite activities: playing with huge lions:


Look at the faces of these lions!!


Here Kevin gives the lion a kiss..


.. and the lion gives Kevin a kiss back!


Here's Kevin with a Hyena

!






Kevin is also friends with a black panther.











Here are some videos from YouTube about Kevin Richardson and his unusual friends:



This video is one that you MUST see. Amazing!

According to reports, 43-year-old Manuel Uribe, the world's heaviest man, has announced that he plans to marry his long-term girlfriend named Claudia Solis on Oct 26 in Monterrey, Mexico.

The couple met each other in 2004. They have still yet to decide the location for exchanging their wedding vows.

Uribe had been declared the world's heaviest man this year by Guinness Book of World Records. He is unable to even get out of his bed. Any outing requires hoisting his bed onto the back of a truck.

However, since 2006 when his weight was at its peak of 560 kg, he has shed about 250kg with the help of nutritionists working with the Zone diet. Understandably, he said he would not have more than a bite of wedding cake for photos, since he's still dieting to reach a weight which will allow him to walk again. His goal is to leave the house on his own but doctors say that is a long process because it may take several years for Uribe to reach his goal. He particularly is looking forward to walking his fiancee down the aisle when they marry. A Mexican band called Pesado, or Heavy, will be providing the music during his wedding.

(Photo Source: Netscape)

My last post on Big Bang - CERN's Large Hadron Collider Rap Video had a few readers asking me who the author and rapper of that video about high-energy particle physics is. Well, her name is Kate McAlpine, aka alpinekat (photo on the left). She is a science writer who works at CERN and who also has a rap about neurons on YouTube.

Her rap video about the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator that has been built in a 17-mile circular tunnel at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, has drawn almost 3 million views and counting so far on YouTube.

McAlpine rapped that when the collider starts functioning, "the things that it discovers will rock you in the head."

The world's biggest physics experiment has succeeded in its first major test as CERN's Large Hadron Collider has started functioning today. A beam of protons was successfully fired all the way around a 17-mile tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border. CERN is the French acronym for an outfit called the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has created this Large Hadron Collider 300 feet below the Swiss-French border. The scientists will be firing the protons — a type of subatomic particle — around the tunnel in stages, several miles at a time.

Once the beam has successfully been tested in clockwise direction, CERN will send it counterclockwise. Eventually, and possibly after a month, the two beams will then be fired in opposite directions with the aim of smashing together protons to see how they are made. This collision of protons will occur at really fast speeds until they create conditions similar to the moment just before or after the Big Bang.

This experiment, which has been eagerly awaited by 9,000 physicists around the world, is fraught with objections by a plethora of skeptics who fear the collisions of protons will bring about doomsday, since they may destroy the earth and wipe out mankind.

The following Rap video was made by people involved with the project, to create awareness about exactly what the experiment is about. It's more of an educational rap video - check it out below.



In case you can't see it above, click here for the link on YouTube or click here for the link on Vimeo.

For those of you who use SiteMeter, here's some news. The current SiteMeter platform will be shutting down very soon and the new one is tentatively scheduled to start up over the weekend of September 13th to 14th, 2008. With respect to this, there are a few facts that you should be aware of:

1. After the migration, all Premium Accounts will have to pay only one flat fee of $6.95 a month or $59.00 a year. This is applicable to both new members and current paid accounts.
2. Although the SiteMeter Website won't be available during the migration weekend, stats will continue to be tracked.
3. Visits Counts might be different, but they will be more accurate on the new platform. How so? The visit Counts will likely be higher, because the new platform will have the ability to track visits using cookies. This will let SiteMeter distinguish unique visitors much more precisely than it could on the old (current) platform. For example, unique visitors sitting behind one IP address would previously be able to be detectd only around half the time, but utilizing the cookie system makes the stats 100% accurate. Also, there's good news for those who are currently using SiteMeter's Free service but have large volumes of visit traffic. Previoulsy, your visit counts may have been lower than actual. However, on the new platform, you will get unlimited capacity on visit records which will longer affect visit counts.
4. Page View counts will be much more accurate. This means that page view counts may be slightly lower, because SiteMeter has updated their Bot Filtering Database with the most current Bot list available. This gives them the ability to exclude counts to your stats from automated Bot’s travelling the internet hitting sites.
5. You may experience a small gap in your stats while they transfer all accounts over to the new platform.
6. You will have to “Activate” your SiteMeter account(s) on the new platform to obtain access to your new stats.
7. Passwords will now be Case Sensitive.
8. All your historical data will remain intact and be transferred over to the new platform.

Amazon Prime is a popular Amazon.com program in which you, as a member, get unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of eligible items. The best thing is that all new members are offered a free trial, so you get to experience the benefits and convenience of shopping with Amazon Prime for a whole month absolutely free. As an Amazon Prime member, this is what you get:

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We all know how important promoting one's business is to achieve success, and how videos aimed at targeted audiences are effective in this regard. Well, BuzzShed has a video distribution system that allows you to utilize over 60 demographic filters to identify the most relevant audience for each campaign. Hence this video promotion tool not only exposes your videos to a highly targeted audience, but reduces cost to a great extent as well. Those who are using online video as a promotion channel will benefit from a BuzzShed campaign.