Stalking Venus

A couple of months back, it was discovered that Nelson Mandela, the previous South African president, was banned from entering many parts of the United States, because the FAA peeps had the ANC and it’s members on their terrorist watch list.
An embarrassed George Bush has just signed a bill that allows the Nobel Peace Prize [...]

As if the crime in this country wasn’t bad enough, now we have cops shooting each other. Independent Online reports that over 400 protesting metro police blockaded the M2 highway that rings Johannesburg, bringing peak hour traffic to a standstill.
Then along come the SA Police in riot gear. Shooting erupted, with the metro police using [...]

George Carlin, amazingly talented and incredibly funny comedian, who has entertained the world for 50 years, died at age 71 last Sunday.
Carlin, known for his irreverance, comedic anger and cleverly-timed usage of strong language will be missed by audiences around the world.
Known for his comedy routines such as “Seven words you can’t say on television” [...]

Torrential downpours starting Tuesday evening caused major road blockages, destruction of bridges and property and the death of at least six people. Others are still missing, injured or marooned where emergency services cannot reach them. Two of the dead were children - pupils from Sidelile High School. (Sadly ironic is the fact that the word ’sidelile’ means ‘we had enough’ in the Zulu language).

Some more tragic news delivered to you with a dollop of bad taste:
If you want your scouting experience to literally blow you away, then head on over to Iowa, where four people were killed and at least 40 injured when a tornado struck the Little Sioux Scout Ranch situated near the Nebraskan state border yestereday [...]

Last month, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake caused an atrocious amount of damage, leaving some 87,000 people dead or missing. Millions more were left homeless and the landscape of the region was massively altered by the ensuing floods and shifted earth.

Locals of the Jiangyou region in China are breathing a sigh of relief as waters from [...]

Laurent was the man behind fabric-printing the works of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian onto sack-like dresses, taking the world by storm with their simple lines and bright designs. He was also the man that finally made it okay for women to wear pants, thereby breaking with an entire civilisation’s passé traditions…

The current mission, bound carries the bus-sized Japanese Pressurized Module, or JPM, which is the station’s largest module. Together with the three-member station crew, and guidance from ground teams across the globe, the shuttle’s astronauts will install the module and Kibo’s robotic arm system.

Sad news for the film world today. The New York Times is reporting that Sydney Pollack died in his home last night, aged 73.
The world-class director of award-winning films like Out of Africa, Tootsie, and The Way We Were succumbed to cancer in his home on Monday night.
Details and filmography here.
Sources:
New York Times via BoingBoing

Radio signals received at 21:55:00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time / GMT) on Saturday confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.
Michael Griffin, the NASA Administrator noted that this was the first [...]