World Largest Fountain In Dubai

Emaar water spectacle

Emaar Properties said on Monday it plans to build one of the largest fountains in the world as the centrepiece of its Downtown Burj Dubai project. Arabian Business reveals what the real estate giant has in store
The fountains, which has yet to be named, will be capable of shooting water over 150 metres into the air - the height of a 50-storey building - and stretch over 275 metres - the length of two football fields

The $218 million project will be 25 percent larger than the iconic fountains at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas

Like the Fountains of Bellagio, Emaar's fountains will include an integral light and sound show and is expected to become one of Dubai's major tourist attractions, drawing over 10 million visitors per year.

The fountains will shoot 22,000 gallons of water in the air at any given moment and feature over 6,600 lights and 50 colour projectors.

The fountains have yet to be named and a cash prize of $27,225 has been assigned to the winner of a competition to name the water feature

The structure is scheduled to be operational by 2009

Poisonous Spider

Nine-year-old girl finds black widow spider in red grapes bought at Waitrose

Supermarket bosses have recalled red Mexican grapes from all their stores after a deadly black widow spider was found in a bunch.

Waitrose pulled the fruit from shelves in case other spiders had entered the country in the same consignment.

The black widow - the world's fifth most poisonous spider - was found by nine-year-old Harriet Barron in a fruit bowl at her home.

Minutes earlier, her brother Elliot had been eating from the same bunch while watching television.

Their mother, Susanne, a 53-year-old nurse, had bought the grapes at her local Waitrose in Northampton.

She said: 'Harriet went to get a grape and started screaming, "There's a spider in there."'

' My husband Columbus recognised the hour-glass-shaped orange and red markings, covered it with paper and walked out of the room.'

The couple, who have four children, put the spider in a jar before contacting Waitrose and the Department for Food.

Mrs Barron said she has not asked for a refund. ' Our thoughts were about safety because there was likely to be more than one in the consignment,' she added.

Black widow spiders come from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Females can grow to about 1.5inches, including leg-span, but males are much smaller.

A store spokesman said: 'This is an isolated incident and our fruit undergoes stringent checks during packing.'

Thousands of honey bees

Shoppers were stunned when a massive swarm of thousands of honey bees touched down in a busy city centre.

Around 15,000 insects gathered in Queen Street, Exeter, at around lunchtime on Tuesday.

While some people darted for cover, others stood and watched the aerial acrobatics.
The local beekeeper was called in to remove the somewhat confused bees

Invasion: 15,000 bees descended on Bella Italia restaurant in Exeter city centre

After around five minutes, the swarm flew underneath a table outside Bella Italia, setting up camp for several hours.

The swarm of over 15,000 bees was roughly a metre in diameter and around an inch thick.

Speaking from inside Bella Italia, supervisor Joe Heginworth, 18, said: 'I've never seen anything like this before.

'There's a pile of people outside watching them and taking photographs on their mobile phones.'

Special ops: A local bee-keeper arrives to deal with the swarm ...

Brenda Cann, 62, saw the bees arrive from outside Queen Street News, where she works.

She said: 'They were coming down from the direction of the High Street.

'They near enough stretched across the whole of Queen Street, but I wasn't really worried.

'A lot of people were coming in to ask what was going on.'

A police spokesman said members of the public started to report the swarm from around 1.30pm.

'One call said there was a large colony of bees coming up from the pavement and they were concerned someone might get stung,'' he said.

... while a team of police officers was despatched to provide back up

The bees were cordoned off to prevent anybody getting too close for comfort.

Milly Lefebvre, 37, was on her lunch break from the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, in Queen Street, when she spotted the commotion.

'It seemed to be a huge amount of bees in a very little space,' she said.

'There was still a group of teenagers having coffee next to them. It was quite surreal.'

Exeter City Council's pest control team was called in to remove the insects with the help of local beekeeper, John Baston.

Mr Easton, 64, said the bees probably stopped for a breather while looking for a new home.

He said some swarms could be aggressive and caution should be taken when dealing with them.

'I was collecting a similar swarm last week and I received 50 stings on the back of one glove alone,' he said.

'Under those circumstances, if you are not protected it can be quite dangerous.

'My advice for anyone who comes across a swarm is to leave them alone and call an expert.'

Mr Easton, who has kept bees for 25 years, said he removed the swarm by gently picking up a chair the majority had settled on before shaking it above an open hive.

'The idea was for the queen bee to fall into the hive and the others to stay in there with her,' he added.

Mr Easton said he would take the bees home and give them 20Ibs of sugar syrup before checking them several times for signs of disease.

'If they are free of disease I will continue to build up their stores to see them through the winter,' he said.

A council spokeswoman said: 'It's the time of year for bees to swarm and it's not unusual for swarms to appear in the centre of Exeter.'

World's Wackiest Festivals

1.El Colacho: the Baby-Jumping Festival (Spain)
In celebration of the Catholic festival of Corpus Christi, grown men leap over newborns, with full parental consent. Donning scary, vaguely Elvis-like costumes and wielding whips and truncheons, the men attempt to "cleanse" the babies of evil. Evidently, recklessly leaping over them is the best way to achieve this. The town has observed the strange practice (called El Colacho) since 1620, and any onlookers who seem to be in need of a quick exorcism are pulled into the event, as well -- so look normal, by God! And leave your babies with the sitter.


2.Up Helly-Aa: the Fire Festival (Shetland Islands)
A tribute to the islands' Viking Past, Up Helly-Aa ("End of the Holy Days"), the fire festivals are held in Shetland annually in the middle of winter to mark the end of the yule season. The festival involves a procession of up to a thousand guizers, and culminates with the burning of a 32-ft. replica of a Viking longship. Due to the often-flamboyant costumes and the large quantity of males dressing up as females, it has earned the joke name 'Transvestite Tuesday'.

3.The Monkey Buffet Festival (Thailand)
Every year, all of the province's approximately 600 monkeys are invited to eat fruits and vegetables during an annual feast held in honor of Rama, a hero of the Ramayana, who, it is said, rewarded his friend and ally, Hanuman the Monkey King, with the fiefdom of what is now Lopburi. Organizers of the annual monkey buffet use more than 3,000 kg of fruits and vegetables for the festival.

4.Holi: the Festival of Colors (India)
Holi, also called the Festival of Colours, is a popular Hindu spring festival observed in India, Guyana, and Nepal. On the second day, known as Dhulhendi, people spend the day throwing colored powder and water at each other. The spring season, during which the weather changes, is believed to cause viral fever and cold. Thus, the playful throwing of the colored powders has a medicinal significance: the colors are traditionally made of Neem, Kumkum, Haldi, Bilva, and other medicinal herbs prescribed by Ayurvedic doctors.


5. Cheese Rolling Festival (England)
Though it sounds benign (and kind of goofy), cheese-rolling is very dangerous. Running full-tilt down a very steep hill behind a madly spinning 7-pound wheel of cheese can be well-nigh lethal. In fact, police have attempted to ban the event, but participants have refused to observe the ban. Men and their cheese wheels can not be separated easily, evidently. So what happens during a cheese roll? Simple: the cheese is set to rolling, and racers zoom down the hill after the cheese. However, as the cheese can reach speeds of up to 70 mph, it rarely happens that someone catches the cheese. First to the bottom wins the cheese. Glorious.

6. Maslenitsa: free-for-all boxing match (Russia)
In Orthodox countries, the week before Lent is marked with a series of celebrations, including a free-for-all boxing match in which there are no rules. In centuries past, the fight ended only when the participates were covered with blood and bereft of clothes.

7. Tunarama: the Tuna Tossing Festival (Australia)
The Tunarama festival is held in Port Lincoln, on the tip of Eyre Peninsula, over the Australia Day (26 January) long weekend. When the festival began in 1962, it was intended to promote the emerging tuna fishing industry in Port Lincoln. Tuna fishing is now one of the town's biggest industries and Australia's largest tuna cannery is located there. The highlight of the festival is the tuna tossing competition. Ex-Olympic hammer thrower, Sean Carlin, holds the record for the longest toss at 37.23 metres set in 1998.

8. Roswell UFO Festival (USA)
The Roswell UFO Festival celebrates the anniversary of the "Roswell Incident," when a UFO was said to have crashed into military grounds nearby. Featuring experts, authors, researchers, and lecturers dissecting the infamous incident, the celebration will also sport an alien parade, an alien costume contest , and an alien hot air balloon ride.

9. La Tomatina (Spain)
In late August, thousands of people pelt each other with over 250 lbs. of tomatoes in a span of 60 minutes in an event modestly described as the world's largest tomato fight. Every year, over 30,000 tourists come to Bunyol for this festival. Rules of conduct keep the festivities from becoming a more dangerous brawl.

Worlds Shortest Man Again

Goat Wins Most Beautiful Goat Contest

What a lovely underbite: A Damascene wins the Most Beautiful Goat title at the Mazayen al-Maaz competition in Riyadh despite a faint resemblance to Popeye.

Baby born with a second penis

THIS is the picture that will shock parents around the world - a baby born with a second penis on his BACK.

The tot was born to farmer dad Li Jun, 30, and his unnamed wife, who live in Hejian city in central China's Henan province.

Surgery

But he was rushed to Tianjin Childrens' Hospital on May 27 for surgery to remove his extra manhood.

The rare condition, the first for Tianjin Childrens' Hospital, is called fetus in fetu (FIF).

Doctors, who spent over three hours removing the extra penis on June 6, said he was fine following surgery.

Bird Flu Hits Hong Kong

HONG KONG (June 7) - Hong Kong health workers slaughtered 2,700 poultry in a market Saturday after chickens were found to be carrying the dangerous H5N1 bird flu virus, officials said.

The slaughter may be extended to all live poultry in the territory if the virus is detected in any other locations, Secretary for Food and Health York Chow said.

"Since we have detected the virus in the market, we will cull all the chickens in this market," Chow told reporters. "If we find another positive detection in another market, then we will assume that the risk is much higher and we need to cull all the chickens in all the markets."

Hong Kong TV Cable showed health workers wearing protective gear placing live poultry from nine stalls into bags to prepare for the slaughter.

Routine bird flu checks detected the H5N1 virus in five samples of chicken waste. The samples were collected June 3 from three vendors in the market in the Sham Shui Po residential district, Chow said.

Health officials declared the market an infected area and suspended all sales of live poultry there, a government statement said.

Chow said authorities were tracing the origin of the infected chickens.

Chow also ordered a 21-day ban on the supply of live poultry from mainland China and from local farms.

Occasional H5N1 infections in wild birds are common in Hong Kong but the territory has not suffered a major outbreak of the disease since the virus killed six people in 1997.

That prompted the government to slaughter the territory's entire poultry population of about 1.5 million birds.

At least 241 people have died of bird flu worldwide since 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

Most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds, but health experts worry the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily among humans, sparking a pandemic that might kill millions of people.

Businessmen jailed for running a £340m scam using fake addresses

An international businessman and his two deputies were jailed for 25 years yesterday for running a £340million metal trading con from a cow shed in India.

Virendra Rastogi, 39, was the multi-millionaire chief executive of a billion pound business when investigators from the Serious Fraud Office swooped in 2002 and caught him stuffing papers into his shredder.

Southwark Crown Court heard it was a 'desperate last ditch attempt' to destroy incriminating documents and distance himself from a fraud spanning six years across three continents.


Rastogi and his co-defendants Anand Jain, 42, and Guantam Majumdar, 55, invented hundreds of bogus companies and imaginary transactions to convince banks to lend them money.

Fraud investigators found the fake addresses included a cow shed in a field in India, and a laundrette in the US.

Another fake company address was the home of an an elderly lady selling scrapbooks in New Jersey.

The court heard the 324 fake firms were apparently ordering vast quantities of metal from the USA, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and Singapore through Rastogi's company RBG Resources PLC.

The company was founded on fraud and riddled with $600million of debt.

Judge James Wadsworth QC jailed Rastogi for nine and a half years.

Jain, dubbed the 'facilitator' of the fraud, was locked up for eight and a half years while Majumdar, once a respected banker in the City, was caged for seven and a half years.

Judge James Wadsworth QC said the 'collusion' of Rastogi's company RBG, and his brother's company in America resulted in billions of dollars being borrowed from banks all over the world.

The judge said: 'I am of the view that you Virendra Rastogi, though much younger and the junior within your family, were the real brains of the extension of the business by these fraudulent means.

'Over six years the banks were induced by your falsehoods to advance billions of dollars for trades that did not exist in any real sense.'

Judge Wadsworth said the loss to the banking system was an estimated $538million.

Rastogi enjoyed a plush existence in his exclusive Mayfair flat and pocketed a total of £4.15million in just five years, between 1996 and 2001.

In 2001, the managing director was taking home an annual salary of £650,000 while his 'deputy chief executive' Majumder earned £390,000.

At the bottom of the pecking order, Jain earned £201,000 with a bonus of £75,000.
house

Rastogi claimed this was the address of an International multi-million dollar firm but it was actually an elderly lady's home

At the end of the mammoth trial, which cost the taxpayer at least £10million, the three men were found guilty of an international conspiracy to defraud.

Rastogi followed in the footsteps of his older brother, Narendra, who is currently serving a seven-year sentence for fraud in the USA for founding an empire based on fake invoices from bogus businesses.

Creditors at financial institutions, such as German-based West LB and General Motors, were told RBG Resources gave their customers unusually long 180-day 'credit windows' before having to pay up.

The fraudsters ware granted massive loans to cover them in the interim period and RBG borrowed half its annual 'turnover.'

Rastogi, once on 'Britain's Asian Rich List', convinced the financial world of his credibility by insisting on having internationally renowned firm Pricewaterhouse Cooper as his auditors.

When RBG collapsed in May 2002, investigators struggled to trace the metal-trading customers and those that were found consisted of 'low rent local trade operations.'

The corporation unravelled when PriceWaterhouse Coopers resigned in the middle of an annual audit in 2001.

Suspicions had been raised after a number of documents purporting to be sent from six different companies all over the world were all sent from the same fax machine in Hong Kong.

Other documents appeared to be 'warm from the printer.'

The collapse of Rastogi's firm, based at 105 Piccadilly, followed the end of sister company Allied Deals based in the USA.

Allied Deals was headed by Narendra Rastogi and was built entirely built on fraud, with 95 per cent of its trading between 1996 and 2002 completely fabricated.

The discovery of this fraud lead to the conviction of Narendra and various other members of staff.

A pure white horse 'albino'

The rare 'albino' foal that's become a star of the New Forest
It's one of the rarest sights in the equine world.

A pure white horse is hardly ever seen outside a pub sign.

And almost all of them have begun life as a darker colour before turning to light grey.

So crowds have been flocking to catch a glimpse of this beautiful foal, born among a group of New Forest ponies near Lyndhurst, Hampshire.

The spindly-legged youngster - also pictured, inset, with his dun-coloured mother - has quickly become the star attraction in Britain's newest national park.

The fact the foal has a brown mother proves that he is a cremello blue-eyed cream and not an albino

The enthusiasts who first spotted him thought he could be an albino, but experts have now ruled that out.

They say the giveaway is his eyes, which are blue. An albino's would be pink.

The technical term for the colt is a cremello blue-eyed cream.


As well as their blue eyes, such animals have some pale golden pigment in their coats and skin. Albinos have no non-white colouring at all.

Sue Westwood, clerk to the Verderers, the group which protects and conserves landscape and wildlife of the New Forest, said: 'It is virtually unheard of in horses to have an albino and cremellos are very unusual.

'Unfortunately, they are not very hardy at all.

'They find it hard to deal with sunburn in the summer and with the cold rain in the winter.'

The sensitivity to light may explain why the foal's eyes are half-closed. Or he could just be trying to look relaxed in the face of all the attention.

UNBELIAVEABLE IN JAPAN

It is unbelievable to see what people are doing in the world. The world is in need of our prayers for the respect of human life. What is in this message scares. It is really sad to have such a culture. Felix