Crawl spaced out

Joy – and mystery – as man feared lost overboard is found hiding on ship

FRANK URQUHART

THE family of a missing oil worker, found alive 42 hours after he was feared lost overboard from a North Sea diving support vessel, yesterday hailed his dramatic return from the dead as a “Christmas miracle”.
But last night, as Christopher McGonigle continued to recover in hospital from his bizarre two-day ordeal, hidden on board his ship with a broken leg, his bosses were still waiting to discover how he became stowed away in a roof void with a bottle of water and a bunch of bananas.
Grampian Police are also planning to talk to the man whose mysterious disappearance led to a two-day search, involving four helicopters and ten ships, and costing an estimated £500,000.
Mr McGonigle, 35, of Strabane, Northern Ireland, the operator of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), was presumed to have drowned when he vanished from the diving support vessel Pelican while the boat was 140 miles east of Aberdeen. He had last been seen at about 3am on Saturday.
Father John Doherty, the local priest, said: “His family spoke to him on the phone last night, but he wasn’t in a fit state to tell them what had happened. He was suffering from hypothermia and dehydration and a bit incoherent.”
A source at the company said the circumstances in which Mr McGonigle had been discovered were “bizarre to say the least”.

This article:New Scotsman

Last updated: 19-Dec-06 00:32 GMT

Racing certainty

Athlete fails gender test

AN INDIAN runner who won a silver medal in the women’s 800 metre’s at the Asian Games has failed a gender test and been stripped of the medal.
The Indian Olympic Association said yesterday it has been told by the Olympic Council of Asia that Shanti Sounderajan, 25, had been disqualified after failing the test in Doha, Qatar, after coming second.
An Indian athletics official said Sounderajan had almost certainly never had sex-change surgery.
Instead, the official said, the runner appeared to have “abnormal chromosomes”. The official also said that the test revealed more Y chromosomes than allowed.
Sounderajan was not immediately available for comment.

This article:New Scotsman

Last updated: 19-Dec-06 00:32 GMT

Horse laugh

Head-butt by horse restores man’s sight

RACHEL WILLIAMS IN
NEW YORK
A SECOND World War veteran who was blinded in his right eye when he was hit by shrapnel can see again after being head-butted by a pedigree racehorse.
Doctors tried in vain for 64 years to restore Don Karkos’s sight, until My Buddy Chimo stepped in.
Hours after the horse smacked the 82-year-old paddock security guard in exactly the same spot as the shrapnel gashed his forehead in combat in 1942, he realised his vision was returning.
Although his vision is still not perfect, Mr Karkos has been able to see about 15ft with his damaged eye since the incident at the Monticello Raceway racecourse in New York state two months ago.
“What happened is still a mystery to me,” he said. “But I do know I had got used to not seeing things and bumping into walls, and I don’t do that anymore.”

New Scotsman

Mind control

Robot controlled by power of brain waves
By Roger Highfield, Science EditorLast Updated: 2:42am GMT 18/12/2006 

Computer scientists have used the power of thought to control a humanoid robot. Wearing a special cap dotted with 32 scalp electrodes, an individual can “order” the robot to move about and pick up objects merely by generating brain waves that reflect the instructions. Rajesh Rao, of the University of Washington, demonstrated the robot at the Current Trends in BrainComputer Interfacing meeting in Whistler, British Columbia. For the demonstration, the robot was in a different room from its human master. The electrodes pick up signals using a technique called electroencephalography. The thought commands are limited to basic instructions. The robot can be told to move forward, choose one of two objects and bring it to one of two locations. The Washington team plans to extend the research to use more complex objects and equip the robot with skills such as avoiding obstacles.

Daily Telegraph

Kilty as charged

Scots troops must share their kilts
By Kate DevlinLast Updated: 2:35am GMT 18/12/2006 

Soldiers in Scotland’s new “super regiment” have to share kilts because of a shortage of the ceremonial dress. The Royal Regiment of Scotland has 5,000 soldiers but just 320 kilts, just one for every 15 men.The kilts are worn during ceremonial or public duties. The shortage comes after the Army decided to end its 150-year association with Borders-based kilt makers Robert Noble, which has produced military tartan since 1850. The Army has put to tender a £1 million contract for the new kilts. It has received 320 “trial” kilts but will not receive a full set until 2008.

Daily Telegraph

Fly by night

British envoy caught up in butterfly row
By Jeremy McDermott in
MedellinLast Updated: 4:04am GMT 14/12/2006 

The British ambassador to Colombia’s passion for butterflies has caused a flap amid claims that he has been wealding his net without the proper permits. Haydon Warren-Gash, 57, hit the jackpot when he landed his job in Colombia, the country with the greatest selection of butterflies in the world. But the avid lepidopterist, who has had about 12 species named after him or members of his family, was accused by El Tiempo newspaper of taking rare species from the Tayrona National Park last month without a licence. Insisting that he was not “a nut with a net”, Mr Warren-Gash stated in a written explanation of his actions that he was working in conjunction with Colombian authorities. “These allegations are untrue. I’m less than chuffed with the paper.” Sources within the British embassy have said that the ambassador has turned one of the rooms in his residence in Bogota into a shrine to his hobby.

Daily Telegraph

I Spy

Diplomats turn to Google to break nuclear ring
By Damien McElroyLast Updated: 2:13am GMT 12/12/2006 

It has 16 intelligence agencies, spends untold billions on spying and uses the most sophiscated surveillance equipment available. Yet when American diplomats needed to identify Iranians to punish with financial sanctions for involvement in the country’s nuclear programme they used Google, the most popular website search engine. State Department diplomats were rebuffed by the CIA after requesting names of scientists and bureaucrats involved in Teheran’s clandestine quest to build a nuclear weapon. A junior State Department desk officer was then given the task of finding a set of names on the internet. The upshot is a draft United Nations resolution that proposes a travel ban and an asset freeze on 12 individuals, including the commander of the Revolution Guards, the feared state militia, and directors of several nuclear institutions. The resolution, now circulating in the Security Council corridors, is scheduled for adoption before the end of the year.

Daily Telegraph

Hot stuff!!

Shrimps survive boiling seas two miles down
By Charles Clover, Environment EditorLast Updated: 1:36am GMT 11/12/2006 

Scientists have discovered species of shrimp, mussel and clam living at temperatures near boiling point 1.8 miles down in the equatorial Atlantic. They are unable to explain how the shrimp are able to live without being cooked on the walls of volcanic vents carrying fluids from the Earth’s core. Scientists from the Census of Marine Life, a ten-year project to catalogue the 200,000 species thought to live in the oceans, measured temperatures of 765F (407C) in the fluids emerging from the hottest vent – hot enough to melt lead. Yet nearby there were shrimp and large beds of mussels and clams living exposed to pulses of water at temperatures of up to 176F (80C) in a wholly dark environment, where the surrounding water is at 36F (2C) – nearly freezing point. Somehow the chemistry of the shrimp, and other deep-sea life forms observed, allows them to tolerate both the extremes in temperature and the high concentrations of heavy metals in emissions from the vents. According to scientists who have eaten them, the shrimp are foul-tasting because of the amount of hydrogen sulphide in their bodies.

Daily Telegraph

The answer is out there somewhere

Scientologists get £270,000 subsidy
By Adam Lusher, Sunday TelegraphLast Updated: 1:37am GMT 11/12/2006 

The controversial Church of Scientology has been granted a subsidy of more than £270,000 a year in public money, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal. Scientology’s lawyers used European rulings and Government equality regulations to force the City of London corporation to grant an 80 per cent rates discount for its new centre near St Paul’s Cathedral. The “church”, it is believed, is now pressing to pay nothing at all. The corporation confirmed that this discount was on the basis that Scientology is a “charity”, despite the fact that the Charity Commission has refused to register it. The discount, referred to as a “mandatory rate relief”, has been granted even though the Church of Scientology has estimated global assets of $398 million (£203 million), is supported by film stars including Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and was once described as “corrupt, sinister and dangerous” by a High Court judge. Scientology has attracted controversy regularly since L Ron Hubbard, the American science fiction writer, founded it in 1954, teaching that humans are immortal beings with a spiritual side called the “thetan”.

Daily Telegraph

Get your skates on…

Skates give Indian factory workers true ‘mobility of labour’
By Amrit Dhillon in
Delhi, Sunday TelegraphLast Updated: 1:37am GMT 11/12/2006 

Workers in Indian textile factories have given a new meaning to the idea of rolling production lines – by learning to do their jobs on skates rather than foot. More than 2,000 staff in mills in the industrial city of Coimbatore have been trained to do their work on roller skates in a bid to speed their progress across the shop floor and improve productivity. Previously, walking up and down the length of a 150ft loom or spinning frame could take several minutes, and proved exhausting by the end of a shift. Now, however, employees glide around effortlessly in what is fast becoming a standard industry practice.

Daily Telegraph