Waiting Room News, Issue 12, May 27, 2013 by Nick Moore

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Waiting Room News Australia

World CAUGHT SHORT: Oil-rich Venezuela moved to end shortages of hygiene products by allocating $US79 million to import 39 million rolls of toilet paper, 50 million sanitary napkins, 10 million bars of soap, 17 million disposable diapers and three million tubes of toothpaste.

YOU’RE KIDDING! Middle-income families in Australia spent up to $458 a week to raise a child, up 50% since 2007, a report from AMP and the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling found. It looked at the cost of raising children in Australia across all income groups. It cost about $800,000 to raise two children to the age of 21.

TWISTER TERROR: Twenty-four people died when a tornado mauled Oklahoma City destroying as many as 13,000 homes and causing up to $2 billion damage. Ten children died in the US twister that steamrolled neighbourhoods and two schools in the suburb of

Fun Fact IF you type @[4:0] in a Facebook comment window and hit enter, the name of founder Mark Zuckerberg will appear. Source: CNN

ARCTIC RESCUE: A Russian drifting Arctic research station was to be evacuated because the ice around it was melting, the environment ministry in Moscow said. The ministry sent an icebreaker to move the station and its 16 staff from near Canada’s economic zone.

Volume 12 May 27

Entertainment FAKE PSY: A man from rural France impersonated Korean Gangnam Style entertainer Psy at the Cannes Film Festival, partying with the stars for two days, The Hollywood Reporter said. The original Psy tweeted: “Seems like there’s another ME at cannes... say Hi to him.” FACING UP: Brad Pitt, 49, struggled to recognise faces and thought he suffered prosopagnosia, or face blindness, Us reported online. Pitt said even after a “real conversation” with someone, he would forget what they looked like as soon as they walked away.

PAY PLEDGE: Democratic Labor Party senator John Madigan would give away his Parliamentary pay rise to provide training equipment to school students. The Victorian Senator, who was elected to Parliament in 2010, said he was “gobsmacked” by a pay rise for federal MPs last year, which saw him earn an extra $50,000 a year. AIR ANGST: Australia’s top aviation safety agencies (the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority) operated in a cloud of incompetence and were risking lives. That’s the finding of a senate committee report that sparked calls for action after probing a 2009 crash off Norfolk Island, Nine News reported.

Did You Know? FEDERAL backbenchers’ salaries increased twice last year - once by $44,000 and again by $5500 on average - taking their annual salary to $190,550. Source: Fairfax

TV STALWART: Australian actress Penne Hackforth-Jones died aged 64 after battling lung cancer. Born in 1949 in the US, she was brought up in Australia. Hackforth-Jones appeared in many wellknown Australian TV series, including A Country Practice, and Mother and Son.

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Waiting Room News

World CHINA FEAR: Most Indians thought China was a threat, a poll showed. A war with China was rated a “big threat” by almost three in four respondents in the survey by the Lowy Institute for International Policy and the Australia India Institute, Fairfax reported.

Australia GUN WARNING: Police warned of the threat from a plastic gun that “will kill at both ends”. The gun cost $35 to make on a 3D printer, with instructions downloaded from the net. NSW Police said they easily made two Liberator plastic guns on a $1700 home 3D printer. From 16 parts it only took police 27 hours to build the guns, Fairfax reported.

KING BUGGED: King Edward VIII was bugged by the government during the 1936 British abdication crisis, National Archives files showed. The Home Office ordered “interception of telephone communications” between royal residences and Europe.

Odd Spot APPLE gave a $10,000 App Store gift card to an Ohio man who downloaded the 50 billionth app from its App Store. It was a free word game called Say the Same Thing.

Please put me back neatly for the next person to enjoy

Entertainment HALLIWELL HERE: Ginger Spice touched down in Sydney to begin work on Australia's Got Talent. Brit singer Geri Halliwell arrived with daughter Bluebell Madonna, 7, in tow. Halliwell would join fellow judges Dawn French, Kyle Sandilands and Timomatic. TRAINERS TEAM: Biggest Loser trainer Michelle Bridges confirmed she was dating co-star Steve “The Commando” Willis. Bridges split with husband of nine years Bill Moore in March. Willis has confirmed he split with his wife Froso, with whom he has two children.

FLOWER POWER: A team of Aussie gardeners (above) created history by claiming best in show honours at the Chelsea Flower Show in London. Their exhibit took 17 days to build, and featured a stone gorge, running waterfalls and a billabong. The $2 million display was the first Australian entry to win best in show, ABC News reported.

Fun Fact EARTH’S beaches contain roughly 5000 billion billion (5 sextillion) grains of sand. And there is 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometres of water on the planet. Sources: The Math Dude; US Geological Survey

BOY SURVIVES: A UK toddler who was the sole survivor of a crash that killed five family members in Saudi Arabia was found after workers saw the bag he had been put into moving. The boy survived thanks to his grandfather cradling him tightly, The Telegraph reported.

HAZEL PASSES: Former PM Bob Hawke paid tribute to his late former wife, Hazel, for being a “constant support” through difficult times. Mr Hawke said he remembered Hazel “with deep affection and gratitude”. Hazel Hawke died on Thursday last week, aged 83 after suffering for many years from dementia. They divorced in 1995.

TV NAP: Morgan Freeman was caught dozing off in a live US TV interview while promoting his new movie with co-star Michael Caine, Now You See Me. As the reporters talk to Caine, 80, Freeman, 75, slumped forward seemingly falling into a deep sleep.

Odd Spot

Fun Fact

Did You Know?

BRITISH women spent 59 days of their lives shaving their legs, a study found. And 35% of women polled said it was their least favourite beauty chore. The second most detested was hairstyling, with eyebrow plucking third.

JIMMY Carter, while US president, once sent a jacket to the cleaner with the nuclear detonation codes still in the pocket.

ACCORDING to Aboriginal legend, there is a cave on the Wessel Islands off Australia’s north filled with doubloons and weaponry of an ancient era. African 1000-year-old coins had been found on the islands, News Ltd reported.

Source: QI television show

Waiting Room News Technology

GAME ON: Kids playing a high-intensity video game used as much energy as they did when exercising moderately, and energetic gaming improved kids’ heart health, researchers at the University of Western Australia and Wales’ Swansea University said, Nine News reported.

GLASSES RAISED: US tech company Lambda Labs said it had developed facial recognition software for Google’s upcoming Glasses product that told wearers the name of the person they were looking at. The software spotted faces in the field of vision and then put a name to that face based on images on the net, Fairfax reported.

ANXIETY, or excessive worrying, is the most common psychological problem in Australia and affects 14% of the population, according to the Bureau of Statistics.

JOBS SHED: Ford said it would shut its factories in Broadmeadows and Geelong in October 2016, with the loss of 1200 jobs. Ford recorded a $141 million loss for 2012 and losses of almost $600 million over five years. It blamed the closure on the cost of doing business in Australia. PACKER EXITS: Echo Entertainment shares, operator of Sydney’s The Star casino, crashed on Friday last week after Crown chairman James Packer dumped his stake. Echo traded as low as $2.99, down 45c or 13%, after Mr Packer sold a 10% block, News Ltd reported.

EXPANDING PROBLEM: The number of Australians who were obese had reached “staggering” numbers, a government report stated. In 2011-12, 63% of Australians were overweight or obese, a rise of 2% in the past four years - with 35% overweight and 28% obese, ABC News

Did You Know?

Business

UNIQUE VIEW: Google had been collecting panoramic Street View imagery of the Galapagos Islands, including Underwater Street View photography (above), and said this new visual content would be available on Google Maps this year. The unique biodiversity of the islands inspired Charles Darwin to devise his theory of evolution,

ILLNESS RISES: The number of parents with mental illness rose 3% every year from 1990 to 2005, a study found. The study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, is the first of its kind in Australia, based on 15 years of data from WA, ABC News reported.

SOLAR PRINT-OUTS: A $200,000 solar cell printer at CSIRO in Victoria was producing A3sized flexible solar cells. Studies showed stable outdoor performance beyond six months and it was predicted lifetimes of several years would be achieved soon. Using semiconducting inks, the cells were printed on thin flexible plastic or steel, EnergyMatters.com.au reported.

Odd Spot

Fun Fact

A RECORD-setting 5.7m Burmese python was killed with a knife in a rural US county, after it wrapped itself around the leg of the man trying to capture it. It beat the previous record by more than 30cm, Fairfax reported.

THE sun’s core is so hot that a piece of it the size of a pinhead would give off enough heat to kill a person 160km away.

Q: Which singer had a hit with the 1988 dance track The Only Way is Up?

Q: Is Eimeo a seaside suburb of Mackay, Cairns or Bundaberg?

Source: QI television show

A: Yazz

A: Mackay

Q: What did Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Everest, do for a

Q: Via lactea is the classical Latin name for which celestial body?

Did You Know? AT some point, genes from at least eight retroviruses became incorporated into human DNA. They now perform important functions in reproduction, yet are entirely alien to our genetic ancestry. GOING DOWN: Goldman Sachs cut its forecasts on the dollar, citing Australia’s deteriorating economic fundamentals, falling commodity prices and slower Chinese economic activity. The bank sees the Aussie trading at $0.90 in 12 months, from a previous forecast of $0.98.

Did You Know? THE antioxidant concentration in hot cocoa was almost twice as strong as red wine, two to three times stronger than green tea and four to five times stronger than black tea, a study at Cornell University determined.

Q: In grammar, ‘the slimy snake slithered slowly’ is an example of what? Q: Is Helsinki the capital city of Norway, Sweden or Finland? A: Finland

Health

Please put me back neatly for the next person to enjoy

A: Alliteration

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A: The Milky Way

A: He was a beekeeper

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Waiting Room News

Health BABY PERIL: Babies sharing beds with parents faced a five-fold risk of cot death, a study in the British Medical Journal Open claimed. The raised risk extended to babies thought to be at low risk because they were breastfed and the mother had avoided cigarettes, alcohol or drugs.

Science MOON BLAST: A 40kg space rock had slammed into the Moon at about 90,000km/h, exploding with a force of five tonnes of TNT, NASA said. An automated telescope captured the images of the March 17 explosion, the biggest seen since NASA began watching the Moon for meteoroid impacts about eight years ago, ABC News reported.

BAD PLAN: Workers in open-plan offices were more likely to get sick, were less productive and took more days off, new research revealed. They took 62% more sick days than those who worked in their own, enclosed space, The Daily Mail reported online.

Fun Fact THERE are 200-400 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and a German supercomputer calculated there were 500 billion galaxies in the universe. Source: BBC Schools online

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Business COAL WOES: Australian coal miners were steeling for years of production cuts, job reductions and asset sales as swelling shipments from international rivals lowered hopes of a recovery in prices, which had slumped about 30% since their peak two years ago, Fairfax reported. GATES TOPS: Thanks to a recent stock surge, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was again the world’s richest man, a title he lost in 2007, Bloomberg calculated. Gates’ fortune was now worth $US72.1 billion, putting him about $US550 million ahead of the former No.1, Mexico’s Carlos

ANCIENT ART: Archaeologists had discovered nearly 5000 cave paintings at 11 different sites in eastern central Mexico, likely created by early hunter-gatherers, UPI.com reported. The red, white, black and yellow images depicted humans engaged in hunting, fishing and gathering, and animals such as deer, lizards and centipedes.

Did You Know? AT the Santa Rita do Sapucaí jail in Brazil, inmates can pedal to generate electricity in return for a cut in their sentences - a day off for every 16 hours of effort on bikes hooked up to batteries.

SNORE WORRY: Breathing difficulties during sleep might be a warning sign of Alzheimer’s, researchers at New York University School of Medicine said. Their evidence suggested some people with sleep-disordered breathing might be developing pre-symptomatic dementia.

CAVE MUMS: An analysis of a fossilised tooth suggested primitive mothers breastfed exclusively for just seven months. The claim of Australian and US researchers was based on an analysis of barium in different layers of tooth enamel, which also revealed the Neanderthal child was completely weaned at 1.2 years, ABC Science reported.

GRIM UPDATE: Driller Boart Longyear became the latest mining contractor to deliver a grim profit update, warning the slowdown in the sector had led to a drop in demand and forced it to cut more than 1000 jobs worldwide this year, Fairfax reported.

Odd Spot

Fun Fact

Did You Know?

Q: Who starred in movies The Hustler, Hud, Harper, and Harry and Son?

Q: Who wrote the novels Rage, Monsoon, Warlock, and Men of Men? A: Wilbur Smith

Q: Which sea captain commanded the First Fleet to Australia? A: Arthur Phillip

A: Paul Newman

Q: Cut, clarity. colour, and carat set the value of which gemstone?

Source: QI television show

AN original Apple-1 sold for $US640,000 at an auction in Germany in November. The computer was priced at $US666.66 (about $US2700 in current money) when made in 1976, The New York Times reported.

Q: Which is the only state in the US that begins with the letter ‘P’? Q: Is jujitsu a Japanese martial art or paperfolding craft? A: Martial art

IF YOU drilled a tunnel straight through the Earth and jumped in, it would take 42 minutes and 12 seconds to get to the other side.

A: Pennsylvania

PEOPLE’S closest friendships were formed with their colleagues – particularly if their workplace environment was stressful, research conducted by the Lancaster University in the UK concluded.

A: A diamond