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The Escape Theme Park in Penang is going to have the world’s longest water slide. Measuring 1,140m long, the waterslide is already 80 per cent complete, and is expected to be ready by next month. The theme park’s chief executive officer Sim Choo Kheng, said: “It is expected to be the longest in the world, longer than the water slide in New Jersey, USA, which is 602m long. “It can go into the Guinness Book of Records. “It is a challenge to build due to topographical factors and lack of machinery. “It is expected to open to the public in early August after a security check is carried out,” he said, after a site visit with chairman of Penang Development, Heritage, Culture and Arts Committee chairman Yeoh Soon Hin on Sunday (June 23). Visitors will slide down from the hilltop and cross Jalan Teluk Bahang to the suspension bridge and end up at the water theme park. The hilltop is also the start of other rides such as luge (sleds down the hill), zip coasters and sliding tubes. The theme park already has a 300m long water slide that was launched last year. Mr Sim said a 400m long cable car ride with 30 seats would also be completed at the same time as the water slide. “The cable car connects between the foothills and the water slide. “It is unique as it goes through the jungle,” he added. The theme park is listed in the international holiday assessor site, TripAdvisor.

World's first fully digital valves open up engine possibilities https://newatlas.com/camcon-digital-iva-valve-system/55827/ Camcon COO Mark Gostick (left) with Technical Director Roger Stone (right)(Credit: Camcon Automotive) British company Camcon Automotive has built the first fully electronic engine valve system, uncoupled from the crankshaft, that offers unprecedented control over the combustion cycle. On top of power and emissions improvements, it also opens up some weird and wonderful capabilities we've never seen before, such as giving 4-stroke engines brief 2-stroke power boosts. Variable valve timing is nothing new. It's been obvious to manufacturers for decades that the optimal valve operation is different when the engine's doing different things, and that changing the timing, lift and duration of the valve events on an engine to suit different scenarios can result in power, torque, efficiency and emissions advantages. What makes Camcon's system different is that it allows complete, instant and unrestricted control over exactly what any intake or exhaust valve is doing, at any time, regardless of what the engine itself is doing. That's because Camcon's IVA (Intelligent Valve Actuation) system is fully electronic, with no mechanical attachment to the crankshaft. There are no timing belts or valve springs, with each valve getting its own miniature camshaft, complete with a desmodromic system that opens and closes the valves precisely and mechanically. And instead of being driven off the crank, each valve's camshaft is controlled by an electric motor. These motors can rotate either way with total precision, and for a given valve event they can rotate through fully to give 100 percent of the available valve lift, or they can stop part-way through and return back to closed, so you can get literally any degree of valve lift you want, at any time. There's a video at the bottom of the page to give you a better visual explanation. The system knows the position of the crankshaft at all times thanks to a rotary position sensor – in fact, the whole system runs under real-time, closed-loop control, so that valve events are timed perfectly against what the motor's doing. "What that means," says Camcon COO Mark Gostick on a Skype call from his Cambridge office, "is we can give the engine exactly what it wants at low revs, and exactly what it wants at higher revs, and anywhere in between, and you don't have to compromise at all. You can change timing, you can change duration, you can change lift, you can even shape the events if you want. You can do double events. You can change the profile of your camshaft between one event and the next. You can go from your idle setting to 100 percent throttle in one revolution. You can do pretty much anything. You've got what we like to call a digital crankshaft." It seems like a simple enough idea, moving to electronic control of the valves. So why hasn't it been done before? "Electromechanically, you could look at it and ask 'why didn't you do that 20 years ago?'" says Gostick. "The difference is in the electronics that control it. What's happened in the recent past is that there's now sufficient processing bandwidth at a low price that can tolerate top of engine conditions, so you can actually put real time control on top of these motors." The low-hanging fruit Naturally, this lets car manufacturers run highly optimized versions of the same tricks they've done with traditional VVT systems previously – bit of extra torque down low, bit of extra horsepower up high, improved emissions. And the company has several bench engines running, as well as one built into a drivable car to demonstrate these kinds of simple advantages. "We've got thousands of hours of dynamometer time, showing what we can do," says Gostick. "This is on the inlet side only – we decided to do the inlet side first because it's lower risk, but it has the most well-known benefits. Nobody's ever done variable valve timing on the exhausts, so the benefits are less well understood. "In terms of dynamometer results, we've only done what's called steady state testing, where the thing is running at a fixed point or a series of fixed points. And against the Jaguar Ingenium, which is pretty much a state of the art petrol engine, we got CO2 benefits of up to 7.5 percent improvement. We believe with transient calibration and all that kind of stuff where we integrate it properly into a vehicle, we could show CO2 benefits of up to 20 percent. We're now in the process of making 16-valve engines, that's inlet and exhaust, and we'll be running that when it's ready." More integrated possibilities Camcon believes the benefits of this IVA system will really begin to add up once it's more tightly integrated into the car, particularly in the hybrid space. And Gostick certainly doesn't think the gasoline engine is anywhere near the end of its rope. "People might say 'why are you still jumping through hoops on internal combustion engines, when everybody knows it's all going to be batteries?' Well, actually, if you talk to people in the industry and look at what's happening, most take the view that for the foreseeable future, most vehicles are going to have some form of internal combustion engine on board, be it plug-in hybrids, regular hybrids or whatever. And those hybrid vehicles still need to have very well tuned, high performing engines. "If you've got a plug-in hybrid, you've got built-in intelligence on board that decides when to run off the battery, and when to run off the engine. Part of that calculation is how much energy it might take to re-start the engine. Restarting the engine takes a lot of battery each time, and then you've got to recharge the battery from the engine, which has consequences for the overall performance. "But if you've got complete control over the valves, you can substantially reduce the amount of energy it takes to restart the engine. Because you can open the valves right up, so the starter motor just has to overcome friction, as opposed to compressing the gases in the chambers as well. By doing things like that, you can change the equation for when you re-start the engine. "In a hybrid vehicle, with a given size battery, you can substantially increase its pure electric mileage capacity. We have a sense of it, we haven't bagged it up with real world examples yet, but typically plug-in hybrids have a pure electric range around 30 miles (48 km), something like that. We think we can probably get that to 40 or 50 (64 or 80 km), which is reasonably substantial. That's not just by using this start-stop thing, that's including some other ideas we've got around things like the air conditioning and other integrations. "Hybrids are very interesting, because you can use electricity at some points, and internal combustion at other points, and if you optimize that, you can play some really interesting tricks, like deciding when to run the valve train off the battery, and when to run it off the alternator. Sometimes the electric system produces too much electricity, more than it can store, so you can use it in different ways. We're just starting to scratch the surface of them really. "It's things like this, which are not obvious ... I mean, we can talk about the headline performance improvements you can give on a raw engine, but actually there's practically the same benefit again if you do the integration into the vehicle properly. You can play new tricks that you couldn't when the valves were linked to the crankshaft." Getting really crazy with digital valves While the above kinds of techniques do push a little into uncharted territory, going further with the IVA offers some truly out-there potential. "One of the things you can do with this valve train is to do all sorts of relatively off-the-beaten-path combustion approaches," says Gostick. "So people are talking about deep Miller cycle and Lambda 2 and HCCI and this kind of stuff, things where you need very precise control over the combustion conditions to do them. We regard ourselves as an enabler. "The two-stroke thing is slightly off to the side. The trend in car engines has been downsizing, downspeeding, all these kinds of things. All of which work fine when you're cruising on the motorway, but when you're trying to pull away really quickly from traffic lights or at a roundabout or whatever, and you put your foot down, that's when you really feel like you've got a small engine in a big car. "What you can do – in principle at least, we haven't demonstrated it yet – is you can turn the vehicle, for short periods of time, from four-stroke operation into two-stroke operation. That essentially doubles the power output. It gives you, when you need it, a burst of power. In principle, you can do it, for a short time period that's limited by heat and lubrication factors. When we get actuators on the exhaust valves of our test engines, we'll be trying it. "Two-stroke is one of those things that kind of is, was and always has been the future of internal combustion engines. There's renewed interest in two-strokes for a number of applications and we might be able to do something interesting there, just for very short periods, so you can get over this problem with small engines in big cars. "Going to the opposite end of the spectrum, you could do something called 12-stroking," Gostick continues. "So if you're on the motorway and you're cruising along, you can put it in 12-stroke mode, meaning that every cylinder only fires every third stroke. But it does it over the whole engine, like a roaming cylinder deactivation if you like. "A lot of cylinder deactivation just knocks off one or two cylinders, and because it's mechanical, it always knocks the same ones off, and when you re-engage them, you get hydrocarbon spikes because there's engine oil building up in the cylinders while they're not firing. If you do 12-stroking, you keep all the cylinders warm and you stop this build-up of lubricant, so you get the benefit without the penalty when you re-engage four stroke again. "Once you have this degree of control, you can start to play all sorts of tricks. Once you've got the exhaust valves hooked up, you can also port the exhaust, so you can do quick catalyst warmup, you can play tricks with turbochargers, you can do all sorts of things." Where Camcon's digital valve system is at commercially While Camcon has its own test engines and demonstration car up and running, this technology won't reveal the extent of its benefits until auto manufacturers start running with it and fully integrate it into their systems. The company has spent significant time working with Jaguar Land Rover, publishing a paper together at the prestigious Aachen engine conference in Germany last year. And while that collaboration continues, Gostick says the company sees its biggest opportunities in Asia. "We're focusing on the far East: Japan, Korea, China, purely because from an industry perspective we feel those are the areas that will be most receptive to what we're trying to do at the moment," he says. "It's a combination of the political environment, their attitudes to innovation and risk, and how mature they are in terms of thought process about future powertrains. In Europe at the moment, because of what the Commission is doing, all the car companies are running around saying 'batteries good, batteries good,' and a lot of the Asian companies have been through it in a more thoughtful way, and come up with a portfolio approach where you've got battery vehicles, you've got hybrid vehicles, and for other applications there's pure ICE vehicles. I think they're further along in their thought process about what the future powertrain looks like." The company has just introduced a version of the IVA tech that runs on the kinds of single-cylinder development engines that OEMs and tier one automotive suppliers use to test and develop their motors, to make it as easy as possible for car companies to experiment with the technology. Camcon believes that the digital valve train can be a diesel-killer for passenger cars, offering diesel-level efficiency and fuel economy with none of the particulate and NOx emissions that have seen diesels fall spectacularly out of favor in Europe in recent months. "In terms of cost, we can't go into specifics yet, but it's certainly less than the cost of doing diesel rather than petrol," says Gostick. "Diesel sales in Europe in the last quarter are down by 17 percent or something. It used to be 50 percent or more of total car sales, now it's down in the 30s thanks to Dieselgate and other factors. One of the consequences from that is that CO2 emissions in Europe are now going up again, because people are turning back toward gasoline engined cars that put out more CO2 than the diesel engines do. "That's why a system that can reduce emissions in petrol cars is a great thing to have right now. Ours is not a cheap system, but in the context of diesel, it's not an expensive one either." On a less planet-friendly note, we'd like to see what happens when this technology gets into the hands of hardcore performance tuner types and race teams. This sounds like an opportunity for petrolheads to do some very interesting things with motors. Source: Camcon Automotive Update (Aug 13, 2018): As some commenters have noted, this system bears some similarities to the FreeValve system from Koenigsegg, as demonstrated in the Qamfree motor from Qoros – but we'd highlight that the FreeValve's electro-hydraulic-pneumatic actuation system uses valve springs instead of a mechanical system to close its valves. Thus, it's vulnerable to high-rpm valve float and doesn't offer quite the desmodromic precision the Camcon system does. However, it's fair to call the difference academic when it comes to roadgoing cars, whose motors rarely rev high enough to make that a problem anyway. Check out the technology in the video below. https://youtu.be/XdEhg9JDuEw

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/suspension-bridges-frightening/index.html It's just physics. Friendly civil engineering. These are the fourteen:- 1. Frighteningly transparent: ZHANGJIAJIE GLASS BRIDGE Where: Zhangjiajie, China When: Opened in 2016 Whoa: World's highest glass-bottomed suspension bridge Anyone can stare out of a very high window. But standing on one -- coaxing your feet onto a glassy surface suspended above nearly 1,000 feet of air takes some serious spine. Especially in Hunan, home to the world's record-setting glass-floored pedestrian bridge. Hanging between a pair of mountain cliffs in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park's Grand Canyon Scenic Area, this 1,410-foot-long span was until recently the world's longest glass bridge. But ask anyone venturing onto its triple layered, steel-frame-supported, sledgehammer-tested, crystal-clear span levitating 984 feet above an all too visible canyon floor. It's still the highest.

Man diagnosed with world's first human case of rat disease hepatitis E.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-diagnosed-first-human-case-of-rat-disease-hepatitis-e/ A 56-year-old man from Hong Kong has developed the world's first human case of rat hepatitis E, Chinese scientists announced Friday. Researchers from the University of Hong Kong discovered the case after testing showed abnormal liver function following a liver transplant. Doctors later found that he had a strain of hepatitis that was "highly divergent" from other strains found in humans, the BBC reports. It's unclear how the man was infected with the virus, but contamination of food by infected rat droppings in the food supply is possible," the researchers said in a report. The patient has been cured of the disease, his doctors said. While rats are known to transmit a number of other diseases to humans, includingplague, Lassa fever and leptospirosis, this is the first reported case in humans of the rat variation of hepatitis E. The human strain of hepatitis E is typically spread through contaminated water or food, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, a microbiologist at Hong Kong University, told reporters at a press conference that the discovery was a "wake-up call" to improve environmental hygiene, according to the South China Morning Post. "We don't know if in future there will be a serious outbreak of the rat hepatitis E virus in Hong Kong," he said. "We need to closely monitor this issue." Dr. Siddharth Sridhar, a clinical assistant professor also in the university's department of microbiology, said controlling the rat population is key. "Infections that jump from animals to humans must be taken very seriously," Sridhar told The New York Times. "For these kinds of rare infections, unusual infections, even one case is enough to make public health authorities and researchers very alert about the implications of the disease. One is all it takes." Symptoms of hepatitis E in humans include fever, fatigue, nausea and vomiting, jaundice, abdominal pain, joint pain and dark-colored urine. There is no specific antiviral therapy for the disease and it typically goes away on its own without treatment. Doctors will advise infected patients to rest, get adequate nutrition and fluids, avoid alcohol and check with their physician before taking any medications that can damage the liver. The rat variation of hepatitis E was first discovered in Germany, according to a paper published in 2010. The New York Times reports that it has been found in rats all over the world, including the United States.

China 12 March (BelTA - People's Daily) - Magine walking between a group of skyscrapers, not on the ground but over the rooftop - you would soon be able to do so in China. Construction workers in the city of Chongqing, south-west China, are building a huge rooftop corridor that connects six 60-storey towers at 820 feet high. Stretching 984 feet like a horizontal skyscraper, the enormous glass-walled structure is nearly as long as The Shard in London laid on its side. Once completed, the innovative sky bridge will have a glass-bottomed outdoor observation deck. From there, daredevil visitors will be able to enjoy the views of the Yangtze River and Jialing River merging at Chongqing's Chaotianmen area, one of the oldest part of the mega metropolis with some 30 million residents. Measuring 98 feet in width and 74 feet in height, the lofty passageway is the crown jewel of an ambitious £2.7 billion project that comprises eight skyscrapers: six at 820 feet tall and two at 1,148 feet tall. The passageway will comprise 3,200 pieces of glass and 4,800 aluminium panels and weigh a staggering 12,000 tonnes, the equivalent of 1.5 Eiffel Towers or 20 Airbus 380 planes. The humongous complex, called Raffles City Chongqing, is invested by Singaporean real estate company CapitaLand which owns a chain of shopping malls and office buildings across China. Occupying an area the size of 170 football fields, the eight-building complex is designed by Canadian-Israeli architect Moshe Safdie, who is also the brain behind Singapore's landmark Marina Bay Sands. To build such a huge structure on top of multiple skyscrapers is a complicated process. According to CapitaLand, workers are constructing it in nine parts. Four of them are built directly on top of the four buildings in the middle. Three sections used to connect the buildings are constructed on the ground. They will then be hoisted up by hydraulic strand jacks and attached to the side of the buildings to form a continuous passageway with four neighbouring parts. The remaining two segments situated on both ends will be built in short sections from the rightmost and leftmost towers. They will connect the corridor to the two adjacent buildings via cantilever bridges. Each of the three between-building sections weighs 1,100 tonnes, and the first section has been lifted up and mounted to the side of two towers. The entire rooftop passage is expected to complete by the end of June this year, according to a spokesperson from Raffles City Chongqing. In addition to the vertigo-inducing observation deck, it will contain two swimming pools, various restaurants and meeting rooms; while the eight skyscrapers will have luxury homes, shopping malls, offices and hotels. The whole complex is scheduled to open in stages from 2019. Five of the eight buildings have topped out so far. As a country passionate about skyscrapers, China is planning and building some of the world's most dramatic high-rise projects. According to Shanghai-based news site Jiemian.com, nearly 70 per cent of the worldwide skyscrapers were built in China in 2016, which already has half of the world's 10 tallest buildings. A previous report from China Economic Weekly said by 2022, China will have a total of 1,318 skyscrapers - or high-rise building taller than 498 feet. Read full text at: http://eng.belta.by/society/view/chinese-workers-are-building-a-glass-corridor-above-four-60-storey-towers-109919-2018/ If you use BelTA’s materials, you must credit us with a hyperlink to eng.belta.by.

China's latest product in their massive military modernisation programme. this aircraft will be strategic in China's claims to the disputed portions in South China Sea. World's largest amphibious aircraft makes maiden flight in China https://www.todayonline.com/world/worlds-largest-amphibious-aircraft-makes-maiden-flight-china

On August 30 2016, members of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AICC) and the Antonov Corporation, the leading Ukrainian aviation company, signed an agreement to restart production of the AN-225, the world's largest cargo aircraft which first flown during the final days of the Soviet era in 1988. The contract includes the establishment of two large production facilities for the new AN-225, located in Central and Southern China. Antonov will deliver the necessary technological and purchase production equipment for the Chinese. The first completely redesigned AN-225 is expected to start flying in 2019. An-225 weights 640 ton, powered by six engines is 84 meters in length and a wingspan of over 88 meters. It carries a payload of 250 tons ( or about 100 Terrex ICV armored vehicle. ) http://www.popsci.com/china-will-resurrect-worlds-largest-plane

Amazing Asian! My next question how long will it take for him to get out of that lot? Haha

Wilson Raj Perumal: The man who fixed football (CNN) -- He rose from humble beginnings, worked his way through the local leagues before graduating to become a major player on the international stage, netting him millions of dollars along the way. But this isn't a tale about a footballing hero. This is a story about one of modern sport's greatest villains -- the man dubbed the most notorious match-fixer in the world. You may not be familiar with the name Wilson Raj Perumal but given how prolific he was, you might have watched one of the games he's fixed. "I never really counted, but I think it should be between 80-100 football matches," Perumal told CNN's Don Riddell in his first-ever television interview. Few doors seemed to be closed to Perumal. "I was on the bench at times, and telling players what to do, giving orders to the coach. It was that easy. There was no policing whatsoever." Officials were just as easy to target, he boasts, with "no barriers" when approaching select referees, while certain football associations would "welcome you with open arms," he added. It was only after his arrest and subsequent conviction in 2011 -- his fourth for football-related crimes - - that Perumal started coming clean on his former life, with the poacher-turned-gamekeeper now helping European police combat match-fixing. In all, Perumal claims to have pocketed around $5 million himself from match-fixing. However, he lost it all gambling, perhaps explaining why the 49-year-old recently published an autobiography, "Kelong Kings," recounting his journey from rural Singapore to football's globetrotting Mr Fix-it. "I had my boyhood dreams. I wanted to be a soldier but during my school days I got a criminal record and couldn't really pursue what I wanted to. And then I got attracted to betting when I was about 19-20 years old," he said. "I kind of got hooked and I didn't want to lose ... so I started fixing local matches," he says. Perumal plied his trade in Singapore's local football leagues in the late 1980s before joining what international crime-fighting organization INTERPOL recently described as "the world's most notorious match-fixing syndicate" allegedly headed by Tan Seet Eng -- better known as "Dan Tan," who is now reportedly in detention in Singapore. As the Internet age dawned in the mid-1990s, so Perumal's match-fixing horizons expanded. "We could see all these matches around the world ... I had the opportunity to target vulnerable countries ... people who were prone to accept bribes," he said. "So I registered a company and started e-mailing associations and building relationships." 'Like two hands prepared to clap' The 49-year-old's first foray into international match-fixing -- a 1997 friendly match between Zimbabwe and Bosnia Herzegovina -- failed, he says. Perumal alleges up to six players from the Zimbabwe team had agreed to lose the match 4-0 in return for a share of $100,000. But the game played in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia finished in a 2-2 draw. "We gave them a result that was difficult to accomplish and what happened during the game was that one player accidentally kicked the ball into the net." A decade later, Perumal targeted Zimbabwe again in what became known as the "Asiagate" scandal with both players and officials receiving bribes tofix a string of matches between 2007 and 2009. "We were like two hands prepared to clap," Perumal says. Former FIFA match-fixing investigator, Terry Steans was shocked when he was handed a FIFA case file on match-fixing in Zimbabwe in 2009. "I read that file and thought: 'No. It can't be. It can't be this easy and it can't be this prevalent,'" Steans told CNN. "Five years later, I know yes it was and yes it is. But that file opened our eyes and it was to set FIFA Security, at that time, on a path to try and discover as much as we could about the fixers and how prevalent and widespread they were." Zimbabwe's game was destroyed by the fixing scandal, Steans says. Dozens of players and officials were sanctioned, some receiving life bans while others were barred from playing for several years. The Footballers Union of Zimbabwe has been critical of the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) investigation but Steans says ZIFA deserves credit for taking action. "They appointed an investigation committee and they took the investigation as far as they possibly could do." CNN invited ZIFA to comment on match-fixing in the country but they hadn't responded by the time of publication. Hat trick of jail terms Perumal says he achieved around a 70-80% success rate and claims to have rigged games at the Olympics, World Cup qualifiers, the women's World Cup, the CONCACAF Gold Cup and the African Cup of Nations. But his attempts to corrupt didn't always go undetected by the authorities, notably in Singapore where he was imprisoned three times for football-related offences. In 1995, he was jailed for 12 months for trying to bribe a football player. Four years later he was imprisoned for 26 months for introducing a referee to a match-fixer and in 2000 he attacked a footballer with a hockey stick prior to a game -- an offense he says he deeply regrets. In 2011, the football authorities eventually caught up with Perumal again, this time in Finland where he was arrested and subsequently jailed for fixing matches in the Veikkausliiga, the country's premier football division. Perumal served one year of a two-year sentence before being extradited to Hungary where he has been helping police there with match-fixing investigations in the Balkans. Steans was shocked when police showed him Perumal's list of contacts. "Perumal had 38 countries in one phone book contacts list -- he had officials and players from those 38 countries," Steans told CNN. "If you then go to his laptop address book, there were over 50. FIFA has 209 associations ... so we are talking a quarter of FIFA associations for one fixer," he added. "As we now know, he used most of these people and used them for his own ends and his syndicate's ends and made a lot of money out of it." He might have lost all his ill-gotten gains but Perumal looks back fondly on that period of his life. "I have no regrets. It was like, it was a phase of my life and I enjoyed it and I traveled around the world. I had a good time." There are glimmers of remorse. Perumal says he feels sorry for fixing some matches but then says there are "no regrets" for others. "Football is no longer a sport. It is more like a business now. So I think we're just trying to make money out of this business. People want to win and they will do anything just to get a result." Pitch battle FIFA says preserving the game's integrity is "a top priority" and in 2011 announced it was giving INTERPOL €20 million ($26.5 million) to fight match-fixing. "We take any allegations of match manipulation very seriously and are looking into those," FIFA's media department told CNN via email. "Obviously we are aware of publications such as 'Kelong Kings.' We do not further comment on our activities and we do not share investigative reports. "FIFA continues to work closely with law enforcement agencies as well as the respective public authorities and other sports organizations on a national regional and global level to tackle the issue of match manipulation." But Perumal thinks they could be doing more. "FIFA has not come up with enough strategies or methods or publicity or marketing or whatever you can call it, to combat match-fixing," Perumal says. "FIFA are doing a lot of things to combat racism but I think match-fixing is more of a problem than racism. I'm not saying FIFA shouldn't pump in so much money (to tackle racism) but what I'm saying is that match-fixing is a more pressing issue." Steans says Perumal has been "value for money" for investigators helping them understand how match-fixers operate. "Wilson is a bit of an enigma," he says. "But you know what, every piece of information that he gave out of Finland and Hungary that came our way was right." The former FIFA man is still fighting match fixing, working as a consultant for a sports corruption company. But given the recent past, he fears for football's future if match fixing continues to carry on virtually unchecked. "We end up with a game that lacks integrity, with the game's reputation in tatters and with fans not really knowing what they're watching," Steans says. "Will fans watch? We'd probably end up with something similar to Zimbabwe where fans walked away, sponsors walked away ... You will end up with a game that means nothing. Just means nothing. "And when it means nothing, sponsors don't want it and fans don't want it either. So teams would be playing in empty stadiums. It'd be a desert." http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/26/sport/football/match-fixing-wilson-raj-perumal-corruption/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

#10 – Buddha Shaped Pears ($9.00/Each) We visit the country of China for our first fruit, and it is perhaps the most bizarre in all of the world. When we say Buddha shaped pears, we are not messing around at all. These pears look exactly like a Buddha statue, even down to the facial details. A mold was made by Chinese farmer Xianzhang Hao of the Hebei province. Hao would then grow the pears into these molds and they would resemble Buddha to a T. For the amount of work that goes into these pears and the fact that immortality is offered by eating one (as foretold by the Chinese myth of a magical Buddha shaped fruit), I guess $9 isn’t asking too much. Still, we have to know. Average pear cost at your local market? Around $0.50 each (minus immortality). #9 – Sekai Ichi Apples ($21.00 Each) The name Sekai Ichi translates into English as “World’s Number One”. That’s a pretty bold statement, but these apples have backed it up. After celebrating the 40th birthday of the apples in 2014, they are still the most expensive in the entire world. The average fruit has a circumference of 15 inches, so their waist lines are almost bigger than some supermodels. They also weigh around two pounds each, so you can do some damage with them. Average apple cost at your local market? Around $0.85 each. #8 – Dekopon Citrus ($80.00/Pack Of Six) Mandarin oranges are nothing new, but the Dekopon version of the fruit (that first started growing in 1972) is particularly fresh. Dekopon is the brand name for the fruit, and only the top of the line oranges make it through. These oranges look much different than others due to the fact that they are the size of softballs and have a huge hump on the very top. They are also lauded as the most delicious and sweet oranges in all of the world. Average orange cost at your local market? Around $4 for a pack of six. #7 – Sembikiya Queen Strawberries ($85.00/Pack Of 12) The Senbikiya Queen Strawberry package is perhaps the fanciest of all arrangements on this list. You have seen the perfect strawberry at your local market, the one that is red all the way through with a dark green leaf at the top and has the seeds of pure white popping out from the skin. It’s mouthwatering just thinking about it. What makes these strawberries so special is that they all look like that. The ones that don’t get tossed out, never to be seen again and disrupt the brand. In one package, you get 12 absolutely gorgeous strawberries, but you might not even want to eat them due to their beauty. Average strawberry cost at your local market? Around $2.75 per pound. #6 – Square Watermelon ($800.00/Each) Guess where these square watermelons are grown each year? If you guess the obvious choice of Japan, you would be right. In 2014, these square watermelons were finally shipped to countries outside of Japan, but they come at a high price. They are grown in a box, which forces them to take the square shape. That only works with fruit, so don’t try to make a square person. At around 13 pounds each, these watermelons are sold at department stores across Japan. Most people don’t even eat them, and instead opt to use them as decorations. It’s a great conversation starter, like “How the hell did you get a square watermelon, Linda?” Average watermelon cost at your local market? Around $5. #5 – Pineapples From The Lost Gardens of Heligan ($1,600/Each) The Lost Gardens of Heligan is one of the most well known botanical spots in all of the United Kingdom. Pineapple pits aren’t quite common in Europe, as Heligan has the only one left in the entire continent. To keep the pit going, two giant mud structures are based in rotting manure to help the pineapples grow and stay ripe. That’s right, people are willing to pay $1,600 for one pineapple that was grown in mud and rotting poop. The most expensive one to ever be sold out of this pit went for over $15,000. The poo grown pineapple must have been juicy. Average pineapple cost at your local market? Around $3. #4 – Taiyo no Tamago Mangoes ($3,000/Per Pair) Taiyo no Tamago translates into English as “Egg of the Sun”. You don’t want to eat mangos that taste like eggs, but they are just shaped that way. The Egg of the Sun is a brand of fruit that you see in Japan, much like the Dole brand that you see in North America. Dole fruits cost a considerably less amount than these ones, though. For their mangos, the Egg of the Sun company refuses to sell any single one that is over 350 grams and isn’t packed with a high sugar content. Each year, the auction for the first harvested juicy mangos nets a high price, but $3,000 per pair is the tops. Average mango cost at your local market? Around $1.50…per pound. #3 – Ruby Roman Grapes ($4,000/Per Bunch) Are you surprised to see that these grapes come out of the country of Japan? No, alright then. These grapes are known as table grapes, and they are about the size of a table. That’s not actually true, but they are the size of ping pong balls. The Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan is the only spot where you can find the mighty Ruby Roman grapes, and they weren’t produced until the year 2008. It was there that interested buyers offered $910 for just one small sampling ($26 per grape!) of a bunch. Average grape cost at your local market? Around $3…per pound. #2 – Densuke Watermelon ($6,100/Each) What makes the Densuke watermelon that much rarer than any other watermelon in the world? It’s quite a bit larger at around 24 pounds and has a black rind, but that’s about it. What in the world could possibly make it so expensive? The ludicrously high price tag comes as a result of its rarity. You can only find the Densuke watermelon in the island region of Hokkaido Japan, and around 10,000 are grown each year. Rich people love the taste of rarity, so the first one of each harvesting season is put up for auction. The top one in 2008 netted this amazing price to sneak into the list of most expensive fruits. Average watermelon cost at your local market? Around $4. #1 – Yubari Melon ($23,000/Per Pair)Cantaloupe is one of those things that you either really love, or just absolutely detest. For those that do love the taste, then the Yubari King is the top of the line in the family of orange melons. You can only find these bad boys on the Hokkaido island near Sapporo, and the Yubari is a result of a hybrid between two other sweet cantaloupes. In Japan, the Yubari melons are given as a gift since they are so expensive. While you might send your wife a fruit basket, some guy in Japan spent thousands for a pair of melons. Get your mind out of the gutter. Average cantaloupe cost at your local market? Around $3.

Wow, one of Singapore's pastor is among the world's top 10 earning pastor. see today's Today paper Pg 17 attached. img-X23163432.pdf

This huge leech is found after a flood in the west part of Malaysia.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/zf-trw-aim-to-provide-bundles-of-high-tech-parts-to-make-cars-smart-1411009052 http://online.wsj.com/articles/trw-agrees-to-11-7-billion-sale-1410790179 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-15/zf-to-buy-trw-in-11-7-billion-deal-to-create-no-2-in-car-parts.html This is the most talk about issue of 2014 in the automotive industry. The rivalry of these 2 automotive parts giant have come to a happy conclusion with ZF acquiring TRW to form the world's #2 automotive parts supplier trailing only behind Bosch. The acquisition would have been unexpected years ago will help to churn out more automotive parts with more competitive prices. For many who are not aware, ZF is the one who designed and produced the 8 speed transmissions for BMW and Landrovers. The 9 speed transmission for the L/R Evoque. The shock absorbers and clutches and transmission makers for Porsche PASM and PDK. Porsche and BMW merely buy their transmission and shock absorbers and suspension parts etc from ZF and rebrand it as their own. I wonder how this is going to affect us as consumers. hmm.. sounds promising.

seriously ?? with this on that bridge?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB3xM93rXbY who is keen to take this up?