Snow blankets Herat

Snow blankets Herat

The heaviest snowfall for decades has blanketed western Asia. Qadir Assemy sent these pictures of icy conditions in Herat, western Afghanistan.

Mechanics help mend cars stranded in the snow. Picture: Qadir Assemy
Mechanics on the streets of Herat have been kept busy in the freeze. Many vehicles, particularly those with diesel engines, simply gave up on the road.

A truck breaks down outside the eye hospital. Picture: Qadir Assemy
Trucks were particularly hard hit by the weather conditions. Qadir Assemy says snow brings out community spirit in Herat and people stop to help each other on the road

Herat International Five Star Hotel. Picture: Qadir Assemy
Many parts of the city have been eerily quiet in the wake of the snowfall.

Mobile phone top-up card seller Picture: Qadir Assemy
Few have dared to venture outside but it's business as usual for a mobile phone top-up card seller camped in the middle of the road.

The flurry has covered parts of the region which haven't seen snow in living memory.

20 Photos with Unexpected Elements in the Background

Ever seen a picture with somebody in the background that totally ruins that “intimate photo”? Or something going on that completely disrupts the purpose of the picture… Here are 20 photos in which there are unexpected elements or people in the background doing crazy things.

World's First Outdoor Artificial Surfing Machine

Six-foot swells are set to break on the Thames at an attraction aiming to tempt the growing ranks of urban surfers to taste the "quintessential California surf lifestyle" in the unlikely surroundings of a disused dock in east London.

From 2011, the world's first outdoor artificial surfing machine will try to rival the Atlantic breakers of Devon and Cornwall using cleaned river water. The plan is to persuade surfers to take to their boards in Tower Hamlets rather than make the long drive to the West Country, where the surf is sometimes more millpond than Maui.

The £20m Venture Xtreme project at Silvertown Quays has secured outline planning permission, and building work to transform the former grain dock will begin this year. An artificial beach with palm trees, boardwalks and rentable fire-pits and barbecues is planned for post-surf relaxation.

Surfers can expect to pay £30 ($60) for an hour's session that will offer at least 10 waves per rider, each rolling more than 100 metres as the swell spreads from the dock to the wide beach. The wave machine can be set to make the surf break left and right from a central peak, allowing surfers to ride comfortably without fear of collision.

Blind Mechanic Diagnoses Car Problems By Smell

A mechanic in Deerfield Beach can smell trouble in the cars that come into his shop.

After losing his eyesight three years ago, Daniel Moncada relies on his senses of smell and touch to figure out what's wrong with a car's engine.

Moncada lost sight in both eyes from a rare and aggressive deterioration of his retinas. It cost him work in construction and Web design.

Family members help run the mechanic shop he owns now, King Motors of South Florida. His mother runs the sales department, his mother-in-law does upholstery for cars and his wife oversees engine and vehicle inspections.

How many dead bodies are up on Mount Everest?

Today's useless fact - How many dead bodies are up on Mount Everest?
Mount Everest is both the highest mountain and the highest graveyard in the world. As of 2002, 175 climbers had died on the mountain, and the vast majority of these bodies were left behind. There are reported to be at least 41 bodies on the north side of Everest.

Some people simply run out of gas on the trail and freeze to death in place. Others are consumed by avalanches. And, as veteran mountaineer David Breashears points out, removing dead bodies from this elevation is an enormous task.

Breashears describes how it took a team of 12 people eight hours to move the body of one dead Taiwanese man down a portion of the mountain. The high altitude, low oxygen, fierce winds, and intense cold make the trip extremely challenging even for an unencumbered person, so few climbers attempt to take the bodies of the deceased back with them.

Some bodies are lost forever on Everest. During the tragic May 1996 expeditions when eight people died in a freak storm near the summit, two of the bodies were never found. To further complicate matters, the local Sherpas, the people most adept at climbing the mountain and transporting gear up and back, are wary of dead bodies and don't like to go near them.

Man with lots of chicks

OMG, so many chicks!… what do you think he’s going to do with the chicks?

Snatched from the jaws of death: Zoo rescues cubs after confused polar bear mother EATS her two babies

The giant polar bear looks like a mother tenderly caring for her newborn.
As Vera emerges from her den at Nuremberg Zoo, she carries her tiny cub - believed to weigh less than 8lb - by the scruff of its neck.But rather than a loving encounter this was, in fact, the final scene from an extraordinary drama involving primeval nature, a controversial zoo experiment and a tragic outcome.

Moments later, Vera began violently swinging the cub round her head. When she dumped it in the den, keepers moved in to rescue the cub.An attempt to force the bears to raise their cubs as nature intended has already led to two others being eaten by their confused mother, Wilma.

This grisly find, which keepers discovered yesterday, forced them to move in on Vera and - finally - check on her cub. The zoo hurriedly announced that keepers would begin bottle-feeding the surviving cub.It's an ironically late move. Managers at the German zoo had previously announced that the cubs would not be bottle-fed as bears in captivity often are.

Even when they later realised that the mothers had failed to bond with their offspring-officials said it was vital that the tiny cubs should be reared "naturally", even admitting they would leave them to starve. In the wild, cubs whom the mother cannot care for are often killed and then eaten - protein is not to be wasted when the carnivores have to survive temperatures of -70c.

Last weekend, zoo staff became worried when Vera did not appear to be feeding her cub, which she had hidden in a man-made den carved out of rock inside her enclosure.
Wilma's cubs had also remained inside their den.But the zoo refused to check on them, saying they did not want repeats of "Knut-mania" - a reference to the worldwide outcry after a baby polar bear faced starvation at Berlin Zoo last year.

Abandoned by his mother at birth, animal rights activists claimed that Knut should die rather than be raised by humans. But zoo officials disagreed, rearing him by hand in defiance of death threats by extremists.Nuremberg officials took a sterner line on the raising of their cubs.As radio phone-ins and internet sites were bombarded with pleas to save the tiny animals, deputy director Helmut Maegdefrau insisted they would not intervene.

"If you don't let the mothers practise, they'll never learn how to bring up their cubs," he said."If we were to keep checking, we would disturb them and make it more likely that something goes wrong." Yet something had already gone wrong. On Monday morning, zoo staff heard Wilma pawing at the gates of her den, where it was believed she was raising her litter.Keepers had assumed that there was no crying from her cubs because they were content and fed.

But when zoo keepers let Wilma into a separate area to investigate, the den was empty.Wilma's customarily ravenous appetite had also disappeared and the obvious conclusion was drawn.Last night, Vera's surviving cub was being examined by vets in case being thrown about by its mother had caused internal injuries.

Now the zoo is facing just as rough a ride from an outraged international community.
Let's hope that Vera's sole surviving cub will grow up as healthy and happy as the now one-year-old Knut who has his own TV show and blog - and not care whether it is raised by humans holding bottles of milk.

Rare Prehistoric Shark In Japan

A rare prehistoric shark was discovered by local residents in Shizuoka, southwest of Tokyo. The huge eel-like creature, considered to be a living fossil, was taken to Japan’s Awashima Marine Park and placed in a seawater pool. But the new environment was fatal and, only just a few hours after it was moved, the unusual shark died.

Schoolgirl's Guide to Teenage Slang

A school girl from Britain has written a guide to teenage slang for confused parents.

Lucy van Amerongen, 13, penned The A-Z of Teen Talk after her parents complained they couldn’t follow her conversations with pals – and a publisher snapped it up.

Now Lucy, who goes to posh private school Cheltenham Ladies’ College, is “stoked” (very happy) because sales of her “nang” (cool) book are “owdish” (excellent).

Her guide includes 300 teen words such as “antwacky” (unstylish), “cotch down” (sleep), “rago” (OK) and “zip” (yob).

It also includes her three golden teen talk rules – never make eye contact when talking to a “mouldie” (parent), always mumble inaudibly, and try to include “like” in every sentence.

Lucy, of Box, Gloucs, said: “I hope the book clears up confusion. Some parents don’t give teenagers enough credit for some of the words they use. More come up every day and a lot are very creative.”

How to make Hot Ice

crazy experiment turning a liquid to a solid with just a touch.. amazing

6 Most unusual roads in the World

Toronto, Canada - the longest road.

Castletown, England - the narrowest street.

Buenos Aires, Argentina - the widest road.

Dunedin, New Zealand - the most abrupt road.

Svindon, England - the most complicated/tangled junction.

San Francisco, USA - The most curved road.

Hu Ziwei Embarrassing Her CCTV Sports Anchor Husband Zhang Bin

Hu Ziwei is a (former) business anchor of Beijing TV Station. She was recently shot to the international fame after the video showing her embarrassing husband Zhang Bin, a famous sports anchor on China's CCTV 5 channel,Ziwei bravely scolded Zhang Bin for betraying her by having an improper affair with another woman when Zhang Bin was on the event that the CCTV-5 was relaunched as the Olympics Channel on. Stunned by Ziwei's unusual behaviour, Zhang Bin stood open-mouthed and didn't know what to do.

40 amazing facts about sleep

The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

- It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

- Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

- A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year

- One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.

- The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

- REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.

- Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It's possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.

- REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery - obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.

- Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analagous to watching a film

- No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

- Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

- Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting - to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.

- Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations - sleep and consciousness.

- REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term bubs. Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hampster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.

- Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.

- British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers' body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers' retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.

- Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

- The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

- The NRMA estimates fatigue is involved in one in 6 fatal road accidents.

- Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper doesn’t wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.

- The "natural alarm clock" which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.

- Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.

- In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

- Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

- To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

- A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won't dream much.

- After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough.

- Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.

- Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.

- Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

- Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep

- Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal

- Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

- Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.

- Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.

- Most of what we know about sleep we've learned in the past 25 years.

- As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.

- Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

- The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.