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COMIC NEWS
Tired of human reality shows? Well, the Big Brother of the hen world is now on the Web (www.ourchickens.com), set in an English chicken coop and featuring the lovely Pauline, Fowler and Tikka. More than 5 thousand hits a day. Because the level of debate between the hens is really high.
Energy saving and migration
This autumn and next spring they'll be switching the lights off at night above the 40th floor in tower blocks in New York city. This is to keep the path of migrating birds free of light pollution. It will also save quite a lot of energy and money.
Because of the dazzling lights, more than 4,000 migratory birds have crashed into skyscrapers since 1997.
Hard luck if anybody falls down the stairs.
It seems like the United States Senate is drafting a law to stop the spread of the use of swearwords in public, especially on TV.
The new law will have fines of up to 500,000 dollars for vulgarity. Oh, heck!
Prick up your ears
Two forthcoming musical novelties not to be missed. One is the first CD of the plain-tailed wren of the Ecuadorian bamboo forest. According to a Scottish research team, their song is the most coordinated, precise and complicated in the animal kingdom, apart from Pavarotti's.
The plain-tailed wrens of the Ecuadorian bamboo forest sing in choruses of up to seven, each bird contributing its part to the "song" in a precise musical pattern.
The other novelty is sand dune music, in a composition by a group of French scientists who have recorded the sounds of the desert and lined up a few grains of sand for a tour.
A Scottish university dedicated three days of study to the relationship between David Beckham, the famous English footballer, and postmodernism. It seems like they didn't come up with anything of note.
Brisbane, Australia: while a man was watching television, a youth entered the room in a car. Amazing, these new special effects on TV!
Nobody was hurt, fortunately, "just a big fright and half a house to rebuild", said the man.
GOOD NEWS
Ciudad Juarez is considered one of the most violent towns in Mexico. And so the town council decided to launch a message of peace and love by getting in the Guinness Book of Records with the biggest hug in the world. More than 11 thousand people took part, in a line over 7 km long.
After an article in the Italian Internazionale magazine (no. 608), the story of George Weah has now reached the national television news.
Football fans will certainly remember him as the former AC Milan player who won the Golden Ball award in the year ...
Now Weah, aged 38, from Libera (Southwest Africa), has gone from goals for all to water for all and is currently running as candidate for the Liberian presidency. The latest opinion polls put him in the lead, despite the criticisms of the other candidates.
Thanks to an electoral campaign made up of slots, speeches and meetings all over the country, 'King George', as he is known, has become the symbol of a new Liberia that can make it. He is the new hope, especially for the youth, about half the electorate.
Weah was born poor, as are many Liberians, and, because of this, he says, he is able to listen to poor people and understand them when they talk. Unemployment in his country is at 85% and two thirds of the population live on UN aid.
King George has promised to build houses, water pipelines and electricity networks to create prosperity and jobs.
Weah's answer to the 27 candidates who accuse him of having no political experience is that, with all "their" experience, they've been governing the country for a hundred years and haven't achieved a thing.
Perhaps it's as he says: you don't need to study political science to be a politician. It's just a question of having sense.
The Peace Market
It's been inaugurated in Bunia, capital of the Ituri Province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. An area of 15 thousand square metres, filled three times a week with stalls, travelling shops and shoppers from the different communities. The site chosen for the Peace Market is symbolic: it's where members of the warring Lendu and Hema communities decided to come together and talk in 2003.
Scientist Ann Christy from Ohio State University claims that electricity can be generated from cows' digestive systems. A rural alternative to photovoltaic panels...
In Germany, in the first six months of 2005, 5.7% of the total energy consumed was generated by nuclear power, whereas energy from renewable sources (wind, water and biomasses) rose to 6.4% of the total. It's the first time that green energy has overtaken nuclear energy.
Editorial staff: Simone Canova, Jacopo Fo, Maria Cristina Dalbosco and Gabriella Canova
*** COMIC NEWS ***
Anthropology
In an interview with the BBC, Steven Mithen of Reading University claims that Neanderthals liked music. “People often portray Neanderthals as dull and grumpy but they had a strong sense of music,” he says. “Their songs would have covered emotions such as embarrassment and happiness.”
What sort of modern music would Neanderthals have liked most? “I think they would have particularly liked rap music. It has the sort of effect Neanderthals would have enjoyed. I can see them rapping in my mind.”
Are you on drugs?
A thief who stole a bicycle from a hospital car park in the village of Dorobanti in Arad county Romania got more than he bargained for when he fainted in his pursuer’s arms. After being taken straight to hospital (rescue was at hand within minutes), he’s now facing charges for a heart attack.
The world’s highest dinner party has been hosted in a hot air balloon over Somerset, UK. There was just a slight moment of panic when the roast chicken fell overboard...
Like every year, dozens of Peta activists raced nude in protest against the “running of the bulls” in Pamplona from 6 to 14 July. Millions of tourists from all over the world now come to Pamplona just to see the Peta event.
*** GOOD NEWS ***
Have you seen the film The Terminal?
Following a coup in his native country, Tom Hanks finds himself stranded for eight weeks in New York airport, where he adapts to his new life and falls in love with a hostess (Catherine Zeta Jones).
A similar saga came to an end recently in the international airport in Nairobi, Kenya. The character in this real-life story is 43-year-old Sanjai Shah, who for a year had been sleeping on transit lounge chairs near gate 14.
As in the film, Sanjai Shah’s predicament was the result of bureaucracy. In May 2004, before leaving Kenya for Great Britain, he had cancelled his Kenyan passport without realising that the British Overseas Citizen passport was not sufficient for unlimited entry to the UK and in any case had to be accompanied by a return ticket with travel date within six months. Sanjai did not have a return ticket and was duly deported. But at that point he no longer had a Kenyan passport and was stranded.
The good news is that his British citizenship has been granted and on 12 July he will be able to leave Kenya legally.
(Source: Corriere della Sera)
The film The Terminal is in fact inspired by the story of the Iranian Kurd Merhan Karimi Nasser, also known as Sir Alfred, who since 1988 has been a prisoner of bureaucracy in Paris’ Charles De Gaulle airport.
Women scientists in Pakistan
A survey by the journal Nature has found that the numbers of female university students are increasing in Pakistan. In 1991 women accounted for one fifth of the 60,000 university students, but in 2001 this figure had risen to one third, with peaks of 67% at Karachi University and 50% at Punjab University. Women are mainly enrolled on scientific courses.
Fair trade
Footballs, cushions, straw-bottomed chairs, looms, bags, slippers, soap, tomatoes, pulses, cereals, coffee and honey are just a few of the products that Argentina is exporting through fair trade channels, now an economic, social and political reality.
The mechanisms of fair trade are very simple. The producers are paid fairly but in return have to follow a number of rules: they must respect the environment, they must not use child labour or exploit workers, and they must form cooperatives to allow decisions to be taken democratically and the benefits shared.
One of the best-known examples of fair trade is coffee. It is calculated that total revenues from ethical products amount to about 200 million dollars. Coffee alone earns the cooperatives 34 million dollars a year.
There are more than 5,000 specialist shops in Europe and 20,000 in the United States.
Prince Charles the Organic
Duchy Originals, the organic food range owned by Prince Charles, made £1m (abut 1.5m euro) in profits last year, all of which went to charity, according to the London Evening Standard newspaper.
*** HEALTH NEWS ***
Anti-smoking campaigns
The British government has unveiled a hard-hitting anti-smoking campaign. One of the adverts warns: “Does smoking make you hard? Not if you can’t get it up”. Another ad explains that smoking can give you a “cat’s bum mouth”.
Smart Start, a company based in Irving, Texas, is raking in the dollars with the first interlock device to prevent drunk driving. The operation of the device is simple: after turning the ignition key, the driver has to blow into a tube connected to a breathalyser. If the alcohol level exceeds the legal limit, the interlock prevents the car from starting.
Just in case drivers attempt to get round the system by having the car started by a sober person, the device requires random checks while the person is driving. If the driver then fails to stop, the anti-theft alarm, hazard warning lights, headlights and horn all go off at once, and the car will soon catch the attention of a police patrol.
The main purchasers so far have been apprehensive parents about to buy a car for their children and the New Mexico government, which requires interlock systems for drivers with past convictions for drunk driving (the mandate is for a year).
*** SCIENCE NEWS ***
Electricity from the sea
A plant for the production of electrical energy from wave movement started up near Port Kembla in Australia on 2 June. When fully operational, the plant will supply 11 GW of energy a year, sufficient for the requirements of 500 homes. It will also supply the energy needed to desalinate, purify and distribute 2000 litres of water a day.
The operation of the plant is simple. The movement of the waves compresses air in a special chamber, inside which there is a turbine which in turn drives an electricity generator.
Dolphins speak two languages
This discovery has been made by a team of researchers at the Marine Science Institute (Ismar) of the Italian National Research Council CNR. These highly intelligent animals have one innate language for conveying emotions, used during courtship and for expressing anger, happiness and fear. The second language is like a dialect and is used to exchange information within individual communities. This language is not innate and involves a long learning process that begins before birth.
The two languages are distinguished by the use of different frequency bands.
*** COMIC NEWS ***
The Office Chair World Championships was held on June 11th in Switzerland. The 64 contestants competed on a 200-metre downhill course.
Don't cheat on your girlfriend or you might find yourself in the shoes of a man from Birmingham, UK. To get her own back, she sold his custom Lotus Esprit Turbo on eBay for less than a euro. The auction lasted just 5 minutes and the new owner picked up the car the very same day.
But if you have a girlfriend like that and are thinking of two-timing her, let us know beforehand. We could do with a new car.
Chris Templeton, a research biologist at the University of Washington, has been studying the call of the black-capped chickadee. He's going to make it a rock star.
A good reason to choose a black car
According to a study carried out by students at Bristol University, birds prefer to deposit their droppings on white cars. Black and blue cars are less popular targets. Bird expert Dr. Derek Toomer says that the birds mistake the white cars for enormous sheets of toilet paper (or perhaps predators).
In Devils Lake, a town in North Dakota, a man was arrested for driving an electric-powered shopping cart while drunk. After entering a grocery store, the man began weaving and doing 180° spins around the store. He was stopped after a head-on collision in the pretzel and cracker section.
A similar incident occurred a few years ago in Morristown, New Jersey when a 63-year-old man was fined for being drunk in charge of an ice rink polishing machine.
*** GOOD NEWS ***
The first time
For the first time ever a black woman, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, has been appointed Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa. Her predecessor, Jacob Zuma, resigned last Tuesday amidst accusations of corruption.
The South African government consists of 29 ministers, 13 of whom are women.
According to figures released by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the use of ecstasy has fallen sharply. A survey of high-school seniors in 2001 revealed that 9.2% had used ecstasy, while in 2004 this figure had fallen to 4%. There appear to be various factors behind ecstasy's demise. Tighter security after the September 11th, 2001 attacks have pushed up the price of the drug to as much as $30 per pill and numerous studies have revealed the risks associated with its use, which include brain damage and death.
However, the decline in ecstasy appears to be leading to increased use of prescription painkillers. A few days ago the DEA broke up a drug ring that was illegally selling more than 2.5 million pills a month via the Internet.
Will Australia run on bananas?
Following a feasibility study conducted by researchers at the University of Queensland, the Brisbane-based firm Ergon Energy was engaged to build a plant for the production of biofuel from banana skins. In north Queensland, which accounts for 80% of Australia's annual banana production, approximately one in three bananas does not meet market standards, but could be recycled and converted into a biodegradable fuel. The residues would also make an excellent fertiliser.
*** SCIENCE NEWS ***
According to a survey of 750 Australians, four out of five are convinced of the existence of aliens. Eighty-four percent of these thought aliens would be friendly while the remaining 16% have already bought a molecular disintegrator.
Breast feeding
A study of 797 children aged 10 to 12 conducted by the National University of Singapore has shown that breast-fed children are about 50% less likely to become near-sighted. Docosahexaenoic acid (or DHA), a substance contained in breast milk, is important for the development of photoreceptor cells in the retina. These cells play a major role in determining nearsightedness, one of the most common sight problems affecting about 40% of people in the United States and Europe and between 70% and 90% in some Asian countries such as Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong.
*** ANIMAL NEWS ***
Aren't they the lucky ones?
Bats, armadillos and opossums sleep for up to 20 hours a day.
The American Museum of Natural History in New York has exhibited the skeleton of a strange dinosaur called Bambiraptor. About 90% of its bones have been recovered. Although a fierce hunter, the experts say it was good-natured and had big, soft eyes. It ate a T-Rex a day.
*** COMIC NEWS ***
Happy New Year!
For Bolivian Aymara Indians it's the start of 5513.
Recordmen
Heavy athletics: 100 metres sprint in 22.04 seconds. That's the new world record for the 95-99 male age group, set a few days ago by a 95-year-old Japanese man, Kozo Haraguchi, at the Miyazaki running track. Haraguchi was a boy wonder when he started competing in athletics, at the age of 65.
Blocked capillaries? Researchers in New York have developed a microbrush. It can remove particles measuring as little as 50 nanometres. It's a devil of a job getting the toothpaste on, though.
Love's destiny...
Laura Keeping and Daniel Harman met 21 years ago in the paediatrics department of St. Mary's Hospital, Portsmouth. That was when they were born. Now they've announced they're going to be wed in September.
Thief stories
While attempting a burglary at a house in Cordoba, Argentina, the would-be thief found a bottle of gin, drank it and fell asleep in an armchair. He was discovered by the proprietor and arrested right in the middle of a dream.
*** GOOD NEWS ***
It's gone up to 143 (from 132 on the last count) the number of American cities that have decided to sign the Kyoto Protocol locally in a gesture of defiance against the Bush administration and to support the campaign for the reduction of carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere by 17%.
Do you know what is now thought to be the most ecological city in the world?
It's Curitiba, in Brazil. The mayor, Jaime Lerner has made the town centre a pedestrian precinct, made many of the main streets bus-only, planted millions of trees, excavated flood basins and recruited the city's poor to collect refuse. In exchange for bags of rubbish they can get food, medicine, books and free bus tickets.
For more information on the example of Curitiba, see http://www.alcatraz.it/redazione/news/show_news_p.php3?NewsID=2153
Brazil
The Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, has inaugurated a new children's
*** COMIC NEWS ***
Florida: a woman found an image of the face of Jesus in a french fry. Miracles of the microwaves.
The American Supreme Court has banned the use of marijuana for therapeutic purposes. Nothing about the use of marijuana for fun, though.
Connect in God's name
The parish priest of Saint John's Church in Cardiff, Great Britain, has had broadband wireless Internet access installed in the north nave of the church. The faithful can thus be connected at all times. God was, after all, the first one to use wireless mode.
Runners in the recent Chicago marathon ran a mile extra because of a calculation error in the route planning. The organisers say they're sorry.
Researchers at the Joint Genome Institute have mapped part of the DNA of the Ursus Spelaeus, a cave bear that has been extinct for over 10,000 years and is therefore no use at all.
*** GOOD NEWS ***
Mariam Mukthar is the first woman judge to be appointed to the Nigerian Supreme Court. Despite the fact that the President of the Court forbade applause at her swearing-in ceremony, there was an ovation lasting several minutes.
Genetically inferior
The state of Andhra Pradesh, considered as the agricultural capital of India, has banned Monsanto's genetically engineered cotton, forbidding its promotion, marketing and all forms of trials.
The measure was taken on the basis of certain 'useful information': the yield of the GM cotton was 30% lower than that of normal cotton, whereas the costs were 10% higher.
There was no reduction in the use of chemical pesticides, despite the promises, and farmers' earnings went down. In the last three years the income per acre for non-GM farmers was 60% higher than that of GM farmers.
www. ... .xxx
In a few months' time porn Internet sites will have their own virtual red-light district. The domain will be ".xxx" instead of ".com", making it easier to spot the porn sites and stop children visiting them.
Mosquito net microcredit
Seme is a little village in South Benin where, thanks to a rotating credit scheme (known as a "tontine") set up by a group of women, more and more families are able to afford repellents and mosquito nets to help combat malaria.
The system is simple: the people in the rotating credit associations meet every week in groups of 10 and pay an "association instalment". The money collected is then passed on, in rotation, to each of the women in turn so that they can buy the nets and repellents against the malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
(The "tontine" is named after Lorenzo Tonti, the Neapolitan banker who invented rotating credit in 1653.)
Boxfish
This is the name of a brilliantly coloured tropical fish, famous for its box shape and, now, for being the inspiration behind a low-consumption automobile. The prototype of the car, designed by DaimlerChrysler, will be unveiled at the next Innovation Symposium in Washington. Thanks to its aerodynamic shape, the car (4.24 metres long with space for four occupants) can travel 100 kilometres on 4.3 litres of fuel. At a constant speed of 90 km/h it consumes 2.8 litres every 100 km.
It has just one defect: the fish-bone down the middle.
*** SCIENCE NEWS ***
The public urinal robot
Its official name is Shakeutrin, it's Japanese-made and it's meant to be a robot that helps pee-lazy men have a pee. It's shaped like a normal lavatory bowl and has a TV camera and two mechanical arms that take care of everything: unbuttoning the trousers, pulling them down, aiming and so on. All you have to do is stand in front of the bowl and, above all, stand still while the robot takes the situation in hand.
After spending 5 weeks stuck in a sand dune on Mars, the Opportunity space probe started moving again over the surface of the planet. Now it's almost certain there are breakdown trucks on Mars.
The Brazilian armed forces opened their secret files and the news broke immediately of numerous sightings of unidentified flying objects.
Three of the sightings were amazing: in 1954, military personnel flying over the state of Paranà were followed by a UFO. More than 100 photos of flying saucers were taken, again by military personnel, in Amazzonia in 1977. The third file is about what has come to be known as "the night of the UFO's in Brazil". In May 1986 civilian and military airports reported the passing of 21 flying objects, each with a diameter of about 100 metres. Never before had there been such a sighting, witnessed by pilots and civilian and military airport personnel of various ranks.
Perhaps we're not alone in the universe, and the problem is our car-parks aren't big enough..
*** COMIC NEWS ***
It wasn't the end of the world!
The Bank of Ephraim, in Utah, went bankrupt after lending 18 million dollars to a Mormon sect. So sure were the devotees that the end of the world was nigh that they squandered an entire fortune. Think about it, just think about it...
A new text message service has been launched in France: instructions for watering the garden. A message a day with practical hints, at the cost of 4 euros a month.
The first ever anti-allergy car, approved by the British Allergy Foundation and certified by the German TUV organisation, has been previewed in Britain by Ford. All the materials used in the manufacture of the car are non-allergic and it has special filters to limit the amount of pollen and dust mites getting into the car interior. It's called the Ford Etci (pronounced "itchy").
Mad ecologists
Manfred Werner, director of a medical research institute in Braunschweig, claims that you can survive by feeding on the sun's "energy" alone. And he's proved it: he hasn't eaten since 2001, limiting himself to drinking a litre and a half of water, fruit juice or coffee a day and getting all the energy his body needs from the sun. He lost about 20 kilos but now his body has got used to it and his weight has stabilised at 68 kg. He says he's in good health. According to some of his colleagues, Werner's veins haven't got blood flowing in them, but chlorophyll.
Thief stories
A tow-truck towed away the car he had stolen and he reported it to the police. Imbecile arrested in Baltimore, United States.
On Saturday the 7th of May in Boston students from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) organised the first ever time travellers' party. The aim of the event wasn't to discuss the feasibility of time travel, but to attract travellers from the future to Earth.
Don't worry if you missed the party, you can always go tomorrow.
Orgasm Day was celebrated in Brazil. This is another party you can time-travel back to.
*** GOOD NEWS ***
News of all news
The Kuwaiti Parliament has approved a bill that extends the right to vote to women.
"Are your butts covered?"
A group of former United Airlines stewardesses discovered their pensions were going to be cut. They thought about it and in the end decided to round off their annuity by posing for a striptease calendar called "Are your butts covered?".
News of the event spread all over the world, until last Wednesday when Chicago Bankruptcy Court Judge Eugene Wedoff authorised the airline to transfer its employee pension obligations to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
The flight attendants' plan was inspired by a similar episode that was made into a film by Nigel Cole, called "Calendar Girls". The film tells the story of a group of women from Rylstone Women's Institute, England. When on of the women's husbands died from leukaemia, they decided to
pose naked for a calendar to raise funds for medical research. The calendar became world famous and sold more copies than the Britney Spears and Cindy Crawford calendars.
The Argentine government has launched a new "Sexual health programme" which, amongst other things, involves the free distribution of 18 million condoms all over the country.
Time magazine dedicated a long article called "Power to the people" to the eco-village of Beddington in South London. It's the first English building complex that releases zero pollutants. The entire community runs on the microgeneration of energy: instead of a big, polluting,
central unit there are lots of energy production points using exclusively renewable energy sources (mini-wind turbines and solar arrays in every house). All the homes make the maximum use of natural light.
Workers' occupation in Argentina
Naomi Klein is co-author of a new documentary called The Take, which tells the story of the workers in the Zanon ceramic tile factory in Neuqun, Patagonia. In 2001 they formed a cooperative (FaSinPat - Fabrica sin padrones), occupied the closed-down factory and started up production again, with extraordinary results: in 2004 the number of workers in the cooperative increased from 300 to 470 and output almost doubled. They also managed to build a medical centre near the factory. There are now a total of 15 thousand workers occupying and running 200 companies, trying to build an alternative to the bankrupt system (despite state loans) of the last twenty years.
Amongst these are the Chilavert print workers, the Brukman textile workers, the Renacer electricity workers, the doctors and hospital workers in the Junin and Ados clinics and the Gattic shoe factory workers. The occupied factories aren't looked on favourably by the government, which is trying in every way it can to boycott the work, by putting pressure on the workers (intimidation and verbal and physical aggression), all with total impunity.
You can sign the appeal in defence of the cooperative on the Web:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/zanon/petition.html
*** ANIMAL NEWS ***
Forged money stinks
... and in fact the Austrian police have trained 4 dogs to sniff out forged euros, Swiss francs and dollars. The forged money probably smells different because of the colours used, which a dog's super-keen sense of smell can pick out. They play around with millions of euros in the training.
After years of struggle, the 200 donkeys of Blackpool (Northwest England), who've been ferrying tourists along the sea front for over a century, have won a new right: the lunch break.
It was announced by a Council official, who said that the quadrupeds' work times will be from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., with Fridays off. And every day there must be a suitable rest period, in which the donkeys can eat their feed (organically grown, naturally) in peace.
You know the big black hats worn by the Queen of England's guardsmen? The ones they've been making out of Canadian black bear fur for over two centuries, much to the ire of animal rights activists? Well, now they're experimenting with a new synthetic material. Previous experiments
haven't had very positive results, unfortunately: when it rains the synthetic fur goes limp and the Queen's guardsmen lose credibility. The new material performs excellently even in the wet.
*** SCIENCE NEWS ***
The elevator that sucks
No, it's not the name of a new porn film but an invention by a United States company. A one-person cab running in a cylindrical tube. When the air is sucked out of the cylinder the lift goes up, and when it's put back in it goes down. The elevator currently has a maximum range of two or three floors with a capacity of about 200 kg, but the designers are working on more powerful models. They've got to suck harder.
The US Justice Department has made a historic decision. In a new memo it states that: "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international law."
In previous memos it talked of the possibility of inflicting pain of an intensity "equivalent to organ failure or even death." In certain cases, the President could authorise torture, and those who administered it were legally protected.
A drastic cut in the number of Guantanamo prisoners has been announced.
(Perhaps down to 400 million. But we're not really sure of this figure)
Disgruntled reactions in the Third World.
Electric skis are now on the market. They generate energy from vibrations and use it to stabilize the skis, drawing on the technology developed for Apache helicopter blades. The stabilization action occurs every 5 thousands of a second.
They cost 20 billion dollars.
(More or less)
Dealer stories
Florida: 700 grams of marijuana were stolen from the home of Douglas Sheetz, aged 18 and Misty Ann Holmes, aged 17. They reported it to the police immediately, stressing the fact that it caused them serious economic harm because they intended to sell it.
They were arrested.
(I swear that every word of this is true!)
Magna Carta Libertatum
50 thousand government files have been made public in Britain.
On careful perusal, it was discovered that generations of British civil servants have been fighting to get soft toilet paper in the bathrooms (they used to use hard, shiny paper).
The first request was made in 1964, by an employee suffering from piles. The question was raised again in 1967 and 1969. And again and again over the following years. A slow but inexorable lobbying campaign.
It wasn't until 1981 that the request was granted. So, if you get to wipe your bottom with soft paper at a London registry office you've got these intrepid warriors to thank.
Spain
As from next year it will be obligatory to install solar panels in all new homes.
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