2008 August | FendyBt2 Official Website

Cuba punk rocker spared jail term

August 30th, 2008 by FendyBt2

Article Source: FendyBt2 Official Website

By Emilio San Pedro
BBC Americas editor

Cuban singer Gorki Aguila at his home in Havana (29/08/2008)

A court in Havana, Cuba, has ordered a punk rock musician to pay a fine of $30 (Â£15) for public disorder for playing his band’s music too loud.

However, Gorki Aguila was cleared of a more serious charge that could have led to a jail sentence.

The lead singer of band Porno Para Ricardo is known for songs that ridicule Cuba’s communist government.

He had faced a possible four year term in prison for the crime known in Cuba as social dangerousness.

The controversial law allows the jailing of people who the authorities believe have been displaying behaviour that would indicate they could be on the verge of committing a crime.

But, prior to the trial, prosecutors decided to drop the charge. Instead Mr Aguila was found guilty of public disorder for playing his group’s music too loud while they were recording their new album.

He was then ordered to pay a $30 fine and released.

Minutes later, the outspoken bushy-haired singer told reporters gathered outside his house that it was clear the international interest in his case had played a key role in the last-minute decision by prosecutors to drop the more serious charge he was facing.

He also vowed to continue criticising the Cuban government and its emblematic communist leaders like Fidel Castro and the current president, Raul Castro.

Nothing, he said, could ever be gained by remaining silent.

There has been no comment regarding the case from the Cuban authorities

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation

Town prepares for hero’s welcome

August 27th, 2008 by FendyBt2

Article Source: FendyBt2 Official Website

Rebecca Adlington

A hero’s welcome is being prepared in honour of double gold medal winner Rebecca Adlington in her home town.

Thousands of people are expected to line the streets of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire as the swimmer tours through the town on an open-top bus.

She will be taken to the bus in a gold Rolls Royce and presented with a pair of gold Jimmy Choo shoes promised to her by the town’s mayor Tony Eggington.

Adlington won two Olympic golds in the 400m and 800m freestyle in Beijing.

The 19-year-old swimmer broke the 800m world record set in 1989 – the year she was born.

‘Golden opportunity’

Mayor Tony Eggington said: “To reach the very top of any sport requires years of hard work, focus and complete dedication – all traits which Rebecca has in abundance.

“What’s more, this success couldn’t have happened to a nicer girl. Rebecca is a credit to herself, her family and Mansfield.

“Through the success of Rebecca we now have a golden opportunity to inspire even more young people to go on and achieve success, whether it is in sport or other walks of life. This is what hard work can achieve.”

A giant screen has also been put up in Mansfield’s Market Place which will replay Adlington’s winning races as she tours the town on Tuesday.

She became the first British swimmer in 100 years to win two Olympic gold medals.

Her intensive training schedule has seen her get up at 0500 every day and spend 30 hours a week in the pool

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation

Black hole star mystery ’solved’

August 23rd, 2008 by FendyBt2

Article Source: FendyBt2 Official Website

Computer simulation of a molecular cloud falling into a black hole (Science/AAAS)

Astronomers have shed light on how stars can form around a massive black hole, defying conventional wisdom.

Scientists have long puzzled over how stars develop in so extreme conditions.

Molecular clouds – the normal birth places of stars – would be ripped apart by the immense gravity, a team explains in Science magazine.

But the researchers say that stars can form from elliptical discs – the relics of giant gas clouds torn apart by encounters with black holes.

They made the discovery after developing computer simulations of giant gas clouds being sucked into black holes like water spiralling down a plughole.

“These simulations show that young stars can form in the neighbourhood of supermassive black holes as long as there is a reasonable supply of massive clouds of gas from further out in the galaxy,” said co-author Ian Bonnell from St Andrews University, UK.

Ripped apart

Their findings are in accordance with actual observations in our Milky Way galaxy that indicate the presence of a massive black hole, surrounded by huge stars with eccentric orbits.

The simulations, performed on a supercomputer – and taking over a year of computing time – followed the evolution of two separate giant gas clouds up to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, as they fell towards the supermassive black hole.

The simulations show how the clouds are pulled apart by the immense gravitational pull of the black hole.

The disrupted clouds form into spiral patterns as they orbit the black hole; the spiral patterns remove motion energy from gas that passes close to the black hole and transfers it to gas that passes further out.

This allows part of the cloud to be captured by the black hole while the rest escapes.

In these conditions, only high mass stars are able to form and these stars inherit the eccentric orbits from the elliptical disc.

These results match the two primary properties of the young stars in the centre of our galaxy: their high mass and their eccentric orbits around the supermassive black hole.

“That the stars currently present around the galaxy’s supermassive black hole have relatively short lifetimes of [about] 10 million years, which suggests that this process is likely to be repetitive,” Professor Bonnell explained.

“Such a steady supply of stars into the vicinity of the black hole, and a diet of gas directly accreted by the black hole, may help us understand the origin of supermassive black holes in our and other galaxies in the Universe.