Huayra Supercar

You’ll have to ask your friend from Lake Titicaca how to pronounce it, but if a picture is truly worth a thousand words, images of the Huayra speak for themselves.

Named after an ancient Andean god of wind, the Italian supercar is the latest from one of the world’s smallest and most bespoke automakers, Pagani. Never heard of it? That’s because it doesn’t sell cars in the United States, yet.

Unlike the company’s current car, the Zonda, the Huayra has been engineered to meet U.S. safety and emissions standards, and should be available here, at least to a few extremely wealthy individuals.

The price tag for this gullwing, grouper-faced objet d’art is $1.4 million. For that you get what’s described as a carbon-titanium monocoque chassis cradling a mid-mounted, 700 hp 6.0-liter twin-turbocharged V12 engine designed for Pagani by AMG, the performance arm of Mercedes-Benz.

With a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission and a weight of under 3,000 pounds, the Huayra should deliver incredible acceleration. The company claims a top speed of over 230 mph. A moveable wing with four adjustable flaps allows the car to transform its aerodynamics to suit the prevailing winds being generated by such speeds.

In true Pagani form, two passengers are treated to the most over the top, retro-fabulous interior imaginable, with lots of shiny pods for the gauges, carbon fiber trim and the richest leather this side of the sofas in a Medici sitting room.

Like it? Unless you can afford one, enjoy the photos. Pagani plans to make only about 20 per year, for the entire world. So, unless you live near the company’s headquarters in Modena, or perhaps in Dubai, don’t expect to see one parked in front of your house anytime soon

GOOGLE NEWS

Google is preparing to launch Google Offers, the search giant's Groupon competitor, Mashable has learned.
We have the documents to prove it -- one of our sources has sent us a confidential fact sheet straight from the Googleplex about the company's new group buying service.


"Google Offers is a new product to help potential customers and clientele find great deals in their area through a daily email," the fact sheet says.


Google Offers looks and operates much like Groupon or LivingSocial. Users receive an e-mail with a local deal-of-the-day. They then have the opportunity to buy that deal within a specific time limit (we assume 24 hours). Once enough people have made the purchase, the Google Offer is triggered and users get that all-too-familiar $10 for $20 deal for that Indian restaurant you've never tried.


From what we can tell, Google Offers will be powered by Google Checkout. It also includes Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Google Buzz and e-mail sharing options.


Google is actively reaching out to businesses now to get them on board with Offers. It even apparently has a writing team in place to craft the write-up for offers.


Google famously tried to buy Groupon for $6 billion just a few months ago in order to bolster its local advertising business. Groupon rejected the offer though and is instead preparing for a $15 billion IPO.
The search giant clearly isn't giving this market up without a fight, though. With its vast reach, huge resources and brand recognition, it could prove to be a powerful player in the space.


We're going to be watching these developments closely. Look here to see the entire fact sheet Google is sending to local businesses:


Google has responded to our inquiry and sent us the following statement:


"Google is communicating with small businesses to enlist their support and participation in a test of a pre-paid offers/vouchers program. This initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with customers in new ways. We do not have more details to share at this time, but will keep you posted."


Google essentially confirms Google Offers is real. It looks like Google Offers is in the testing phases, though.

We've also learned that Google will pay out 80% of a business' revenue share three days after its deal runs. Google will hold the remaining 20% for 60 days to cover refunds before sending the rest.

Misuse of scientific research to create designer drugs

Writing in the journal Nature, Professor David Nichols of Purdue University, Indiana, says he is "haunted" by deaths linked to a drug based on his own research.

MTA or "flatliners" used a blueprint published by the professor and was sold as a "legal high", drugs which mimic the effects of illegal substances. It has since been banned as a class-A drug in the UK.
Back in the 1990s, Professor Nichols and colleagues were experimenting with chemicals similar to the one used in the drug ecstasy.

The hope was they the research might lead to new drugs to treat depression. He published three papers on the effects on rats of one chemical called 4-methylthioamphetamine or MTA.

It later emerged the work had been used to create pills dubbed "flatliners", which were linked with at least six deaths.

But it is only recently that the professor has become fully aware of how the designer drugs industry has been systematically mining his work for recipes.

"It's not like you took a gun and shot somebody because then you would know you'd been responsible," he told the BBC, "but people were taking something that you had published and I was alerting them that this might be an active molecule."

Kitchen lab
Professor Nichols says MTA, and other chemicals he has developed, can be created in a kitchen laboratory.
"It is something that someone with a PhD, if they're really determined to do it, could probably set up in a laboratory in their kitchen.

"If they could get the necessary chemicals, they could make some of these things, but these drugs are being made on a much larger scale than just the occasional chemist with the curiosity.

"It sounds like these things have really become a small industry."

The professor is by no means the only scientist to have his work plundered by the drug makers.
He says several synthetic drugs which mimic the effects of cannabis have been developed using data from publicly available scientific literature.

The British authorities have moved to ban a host of "legal highs" in recent years including GBL, BZP and mephedrone.

Mephedrone, which is also known as "meow", was banned last year after it was associated, in some cases wrongly, with a number of deaths

AUSTRALIA FLOODS

Australia's record floods are causing catastrophic damage to infrastructure in the state of Queensland and have forced 75 percent of its coal mines, which fuel Asia's steel mills, to grind to a halt, Queensland's premier said on Wednesday.

The worst flooding in decades has affected an area the size of Germany and France, leaving towns virtual islands in a muddy inland sea, devastated crops, cut major rail and road links to coal ports, slashed exports and forced up world coal prices.

"Seventy-five percent of our mines are currently not operation because of this flood," Premier Anna Bligh told local television. "So, that's a massive impact on the international markets and the international manufacturer of steel."

The Australian floods, which have cut off 22 towns and affected 200,000 people, have resulted from the La Nina weather phenomenon, which produces monsoonal rains over the western Pacific and Southeast Asia.

The La Nina is expected to last another three months after it produced Australia's third-wettest year on record in 2010, the nation's weather bureau said on Wednesday.

"Queensland is a very big state. It relies on the lifelines of its transport system, and those transport systems in some cases are facing catastrophic damage," said Bligh.

TOP TEN MEN IN HEADLINEW 2010


An eight-year-old boy name Kiki provided one of those heart-rending moments that so often give relief from the misery of natural disasters.
He was pulled from the ruins of a two-storey building that had been flattened in the earthquake that struck Haiti.
In testimony to the strength of the human body and spirit, he emerged some seven-and-a-half days after being buried in the rubble with a broad grin and his arms outstretched towards his mother.


Manchester City footballer Wayne Bridge suffered a rift with former Chelsea colleague and friend John Terry with the revelation that the Chelsea captain had allegedly had an affair with Bridge's former partner, and mother of his son, Vanessa Perroncel.
Bridge announced his retirement from England duty, thereby ruling himself out of the World Cup. It was suggested in the media he couldn't face being holed up with Terry for the duration of the competition.
John Terry lost the England captaincy as a result of the episode. Perroncel has denied anything untoward happened.


Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helu, 67, was finally "crowned" the world's richest person.
According to the Forbes List, this son of a Lebanese immigrant has accumulated a fortune worth $50bn (£32.4bn), partly as a result of buying a majority stake in the Mexican state phone company prior to its privatisation.
His Telmex Company has a virtual monopoly of landlines and represents 7% of Mexico's entire economic output.


When an explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico threatened an environmental disaster, it was left to Tony Hayward, the much-criticised British chief executive of BP, to face the music.
His company faced scathing criticism from all quarters including the US Congress.
Hayward didn't help himself when he made a remark about wanting his "life" back. The explosion killed 11 men.


Following the sudden resignation of David Laws, Liberal Democrat MP Danny Alexander found himself appointed as chief secretary to the treasury, a key role in managing the budget cuts.
As Nick Clegg's chief of staff during the election campaign, he had branded the Conservatives untrustworthy and "economically illiterate".
He rose to prominence as part of the Lib Dem negotiating team that brokered the agreement to enter into a coalition with the Tories.


Spare a thought for Nicholas Mahut, the 28-year-old Frenchman who was the loser in the world's longest ever tennis match.
After a titanic battle on Wimbledon's Court 18 that lasted more than 11 hours and which ended 70-68 in the final set, Mahut was a picture of total dejection.
An extraordinary 103 aces were not enough to defeat the US's John Isner.
However, both players were given special trophies to mark their extraordinary achievement.

When thousands of secret US military documents were first leaked to the Wikileaks website, its founder, Australian Julian Assange, was little known.
By the end of the year, after more and more revelations had appeared causing fury in governments, Assange had become a household name.
The issue of press freedom raised by the Wikileaks affair was complicated by Assange's subsequent legal battle against extradition to Sweden to answer sex crime charges that he claims are part of a conspiracy to silence him.

Conspiracy theories abounded after the mysterious discovery of the naked body of a 30-year-old MI6 worker, Gareth Williams, inside a padlocked sports bag in his flat in London.
He was last seen alive eight days earlier. Williams was a GCHQ code-breaker believed to have helped thwart a terror campaign in Britain by intercepting phone calls involving British jihadists at a training camp.
Toxicologists found no evidence of drugs, alcohol or poisons in his body.


Cardinal Walter Kasper caused something of a stir when he commented to a German magazine: "When you arrive at Heathrow you think at times that you've landed in a Third World country."
The comment came ahead of the Pope's visit to Britain. He felt no need to apologise for the seeming slight and his personal secretary explained that he was merely remarking on the prevalence of so many cultures, religions and races in the country.
It was just as well the cardinal hadn't landed during December's cold snap.

The last of the 33 Chilean miners to be winched to safety after 69 days trapped underground was the shift foreman Luis Urzua who was credited with keeping them safe.
After the mine's collapse, Urzua instituted a set of rigid rules and regulations crucial for the men's survival such as rationing the mine's emergency food consignment into minimal portions and organising the miners' work, sleep and sanitary areas.
He kept each man on a 12-hour shift schedule.


A sixth-form classics student, Edward Woollard from Dibden Purlieu near Southampton admitted throwing a fire extinguisher from the roof of the Conservative party HQ in Millbank during student protests in London against the raising of tuition fees.
The extinguisher landed near a group of police officers, one of whom said he was "six inches from death".
Woollard, who was released on bail, could face up to five years in jail when he is sentenced next year.


A community project manager from Moss Side in Manchester, Eddie Afekafe, gave an inspirational speech during England's presentation as part of its unsuccessful bid to host the 2018 World Cup.
Afekafe told how he escaped a world of gang crime when given the backing by the Prince's Trust for an FA coaching scheme.
"Football changed my life," he told delegates, as he explained how he qualified for his level two coaching badge and became a key member of Manchester City's community programme.