Newsgab

An anonymous £800,000 advertisement has appeared on Lebanese and Iraqi television screens. It explicitly shows glass, a body, and limbs flying through the air in slow motion. The clip to prevent terrorism can be viewed here, under the heading suicidal terror. .

The sixty second advertisement has been made possible by the time suspension technique, which is a special effect, popularised by the film Matrix

The gruesome story begins with a young boy watching a man walk through a crowded market. Suddenly the man stops and you can see the yellow straps of the bomb wrapped around him.

Seconds later he detonates the explosive and the next thing that you see is the cars flying and people crashing through the windows of a nearby café.

“Terrorism has no religion” in Arabic, flashes across the screen amidst the scene of people weeping.

Floyd Landis, the winner of the 2006 Tour do France, and then failed a drug test, plans to present his defence on his personal blog site.

Part of his defence is that the officials at the World Anti Doping Administration laboratory in France failed to follow the correct protocols with his test samples.

Landis was fired by his Phonak team in August, after he failed the drug test. Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme has said he no longer considers Landis the champion.

On July 20 during the Tour de France race Landis had a dramatic and impressive Stage 17 victory during a gruelling mountain stage, when he gained nearly eight minutes on the leader Oscar Pereiro.

Landis was tested twice for testosterone and in both tests the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone was excess of the 4:1 limit. In one test his ratio was 11:1, but his legal team has claimed major mistakes were made in the tests.

Jim Benson, the founder of a space hardware company SpaceDev, has set up Benson Space Company with the idea of “opening space for all of humanity.”

“A new race to space is on,” California-based Benson said. “I plan to spend the next several years creating the possibility that anyone who wants to go to space will be able to, safely and affordably.”

Benson has already raised $1 million to start his venture but in the world of space travel that is a grain of sand. He has to raise somewhere in the region of $50 million to make any space tourist business viable.

The dream of space tourism has been edging nearer for the last few years, the biggest stumbling block has been the cost. However two years ago SpaceShipOne, owned by media mogul Paul Allen brushed the edge of space with a man on board. SpaceDev made the rocket motors for SpaceShipOne.

I guess I forget sometimes that Newsgab is effectively a blog where folks come together and write about news stories of interest.

I come across many a Blog, which I think is pretty newsworthy or worth a mention so I thought that I’d create a new Blogosphere category.

The first post in this category is all about perspective and the realisation that your life, however hard you find it may not really be all THAT bad after all.

An Army blogger, back from Afghanistan due to an illness in his family, gets the worst possible news.

What now… That’s the question we’ve been facing for the last several days. We’ve come to the acceptance that within a year, I’ll likely be a single father. By acceptance, I don’t mean to imply happiness or anything like that. More like many, many tears.