Largest Hotel Suite

WHO:

Grand Hills Hotel & Spa

WHAT:

4,131 m²

WHERE:

Broummana, Lebanon

WHEN:

May 2008

The largest hotel suite is the Royal Suite at the Grand Hills Hotel & Spa located in Broummana, Lebanon. It measures a total of 4,131 m²

Largest Container of Body Cream

WHO:

Beiersdorf Hellas AE

WHAT:

1,124,490 ml

(247.4 gal /

323.4 US gal)

WHERE:

Athens, Greece

WHEN:

November 15, 2001

The world's largest container of body cream, measuring 2 m (6 ft 6.7 in) in diameter, 53 cm (1 ft 8.8 in) high and holding 1,124,490 ml (247.4 gal / 323.476 US gallons) of NIVEA Creme, was created by Beiersdorf Hellas and unveiled in Athens, Greece on December 15, 2001.

Largest Swimming Pool

WHO:

San Alfonso del Mar

WHAT:

1,013 m (3,324 ft) long - Area of 8 ha (19.77 acre)

WHERE:

Algarrobo, Chile

WHEN:

December 2006

The largest swimming pool in the world is the San Alfonso del Mar seawater pool in Algarrobo, Chile. It is 1,013 m (3,324 ft) long and has an area of 8 ha (19.77 acre), it was completed in December 2006.

Pakistan Sizzles: Sibi to reach record temp on Friday?

The image aboce is from MSN weather site. Note the pinkish spots on most of the Punjab and Sindh-Baluchistan-Punjab border area. This color shows temperatures in excess of 45C (113F).

Large parts of the country are reporting daily temperatures in excess of 40C. Numerous lives have been unfortunately lost due to this heat wave in both Pakistan and India. As of June 12, Dawn newspaper is reporting 47 people have lost their lives in Pakistan. Today a friend forwarded me an email drawing my attention to 5-day weather forecast for Sibi. According to CNN weather website, temperature in Sibi Pakistan is going to hit 57C (or 134F) on Friday June 15,

Big record

U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood last month found that Lime Wire LLC assisted users in pirating digital recordings, and that founder Mark Gorton personally "directed and benefited from many of the activities" that resulted in liability.

In papers filed on Monday in Manhattan federal court, lawyers for the record companies said Gorton has moved "significant" assets, including nearly 90 percent of Lime Wire's ownership stakes, to an entity he "openly" hopes will be shielded from damages that could top $1 billion. The assets allegedly moved were blacked out in the papers.

Gorton and affiliated defendants "have engaged in a series of fraudulent actions" to "frustrate a legal judgment in this case," the papers said. "An asset freeze is required in order to ensure that plaintiffs recover at least some of the monetary compensation they are entitled to."

Last week, the record companies also sought a permanent injunction to halt piracies. It said that despite Wood's ruling, Lime Wire appeared to have done nothing "to change its illegal ways," and that every recording on Billboard's Top 40, Top 40 Country, Top 40 Rock and Top 40 Latin Pop charts were still available to download through LimeWire software.

According to court records, Wood on Monday also granted the requests of two law firms to stop representing Lime Wire: Fulbright & Jaworski LLP, and Porzio, Bromberg & Newman PC.

A Lime Wire spokeswoman said: "We will continue to stay focused on the development of our new music service and ensure that the company continues business as usual." She added that the change in law firms had been planned before the latest court filings, saying: "We were looking for a better firm."

Arista, Atlantic, BMG Music, Capital, Elektra, Interscope, LaFace, Motown, Priority, Sony BMG, UMG, Virgin and Warner Brothers are the 13 record companies that sued Lime Wire, backed by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Lime Wire created its service in 2000 and has said it has more than 50 million monthly users. These users accounted for 58 percent of people who said they downloaded music from a peer-to-peer service in 2009, a survey by NPD Group shows.

Wood's decision followed a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against file-sharing service Grokster Ltd, which said companies could be sued for copyright infringement if they distributed devices designed to be used that way, even if the devices could also be used lawfully.

The law firms that withdrew from the LimeWire case and lawyers for the record companies did not immediately return requests for comment.

BP spill sets a somber record as Gulf's biggest

WASHINGTON — BP's massive oil spill became the largest ever in the Gulf of Mexico by Thursday based on the highest of the federal government's estimates, an ominous record that underscores the oil giant's dire need to halt the gusher.

The oil that's spewed for two and a half months from a blown-out well a mile under the sea hit the 140.6 million gallon mark, eclipsing the record-setting, 140-million-gallon Ixtoc I spill off Mexico's coast from 1979 to 1980. Even by the lower end of the government's estimates, at least 71.7 million gallons are in the Gulf.

The growing total is crucial to track — in part because U.K.-based BP is likely to be fined per gallon spilled, said Larry McKinney, director of Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi's Gulf of Mexico research institute.

"It's an important number to know because it has an impact on restoration and recovery," McKinney said.

The oil calculation is based on the higher end of the government's range of barrels leaked per day, minus the amount BP says it has collected from the blown-out well using two containment systems.

Measuring it helps scientists figure out where the missing oil is, hidden below the water surface with some even stuck to the seafloor. Oil not at the surface damages different parts of the ecosystem.

"It's a mind-boggling number any way you cut it," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University environmental studies professor who consults for the federal government on oil spills. "It'll be well beyond Ixtoc by the time it's finished."

Temperatures reach record high in Pakistan

Mohenjo-daro, a ruined city in what is now Pakistan that contains the last

traces of a 4,000-year-old civilisation that flourished on the banks of the river Indus, today entered the modern history books after government meteorologists recorded a temperature of 53.7C (129F). Only Al 'Aziziyah, in Libya (57.8C in 1922), Death valley in California (56.7 in 1913) and Tirat Zvi in Israel (53.9 in 1942) are thought to have been hotter.

Temperatures in the nearest town, Larkana, have been only slightly lower in the last week, with 53C recorded last Wednesday. As the temperatures peaked, four people died, including a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder and an elderly woman. Dozens are said to have fainted.

The extreme heat was exacerbated by chronic power cuts which have prevented people from using air-conditioning. The electricity has cut out for eight hours each day as part of a severe load-shedding regime that has caused riots in other parts of Pakistan where cities are experiencing a severe heatwave with temperatures of between 43C and 47C.

"It's very tough," said M B Kalhoro, a local correspondent for Dawn.com, an online newspaper. "When the power is out, people just stay indoors all the time."

The blistering heat now engulfing Pakistan stretches to India where more than 1,000 people have reportedly died of heatstroke or heart attacks in the last two months. Although Europe and China have experienced cooler than average winters, record or well-above average temperatures have been recorded in Tibet and Burma this year.

Southern Europe was yesterday rapidly warming after a particularly cool winter. Thirteen provinces in southern Spain, including Andalucia, Murcia and the Canary islands, were put on "yellow alert" after meteorologists forecast temperatures rising to 38C (99F) in Cadiz, Córdoba, Jaén, Malaga and Seville.

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), the national climate monitoring service that measures global temperatures by satellite, 2010 is shaping up to be one of the hottest years on record. The first four months were the hottest ever measured, with record spring temperatures in northern Africa, south Asia and Canada.

The global temperature for March was a record 13.5C (56.3F) and average ocean temperatures were also the hottest for any March since record-keeping began in 1880.

As a result of high sea surface temperatures, the Atlantic hurricane season, which officially started today is now expected to be one of the most intense in years. Last week NOAA predicted 14 to 23 named storms, including eight to 14 hurricanes, three to seven of which were likely to be "major" storms, with winds of at least 111mph. This is compared to an average six-month season of 11 named storms, six of which become hurricanes, two of them major.

 

On Sunday, scientists reported that Africa's Lake Tanganyika, the second deepest freshwater lake in the world, is now at its warmest in 1,500 years, threatening the fishing industry on which several million lives depend. The lake's surface waters, at 26C (78.8F), have reached temperatures that are "unprecedented since AD500," they reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Some scientists have suggested that the warming experienced around the world this year is strongly linked to warmer than usual currents in the Pacific Ocean, a regular phenomenon known as El Niño. Others say that it is consistent with long-term climate change.