Brentwood International

According to the website Avanova.com, luxury ocean liners in Russia are offering pirate hunting cruises aboard armed private yachts off the Somali coast.  Wealthy punters pay US 5,000 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders.  When attacked, they retaliate with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers, reports Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt.   Passengers, who can pay an extra US 8 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and US 11 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops.

The yachts travel from Djibouti in Somalia to Mombasa in Kenya.   The ships deliberately cruise close to the coast at a speed of just five nautical miles in an attempt to attract the interest of pirates.  "They are worse than the pirates," said Russian yachtsman Vladimir Mironov. "At least the pirates have the decency to take hostages, these people are just paying to commit murder," he continued.

Michael Jackson, the sensationally gifted “King of Pop” who emerged from childhood superstardom to become the entertainment world’s most influential singer and dancer before his life and career deteriorated in a freakish series of scandals, died after being taken to a hospital on Thursday after suffering cardiac arrest.   He was 50.    His 1982 album “Thriller” — which included the blockbuster hits “Beat It,” “Billie Jean” and “Thriller” — remains the biggest-selling album of all time.    1983's “Thriller,” broke industry sales records and erased the divide that separated black music from the American mainstream. Its success enabled him to broker what were believed to be the highest royalty rates ever earned by a recording artist. "Triller" won eight Grammys, and is estimated to have sold more than 65 million copies world wide.

He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched voice punctuated with squeals and titters.

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Workplace Phrases You Probably Don't Know ... But Should Due to the nature of a lot of people's work, technical language and terminology is often necessary, but buzzwords can make you sound pretentious. On the other hand, if you are working on a team full of buzzword-addicted co-workers, you'll need to fit in.

Boil the ocean
Definition: The scope is too big to do in one project. Break it up into more than one. We often hear, "We're not trying to boil the ocean here. We just need to," when the client is trying to keep costs down and avoid an overly ambitious project scope.

Drink the Kool-Aid
Definition: To enthusiastically perform a task or follow a leader without knowing how this may affect you or to buy the "company line" without question. In business, you may hear someone say, "He drank the Kool-Aid," when  he means, "He has been thoroughly trained in the program and we have his unconditional support," or "He is on board with our strategy."

Use case
Definition: A particular circumstance or situation in which the solution would be used. For example, when designing a system, the engineer will refer to all the use cases that have been documented to determine if his solution would be effective in each situation.

Talking to the dog
Definition: Thinking it through by talking it through out loud. You'll often hear engineers and programmers say that they finally solved a problem by talking to the dog.

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Ever heard of the jaguarundi? Neither have we.   Perhaps that's because this unique type of cat that lives along the Texas border with Mexico is endangered. Perhaps it's because nobody really cares. We're guessing it's a bit of both, but that doesn't mean every animal shouldn't have some human in their corner pulling for them.     WildEarth Guardian, a non-profit environmental organization, recently waged war in the form of a lawsuit in Houston federal court against Ken Salazar, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, demanding that he put a conservation and survival plan together for the animal. After all, the organization argues, the cat has been listed as endangered since 1976, plenty of time to create such a plan as required under the Endangered Species Act.    Two types of the endangered species call south Texas their home, the Gulf Coast jaguarundi and the Sinaloan jaguarundi. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they are larger than a domestic cat and have small ears, long, narrow bodies with short legs and flattened heads and tails. They generally look more like an otter or a weasel than a cat.    WildEarth argues that humans are making it tough on the jaguarundi these days. Farmers are clearing away their habitat to make room for more vegetables and crops. Plus, says the organization, the border fence between the United States and Mexico is keeping the animal from crossing back and forth within its own natural environment, thus limiting their access to other jaguarundis to mate with.

Six years ago Chris Ebejer conceived a way to stop babies from overheating.   Now, proudly, he is delivering his fully-formed creation to the world.  The father of one has signed a £12.5million contract with a manufacturer to take his 'Babyglow' babygrows global.  The garments change colour with baby's temperature - meaning they can tell parents when their child is getting too hot and help prevent catastrophic illness.  Overheating can cause a baby's brain to shut down and is also an indication of illnesses such as meningitis.  Mr Ebejer, who had his idea while watching a documentary about babies, began the search for an ink pigment with heat-sensitive molecules.   He spent six years and £700,000 working with scientists to develop-the pigments to embed into cotton babygrows.

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Woman who missed Air France flight 447 died in car crash two weeks later

An Italian woman who arrived late for the Air France plane flight that crashed in the Atlantic last week has been killed in a car accident, it has been reported. Johanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from Bolzano-Bozen province, had been on holiday in Brazil with her husband Kurt and missed Air France Flight 447 after turning up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31.  All 228 people aboard lost their lives after the plane crashed into the Atlantic four hours into its flight to Paris.  The ANSA news agency reported that the couple had managed to pick up a flight from Rio the following day.  It said that Ms Ganthaler died when their car veered across a road in Kufstein, Austria, and swerved into an oncoming truck. Her husband was seriously injured.

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It was supposed to be a pleasant surprise, but turned into the shock of a lifetime.

A woman in Tel Aviv, Israel, gave her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise gift, throwing out the old tattered bed her mother had slept on for decades. The gesture ended up bankrupting Annat's mother, who had stuffed her savings of nearly $1 million inside her old bed for decades, Annat told Israel Army Radio.

A massive search is under way at the city dump, where security has been beefed up to keep out treasure-seekers who have heard Annat's story in Israeli media.

Annat, who did not want to reveal the rest of her name, told Israel Army Radio that she woke up early Sunday to get a good deal on a new mattress as a surprise for her mother.

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A new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112 will soon be officially included in the periodic table, German researchers said.

A team in the southwest German city of Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing charged zinc atoms through a 120-meter-long particle accelerator to hit a lead target.

"The new element is approximately 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element in the periodic table," the scientists at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The zinc and lead nuclei were fused to form the nucleus of the new element, also known as Ununbium, Latin for 112.

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Hi Everyone...we are Twitting now !!!

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users - known as followers - who have subscribed to them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications.

Our user is:  BrentwoodInt   Follow us!!!

Office Agents, a Tokyo-based company, rents out friends, work colleagues and even relatives to pad out the guest list.

For around $208 US, one of the company's agents will attend the wedding as a guest, while a heart-tugging speech will cost an extra 105US and a song or dance will set clients back a mere 52US dollars.

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