Five stranded snorkellers rescued from tiny island off Australia after their huge SOS message was spotted by helicopter.

(Adam Withnall / Wednesday 23 April 2014)

Five snorkellers stranded on a tiny island off
the east coast of Australia have been rescued after
scrawling a giant SOS message into a nearby
sandbank.

[05] The group had been stuck out at sea for more
than nine hours after their boat’s anchor failed and
it drifted away.

They had been swimming around a remote
sandbar near Wigton Island, Queensland, when the
[10] vessel started shifting - with their mobile phones,
clothes, water and sunscreen all still on board – and
it had moved beyond reach before they had time to
react.

Speaking to the Courier-Mail about the ordeal
[15] yesterday, Lyn Forbes-Smith described how she, a
female friend and three male friends were facing
the prospect of a long, cold night surrounded by
ocean when they finally spotted an approaching
rescue helicopter.

[20] “We had sort of made plans about what we’d
do on the rock for the evening,” she said.

“We had reef walkers on thankfully, but we
had no food, water, cream, no hats, not much at all.
We just looked for the highest ground, we looked
for rocks where five of us could huddle together
[25] because we didn’t really want to separate, and we
wanted to be out of the wind as best as possible.”

Ms Forbes-Smith explained that they were
concerned the sandbar – and their message – would
[30] go under with the tide, but that they were
“reasonably confident” someone would come
looking when friends realised they had not
returned.

The group had set off from Keswick Island
[35] towards Wigton Island at around 8am for the
snorkelling trip, and it was around 5pm when they
first saw signs of help approaching.

Another member of the group, Craig Gilbert,
told ABC News of their joy at spotting an RACQ
[40] rescue helicopter.

“We saw the helicopter and we thought, 'Oh,
you beauty' - and then it disappeared and we
thought, 'Oh no - we better look out for our beds
for the night' - then it came back probably 20
minutes later,” he said.

Rescue helicopter crew member Damien
[45] Kross said the five were treated for sunburn and
dehydration, but were otherwise “fine”.

“They were a little bit dehydrated but we
winched them to safety and brought them back here
to Mackay on the mainland] for just to have a
[50] quick medical attention and they were all fine.”

Aspirin a day could dramatically cut cancer risk, says biggest study yet

An aspirin a day could dramatically cut people’s chances of getting and dying from common
cancers, according to the most detailed review yet of the cheap drug’s ability to stem disease.
More than 130,000 deaths would be avoided over a 20-year period if Britain’s 50- to 65-year-olds
took a daily aspirin for ten years, because the beneficial effects continue even when the aspirin is
[5] stopped, the authors say.
A research team led by Professor Jack Cuzick, head of the centre for cancer prevention at Queen
Mary University of London, concluded that people between 50 and 65 should consider regularly
taking the 75 mg low-dosage tablets. Cuzick said that taking aspirin “looks to be the most important
thing we can do to reduce cancer, after stopping smoking and reducing obesity, and will probably
[10] be much easier to implement”.
In a briefing to journalists, the scientist added that he had been dosing himself for the last four
years, keeping the tablets beside his bed. “I take aspirin as part of a bedtime ritual every day”, he
said. However, to obtain the newfound benefits of the drug, people would have to take aspirin for
at least five years and probably ten, the review said.
[15] Aspirin was originally developed as a painkiller and treatment for fever and inflammation, but more
than a century after it was first synthesised from willow bark, researchers have found more medical
uses for it. It has been demonstrated to reduce the risks of heart attacks and strokes as well as the
chances of some cancers. But the big question has been whether the benefits outweigh the harms,
because aspirin can cause stomach bleeds, which could be potentially fatal in some people.
[20] “Aspirin is showing promise in preventing certain types of cancer, but it’s vital that we balance this
with the complications it can cause – such as bleeding, stomach ulcers, or even strokes in some
people”, said Dr. Julie Sharp, head of health information at Cancer Research UK. “Before aspirin can
be recommended for cancer prevention; some important questions need to be answered, including
what is the best dose and how long people should take it for. And tests need to be developed to
[25] predict who is likely to have side-effects”, she said.
As a generic drug – Bayer’s patent ran out in the 1930s – there are no profits to be made by
big pharmaceutical companies from the estimated 100 billion tablets taken around the world
every year.
theguardian.com

Horse or cow

Prior to taking retirement and selling off his land, a farmer needed to get rid of all the animals he owned, so he decided to call on every house in his village. At houses where the man was the boss, he gave a horse; at houses where the woman was the boss, he gave a dairy cow.

Approaching one cottage, he saw a couple gardening and called out, ‘Who’s the boss around here?’

‘I am,’ said the man.

The farmer said: ‘I have a black horse and a brown horse. Which one would you like?’

The man thought for a minute and said, ‘The black one.’

‘No, no, get the brown one,’ said his wife. The farmer said, ‘Here’s your cow.’

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Visitors to Hawali generally arrive at Honolulu International Airport. Many travel to the hotels and beaches of Waikiki. And there they often remain. But there is much more to Honolulu than beaches and boutique shops. The Hawalian capital is home to a lot of cultural attractions and beautiful scenery.

The birthplace of Barack Obama, Honolulu today mixes the relaxed pace of Pacific Island life with the excitement, commerce - and problems - of a modern American city. Home to almost one million people, the Hawaiian capital still has the feel of a town rather than a metropolis, however. It's expensive - because everything that arrives here is subject to excise taxes. The huge variety of restaurants represent the cultural mix of Honolulu, with many Japanese, Chinese, Thai and other Asian Cuisines. In fact, Native Hawalians and Pacific Islanders are very much minority here.

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DAD REFUSES TO GIVE UP BABY WITH DOWN SYNDROME

When he discovered his newborn son had Down syndrome, a New Zealand man living in Armenia was horrified not by the condition, but by the assumption that he wouldn't want to keep little Leo. When the boy was born, “the doctor came out, he said, ‘There’s a real problem with your son,’” Samuel Forrest tells ABC. “They took me in to see him and I looked at this guy and I said, ‘He’s beautiful – he's perfect and I’m absolutely keeping him,’” he says. But his Armenian wife told him she would leave him if he didn’t agree to put the boy up for adoption, and when he declined, she filed for divorce a week after the boy was born on Jan. 21.

“When a baby like this is born here, they will tell you that you dont have to keep them,” Forrest says. “My wife had already decided, so all of this was done behind my back.” [...] Forrest, a freelance business contractor, started a GoFundMe page for help taking Leo to live in New Zealand and has had an overwhelming response, TVNZ reports. With a $60,000 target, he has now raised more than $200,000 and plans to use the extra funds to support programs that help abandoned children in Armenia and families with disabled children.

The text explains a story about a father who decided to keep his son who had some special needs.

Read the following passage to answer question.

In order to get access to the inner working of the brain, researchers recruited 12 men and 4 women who were setto undergo surgery for malignant brain tumors. During neurosurgery, researchers attached electrodes to each participant's Broca's area — the part of the brain responsible for speech production -to monitor its activity during a series of tests. Participants were fully conscious during the tests and surgery was performed using local anesthesia.

In the first part of the test, participants read Italian words and phrases out loud while researchers measured both the sound waves of the speech and electrical signals in the brain. In the second partofthe test, participants silently read the same words and phrases thatthey had just spoken.
An interesting pattern emerged. When reading aloud, patients showed activity in Broca's area that corresponded to the sound frequencies of the words. And when reading silently, their brains also mimicked the sound frequencies of each phrase. Atan anatomical level, then, reading silently is the brain internally speaking to itself.