Saudi Arabia opened its first co-educational university on Wednesday, a high-tech campus with massive funds which reformers hope will spearhead change.

Western diplomats hope the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), which has attracted more than 70 professors and 800 students from abroad, will stimulate reform after recent setbacks such as shelving municipal elections and cancelling cultural events opposed by clerics. (more…)

This week in New York, at the UN climate talks airlines, airports and aircraft companies are presenting a plan to slash emissions by 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.
If the UN accepts the plan presented, it will be added to the Copenhagen agenda.

This would be significant because not only is the aviation industry responsible for two percent of yearly global emissions, but those emissions weren’t part of the Kyoto Protocol. (more…)

BANGKOK — For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.

The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results “instilled new hope” in the field of HIV vaccine research.

The vaccine — a combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines — cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 percent in the world’s largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok. (more…)

Anderson will debut her animal and eco friendly clothing line, A*Muse, during New Zealand Fashion Week, September 22-25.

The designs she collaborated with Richie Rich were originally set to debut at New York’s Fashion Week from September 10-17, but Pamela set her sights on New Zealand for its green reputation.

Rich, who designed the Heatherette label, explained in more detail. (more…)

This is for all the mafia movies ever made and the stories portraing “Sicilians” as bad people.
Violence is, unfortunately, a pretty common extracurricular activity at Italian football games.
So when you hear that a group of visiting Chievo (Verona) supporters were accosted by bad Catania (Sicily) apples and had the GPS stolen out of their car a couple weeks ago, it comes as no surprise.
But what you don’t hear often is that other supporters, the majority of whom are good, have taken to righting the wrongs of their reluctant brethren, as a group of Catania supporters did for the lads who’d met a few of the unfavorable Elefanti tifosi. (more…)