ROME: It may have taken God a week to create the world, but it will take nearly as long to read the Bible from beginning to end in what is being described as the longest live television broadcast in Italian history.

On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI will read the opening verses of the Book of Genesis. The nonstop Bible recital will end 139 hours later when Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, tackles the final verses from the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation.

In between, about 1,250 readers from many walks of life and religious faiths will take turns until every word in the 73 books that make up the Roman Catholic Bible has been uttered (mostly in Italian but also with some ancient Greek and Hebrew). The first and the last hour of the Bible-a-thon will be broadcast live on the main channel of RAI, the state broadcaster; the rest will be shown on RAI's satellite education channel.

"Please don't call it a marathon - it's more of a nonstop relay," said Giuseppe De Carli, the chief of the RAI division that covers the Vatican and the organizer of the event, which will be held during six days at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome. "It's not a race, after all, but a reflection on God's way."

PARIS: On ZDF Dokukanal, a public television channel in Germany, the evening entertainment last Tuesday began with "Illusion of Freedom: How Neurology Is Turning Our Worldview Upside Down." That was followed by a documentary on child poverty.

The channel is no ratings-grabber. So ZDF, one of two main publicly financed television companies in Germany, wants to revamp Dokukanal, a digital channel that was started eight years ago. It intends to replace documentaries and other factual fare with "family entertainment," including soap operas, to attract a broader audience.

"This is the only way for us, in a digital world, to fulfill our communications mission and reach younger people again with our public service content," said Markus Schächter, director general of ZDF, in a statement on the broadcaster's plans.

Commercial rivals of ZDF are crying foul, saying they already provide plenty of options for viewers seeking lighter entertainment. Last Tuesday one of them, RTL, offered reruns of the U.S. drama "CSI: Miami."

A Frenchman inspired by the film ET has set off on an attempt to become the first person to cross the English Channel in a pedal-powered airship.

Stephane Rousson, 39, from Nice, took off from the coast of Hythe in Kent just before 8am and hopes to reach Wissant about five hours' later while suspended from the miniature Zeppelin.

He is being shadowed by two boats during the 28-mile journey across one of the world's busiest shipping lanes in case he and his contraption plunge into the sea.

A spokeswoman for him, who is on board one of the boats, said: "To have set off is a victory in itself. He had to wait for just the right weather conditions but they came at the right time.

"It's all going right. He is hovering about ten metres from the water and is making a really good go of it."

MI6 is using the social networking site Facebook to recruit the next generation of spies. The Secret Intelligence Service, which has traditionally scoured the country's elite universities for recruits, launched a series of online adverts this month as part of its attempts to attract people from a variety of backgrounds.

"A number of public channels are used to promote job opportunities in the organisation and Facebook is a recent example of this," said a Foreign Office spokeswoman. MI6 runs agents in foreign countries and says it wants its officers to "reflect the society" they serve.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2008) -- Eight-year-old children have a radically different learning strategy from twelve-year-olds and adults. Eight-year-olds learn primarily from positive feedback ('Well done!'), whereas negative feedback ('Got it wrong this time') scarcely causes any alarm bells to ring.  Twelve-year-olds are better able to process negative feedback, and use it to learn from their mistakes.  Adults do the same, but more efficiently.

he switch in learning strategy has been demonstrated in behavioural research, which shows that eight-year-olds respond disproportionately inaccurately to negative feedback. But the switch can also be seen in the brain, as developmental psychologist Dr Eveline Crone and her colleagues from the Leiden Brain and Cognition Lab discovered using fMRI research.  The difference can be observed particularly in the areas of the brain responsible for cognitive control. These areas are located in the cerebral cortex.

Opposite case

In children of eight and nine, these areas of the brain react strongly to positive feedback and scarcely respond at all to negative feedback.  But in children of 12 and 13, and also in adults, the opposite is the case.  Their 'control centres' in the brain are more strongly activated by negative feedback and much less by positive feedback.

An old news:
http://nightwatch.afcea.org/NightWatch_20080925.htm

Georgia-Abkhazia:  A car bomb exploded this morning near the Abkhazian Interior Ministry and secret service office buildings in Sukhumi, the Abkhazian capital, Interfax reported. The buildings were damaged but no casualties were reported. Abkhaz secret service chief Yury Ashuba was quoted as blaming the attack on Georgia's secret services.