The list, selected by the magazine editors, includes seven courses in the United States and one course each in Scotland, British Columbia, and Dominican Republic. The list is not endorsed by Reuters:

1. The Castle Course, St. Andrews, Scotland (Architect David McLay Kidd) Scotsman David McLay Kidd won the coveted design commission to build a seventh course at St. Andrews and transformed every inch of a derelict 220-acre potato farm on the outskirts of town into the Castle Course. Tumbling, hazard-studded fairways make every tee shot an adventure.

2. The Chase At PGA Golf Club Coyote Springs, Coyote Springs, Nevada (Architect Jack Nicklaus) Situated 50 miles north of Las Vegas, the Chase at Coyote Springs supplies lakes, waterfalls and artful desert buffer zones. Nicklaus tosses in the unexpected with tattered-edge bunkers and intricate contours in and around the greens.

3. Ritz-Carlton Golf Club At Creighton Farms, Aldie, Virginia (Architect Jack Nicklaus) The property is in on terrain laced with wetlands, creeks and ponds. Developers gave Nicklaus several hundred acres of this horse country to transform but his crew left much of it in a natural state. Where the ground was high and dry, he built bunkers, false fronts and lots of undulations.

4. The Club At Tower Ranch, Kelowna, British Columbia (Architect Thomas McBroom) In interior British Columbia as many as 10 courses are opening over a three-year span. The Club at Tower Ranch has broad vistas and bulging hills overlooking Lake Okanagan and the city of Kelowna, a popular summer resort.

5. Tetherow Golf Club, Bend, Oregon (David McLay Kidd) This sporty layout, covering craggy high-desert terrain, merits lavish praise. Tall pines frame some of the holes, but much of the acreage was ravaged by wildfire 15 years ago, leaving open expanses that Kidd used to effect.

6. Sugarloaf Mountain Golf And Town Club, Minneola, Florida (Architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw) Sitting in the hilly outback of scrub oak, citrus groves and quiet country roads, the layout features elevation changes of 200 feet or more and enormous tumbling fairways. Tacking up and down pleasant inclines, the holes are beautifully oriented and paced.

7. The Legacy Course At Roco Ki, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic (Architect Nick Fald) This new Faldo course required a midstream re-routing because the tricky island terrain reacted unpredictably to some construction. But Faldo found corridors through upland mangrove.

8. Four Mile Ranch Golf Club, Canon City, Colorado (Architect Jim Engh) Fans of Engh’s work will note many of his trademark elements here, among them high-stakes green complexes and sharply angled doglegs. No traditional bunker can be seen, just noses, hollows and humps but the course is far from hazard-free.

9. Palouse Ridge Golf Club, Pullman, Washington (Architect John F. Harbottle III) This golf course has greens perched high and fairways that heave and tilt like turbulent seas. Wind turns Palouse Ridge into the evergreen state’s version of a blustery British links. Even on calm days, the course is still a handful.

10. Rock Creek Cattle Company, Deer Lodge, Montana (Architect Tom Doak) A prime selling point of this private prairie-links golf course and fishing club near Deer Lodge, Montana, is that the course works its way through evergreen-studded foothills and small natural bowls.

A morbidly obese Canadian inmate has been released months ahead of schedule because his prison was not adequately suited to hold a man of his girth, a parole board said Thursday.

Michel "Big Mike" Lapointe, 37, had pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in February and in May was sentenced to five years in prison, less 20 months served awaiting trial.

But a judge later reduced his sentence because of hardships the 430-pound (195-kilogram) man claimed to have endured in a prison designed for smaller criminals.

This week, the Quebec Parole Board granted him early parole, saying in its decision he had been jailed for 25 months under "difficult conditions due to his health."

The parole board also noted that two halfway houses — residences designed to help convicts transition from jail back into society — had refused to take him in, and that he was well-behaved during his incarceration.

Lapointe, a former accountant for a drug-trafficking ring, would not normally have been eligible for parole until February 2009, but according to his lawyer Clemente Monterosso, his health was deteriorating.

His jail cell bed was a foot (25 centimeters) narrower than his body and he could not even sit on a chair, Monterosso said in May.

"Finally it’s over," Lapointe told the daily Journal de Montreal on Wednesday. "I want a normal life. I made some mistakes and I paid for them."

"Now, I will finally have a decent bed and a chair I can sit on," he said.

This list is not endorsed by Reuters.

1. McDonald Observatory, United States

For a night-time even like no other, head 2,040 meters (6,700 ft) above sea level to the top of Mount Locke. The McDonald Observatory, at the Davis Mountains in Texas, enjoys some of the best dark skies in the continental United States, ensuring jaw dropping views of celestial splendor. It also holds regular star parties, allowing you to look through the kind of massive telescopes that make astronomers rub their hands with glee.

2. Stonehenge, Britain

Thought by some to be a giant, primitive observatory, Stonehenge suggests that going "wow" at the heavens’ twinkling bits is nothing new — they began building this monumental circle of standing stones around 5,000 years ago. It’s still a good place to stargaze today — out in Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire there aren’t many lights around interfering with nature’s display.

3. Abu Simbel, Egypt

Even in a country crammed full of awesome ancient sites, Abu Simbel, one of the most important ancient observatories in the world, inspires. Its four 20 meter (66 ft) statues of Ramses II and the monumental main hall were laid out to honor sun gods. The whole structure was moved, lock, stock and statuary during the construction of the Aswan High Dam, and rebuilt, still precisely aligned.

4. Caribbean Islands

Where better to gaze at a bejeweled blanket of stars than the islands where the breeze is warm, the night air is fragrant with franipani and the rum is sweet. Find a romantic beachside, palm-fringed spot, lie back and star into the velvety darkness.

5. Pisac, Peru

For the Incas gazing at the heavens was about much more than horoscopes and romantic views. Instead, the firmament features a celestial roadway — the Milky Way. Priests possibly used this wide band of diffuse light as a route map for parallel terrestrial pilgrimages.

6. Caldera de Taburiente National Park, Canary Islands

Flung out into the sea off west Africa, the Canary Islands are the last chunk of land before a whole lot of ocean. La Palma is the island furthest west, and right at its tip is the Caldera de Taburiente National Park. It’s such a good spot for star gazing that it’s home to the Roque de los Muchachose Observatory, which has one of the most extensive fleet of telescopes in the world.

7. Sherbrooke, Canada

Once the global hub of ice-hockey-stick manufacturing, Sherbrooke, Quebec, didn’t, until recently, have many other claims to fame. Visitors tend to use this French-speaking city as a springboard for the pristine rivers, mountains and lakes of nearby Mont-Megantic National Park. But there is another reason to visit: both the park and the city have been designated the world’s first International Dark-Sky Reserve.

8. Slovenia

As Oscar Wilde put it: we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. In theory, you should be able to see a lot of stars in Slovenia — the country recently passed its first light-pollution law. The International Dark-Sky Association reckons the law will save Slovenia 10 million euros ($13.5 million) a year, and the planet a some hefty greenhouse gas emissions.

9. Hawai’i (the Big Island), Hawaii, United States

You may plan to explore the smoking, steaming landscape around Crater Rim Drive, crawl through the lava tubes at Kaumana Caves or simply snorkely and sunbathe on the perfect white beaches of Kauna’oa Bay. But it’d be a shame to leave the Big Island without at least one long look at the night sky — Hawai’i’s altitude and isolation give it a distinct astronomical advantage.

10. Sark, Britain

Get out of the cities to see more stars. Urban light pollution means you’ll usually only see 100 with the naked eye; in a dark-sky zone you can pick out 1,000. For a beautiful nightscape, head to Sark, in the Channel Islands. This high plateau of granite is nearly 5 km (3 miles) long, 2.5 km (1.6 miles) wide, has few houses and no cars or street lights. Cycling its pock-marked, unpaved lanes by moonlight is magical — but bring a flashlight.

credits: reuters.com

comment: i hope someday i could see these awesome places listed above.. and of course sky watching is very romantic with a special someone..so better bring one or two..ayt? 

The "Syunsoku" brand of sneakers has sold over 10 million pairs since being launched in 2003, with sales more than doubling every year.

Total sales almost equal the number of Sony PlayStation Portable units sold in Japan, suggesting that one in every two elementary school kids owns a pair, says manufacturer Achilles Corp.

"After I begun wearing them, I was picked to be a relay runner," says four-year-old Kohei, showing off his pair of red-lined silver Syunsokus, which mean "Nimble Feet" in English.

Kohei’s friend, Kei Yamashita, owns two pairs — one in green and the other in blue.

Behind the Syunsoku boom is cutting-edge technology specially developed to help children run at top speed without losing balance — especially around athletic tracks.

The shoes have asymmetrical soles with more rubber spikes on the right. The design gives runners better stability and grip against centripetal force when running anticlockwise around a track, according to Achilles.

Other features include elastic laces to help with knotting.

Tokyo-based Achilles says it sold 4.5 million pairs of the shoes in the business year ended in March, and sales this year seem even stronger.

"It’s mostly word-of-mouth that’s fueling the sales," says Yutaka Tsubata, a senior manager of Achilles’ product planning development.

"Our product concept was to help fast runners run faster, and to give dreams to those who cannot. It is every kids’ dream to be a hero on sports day."

The company plans to start making an adult line next year.

Toddler Kohei’s mother, Yukie Ota, says she was not convinced the sneakers actually made her son a faster runner.

"But they make him believe that he’s faster than ever… and I guess that’s good enough," she said.

The study, called INTERHEART, looked at 16,000 heart attack patients and controls between 1999 and 2003 in countries on every continent, marking a shift from previous studies which have focussed on the developed world.

The patients and controls filled in a "dietary risk score" questionnaire based on 19 food groups, which contained healthy and unhealthy items and were tweaked to include dietary preferences of each country taking part in the study.

The researchers found that people who eat a diet high in fried foods, salty snacks, eggs and meat — the "Western Diet" — had a 35 percent greater risk of having a heart attack than people who consumed little or no fried foods or meat, regardless of where they live.

People who ate a "Prudent Diet" — high in leafy green vegetables, other raw and cooked vegetables, and fruits — had a 30 percent lower risk of heart attack than those who ate little or no fruit and veg, the study showed.

The third dietary pattern, called the "Oriental Diet" because it contained foods such as tofu and soy sauce which are typically consumed in Asian societies, was found to have little impact on heart attack risk.

Although some items in the Oriental diet might have protective properties such as vitamins and anti-oxidants, others such as soy sauce have a high salt content which would negate the benefits, the study said.

The study was groundbreaking in its scope and because previous research had focussed mainly on developed countries, according to Salim Yusuf, a senior author of the study.

"We had focussed research on the West because heart disease was mainly predominant in western countries 25-30 years ago," Yusuf, who is a professor of medicine at McMaster University in Canada, told AFP.

"But heart disease is now increasingly striking people in developing countries. Eighty percent of heart disease today is in low- to middle-income countries" partly because more people around the world are eating western diets, he said.

"This study indicates that the same relationships that are observed in western countries exist in different regions of the world," said Yusuf, who is also head of the Population Health Research Institute at Hamilton Health Sciences in Ontario.

Patients who had been admitted to coronary care units in 262 centers around the world, and at least one control subject per patient, took part in the study.

The INTERHEART results were published Monday in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association.

The main countries in the study were Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia in South America; Canada and the United States in North America; Sweden in western Europe; Croatia, Poland and Russia for eastern Europe; and Dubai, Egypt, Iran, Kuwait and Qatar for the Middle East.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the main countries were Cameroon, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe; while nearly all the South Asian countries — India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka — took part, as did Southeast Asian countries including the Philippines and Singapore, Yusuf told AFP.

But Britain, which once ranked in the top five, has slipped to 44th place behind El Salvador and Peru, after a 50 billion pound ($86.5 billion) pledge this week by the government to bolster bank balance sheets.

The United States, where some of Wall Street’s biggest financial names have collapsed in recent weeks, rated only 40, just behind Germany at 39, and smaller states such as Barbados, Estonia and even Namibia, in southern Africa.

The United States was on Thursday considering buying a slice of debt-laden banks to inject trust back into lending between financial institutions now too wary of one another to lend.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report based its findings on opinions of executives, and handed banks a score between 1.0 (insolvent and possibly requiring a government bailout) and 7.0 (healthy, with sound balance sheets).

Canadian banks received 6.8, just ahead of Sweden (6.7), Luxembourg (6.7), Australia (6.7) and Denmark (6.7).

UK banks collectively scored 6.0, narrowly behind the United States, Germany and Botswana, all with 6.1. France, in 19th place, scored 6.5 for soundness, while Switzerland’s banking system scored the same in 16th place, as did Singapore (13th).

The ranking index was released as central banks in Europe, the United States, China, Canada, Sweden and Switzerland slashed interest rates in a bid to end to panic selling on markets and restore trust in the shaken banking system.

The Netherlands (6.7), Belgium (6.6), New Zealand (6.6), Malta (6.6) rounded out the WEF’s banking top 10 with Ireland, whose government unilaterally pledged last week to guarantee personal and corporate deposits at its six major banks.

Also scoring well were Chile (6.5, 18th) and Spain, South Africa, Norway, Hong Kong and Finland all ending up in the top 20.

At the bottom of the list was Algeria in 134th place, with its banks scoring 3.9 to be just below Libya (4.0), Lesotho (4.1), the Kyrgyz Republic (4.1) and both Argentina and East Timor (4.2).

Rankings

1. Canada

2. Sweden

3. Luxembourg

4. Australia

5. Denmark

6. Netherlands

7. Belgium

8. New Zealand

9. Ireland

10. Malta

11. Hong Kong

12. Finland

13. Singapore

14. Norway

15. South Africa

16. Switzerland

17. Namibia

18. Chile

19. France

20. Spain

The Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park in Palawan province has topped the latest ranking of the nominees vying to become the New7Wonders of  Nature.

As of September 29, the Puerto Princesa treasure climbed to the top spot from 5th place, according to the New7Wonders of Nature Campaign site. 

It dislodged Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, Beach, which slipped to No. 3. 

Aside from the Subterranean River National Park, three of Philipine nominees were also included on the top 11 list.   

These were Bohol’s Chocolate Hills (4th place, up from 11th), Tubbataha Reef off Sulu Sea (5th place, up from 19th), and Legazpi City’s Mayon Volcano (11th place, down from 10th). 

The Department of Tourism urged all Filipinos to continue voting online for the Philippine wonders to ensure that one of the country’s nominees would proceed to the next level in 2009.  

By Jan. 1, 2009, only one national nominee per country, the highest ranked in the voting on Dec. 31, 2008.  will be allowed to proceed, according to New7Wonders Web site. 

"Therefore until the end of 2008, countries with more than one national nominee will be racing to choose the national representative that is allowed to continue into 2009. Nominees shared by more than one country will remain and continue into 2009," the Web site said. 

Online voting for nominees will continue up until July 7, 2009. The New7Wonders of Nature panel of experts will then review the top 77 nominees. 

Among the 77, only 21 nominees will be chosen as finalists. The list finalists will be disclosed on July 21, 2009. The 21 finalists will then be put to popular vote, the Web site added. 

Who loves to eat CHICKEN?       

                Ever since I was a child my favorite food of all time is chicken, I just love it and when it is cooked in different style whether in a special occasion or ordinary event truly chicken dominates the dining table. Apart from the good taste attributes of chicken it also a nutritious food which is high in protein, phosphorus and niacin, and also a good source of iron. The breast is the section with the lowest fat content, in these cholesterol and diet conscious times, it is best to trim chicken of its skin and as much fat as possible. So much for that info, here’s a Chicken recipe that would make you crave for more!!  Bon a petite.