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“The family is considering the Muslim burial traditions because they believe Michael would have wanted to be laid to rest in keeping with his new-found religious beliefs,” aceshowbiz.com quoted a source as saying.

“Michael’s brother Jermaine is educating the family as to the special rites because he feels it’s important to bury his brother according to the Muslim way,” added the source.

Despite earlier reports that both public and private memorial services for the late music performer have been set to be held this week, there has been no official confirmation yet from Jackson’s family on the location where his body will be laid to rest.
 
Jackson reportedly converted to Islam in late 2008, years after expressing his interest to join the faith. He later on changed his name into ‘Mikaeel’, which was meant as a reference to the name of one of Allah’s angels.

From the Global news streaming from LA, here is a technological update in the aeronautic industry:

The interplanetary space probe Ulysses officially ceased operations on Tuesday after an 18-year voyage of roughly 5.5 billion miles (8.85 billion km) and nearly three complete orbits around the sun, NASA said.

Radio contact with the Volkswagen-sized spacecraft was halted by ground controllers shortly after 1 p.m. PDT/4:00 p.m. EDT, but NASA project manager Ed Massey said Ulysses will continue its wide, elliptical orbit around Earth’s local star indefinitely.

He said there was a chance the probe might eventually swing close enough to one of Jupiter’s moons to alter its course and place it on a path that will take it out of solar system and into interstellar space. The spacecraft was about 437 million miles (705 million km) from the sun at the time that its transmitter was switched off, Massey said.

Ulysses, a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency, was launched from the U.S. space shuttle Discovery in October 1990 and became the first probe to fly around the sun’s poles. As of mid-June, it had logged 5.4 billion miles and nearly three complete solar orbits.

Named for the hero of “The Odyssey,” Ulysses was designed to help scientists study solar radiation and was originally expected to last for just five years.

By staying active for the better part of two 11-year solar cycles, Ulysses collected a wealth of information that formed the basis of over 1,000 scientific articles and two books.

Among its discoveries was a finding that the solar wind, a steady stream of charged sub-atomic particles blown out from the sun at about 1 million mph (1.6 million kph), has dwindled to its lowest level in at least 50 years.

The solar wind inflates a massive protective bubble, called the heliosphere, around the solar system. As the solar wind weakens, the heliosphere is expected to contract in size and strength as well, allowing more cosmic radiation — super high-energy electrons and protons zipping through interstellar space — to reach the inner solar system.

The Earth remains shielded from these potentially harmful cosmic rays by virtue of a magnetic field that surrounds our planet. But the diminished solar wind and corresponding rise in cosmic rays are a concern for astronauts and spacecraft that venture beyond Earth’s orbit.

The biggest implications of those fluctuations, and other observations made by Ulysses, are scientific ones.

“The data acquired during the long lifetime of this mission have provided an unprecedented view of the solar activity cycle and its consequences and will … keep scientists busy for many years to come,” Ed Smith, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

How about we enlighten our zoological senses, by learning something fascinating about humming birds?
Ever seen these beautiful tiny hovering birds? They are simply amazing.
These tiny birds weigh no more than 3-4 grams, and they can amazingly fly at speeds above 35mph.
These birds normally thrive on the nectar from flowers and they are a great contributors for pollination (meaning: they help plants multiply), I got extremely attracted to these cute birds and did my research on them, which is also the reason for this post.
I would tell this for sure, the more you get to know about these beautiful birds the more you get interested in them. As a matter of fact I got convinced to buy hummingbird feeders for my yard, to admire this awesome creation of nature.

A Yemen Airways passenger plane with 150 people on board crashed in the Indian Ocean island of Comoros early on Tuesday, at least 10 people were killed and 50 injured after a freight train derailed and two railway cars filled with liquid gas exploded at a station in the Tuscan port city of Viareggio in Italy.

Yemen Airways crash
“The plane crashed in the sea 15 minutes ahead of the scheduled time of arrival in Moroni,” the official told DPA.

“We have no information whether there are any survivors,” he said. The 150 people on board Yemen Airways flight IY 628 included passengers and crew.

The Airbus 310 plane was flying from Yemen capital Sana’a to Comoros. A company official said that most of the passengers were expatriates from Comoros who were in transit from Paris.

Comoros is located off the eastern coast of Africa between Madagascar and Mozambique.

Something to get your attention, this is a news extract about a child who started smoking at a very young stage.

Tong Liangliang, an ordinary 2.5 years old child who lives in China. Liang Liang smokes a pack of cigarettes daily.

As it turned out, his parents gave him the first cigarette at age 1.5 to relieve pain.

Tong was born with hernia and it was dangerous to operate it his its infancy.

The boy suffered from severe pain and to distract him from the anguish, the father gave him a smoke.

Over time, Tong got addicted to smoking. Now the parents can’t get him to stop smoking.

Tong goes through the same withdrawal symptoms as an adult. Every time he sees someone smoking, he asks for a cigarette and becomes agitated and angry if refused.

There have been no reports of any doctor caring for Liang Liang.

“The father wasn’t aware how serious the toddler’s habit had become until the child began to increase the number of cigarettes he smoked per day,” a Chinese news agency was quoted as saying.

Record unlikely

However, The Guinness World Records may not accept the feat.

It has refused such requests before on the grounds that it “promoted a harmful habit”.

In 2005, a 37-year-old Chinese man submitted an application to the Guinness Book of records, claiming he had started smoking at the age of three and was the world’s youngest smoker. His application was denied on the grounds that it promoted a harmful habit.