The popular microblogging service Twitter is exploring new business models.

The newest idea is special deals for Twitter users. The deals would be financed by companies that use the Twitter account @earlybird for advertising, reported Twitter on its website.

Deals will initially be almost exclusive to American markets. But, over time, it’s possible that the deals could be expanded to other regions or focus on broader categories, like music or fashion.

Twitter, which lets users send messages up to 140 characters long, has grown rapidly to more than 12 million users. But the Californian start-up has had a hard time earning money. Plans for an advertising campaign met with sharp resistance from Twitter users.

The solution for this special way of offering deals is designed to toe the line because it would only focus on users who subscribe to @earlybird. If the idea proves popular, Twitter could grow into a serious competitor for special deal services like Groupon.

A woman from a remote mountain village in Eastern Europe turned 130 yesterday, it is claimed making her the oldest person on earth.

Officials in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia say Antisa Khvichava was born on July 8, 1880.

She lives with her 40-year-old grandson in an idyllic vine-covered country house and retired from her job as a tea and corn picker in 1965, when she was 85.

Wearing a bright dress and headscarf for her birthday, Antisa said, “I’ve always been healthy, and I’ve worked all my life at home and at the farm.”

She never went to school to learn Georgian and speaks only the local language, Mingrelian.

Lost certificate

Antisa’s age still has not been independently verified. Her original birth certificate has been lost, but according to records, she retired as a tea and corn picker in 1965 at age 85.

Officials said they have other documents that back her age claim, and her family insists she is 130.

To mark her birthday, a string ensemble played folk music out on the lawn, while her grandchildren offered traditional Mingrelian dishes like corn porridge and spiced chicken with herbs to all guests at the party.
114
The age of Eugenie Blanchard of Saint Barthelemy, France, the oldest woman, according to the Gerontology Research Group

The state of Pennsylvania has introduced America’s first-ever wine vending machine as part of a supermarket trial.

Customers just have to swipe their driver’s licence, look into the camera and blow into a breathalyser attached to the machine to purchase bottles of wine.

If the machines prove successful inside two supermarkets, the state Liquor Control Board says it could place the high-tech gadgets in up to 100 more.

Strict licensing laws in Pennsylvania mean individuals can only buy wine and liquor for home consumption at state-owned stores staffed by public employees.

Several attempts to reform the laws have been blocked by special interest groups intent on maintaining profits from the alcohol trade.

The vending machines are being provided by Simple Brands, based in Pennsylvania, for free in exchange for being able to sell advertising on attached flat-screen monitors.

Customers choose their bottle of wine on a touch-screen display, swipe their ID, blow into an alcohol sensor and look into a surveillance camera.

The whole process takes around 20 seconds and a fee of $1 could be added after the trial period.

A state employee in Harrisburg remotely approves the sale after verifying the buyer matches the photo ID.

Pennsylvania liquor board chairman Patrick Stapleton said the kiosks gave ‘an added level of convenience in today’s busy society’.

Simple Brands president Jim Lesser said the vending machine was not aimed at wine connoisseurs.

“They were developed for the average consumer who wants a nice bottle of wine with their steak and seafood,” he added.

The giraffe’s long neck may have evolved to help the male compete for mates, suggests new research.

Nearly 15 million years ago the giraffes were antelope-like animals roaming the dry grasslands of Africa. They had no distinguishing characteristics, except that some their necks were a bit long.

But within 6 million years, they had evolved into animals that looked like modern giraffes, even as we know the modern species only emerged around 1 million years ago. Today’s giraffe, the tallest living land animal, stands between 4.5 and 5 metres tall with its neck making up nearly half that height.

It is largely believed that giraffes’ long necks evolved to help them eat leaves on tall trees that their rivals couldn’t reach.

But the evidence supporting the high-feeding theory is surprisingly weak.

The latest theory is that the long necks are the result of sexual selection – they evolved in males as a way of competing for females.

Male giraffes fight for females by “necking”. They stand side by side and swing the backs of their heads into each others” ribs and legs. Helping them are their unusually thick skulls and horn-like growths called ossicones on the tops of their heads.

A long and powerful neck would be an advantage in these duels, and it has emerged males with long necks tend to win, and also that females prefer them.

The “necks for sex” idea also answers why giraffes have extended their necks so much more than their legs. If giraffes” long necks evolved to reach higher branches, their legs should have been lengthened as fast as their necks, but they haven’t.

The only problem for the sex idea is that it implies that female giraffes shouldn’t have long necks, and they plainly do.

Research conducted last year by Graham Mitchell of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and colleagues apparently debunked the “necks for sex” theory. Mitchell’s team demonstrated that, in Zimbabwe at least, males and females had necks that were almost exactly the same length, and that if anything the females’ necks were longer.

However, Rob Simmons and Res Altwegg of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, have reviewed Mitchell’s results and are not convinced. According to them, the figures do show that males have proportionally longer necks, and that “Mitchell et al. appear to have misinterpreted this result”, reports The New Scientist.

They point to a study in Namibia which found that males consistently had heavier necks than females with the same body mass, and that only the males’ necks kept growing throughout their lives. Males’ heads were also heavier than females’, which is what you would expect if they were being selected for their ability to fight.

Simmons and Altwegg believe giraffes’ necks may have begun growing as a way of eating hard-to-reach food, but that they were then “hijacked” for mating purposes. Once the necks reached a certain length, males could use them for necking and clubbing – and at that point sexual selection took over, driving the necks to their current extreme lengths.

Simmons and Altwegg’s research appears in Journal of Zoology.

Osama bin Laden hiding in Pakistan: CIA chief

The top US spy chief believes Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan and Iran is working on a nuclear capability but is still at least a year from making a bomb.

Osama bin Laden remains in “very deep hiding” in the tribal areas of Pakistan near the Afghanistan border, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Leon Panetta told ABC News Sunday.

“He obviously has tremendous security around him,” he said of the Al Qaeda leader sought by the United States in connection with the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Panetta estimated that no more than 50 to 100 Al Qaeda terrorists were in Afghanistan, mainly in Kandahar.

With further efforts to disrupt Al Qaeda operations and kill Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, “we think ultimately we can flush out” bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group’s second-in-command, Panetta said.

However, he acknowledged it had been years since the US had any good intelligence on the precise location of bin Laden.

On Iran, Panetta said the Tehran government continues to develop the capability to build a nuclear weapon, but that debate exists within the country on whether to actually do so.

“We think they have enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons,” Panetta said. “They do have to enrich it, fully, in order to get there. And we would estimate that if they made that decision, it would probably take a year to get there, probably another year to develop the kind of weapon delivery system in order to make that viable.”

The war in Afghanistan had “serious problems,” but the US-led mission was making progress, Panetta said. “It’s harder, it’s slower than I think anyone anticipated.”

He cited governance problems, drug trafficking and the Taliban insurgency – all in a tribal society – as the major challenges to the goal of “making sure Al Qaeda never finds another safe haven from which to attack this country.”

“Winning in Afghanistan is having a country that is stable enough to ensure that there is no safe haven for Al Qaeda or for a militant Taliban that welcomes Al Qaeda,” Panetta said.

He downplayed the chances of a political reconciliation process succeeding in Afghanistan, saying the Taliban and its allies would only take part if they believed they faced certain defeat.