Fun flash: Carve a pumpkin without getting your hands messy (family friendly).

Biodegradable CDs will start selling at the end of this year

Biodegradable CDs will start selling at the end of this year:

Sanyo Electric has developed an optical disc based on a polymer derived from corn which, the company says, is as sturdy as current plastic discs but will biodegrade when disposed of.

The discs have been designed to tackle a problem common to many plastics upon disposal: If burned, toxic gases can be released into the atmosphere causing health and global warming concerns; but if buried, they don't break down, causing a potential problem for future generations. The MildDisc will degrade after a period of about 50 to 100 years and break down into water and carbon dioxide, Watson [a Tokyo-based spokesperson for Sanyo] said. This time span means users don't have to worry about losing information during the lifetime of the discs, he said

(from PC World, via Yahoo News).

Testing airport security as civil disobedience: 'A college student told federal authorities he placed box cutters and other banned items aboard two Southwest Airlines planes nearly five weeks before they were found, according to an FBI affidavit' (from Associated Press, via Yahoo News).

Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei tendered his resignation, just two days after being sworn in by Yasser Arafat and as another suicide bomber blew himself up in the West Bank (from AFP, via Yahoo News).

And the world is flat:

The lives of Roman Catholics in some of the countries worst hit by HIV/AIDS are being put at even greater risk by advice from their churches that the use of condoms does not prevent transmission of the disease, according to a British television program. If condoms cannot be absolutely guaranteed to block sperm, they stand even less chance of stopping the much smaller virus, the churches' argument runs.

The Archbishop of Nairobi, Raphael Ndingi Nzeki told the program: 'AIDS...has grown so fast because of the availability of condoms'

(from Reuters, via Yahoo News).

Bejing: Starving people in the tens of millions? Human rights granted to maybe six people? Let's go the moon! Coming up third in the Space Race:

China, on the verge of its first attempt at manned space flight, said on Monday it would launch a satellite to survey the moon within three years. Chinese space officials have hinted they are pursuing a multi-pronged human spaceflight program, including space station construction, as well as eventual travel to the Moon, all by 2020

(from Reuters).

Elena Slough, documented as the nation's oldest person, died Sunday at the nursing home where her daughter died three days before. She was 114 or 115, according to different sources (from Associated Press, via Yahoo News).

The Ig Nobel Prize in engineering went to the late Edward A. Murphy Jr. and two colleagues for jointly coining 'Murphy's Law,' which is commonly known as 'If anything can go wrong, it will' (from Associated Press, via Yahoo News).