Protecting yourself while riding is the first and most important thing, whether you think it’s too hot out, or gear costs too much, or you just don’t feel like it. No excuses are enough not to wear the required things said by ‘Jeff Cobb’ when you ride, see details as described below:

Helmet
A helmet (and optional ear plugs) protects you from hearing loss, or being pelted by debris, insects, rain, hail, and it could one day save your life.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates helmets improve your odds by 37 percent. That is, for every 100 riders killed not wearing one, 37 riders could have lived had they all been wearing helmets.

There are several standards – U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), Snell, and some European standards. While the Snell Foundation says its standard is superior, this is open to debate.

Based on several studies, we recommend at least the federally mandated DOT standard. Identified by a label on the back of the helmet, the DOT standard means the manufacturer says it will pass specific tests for impact protection, penetration, staying on your head, and more.

There are “half helmets,” partial coverage, and full face. A full face provides the most protection.

Jacket and pants
Well-designed rider clothing keeps you protected from windburn, sunburn, exhaust burns, and is a comfortable first line of defense.

Some riders wear a motorcycle jacket, but complete the outfit with street pants. Fact is, your legs are very vulnerable so why not protect them just as well?

In a crash, cotton dungarees tear through in less than one second. Shorts, khakis or sweat pants offer negligible safety value. Fashion leather may shred as instantly as cloth. If you choose leather, make sure it’s suitable for motorcycle use.

According to Dana Grindle, owner of Bates Custom Leathers in Signal Hill, Calif., while certain textiles can do a good job, especially when combined with built-in armor, high-tensile cowhide still offers the most abrasion resistance and tear-through strength.

For the heat of summer, manufacturers offer perforated leather or abrasion-resistant mesh. There are also several brands of textile jeans, if you absolutely don’t want the fully kitted look.

Whatever you wear, make sure it’s protective, said Rae Tyson, an experienced rider and NHTSA spokesman.

“Some of the worst crashes I’ve seen have been with people who fell off the motorcycle who were wearing short sleeves, or shorts, or a tank top, etc., and it’s not a pretty sight,” Tyson said, “Last time I checked your body was never designed for that.”

And Grindle concurred, adding motorcycle clothing can cost significant money, but if you crash once, you will not question whether it was worth it.

“Do you know what 20 mph does to your skin,” Grindle asked, “Oh my God, it can take it to the bone.”

This may sound dramatic, but she’s not kidding.

The skin covering your joints – knuckles, elbows, hips, knees, ankles, and shoulders – is especially easy to damage, and a crash can remove it, and even flesh, and healing can take a year or longer.

Built-in armor, or strapped-on armor under your clothing at these points is highly recommended!

Some gear comes with European-standard armor, rated “CE” level I (good), or level 2 (best).

Motorcycle clothing sold in the U.S. is not required to meet any certification, however. So be wary, but understand some premium American manufacturers have crash tested their armor and found it as good as or better than otherwise certified armor.

Boots and gloves
The hands and feet are intricate mechanisms made of many delicate bones. They can be crushed or broken far too easily. Boots should be heavy-duty leather with hard armor around the ankle, and ideally padding too. Leather gloves with long gauntlets should likewise have impact protection on the knuckles and palms, and even wrists.

Jeff Cobb

A plane crash kills all 9 people aboard over Hudson River on Saturday, August 8 when a small plane collided with a sightseeing helicopter from the ‘Liberty Helicopter Tours’ carrying Italian tourists.

Another helicopter pilot on the ground at the heliport for Liberty Tours, which operated the doomed sightseeing craft, saw the plane approaching the helicopter and tried to radio an alert to the pilots, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. The warning wasn’t heard or didn’t happen in time.

The collision, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg said was “not survivable,” happened just after noon and was seen by thousands of people enjoying a crystal-clear summer day from the New York and New Jersey sides of the river.

“First I saw a piece of something flying through the air. Then I saw the helicopter going down into the water,” said Kelly Owen, a Florida tourist at a Manhattan park. “I thought it was my imagination.”

The two aircraft went down just south of the stretch of river where a US Airways jet landed safely seven months ago. But this time, there was no miracle.

“This is not going to have a happy ending,” Bloomberg said. Hours after the collision, he said he thought it fair to say “this has changed from a rescue to a recovery mission.”

The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating the cause of the collision.

Two bodies were recovered in the water, one floating free and one in the wreckage, and other bodies were spotted in the debris in the river, the mayor said. The crash victims included five Italian tourists and a pilot on the helicopter and the three people on the plane, including a child, Bloomberg said.

Witnesses described seeing a low-flying plane smashing into the helicopter, and then wreckage scattering. One of the plane’s wings was severed by the impact.

Buzz Nahas was walking along the Hoboken, N.J., waterfront when he heard the impact, then looked up to see the plane without one of its wings “fluttering” into the water.

“There was a loud pop, almost like a car backfire,” he said. “The helicopter dropped like a rock.”

The plane, headed for Ocean City, N.J., left Teterboro Airport in New Jersey at 11:54 a.m., the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a statement. It had landed at the airport 25 minutes earlier with the pilot aboard to pick up two passengers.

The plane had started its journey in Pennsylvania, an official familiar with the plane’s flight path told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Source: Yahoo

An outbreak of deadly swine flu in Mexico and the United States has raised the specter of a new virus against which much of humanity would have little or no immunity. The outbreak of the new multi-strain swine flu virus transmitted from human to human that has killed more than 160 people in Mexico is a “serious situation” with a “pandemic potential”, the head of the World Health Organization said.

US medical authorities expressed strong concern Friday about an unprecedented multi-strain swine flu outbreak that has killed at least 60 people in Mexico and infected seven people in the United States. “It’s very obvious that we are very concerned. We’ve stood up emergency operation centers,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokesman Dave Daigle told AFP.

Swine influenza, also mknown as Swine Flu, or Pig Flu, refers to influenza caused by any strain of the influenza virus endemic in pigs (swine). Strains endemic in swine are called swine influenza virus.

The 2009 flu outbreak in humans that is widely known as “swine flu” apparently is not solely due to a swine influenza virus. It is due to a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 that derives from one strain of human influenza virus, one strain of avian influenza virus, and two separate strains of swine influenza virus. The origins of this new strain are unknown, and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) reports that this strain has not been isolated in swine. It passes with apparent ease from human to human, an ability attributed to an as-yet unidentified mutation. The strain in most cases causes only mild symptoms and the infected person makes a full recovery without requiring medical attention and without the use of antiviral medicines.

The World Health Organization went on high alert, dispatching top experts to the United States and Mexico amid concern that the new virus could become a global epidemic.

“It’s a virus that mutated from pigs and transmitted to some humans,” Cordova said earlier.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said tests show some of the Mexican victims died from the same new strain of swine flu that affected eight people in Texas and California, who later recovered.

“It’s very obvious that we are very concerned. We’ve set up emergency operation centers,” CDC spokesman Dave Daigle told AFP.

The WHO said Canadian laboratory testing had confirmed 18 cases of swine fever among almost 1,000 Mexicans found to have an influenza-like illness in three regions — of whom 62 died.

“Because there are human cases associated with an animal influenza virus, and because of the geographical spread of multiple community outbreaks, plus the somewhat unusual age groups affected, these events are of high concern,” the Swiss-based body said in a statement.

“The majority of (the Mexican) cases have occurred in otherwise healthy young adults. Influenza normally affects the very young and the very old, but these age groups have not been heavily affected in Mexico,” the WHO said.

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival.

Check out the things that you can do with it:

FIRST: Emergency
The Emergency Number worldwide for  Mobile   is “112″. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial “112″ and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.

SECOND: Unlock your car
Have you locked your keys in the car? Does your car have remote key less entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their mobile phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. It Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other ‘remote’ for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

Editor’s Note: It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a mobile phone!’

THIRD: Hidden Battery Power
Imagine your mobile battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370#. Your mobile will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your mobile next time.

FOURTH: Disable your mobile set
How to disable a mobile phone? To check your Mobile phone’s serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: “* # 0 6 # “. A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won’t get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can’t use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.

Well, the name says all about it. Vikram Jaisingh (Farhan) comes down to Bollywood town Mumbai from Delhi to become a star. At his fellow struggler friend’s house he meets Sona (Konkona) for the first time. Sona too has dreams in her eyes of becoming a lead actress in an A grade film. For the past three years till then she has been living with this hope in her eyes. Taking advantage of her is Chaudhary (Aly Khan) a small time producer who has been assuring her of that one big break and in return of which he is sexually exploiting her and assigning her B grade projects.

That’s the plot of the movie. Giving a lucky start to 2009 is the film ‘Luck By chance’ which opens up at the box office on the 30th of January, 2009. The film marks the directorial debut of Zoya Akhtar.

The plot of the film deals in and around Bollywood and how people from different walks of life come to the dream city to make it big in an industry where luck clicks more than hard work.

Starring: Farhan Akhtar, Konkona Sen Sharma, Rishi Kapoor, Dimple Kapadia, Juhi Chawla, Sanjay Kapoor, Isha Sharwani, Hrithik Roshan, Saurabh Shukla, Aly Khan.

Director: Zoya Akhtar.

Music: Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Norani, Loy Mendonca.

Lucy Hill is an ambitious, up and coming executive living in Miami. She loves her shoes, she loves her cars and she loves climbing the corporate ladder. When she is offered a temporary assignment–in the middle of nowhere–to restructure a manufacturing plant, she jumps at the opportunity, knowing that a big promotion is close at hand. What begins as a straight forward job assignment becomes a life changing experience as Lucy discovers greater meaning in her life and most unexpectedly, the man of her dreams.

That’s the Synopsis of the newly released movie in Hollywood New I Town. The movie was released on 30th January, 2009.

Looking like something that might have been made 50 years ago, there is nothing even remotely “new” about New in Town. Lucy (Renee Zellweger) is a big-city Miami career woman sent by her company to check out a small town Minnesota plant and devise a plan to downsize it. Almost immediately she locks heads with the local Union rep, Ted (Harry Connick Jr, ) and further alienates the folksy employees who “all tawk like theeese doncha know” by instituting firings and a new streamlined work ethic. Things get dicey when initial conflict turns into romance (surprise!) between Ted and Lucy, and her bosses inform her she must shut down the entire plant, putting everyone out of work.

People from accross the world celebrate the 14th February as a ‘Valentine day’, though the celebration continues between the loved ones throughout the month. Young stars waits mostly for this day with deep love and enjoy and express their feelings to one whom they love.

This day involves mutual exchange of Valentines. Loved ones celebrate by presenting flowers, gifts , offering candies ,sending e cards , sending love messages and much more all in the name of St. Valentine, the patron saint of lovers.

There are varying opinions as to the origin of Valentine’s Day. Some experts state that it originated from St. Valentine, a Roman who was martyred for refusing to give up Christianity. He died on February 14, 269 A.D., the same day that had been devoted to love lotteries. Legend also says that St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it “From Your Valentine”. Other aspects of the story say that Saint Valentine served as a priest at the temple during the reign of Emperor Claudius. Claudius then had Valentine jailed for defying him. In 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius set aside February 14 to honour St. Valentine.

Valentine’s Day was started in the time of the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, February 14th was a holiday to honour Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia.