Newsblog

I'm trying to add a 'newsblog' element to this blog, like the one The Guardian has. We'll see how long I can keep this up.

An earthquake in South Asia has caused severe damage in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. Racking up a 7.6 on the Richter scale, the death toll has reached 18,000 people so far.

A complete ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants is set to take place in England. Currently, smoking is only banned in places where food is served. Some pubs have stopped serving food altogether to get around this law. Read more about it here.

For slightly less recent news, try this: Two Aussie dudes have been awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for their work in 'peptic ulcer disease'. Basically, people used to think that stomach ulcer problems were caused by stress which in turn led to an over-excretion of stomach acids. Well, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall discovered that a certain species of bacteria was in fact the actual cause of the problem. It's quite interesting because I suffer from gastric problems sometimes and worry about getting ulcers later on in life. But now after I've heard about this, I'm a little more relieved.