However, toxic contamination is a world-wide problem and not limited to any one nation. Here are just a few of the worst man-made disasters.

Pcher Lead & Zinc Mine

Picher, Oklahoma, which EPA calls the most toxic place in the U.S.A. was once the world’s richest lead and zinc mining field, housing 20,000 people. Less than 25 people remain. Acidic water from the underground mining tunnels turned the creek that runs through the area red and poisonous. The deteriorating underground mines threaten to swallow the streets whole. Mountains of mining, lead contaminated waste, loom over the empty town.

Aral Sea Wasteland

Soviet irrigation projects from the Aral Sea, slowly drained the water out of this once great sea. Today, the sea is nearly dry and has separated into two much smaller seas. Fishing boats sit aground, rusting in a vast, contaminated desert wasteland.

China's e-waste

China’s biggest e-waste village, where electronic trash is dissembled by hand to extract wires and valuable parts. Circuit boards are burned, cooked and soaked in acid to extract scraps of precious metals. These methods, along with pollution from the e-waste itself, have made Guiyu the world’s second-most polluted place on the planet.

The Pacific Trash Vortex, consists of 3.5 million tons of trash — 90% of which is plastic debris — that is swirling between Hawaii and California. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas.

In May 2006, gas drilling on the Indonesian island of Java triggered a “mud volcano” killing 13 people. Ever since, hot sulfuric mud has continually gushed from the ground in Sidoarjo. The steaming pool of mud covers more than 25sq k and is growing at an estimated 50,000 cubic meters–the equivalent of a dozen Olympic swimming pools–every day. Scientists expect the mud volcano to continue erupting for another 30 years.

In November 1995, a flock of migrating snow geese landed on the Berkeley Pit Lake, a copper mine filled with more than 40 billion gallons of acidic water and heavy metals . After several days of stormy weather and fog that prevented the birds from leaving, 342 were found dead. The State of Montana determined that excessive exposure to Pit water had corroded the birds’ esophagi.

Mud Volcano Sidoarjo, Java; Plastic Rubbish Vortex In Pacific; Berkeley Pit Lake, Montana

On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Station exploded, releasing radioactive material into the air and contaminating millions of square miles. The 49,000-person town closest to the reactor, Pripyat, was forced to evacuate entirely. Two decades later, this ghost town is a radioactive freeze frame of the Soviet Union in 1986.

Bhopal, India, suffered one of the most tragic environmental disasters the world has ever seen. During the middle of the night in 1984, the Union Carbide plant which manufactured pesticides, leaked 32 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate. Thousands died and thousands more were deformed, blinded, and disabled. More than 2,000 bodies were cremated in one day. The soil and water near the factory are toxic from the still leaking plant. There has been no clean-up.

In the late 1970s, in an effort to clean up the radioactive debris left by the nuclear test explosions in the Marshall Islands, the U.S. government dug up 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil and deposited it on Runit Island into a 350-foot wide crater left by the nuclear tests. An enormous, foot-and-a-half-thick, 100,000-square-foot dome consisting of 358 gigantic concrete panels was built over the site. It cost the government nearly a quarter of a billion dollars and took three years to complete. The area is still radioactive.

Chernobyl Nuclea Station Marshall Islands Nuclear Waste Dump Union Carbide Plant, Bhopal, India

In the desert in Turkmenistan is a hole 328 ft. wide that has been on fire, continuously, for 38 years. In 1971, a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. Poisonous fumes began leaking from the hole. To head off a potential deadly catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole aflame.

Wittenoom, Pilbara in Australia, once the area’s biggest town in the asbestos mining area is now a toxic ghost town. In 1966 it was officially closed down due to health concerns from the effects of the asbestos mining at the nearby Wittenoom Gorge.

The massive coal fire underneath Centralia, Pennsylvania ignited sometime in 1962 and has been burning ever since. National awareness of Centralia’s unending environmental catastrophe came in 1981 when a 12-year-old boy fell into a 150-foot hole that suddenly appeared in his back yard. Most residents were relocated in 1984, and in 1992 the entire town was condemned.

Decades of strip mining for phosphorus have devastated over 80 % of Nauru’s land, leaving it a barren wasteland of jagged limestone pinnacles up to 49 ft. high. With its reserves depleted, the country’s economy collapsed and the devastation left by strip mining mostly eliminated the chance of establishing a tourist industry. Today Nauru has just a 150-meter-wide strip of fertile land left along one of its shores.

Poisonous Gase Fire In Turkmenistan; Wittennoom, Asbestos Mining Town Australia; Coal Fire under Dentralia, Pens; Barren land Naru Island

Finally we have the Mexico Gulf oil spill, that is as yet unmeasurable.

Using various gas properties, namely methane and hydrogen, under heat and Radio Frequency radiation, (microwave) and heating the chamber to 2000 Celesius, the gas molecules attach themselves to the carbon on the surface of the seed diamond, producing a large diamond which is 50% harder than natural diamonds.

Enormous pressure and heat has been used to produce man-made diamonds since the 1950’s. The first industrial diamond taking five years to produce, by GE. Now scientists have the ability to create Super Diamonds in a matter of days from a seed diamond, making the use of diamonds as a raw material to be used in technology, priceless.

Already mining and drilling have been revolutionized by the production of industrial diamonds, but modern technology is on the verge of being taken a step further, due to the fact that diamonds are the most efficient heat conductor there is, transferring heat 5 times quicker than metal.

Hope Diamond

Silicon chips are subject to heat and shut down if heated beyond a certain temperature. The Super Diamond will not only  conduct electricity, but is not affected by heat. Computers will be able to operate at much faster speeds. Mobile phones and any form of communication will be vastly improved with the use of the Super Diamond.

Diamonds are the hardest substance known to man and for many centuries it has been one of the most revered and sought after materials. They have been the sign of supreme wealth, being steeped in mythology and deeply rooted in ancient legends. Super Diamonds are laser marked, so they will not get onto the jewellry market illegally.

Light slows down when it is refracted through a diamond, allowing communication to control the speed of light. Even windows can be made of diamond, using this new process.

South Africa is now able to produce a synthetic diamond in just 45 minutes. The downside of South Africa’s process is that it can only produce very small diamonds.

The snowball fight was then streamed live to the Internet.

Beach Drive, in Rock Creek Park, was also converted into a makeshift cross-country ski run, yet the major event of the area is snow clearing, with some districts being warned about ‘shovel-thieves’.

Washington, DC has been crippled with the worst snow storm in the region’s history, when over two feet of snow fell. Over 200,000 homes and businesses lost power as the entire area was brought to a standstill.

City officials urged people to stay at home, while emergency crews worked to clear streets and restore power to the paralyzed area, as snowbound people huddled in their homes.

So much snow fell, nonstop, that even plows occasionally became stuck and crews ran out of places to push piles from roads they cleared again and again. District transportation officials warned of huge snowbanks at intersections and said they would interfere with motorists’ line of sight for days to come. The National Guards were called out to assist.

“It’s as much snow as any one of us have seen in our lifetime,” District Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said. Officials said they could not remember another blanket closure of the area like this one. Washington’s largest snowfall was 28 inches in 1922.

“With the high winds and driving snow, you can’t even see the top of the Washington Monument from the base,” said Sgt. David Schlosser, a Park Police spokesman.

The storm was named ‘Snowmageddon’ even before the first snowflake fell. More snowfalls have been predicted in the days ahead.

Other areas hit are Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Baltimore. Three feet of snow fell in West Virginia.

The centre says the person flew to Darwin from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam on Jetstar flight JQ74 on Australia Day and then left on the same flight bound for Sydney at 7am. Centre for Disease Control Director Vicki Krause said, “There is still a small risk that other passengers and visitors to the airport may have been exposed.”

Head of Disease Surveillance, Dr Peter Markey, explained that measles is a very contagious viral illness spread between people through coughing and sneezing. “The symptoms of measles are fever, cough, runny nose and sore eyes which occur usually 10 days after exposure to a case, followed by a red blotchy rash three to four days later. To be immune to measles you need to have had measles previously, or have had two doses of the measles vaccine.”

The measles alert applies until February 19.

Across the world, more than 300 people have been diagnosed with the mumps. Suburban New York is seeing the nation’s largest outbreak of the disease in years.

A health official says 303 people in the Rockland County towns of Monsey and New Square have been diagnosed with the highly infectious disease. Almost all the cases are among Orthodox Jews.

Investigators say the outbreak started in August 2009 at a Jewish summer camp in Sullivan County with an 11-year-old boy who brought the disease from England. It has since spread to Jewish communities in Brooklyn, New Jersey and Orange County in upstate New York.

Mumps is spread by coughing and sneezing with the most common symptoms being fever, headache and swollen salivary glands under the jaw.

Just hours after the aborted attempt on Christmas Day to blow up a plane, Britain’s MI5 intelligence service reports that Britain’s worldwide eavesdropping ‘spy in the sky’ agency (GCHQ) began picking up ‘chatter’ emanating from Pakistand and Yemen, concerning lethal breast implants, on Arab websites.

MI5 agents say that Muslim doctors, who were trained at leading UK teaching hospitals, are returning to their native countries to perform surgeries that involve inserting plastic implants containing PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) explosives into women’s breasts and men’s bodies, using the buttocks, or appendix areas.

PETN was used by British shoe-bomber, Richard Reid, who tried unsuccessfully to blow up an American airliner in December 2001. London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came close to blowing up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, when he tried to inject TATP from a syringe, so as to detonate the explosives he had stuffed inside his underpants. Fortunately for the 280 passengers onboard, the fluid had ignited his clothes instead of detonating the explosives.

Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, warns that the body-bombers pose a serious threat to security. Surgeons from the UK’s National Health Service agree that plastic implants are virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines.

A hand-picked team has been appointed by Evans,  to investigate a threat which he says “Can circumvent our defense, given that the explosive would be inserted in a sealed plastic sachet and would be such a small amount, would make it all the more impossible to spot”.

Explosive experts at Britain’s Porton Down biological and chemical warfare research centre estimate that just five ounces of PETN in a plastic sachet inside a bomber’s body could easily blow a large enough hole in a fuselage to crash an airliner. Eight ounces of PETN could penetrate five inches of armour.

The bomber could detonate the explosives using a hypodermic syringe to inject TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide) through his or her skin into the explosives sachet. The concern is that it would appear to be a diabetic injecting him/herself.

The urgency now is for more high specification X-ray machines, which can detect body bombs, be placed in ‘hot spots’.

It was in the question and answer period, after her speech, that Palin appeared to read something off her hand. An enhanced photo revealed the words, ‘Energy’, ‘Tax’, Lift American Spirits’ and ‘Budget Cuts’ (with budget crossed out).

The Hand

Critics around the world reacted with a wide range of humour, from suggesting Palin should sell ad space on her hand, thanking her for giving a visual definition of  ‘talk to the hand’, to Sarah Palin’s new job – palm reading.

Palin shot back at her critics by writing ‘Hi Mom’, on her hand during a campaign appearance with Gov. Rick Perry in Texas.

It has been reported that Sarah Palin was paid $100,000 to speak at the Tea Party in Nashville, before a small crowd of Tea Party convention-goers, who all paid a hefty price to attend. Three cable news channels  broadcast the speech live. She touched on many of the social and political divisive topics that have impassioned the Tea Party movement.

During the question and answer session she concluded “The Republican Party would be really smart to start trying and absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible.”

“I would if I believe that is the right thing to do for our country and the Palin family. Certainly I would do so,” Palin said when asked if she would run for president in 2012. The Fox News Sunday interview was taped the night before she delivered the address to the Tea Party convention. The interview left a clear impression that Sarah Palin would not be a running mate in the 2012 presidential election, but quite possibly a firm contender as a candidate in her own right.

When asked about the hefty fee she received to appear at the Tea Party, Palin replied, “This isn’t about money. It is not about a title. It is not about a leader position in this movement,” she said. “It is about the people. I will live, I will die for the people of America whatever I can do to help. And this party, this party that we call the Tea Party, this movement is the future of politics in America and I am proud to be here today.”

Now investment bankers and other business people are uniting in an effort to save the job of the stockbroker with Macquarie Private Wealth, David Kiely, who was watching supermodel Miranda Kerr during a live Channel 7 interview.

Not only did Kiely get busted, he has become an overnight star. The video clip went viral on YouTube.

Kiely is now sitting at home awaiting his fate, as he meets with bank executives.

Rumours are rife that Kiely was set up by another employee who sent him the saucy email, knowing it would be opened while the cameras were rolling.

Who is the criminal in this situation? The man who deliberately sent the material; the man who publicly viewed the material; or the television station that broadcast the material? Perhaps all three are culpable of breaking the law on pornographic viewing?

A woman boarded a crowded bus in Hong Kong, to discover the man in front of her was openly watching a pornographic video. She was concerned as there were several school students also on the bus, all of whom would have been able to see the video.

Lianhe Wanbao made enquires at the police station, as to whether public viewing of such videos was a chargeable offense. She was told that anyone found in possession of pornographic material can face a fine of up to $20,000. Those who distribute or screen such videos can face a fine of up to $40,000, a jail sentence of up to 6 months, or both.

She was told that members of the public should alert the police of such incidents and appropriate action would be taken.

Just as the first course arrived the wife walked back into the restaurant. Heated words flew, culminating in the wife pouring the rest of the bottle of red wine over the husband’s head. The wife and the mistress then joined arms and left together, disgusted with the cad of a man in their lives.

The surrounding diners had sat quietly through all this, totally bewildered, but secretly impressed with how fabulously functional their own relationship was.

The twist which was reported in the newspapers a week later, is that the colourful threesome were actors hired by the restaurant, specifically to entertain the diners and make them feel grateful about the state of their own relationships.

The U.S Greeting Card Association estimates that approximately one billion valentine cards are sent worldwide for February 14th. Men spending twice as much as women.

Sending a Valentine Day card is now the second-largest greeting card-sending holiday, particularly in the United States. Christmas being the largest.

St Valentine’s Day began way back in the Middle Ages as a pagan Roman holiday called Lupercalia, the hero-hunter of wolves. It is believed girls names were placed in a box and the boys drew a name out. The girl becoming their partner for the next year.

Others say that it was the murder of a Roman priest who was cruelly sentenced to death for secretly performing marriages, so that the young men would not have to join Emperor Claudius’ army.

All this may seem a million light years away from the values we hold in the 21^st century, yet the idea is still the same. ‘Make a loved one feel special’.

This year you can avoid such scenes as described above, by slipping away to somewhere that has a truly romantic atmosphere. A place that will tell your loved one how much you really love him/her.

A special experience waits you at Seachange Lodge, on the tropical island of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific. (Just three hours off the east coast of Australia). Begin with VIP treatment from the airport, a bottle of chilled champagne on arrival, to luxuriating in your own private spa.

Remember you don’t have to celebrate on the 14^th, you can do it later in the month. Just so long as you give the airline tickets to your lover on the Day, preferably with a card.

Waterside Chalet Seachange Lodge

According to the Independent in the UK the concern has existed before, but TripAdvisor’s Dirtiest Hotels list made it an even hotter topic in the past week.

Bob Cotton, CEO of the British Hospitality Association, told the Independent that hotels across Europe are lobbying the EU Commission to rewrite the rules governing website reviews.

The Trip Advisor website is advertised as being unbiased, but is this true? For every bad review how many good reviews? Also, are the reviews written by genuine guests, or rival companies?

“Websites have a responsibility that the person has actually stayed at the hotel or dined at the restaurant,” Cotton told the Independent. Websites also need to check out that the complaint is genuine.

At Seachange Lodge, on the tropical island of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, there was a complaint written by a disgruntled guest who believed he had been penalized, through his children’s behaviour. He was quick to write to Trip Advisor saying that children were not welcome at Seachange Lodge and advised any family to steer clear of the resort. He filed a complaint also with the Vanuatu Tourism Office.

Another family was happily staying at Seachange Lodge at exactly the same time. The owners/operators of Seachange Lodge offered staff of the Tourism Office the opportunity to interview the other family.

Unfortunately there is no avenue available for operators of accommodation venues to repudiate any complaints publicly claimed by guests.

The world Cyber Space is full of uncontested comments by individuals. While a few are helpful and informative, many are amusing and some are downright rude, incoherent and irrelevant, or biased.

“You can’t ban these on-line comments – that is like de-inventing the atomic bomb – and I am in favour of all these methods of modern communication. But we need a fair crack of the whip,” said Cotton.

The truth is ‘You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all the time.’ We can only trust that would-be travelers are able to make a fair assessment themselves, over several reviews and not act slavishly to any particular review. Otherwise, sites like Trip Advisor become little more than an electronic version of ‘Indian Whispers’. By the time the saying gets to the end of the line, it is completely changed, with no redress to the original. Entire governments have been brought down by such tactics.

Costing $575,000, the carbon-fibre winged toy will be capable of submerging to 40 metres.

According to Travel Blackboard, Sir Richard Branson told the Sun “It’s very similar to an airplane flying in the sea. You can literally do a loop-the-loop.” The three bubble cockpit gives the occupants a panoramic view of the surrounding area. Steering is similar to that used on some jet fighters – a joystick.

The Nymph will be moored at Branson’s private Caribbean Island, Necker Island, where he plans to lend it to guests, for $25,000 a week. Guests staying at Necker Island do so for the privilege of paying $88,000 for a week’s stay.

Eventually Branson plans to have the submarines placed around the world.

Branson plans to produce a pressurized version of the Necker Nymph that will be capable of travelling down to a depth of 11,000 metres, in order to plumb the dark depths of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific.

While it is exciting to read the exploits of the billionaires of this life, most of us enjoy life on a different level. So while everyone is not privileged to enjoy the delights of Necker Island and the Necker Nymph, tucked away in the north-west corner of the South Pacific lies a little known tropical island archipelago called Vanuatu. There you can dive and snorkel and enjoy the delights of the ocean, for a lot less than what you would have to pay for the luxuries of Necker Island. There’s even a small sub you can joy ride in, or glass-bottomed kayaks where you can do your own thing.

Vanuatu, steeped in widely varying customs and traditions, guarantees you an experience of a life time, as you encounter an entirely different type of life style. And it is only three hours from the East coast of Australia.

You can win a fabulous VIP tropical island holiday for two, staying in the unique property Seachange Lodge. Airfares paid out of the main centres of New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and New Caledonia. This is worth checking out at (http://seachangelodge.com).